Here’s the deal: I told myself I wasn’t going to write about Terminator 2: Judgement Day for my ongoing Summer of 1991 retrospective. I feel like I’ve worked tangential references to this film into roughly half of the 250 reviews on this website. That’s probably a gross exaggeration...but I have talked about it a lot. Also—other people have talked about it a lot. It’s friggin’ Terminator 2! It’s the Cadillac of all summer movies! Ultimately, I feel like it’s simply not possible to discuss film in the summer of 1991 and avoid talking about T2. It’d be like visiting the Louvre and skipping the Mona Lisa. Like making someone a Best of Lynyrd Skynyrd mixtape and leaving out Free Bird! (Note: I have no idea why one would want to make such a tape. I mean...I guess “That Smell” is decent enough). If you’ve spent any time here at VHS of the Week you know that T2 occupies a special place in my heart. I have never anticipated the release of a film with such desperation...before or since. This is a bit strange given that I did not, and do not, particularly care for the original Terminator....or the entire science fiction genre.That shit ties my head in knots! I wanted to review the NeverEnding Story but found it too confusing to put into words! And I’m 42 years old! In the years following the 1984 Terminator, Austrian bodybuilding fuck boy and two-term governor of the state of California Arnold Schwarzenegger blew up like Gallagher’s watermelons. My dad, himself a fledgling bodybuilder in his younger years, was obsessed with Arnold’s physique and his skull cracking flicks like Commando and Raw Deal. I dug his crossover jams like Twins and Kindergarten Cop. Ours was the house of Arnold. We just loved that big motherfucker! So when T2 appeared on the docket, the excitement was paralyzing. The film came with an $80 million dollar price tag, making it the most expensive flick ever made at the time. Folks tend to work themselves into a lather when someone spends an unfathomable amount of money on a film. You know how many homeless people you could feed with that kind of dough? A lot. You know how many Gulfstream Jets you can buy your leading A-list action star with that kind of dough? Just the one! The knives were out for T2 for sure, but it was also a foregone conclusion that it would be good and that it would pull it an ass ton of money. And you know that? It was...and it did! I’ll go to my grave saying that Point Break is the best film of the summer of ‘91...but T2 does exactly what it’s supposed to do. It’s the apex of summer moviegoing. I know I’m on an island here but that CGI shit does nothing for me. Zilch. On the other hand, everything that happens in T2 feels like it could actually happen. I know—you’re thinking “dude...there’s a man made of liquid metal who hijacks a helicopter with his flying motorcycle!” To which I would say: AND!? T2 made Arnold Schwarzenegger the biggest movie star on the planet...a title he only held onto until the release of his very next film, the interminable Last Action Hero. After his bafflingly successful political career, Schwarzenegger returned to making movies but nobody watched them. It was certainly an odd sight, though, after all of his years as a cigar chomping, dick swinging, Republican alpha male, to see Schwarzenegger post videos of himself in quarantine...hanging out with his donkeys and espousing decidedly non-republican talking points. Just a withered grandpa with a bum ticker begging people to stop being racist. Arnold—I still don’t mind the guy!
Before we get to the getting, I feel like I need to mention this: the only thing in life I have anticipated harder than T2 was probably Guns N’ Roses Use Your Illusion albums, their long delayed follow up(s) to Appetite for Destruction. So imagine my reaction when I found out that the first single for this new Gn’R project would be dropping with a T2 tie-in video! I literally dropped dead. And yes...I know what “literally” means. The video premiered in May of ‘91 and I was right there glued to the tube...waiting to capture all of it with my mind’s eye. The video functions as both an extended trailer for the movie as well a palette awakener for albums...which were still a maddening three months away from hitting the shelves. If you haven’t seen the video, do yourself a favor and stream it where videos are streamed. The treatment for this video could fit on the back of a fortune cookie. Guns N’ Roses are playing a concert. Arnold Schwarzenagger, in character as the T-101, shows up with a shotgun, presumably to terminate the band and save us all from The Spaghetti Incident. The video is split between clips from the film, clips of the band performing the song with mild costume changes, and clips of Schwarzenegger making his way through the crowd with a shotgun. First off--It’s weird how the sight of a man walking through a packed concert venue with a shotgun didn’t seem weird at all back in 1991. Now--not so much. Must have something to do with the 70000 mass shootings we’ve had in the last 30 years. ANYWAY, the song is called “You Could Be Mine” and it just absolutely slays. It starts with a backwards drum fill before skipping straight into high gear. If you looked up “galloping drum beat” in the dictionary you’d see a gif of Matt Sourm playing the intro to “You Could Be Mine.” Duff is first act...chorus pedal on his bass just dimed out. Oh! And here come Slash and Izzy with their...erm...slash and burn guitarmonies. The works just keep building and building until PATOW!!! The whole thing blasts into place, smacking the listener like a line of pure cocaine. In fact--the original title of this song is “Cocaine Talking,” and that’s not just the cocaine talking! The performance is a sort of last gasp from the classic-era Gn’R…right before the wheels started to fall off. Axl wears a purple jacket with a mesh T-shirt underneath and a pair of nut hugging biker shorts. Slash and Duff are bare chested and swimming in substances. Izzy? He’s still around too. Our man Arnold, though, CANNOT seem to make it to the stage, even though this song is SIX MINUTES LONG!! When he catches up with the band outside after the gig, his Terminator hardware tells him that killing Axl Rose would be a waste of ammo. I bet Axl came up with that twist himself. He’s crazier than a shithouse rat, that guy.
Before I give y’all a rundown of the plot, I need to point out that, when Terminator 2 was released on July 3, 1991, it ran for 137 finely etched minutes. All killer...no filler. At no point in the last 30 years have I wished that there were additional minutes of Terminator 2 to be watched. At no point have I wished that there were additional minutes of ANY movie to watch, really. I tend to take an extremely dim view of director’s cuts. Just leave shit alone! Doesn’t Richard Kelly know that replacing Echo and the Bunnyman’s The Killing Moon with INXS’s Never Tear us Apart as the opening song of Donnie Darko RUINS THE ENTIRE MOVIE!!?? Anyway, extended cuts really became the order of the day during the DVD era, so I was a little surprised to find that my VHS copy of T2 runs for 15 minutes longer than the 1991 theatrical cut. I thought I might be able to circumvent those extra minutes by watching my DVD copy of T2 but THAT ONE has 16 extra minutes!! And what the fuck happens in that extra one minute?? The infamous cyborg bunga bunga party scene? I have yet to see any of this extra footage so you’re going to get my reactions in real time. Fun!
Anyway, what happens is this: We open with a little refresher course in Terminatorology, voiced by Sarah Connor, mother of the revolution and sole survivor of the original film. Sarah tells us that, on August 29th 1997, three billion people died in a fiery fireball. As someone who lived through 8/29/97 I can tell you that this does not check out. Although Princess Diana WAS killed in a car accident like two days later...which is kinda spooky. Right, so the Terminator (Schwarzy) was supposed to stop Sarah Connor from riding the dude from Navy Seals (Michael Biehn) like a mechanical bull but was unsuccessful. Everyone knows Mikey Biehn got the strong seed like whoa and so SC was instantly preggers with little JC. As in John Connor, the eventual leader of the revolution or something. So Biehn’s character, whom we’ll call Kyle Reese as that was his name, was terminated, but Sarah crushed the Terminator in a hydraulic press. Someone swept up his robot detritus and used the future technology to create iPads. Seriously though, a company called Cyberdyne Systems attempted to use the technology to automate the entire United States military industrial complex and all of its nuclear weapons.. On that fateful day in late August, the machines got sick of sitting around waiting for Titanic to come out and decided to turn against the human race. Now, in the year 2029, a constant battle rages between Skynet (the bad machines) and the survivors, led by John Connor. I probably just explained that all fucked up but I already told you this shit is like calculus to me! Who is in charge of the robot people then?? Skynet sends a Terminator back to 1991 to kill young John Connor. Not to be one upped in the race to erase himself, Connor sends his own Terminator back to the early 90’s to protect his younger self from termination. Too bad he couldn’t program the Terminator to prevent the kid who plays young John Connor from turning into a wife-beating piece of shit, eh? I digress. So there’s the plot of the movie...ish. I need a drink! The opening credits roll over scenes of burning playgrounds and honestly….this vision of 2029 doesn’t seem all that far fetched to me right now. Or unsettling. You think the sight of a flaming merry-go-round is gonna move the needle with me after the last two years? Please.
We touch down in Los Angeles in the year 1991. You know how some movies look greyscale? This one is bluescale. It looks like it was filmed inside of the Blue Man Group’s balls. The T-101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) materializes from a lightning pod, naked as the day he was born and just ripped to shreds. He was 43 when he made this movie and was still a glistening mass of muscle meat. He walks into the nearest biker bar with his dingle danglin’. Y’all remember when that reporter from Rolling Stone asked Arnold if the Terminator fucks and he said “you disgrace your magazine wis deez questions. Sounds like a “yes” to me! The lady bar patrons stare at his pecker and seem pleased with what they see. The bikers are less pleased. They try to kick his ass but the Terminator proceeds to beat the shit of 10 dudes. He stabs one dude to the pool table and defenestrates Extra Who Looks Exactly Like Chris Cornell. He steals a pair of leather pants, a leather jacket, a pair of shades, and a motorcycle. He speeds toward downtown Los Angeles while the sounds of “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood and the Destroyers waft through the air like a fart. Fun fact: the theater where I saw T2 on opening day was showing this flick on two screens and Problem Child 2 on their other two screens. This means that it was NOT POSSIBLE to see a film at Showcase Cinemas in downtown Worcester on 7/3/91 WITHOUT hearing the song “Bad to the Bone.”
Meanwhile across town, a parallel lightning cloud shits out a second, more slightly built naked terminator. This one is the T-1000 (Robert Patrick)...which is approximately 899 Terminator points higher than the T-101. He also has the upper hand on the old school termy in a huge way as he is made of liquid metal. We don’t actually know this yet...but I know it because I have already seen this movie 200 times. He slaughters the nearest police officer and steals his uniform, which he will continue to wear throughout the entire film. I really have no idea why he decides to limit his wardrobe to one shitty cop uniform when one of the premier features of the T-1000 is that it can shape-shift into any human person on the planet. And also--floors. Why didn’t they cast a revolving door of the most insane actors they could think of to play the T-1000? They could've gotten Dolph Lundgren and Ernest Borgnine and Bill Paxton and Terri Garr...all appearing as the T-1000! No disrespect to Robert Partick (y’all know I’m a Fire in the Sky ride or die) but did they have to limit themselves to one dude who looks like Ray Liotta’s squirrely cousin? So it’s liquid cop versus leather muscle daddy. We’ve got a ballgame!
Even though the T-1000 is the thousandest T that they make, he still has to pound the pavement to try to locate John Connor. The T-101 just instinctively knows to drive his motorcycle towards Burbank. When we meet little JC, he’s living in the valley with his asshole foster parents. He’s kind of an asshole too, this kid. He mostly hangs around his garage listening to the Gn’R single and working on his dirt bike. Later, he blazes into town with his mullet head buddy to rob ATMs. I’m not getting “leader of the resistance” vibes from this kid AT ALL. I’m not sure how I missed this on my 7 dozen earlier viewings but John Connor totally rocks a Public Enemy T-shirt throughout the flick. I wonder what his favorite PE song is? I’m gonna say “Prophets of Rage.” While the kids are biking to the mall to spend some of their ill gotten gains, John tells his buddy that his biological mother is a “total loser” who has been locked up in a looney bin since her unsuccessful attempt at firebombing a computer factory. You mean like a Micro Center? Sounds pretty cool to me, bro. Cut to: the Pescatarian Asylum for the Clinically Insane, current address of one Sarah Connor. You may have noticed that I used the term “looney bin” a few sentences back, which is not the preferred nomenclature. That’s how the filmmakers chose to portray this particular facility. All the patients at this place are REAL fucked up! They are all lying in the hallway screaming and shitting and drooling on themselves. Don’t worry--it gets much, much worse! The cat in charge, Dr Silberman, is particularly cruel to Sarah ‘cuz she won’t get off her whole armageddon jag. When we’re reintroduced to Sarah Connor, she’s still played by the actress Linda Hamilton. But this time she’s JACKED. Like she’s been doing chin ups for 8 hours a day since 1984. The orderlies enter her room to give her her daily dose of thorazine and she’s like “I’m all set” so these male nurses throw her on the ground and kick her and zap her with a cattle prod. While she’s in the middle of her narco nap, she receives a visit from the ghost of Michael Biehn and WHAT THE FUCK IS HE DOING IN THIS MOVIE!?? This is all news to me, folks! You mean that Michael Biehn had actually returned as Kyle Reese in Terminator 2 and they cut his scenes?? What a bunch of dicks! That’s no way to treat the star of The Seventh Sign! Dream Kyle tells Sarah that the Terminators are after her son and that she needs to protect him. She’s like “that’s gonna be tough to do from this padded cell that I’m locked in 24/7 ya dense prick!” Biehn tells her to remember “The Message.” You mean that song by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five? Good tune. When Sarah comes to, she’s brought before the parole board so she can lobby for a move to the minimum security wing and a restoration of her visitation privileges. Here I’d like to point out that Sarah is always wearing really fancy sleepwear at the Pescadero. At least they dress their patients well before they beat the shit out of them, eh? At the hearing, Dr Silberman shows Sarah a video….of Sarah going apeshit and screaming about the end of the world and how “anyone who isn’t wearing 2 million SPF Sunblock of 8/29/97 is gonna have a pretty fuckin’ bad day!” Do they even make sunblock that strong?? What if I took my 100 SPF and applied it 20000 times? Would that count? Silberman asks Sarah if she feels like she’s made progress and she’s like “Yup. Now let me out.” He is not impressed. He sentences her to six more months in the cooler. She leaps out of her chair and tries to murder him. I feel like he kinda had it coming.
Both Terminator’s get a bead on John and converge on the mall, where John is absolutely crushing ass at Afterburner. I guess maybe he’ll be a good army commander ‘cuz he’s good at video games? John hears that 5-0 is looking for him, presumably for robbing ATMs, so he attempts to escape through the bowels of the shopping mall. When he enters a maintenance hallway he runs smack into the T-101, who is walking in slow motion and carrying a box of long stem roses with a shotgun stashed inside. Wait a minute...GUNS and ROSES!?? I seriously never put that together until now. Maybe I haven't actually seen this movie before!! John sees the gun and naturally assumes this cat is gonna shoot him. Those of us who have seen the first Terminator assume this as well. But then the T-1000 appears on the scene and the T-101 starts blasting away at HIM and not this kid! He’s trying to terminate the terminator! Problem is--the bullets leave shiny, metallic splotches where the human gore should be. This guy is made from liquid metal…unlike the T-101…who is made from plain vanilla metal. I’d love to tell you what the consequences of a liquid metal man are but my knowledge of liquid metal begins and ends with this movie. He’s, like, super duper hard to kill….particularly with bullets. Does this mean that they don’t try to shoot him again and again and again and AGAIN even when it’s abundantly clear that he is impervious to the effects of gunshots??? Not kids...it certainly does not.
While the machines of hating grace throw each other into cement walls, John hops on his dirt bike and sets the throttles for the sun. The T-1000 gives chase on foot and I gotta say...that dude can lay down some serious shoe leather! This film is really just a showcase for Robert Patrick’s running prowess. I bet that guy could’ve taken that shit to the Olympics (assuming it isn’t just a running double, of course). Luckily, dirt bike beats runner but then T-1000 steals a tractor trailer and tractor trailer beats dirt bike. Every time. The chase spills into the LA river basin and It’s looking like curtains for little Johnny C, and hence, all of mankind, but the T-101 has got his back. He jumps his motorcycle into the basin like it’s the friggin’ wagon queen family truckster! I’ve always admired James Cameron for allowing this scene to go out with a close up of a stunt double who looks more like Martin Short than he looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger. John is rescued and the truck crashes into a bridge and explodes. But our pal the T-1000 emerges fully engulfed in flames before simply turning back into police costume-wearing Robert Patrick. As I wrote in a review for my 8th grade English class—“it...is...MINT!!!”
John and the T-101 take a little sidebar to explain some important plot points to the audience. Arnold details the physiology of the T-1000. He can transform himself into any form, human or weapon. But not...like...a cantaloupe. In fact, at that very moment the T-1000 is busy murdering John’s foster parents with his liquid arm swords. John says that they were “dicks” anyway...but you can tell he’s minorly bummed. John tells his new metal machine buddy that they need to break his moms out of Pescadero ASAP but the T is all “does...not...compute.” What is he supposed to do with the kid, then? Rent an apartment at the Oakwoods and wait for the bomb to drop?? John remembers that he’s the leader of the free world and that this Terminator is essentially his property. John is like “wait a minute: aren’t you supposed to do whatever I say??” The T-101–“yes” (begrudgingly). John is like “stand on one foot! Bark like a dog! A big dog! Sing the Soul Glo jingle!” The Terminator obliges. Well...not the last three things. John tells the Terminator that he’s hereby barred from killing anyone for the rest of the film, which has gotta be tough shakes for a terminator! What happened was—between the first Terminator and this one Arnold Schwarzenegger became an unlikely family friendly movie star and the producers must’ve figured 2.5 hours of this dude just murdering the shit out of people would be a bad look. Luckily, this killing embargo does not extend to fellow Terminators.
JC & T bike up to the nut house, where Sarah is currently having the side of her face licked by yet another pervy male nurse. This facility is the fucking pits, man. Oh—the T-1000 has already slithered into the hospital too, so there’s also that. He briefly disguises himself as a checkered floor before rising like a liquid Phoenix to start violently dispatching the hospital staff. I gotta say—the special effects in this movie still look pretty bomb 30 years later. Before any Terminators can reach her, Sarah manages to unlock her cell with a shiv. She immediately finds that motherfucker who licked her face and beats him to death with a broomhandle. I have no problem with that. Then she tracks down Dr Silberman and jams a Roto Rooter-filled syringe into his neck and demands to be let out of the hospital. He acquiesces. Sarah tries to make her way out of the asylum, but as she’s running down one of the hospital’s poorly lit, abandoned corridors, see sees the T-101 step off the elevator and she freaks the fuck out! Mind you, last time she saw this dude was way back in ‘84 when he was still playing for the bad guys. She dudn’t know that he was reprogrammed to not murder her. She’s like “oh HELL no!! You can jingle all the way back to 2029 or whatever fiery hellscape you came from!” But then she sees the liquid guy and Arnold extends his hand and says “come with me if you want to live.” She does want to live so she goes with him. They have to do battle with the T-1000 all the way to the parking lot. A lot of neat stuff happens that just isn’t going to sound interesting if I try to describe it. Maybe just watch the movie?
Sarah, John, and the T-101 steal a car and finally manage to outrun the running T-1000. As they speed south toward the Mexican border, John briefs his mom on the latest comings and goings in Terminator land. The Arnold Schwarzenegger machine? He’s a buddy now! Sarah looks at him like “cool. So...erm...what you been up to these last seven years?” and he’s all “not much--did Red Heat with Jimmy Belushi. That guy tokes like a beast!!” When this unlikely trio makes camp for the night, it’s the T-101’s turn to play show and tell. We learn that his battery lasts 120 years (you hear that, APPLE!?) and that you can shut him off by peeling back his scalp and yanking out his CPU, which is French for “central processing unit.” This is all new to me as none of this was in the theatrical cut. Now I know! They power him down and Sarah grabs the CPU and prepares to smash it with a hammer. Man, that would’ve brought this flick to a screeching halt! But you know--even if they ended it here it still would’ve been better than, I don’t know, Hudson Hawk? John refuses to allow his mom to destroy the computer chip. Totally pulls rank on her! He’s all “I’m de captain now!” The next morning, John attempts to socialize the T-101 by teaching how to cuss and use street lingo (because John Connor has his ear to the streets? I guess he does have that one Public Enemy shirt). He teaches him “Hasta La Vista, Baby” and “eat me.” He also teaches him how to say “chill out,” a line he unfortunately repeat in the unfortunate 1997 film Batman and Robin.
The crew continue on to Mexico for a little Mexican intermezzo (now would be a good time to stretch or hit the loo if you gotta go). How they manage to cross the border as an escaped convict, a metal cyborg, and a missing child we do not know. Sarah hits up her pal Enrique, who has a cache of automatic weapons and enough plastic explosives to orbit Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not really sure what they need the guns for as it has already been WELL ESTABLISHED that the T-1000 cannot be killed by conventional (or any) weapons! T-101 explains that a brilliant scientist named Miles Dyson is the one who took the discarded Terminator hand and developed the technology that inadvertently led to the downfall of society. John looks at T-101 and says “we’re not gonna make it, are we? People?” T-101 says “it’s in our nature to destroy ourselves.” Man, ain’t that the fuckin’ truth! So prescient, this movie. Damn. Anyway, Sarah is like “soooo...this Miles dude--what does he look like?” T-101 says that he should be easy to find as he is THE ONLY BLACK PERSON IN THIS MOVIE. We finally meet Miles and he’s just a good natured workaholic, diligently plugging away on his creation that he thinks will change the world for the better while his young children beg him to take them to Water Whizz. Hey, I’m sure the person who created the internet thought they were changing the world for the better too. Now it’s a swirling cauldron of garbage...like this review that you’re currently reading! After Sarah has a terrible nightmare about Judgement Day (note: I know I said I hate CGI, but these scenes of LA being obliterated are pretty damn effective. I think they’re CGI, anyway…and that they didn’t actually destroy Los Angeles for this film), she decides to abandon John and the T-101 and go whack Dyson herself.
When the Dyson family return home from Thunder Lagoon, Sarah is already waiting outside in her makeshift assassin’s nest. She fires about 700 rounds into the house, catching Miles with one bullet and completely missing everyone else. She moves inside to finish the job but then has a massive panic attack. I mean….she’s had a pretty eventful 24 hours! John shows up with the T-101, who brandishes a knife and starts carving up his arm. Everyone starts freaking out! Do they think he’s committing suicide or something? No, he flexes his metal robot arm and Dyson is like “I know that thing!” They sit Dyson down and tell him that he’ll eventually have the blood of three billion humans on his hands. You know how much blood that is?? A lot. I see here in my notes I wrote “he takes it well.” Does he really though?? I’m sure he feels WICKED bad! In fact I know that he feels bad because his immediate reaction is to bring his new pals to the Cyberdyne building to blow it up! All he has to do is destroy the old Terminator bits and all of his research and the future will be saved. Oh, we’ll still get Justin Bieber, Donald Trump, and Covid-19 though...so forgive me if my enthusiasm begins to wane. They sneak into the lab and start laying down explosives but someone drops a dime on them and the building is crawling with police in no time. The T-1000 is back on the scene, riding his police motorcycle right up the emergency stairwell. Speaking of the T-1000: where the fuck has HE been for the last forty minutes?? Did he buy a map of the stars and putter around Beverly Hills looking for Dyan Cannon’s house? Did he melt himself into a vibrator to see what’s what? What a lazy ass Terminator! T-101 grabs his gatling gun, blasts out a tenth floor window, and machine guns the balls out of the plaza below. His gun is so powerful it uproots trees! But hey--according to his scorekeeping screen, there are no casualties. Or rather--0.0 casualties, which is the same score Pitchfork Gave to Liz Phair’s self-titled 2003 album. Nice shootin’, Tex! While T-101 keeps the authorities at bay with his fusillade of bullets, Dyson grabs all of the necessary materials and exclaims “we got Skynet for the balls!” which is great. Then the swat team breaches the room and shoots Dyson ten times, which is less great. Inexplicably shooting the only black character to death? Not a good look, folks...not good at all. Oh wait! He’s not dead yet! He’s just holding onto the detonator and gasping for breath OPE! Now he’s dead. The building explodes. Or...I guess just part of the building because everyone else inside is still alive. Problem is there’s still 500 cops down in the lobby, guns drawn. T-101 decides to head on down to suss out the sitch. Before he leaves, though, he tells the Connor’s “I’ll be back.” The audience members leap from their chairs and applaud rapturously. Seriously, I saw T2 four times on the big screen and this line brought down the house EVERY SINGLE TIME! What a weird line to attain legendary status. I’ll be back? It’s like...cool. Maybe grab some Doritos? When the T-101 steps into the lobby the police light him up like an unarmed black teenager reaching for his wallet. They pump about 1000 rounds into him but he remains on his feet. Don’t you think one of these cops would have the good sense to say “you know--we’ve put an unreasonable amount of bullets into this man and he does not seem injured in any way. I wonder if there isn’t something else going on here??” But no--they keep right on blasting. T-101 honors his no kill pact and simply shoots all of the police officers in less essential-type areas. Arms and legs and such. I know I say this a lot...but being shot ANYWHERE is always gonna be a big deal! While T-101 is putting the entire LAPD on extended disability leave, the T-1000 pilots his motorcycle off of the top of the exploded building and has a midair collision with a police helicopter. He pours himself into the chopper like a broken lava lamp and tells the pilot to get out. He does.
Right, so T-101 and the Connor’s take off in a stolen police van and T-1000 chases them in his helicopter. It’s rad. After crashing their respective vehicles, T-1000 hijacks a truck full of liquid nitrogen and the rest of the crew hijack...a shitty Nissan pickup truck? Hardly seems fair. They continue to shoot bullets at the T-1000, having learned nothing over the last two and a half hours. I guess the T-1000 doesn’t have his CDL license ‘cuz he jackknifes the truck and rolls it over. No sweat--he simply hops on the roof and rides that crippled beast like a surfboard as it sails toward the steel mill from the end of Sly Stallone’s Cobra. When the truck reaches the steel mill, the part of the truck that houses the dangerous chemicals splits open like an old pair of trousers. There's a deluge of liquid nitrogen that gives a million ametuer chefs watching at home a million terrible ideas. T-1000 gets covered in the gunk too and turns into a copsicle. Arnold sees that he’s frozen (note: can metal FREEZE??) and figures it’s time to try out his new tagline. He says “Hasta La Vista (pregnant pause) baby.” Then he shoots the T-1000, who immediately shatters and hits the ground like a sock full of nickels. This fell ghoul quickly melts back together and REFUSES TO DIE!! But Schwarzenegger already used up his new signature quip! I don’t know--there's some more Terminator-on-Terminator fighting. T-1000 briefly turns into Linda Hamilton to try to trick Linda Hamilton. Not having him morph into Danny DeVito during this climactic battle sequence seems like a massive lost opportunity. With the T-101 briefly down but not out, it falls on Sarah to dispense with T-1000 once and for all. She does that cool one-armed shotgun rack thingy that they showed over and over in the previews. It doesn’t hurt the T-1000 but it DOES cause him to take a few steps back...off a ledge and into a massive vat of molten steel. Ok, so you can’t freeze liquid metal people but you CAN burn them to death. Got it! The T-1000 squeals like a Veloceraptor with an abscessed tooth. As he’s dying, the ghosts of his victims leave his body and ascend up to heaven or wherever in a scene that was CLEARLY lifted wholesale from the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street Part IV: The Dream Master. Wes Craven should’ve sued the shit out of James Cameron! I’m thinking it’s too late now...for obvious reasons. The T-1000 transforms into a gelatinous butthole before disappearing completely. Sarah and John toss the antique Terminator parts into the soup, which, in theory, should save the world...from the four bullshit sequels that followed this one! Heyyyooo!!!! As much as I loved this movie I never even considered watching any of the subsequent Terminator’s. I know that there’s one where Christian Bale screams at a dude whose last name sounds like “halibut” and someone recorded it and posted it online to show the world what an immense prick that guy is (“You and me--we’re fuckin’ done professionally, man!). Oh wait! I did watch a few minutes of the latest reboot on TV last year. And...like...Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a regular old GILF who lives with his family in Utah or wherever. And he and Linda Hamilton drive a vehicle out of a crashing jumbo jet and then have a car chase UNDERWATER!! Hard pass.
ANYWAY, Sarah and John are like “well, we just saved the world--let’s go get a taco” but T-101 says that they need to destroy him as well ‘cuz he’s made up of the bad stuff. Since he cannot commit terminator seppuku, it will fall on John to lower him into the fiery sauce. John wails and punches the T-101 and commands him to stay and be a pal. Alas, this kid is just destined to not have a father. Through heavy tears, John lowers the best friend that he ever did have into the hot stuff. When the Terminator is about 95% submerged, he raises his hand and gives his buddy one final, triumphant thumbs up. Do you think you could still give a thumbs up after everything but your left hand has been incinerated. I bet that you cannot. In a closing voice over, Sarah Connor says that “if a Terminator can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.” Oh lord I wish it were so, my friend. And no I’m not crying. It is YOU who is crying!! Dun dun dun...dun dun….DUN DUN DUN...DUN DUN!! The end. Happy 4th of July, everybody.
Here’s a story that isn’t much of a story: in June of 1991 my Aunt Lorie agreed to take me to the movies as a little “congratulations for making it through the 7th grade without being wedgied to death by bullies” gift. My aunt, who has most likely never looked at this website, was a totemic figure in my childhood as she’s the adult-ish figure primarily responsible for feeding me a steady diet of heavy metal and grizzly horror flicks when I was way too young to diet on said substances. The nights when she would babysit would usually begin with her sending me to the nearest Cumberland Farms on my Huffy to buy her a pack of Kool’s. Upon my return, she’d pull out her stash of VHS tapes; Mother’s Day...Faces of Death…The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Part 1 and/or 2. Then she’d plop me in front of the TV for the night and let me watch the blood seepage while she sat outside in her gold camaro and smoked cigarettes with her boyfriend(s). This time, though, we’d actually be stepping out to the cinema for the first, and sadly, last time. Lorie gave me two movies to choose from: Madonna’s Truth or Dare or Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. Me being me…I chose ‘em both! And my aunt? She surprisingly acquiesced! Only one of these two films made a huge impression on me. Maybe you can figure out which one by taking this simple quiz. 30 years later…do I still A)—Stick my finger down my throat and make retching noises every time I see Kevin Costner? Or B)—Yell “Dishes are DONE, man!” every time I finish doing the dishes? If you answered “both A and B” the you are correct! Seriously though—the answer is obviously B. It’s only one of the most quotable lines in cinematic history…right up there with “we’re gonna need a bigger boat” and “I’m right on top of that, Rose,” the latter of which is from this very…same…movie!! “Vogue” is a banger and all but Don't Tell Mom is simply one of the greatest films ever made. And I can say this with authority because I just watched it again for the first time in forever and it still absolutely murders. What kind of brilliant cinematic wizard came up with this material anyway?? Did some dude walk into HBO Films and say “what if we cast Kelly Bundy in a flick that’s a cross between Home Alone, Working Girl, and Weekend at Bernie’s?” And did they then give this individual a lifetime achievement Oscar ON THE SPOT!! I mean…it still kind of sucks, of course. Would I still rather watch Don’t Tell Mom than watch Madonna blow a bottle of Aqua Panna? Any day of the week, friends.
What happens is this: dream crush of every singe cis male alive in the late 1980’s, Christina Applegate plays Sue Ellen “Swell” Crandall, a fashion-forward 17 year-old recent high school graduate who lives in a dumpy ass farmhouse with her single mother and her ten siblings way out in El Monte or some shit. All of Swell’s friends are fucking off to Europe for the summer but poor Swell’s mom refuses to bankroll her eldest daughter’s travel. Not because she doesn’t have the dough, you understand? Nah, ma dukes is heading to Australia for two months with her own damn friends. Swell is stuck at home with her brothers and sister, whom I will now introduce alphabetically: there’s her hesher long hair twin brother, Kenny (man who starred in the only film with the word “babysit” in the title that’s better than this one, Keith Coogan), 13 year-old sister who likes to torture insects for fun, Melissa (indomitable 2-time Michael Myers sparring partner, Danielle Harris), 11 year-old grad larceny enthusiast, Walter (actor who I do not know), and 14 year-old neighborhood lotario, Zach (child actor who got into drugs and died way too young, Chris Pettiet). Two things I notice right out of the gate: the score for this movie, by 15 time Academy Award Nominee Thomas Newman’ssssss brother David, is way way WAY over the top. This is a teen comedy comedy, not the opening credits to Psycho, bro. Later, the score will be dialed down in favor of an unholy avalanche of early 90’s soft rock tunes with lyrics that describe exactly what is happening in a given scene. Y’all know how much I hate literal soundtracking! And second—Christia Applegate smokes a metric shit ton of cigarettes in this film. She’s like Peter Stormare in fargo…lighting one with the end of a ‘nother! I feel like if this movie came out today it would be rated R for smoking. Unbeknownst to the Crandall kids, their mom has hired an elderly live-in babysitter named Mrs Sturak to look after them while she’s down under…because…you know…they’re just kids. This lady rolls up in her 1955 Buick Special Riviera (I looked it up) while Mrs Crandall is on her way out the door and she’s, like, a zillion years old (actual age: 78). The kids figure she’ll be a pushover but the second Mrs Crandall pulls away, she blows her whistle and turns into the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. Once the kids realize they’re in for a summer of push-ups and skull fuckery there’s one of those neato-o dolly zooms like the one in Jaws. Mrs Sturak is cartoonishly mean. She tries to curry favor with the children by kicking their friggin’ dog upside the head. I’m immediately thinking…if the movie was just 105 minutes of this stupid shit, it would not be worth watching. Before Mrs Sturak can even unpack her Fixodent, she decides to take a look in Kenny’s room…and it’s REAL fucked up! Reefer plants…Motorhead posters on the wall (note: it kinda looks like he has a Christina Applegate poster on his wall too…which would be weird. For a lot of reasons), a half eaten pizza spinning on the turntable. The old bag is so frightened by the sight of this den of iniquity she has a heart attack and drops dead! That’s right, y’all—the titular babysitter doesn’t make it long enough to sit down for Wheel of Fortune. She dies about 3 minutes after the opening credits have concluded….’cuz this flick takes care of BUSINESS!
The kids hold an emergency household meeting to discuss next steps. Naturally, they alert the authorities, who remove the body and begin the process of notifying this lady’s surviving family members. Just kidding! Calling emergency services would shorten the length of this movie by about 90 minutes so they stuff Mrs Sturak in a steamer trunk and then leave the trunk on the front steps of a random mortuary like the world’s shittiest Amazon package. They figure Australia is, like, mad far away and it is also 1991 so there’s zero chance of Mrs Crandall learning about the babysitter’s death from social media (ROLF R babysitr is ded who has xanz??). Problem is: Mrs Crandall slipped the babysitter an envelope full of dough before she split and that shit is nowhere to be found! Dumb ass kids just threw away an old lady that was strapped with cash! Now they’ve got 3 pennies, a ball of lint, and one frozen Mama Celeste Pizza (product placement in the house!). Five human people are supposed to live two months on those things I just mentioned. Kenny splits the scene to hang out with his buddy Lizard and puff herb. Dude likes blazing with his buddies…he’s a fuckin’ pot head! Swell says “well SOMEBODY has to get a job!” And you and me both know it ain’t gonna be the little girl from Halloween. So Swell starts working at a disgust-o fast food joint called Clown Dog. Couple of problems with this; unless she already has food service experience (she appears to have never worked anywhere. Remember how she couldn’t afford a ticket to Europe) she would probably have to train at a reduced rate of pay for at least a week. From the looks of the joint, folks working there couldn’t possibly be making more than minimum wage…which was what…$4.25 an hour in 1991? Restaurants usually pay bi-weekly so maybe…MAYBE Swell walks home with a check for $170 less taxes after one month. Her mom is only gone for two months. Why not just grab some ski masks and knock over a Vons?? Swell takes the job anyway…and it just completely fucking sucks. Sure, she gets to work with this non-threateningly handsome kid Brian (popular 90’s actor who is not Josh Hamiltion, Josh Charles) so you know they’re gonna snog, but the place is the pits. The manager is an insufferable dork, she has to wear a bowtie, and the restaurant just oozes filth from every pore. There’s a river of fry-o-lator grease flowing through the kitchen and fossilized tater tots on the floor and shit. Do they have a Z on their front door?? I would not eat at Clown Dog, no sir/ma’am. One night, while Swell is scraping chicken entrails off the ceiling the manager asks her why she forgot her smile and she blows her stack and walks out. 86 Swell.
The Crandall household is down to its last box of Cap’n Crunch so Swell still needs cash pronto. You know what that means, right? Time for a “gearing up to apply for more professional-type jobs'' montage! Swell shops for self-help books and tries on about a dozen different outfits while a craptastic cover of Tommy James’ “Draggin’ the Line” plays in the background. Come to think of it…the original “Draggin’ the Line” isn’t very good either. Whatever. Anyway, Swell gets all decked out and drives the dead babysitter’s car to downtown LA and brings her wholly plagiarized resume to a clothing manufacturing company called GAW, which is an acronym for “generalized anxiety whatever.” Swell arrives on the 17th floor and is given a thoroughly frosty reception by Carolyn (Jayne Brook), the frosty receptionist. TO BE FAIR…Swell is supposed to apply for a job down on the 5th floor. I’d probably be annoyed too! Fortunately, or unfortunately for Carolyn, she leaves her post for long enough for GAW president Rose (Joanna Cassidy) to materialize and inquire about her whereabouts. Rose is all “where is my damn secretary?” and Swell is like “does she look like she’s chewing her face?” Does she look like she’s chewing her FACE!? What does that even mean? It doesn't matter—Rose hears this and is all “grah hah hah you funny, girl…howdya like to be my personal Admin? The hub of my communications network??” Seriously, that’s all it takes?? One funny quip that isn’t even funny?? She isn’t even gonna have this girl vetted by HR? NOPE! She’s immediately ushered into her new office and the film effectively transitions into Working Girl. Peep this though—her office is even bigger than Sigourney Weaver’s in that film! Her job comes with a 401K, fully benny’s, and an annual salary of $37500, which is approximately 1.2 gazillion dollars in 2021 money. All of this happens in a head spinnigly short amount of time. The job only comes with one instruction—if Rose asks Swell the status of such and such…she’s to say “I’m right on top of that, Rose!” That’s it! Does she even know how to do anything?? Carolyn is positively livid because why wouldn’t she be??
Swell takes her siblings grocery shopping to celebrate her new gig. But when they exit the store, they discover the dead babysitter’s car in the process of being stolen by a trio of drag queens dressed like Liza Minelli, Marilyn Monore, and someone I did not recognize. First—it wasn’t really their car to begin with. Second—WHAT?? Why drag queens!?? I feel like maybe this was supposed to be a subplot that ended up on the cutting room floor. Or maybe the director had some drag queen pals who were hard up for a gig? Swell continues to receive romantic entreaties from Clown Dog Brian, who asks her if she’d like to watch the grunion’s run. She’s like “sorry, I don’t like punk rock music.” She’s sweet enough on this kid BUT…when she returns to the office she discovers that Brian is the brother of Carolyn the wicked secretary because of course he is. Things at GAW aren’t exactly coming up Swell either. She’s constantly being sexually harassed by Rose’s boyfriend Gus (the dead body from the Sheen/Estavez not-a-classic Men at Work, John Getz). He takes her to lunch in his Ferrari and orders her alcohol, even though she is secretly a 17 year old-child. He speaks of post coital bliss and getting a lady’s juices flowing. I barf all over myself. If this was now instead of then this motherfucker would be cancelled before the amuse bouche arrived. Then there’s asshole Bruce, played by real life sex addict who played one on TV David Duchovny. He’s always coming around sassing her up and stinking up the place with his Binaca breath. He’s quickly in cahoots with Carolyn as they try to dig up dirt on this baffling new hire. Then there’s the issue of Swell not knowing how to do anything (as I suspected!). Rose is like “I need those TPS reports on my desk by Monday!” and she’s all I`m right on top of that, Rose!” but then pawns the job off on the poor Lucy, the police dispatcher from Twin Peaks.
After about a week on the job, Swell starts to feel the rigors of working an adult person job at 17. She’s always sitting in traffic on the 10 in her mom’s Volvo next to VW Rabbit’s full of kids her age headed down to Redondo Beach. (Note: a Volvo? My sympathy-o-meter stays pinned at zero). Her siblings continue to be lazy layabouts. One night, she chastises Kenny and his pals for blasting Slaughter. One of them says “ohh…PMS city”…which is not an actual place. She tells Kenny that he could do the dishes AT THE VERY LEAST! So Kenny and his pals haul the dirty dishes onto the roof, throw them into the air, and blast them to bits with a loaded shotgun. Dishes=done man. Here’s the thing, though—Kenny also starts to become quietly obsessed with Julia Child’s cooking show. Later, he will try to make every single recipe in The French Chef and they will make a film about it and call it Kenny and Julia. Oh…wait a minute. But yeah…the kid has caught the cooking bug…prolly cuz he’s high as balls all the time and has persistent munchies. Swell accompanies Brian to watch the grunion run (they were just fish this whole time!) and they almost hook up. Later he brings her to a department store where they gleefully bounce around on bouncy balls and the soundtrack goes “this is the best thing that ever happened to me.” When Brian drops her off for the night, though, he asks her where she works and she refuses to tell him. He tells her to stop acting like Henry the VIII. I’m not sure I know what that means…and I got a B+ in my college Shakespeare course….so I should know! They…like…break up. The soundtrack goes “In a perfect world…it would never end like this.” A real Greek chorus, this soundtrack.
Back at the office, Rose returns from her wild and dirty Santa Barbara weekend with Gus and tells Swell that she experienced a 48 hour orgasm. I feel like that would be extremely dehydrating. Like, you should probably go to the ER and see if they can’t put a stop to that. Swell receives her first paycheck and is shocked that it’s for less than she expected because of taxes, health insurance, etc. Welcome to every single pay week of my entire life, kid. She decides to “borrow” the office’s stash of petty cash so she can buy groceries until the big bux start rolling in. Unfortunately, she makes the profoundly unwise decision to bring the entire box of petty cash home and her brothers and sister steal it and now they’re freeeee….free fallin’. Zach buys his girlfriend an engagement ring and little Walter buys a monster home entertainment system. We’re talking laserdiscs and the whole nine! So that’s trouble with a capital O. Then Carolyn and Bruce discover that Swell has been outsourcing her TPS reports to the Twin Peaks gal and rat her out to Rose. Not only is Rose NOT angry at Swell, she’s impressed that she would manipulate a subordinate into performing free labor! Swell can literally do no wrong. Before Rose can present her with an Employee of the Month plaque, Swell receives an emergency phone call from home. Little Walter fell off the roof and broke his arm. She has to go pick him up from Cedars Sinai…where she tells the doctor’s that she’s his mother…even though they are only SIX YEARS APART in age! Do they not ask for health insurance info at this hospital?? They’d probably be on the phone to DCS before the plaster on Walter’s cast dried. When she returns home from the hospital, the full scope of her sibling’s pilferage becomes clear. She’s almost four G’s in the red! (“Everything sucks…everything’s fucked”—Fred Durst). Speaking of sucking—when Swell returns to the office she discovers that the company is in the process of being liquidated. Apparently their new line of school uniforms were ass ugly and sparked mass protests. Swell is like “gimme a sec and lemme see what ya girl can come up with.” She hits the raw materials racks and designs her own line of unready-to-wear school uniforms before lunch. Her clothing doesn’t make sense as uniforms for ANYTHING, let alone school. But I guess she would know, having graduated from high school as recently as three weeks ago. Rose is like “Swell, you done saved the company!!” She just needs to sell the new uni line to the Germans at an upcoming gala. Or was it the Swiss? Something vaguely racist, as per usual. Rose says to pay for the gala with petty cash, of which there is none. Swell says they can just have this meeting, where millions of dollars and the future of the entire company is on the line, out at her momma’s crib. Rose agrees because OH COME ONNN!!!!
Swell tells her crew that they need to prepare themselves for a “cleaning up the house montage.” So they do. Kenny starts preparing a menu, his buddies carve giant ice sculptures, and the younger kids completely refurbish the swimming pool. The soundtrack sings something like “can’t break these chains!” I’m sorry—were these people ever in chains?? Swell continues to pay little attention to Kenny's slow but steady transformation from deadbeat stoner to gourmand, which pisses him off something awful. She tells him that she appreciates him. He tells her to eat shit. These two—they bicker like a couple. If I’m being honest…there’s more chemistry between Kenny and Swell than there is between Swell and Clown Dog Brian. Maybe that helps explain why he has a nudie poster of her in his bedroom?
The night before the big gala, Carolyn and Bruce break into Swell’s office under the cover of darkness and locate her wallet and a copy of her driver’s license. Why her wallet is at her office in the nighttime and not on her person, we do not know. Her ID confirms what these two yahoo’s have long suspected; Swell is only 17. Winger’s “Seventeen” plays on the soundtrack. I mean...I wish. Now it’s party time and the Crandall household has been fully rehabbed, as has Kenny, who has shorn his heavy metal locks. Lookin’ good, Coog! The entire cast of the film have stepped out for the big event! As the Welsh begin to arrive, Kenny furiously plates passed apps. Swell’s anonymous group of girlfriends arrive home from Europe just in time to model Swell’s new uniform line…because in this movie a fashion show needn’t take more than 5 minutes to throw together. Before they can get started, Swell tells Rose that Gus has been sexually harassing the shit out of her the entire time..both before and after he gave Rose her 2 day orgasm. Then Swell sprays water on Gus’s dick with a squirt gun. So that takes care of that. Now it’s Carolyn and Bruce’s turn to try to derail Swell’s night with their latest hand. Not gonna lie—they’re holding a pretty solid hand. We’re talking four of a kind…all aces! They lay it down for Rose, who once again DOES NOT CARE! She tells Carolyn to grow up. Swell is made of teflon! The fashion show finally begins and Swell’s friends show off their weird 1960’s Pan Am stewardess outfits, much to the delight of the assembled French. But while she’s in the middle of her spiel, Brian, who has been missing from the movie for the last 40 minutes, rolls up in his Corn Dog delivery truck, professing his undying love for Swell over the truck’s loudspeaker. Swell is like “bah hah ha this is all part of my line how you like my corn dog outfit??” The Dutch eat it up, which is awesome. But then her MOM shows up unexpectedly, which is less awesome. Mrs Crandall, Buzz Killington that she is, immediately outs Swell as a teenager and demands the party be shut down. Let’s take stock of the scene here, though: she left her house a fucking shambles. Swimming pool unfit to even skateboard in. Now the place is spic and span. Her youngest children are all wearing tuxedos. Her deadbeat son is serving beef tongue canapes that he made HIMSELF to the fleet of millionaires who dot the front lawn. And then there’s her previously unemployed daughter up at a podium about to sell her own clothing line. And she’s just gonna shut it all down!?? You remember what Al Pacino said to Kevin Spacey in Glengarry Glen Ross after he called him a C-word 20 times? You never open your mouth….UNTIL you know the score!
Apparently, Mrs Crandall cut her trip short because she couldn’t get in touch with anyone back at the house. She asks Swell to explain what happened in the movie while she was gone but Swell tells her she’s cranky and needs to go to bed and that they’ll talk in the morning…so that’s what she does. Now Swell has to face Rose. And wouldn’t you know it?? SHE STILL DOESN'T CARE!!! She’s like “the Norwegians loved your duds. You saved the company. See ya Monday morning?” But Rose says she wants to be a teenager for a bit longer. Maybe take some classes at community college when she can afford it. Rose is like “pssh—community college?? I can get you into Vassar TO-DAY!” Rose says “cool.” Nice job, white people. I see here in my notes I wrote “R.E.M.’s Life’s Rich Tapestry. I have no idea what that means but I’m pretty sure the actual name of the album is Life’s Rich Pageant. Brian is like “still wanna smash?” and Swell is like “sure” so they kiss long and nastily. He doesn’t bring up the fact that Swell COMPLETELY ruined his big sister’s professional life! Before they can get to the gettin’, Mrs Crandall appears at the back door and hollars “where’s the babysitter??” Ohhhhh shhhiiiiittttt!!!! Roll credits. I’m thinking felony charges of improper disposal of a human body for Swell and Kenny FOR SURE. They probably won’t do any time but it’ll be a bitch of a fine. The end.
So here’s the deal: 1991 was something of a watershed for black cinema. To fail to acknowledge and pay tribute to this fact would be a massive betrayal of my responsibilities as a human being. I would love to sit here to tell you all about it. Problem is: I’m white. So there’s that. I mean...if you really want to get technical--my paternal grandmother WAS born in Panama...and I have second, third, and fourth cousins all over Miami and Puerto Rico for whom English is a second language. But yeah...no...I’m pretty friggin’ white, folks. The Catholic School I force-attended until I was 12 wasn’t just white...it was translucent! My high school had, what, six non-caucasian students across four grades? Approximate number of black students: one. African American history wasn’t in the curriculum and it certainly wasn’t in my household, where by born-at-the-turn-of-the-century great-grandparents openly lamented the fact that “colored men” were allowed to play professional basketball. What happened was: I accidentally watched Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing when I was 10 years-old and it completely changed my life. I know that probably sounds like hyperbole...but...I don’t know what to tell you...it isn’t! It continues to change my life and to open my eyes every time I watch it, which is at least once a summer, usually on the first day the temperature creeps north of 90 degrees. As I’m sure you’re all well aware, on Memorial Day of 2020, a Minneapolis police officer knelt on the neck of a black man named George Floyd for almost nine minutes in broad daylight. While horrified onlookers screamed and pressed “record” on their cell phones and pleaded with the officer to stop, life slowly drained from Floyd’s body. A few months later, after weeks of nationwide protests the scale of which hadn’t been seen in half a century, my girlfriend and I sat down, cranked the AC, and settled in for our annual viewing of Do the Right Thing. But this time it was too much to take. If you haven’t seen the film, well, you are not living the right kind of life! I’ll spare you the play-by-play and jump straight to the spoiler--DTRT takes place in Brooklyn on the hottest day of the summer. When night falls, long-simmering racial tensions reach a boil at the Italian-American owned Sal’s Famous Pizza. A violent skirmish erupts and the NYPD inexplicably choke Radio Raheem to death out in the street. Radio Raheem, the benevolent, Public Enemy-bumping giant who’s this film’s secret center of gravity. Dead. And for what? The onlookers scream at the police. They scream the names of people...real people….who’d been recently murdered by the police. And there we were watching this movie...this THIRTY ONE YEAR OLD MOVIE...and thinking about how we haven’t gone anywhere but backwards. That if they shot this scene today and had characters shout the names of the real life black and brown bodies who have died at the hands of the police, the scene could go on for hours. As the police try to stuff Radio Raheem’s lifeless body into the back of a cruiser, one of the all day drinkers from across the way calmly approaches, his voice quaking with resigned sorrow and anger, and says “you didn’t have to kill the boy.” No…..you didn’t.
Oooof...anyway--in addition to teaching me things I was completely ignorant about, DTRT also made me a Spike Lee diehard for life. I’ve seen all of his movies, even though a strong handful of them are profoundly unwatchable. In the last paragraph I mentioned how a lot of black directors, some barely old enough to legally purchase alcohol, made huge impressions on the big screen in 1991. Since we’re focusing on the summer of ‘91, that leaves us with 19 year-old Matty Rich’s Straight out of Brooklyn, John Singleton’s audacious debut Boyz n the Hood, and Spike Lee’s follow up to his follow up to Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever. I saw all of these films when I was still just 12 years-old...which is some fucking heavy lifiting for a 12 year-old! In an earlier review, I mentioned that I hosted a sleepover party where my fellow 8th graders begged me to watch Problem Child 2 but I made them watch Jungle Fever instead. And sure--they complained and cried and called their moms to ask what crack was and why someone would want to perform fellatio for it. But I bet they’re all looking back now and thanking me! Or..you know...maybe not. Problem Child was like 71 minutes long and had at least two jokes to Jungle Fever’s zero. As much as I love all of these films, I recognize that none of them are VHS of the Week-able. Does anyone really want to listen to Danny Tebo from Grafton, MA (population: vanilla whiteout) tell jokes about Boyz in the Hood for 8 pages?? Especially since ALL of these movies end harrowingly! (“Ricky is so excited he’s going to be leaving the hood to play football OPE!! Ricky got smoked! Balls.). Shit, does anyone want to read me telling 8 pages worth of jokes about any movie?? Why do I keep doing this??
I guess I should say a few words about Jungle Fever since it’s what I’ve chosen to name this article. I won’t give you a beat-by-beat on it ‘cuz that would take forever and be super awkward. There’s really nothing funny about it at all. Or...I guess the lead character’s name is Flipper Purify. That’s unintentionally hilarious. And he’s played by man who would rather go to jail for a long ass time than pay taxes, Wesley Snipes, which is actually hilarious. Flipper is a medium happily married architect who works at a firm that’s run by Tim Robbins and the Voice of Chucky. Flipper’s bosses hire an I-Talian lady named Angie (natch) to be his secretary. Flipper wants a black secretary until he sees that Angie is played by the lady who threw an entire filet mignon at Tony Soprano’s head Annabella Sciorra. Then he wants sex. They ball. Problem is--he’s black and she’s white. And also--like a billion other problems that lead to a billion tiny subplots. If there’s a movie that has more subplots than actual plot...it’s this one. Angie is already dating John Turturro...and y’all know that nobody fucks with the Jesus! Actually, Turturro is a huge pushover. He lives with his domineering, racist father, played by the legendary Anthony Quinn. True story--in 1997 I went to see Anthony Quinn speak at my college. His son was a student there and I guess the old man wanted to do him a solid. I remember leaving after about 10 minutes upon realizing that I did not really care what Anthony Quinn had to say about anything. Speaking of racist, domineering fathers---Angie’s dad is Frank Leotardo from The Sopranos! As in the late Frank Vincent! As is “go home and get your fuckin’ SHINE BOX!” And Angie’s brother? None other than Christopher Moltisanti! If Spike Lee directed a Soprano’s episode...it would be this film. Anyway, everyone is unhappy about Flipper and Angie’s affair…’cuz they’re all racist like a motherfucker. Well...not Flipper’s wife really. She just doesn’t like her husband fucking other woman and kicks him out. Fair shakes. Flipper goes to visit his buddy Spike Lee, who introduces him/us to that weird hovering tracking shot that he’ll go on to use in every move he has made since this one. Spike tells Flipper that he has jungle fever, which is also the name of the movie we’re watching (tears off shirt...runs through the neighborhood banging pots and pans). It’s also the name of the film’s title track, which was sung by Stevie Wonder. Ever notice how everyone is way too polite to draw attention to the fact that Stevie Wonder hasn’t written a good song since Reagan’s first term? I’m totally fine with that. While Flipper is hanging at a basketball court talking about life and love with Spike Lee, he runs afoul of his older brother Gator. Gator is an unrepentant crackhead played by recently repented real life crackhead Samuel L Jackson in what is still his best performance. And yes...I have seen all of his other movies. Things between Flipper and Angie go from shitty to quite shitty. There’s really not much chemistry between them...prolly ‘cuz according to Spike Lee’s biography...Wesley Snipes was a creepy dickhead on set. John Turturro falls in love with a black woman...which makes his racist father even racist-er. Flipper, along with his parents, played by the indispensable icons Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, try to help Gator, but he’s beyond salvation. At the film’s conclusion, Gator comes around his parents' place begging for cash for another fix. Ossie Davis draws a pistol and, like Marvin Gaye Sr, murders his own son. It’s fucking beyond devastating. Flipper attempts to reunite with his wife but is shown the door yet again. One morning, whilst walking through his neighborhood, a teenage prostitute approaches him and offers to suck his dick for two dollars. He grabs her, screams “NOOOOOOO!!!!”...and the movie ends. My 12 year-old friends vow never to speak to me again.
It’s not a flawless film, Jungle Fever--maybe not even in Lee’s top five. But it definitely evokes nostalgia for the era when Spike Lee was swinging for the fucking fences every time out. Just leaving it all on the screen. Directing every flick like it might be his last because...let’s be honest...ANY of these flicks could have been his last! Earlier I said that 1991 was a watershed moment for black cinema….which means that all of these young gun hotshot directors who burned up the screen got huge budgets and carte blanche for their big follow ups, right? Dudes...please. Matty Rich made one more film and never worked again. Spike Lee was 34 when Jungle Fever came out and already an elder statesman at 34. With 5 critically acclaimed, money-making films under his belt, he was finally given the green light to direct an adaptation of Alex Haley’s Malcolm X. And how much money was Warner Bros willing to pony up for a sprawling, 3 hour epic with a bravura leading performance from Denzel Washington and scenes shot all over the world and all across the early 1940’s and 50’s? Ten million dollars LESS than they spent on Robin Williams’ Toys….that’s how much! A few million more than they spent on Al Pacino’s Scent of a Woman...in which fucking NOTHING HAPPENS!!
Fortunately, Spike Lee persisted and is once again at the top of his game. Last summer, in the middle of all the bullshit, he dropped Da 5 Bloods on us, a knockout masterpiece that easily recalled the hungry young Spike of the early 90’s. It’s the kind of flick few expect from someone 22 features films deep into their career. Delroy Lindo would win the Oscar for best actor,...that was a foregone conclusion. The only other question was how many other categories would Da 5 Bloods be nominated in? Best Picture? Best Director? Maybe a supporting actor nod for Chadewick Boseman, who looked like a chiseled young specimen and who was secretly dying of a cancer that would kill him just weeks after this movie came out. Maybe if you're the guy who made Do the Right Thing only to watch Driving Miss Daisy win Best Picture THE SAME YEAR you learn not to get your hopes up about these things. But man….Da 5 Bloods was nominated for exactly fucking nothing! NOTHING! At least everyone and their great granny annie had Chadewick Boseman locked in to pick up a posthumous Oscar for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. A little poetic justice there at least, right? WRONG! They gave the goddamn award to an 83 year old white man who already has like 20 Oscars and who DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO SHOW UP! Because of course they did...of course they did...
Here’s the deal: My parents were mostly happy to indulge my crippling movie watching habit, offering pick up and drop off service to the cinema and coughing up the dough to help cover my not insubstantial video store late fees, I would always start to get a bit of pushback when school let out for the summer. You see--I was born in New England and have lived there my entire life. Like any good Masshole will tell you, whether you asked or not, up here the out of doors remains too cold to inhabit for 315 days out of the year. But my moviegoing thirst wasn’t seasonal...it was INSATIABLE. I wanted to watch movies all the time...always. If there’s a better combination than a hot summer night, a wood panelled basement, and a horror movie watched on a weathered VHS tape I have yet to hear of it! But my folks couldn’t understand why I would choose to spend that heartbreakingly brief season of euphoria-inducing sunshine glued to the tube. But I did….and still do! In fact—right this very moment it’s a cloudless, 90 degree day in early June and I’m inside typing a 3000 word joke review of a 30 year-old movie instead of sitting on my front stoop sipping muscadet and watching the sidewalk gum boil. Since my parents had jobs they had to go to, I was free to hang out on my waterbed watching Tremors all damn day. My folks still forced me to go on vacation at least once a summer (tough life, right?). Every August, my dad would bring my older cousin Nick and I to Misquamicut Beach in Westerly, Rhode Island. ...which is...you know...a beach. They got sand and surf and fried clams and maybe some Ski Ball and that’s about it. But for me, it might as well have been Cote d’Azur. I LOVED it! I was nine years old on our first trip and had rarely left Worcester County so what the hell did I know? The hotel we stayed at had Pole Position in the lobby. I mean...who needs the French Riviera?? Did a week in the sun and sand quell my appetite for the flicks? Not even a little bit. I would pick up a local newspaper the day we arrived, turn to the movie section, and stick a list of local showtimes under my dad’s nose. My poor dad...who wanted nothing more than to pound brews from sunup to sundown….maybe dip out to the car for a jazz cigarette while Nick and I were busy setting up the Monopoly board. He specifically did NOT want to leave the beach and drive to a movie theater. At all. And looking back, I can’t say I blame him. After all, there was probably more Coors Light in his blood than blood the entire time we were on vacation. But in the summer of 1989 I caught a lucky break: it rained! And since one can only play so much Pole Position, my father relented and agreed to take us to the movies. But unfortunately for my parents (and everyone else who has ever had to deal with me) they only had one child...and only children be PUSH-Y! Although it had been in theaters for over two months, we had yet to see Tim Burton’s Batman. I can’t think of a better way to while away a rainy summer day than watching Jack Nicholson rip it up as a Joker. Films like Batman were created for that express purpose. Except I DID think of a better way to spend that afternoon...and it involved watching the Tom Hanks cop dog buddy comedy Turner & Hooch. To say my dad and cousin were not on board with this would be an understatement. But I whined and pouted and cajoled and produced a review from the Westerly Times that awarded T&H a higher score than Batman ( Southern Rhode Island being so well known for its award-winning film criticism and all. Pauline Kaels just crawling out of the woodwork down there). I got my way. We saw Turner & Hooch...and it sucked. In 1990 we got another rainy day and everyone got hyped to go see Steve Martin in My Blue Heaven….until I announced that we had to see Air America, starring rehabbed substance abuser Robert Downey Jr and unrehabbed anti semite Mel Gibson, or I would LOSE MY MIND! What can I say?I thought in my heart of hearts that Air America was going to be the best movie in a summer that had already seen the release of Die Hard 2 and Total Recall. I also thought Slaughter’s Stick it To Ya was better than Abbey Road in 1991...what are you gonna do? Another year...another overcast beach day. “Perfect time to go see Kathleen Turner in V.I. Warshawski, right fellas?” I said, pleadingly. This time the unthinkable happened: I was overruled. IGNORED! NO ONE wanted to see V.I. Warshawski...not in our beachside hotel room or anywhere else in the world. Now it was my dad’s turn to produce a one-star review of my pick. My cousin and father both wanted to see City Slickers, which opened June 1st and was still playing in the middle of August. I stomped by British Knight’s and whined a blue streak. “City Slickers?? With the guy from Running Scared?? Oh I’m sure that will be funny...OH SURE!” but this time my cries went roundly ignored. Nick was already 15 and could beat the shit out of me and my dad was, you know, my dad. I think I even threatened to just NOT watch the movie if they brought me to see it. It was 1991–what was I gonna do? Sit there and live Tweet about how pissed off I was?? What happened was—I watched City Slickers. And I loved it! So I watched it again for this Films of Summer ‘91 project I’m workin’ on...and I still dig it! City Slickers currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 90%...which is 81 percentage points higher than most of the movies I choose to review on this site. So...I don’t know...I guess we’ll see how I do!
What happens is this: we open in Pamplona, Spain….where one million strong have gathered for the annual running of the bulls. You know what event I can’t fucking believe is a real thing? The running of the bulls. What’s THAT all about,I wonder? I should google it later. Among the assembled bull evaders are three ungratefully wealthy New Yorkers played by Comic Relief 1-20’s Billy Crystal (Mitch), The Wonder Years narrator Daniel Stern (Phil), and man who deserved better than to die after shooting an episode of Entourage Bruno Kirby (Ed). Mitch is a neurotic ad exec because Billy Crystal only has one speed and it's neurotic something or other. Phil is a grocery store manager who is unhappily married to a woman whom he frequently fantasizes about assaulting. And, even though he looks like Super Mario leapt out of the screen, Ed is a swinging cad. The fellas have travelled to Spain for the San Fermin Festival, yes, but also to prolong their youth or some bullshit. Do you have to be young to sign up to run from bulls? I bet it helps. I couldn’t run to my kitchen right now and it’s 20 feet away. I’d be like...you fuckin’ got me, bull—now where the dank tapas at?” The fellas run from bulls...which is awesome...but Mitch gets gored in the asshole...which is less awesome. They bring him to a local hospital where he tells the doctor not to sew up anything important (“I’ll sew ya asshole shut and keep feedin’ ya!”--The Wu-Tang Clan). I wonder how much coin you have to drop for emergency medical procedures while vacationing in Europe. After the exchange rate and shit? Gotta be gnarly. After an animated opening credits sequence that goes on for approximately 37 minutes, the fellas return to their lives as affluent New Yorkers. Mitch is happily married to Thirtysomething star who is now 70 Patricia Wettig but the dude is in full on meltdown mode ‘cuz….get this...HE’S TURNING 39!!! The horror...the horror!! I originally saw this movie when I was 11….and my DAD was only 32...so to us 39 was ancient….so we could groove with what this movie was throwing down. Now I’m 42..which is the same age as Billy Crystal was when he made this movie. Now he’s older than the old Borscht Belt comedian he played in his career-derailing follow up to this flick, Mr Saturday Night. My father is now dead. ANYWAY! Mitch is a bundle of exposed nerves...even though he lives in a dope ass apartment with baller views of the Manhattan skyline. Here I need to point out that Mitch is shown riding the Roosevelt Island Tramway, a cable car that flies high over the Queensbboro bridge, to work, which clearly suggests that he lives on Roosevelt Island. You know who has two thumbs and lived on Roosevelt Island for 9 months in 2001? This guy! I haven't been back in 20 years but I heard they eventually spiffed up the joint and people started intentionally moving there, no doubt lured in by the fact that it’s where they filmed Jennifer Connelley’s scarcely enjoyed 2005 film Dark Water. But in 2001 it looked like the set of a David Fincher movie. Specifically: Seven. They had one restaurant, an abandoned mental hospital, and row after row of these blocky Easter European-looking high rise apartment buildings. But hey--they also had a video store and a Gristedes where you could buy a 6-pack of Meister Brau for $2.99...so my needs were met. So yeah--there’s no way 1991 fictional Billy Crystal lives on Roosevelt Island. He’s got a cushy job buying radio jingles...but his boss, veteran character actor who is now cancelled Jeffery Tambor, thinks that he’s lost his touch. That he isn’t as hungry as the younger guys who work for the station. Tambor relays this to Mitch in a scene that feels like a carbon copy of the scene in Parenthood' where Steve Martin’s boss tells him that he needs to spend less time with his family and more time trying to “get guys laid.” And the reason for this is that City Slickers was written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who also wrote Parenthood. And Splash. And The Money Pit. And A league of Their Own. That’s an ace resume right there, y’all. Tambor puts Mitch on work probation, which makes his already acute malaise feel more malaisious. After work, Mitch has to drop by his 10 year-old son’s classroom because it’s Bring Your Father to School and Make Him Tell the Class About His Employment History Day. Puzzlingly enough, Mitch is one of only two dads slated to speak in front of the class. I’ll let it slide though ‘cuz the other dad, Danny DeVito look alike and actual Danny DeVito voice double Bobby Costanzo, is hella funny. Mitch’s son, who looks like notoriously terrible restaurant patron Jake Gylllenhaal at 10 years old because he’s 10 year-old Jake Gyllenhaal, is embarrassed that his old man doesn't have a rock star job and tells his classmates that Mitch is a submarine commander. MItch gets up in front of the class and delivers an incredibly poignant and devastatingly depressing description of what the children can expect from the rest of their lives. “And then in your 50’s you’ll have your first surgery...although you’ll call it a procedure.” Jesus. You’ll have to excuse me while I go and check if the shower rod can take my weight.
Mitch’s wife throws him a 39th birthday party and his boys Phil and Ed show up with a bag of molly and things get SLICK! Just kidding--they mostly sit around drinking Grolsch and trading one-liners. Ed, who is now engaged to a lingerie model half his age, has a suggestion for their 25th annual Bro Down...and his suggestion is this: they will fly to New Mexico and help drive a herd of cattle down (up?) to Colorado. Ed’s idea is dismissed immediately and ferociously. But then something kah-razy happens! The voice of Lisa Simpson barges into the party and, in full view of all of the guests, informs Phil that she LATE! You know...for her THING!? Her lady time!? Phil’s like “humina humina what’s that gotta do with me??” but dude...we all know y’all have been smashing. And his wife knows what’s going on...which is a real problem. For all of the regular reasons, yes, but also because the grocery store Phil manges is owned by his father in law! And Lisa Simpson’s voice is a cashier at said grocery store! Shit, I bet the Gristedes on Roosevelt Island is hiring. A huge blowout ensues, wherein Phil tells his wife that he hates her. HATES HER! He tells her that “if hate were people..I’d be CHINA!” Not gonna lie...I’m not really sure what that means exactly. I do know that this scene brings the party to a screeching halt. Afterwards, Pat Wettig asks Mitch if he’s happy. He says that he is not. She asks if he wants to go herd cattle in New Mexico. Also no. She asks him if he’s gonna impregnate a teenaged grocery clerk. FOR THE THIRD TIME...NO! She tells him that she wants him to go to New Mexico to “find his smile.” He agrees because...well...it wouldn’t be much of a movie if they just went to Vegas and did a ton of blow, would it? Then it would be The Hangover. Again--not much of a movie.
The dudes fly to New Mexico and travel to a ranch that’s run by man who I almost didn’t recognize as he is not playing a racist sheriff, Noble Willingham. He tells the assembled amateur cattle herders “you come out city slickers but you’re goin’ home cowboys.” I don’t know about y’all but every time I’m watching a movie and where a character says the name of the movie I feel like tearing my shirt off and running out of my house cheering and banging pots and pans together. Just me? Cool. There, they join a group that includes an african american father/son dentist duo, an alcoholic chef, a pair of rapey ranch hands, and a portly ice cream making duo (played by the great David Paymer and the man who I assumed was long dead but is actually still alive Josh Mostel) that is so clearly supposed to be Ben & Jerry that I’m shocked they didn’t sue Columbia Pictures. Representing the entire female race is Supergirl star and possibly my first celebrity crush Helen Slater. I feel like she was everywhere in the 80’s but I checked her IMDb and it turns out she was only in like four movies. But they all MURDERED! She’s single and Daniel Stern’s character is single and if they don’t end up together by the end of the movie I’ll eat the movie. Ed is ready to dive right in and start wrestling cattle but his buddies are miserable. Phil keeps talking about how much he wants to murder his now ex-wife. Maybe you shouldn’t have cheated on her slash married her in the first place, homie. After a visit to the ranch gift shop to pick out some new cowboy duds (note: a gift shop??) Mitch makes a half-hearted attempt at learning how to use a lasso and nearly hangs himself to death. Before they can even hit the dusty trail those shithead ranch hands start to sexually harass Helen Slater. Mitch leaps to Slater’s defense. Tells the dudes that their behavior “isn’t exactly 90’s behavior.” They look like they’re about to pull out all of Mitch’s curls one by one until a shadowy figure appears on horseback and chokes out one of the dudes and throws a knife at the other dude’s balls. The camera pans up and HOLY SHIT! It’s Tango & Cash villain and man who accidentally gave Marisa Tomei a Best Supporting Actress for My Cousin Vinny Jack Palance! Palance is Curly the ranch boss, who is also a badass old fashioned republican macho cowboy. Dude lights his cigarettes by striking a match on his OWN FACE! Phil sizes up this dark rider and says “did you see how leathery he was? He was like a saddle bag with eyes!” Man...this movie had ZINGERS! By the mile. Speaking of—when Curly overhears Mitch talking some mile smack about him he rolls up to Mitch and tells him that he craps bigger than him. Now that’s gold! Not to be confused with Curly’s Gold...which is the sequel..and also terrible).
Once this ragtag crew finally take their bovine buddies and giddyup they spend an awful lot of time just embroiled in lengthy conversations about the meaning of life. It’s all primo dialogue too. They could totally adapt this movie for the Broadway stage...EASY. It’s like Blazing Saddles meet Neil LaBute minus all of the overt racism. Not sure how they would handle the cows though. Here I should mention that City Slickers was directed by the same dude who directed Tremors...which marks the second time I have mentioned Tremors in this review. Would this movie have benefited from the presence of a couple of underground flesh eating snake-a-zoid monsters? I mean--what movie wouldn’t?? Anyway, Ed mentions that he would like to bang the shit out of Helen Slater and asks why Mitch doesn’t ever feel like cheating on his wife. Mitch says that he prefers to admire Picassos in museums...not rip them off the wall. Fair doss, mate. Ed says that he wants to put babies in his model girlfriend but is afraid he’ll screw it up by being unfaithful. Mitch suggests that he, you know, not do that. When dawn breaks on day #2, Mitch pulls out a battery-powered coffee grinder, correctly surmising that there is nowhere to find a decent cup of fair trade sumatra in the wild wild west. His portable device spooks the herd, though, and the animals destroy the entire makeshift camp before splitting for points unknown (“BULLS ON PARADE!!!”--Rage Against the Machine). Everyone is ripshit at Mitch. Hey, Josh Mostel has a CELL PHONE...in 1991...and no one gives him any guff. Can’t possible catch more than a bar or two in the middle of the Rockies. Curly looks at Mitch like “Ok Mr Matcha Latte--me and you are gonna ride out and round up all of the strays together.” Mitch jokes that his time alone with Curly will be just like Deliverence...because rape is hilarious. After they round up the cows, Mitch and Curly make camp for the night and engage in a little gettin’ to know ya jibber jabber. Curly tells Mitch that he doesn’t find his humor very funny. You know what tho? I do! Billy Crystal absolute crushes it in this movie. Makes me feel kinda bad that he squandered the good will he built up here with...every single movie he has appeared in since. Mitch asks Curly if he’s ever been in love...which is probably not something you would ask a chain-smoking 76 year-old cowboy you have known less than 48 hours and who has been a total prick to you the entire time. Curly says that he fell in love with a redhead that he met ONE TIME and didn’t even bother speaking to. Bro, you are mad old...maybe sign up for Tinder before it’s too late. The next morning, Curly tells Mitch that the secret to life is one thing (holds up index finger)...but won’t tell Mitch what that one thing is. It’s the single most annoying mystery since we tried to find out what exactly Meatloaf will NOT do for love.
Later that afternoon, one of the cows unexpectedly goes into labor and Mitch is forced to yank a baby calf out of his mama's area. This scene shocked the bejeezus out of me when I first saw it...because I still thought baby cows were delivered by the stork! This scene is unbelievably graphic. Amniotic fluid flowing like the river wild! It’s also fake. The baby calf is real, though. He’s cute as shit. Mitch names him Norman and his thoughts are voiced by Roseanne Barr. Not really, though. Mitch returns to camp with a new animal buddy and some serious pep in his step. But then, like 30 seconds later, Curly up and fucking DIES! Massive coronary while smoking his 100th cigarette of the day. Those cowboys killers will kill ya, cowboy. The crew returns to New Mexico and are immediately issued refunds. Just kidding! The fucking bury Curly in the middle of the desert and put the rapey cowboys in charge of their crumbling caravan. Things quickly go from shitty to amazingly shitty. First the drunk chef drinks more than even a drunk chef can handle and drives his old timey Deadwood horse carriage off a cliff. Luckily, he only breaks both of his legs, which is more than I can say about those poor horses. One day--three graves dug. The Dentist and his son volunteer to leave the movie to bring the chef to a hospital in Taos, bringing the number of persons of color in this movie back down to zero. Can’t say I blame ‘em. When night falls, the shitty cowboys find what’s left of the chef’s stash and get Serge Gainsbourg-on-an-80’s-talk-show drunk. Naturally, we assume that they’re gonna go after Helen Slater again. But no--they drag out poor little Norman and put a GUN to his head and ask who’s hungry for veal osso bucco. Mitch tries to intervene but they call him homophobic slurs and punch him in this face. This shit is DARK, dudes. There’s a minor scuffle during which Phil gains control of the gun and has a full on Travis Bickle at the end of Taxi Driver meltdown. The cowboys are like “this motherfucker is TRIPPIN’...let’s skip the calf murder and jam!” Day saved, Phil retreats to his tent where he breaks into chest-heaving sobs. Ed and Mitch rush in there to comfort him. Phil says that he’s worried he will never see his children again. As his children are not characters who are featured in this film, I remain unconcerned. He also says that the voice of Lisa Simpson was not really pregnant with his child. Actually, I think he says this way earlier in the movie...but...just putting it out there.
The majority of the remaining cast members decide that the best course of action at this late hour of the film is to leave the cattle behind and just go the hell home. David Paymer points out that the animals will most likely be cheeseburgers by the year’s end anyway. Ed and Phil insist on bringing in the herd because, well, this movie needs to end somehow. Mitch waffles and disappears for a bit before re-materializing in a slick new set of cowboy gear. What’d he ride intro town and hit up a fuckin’ Boot Barn?? So now it’s just the three lead actors tasked with trying to move about 100 large animals across state lines. And wouldn’t you frigggin’ know it--the weather immediately takes a turn for the bullshitty!? Clouds to the left of them...lightning to the right. They eventually reach a creek that’s swollen from the rainwaters and have little choice but to lead the cattle through the rapids. They manage to do so...and unremarkably. I’m sitting there watching like “this is the big climax of the movie??” It ain’t exactly Keauna Reeves jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, know what I’m saying? But my girlfriend is like “dude, who has eyes on Norman??” Lo and behold--little Norman is left behind, struggling for his life in the raging river. Mitch dives in and saves him because of course he does. It’s bad enough Jack Palance won an Oscar and they had to come up with bullshit reasons to put him in the sequel. Imagine if there was a ghost calf too?? When the dudes finally limp to their destination, they find all of their original travel mates relaxing on the front porch, sipping tea and eagerly awaiting their return...like they all wouldn't have gotten the FUCK up outta there, flown to their respective homes, and unleashed a flurry of zero-star Trip Advisor reviews (“Attempted murder and unexpected equestrian burial were NOT listed in the promotional materials!”). Everyone hoots and hollars and Helen Slater gives Phil the thumbs up, which means that, even though they have exchanged less than 3 words during this entire movie, they are totally gonna fuck. Mitch breathlessly asks Noble Willingham if he’s happy that they saved the lives of his cows and he says that it doesn’t really matter as they will be on a plate at Smith & Wollensky’s before you can say “helleeewwww.” Everyone is bummed but...you know...they just kinda leave it at that. It is what it is.
The titular city slickers return to their native city and assure their wives/girlfriends/Helen Slater that they’re forever changed by the experience. Ed is going to make babies with his young girlfriend, Phil is going to hit the classifieds and ball Helen Slater, and Mitch found his smile AND learned the meaning of life. Mitch’s wife is all like “you seem much better now...maybe you should quit your job”...and he’s like “do you think we’ll still be able to afford our $5000 a month penthouse and tuition for our children and be able to jet off to Spain once a year? Oh, and also have enough dough to board a baby calf in New York City (Mitch brought Norman home with him...because of course he did). And she’s like “sure dude--we’ll be fine.” You’ll be FINE!? Oh yeah?? I’m already older than all of the leads in this movie and you know what I can afford to do when I’m feeling directionless...or if I’ve lost my smile? I CAN GO FOR A WALK! That’s it! I couldn’t even afford a Lonely Planet tour guide to New Mexico let alone a plane ticket there! Man, everyone in this movie has affluenza. This movie sucks. Just kidding, I give it an A-minus. The end.
Here’s a story: in 1990 I bid farewell to the knuckle-cracking penguins who had been terrorizing me since the first grade and moved to the neighboring town of Grafton, where I entered the public school. And I’ll tell you--it was far from a seamless transition. I got dunked on...HARD. I’d always just worn a uniform to school so I didn’t know how to dress myself...or act myself. I just threw on whatever duds my mother brought home for me. How the hell was I supposed to know that I needed to wear baggy MC Hammer pants and tight roll them at the ankle?? Even when I tried to go full hesher and started wearing my jean jacket with the sewn on Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne patches I was called a poser. I had short hair and was therefore “not metal enough.” When class would let out for the day, I would have to sprint to the principal’s office and hide until the halls of Grafton Middle emptied out. Otherwise, a buffet of embarrassments almost always awaited me. I was thrown in a garbage can...stuffed in a locker...de-pantsed and dragged down the hall in front of the entire school. Shit, no wonder I’m still in therapy! One afternoon, while I was in the Principal’s office trying to duck a spitball shower, I turned to him and said “Yo Prince--aren’t there any other unhip kids at this school?? You know, indoor kids? Dudes that can quote Steve Martin movies from start to finish on the spot?” The Principal chewed it over for a second and said “you just described Brett Warwick! I bet you two would have a lot to talk about!” And you know--we did! We still do! We started hanging out after school, drinking RC Cola and watching John Candy movies and remain great friends to this day. Eventually, fall turned to winter which turned to spring (obvi) and the 1991 summer movie calendar became a hot topic of conversation. Everyone and their damn momma knew that the #1 spot belonged to Terminator 2...but my pal Brett had a boner with a capital O for Walt Disney’s The Rocketeer. And the reason for this was that his uncle Richard was slated to appear in said film. Me? I had The Rocketeer finishing in the Top 5...easy. Any reasonable oddsmaker would. A Disney flick about a newfangled superhero with a bomb ass art deco poster? From the director of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids?? Sheeiit...this Rocketeer cat was gonna be Disney’s Batman. We’re talking endless merchandising tie-ins and sequels upon sequels and spin-offs and reboots. What ended up happening was: The Rocketeer opened on June 21, 1991 and only did medium business. And the reason for this is that it’s a thoroughly medium movie. It’s the cinematic equivalent of an iceberg salad with the dressing on the side. No one hated it yet no one really liked it either. The number of people who walked out of the theater and said “I need to see more of THAT” was around zero. In October of that year I threw myself a 13th birthday party where I forced the attendees to play a game of movie trivia...because of course I did. When I asked the partygoers to name the actor who had played The Rocketeer NO ONE KNEW! The movie had already faded from view THAT HARD. Jesse Smith answered “Joe Campbell” and Danny Rovezzi answered “Tommy Lee,” which is the same answer he gave to every single question I asked that night. Incorrect...but also hilarious. Before I went to see The Rocketeer I called Brett and asked him to describe his uncle to me and he said something like “he has a mustache and is in the scene where the Rocketeer shows up at the airfield.” While I forgot about the movie the second the lights came up just like the rest of y’all, I was quite impressed by Uncle Richard’s acting chops. I was even more impressed when I saw him turn up again in Barton Fink later that summer. When the first day of 8th grade rolled around, I marched straight up to Brett all “DUDE!! Your Uncle Rich is KILLING it! You think he can get me Michael Lerner’s autograph??” After some confusing back and forth we discovered that the man who I had wrongly assumed was Brett’s uncle was actually the great Jon Polito. After school, we went over to his place and he cued up the scene featuring his uncle (Of course they owned a copy. The Warwick’s remained huge Rocketeer stans ‘cuz of that whole family connection thing). Turns out his uncle was just some schmo extra in the bleachers during the air show! I don’t know if he ever did any more acting, Uncle Richard, but I do know that he is now deceased. And actually...so is Jon Polito. Rest in power, dudes.
Since we’re exclusively featuring films from the summer of ‘91 this summer and my copy of Doc Hollywood is temporarily unlocatable, I thought I’d pull out The Rocketeer and see if it plays better than it did 30 years ago. Answer: it does not. The end! Seriously though...what happens is this: We open at a Los Angeles County airfield in the year 1938, where daredevil pilot Cliff Secord (next big thing who never was Bill Campbell) is about to take his Gee Bee racer plane for a test run. He really manages to get that thing cooking too, much to the delight of his airplane mechanic pal Peevy (academy Award winner Alan Arkin, sporting the world’s most unfortunate toupee), who shouts instructions at Cliff from the ground even though he cannot possibly hear them up in the sky. Everything’s going swell until Cliff flies into the vicinity of an in-progress car chase/shootout deal. I’m not sure who is chasing whom and why, but when one of the occupants of the pursued vehicles notices the plane flying overhead he aims his tommy gun skyward and shoots the plane JUST TO BE A DICK! Like...why would you shoot a random plane out of the sky?? For a goof?? RUDE! The bullet pierces the plane’s important fluids line and Cliff starts to plummet earthward. Peevy sees the plane spinning like a top and says “something ain’t right.” Something sure ain’t, my dude! Cliff prepares to ditch his plane like Sully Whatsitberger but crashes into the car chase on approach, sending one of the cars careening into the gasoline tanker that’s forever lurking on the outskirts of the runway during this film, just begging to be blown to bits. Cliff survives but a bunch of explosions explode. Property is damaged. Feelings are hurt. It turns out that the FBI were chasing a crew of gangsters in possession of a stolen something or other. A top secret package, you dig? When the smoke finally settles it’s the FBI who are all pissed at Cliff for crashing his plane into their hot pursuit. Dude, maybe if they didn’t shoot the plane out of the fuckin’ sky! Cliff punches the head FBI guy in the mouth. That Cliff must be a real hothead, right? I mean...I HAVE NO IDEA what he’s like as his character is not fleshed out in any way! It’s as if he literally fell out of the sky (I mean...not literally...although I guess he did just literally fall out of the sky). We don’t know where he’s from or how he became a pilot. Like...what kind of name is Secord? Is that French-Canadien? He doesn’t even appear to have a home! He just hangs out with his mechanic buddy Peevy who’s about 40 years older than he is (when he isn’t with his girlfriend...more on her in a sec). He’s just a tall, handsome drink of water. A haircut. That’s all. And this is a real problem when you’re developing a superhero character. I need to know who I’m rooting for here otherwise I’m gonna root for Alan Arkin’s wig. Maybe we’ll get a Rocketeer origin story movie where he walks around Brooklyn talking to himself and murdering people on the subway. But...I don’t know...I kinda doubt it.
The G-Men assume that the secret package was destroyed in the explosion and have to sheepishly break this news to the package’s rightful owner: Howard Hughes. The actual Howard Hughes...played here by the guy who played The Stepfather in The Stepfather. Hughes says that he’d much rather the package be incinerated than fall into the wrong hands. “The dream is over,” he says, quoting a John Lennon song that wouldn’t come out for another 32 years. Then he locks himself in a screening room for a year and surrounds himself with bottles of his own piss. Back at the airfield, Peevy and Cliff get a ration of shit from airfield owner and man who is not my buddy Brett’s Uncle Jon Polito. Polito wants Cliff to pay for the exploded gasoline truck, which sux extra hard ‘cuz his ride is totaled. No airshows means no income. BUT! Later that night, when the fellas are dicking around in the plane garage, they discover a package in one of the planes. As in THE PACKAGE! One of the crooks stashed it before he was apprehended/blown up! They tear it open and find it’s a stainless steel Ghostbusters proton pack. What do they do next, these couple of numbnutses? They turn the friggin’ thing on and it goes flying through walls like the tilt-a-whirl spaceship in Explorers! It’s a rocket-fueled jet pack! They somehow manage to hit the off switch and look at the thing with wide-eyed wonder. “Wow! It runs on alcohol!” says Peevy. Hey, just like Gary Busey!
Meanwhile up in the Hollywood Hills, a mafia boss played by a didn’t-even-bother-changing-his-costume-on-his-way-over-from-Goodfellas Paul Sorvino is meeting with Hollywood superstar Neville Sinclair (Two-pump chump James Bond Timothy Dalton). What I took away from their conversation was that the mafia stole the rocket pack from Howard Hughes to try to give it to Sinclair but got fouled up by the FBI. It really just seems like there's a shitload of scarcely necessary characters in this film, almost all of which are men. This movie is one Jennifer Connelly away from being Glengarry Glen Ross. I half expected Alan Arkin to start shouting “they took the….they took the phones!!” Unfortunately for all of those various organizations I just mentioned, the rocket pack is still with our boy Cliff, who has decided to strap it to a wooden statue and let that sucker rip. Cliff and Peevy light the fuse and that thing soars through the night sky like BASTA! I immediately have a million questions. Most pressingly: howwww does a flame-powered jetpack NOT incinerate the legs of the person wearing it!?? Dude, your ankles would be ASH! And how do you control its speed and trajectory? How do you control it AT ALL!? What kind of alcohol does it run on and how far can you fly before you need to land at the liquor store and filler up. Why does the wooden statue just eventually fall back to the ground on its own? I guess we’ll have to keep right on guessing ‘cuz it is never properly, or even improperly, explained. After the successful test flight, Cliff heads to Hollywood to meet his aspiring actress girlfriend Jenny, who...again...is played by Labyrinth star and lady who nearly died of boredom in the middle of her Oscar acceptance speech Jen Connelly. She’s got a real hankerin’ for the high life, this Jenny. She’s constantly complaining that she wants to hobnob with stars and starlets and sip highballs at the Brown Derby and Spago’s and wherever. So what does ding dong Cliff do? He brings her to the same shitty greasy spoon out by the airfield that he kicks it at seven nights a week. Cliff talks about his flying career and Jenny is like snorrrrrreeee. She complains that he’s weird and distant and that he treats her like a stranger. Oh! And he didn’t even tell her that he was in a fiery plane crash earlier that same day. Why are these two people together?? Who even is this friggin’ guy?? Jenny storms out.
The next morning, Jenny has to work a gig as an extra on the latest Neville Sinclair swashbuckler. Cliff, looking to make amends for how shittly their date ended, shows up on set wearing the most unfortunate brown leather jacket I’ve ever seen. I was pretty sure I had seen this jacket somewhere before The Rocketeer...and I was pretty sure that somewhere was on one of the dude’s from Milli Vanilli. After accidentally destroying the set and getting his GF fired from the picture, he takes her aside and tells her about the jetpack, figuring this information will cause Jenny to forget the events of the last five minutes and swoon. Neviile Sinclair overhears Cliff telling Jenny that he has the pack because of course he does. Instead of simply murdering both of them and stealing the pack he decides to rehire her for his movie and starts hitting on her something fierce. He asks her if she’d like to accompany him to dinner. Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Cliff is scheduled to participate in an airshow in his other uncrashed plane...but when he shows up to the airfield he discovers that his pal Malcolm has stolen his plane and is up there flying dangerously and who the FUCK is Malcolm?? Did I completely snooze on this character? And why is he dressed up like a fuckin’ clown!? A clown named Malcolm!? I know that my attention occasionally wanders during these flicks but I feel like I would remember that. (Although I see here that the next thing I wrote in my notes is “Water Country” which is a waterslide park in New Hampshire that I went to once in my 20’s. I...I got nothin’). So Malcolm the Clown is probably going to give himself the John Denver unless someone happens to have some sort of rocket pack they can strap on and fly up there to help the guy. As luck would have it...someone does! And it’s a good goddamn thing too because this movie is, like, halfway over and NOTHING of note has happened yet. Nothing worse than an actionless action movie, man. Cliff tells Peevy he’s gonna suit up and fly right and Peevy is all “you better not! But if you do you should wear this sick ass steampunk helmet that I just welded together for you.” Cliff flips the switch and is ping ponging through the sky in no time. I gotta say--even though it was still 1991 the special effects only look about half bad! Cliff rescues his clown buddy in front of the airshow audience members, all of whom promptly shit in their respective drawers. When Cliff lands, he tells Peevy that his neato helmet really helped him steer. My understanding of how this rocket pack works jumps to about a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10.
What happens next is that Cliff makes the front pages from here to Hanoi and is an instant worldwide sensation. Like...within hours. Dude went viral before viral! And I guess my question is, you know, WHY?? All he did was fly around above an airshow and rescue one sad clown. Haven’t these filmmakers ever heard of the montage? They could've had this dude rescue people from burning buildings with his burning jetpack….maybe have him defrost Santa’s sleigh so he can deliver presents on Xmas and shit. He just isn’t particularly super, this superhero. The press swarm the airfield and ask Jon Polito what they should call the fly guy and someone suggests “Rocket Man,” which is quickly shot down for copyright reasons. Imagine if they DID name this movie Rocket Man? And you went to the video store and tried to rent the 1991 Disney flick for your kid but accidentally rented the 2018 Elton John movie? If memory serves correctly Elton John actually DOES fly in that film...but only after ingesting an unreasonable amount of cocaine. One guy’s a hero...the other did a heroic amount of the devil’s dandruff. Same deal. Now everyone and their great granny annie is hot to trot for the rocket; Howard Huges...the FBI...Paulie from Goodfellas….Timmy Dalton...Timmy Dalton’s 7-foot tall henchman Lothar, who looks like he was bounced out of Dick Tracy for being too scary. Someone (the FBI?) shows up at Peevy’s place and pumps it full of lead. When Cliff and Peevy hear about this they decide it’s high time to call authorities to try to negotiate the rocket pack’s safe return. Before they get a chance to drop a dime, though, the mafia portion of the cast track the fellas down at that greasy spoon and start a bunch of shit...waving their pistols around and knocking over gumball machines and whatnot. Oh, and they also try to cook Peevy on the flat top to try to get Cliff to spill the beans about the location of the rocket thingamabob. The diner patrons fight back and there’s a victimless shootout. Eventually, the mafia dudes retreat and scramble to a decommissioned restaurant set from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where Jenny is in the middle of a date with Nevile Sinclair. Paulie, who is also at the resturant, tells Neville he doesn’t understand why he doesn’t just torture Jenny until she gives up the location of the rocket pack. I also don’t understand why he doesn’t just torture Jenny until she gives up the location of the rocket pack. We’re ALL OF US growing impatient with this movie at this point! When Cliff straps on his jammy pack so he can fly to the resto to save his dame he notices that it has a fresh bullet hole in it. Peevy sticks a wad of gum in the hole and tells the kid it SHOULD be fine. Gum.
Cliff shows up at the supper club in a waiter disguise and spills Baked Alaska all over Neville’s balls. While he’s in the loo toweling off Jenny is like “something I can help you with, Cock Blockington?” He tells her that he’s The Rocketeer. You know...from the newspapers? The title character. That’s him. Jenny is like “That’s YOU? Kid, you are TRENDING!” She also decides that she doesn’t give a flying shit and tells poor Cliff to piss off. Before Neville returns, Cliff slips a slip of paper in her vichyssoise that says “they’re gonna kill you!’ or something. I already can’t remember. Before anyone can do anything, all of the various gangs of rivals descend on the restaurant and bedlam ensues. Cliff puts on his pack and flies through the dining room, which is super confusing because A--Why would you ignite a flame-powered jetpack INSIDE A BUILDING...and B--That thing looked like it had an ONLY speed of about 150 MPH. But now Cliff is just gingerly puttering around the restaurant like he’s on some gondola sightseeing tour. Even though Cliff is essentially ON FIRE the FBI capture him by throwing a net over his head. Neville chloroform’s Jenny and brings her up to his ultra villain mansion. When she regains consciousness, she and Neville have a conversation that goes on for about three and a half hours. When Neville is temporarily distracted, Jenny breaks a houseplant over his head and attempts to escape, only to be foiled by Lothar.
The FBI brings a freshly captured Cliff to see Howard Hughes, who screams and pulls out all of his hair when Cliff tries to shake his hand. Hughes explains that it was actually the Germans who invented the rocket man technology and had planned to use it to rain thousands upon thousands of Nazi Rocketeers down upon the United States Capital Building in an all out assault on one of our greatest symbols of democracy. A bunch of Nazis storming the US Capital?? Now that would never happen! Oh...wait a minute. Problem was--the Germans weren’t very good at Rocketeering and their dudes would always explode on takeoff. A newsreel video is shown depicting everything I just mentioned (minus January 6, 2021, of course). This is a HARD PG, this film. Some dark shit right here. Hughes designed a more efficient rocket pack, only to have his blueprints stolen by a goon working for a Hollywood Nazi double agent...and it is 100% this Neville Sinclair fucker. Duh! They tell Cliff that he has to give up the pack but he’s all “sorry! I need to rescue my not-a-girlfriend who could not possibly give less of a shit about me if she tried.” He then hang glides out of the room on a, you know, hang glider.
Sinclair brings Jenny up to Griffith Park Observatory to do some observing and to await the arrival of a Nazi zeppelin that will ferry them back to the Fazzahland. I was about to bust balls about the idea of a blimp flying from LA to Germany but...no dude...those motherfuckers can travel up to ONE MILLION MILES!!! Joke’s on me, folks. Paul Sorvino shows up and is like “dude, are you seriously a Nazi??” Sinclair is indeed a Nazi and quickly devlops a thick German accent and starts shouting “Schnell! Schnell!” at people. Sorvino takes this information in, looks Sinclair up and down, and says “now I gotta turn my back on you.” Ohhh...that scene kills me every time! Poor Henry Hill. Or actually...whatever. When the FBI shows up with the swat team they agree to let sleeping dogs temporarily lie with the mob guys and join forces in machine gunning Nazis to death in the name of the good old US of A. America. Fuck yeah? Sinclair manages to load Jenny onto the Zep but here comes pyro Peter Pan to save the day...which will mark the second and final time a day is saved by The Rocketeer in this film. A bunch of bad guys are murdered on the airship and Sinlair keeps howling in over-the -top fake German, maybe hoping that someone will see this movie and want to put him in a third James Bond flick (Note: they did not). Some stupid with a flare gun (Jenny) sets accidentally sets the ship on fire and that thing is fixin’ to go down like a...Led Zeppelin (sorry...had to). Sinclair demands that Cliff give him the rocket pack...so he does. Not sure where he’s planning on going, being a hugely famous movie star and a wanted Nazi war criminal. Florida? Sinclair blasts out of the ship...but oh shit, y’all--Cliff pulled that wad of chewing gum out of the bullet hole when Sinclair wasn’t looking. He bursts into flames and careens into the “Land” section of the “Hollywoodland” sign. I give that a 6 out of 10 on the clever scale. The blimp is still in the process of destroying itself but Hughes comes to the rescue in his Autogyro, which is not, to my insane disappointment, a flying Greek sandwich. Of course I only know what an Autogyro is because I read it on wikipedia. You think I’d be able to tell that sort of plane by sight? Shit. I also see that, in the middle of this action-packed climax, I scribbled “How old is Leo DeCaprio?” in my notes….which should tell you everything you need to know about my interest level in the outcome of this film. Enraptured….positively. I’m pretty sure I wanted to know how old Leo was when he played Howard Hughes in The Aviator. Answer: 29 years old. Now you know.
So Cliff and Jenny survive the Zeppelin disaster and return to being a couple ‘cuz this movie is stupid like that. I couldn’t tell you what became of the FBI or Paul Sorvino as they are never spoken of again. We haven’t seen the last of freaky double H yet! He shows up at the airfield and styles Cliff out with a spankin’ new airplane. Then he retreats to the restroom and washes his hands with steel wool. After he heads back to do whatever the hell it is that Howard Hughes did, Peevy mentions that he ganked a copy of the rocket pack blueprints...and that he thinks he can make an even BETTER version of the rocket pack just in time for the sequel. Well folks...Alan Arkin is currently 87 years old...so the clock is TICKING, motherfuckers. The end.
Well folks—VHS of the Week is now in its fifth year...which means that I have now used the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend to lament the decline of the summer movie season approximately five times. A season that once featured a head-spinning array of the year’s best films big and small has, over the last decade and a half, been reduced to three big superhero movies...and also three other big superhero movies. When I stepped out to the cinema on this very weekend in 2018 I found Deadpool 2 on four screens and the Star Wars Han Solo side hustle on the other four screens. (Note: the last two screens were occupied by something called Show Dogs, which features an attitudinal Rottweiler police dog and co-stars Stanley Tucci, Shaquille O’Neal, and Ludacris. Why I did not buy tickets to this film immediately I do not know!). The summer always gave us tentpole blockbusters. Die Hard opened in the summer...as did Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Terminator 2. But we also got A Fish Called Wanda in the summer. And Ghost...and Trainspotting...and KIDS! I’ve autopsied the reasons for the decline of the big screen experience over and over on this site. In last year’s Memorial Day Weekend post my nostalgia pains were particularly acute as I was two months into a quarantine that showed no sign of winding down. I wondered if I was staring down my first truly movieless summer movie season. I questioned when I would be able to “sit in an air conditioned room, pay $10 for a Cherry Coke, and scream in terror at A Quiet Place 2.” I now have my answer to that question: exactly one year. A Quiet Place 2 comes out TODAY and I might even be brave enough to triple mask and buy a ticket! If Hollywood has been at an inflection point for the last decade the pandemic caused that point to finally pierce the flesh. What’s left of the studios are funneling most of their product to streaming services. The theatrical window finally shattered into a trillion pieces. Only 11 people watched the Oscars this year and they were all Brad Pitt’s children. That’s not to say there weren’t some outstanding films released in 2020. I enjoyed Da 5 Bloods and Nomadland like the rest of y’all. Occasionally we’d even wire Amazon Prime $19.99, pop some popcorn on the stovetop, turn off our devices, and see if we could replicate a trip to the cinema watching Bill and Ted Face the Music at home. Answer: we could not. We cannot. A movie without a movie theater, for me, will always be a movie diminished. While I refuse to believe movie theaters will ever disappear completely, I do believe they’ll become a niche experience...like purchasing vinyl or...you know...VHS tapes.
I’ve talked long and obnoxiously about my special affinity for the summer of 1991, the summer where I made it my personal mission to see every last film that opened in the Worcester area. I was 12 years old and had fuck all to do with my days and nights. I occupied my waking hours playing an unreasonable amount of Sonic the Hedgehog, reading Premiere Magazine, and scanning the radio for Gn’R’s “You Could Be Mine” or The Scorpions’ “Winds of Change” (which was written by the CIA??). While ultimately unsuccessful in my quest, I did manage to see A LOT of movies that summer. It was a serious number of flicks for a recent 7th grade graduate with no income, siblings, friends, or transportation. Was 1991 the best movie summer in summer history? I would say that any summer that features Point Break automatically wins...but truthfully--no. It was not. Some of the worst films of ANY year slithered onto the big screen that summer. Since 1991 is turning 30 this year I thought I would spend the summer of 2021 revisiting both the highlights and lowlights of my favorite movie summer. So while y’all are out enjoying your first maskless cookouts in two years I’ll be hunkered down trying to barf up 5000 words about Life Stinks, Mel Brooks’ musical comedy about the homeless. You’re welcome. And also--I’m sorry. Enjoy!
Today we’re here to talk about Ron Howard’s Backdraft...the answer to the question--”what would happen if a hunky fireman calendar unexpectedly came to life?” My dad was kind enough to bring me to the 7PM show on Friday May 24th, 1991, enabling me to kick off my summer movie season real proper like. What I remember most about sitting in that packed house three decades ago was the amount of whispery chatter about whether the man who plays Kurt Russell’s character’s father in the opening flashback sequence is also Kurt Russell. Two things about this--1. While we are never really shown a closeup of this character’s profile IT IS CLEARLY KURT RUSSELL!! Like oh my god, people--he’s just wearing a phony mustache! This means that Kurt Russell gets to die not once but TWICE in Backdraft! And don’t go giving me shit about spoilers...I just saved you 138 minutes! And 2. If you weren’t convinced Kurt Russell’s father was played by Kurt Russell you would just have to NOT KNOW! It isn’t listed in the credits and there is no internet because it is 1991. Whaddya gonna do? Call Universal Pictures and ask ‘em? Write a letter to Parade Magazine and hope they run it some Sunday?? “My friend says that Kurt Russell is in Backdraft twice and I say he isn’t! Which one of us is right??” Anyway, what happens in Backdraft is this: Like I already told you, we open with a flashback to the year 1971, which is 20 years before the events of this film and friggin’ 50 years from the year I’m currently writing to you from. The McCaffrey children, Stephen and his brother Brian, are playing hide and seek in a Chicago firehouse when the alarm is struck. Stephen is the older of the brothers and already a huge bully. We know this because he pushes his younger brother around and repeatedly asks Brian “who’s your brother, BRIAN!?” as if Brian would somehow forget the identity of his only sibling. The kids hustle down to see what’s the rumpus and their pops, Captain Dennis McCaffrey (Mustache Kurt Russell) scoops up Brian and offers to let him ride along to see real life tragedy in action. Stephen is not acknowledged or invited. As the truck is pulling out of the station, Brian looks back at Stephen with a huge smirk on his face. Stephen flips him off. Nice Kid.
Here I should say that, although my late grandfather was a firefighter in the years before I was born, most of my knowledge about the firefighting profession comes from having gotten ripped on Shirley Temple’s and danced to Footloose at the annual Grafton Firehouse Chicken BBQ every September from 1983 to 1990. In other words--I know nothing about firefighting. I do know that, in my 20 years working in the restaurant business, I have had to call 911 on several occasions for mostly minor emergencies; unruly patrons, mild health scares, fender benders outside of the restaurant. And even if I were to tell the 911 operator that the emergency wasn’t much of an emergency, three fire trucks were ALWAYS dispatched, sirens a blazin’. I guess protocol is protocol but...are 12 firefighters really necessary for a broken taillight and a bruised elbow? I mention this because, in the world of Backdraft, every alarm indicates the fire of all fires. Heroics will be required...always. Civilians overcome by smoke inhalation will be laddered to safety...or someone will burn to death. Every single time. I realize Backdraft is an action movie and there ain’t much action watching the company roll out to endless “gassy odor in the street” calls...but it’s also like...SRSLY??! Actually, I wouldn’t mind watching a feature length film of a bunch of lame ass fire calls. Very Jim Jarmusch. Anyway, take this opening sequence that I've been dancing around for the last two paragraphs. It couldn’t possibly be more ridiculous unless you had cantankerous goblin and man whose singing voice does not match his appearance in any way David Crosby standing on the street corner screaming “my apartment’s burning!” What’s that? That’s actually THE David Crosby?? Well ain't that some shit! When Mustache Kurt Russell’s truck arrives on the scene, they discover a six story apartment building all lit up and a frantic lady howling “my baby!....my baby!” Russell grabs his pal Johnny Adcox (veteran character actor Scott Glenn) and races up the ladder, leaving his seven year-old child unattended just feet away from a potential building collapse. In a span of about 30 seconds, the old man leaps from fire escape to fire escape, rescues the baby, and fucking winks down at Brian! How he can see his boy from six stories up and through thick plumes of building fire smoke, we do not know. The crowd below cheers. When Russell heads back inside to finish putting out the fire, Brian sees something his old man can’t see; The roof! The roof! The roof is on fire...and water would be helpful ASAP, motherfucker. But it’s already too late. Russell pokes the ceiling with his ceiling poker and the entire building EXPLODES! The crowd below does not cheer. Brian’s dad is vaporized right before his little eyes! It’s cool though ‘cuz the explosion blows the old man’s helmet right off of his head, causing it to sail out of the building and land fortuitously at Brian’s feet. Brian picks up the helmet and looks inside and OH MY GOD it’s full of scorched brains and shit! Not really though. Or….probably. Brian clutches the helmet and weeps and the press photogs snap Pulitzer Prize winning pics of him and shouldn't someone call this kid’s mom to come pick him up??? Were the McCafferey children born without a mother?? Jesus.
We jump forward to 1991, where Brian McCaffery has morphed into Baldwin Brother least likely to break your jaw over a parking spot, Billy Baldwin. After spending a lost decade schlepping around the country, working as a failed rodeo clown and a failed stereo salesman and a failed log cabin salesman, Brian has returned home, joined the academy, and earned his spot among Chicago’s bravest. We know all of this because, when Brian bellies up to the bar to order a Bud Light at his post graduation celebration, the bartender recites this information to the audience pretty much verbatim. I usually enjoy piecing these things together on my own...but you know...once in a while it’s nice to have a one-scene character just explain the entire plot right up front. Meanwhile several blocks away, a local businessman opens the front door of his tony brownstone and is instantly uncinerated. Brian and his hammered firefighter buddies are drawn out of the bar by the sound of emergency vehicles racing by. Outside, Brian runs smack into Jennifer Jason Leigh and is all “oh snap! Loved you in Fast Times! Let’s get a brewski!” and she’s all “remember when we were dating and you up and disappeared for six years?? Hard pass.” Dang! Even though these dudes are shoeless drunk, they decide the best course of action is to follow the firetrucks to the fire and see if they can “help out.” When they arrive they find some dude’s charred corpse stuffed through the window of his Porsche 944. Me? I’d probably go back to the bar and see if anyone wants to split a plate of loaded nachos at this point but Brian sticks around long enough to see big brother Stephen (mustache-less Kurt Russell) emerge from the fiery ruins of the brownstone looking like some hero character from a movie poster (note: this might be the actual image they used on the movie poster). Despite their torrid surroundings, the brothers McCaffery regard each other coolly. Stephen didn’t go to Brian’s graduation...they hate each other’s guts etc. Stephen tells Brian that he switched his fire station assignment and that he will now begin his firefighting career under Stephen’s supervision. He Tells Brian that he better be ready as they have the toughest station in all of Chi-Town. And why is that exactly? Are some parts of the city more prone to fires than others??
The next morning, Brian cruises by Stephen’s pad (in his vintage BMW?? I thought this kid was a chump??) to see if he can’t smooth things over with his bro before they have to start awkwardly fighting fires together. Turns out Stephen is married to Risky Business Star Rebecca DeMornay, which is awesome...but she has kicked him out of the house for being a crazy asshole jerk...which is less awesome. Stephen has been living in squalor on the family boat, which is slowly rotting away in dry dock. Question—are there a lot of boats in the Chicago area?? Not trying to be a dick...I’m genuinely curious! I know they got that lake and all. Stephen spends all of his non-fire fighting time getting wasted on his boat...listening to Cream 8-tracks on his, you know, 8-track player. Brian is all “how come you don’t want me to be a firefighter?” and Stephen says “when you have bad day, someone dies.” Brian also notices several large canisters of some random ass chemical called tryptophan or some shit stowed away on the boat but I’m SURE that won’t come up again.
When Brian shows up for his first day on the job, the entire company is already racing to a four-alarm blaze at a half-abandoned dress factory. Old Adcox is still with the department, having been completely unaffected by the same explosion that blew Mr McCaffery to bits. There’s some brief chatter about waiting for backup but this Stephen motherfucker wants to charge in there like a bull. (Did I mention that his nickname is Bull? Well...it is). Dude is Snake Plissken on speed. He’s Tango AND Cash! He tells Brian to stay right beside him and off they go. Inside, they find both a raging fire as well as ample clean air in which to hang back, converse, and occasionally scream stuff like “let’s take this bitch head on!” Seriously, I’ve had Pop-Tart burns that created smokier conditions than the fires in this film. Brian tries to hang tight with his brother but Stephen is just an insufferable showboat, diving straight into the flames and tossing off one-liners left and right. This particular fire frequently wails like a T-Rex with a skinned knee, which I’m fairly certain is not something that fires do. Brian hears someone screaming for help so he leaves Stephen’s side to see if he can go hero it up. Brian locates a lady victim, throws her over his shoulder, and hustles her to safety. But get this: the lady he rescued was actually just a mannequin. And get this PART 2: The real lady victim they rescue from the fire is is wearing the SAME CLOTHES as the mannequin! That’s some stupid shit right there. After the fire, Brian ducks into an alley to barf. When Stephen finds him he screams “I told you to stay right be-fuckin’-side me, Brian!!” If they gave out an Oscar for the delivery of one single line it would've gone to Kurt Russell for that line....and yes...I know that Silence of the Lambs also came out in 1991. Blah blah fava beans and Chianti snorrrrre. So we’re about 30 minutes in and me, you, and everyone we know would be perfectly content to watch these two foul-tempered Irish brothers bust each other’s balls and fight smokeless fires for another hour or so. But SOMEONE decided this movie needed another half dozen extraneous plotlines...so enter the character of Alderman Swayzak, played by the great J.T. Walsh...a man who’s quest to star in every other movie ever made was thwarted by an untimely visit from the grim reaper. The Alderman is running for mayor and is also involved in an evil scheme to shutter all of the city’s firehouses and turn them into....community centers?? You can’t put out a fire with an organic cooking class, bro. Naturally Stephen hates the Aldermen and threatens to punch his lights out. Jennifer Jason Leigh is the Alderman’s assistant because of course she is. An Alderman is a person governing a kingdom, district, or shire as viceroy for an Anglo-Saxon king because Merriam-Webster says it is.
When the men of ladder whatever arrive back at the station, Brian and his fellow rookie buddy Timmy decide to have a long conversation about their respective goals for their firefighting careers. In the shower. Butt naked. Look..I get it—Baldwin’s gotta be showin’ ass...but this shower room is HUGE! Ten shower heads by my count. Why would you choose to shower RIGHT NEXT TO SOMEONE unless you absolutely had to?? Also—save some hot water for the other firefighters, ya rookie pukes! Later that night the entire company hits the Drunken Fireman’s Ball to slug brews, listen to a Pogues cover band, and act out a bunch of other Irish stereotypes associated with Irish firefighters. Stephen gets shitcocked and punches his estranged wife’s new fireman boyfriend in the face like 10 times. Alderman Swayzak approaches Brian to compliment him on his daring rescue of that mannequin...which is already on the front page of the newspaper!! What, did they have an Evening Gazette or something?? Also--if the Alderman is singlehandedly attempting to decimate the Chicago Fire Department would he really show up at a ballroom full of loaded firemen? (Quick note: you may notice I am occasionally using the term “fireman” as opposed to “firefighter.” And the reason for this is that there are exactly two female characters in this film who only exist so that they may be duly sexed by the male characters. It is what it is). The Alderman offers Brian a cushy desk job but Brian is all “I have been a firefighter for approximately 8 hours...lemme see how I feel after a three minute firefighting montage set to a lame ass Bruce Hornsby tune.” And then: a three minute firefighting montage set to a lame ass Bruce Hornsby tune. Man, I don’t like Bruce Hornsby...and no...the fact that he toured with The Grateful Dead does not move the needle for me. Stephen keeps treating Brian like a piece of shit even though, I don’t know, he seems like a pretty solid fireman to me! Eventually, the company is summoned to yet another scorcher with yet another lady wailing “my baby!” out on the street corner. This time there’s a problem with the water...in that there isn’t any. But Stephen goes charging into the building like Big Trouble in Little Chicago. Everyone else in the company is like “dude, you can’t knock this thing down with curse words' ' but Stephen runs straight into the burning apartment and starts whacking away with an axe and shouting “Don’t take any shit from it!! (the fire)” Fire, indiscriminate prick that she is, refuses to cooperate and soon Stephen is fully engulfed. Brian hangs back on a staircase, certain that he just watched his brother burn to death like his father before him but OPE! Stephen emerges from the flames cradling a live baby like a football. The dude is a baby rescuing MACHINE!! After the fire is over Stephen is like “whaddya say, Brian” and Brian is all “fahhhhhk this noise--I QUIT!” He calls JJL and tells her he wants to work for the Alderman...and the movie effectively reboots itself as a boring ass procedural crime drama.
Brian is sent to work for Inspector Don Rimgale, who some of you might recognize because he is Robert DeNiro. Rimgale brings Brian to the parole hearing of one Ronald “Shadow” Bartel, who is totally Donald Sutherland (speaking of showin’ ass!). Sutherland looks about 90 years old and is still alive as of this writing which means that Donald Sutherland has been 90 years old for approximately 30 years. I guess he’s a pyromaniac who terrorized the city back in the 60’s and lit the fire that left Rimgale with burns over 80% of his body. Despite the fact that this dude is all twitchy and speaks to himself in a childlike sing-songy voice, the parole board is ready to approve his release. Oh! But then Bobby DeNiro leaps to his feet and pulls a Bobby DeNiro. The parole board is all “who are YOU!?” and DeNiro is like “WHO AM I!?? Hey Shadow--You like fuckin’ burnin’ people, hah? Look at me, acehole...you like lightin’ fuckin’ fires jerkawwf?? What would you do if they let you outta here??” Shadow says that if they let him out he would “burn the entire world.” Parole: Denied. Rimgale is investigating another fire wherein a man opened the door of a movie theater only to have it explode in his face. Traces of that obscure triglyceride chemical were found at the scene of both fires, leading Rimgale to believe there’s a serial arsonist on the loose (“I’m your firestarter...twisted firestarter”--Prodigy). Says that the torcher doesn’t actually like fire because he is setting fires that blow themselves out. Brian looks thoroughly bemused by this information.
Brian makes a halfhearted attempt to adjust to his life as an assistant investigative whatever the fuck. He puts on his finest suit/face and attends fancy cocktail parties...but he’s still hardened in the pants area by the sound of firetrucks racing by. JJL senses this and asks Brian if he wouldn’t like to show her his fire station (heyyyo). She asks him if he misses being on the job. He says that he does...yes. He tells her that the station is so old that they used to store hay for fighting fires in the attic (note: HAY??). Then they climb on top of a firetruck and start fucking...which is good on them I guess...but all I can think about is the fact that Jennifer Jason Leigh just had a fairly graphic sex scene with Alec Baldwin in the film Miami Blues, which came out exactly one year before this flick. One year….TWO Baldwin brothers! Soooo much goddamn chest hair! I wonder if JJL also thought about this while pretending to ball brother Billy. I bet that she did. Unfortunately a fourth alarm is struck for a skyscraper fire and the truck they’re riding pulls out of the station while they’re still mid-coitus. Now they’re screwing atop a truck that’s speeding through the streets of Chicago. I mean...why let that stop you?? Meanwhile over at the skyscraper fire, Stephen and his crew (remember them? They’re still in this movie) are first to arrive. They take the elevator up to the floor where the fire is supposed to be but can’t seem to find the fricken’ thing. Stephen grabs Timmy the Rookie and splits off to check out a different part of the building against Adcox’s vehement objections (mmm hmm). Stephen tells Timmy to be sure to check the doors for heat before busting them open with his axe...but Timmy does not do this. He axes a door open and it explodes in his face, instantly burning him beyond recognition. Sux. A half-sexed Brian arrives at the fire just in time to see his onetime shower buddy being stretchered out. They ALL go to the hospital with Tim...the entire goddamn company. I guess the fire will just have to burn itself out then? In the ER, the prognosis is grim...and it’s pretty clear the onus is on Stephen. We know this because Brian gets up in his face and screams “YOU burned him, Stephen!” Stephen yells “FUCK YOU!” and they proceed to pound the living shit out of each other right there in the ER. The nurses are bullshit. Stephen drinks about 75 beers and shows up at his ex’s house….but this time she takes pity on him and invites him in for a little ball sesh. Did you know that Rebecca DeMornay was dating Leonard Cohen when she made this movie?? True Fcat! She co-produced his album The Future right around this time too! I wonder if Leonard Cohen enjoyed Backdraft. I’m going to say that he did not. The next morning, Stephen puts his toothbrush back in his toothbrush holder and scrambles up some eggs for his 10 year-old boy, figuring he’s reclaimed the title of Man of the House. But when Bex wakes up she’s all “yeahhhh last night was some laffs but we need you out of our lives ‘cuz you’re a crazy animal and prolly gonna die soon anyway.” I mean...she’s not wrong!
Brian returns to his job and tells DeNiro that he’s eager to start doing his job. He wants to catch the creep who torched poor little Timmy and blah blah blah. DeNiro explains that the skyscraper, movie theater, and porsche brownstone fires were all set by the same person utilizing a method wherein a fire is set but remains incognito only to erupt when oxygen is introduced. Following the eruption the fire quickly burns itself out, therefore posing little risk to anyone ‘cept for the poor bastard or bastardette unlucky enough to open the door. This nifty parlor trick is called a backdraft, which is also the name of the movie we’re talking about. I have absolutely no idea if it’s a real thing and I’m way too lazy to look it up. All I know is that when I Google “Backdraft” the first thing I see is this movie (and also--BACKDRAFT 2 from 2019...starring Billy Baldwin AND Don Sutherland!!! I had NO IDEA this was a thing...did you?? Well, we do now!). It appears that the three victims were all good friends with The Alderman so naturally Brian assumes he’s the one who did the fires. He goes to JJL and hectors her into stealing the Alderman’s private files. He’s a real cock about it too! She’s like “yeah, this is a really important job for me. And also--remember how we were having intercourse like 5 minutes ago? Maybe watch your tone.” Brian storms off. Relationship over. Brian and Bobby D figure that the Alderman has been shutting down firehouses and converting them into community centers to award lucrative construction contracts to his now-deceased construction cronies...even though it couldn’t cost more than, what, $50K to turn an pre-existing fire station into a Community Center?? They don’t even need to take the poles out! They figure The Alderman is their guy but when they show up at his house to confront him, they find him half dead and the REAL killer in the process of setting up his backdraft trick. Brian tussles with the killer and slams his back against a flaming electrical socket, leaving a flaming electrical socket burn mark on the killer’s back that should help identify him five scenes from now. The killer manages to escape and set off his works. Brian saves the Alderman’s life but DeNiro is blown 50 feet in the air like a DeNiro-shaped missile and is impaled on the stake of a fence. Don’t worry...he’s totally fine.
With DeNiro laid up with an impaled chest area, it falls on Brian to solve what’s left of this mystery. He returns to prison to see Donald Sutherland, who continues to speak in indecipherable riddles and GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!!! Jesus Christ!
After about 10 interminable minutes Brian starts to understand what The Shadow is telling him: the fires are being started by a firefighter!! I mean--DeNiro ALREADY MENTIONED that the killer was using an obscure discontinued chemical that can only be found in the hull of his brother Stephen’s boat! So Stephen is the killer then? Cool. Brian races to Stephen’s station and breaks into his locker to look for evidence and whatnot. While he’s rummaging through the locker, though, he glances over at the shower room, where he sees Adcox toweling off. And guess what?? He’s got a flaming electrical socket-shaped burn on his BACK!!! Holy fudgsicles it was Scott Glenn all along! I actually didn’t see that coming. I kind of liked JJL for the killer...not gonna lie. Before anyone can say anything about anything the alarm goes off. There’s a fire in an explosives factory...and it’s the biggest fire since the Chicago Fire!!! While the guys start to suit up, Brian sprints out the back door, where he runs into Stephen, who has also simultaneously solved the mystery. Brian’s like “yeah...your boy Adcox. Sorry brah.” Stephen says that he will handle it AFTER the big fire. Like...dude...this guy killed three people and burned a fellow fireman half to death. Maybe he should sit this one out and think about what he did! But you know crazy fucking Stephen won’t listen to shit. He splits for the fire and Brian hems and haws before borrowing some gear and boarding another truck. But get this--the truck that Brian is riding on? It CRASHES!! By the time he pulls himself from the upturned truck Adcox and Stephen are already deep in the jowls of danger.
Brian arrives at the scene and asks the other dudes if they’ve seen two firefighters hashing out their troubles. They point to the roof. Sure enough, when Brian reaches the roof he finds his brother and Adcox deep in conversation...because there’s no better place to confront your buddy about the murders he’s been committing than the burning roof of a burning warehouse. Stephen is all “dude, you’re a serial arsonist?? Fuck’s the matter with you!?” Adcox says that the guys who were shutting down the firehouses were causing serious staff shortages that put thousands of firefighters in harm’s way and would definitely lead to an increase in deaths among their firefighting brethren. So...he decided to...you know...kill ‘em. Stephen is like “Hmmm...you make an undeniable point, my murdering friend.” Brian brings up the inconvenient yet unavoidable fact that one of his fires grossly disfigured poor Timmy. Adcox calls Brian a pussy and says that his old man would “fucking puke” if he saw what became of him. Before they get a chance to plumb their complicated family dynamic any further, the roof collapses. An extended action movie sequence ensues. Eventually, the McCafferey’s confront Adcox on a catwalk in the middle of the inferno. Adcox whacks Brian with his axe (not the sharp side tho...so it’s all good). He looks to do the same to Steve but BAM!! An exploding barrel knocks out the catwalk! Adcox and Stephen are left holding on for dear life. Adcox, who is burning up like a marshmallow on a stick, looks up at Stephen and says “let me go, Bull!” Stephen says “you go...we go.” And so they do. They go. Adcox lands on a barrel and snaps fully in half. Can’t say he didn’t have it coming. Stephen lands on...another catwalk? So he must be ok then, right? That’s what Brian thinks when he reaches him and finds him conscious. Stephen is like “somethin’ hurts in my lower part...mind taking a look?” Brian opens Stephen’s jacket and DUDE...his fuckin’ GUTS are hanging out. Like...you can see his liver and shit. No bueno, folks. Shit is exploding all around them. The other fire dudes are trying to reach them but they keep getting blown back. They lose control of their firehose, which dances through the room like an untamed cobra. Brian’s like “ahh shit...guess it’s my time to shine, eh?” He tackles that beast in slow motion and douses the flames, enabling the other emergency personnel to evacuate his brother. They load him into an ambulance and Brian hops into the back for the ride to the hospital. Stephen is like “this is great! The fire...it didn’t get me!” I mean...that’s technically true...and also not. Stephen instructs Brian not to tell anyone that Adcox was the murderer so that he can receive a hero’s burial. Brian agrees. The paramedics pretend to not be listening. Stephen, like he did at the beginning of the movie, says “who’s your brother, Brian?” “You are, Stevie,” says Brian. Then Stephen says “I’m gettin tired a sloubbin a jahhhh fahhh sssssss” and Brian is all “dude..WHAT!?? Could you repeat that??” But Stephen cannot hear him. He’s dead. Cut to: Stephen’s funeral. It’s wicked sad. Brian is crying...Rebecca DeMornay is crying...I’m crying...Kurt Russell and Mustache Kurt Russell are up in heaven...crying. Goldie Hawn...I’m sure she was watching somewhere….crying. Bob DeNiro probably doesn’t cry but there’s totally a catch in his throat.
Now here’s where I usually lament the lack of a denouement in a film. In this case, I feel like I’m all set. It has been over two hours. Play a sad Randy Newman song and send us out into the night. But no...that was just the first of THEE endings! In the second one it was Colonel Mustard who started the fires! Seriously though--after the funeral, Brian and DeNiro barge into Alderman’s Swayzak’s TV press conference and present him with his stolen files, detailing his vaguely corrupt fire station cessation scheme. So that’s the end of his career...but is NO ONE concerned that they still don’t know the identity of the arsonist? Are they going to just stop investigating now?? And does Brian really have that little interest in rekindling his relationship with JJL?? I know Stephen was a crazy asshole but I’m starting to think god took the wrong McCaffery. Well...I guess that….OH WAIT! The movie has still not ended! We also learn that Brian went back to fighting fires! Ok...now it’s over. Ron Howard throws up a graphic that reads “there are over 1.2 million active firefighters in the United States.” And there’s over 1.9 million active McDonald’s workers too...so what of it? The end.
Alright y’all—I don’t have a ton of history with Fire in the Sky...but hopefully enough to fill out an entire paragraph. We’ll see how I do! This film was released in March of 1993 and I never even considered going to see it in theaters. As much as I loved the Cutting Edge, I wasn’t about to leave my home just to watch a D.B. Sweeney movie, you dig? I see here on the internet that it was released on the same day as Chris Rock’s N.W.A. parody CB4 and I’m thinking that I definitely maybe went to see that one instead. “Sweat from My Balls!?” That’s some funny shit...if you’re a 14 year-old boy...which I totally was the year CB4 came out. Flash forward to the fall of ‘93: I’m at the video store with my dad and Fire in the Sky is the hot new flick in the New Release section so I thought “that’ll be just fine.” My dad had a date on the books that night and asked if I’d be cool kicking it solo until just around bedtime. I told him “no sweat! Have fun at the Golden Temple but go easy on the Mai Tai’s. Old Rudy at the bar pours a stiff one! What happened next was--my dad left me home alone and I watched Fire in the Sky and it scared the living shit out of me. Like...turning on every single light in the house and stabbing in closets and under beds with a steak knife-type scared. Fire in the Sky is based on a book called The Travis Walton Experience, which is kind of like the Jimi Hendrix Experience but with 100% less guitar solos. It’s about a guy named, you know, Travis Walton, who claims to have been abducted by aliens in 1975. It’s basically 105 minutes of surprisingly suspenseless small town kidnapping drama with a five minute alien abduction sequence that is pants shittingly scary. What I didn’t know...COULD NOT have known back then...is that this story is complete and utter bullshit. The reason I didn’t know this is that the front of the VHS box says that the film is “Based on a True Story.” And what reason would I have to doubt the good people at Paramount Pictures?? Do I even believe in aliens? Well..the guy from Blink-182 says they exist soooo. Since I was currently residing in the information-less void that was the early 90’s I had no way to follow up on this purported true story! It was 9 PM on a Tuesday night! I couldn’t exactly ride my Huffy to the Library and ask them to pull the microfiche on the Travis Walton incident. What was I gonna do? Call the movie studio? Yeah hi--this is Danny Tebo over in Worcester MA. I see here it says Fire in the Sky is based on a true story. I mean...IS IT????” I made a phone call alright...but it was to the Golden Temple, where I had them interrupt my dad mid crab rangoon with news of an emergency at home. Imagine his delight upon returning home and learning that the emergency involved his high school-aged son’s suddenly crippling fear of alien abduction!
Anyway, what happens in the movie is this: we open deep in the forest in a part of Arizona that is totally Oregon (I guess it was cheaper to film there or whatever) The “real” events happened in an Arizona town called Snowflake, which is also what my extended family members started calling me in 2018. . But yeah...we see that there’s some sort of creepy glowing something up on the mountain. After the opening credits roll, a pickup truck suddenly rockets down the mountain in clear distress. We know this because it keeps crashing into trees that a pickup truck that wasn’t isn’t in distress would simply not crash into. I’m thinking this driver is either shitfaced or trying to outrun a spaceship. Either way! The truck eventually reaches surface roads and pulls into Snowflake’s diner/roadhouse/gas station. Six Stephen Dorff cosplayers emerge from the truck, none of which, and this came as a complete shock to me, are Stephen Dorff! I really thought he was in this movie! You know who IS in this movie, though—the liquid Terminator! That’s right—the T-1000, born one Robert Hammond Patrick Jr. Patrick is Mike Rogers, head logger. He leads his logging crew into the bar, where they get a frosty reception. I DID notice that they sat themselves, which is a dick move. Maybe they should’ve checked with the hostess? A waitress approaches and informs this 6-top of harried beardos that the kitchen has closed for the night. Mike says “ahh...don’t have a late night menu with some sliders on it? Or perhaps some deviled eggs?” Just kidding...this place has a kitchen?? We get a good look at his crew and see that it includes middling actor-turned middling director of middling Mark Wahlberg movies Peter Berg. Oh, and also Henry Thomas. That’s right—friggin’ Elliott from ET!! He’s in this! Rounding out the gang is Tough Guy Drifter and Guy Who Looks Like Stephen Dorff but is somehow Not Stephen Dorff. Mike asks the fellas if they’re prepared to stick to their (not true) story and they say they’re all in. The law is summoned and quickly arrives in the form of the legendary James Garner! Bret Maverick himself, y’all! He’s some sort of super cop...the head cop of all cops...and he has zero unsolved mysteries on his CV, which cannot be possible. Dude is like 70! He meets up with Sheriff Blake, who is played by the guy who played the bad guy in The Last Boy Scout. I’m looking at these good old boys in their cowboy hats and bolo ties and thinking this town is probably a terrible place to be if you are not a white person. Then I think that maybe that’s just the 2021 in me OPE!!!—the deputy just used the term “wetback.” I hate it when I’m right. Garner approaches the lumberjack dudes and is like “what the do?” Mike says he’ll explain everything in flashback form and that it will take up roughly one third of the movie. Garner says he’s cool with that ...and away we go!
We turn the calendar way back to 5 days earlier, when Travis Walton (Da Bomb Sweeney) was still an unabducted, starry-eyed 18 year-old...tooling around Snowflake on his motorcycle, doffing his cap at his fellow townsfolk. (Note: Sweeney was 32 when they made this movie, which is a much bigger number than 18). Travis heads over to see Mike, who looks like he has aged about 30 years in the two years since Terminator 2. Mike has both wife and cash flow troubles but Travis is all “I got the answer right here, buddy boy!” He pulls a crumpled sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket with a doodle of an auto body shop on it. “Look Mikey! It’s our future: M&T Auto Body! You’re Mike and I’m Travis…...M&T...GET IT!?” I don’t know if this dude was abducted by aliens or not but he’s a friggin’ branding genius! Mike is unimpressed. He’s like “you and your cockamamie ideas...” Before he can finish that thought, Travis is already shimmying up Mike’s trellis like the damn Night Stalker. He climbs into the window that has the young lady sleeping just inside of it and wakes her up and makes kissy faces at her and is this MIKE’S DAUGHTER!?? Oh wait...it’s just his sister! I guess that’s a little less gross?? Mike and Travis hop in Mike's pickup and roll out to pick up the dudes from the earlier part of the movie. Turns out the fellas are part of a crew tasked with clearing out some forest or whatever...and they don’t much care for each other! Tough Guy Drifter plays his boombox too loud, annoying the piss out of Peter Berg. Henry Thomas buries his nose in a copy of the National Enquirer, prolly trying to see what his old pal the extra terrestrial is up to. Not Stephen Dorff doesn’t have many lines but he DOES sport some bomb ass vintage rock tees (Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac, etc). Later, at the work site, Travis and Tough Guy Drifter exchange words and almost fight...with their CHAINSAWS! Mostly, though, they just putz around and listen to Black Water by the Doobie Brothers. You know what song I do not like? Black Water by The Doobie Brothers. Travis keeps needling Mike about starting a business and starting a camping trip and starting a marriage with Mike’s little sister. We get it...this Travis kid is just overflowing with earnest incredibleness. Mike doesn’t seem to think so. Tells Travis that he’s a spazz and that he isn’t ready for marriage. Travis says that he GET TO THE FUCKIN’ ALIENS ALREADY!! Jesus.
The fellas finally knock off around sundown and are making their way down the mountain when they spot what appears to be a fire (in the SKY!!). They’re all “it’s a fire...no! It’s the sunset! No...it’s a plane crash!” Henry Thomas is like “ummm...this looks eerily familiar to me.” He doesn’t actually say that but he should have! Help these dudes understand, Elliott! Someone suggests finding an alternate route but Mike says there’s only one way down the mountain and it goes straight through the what have you! They pull around a bend and, sure enough, it's a friggin’ spaceship. A flying saucer! Or, a hovering saucer, anyway. Mike is about to put the pedal through the floorboard but Travis leaps right out of the truck to say what’s up. He really is a box of Frosted Flakes, this kid. Tough Guy Drifter says “let’s leave this son of a bitch here if he wants to be an asshole!” And you know? I don’t disagree with him! All a’ sudden a brilliant white beam emanates from the ship and enshrouds Travis. The beam lifts him about five feet in the air and tosses him gently to the ground. Back in the truck, the guys start to scream “oh no! He’s DEAD!!” Umm...based on WHAT!? I’ve seen people take steeper falls from swing sets and walk away unscathed. If you’re through giving me your amateur medical opinions, why don’t one of you ding dongs go take a dude’s pulse?? Nope—they hit the gas and leave their mildly concussed buddy for alien feed. They stop about halfway down the mountain and have a five minute argument about whether or not they should go back and get Travis. They ultimately decide the best course of action is to try to make it to that roadhouse before the kitchen closes. And I already done told you how that worked out!!
So now we jump forward to the present day in 1975, where Mike has just finished telling James Garner the story that I just finished telling you, but with less curse words. He’s thoroughly unimpressed. He’s like “right so y’all killed your buddy and are blaming it on aliens? Maybe you aren’t familiar with my work on the Rockford Files but I know a shit burger when I hear one.” Garner sends the fellas home for the night and tells Sheriff Roscoe that he’s confident they’ll find Travis’s murdered corpse in a ditch by daybreak. Mike has to go home and face both his wife AND his little sister, who is suddenly shit out of boyfriends. They’re all “so, where is he, Mike?” and Mike is all “aliens took him” and they’re all “really tho—WHERE IS HE, MIKE??” And mike is all “fucked if I know!” By the time the sun rises the next day, the entire GD town is out combing the hills for Travis (and they ain’t found shit!). Travis’s brother Dan shows up HOT and tries to murder Mike and his entire crew. Not Stephen Dorff and Peter Berg search the deepest reaches of the woods, where they run into the Indian from the Doors movie. “Must be from the Indian reservation nearby!” says Not Stephen Dorff. Maybe the native folk know something about the UFO’s. Nope, he’s never seen or spoken of again! Eventually, everyone is drawn to a commotion in the clearing where Travis was knocked on his ass. A cadaver-sniffing dog has picked up on something and soon the local lawmen are yanking bones out of a shallow grave while people wail “it’s him...it’s Travis!!” Ummm...he has been gone, what, 12 hours?? That would be some record decomposition. But yeah...no...it’s a dead dog or some shit.
Travis stays gone for five whole days and things go from ridiculous to quite ridiculous. A team of UFO experts show up and insist that “some of us out there know the truth,” which sounds suspiciously close to the tagline of an extraordinarily popular sci-fi show that premiered six months after this movie (and also occasionally featured Robert Patrick!). The town is suddenly overrun with camera wielding Asians...because Asians love photographing aliens? This movie: kinda racist! Mike’s wife continues to disbelieve him and sends him off to live at the local fleabag. Tough Guy Drifter splits the scene to live in a shanty town and drink cerveza with the local Mexicans. The remaining crew members are no longer an official crew as they’ve been justifiably fired for going viral with their alien abduction story. No easy task in 1975! They’re instant pariahs on the streets of Snowflake. Can’t even get a cup of joe down at the greasy. People continue to ask them what happened to Travis and they continue to insist that they don’t know. You know what they DO NOT talk about? The fuckin’ spaceship!! Aliens! Brilliant beams of light! The incident is only alluded to in the vaguest of terms. It’s always “We all saw what happened....there was a thing...it happened.” Not exactly a geyser of exculpatory evidence there, fellas. Eventually the town calls the sort of town meeting that only happens in the movies. You know—where people are in the middle of a heated discussion and then the main character shows up and interrupts the proceedings by dragging his nails across a chalkboard and saying “y’all know me?” That’s more or less what happens here. Everyone is all “Mike killed Travis!” but then Mike shows up and all “y’all know me! I couldn’t have killed Travis! He’s right over there!” Seriously though—the actual Travis Walton is an extra in this scene. Mike says that he and his buds will take a polygraph the following morning...so that’s what they do. The lie detector man tells the fellas that their results were inconclusive...only to turn around and tell Jimmy Garner the fellas were telling the truth because “my lie detector don’t lie.” Garner looks like he wants to fold the lie detector guy in half like a book.
Later that night, Mike is hanging at his freshly estranged wife’s crib when he receives a collect call....from TRAVIS WALTON!!! Of course he’ll accept the charges!! Mike loads his family into the truck and they roll out to search for Travis. They finally find him six towns over...hiding next to an ice machine outside of a General Store. Naked. And dude is SPUN! Doesn’t even know his own name. Maybe someone kidnapped him and forced him to snort crystal meth for 5 days straight...just like that London twin who wasn’t in Dazed and Confused! Mike is all “hey Travis—it’s me! Mikey! From M&T motors!” Travis stumbles into the loo and drinks his weight in rusty faucet water. Instead of calling the police, Mike calls the UFO guys, who are just a bunch of tactless motherfuckers, man. They bust into the John and turn on the bright lights and shove a microphone in Travis’s face and bombard him with questions like “what did the aliens smell like? Did they touch ya butt??” Travis passes out. He wakes up in the hospital a short time later and finds Mike is at his bedside. “We sure did miss ya, buddy” Mike says. Travis is still pretty sore about the fact that Mike left him for dead when he was very clearly NOT DEAD! He tells Mike as much. Mike calls him a son of a bitch and storms out of the hospital. The other guys from the forest crew show up the next day with meatball subs and cans of pop and Foghat 45’s and they reminisce...OH WAIT...I mean the other guys from the crew are NEVER SEEN AGAIN!! Peter Berg...Elliott...Not Stephen Dorff? Their time in this movie has concluded. Weak.
Travis is discharged from the hospital after a day or so but his brian is still scrambled eggs. All that pizazz he had earlier in the movie? Gone! The sparkle in his eye? Completely snuffed out. He isn’t out of the sickhouse but five minutes before folks start hounding him for autographs. He can’t walk the streets of Snowflake without turning heads. He’s like John Travolta in Phenomenon ‘cept he can’t move shit with his mind. Not to my knowledge, anyway. James Garner observes Travis’s overnight transition into local celebrity with thinly veiled disgust. He approaches Travis to ask him where he spent the last 5 days. Travis says he doesn’t know. Garner tells him he hopes “it” was worth it. I mean...this dude was just on Joe Rogan’s podcast this year...in 2021...so it was clearly worth SOMETHING! Despite the fact that Travis can’t do anything but zombie around the house mumbling to himself, his family decides to throw him a “welcome back to planet earth” rager. A crowd of well wishers gather at the Walton residence and fill their glasses with punch and snack on crudite..but our man Travis? He slinks off and hides under the kitchen table, which is a total party foul (unless you’re on a shit ton of drugs, anyway). Someone knocks over a bottle of syrup, which runs off the edge of the table and lands in Travis’s eye. Could happen! This errant dab of Hungry Jack sends Travis into some sort of fugue state and it’s TIME FOR THE SCARY SPACESHIP SEQUENCE!!!!
Travis wakes up in a cocoon filled with hundreds of gallons of off-green slime. He’s either back in the womb or locked in a disassembled set from the recently defunct Nickelodeon show You Can’t Do That on Television. Travis peels his way out of his pod, only to find that he’s aboard a spacecraft! We know this because there is no gravity (note: but there IS oxygen? I have questions). Travis tries his damndest to get his weightless bearings but accidentally crashes into another pod, where he finds a half-eaten human person!! Gah!! And they only ate the bottom half!! DOUBLE GAH! Now, Travis starts furiously searching for an escape hatch or emergency exit or one of those giant yellow Ripley Power Loaders. Travis floats down into some sort of control room where, sure enough, he discovers a couple of aliens. And you know---they look just like everyone thinks that aliens look like. Not 80’s movie buddy aliens. The slenderman-looking dudes with the football-shaped heads and the huge eyes. They appear to be, I don’t know, napping or something. Maybe charging their batteries for the night? Travis inexplicably kicks one of the aliens in the face, awakening the ACTUAL alien inside. I guess these stereotypical alien shells were just sleeping bag decoys! The REAL aliens look like Geroge Hamilton’s nutsack...and they look PISSED! They grab this Travis motherfucker and throw him on a gurney...and they are NOT gentle about it! They rush him into the surgery theater, strip him down to his bare ass, and cover him in a heavy duty latex sheet that binds his body to the operating table. They cut him a mouth hole so he can breathe but then they start shoving fistfulls of green jello down his throat. Did they think to ask him if he’s vegan!? There’s shaved horse hooves in jello, man! Oh, it gets worse! Once he’s full of gelatin, they grab a metal sink snake and run it so far down his throat it comes out his asshole! (Note: I may be exaggerating that last part. It’s a real possibility, though). And then...AND THEN they put one of those Clockwork Orange contraptions on his face. You know, the ones that force your eyelids open?? They don’t show him any alien pornography, though. They fill his poor defenseless eye socket with a warm white liquid. If my man Trav isn’t already praying for sudden death, he’ll sure as shit start once he sees the aliens pull out a needle that’s about ten feet long! The needle starts to descend toward Travis’s open eye...slowly...slowly...slowly...and then….AND THEN NOTHING!!! That’s it!! Travis just wakes up back in Snowflake all “yeah, I still don’t really know what happened!” While all of this is going on, Sheriff Beauregard is razzing James Garner for failing to definitely solve the case. “I guess your undefeated streak finally came to an end, eh Mav?” James Garner says that Travis Walton is a goddamn fucking liar and that his streak is well intact, thank you very much. He also says that he’s had about enough of acting in this stupid ass movie and promptly jumps in his car and drives away. Goodbye, James Garner.
We jump ahead to 1977, where Travis has grown a mohawk and pierced his nose and started listening to the Sex Pistols. Seriously though, he’s still living in Snowflake. He’s married to Mike’s sister and they already have two kids. Mike, however, was so traumatized by the whole alien incident that he grew a beard, moved to a cabin in the mountains, and became a recluse. Hasn’t spoken to his now ex-wife or children or anyone else in almost three years. But the guy who claims to have been gagged half to death by space creatures for five days can still ride around town with his head held high?? Doesn’t seem fair! The other guys from the crew are all….still absent from the movie. No further info on them. Sorry. Travis drives up to visit Mike, who seems less than enthused to see him. Mike is all “what you been up to? Anything?” And Travis is all “well, I have kids...with ya sister.” Mike grunts. He eventually apologizes for leaving Travis to be diddled by aliens. Travis says that it’s his fault as he should not have exited the truck. They hug it out. Beef: squashed. They decide to drive up to the site of the abduction just ‘cuz. Mike wonders aloud if the aliens might return. Travis laughs and says “I don’t think they’ll be back...I don’t think they like me!’ Well HA HA HA then,eh? Nice to see it isn’t too soon to sit back and goof on this whole alien abduction thing. The movie ends...but the credits inform us that ALL of the men from the crew passed lie detector tests (caps theirs). Which is crazy when you consider that they were all fuckin’ LYING!!
I’ll conclude by telling you that I randomly watched an entire Netflix documentary about Travis Walton two months ago that was so memorable that I already can’t remember any of it. I guess I’ll say that, if you actually believe in aliens, you’ll probably still find this dude’s story bullshitty. There’s a theory that they faked the alien abduction to get out of their foresting contract (why not just cut off a fingert? I guess that sort of thing wouldn’t necessarily keep you in the news for 50 years though, would it?). He also received $5000 from the National Enquirer for “Best Alien Abduction Story of the Year.” You could buy a lot of 8-tracks with 5k back in ‘75, kids. I personally believe that polygraph tests are about as accurate as Magic 8 Balls but it’s worth noting that Travis Walton took another lie detector test on live television in 2005 and his results made OJ Simpson look like Geroge Washington. I think what galls me most about this movie and it's paralyzing effect on me back in 1993 is that, while Walton does indeed tell a story about being abducted by aliens, nothing in his story bears ANY resemblance to the events depicted in Fire in the Sky! He remembers being on a ship...kind of! And lying on a table...of some sort! But dude--he never claimed that aliens lubed up his esophagus with lime jello and ran a metal pipe through his large intestine. That was all purely fabricated to terrify gullible 14 year-old kids with underdeveloped bullshit detectors. Thanks a lot, jerks. The end.
Dearly beloved—we are gathered here today to get through this thing called Flashdance. The totemic 1980’s dancin’ flick that spawned a thousand 1980’s dancin’ flicks. The film that single handedly rescued the leggings industry and caused people all over the globe to take scissors to the neckline of their sweatshirts. Before I attempt to explain the movie’s threadbare plot, I must first make a confession (the first of several confessions we’ll be discussing today): I had never seen Flashdance before this week! I know...I know! How could I have missed out on this cultural juggernaut that was the 45th highest grossing film of the 80’s!? Let’s see—it’s a medium hard R-rated flick that hit theaters when I was 4 years old...but I had already seen Porky’s 2 and Hardbodies 2 and every other smutty sequel on the market. I would say it has more to do with my intense aversion to dancing than anything else. I mean...I’m not adverse to the concept of dancing. It’s ok if other people want to do it. I’m just no damn good at it and would be less mortified if someone walked in on me masturbating than if they walked in me practicing the Cabbage Patch (note: I have done quite a bit of both in the privacy of my own home...though probably more of the former). That said, I’ll admit that I absolutely LOVE Footloose...although I tend to come down on the side of John Lithgow’s reverend in that one. If this Ren MacCormack wants to dance so bad maybe he just hop in his Beetle and drive straight back to wherever it is he came from! Unfortunately I don’t own a copy of Footloose on VHS so I can’t sit here and barf up 5000 words about how Kenny Loggins’ “I’m Free (Heaven Helps the Man)'' is one of the greatest songs ever created by a human person. I think the reason I continued to avoid Flashdance over the decades has more to do with the fact that it was produced by Don Simpson, one of most repugnant ghouls to ever slither into Hollywood. In my review of Top Gun, also a Simpson co-production, I said that Don Simpson made Harvey Weinstein look like Mr Rogers, a line that I dig so much I’ve decided to recycle it here in this sentence. Simpson probably has the worst reputation of all of the abusive, cokey 80’s mega producers...second only to former Sony president and man who was bizarrely married to Pamela Anderson for ten days in 2020 Jon Peters (he’s 75. She’s...less than that). What’s that? Jon Peters ALSO produced Flashdance!? And the script was written by the profoundly overpaid lech Joe Eztherhas, he of eventual Basic Instinct and Showgirls ``fame”. That’s a sleazy triumvirate of terror right there, y’all. I’m thinking this film cannot possibly be good! Having finally broken down and watched it, I will say that at the very least Flashdance does not contain a scene where Kyle McLachlan gets fucked to death in a swimming pool, unlike Showgirls. And that’s the last positive thing I have to say about Flashdance. Read on...
What happens is this: We open on the ash grey streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...and I can immediately tell that Flashdance is going to be a dark movie. Like...literally. I had to get up and fuck with the tracking and eject the tape and blow on it before I realized that the movie is just supposed to look like it does. Usually I’m totally on board with the gauziness of 80’s movies...it’s why I host a VHS blog...but this film is so dark that I was frequently unable to tell what I was even supposed to be looking at. It’s one of the few times in my life where I wondered if I might have been better served hunting down a copy on blu ray. Did the cinematographer not know how to operate a light meter!? Jesus. The theme song (you know...the real big one) plays over the opening credits and here I need to admit that, for the last 38 years, I thought the lyrics in the chorus were “What a feeling...beans believing. Beans as in actual beans: Pinto’s, kidney’s, Black-eyed’s. I looked it up and, come to find out, Irene Cara is actually singing “bein’s believin’.” Honestly, I liked it better with the beans. What the hell does that even mean?? Anyway, we are introduced to 18 year-old Alex, played by 19 year-old lady who holds a B.A. in American Literature from Yale, Jennifer Beals. Alex works as a welder at Pittsburgh’s smokiest steel mill by day but dreams of a career as a ballerina. She also appears to have just fallen out of the goddamn sky fully formed. She has no family and no backstory whatsoever. Ok, so later in the film we DO learn that she grew up in Altoona but that’s not exactly a fountain of information, now is it? Altoona is less than 100 miles from Pittsburgh. It’s not like she’s from Palau! How did she become a welder by the age of 18?? What led her to that career?? Is she in the union?? After she clocks out of her welding gig, she heads to Mawby’s, which is simultaneously the type of wood-paneled dive bar where grody dudes munch greasy cheeseburgers, slug pitchers of Schlitz, and play “Mississippi Queen” on the jukebox...and also a high tech, neon cabaret with ample dressing room space and a seemingly unlimited budget for elaborate lighting and set designs. Like...there is NO EARTHEN WAY that all of these things are occurring under the same roof. I guess this is where Alex goes to interpretive dance because soon Alex is up onstage interpretive dancing. Alex does her...what have you, and for the big finale, she parks her ass on a chair, reaches up and grabs ahold of one of those Europeans toilet flushing chains and yanks it, releasing about 200 gallons of water. I realize this shot of all that water cascading down on Jenny Beals is probably one of the most iconic images in cinematic history. But it’s also like...HUH!? Where did all that water come from?? It’s way, way more than a bucket’s worth. And the audience/bar patrons? They’re friggin’ soaked. It’s like a Gallagher show but with no jokes and 100% less watermelons. Her little number immediately catches the eye of the swarthy Nick, played by actor I do not know Michael Nouri. He asks some of the steel workers, whose voices are all so gravelly they make Tom Waits sound like a castrato, what’s the sitch with the dancing queen? One of the dudes tells him that she works at a steel factory. Specifically--his. Nick owns the goddamn steel factory but does not recognize his only female employee. The next day at the mill, Nick spots Alex reading a copy of Vogue on her lunch break and is all “you spreken zee French? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” Alex says she recognizes his name from her paychecks but doesn’t like to mix business and pleasure so he should take his Francophile ass elsewhere.
After the quittin’ whistle blows, Alex bikes home and we get a chance to see where she lives and what the FUCK, dude!? I think the story is supposed to be that she hobo’d her way into an abandoned warehouse and built herself an unsanctioned squat. But the place is tricked...OUT!! It’s like the apartment from Ghost...but bigger! She’s got a brass bed and a shit ton of plants and a color television with cable and an air hockey table and ColecoVision (ok...I’m lying about the last two things). She also has a pitbull named Grunt. When she arrives at home she asks Grunt if he’s been getting laid, which is a really weird thing to ask a housebound dog (he has not, to my knowledge, been recently laid). She watches some ballet on the telly which gets her in the mood to move...which means it’s time for the infamous “dancing around the apartment to Michael Sambello’s “Maniac” sequence.” I know I’ve said this before but I love it when the songs on the soundtrack describe exactly what is happening in a given scene. She is, indeed, a maniac...maniac on the floor...and she’s psyched she lives in a 5000 square foot apartment in which to engage in said maniacal dancing. Although I’m pretty sure I read that Beals had a dance double...or at least an ass-through-torso double. I’m glad I finally got to see this scene, though. Next time I watch Gremlins and the gremlin dances to “Maniac” I’ll finally get to be in on the joke!
Alex decides that she absolutely positively must apply for admission at Pittsburgh’s Fictional Conservatory of Dance and Repertory. But when she arrives, all of the other ballerinas are lined up holding the passe en releve position and shit and Alex is wearing a dirty ass pair of Carhartt work boots. They all mean mug her while the school admin prattles on about how all applicants need to have 20 years of experience and blah blah blah. Fictional schools are impossible to get into! Why don’t they just let her get up in there and cut a rug, jitterbug? Show ‘em her stuff? It’s at this point that I realize that my entire ballet knowledge base comes from seeing The Nutcracker in the 6th grade and from the film Black Swan. Although...I should mention that while I was in the theater waiting for Black Swan to start, a stranger tapped me on the shoulder and said “Hey man--you know Brittney Murphy? She’s DEAD!!” Totally ruined Black Swan for me. I love Clueless, man! Alex goes to see her 87 year-old ballet mentor, Hanna, who never really offers her much beyond “you are good dancer...you’ll be fine.” I’m not sure what the point of this character is, really. She can’t even get out of her lazyboy let alone show her any wax on, wax off. Next, Alex heads to confession, where she tells the priest that she can’t stop thinking about sex...which is what the nasty old bastards who wrote this movie hope that 18 year-old girls talk about in the confessional booth. Friggin barf, dude. Alex says “I mean--I guess who DOESN’T think about sex all the time?? Well, probably not you, Father.” Eeee...is this a catholic priest...cuzzzz. Then she starts to ramble on about her lack of confidence in her dancing abilities and the priest is like “have you taken the lord’s name in vain or anything like that? If not, maybe tell this bullshit to a shrink.” Actually, this priest never says anything. At all. Maybe the actor didn't have his SAG card or something.
When she isn’t welding, Alex pals around with a Mawby’s waitress named Jeanie, who is an aspiring figure skater, and primo dancer Tina Tech, played by Penny of “The Penny Situation” from Dirty Dancing. The ladies are routinely harassed by strip club manager Johnny C (Fear frontman and Mr Body’s body from the movie Clue, Lee Ving) who wants them to, you know, strip. When they decline Johnny C’s advances, he calls the ladies a bunch of C-words! Real nice, this movie. Alex and her pals head to the gym to listen to some Joan Jett and work off some aggression. The only problem is that this gym seems to exist in the ether! It’s just a bunch of weight machines that appear to be located on a cloud. This sequence seems to exist so the filmmakers could offer some more closeups of butts and boobs, as if there’s a dearth of that in this movie. Meanwhile, back at the Mawby’s, Jeanie’s boyfriend Ritchie decides to try his hat at stand up comedy with disastrous results. He’s up there telling Polak joke after Polak joke and WHAT IS THIS MOVIE EVEN ABOUT!?? Why should I care about Jeanie the figure skater and Shecky Green over here?? This movie has so little in the way of a plot it makes Purple Rain look like Inception.
One night, while Alex is walking through the bar, Johnny C grabs her ass, so she pours a glass of beer on his dick, which is awesome. Later, when she exits the club, Johnny C and his henchman throw Alex on the ground and try to rape her, which is less awesome. Fortunately, Slick Nick is just a few feet away getting into his Porsche 911 and is all “hey, knock it off fellas” and the fellas knock it off. Nick does the only reasonable thing you can do for a lady after she’s been attacked: ask her if she wants to hang out...and when she declines...follow her ALL THE WAY HOME in your sports car while she tries to outrun you on her 10 speed! He keeps asking her out and she keeps telling him that she does not want to date an employer...particularly one who is TWENTY YEARS OLDER than she is! She does not say this last part out loud...but...GAH! He tells her that she’s fired and that he’ll pick her up at 8 the following evening. Neat. Before she can hit the town with Nick the Dick, though, she has to check out Jeanie’s super big important figure skating competition. The one for all the marbles...or whatever it is one is awarded for outstanding figure skating. At this point I realize that I have never seen the actress who plays Jeanie in another film so I googled her and learned that she died suddenly of a brain aneurysm all the way back in 1984. Then I realize that she’s skating to the song “Gloria” by Laura Brannigan, who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 2004. Coincidence!? I THINK SO! Jeanie eats shit twice and blows her figure skating career, which is sad. Not as sad as all of those terrible real life events I just told you about, but sad nonetheless. Alex still manages to make her date with Nick. They grab a pizza and head back to hers. When he sees her spread he’s like “howwww much are we paying you again!?” They hang out in the living room wing of her warehouse and Alex sits on the floor and starts to remove her bra from under her sweater while explaining the concept of synesthesia to Nick. She’s all “you know that if you close your eyes you can actually see music?” and he’s staring down at her like “you want me to close my eyes NOW!??” They ball.
The pizza date was a smashing success. We know from the sex, yes, and also from the walking around the smoking rubble of the burned out factories of Pittsburgh montage that follows (how and why these buildings burned, we do not know). Alex tells Nick that she’s super self conscious about dancing in front of other people...but that she dreams about getting up on stage and trancing out 24 hours a day (“lose yourself to dance”--Daft Punk). Nick puts his hand on her tit. They screw again. The next time she gets a slot at the club, she paints her face up like a mime and performs a number that looks like Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” video if it had been directed by Herb Ritts. Out in the crowd (which...again...cannot POSSIBLY be located in the same space as these over the top performances) Johnny C is still at it, asking poor Jeanie if she knows how to do the horizontal mambo. She tells him to fuck off but then Johnny C leaves her a huge tip so she’s like “ahh ok...I guess I’ll come strip at your club now.” Did I mention that Richie dumped Jeanie and moved to LA to pursue a career as a standup? It really doesn’t matter.
Everything's coming up Alex when she steps out to the ballet with her elderly mentor friend. But while she’s there she sees Nick loading some strange blonde into his Porsche. She’s beside herself, Alex is. She’s probably thinking “I never wanted to date this old prick anyway. Now I’m pissed!” She bikes all the way out to Nick’s mansion just to throw a rock through his window. Nick comes running out of the house barechested, looking all half-sexed, but Alex is off like a flash(dance). The next morning, Nick saunters over to Alex in the gravel pit and tells her she’s welcome to order anything she’d like from the lunch truck. Alex, however, is hungry for revenge, not pierogis. She comes out hot! Guns a blazin’! She’s all “who's the goddamn blonde!?” Nick explains that it’s just his ex wife and that they still occasionally ballet together but Alex is far from satisfied. “Go fuck a blonde!” she screams, while her fellow co-workers hoot and holler, no doubt amused at the spectacle of an 18 year-old giving the owner of the plant a verbal ass thrashing. “Go fuck a blonde,” though—that’s a good one! I’m gonna have to use that sometime. No idea when/why/how. Nick is like “Jesus...first someone breaks my window and now I gotta listen to this!” “I broke your window, dipshit!” comes the reply. Nick is like “umm...yeah...that’s special custom-made Italian glass I had flown over on the Concorde sooooo...” They agree to squash it and are sitting in a high falutin resto chowing face on shrimp cocktail and chicken lobsters in no time (Pittsburgh being so famous for its seafood and all). Alex inexplicably wears a tuxedo with a sleeveless shirt...a little gender role reversal that Flashdance director Adrian Lyne would have Kim Basinger repeat in his 1986 film 9 1/2 Weeks. Dude likes the look of a lady in a tuxedo...what are you gonna do? Nick’s blonde ex wife just happens to be at the same restaurant (of all the gin joints!)...and I’ll tell you...it certainly doesn’t seem like she and Nick are ancient history. She’s super rude but it doesn’t bother Alex any. She tells the blonde that she’s been fucking Nick’s brains out. She also strokes his junk with her feet under the table...so there’s that.
Alex decides to give it another go at fantasy dance school, frosty amin be damned! Nick gets wind of this and decides to make a few phone calls because DUDE—he owns a fucking steel mill! Do you have any idea what one of those suckers cost? Neither do I but it's gotta be a lot! Alex gets the audition because of course she does. She’s got Big Steel behind her now! So the moral of the story is that a young vagabond can pull herself up by the bootstraps and score an audition at a prestigious school...aaaaanddd schtupping a powerful millionaire is mad helpful also. Alex goes to tell her mentor that she scored the audition. She tells her that she knows Alex will make it. Truly a sage, this lady. I see that I wrote what appears to be “I love the way here” next in my notes but I haven’t the slightest clue what that means. Love the way where? To the end of this movie?? Nick takes Alex out to yet another fancy dinner to celebrate and, on the way home, Alex raves about the ease at which they were able to score a rezzy at this exclusive restaurant. She’s all like “I can’t even believe it: there were 50 people waiting in line but we were whisked right in...just like in that scene in the movie Goodfellas that does not yet exist!” Alex says that she could totally get used to a life filled with line-jumping and landlocked shellfish. Right but then, in the very next breath, Nick mentions that he made reservations 24 hours in advance. But Alex didn’t know she’d been invited to audition until earlier that day! Nick is found...OUT! Alex jumps out of the 911 right in the middle of a tunnel, calls Nick an asshole, and says that she will not audition at the audition. Nick is all “didn’t you JUST SAY you loved being able to cut lines??”
So now, all of a sudden, everything's coming up shithouse. Alex gets word that Jeanie is stripping at Johnny C’s joint so Alex busts up in there and pulls Jeanie right off the pole and drags her outside, where she makes Jeanie deposit her wad of cash tips in the gutter. Poor Jeanie. Alex holes up in her million dollar loft, where she develops a cigarette smoking habit. Nick comes to see her but she is nowhere near ready to forgive him. We know this because she cracks him in the face not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES! He tells her she needs a kick in the ass and peaces out. Alex tries to visit Hanna, which proves impossible as the old lady has croaked. That sucks. Alex returns to the confession booth to see her mute priest friend and, once again, has no sins to confess to him. She balls her eyes out and says “I want...I want...I want so much to...SCENE!! The scene just ends while Alex is mid sentence! You want to WHAT, Alex!? Doesn’t matter--it’s climax time! Alex decides that she will audition for the conservatory after all (WHAT!??). She enters a grand hall with floor to ceiling windows that is somehow smokier than the steel mill. She faces an unsmiling panel of 80 year-old, cigarillo smoking stuffed shirts and tells them that she will be dancing to a song called “Flashdance...What a Feeling” and they’re like “weird! isn't that also the name of the movie we’re all acting in??” The needle hits the groove and Alex just goes buck wild! She’s flyin’ through the air and breakdancing and doing the robot. I kept waiting for Huey Lewis to stand up and say “sorry...you’re just too darn loud?’ But these geriatrics? They’re all tappin’ their toes! The suspense-o-meter stays pinned at zero...and the reason for this...besides everything that happens in the 90 minutes that lead up to this scene...is that we, the audience, have NO IDEA what she’s supposed to be doing in her audition! I know she’s trying to get into a ballet school...but she’s doing headspins and shit! Traditionally, every movie that climaxes with a big competition or audition revolves around some impossible to execute move. Will Moira Kelly and Toe Pick be able to nail the Pamchenko? Can Rodney Dangerfield pull off the Triple Lindy? Will Patrick Swayze be able to lift Jennifer Grey’s body over his head? There’s NONE of that here! She’s just danin’ (dancin’...dancin’!) How am I supposed to know if she's good or not!?
Anyway, after the audition ends, Alex sprints giddily outside, where she finds Nick waiting for her with a giant bouquet of roses. Even though she slapped him in the face thrice the last time they were together, she leaps into his arms. And then FREEZE FRAME--the movie is OVER! That’s it. Nothing more to see here, folks. Like...like...did she get into the conservatory or not!? Are we supposed to assume she did just because she’s happy!? You know what my 4th grade teacher said about assumptions? Go fuck yourself. Maybe she’s just happy because she really, really likes roses? And what about her deep-seated aversion to nepotism? Did that also vanish in a cloud of smoke machine smoke!? I can’t even with this movie! So--The end.
I know that I have already mentioned this about 200 times (actual count: twice), but in the fall of 1991 I spent a week working as an extra in the anti-Semitism football drama School Ties...which led me to falsely believe that I was about to embark on a highly successful silver screen career. That someone was going to watch School Ties and say “hey, who was extra #179 in the bleachers during the Thanksgiving Day football game? That kid's a STAR!!” Over the next few years I went full court press trying to get myself cast in every flick that was filmed in the state of Massachusetts. And I rolled snake eyes every damn time. Steve Martin’s Housesitter? They wanted a blonde kid. Alec Baldwin’s Malice? They wanted an older kid. By the time Good Will Hunting came to town I had already permanently folded up my tent. Although Ben Affleck DID film a scene for The Town at the restaurant I was working at...but I was in New Mexico at the time...and wouldn’t have been invited on set even if I hadn’t been in New Mexico...so that totally doesn’t count for anything. One of the gigs I went out hard for was the 1993 Macaulay Culkin-gone-nasty thriller The Good Son, which I saw in theaters when it came out and have thought about zero times since. But the other day while I was out thrifting for VHS, I came across a copy of The Good Son and was fairly shocked to see that the film was written by Ian McEwan, a British author known for penning highly acclaimed novels like Atonement, Amsterdam, Saturday, and a bunch of other awesome books with one word titles that I’ve never heard of...and not at all known for writing crap ass, Z-grade potboilers. I suddenly had a lot of questions and Wikipedia had a lot of answers. You see kids--The Culkin clan had one of those classic dickhead showbiz dads named Kit (Culkin, obvi). Pop Culkin was jazzed when his 10 year-old boy became America’s favorite angel-faced cherub with an asking price north of $4 mil a pic. And really--who wouldn’t be?? But then old Kit promptly started acting a fool. He told Twentieth Century Fox that he wouldn’t allow Mac to reprise the Kevin McAllister role in Home Alone 2 unless they cast him as Henry, the demon child uber villain in The Good Son. Fox eagerly acquiesced because what would Home Alone 2 be without Macaulay Culkin?? A Donald Trump cameo and not much else! The folks over at The Good Son were about to go into production with Heathers director Michael Lehman behind the camera and the kid who plays Kid #1 in Prancer in the Macaulay role. Then the Culkin’s blew into town and burned it to the ground. They neutralized the cast and had Lehman replaced with the hacky director of Julia Roberts’s Sleeping With the Enemy. Kit Culkin demanded McEwan revise the script to his liking and McEwan was like “sod to you, mate--I’d rather go write me some award winning novels instead.” So that's what he did. Although he retains sole screenwriting credit, what ended up onscreen was stitched together by hired guns. Kit also insisted on a plum role for his daughter Quinn, the rare Culkin child who is completely bereft of any and all acting-related skills. The Good Son opened in September of 1993 and did medium business. Just one year later, Macaulay severed ties with his father and left his budding acting career at the altar. While his younger brothers have continued to rack up impressive acting resumes over the last 30 years, Macaulay has seemed content doing fuck all. He eventually grew comfortable with his legacy and appears to have a good sense of humor about things. How else does one account for the fact that he spent a few years fronting a pizza-themed Velvet Underground cover band called Pizza Underground!? I’m Waiting for Delivery Man?? I’m Beginning to Eat the Slice!? I’m cracking up right now just thinking about it!! When the PU announced a tour I immediately bought tickets...and immediately started to wonder why I had done so. I mean--that shit is funny on paper...but funny enough to leave your house for? Mac and his bandmates apparently felt the same way because the tour was cancelled and the band broke up shortly thereafter.
Anyway, what happens in The Good Son is this: I know I’ve repeated this ad infinitum...but it is always a terrible sign when a film that runs less than 90 minutes has an extended opening credits sequence. Unless, of course, the credits sequence is animated (see: Mannequin or Madonna’s Who’s That Girl. Or better yet—don’t!). These movies will likely still be awful but at least the animation is something to look at. The Good Son opens with five minutes of just names against a black screen. I haven’t even seen the movie yet! Why would I give a shit who WHOA...Elmer Bernstein composed the score?? He of Ghostbusters and Animal House fame?? That’s wild! We fade in on a soccer field somewhere in the southwestern United States, where we meet 12 year-old Mark, played by Forever Young star and man whose hand I shook on two separate occasions at the 2006 SXSW Festival Elijah Wood. He looks like an average kid doing average kid things...until glowering character actor David Morse materializes at the edge of the field. Mark sees Morse and a frightful look crosses his face. He’s probably thinking exactly what I’m thinking: where’s your prison guard uniform, bro!? When is David Morse NOT playing some sort of law enforcement enforcer!? Right away—something is rotten in Denver. Morse is Jack, Mark’s dad, and he ain’t there to check out his son’s slide tackle. Turns out Mark’s mom is laid up with the cancer and has gone from sick to quite sick. Mark rushes to her bedside, where she promises him she will always be with him. Literally. And the kid? He believes her! Since impossible to keep promises are the order of the day, Mark turns around and promises his mom that she will not die. He will not allow it!! Cut to: her funeral. Folks, best not to write checks that cannot be cashed, capisce? So Mark is shit out of moms but that’s cool cuz his dad vows to step it up in the parenting department to help fill the blast crater left by the loss of his mother. Just kidding! Jack has a two week business trip to Japan on the books and that shit CANNOT be rescheduled for nothin’. Luckily....or actually...unluckily...Jack has a brother up in a part of Maine that is totally Rockport, MA. He decides to drive Mark all the way up to New England...figuring they can spend some QT tearing down the highway in Jack’s Wrangler, bereave-ing and listening to Sting. Unfortunately, Mark spends most of the ride staring glumly at his Gameboy. Jack says “you’re gonna miss out on a lot of life glued to your device like that.” How prophetic! Jack asks Mark if he’s upset about his dead mother and he’s all “not really—she promised she would come back as something other than herself.” Hey—remember when Prince wrote a song about how he was going to come back as a dolphin? I wonder if that actually happened. Is there a dolphin somewhere that can dance AND shred ass on guitar? That’d be the dolphin who is now Prince. Anyway, Jack is like “you know that Mom isn’t for real coming back as a pigeon tho, rite?” Mark hears this and completely melts down. He jumps out of the jeep and runs screaming through the desert...where he is eaten by the Tremors monster from Tremors. Not really, though.
Mark and Jack finally arrive at Jack’s brother’s spot...and it’s one of those sprawling Colonial’s that sits on a rocky private promontory that juts into the Atlantic. So Mark’s uncle is rich as balls then, eh? Some plain yogurt yuppie grillionaire who’s married to the mom from The Santa Clausesssses. Also known as: Mark’s Aunt Susan. Mark is introduced to his cousin Connie (the aforementioned 8th most talented Culkin sibling, Quinn). While they’re exchanging pleasantries, another child in a Michael Myers-ish mask leaps from the stairs and starts to “cha cha cha kill kill kill.” Mark is about to soil his drawers but this pint-sized ghoul pulls his mask off, revealing himself to be Macaulay Culkin!! (slaps cheeks...screams). Mac plays Mark’s other cousin, Henry, the titular good son. The whole fam damily decide to choke down a couple hundred bux worth of chicken lobsters before Jack catches his flight to the far east. At dinner, Henry eschews the traditional shellfish cracker and opts to smash the lobster claw apart with his bare fist so right away we know that he MUST BE A PSYCHO!!! While Henry mutilates his lobster and unplayfully kicks Mark under the table, the adults sip chilled Puligny Montrachet and discuss how they’re going to send Mark to a local therapist while his old man is out of town. That’s cool--it only took me THREE YEARS to find a therapist...but when you have private island money you can get a therapist faster than regular folks can get a pizza delivered. How it makes sense for this kid to start seeing a therapist when he’s only in town for a fortnight, we do not know. What I do know is that there’s already only, like, 45 minutes in this movie, which just isn’t enough time for anything substantial to happen! Not anything that makes sense anyway. And so it goes...
Morning #1--Mark wakes to find his Aunt Susan has laid out a SPREAD for him. Farm-raised deviled eggs, artisanal cheeses, house made breakfast links, bagels and Nova Lox from the local bakery, and freshly squeezed OJ to wash it all down with. Mark cleans a plate or two before heading out to play with Henry. Susan tells him not to be late for lunch, which promises to be just as epic (oysters with Gloucester scallop ceviche...that’s my guess). Rich white folks do three hots and a cot real proper like! Henry and Mark toss around the pigskin but Henry quickly grows bored and leads Mark to a dilapidated treehouse that’s perilously perched atop the tallest tree on the east coast. Mark slips off the wonky ladder and nearly falls to his death but Henry grabs a hold of him in the nick of time. Instead of pulling Mark to safety, though, Henry asks him if he believes he can fly. Umm...this kid believes his mother is going to be reincarnated as a Springer Spaniel soooo. Henry eventually pulls Mark into the treehouse and they have a tickle fight so no harm, no foul so far, right? After the treehouse incident, Henry brings Mark to the cemetery where they were simultaneously filming scenes for Hocus Pocus. They walk over to a well and Henry pulls out a pack of Parliament 100’s and fires one up and COME ONNNN!!! It’s little baby Macaulay Culkin! No WAY this kid rips butts, dude. He’s about as edgy as a balloon. Henry starts asking Mark questions about his dead mother. Wants to know if he saw her die and if it was gross and whatnot. Henry says that his little brother drowned in the bathtub and that he totally messed with his body after he died. Posed it and took selfies with it and shit. When Mark tells Henry that he’s uncomfortable with this line of conversation and that he would prefer not to discuss the condition of his dead mother’s corpse, Henry threatens to throw Mark down the well. So there’s that.
When Mark isn’t in session with his thoroughly useless therapist (who also lives in a sick seaside crib, natch) he mostly hangs out with his cousin doing normal cousin-type stuff, like provoking a foul-tempered pit bull into chasing them around a boat slip before returning with a homemade crossbow that Henry modified to fire BOLTS and murdering said pit bull. Hey...I get it. I spent a lot of time with my older cousin Nick while I was growing up and we were known to wild out! Our summers were spent listening to the Randy Rhodes Tribute album while blowing up my dad’s empty beer cans with firecrackers...when we weren’t busy peeping his porno mags, that is! What we mostly did, though, was sit on the couch and eat Smartfood and watch Remo Williams on VHS. We sure as shit didn’t murder any animals! That’s a bridge too far! Speaking of bridges--one afternoon, Henry drags Mark out to his little backwoods Jeff Dahmer shed and introduces him to an adult-sized dummy in a horror movie mask. Mark is all “what’s all this now?” and Henry says “It’s Mister HIghway Man!” Henry tells Mark they’re gonna take him for a walk and I ALREADY KNOW where this is going….and not because I saw this movie one time 28 years ago. He isn’t Mr Netflix and Chill Man! Sure enough, the boys find themselves on a bridge overlooking Route 128. Mark is all “ha ha...Mr Highway Man likes to watch the cars and trucks whizz by on the highway, right? RIGHT!??” Henry says “mmmm...not exactly!” before heaving that dummy right off the overpass. Mark stands frozen in horror while Mr HM falls in front of a speeding Winnebego, causing it to roll over. A 300 car pile up ensues. Mark is all “dude, what the FUCK!?” but Heny is mad chill about this potential mass casualty event he just caused. He tells Mark that he doesn’t know how to have fun and that “once you learn that you can do anything, you can FLY!” Like...literally fly!? I have so many questions!! Like how did NO ONE notice this little Henry fucker was a ticking time bomb before the events of this movie?? Was he just playing it cool all those years...hoping that one day some rando cousin would come sleep over and light his fuse? Were Henry’s parents too busy doing rich people things like shopping at farmer’s markets and going to boozy key parties down in Ipswich to notice that they had a 10 year-old Patrick Batemen under their roof?? I bet the answers are in Ian McEwan’s screenplay that they made meatloaf out of. That McEw...he would’ve explained this shit to us. He’s a deep thinker, that guy.
So now Mark is officially ALL SET with his crazy cousin. Before the highway incident Mark thought maybe Henry was just some jerk ass kid who might still turn out alright after a stint in juvie like Mark Wahlberg or whatever. It’s not looking good, son. Right after the highway massacre (note: no one actually died) Aunt and Uncle Oblivious decide to leave the kids home alone (!) for the night and Henry goes right off the fuckin’ rails, dudes. He tells Mark that he maybe/definitely caused his little brother’s death. He then decides that he would like to be an only child and starts stalking his poor little sister, who never even wanted to be in this movie in the first place! When Mark tries to intervene Henry says “do you REALLY think I would hurt my own sister??” Dude...fuckin’....YES!! Have you not been paying attention to the movie?? Mark has to sleep on the floor next to Connie’s bed to protect her from certain death. The next morning, Mark discovers Aunt Susan crying in her dead son’s bedroom. Mark consoles her. Tells her it’s not her fault. She says “I know.” Mark says “no...kid...it’s not your fault.” And so forth. Aunt Susan tells Mark that he’s a sweet kid. She also tells him that Henry took his little sister ice skating on a pond. OH NO, y’all!! Mark sprints to the pond where he discovers Henry towing his sister around the pond like a disabled Miata. It actually looks like they’re having a good tim...OPE!...scratch that! Henry grabs his sister by the puffy jacket and launches her onto the roped off, paper thin section of the ice. Even though she weighs about 39 pounds the ice around her cracks and she falls into the drink. Henry comes to her aid but only pretends to try to pull her to safety. Meanwhile, THREE HUNDRED skating townsfolk just stand there and watch. Eventually some off duty firefighters show up. They hack the ice apart with their fire axes and manage to extract Connie but she’s already a popsicle. OH WAIT! She still has a pulse! She’ll prolly be fine after she learns how to walk/talk/speak again. It’s hard to say with any certainty as she is never seen again. That’s a forever wrap for Quinn Culkin! She hasn't acted since.
Mark follows his Aunt Susan to her special secret cliff, where she likes to go to stare at the ocean and think about her dead child and her newly half dead child. Mark decides that it’s time to lay his cards on the table. He tells her that her remaining unspoiled child is a no good goddamn murdering son of a bitch asshole jerk. Tells her that Henry killed a dog and caused a 600 car pileup and tried to murder his own sister...all in the last 48 hours!. Aunt Susan says “what did you just say!!??” Mark says “what I said, yo!” Aunt Susan winds up and cold-cocks poor little Mark! Just throws a haymaker right at his grill. Jesus Christ, man--If I were Mark I’d run away to Boston and check into the Hotel Buckminster. Maybe see if pops will set him up with a tab at Locke Ober. When Mark finally manages to fish his dad out of a Roppongi karaoke bar and get him on the horn, he explains that cousin Henry is cuckoo for cocoa butter. Jack tries to feign concern but is mostly like “just tell your therapist and I’ll be back from Japan in 8 days.” Mark follows his dad’s advice and goes to see his therapist...where he finds HENRY telling the shrink that it’s actually Mark with the violence problem! Can just anyone walk in and have a session with this therapist!? Jesus. So that door is closed. When they exit the therapist’s office Henry reminds Mark that his mother is “maggot food.” He also looks him dead in the eye and says “Hey Mark (pregnant pause) don’t fuck with me.” Ohhhh...Macaulay Culkin dropped an F-bomb!!! There’s your R-rating right there. (Note: all other dialogue recreations wherein characters use profanity are inaccurate and were fabricated by the author of this article...who has a legendarily filthy mouth).
Mark is left with few options at this point. He basically has to ride out the week and pray his cousin doesn’t slip a blade in his side...and that his aunt stops punching him in the face. One night, Mark suspects that Henry may have poisoned the family’s food supply so he wakes up in a frenzy and tries to jam the entire contents of the pantry into the garbage disposal (Note: I’m not sure why Mark thinks this. I may have briefly stopped paying attention at this point in the movie). Aunt Susan is so pissed at Mark that she locks him up in their Kevin McCallister attic for the night. The next morning, though, Aunt Susan creeps out to the Dahmer shed and starts to poke around. She finds the rubber ducky that her dead son was playing with pre-drowning! Henry shows up and is all “what are you doing in my murder shed, lady!?” She’s not falling for those baby blues this time, y’all. She asks Mark why he has the rubber ducky and he's like “I dunno…’cuz he’s number one?” Susan says she will be taking the rubber ducky. Henry says that she will not. Henry’s voice drops like six octaves as he growls “YOU CAN’T HAVE IT” before ripping the rubber ducky out of his mother’s arms. Finally, this lady is SUS...PICIOUS!!! Henry returns to the house and starts some shit with Mark, who looks like he wants this movie to be over just as bad as the rest of us do. They tussle it up and Mark manages to pin Henry to the bed. He grabs a pair of scissors and aims the tip at Henry’s jugular. “Go ahead,” Henry says, “jam it in!” Come on, Mark--you heard the kid!! Unfortunately Uncle...Uncle...shit, the Uncle is such a Non-character that I can’t even remember his first name! Grayson?? Carlton?? Ahh, who gives a shit. Anyway, the Uncle sees his boy about to have his windpipe sliced out and is like “whyyyy did I have children?!!” He pulls Mark off of his kid and locks him in his office and tells him he’s going to call the therapist. “Hi therapist? My nephew just tried to murder my son with a pair of shears. Anything you can do for that?” Dude, maybe call the police?? Could they not afford to cast any law enforcement agents in this film??
While all of this is going down, Aunt Susan heads out to her thinking cliff to, you know, think. When Henry shows up she point blank asks him if he killed his little brother. “And what if I did?” Henry asks. Aunt Susan explains that he will only be in medium trouble if he fesses up because they are wealthy white people who don’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else. She says that he might have to “get help” but he certainly won’t have to go to prison! That’s for poor people and reefer addicts! Henry weighs his options and quickly decides that his best course of action would be to get a running start and push his mother off the goddamn cliff. So that’s what he does. It’s cool, though--she manages to catch a branch on her way down. Henry looks down at his mother dangling off a 120-foot cliff and smiles as he admires his latest handiwork. But wait! Somehow Mark managed to free himself (totally wasn’t paying attention when that happened either)! He shows up at the cliff and tackles Henry and they start to brawl it out again. Aunt Susan crawls back to the top of the cliff but then the boys, both of ‘em, go tumbling off the edge! According to the Good Son VHS box, this climactic scene was “shot completely without visual effects...and was actually performed by stuntmen AND the movie’s young stars!” I mean--what other options are there?? I didn’t think it was fuckin’ Mickey Rooney up there on that cliff! So the kids go over, but Aunts Susan catches BOTH of them. She’s got a kid in each arm and I’m thinking she’ll have to drop at least one of them. I don’t know--the ads promised a “shocking climax.” Maybe we’re about to find out that Macaulay Culkin is actually Keyser Soze? No, they both beg to be rescued but Aunt Susan looks down and figures that she has a choice: The Pizza Underground or The Lord of the Rings trilogy. She chooses wisely. Henry plummets to the rocky shore below. He dies. Aunt Susan looks at her son’s mangled corpse and says “keep the change, ya filthy animal.” The end.
Leeeetttt.....the river ruuuuunnnn!!! Somebody call the police cuz that song MURDERS!! Did you know that this tune made Carly Simon the first artist in history to win a Grammy, a Golden Globe, AND an Oscar for a song composed and written, as well as performed, entirely by a single artist!? Well you do now!! Love me some Carly Simon, man. Or...I guess I do. I don’t know...she still pops up in the news every couple of years for her now half century-long refusal to reveal the subject of “You’re so Vain.” You know she’s gonna wait until she’s on her deathbed and it isn’t gonna be Warren Beatty or James Taylor but...like...Johnny Rechezzi—some kid she grew up with in the Bronx back in the early 50’s. This tune was written for the 1988 Mike Nichols comedy Working Girl, a film that is mistaken for the 1986 indie flick Working Girls by no one ever. Quite often I decide to profile movies that are aggressively unwatchable at best. Not so with Working Girl. I LOVE Working Girl! Every time Working Girl comes on the cable TV my girlfriend turns to me and says “you love Working Girl.” And she’s 100% correct! I do love it. Now, that’s not to say the film doesn’t feel dated as shit after 33 years. It’s also problematic in the same ways that pretty much every film released during the Reagan administration is. But do you know what else this movie is? Funny, sassy, sexy, and romantic! At least that’s what Gene Shalit said on the back of the VHS box..and you know that dude was NEVER WRONG!
What happens is this: We open with a sweeping panorama of Lower Manhattan while that Carly Simon tune threatens to blow out the speakers. We helicopter in real tight on the Statue of Liberty...the original working girl! I mean...was she though? I guess she’s been holding up that torch for a while. But yeah...I’m all for it! Female empowerment! Ladies taking charge and running the game aaaaand it looks like they gave Harrison Ford top billing even though he’s only in about 1/3rd of the movie. So much for all that. We drop into the Staten Island Ferry, where we meet up with Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) and her pal Cynthia (Cusack sibling who is one letter away from having the same first name as her brother John, Joan Cusack). These ladies are both about five foot ten, 5 inches of which is hair. Holy friggin’ Aqua Net, Batgirl! These gals could forge a Poison cover band ON THE SPOT with those ‘do’s! We assume these girls are working girls because they’re riding the Staten Island Ferry to work and there’s ain’t nothing baller about the Staten Island. Shit, I only know 11 people from Staten Island and 10 of them are the Wu Tang Clan. Don’t they have Cropsey over there too?? I’ll probably stick to Manhattan and the other 3 boroughs, thank you very much. It’s also Tess’s birthday and they’re celebrating with a sad ass cupcake. Cynthia wants to take Tess out on the town but she tells Cynthia that she has to attend a class to learn how to speak like a posh person. “What’s wrong with the way you TAWWK!?? Cynthia asks in a New York accent so thick it’d make a Ramone wince. Let’s hit the pause button and talk about Melanie Griffith real quick. Sometimes I can’t tell if she’s playing some sort of three dimensional acting chess or if she’s simply the world’s worst actress. Her performance here starts off at a level that makes your run of the mill porn star look like Frances McDormand. But she kind of gathers nuance and gravitas as the movie progresses. I mean, she was incredible in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild and she won a Golden Globe and nabbed an Oscar nomination for her work here. But then there’s the issue of the next, say, 75 movies she made after this one. She did Shining Through and she did Bonfire of the Vanities and she did sex with Don Johnson which resulted in Dakota Johnson. Lots of checkmarks in the nay column, y’all.
Anyway, Tess works as an administrative assistant on a trading floor repurposed from Wall Street (the movie). Her boss is veteran character actor and man who I once served a plate of seared Marlin with herbed yogurt and pea tendrils, Oliver Platt. He was super chill to wait on! He’s less chill with Tess, though. When she tries to fish him out of the executive washroom so he can take a super important phone call he chastises her because his stall has run out of TP. He’s all “my ass isn’t gonna wipe itself, TESS!!!” Back out on the trading floor, Platt and his Neanderthal buddies start discussing which stock they should try to short next. Maybe stay away from GameStop, dudes! (Note: if you are reading this review in March of 2021 then this reference is timely and funny. If not? Well...I guess you had to be there). Tess chimes in with some hot stock tips of her own but the dudes just roll their eyes because they’re sexist D-bags. Platt says that all of the real traders have Harvard degrees and that her BA from Staten Island Night Academy isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. But he does offer to hook her up with Bob from arbitrage, which is the name of a totally decent Richard Gere movie that most people have not seen. When Tess drags her tired bones back to SI, she discovers a surprise birthday party waiting for her courtesy of her longtime hometown boyfriend Mick, who is totally Alec Baldwin!! Still the strapping young mulleted stud we love to remember. He invited the whole damn neighborhood—even sex addict who also plays one on television David Duchovny! He’s “Tess’s Birthday Party Friend” and he has zero lines. Gotta start somewhere, eh Fox Mulder? Mick buys Tess some impossible to apply lingerie for her birthday and just lays in bed reading a Monster Truck magazine while she struggles mightily trying to fasten her garters. He’s like “whaa, you don’t like it?” and she’s all “you could try buyin’ me a sweater sometime!”
Although Tess suspects that Bob from arbitrage might be a scumbag, she decides to meet him anyway and HOLY SHIT...Bob from arbitrage is fucking Kevin Spacey!! Oh NO, dudes! He picks Tess up in a limo and proceeds to slug champagne and blast endless rails of coke and get super handsy. In other words—he pulls a Kevin Spacey. She’s like “I thought we were gonna talk business” and he’s like “of course we are! But first let’s watch this porno!” This limo has a VCR?? Tight. Tess is not impressed. She shakes up the champagne and firehoses the dude's face with it. She then marches back to the office, where she puts a message on the stock quote board informing the entire company that Oliver Platt has a tiny little dick. I’m pretty sure that’s a double negative....as well as a fireable offense. He calls her a bitch. She packs up her shit and leaves and that’s that.
Tess goes to see her temp agency rep and SHE WAS ONLY A TEMP?? Man that sucks! I can totally commiserate as I had approximately 17 different temp gigs during the 9 months that I lived in NYC. Quick story: One day I was sent to work at Talk Magazine. I was already leery of the assignment because Talk was partially owned by Harvey Weinstein and I already knew to steer clear of anything to do with him (this is in 2001, folks). So I show up at Talk figuring I’m gonna be a copy editor by lunchtime. Actual assignment: they wanted me to spend the day calling people from a list they gave me and confirm that these people had received their invites to the upcoming premiere of the movie Chocolat. My Talk contact made me practice the proper way to pronounce the film (It’s Show-coo-lahhhh) and made me promise him that I wasn’t a “fuckin’ moron.” I mean...am I? But you see--the people on this list were all uber famous...and I had their actual home phone numbers! Like...I called Gloria Steinam and she was less than pleased to hear from me! Her: How did you get this number!??? Me: Ummm...you wanna see Chocolate or not, Gloria Steinam!?” ANYWAY, Tess’s temp connection is Dukakis family member who had a far better 1988 than her cousin Mikey, Olympia Dukakis. OD agrees to give Tess one last chance but makes her promise she won’t pull any crazy bullshit like impersonating her boss and moving into her townhouse while she’s skiing in the Alps. She doesn’t actually say this...but she should have! Tess is sent to the Mergers & Acquisitions department at a no name company where she’ll be working as secretary for a ferocious executive by the name of Katherine Parker. Ferocious ‘cuz Katherine Parker is played by Sigourney Weaver!! Ripley in the house, y’all. Better freshen your step there, Staten Island! Katherine is mad particular about her coffee (lotsa milk, lotsa sugar) and her brand of smokes (Larks. By the carton) but she’s otherwise fairly decent as bossy bosses go. She asks Tess to order up some passed apps for an upcoming cocktail party but Tess is like “I hear Dim Sum is the wave of the future--maybe we should get a dumpling cart instead!” Gumption! Katherine is wowed...although she makes Tess wheel that steamy ass cart around the party...which looks like it sucks. Chicken feet, anyone? Tess figures since she has been on the job about a day...maybe a day and a half...she should start haranguing Katherine about her latest big idea...which is this: There’s a company called Trask Industries that does exactly what I have no idea. Trask is looking to expand into Television but Tess thinks they should get into the radio business instead. Sitting on my perch here in 2021 I can safely say that that’s a terrible fucking idea. Beyond terrible! Maybe they can acquire a Laserdisc manufacturing plant while they’re at it! Katherine says she’ll suss it out and Tess is just over the moon. She rushes home to tell Mick how much headway she’s making at her new gig but he’s all “that’s great...but my pizza is getting cold...and you promised me a hummo before bed.” He’s an asshole.
Katherine decides that she’s gonna jet off to Europe to do some rich white people skiing ‘cuz mamma needs a vacay and this movie needs more plot. Immediately upon landing in Switzerland or wherever, Katherine tries to ski down a blue square trail and breaks her leg. She calls the office and tells Tess that she’ll be laid up in traction in her Paris apartment for six weeks. SIX WEEKS for a broken leg?? Is this 1988 or 1888? Why don’t they just get her tanked up on Moonshine and amputate the fuckin’ thing. Before the receiver even hits the cradle, Tess is all up in Katherine’s Park Ave townhouse, which looks like it cost low seven figures. She has an espresso machine and likenesses of herself painted by the actual Andy Warhol all over the walls and super duper early prototype Peloton Bike. Tess stumbles across Katherine’s super secret voice activated microcassette recorder and swoons while listening to Katerine attempting to fleece her Wellesley College sorority sisters out of donation money. But then she hears something she shouldn't be hearing! Katherine says that she wants to pursue the Trask deal (I forgot to mention that she had previously told Tess that the deal was a bad idea. That’s kind of important. SORRY!) and that Tess should be kept out of the loop. I mean--no disrespect to Tess...by why WOULD she be kept in the loop?? I know it was her idea and all but she’s just a temporary secretary! And you know what Paul McCartney song is batshit insane? Temporary Secretary! Sad Tess ferries herself home, hoping to find solace in the unwieldy curls of Alec Baldwin’s chest pelt. Unfortunately, she discovers that space to be occupied by Doreen DiMucci...the local putan! Madonna mi can this day get any worse!? Mick is all “umm...it’s not what it looks like?”...even though the P is clearly in the V. Well not CLEARLY but it is heavily implied. Tess flees the scene but Mick runs after her in a towel and offers to let her punch him in the face. She declines. You prolly should’ve taken him up on that, girl--Alec Baldwin is typically the one doing the face punching!
The next morning Tess wakes up thirsty for corporate blood. She dismantles the top two tiers of her hairdo and trades her Reebok Hightops for a pair of Manolo Blahnik pumps and decides she is going to go ahead and broker that Trask Industries deal on her own. She hatches a plan to rendezvous with Katherine’s business associate (Jack Trainor) at a cocktail party she isn’t invited to...even though she has NO IDEA what this Trainor cat looks like. It’s 1988...you can’t just lurk on a motherfucker’s Facebook profile. Cynthia is horrified when Tess tells her about her scheme...but agrees to accompany Tess to Katherine’s apartment to rifle through her closet(s). When Cynthia points out that the dress Tess has chosen to borrow has a $6k price tag, Tess has a massive panic attack. Cynthia gives her a handful of valium that definitely won’t lead to her awkwardly passing out in the next scene. That’s a D-minus setup right there, Mr Screenwriter! Tess hits the cocktail party and nurses a glass of Evian until she notices Harrison Ford undressing her with his eyes. He sidles up to the bar and he’s just a total friggin’ letch. She asks him what his name is and he’s all “no names! Let’s just meet like humans!” Hate to break it to you, homie, but unless you’re Prince between the years of 1996 and 2004, all humans have names! She asks about Jack Trainor and he’s like “never heard of him--let’s do six shots of tequila.” Of course, Tess already has about four Valium’s in her from that nonsensical panic attack, so once the tequila hits she’s completely fugged. She tells Mr Misterioso she has a head for business and a bod for sin. Then her lights go out and she pulls an Irish goodbye. Creepy McCreeperton runs outside, where he finds Tess passed out in the back of a taxi. He takes her to his flat and carries her unresponsive body up the stairs like a sack of shit. He deposits her in a Lay-z-Boy and is all “I’m thinking it’s time for a nightcap...want some brandy?” but Tess is probably about to slip into a coma from the alcohol and benzo interaction. So look--this all sounds absolutely horrifying….because it is! But I’m thinking they get/got away with it because it’s fucking Harrison Ford. He’s Han Solo! He’s Indiana Jones! He’s President GetARRFMyPlane!! He’s a non-threatening all-american superhero..then, now, and forever. Can you imagine how this scene would have played if it was, I don’t know, Nick Nolte dragging this unconscious woman home?? Or Willem Dafoe? Or Gary Busey!?? So...kudos to the casting department then, I guess?
Tess wakes up in her skivvies in this strange man’s bed and is understandably mortified. She gathers her shit and gets right up out of there while whatsisname is still sleeping off his Cuervo-induced hangover. She rushes to her meeting with Jack Trainor and HOLY SHIT...it’s Harrison Ford!! And if you didn’t see that one coming then you have never seen a movie before. Tess pitches Trainer and his goons her Trask Industries radio plan and they’re all like “radio?? Sounds like a terrible idea.” Because it IS a terrible idea. Later that afternoon,Trainor unexpectedly shows up at Tess’s office, sending her into a panic. She has to pretend Katherine’s office is HER office and Cynthia is her secretary (she works there too? I totally missed that one). Umm...there’s like 200 people working at this company. Does NO ONE notice that the new temp is suddenly taking meetings in the boss’s office!? Come ahhnnn!! Tess is steaming mad at this dude. She’s like why didn’t you tell me who you were and why did I wake up naked in your bed?? Jack says that the earth moved and that the angels wept. Ha ha ha rape is hilarious! He eventually tells her that nothing actually happened and tells her he isn’t interested in hearing about HER sex life. But...you...dude...he’s the one who….GAH!!! Despite all the ickiness, they agree to work together to make this Trask deal happen. And what if it DOES happen?? Who will benefit?? She doesn’t even really work at this joint!
Dead tired Tess heads back to the island to attend Cynthia’s engagement party at some local VFW function hall. When she arrives, Cynthia warns her that Mick is at the party slugging scotch and that he’s wicked distraught. Serves him right, the no good two-timing son of a bitch! Tess tries to chat with him and WOW...she wasn’t kidding about the scotch! He just asked the bartender for the entire bottle of Cutty and is taking it down like a champ. I think I’d like to try that sometime. Just gimme the bottle! Is that what they mean when they say “bottle service?” I don’t usually frequent places where things like bottle service are a thing. He’s all “what’s with you and the new duds and the new ‘do?” She says she got a promotion, which is a damn dirty lie. The DJ starts to play Chris DeBurgh’s “Lady in Red” and it is scientifically impossible to avoid slow dancing to that tune after you’ve had alcohol. There’ve been studies. They appear to be drifting toward reconciliation like the Titanic toward that iceberg. Mick shushes the crowd and proposes a toast to the future Mr and Mrs Joan Cusack. Her guido fiance is like “oh! When is you twos gonna tie the knot, hah!??” So what does numb nuts Mick do? He drops to his knees and offers a ringless proposal right there in the VFW. Did I mention that he’s had like 30 shots and the other girl he’s fucking is AT THE BAR!! Tess knows these things and is thoroughly unimpressed. She tells him maybe. “That’s an answer??,” he spits. “You want a different answer? Ask a different girl.” OWNED!!!! Mel-Dog just kills it in these scenes, man! Mick proposes yet again outside of the bar...and again, she tells him maybe. “Maybe means dick...FUCK MAYBE!!!” Mick thunders. I’m not sure if there’s a youtube supercut of Alec Baldwin losing his shit...but if there is, that line belongs on there. Maybe means dick!? That’s solid gold. Tess says that she isn’t steak and, hence, cannot be ordered. Mick tells her she needs to change her attitude or they’re history. Clown.
Now Tess is a Tess unbound....free to continue fibbing her way up the ladder of success. Cynthia, for one, is completely horrified by her BFF’s shenanigans. “Tess...ya gonna get cawwwt!!” she warns. She also advocates for Mick. Tells Tess she’s stomping his heart out, which is a medical impossibility. Tess is unmoved. “Oh! I’m not the one who was pumpkin Doreen DiMucci in OUR BED!” Note: pumpin’. Jack contacts Tess and tells her he thinks he can sweeten the Trask deal if he includes Hot 97 or something. Says he isn’t sure how to relay this information to Mr Trask but Tess comes up with the worst idea in the history of ideas. She decides the best way to get at Trask is to crash his daughter’s wedding and corner the old man when he’s 6 Pina Colada’s deep. Jack is all “how’d you finagle an invite to this wedding” and Tess says that she did not. Jack is beside himself. “Who does business like this!?” he shouts. The cutthroat temp from Staten Island....that’s who! Jack is like fine I’ll just sit in the corner and slam Mai Tai’s while you self-immolate (it’s a tiki-themed wedding....in case that wasn’t already obvious from the cocktail menu). But Tess is actually a smooth operator....a smoooooth operat-ahhh! She intercepts Trask but doesn’t lay it on too thick. Only butters one side of the bagel, you dig? He has no idea that she’s a wedding crashing temp and seems amenable to hearing more about her Trask Radio plan. Jack is floored. Homegirl is a stone cold hustler! The next day, they try to break bread with Trask‘s gatekeepers and get completely frozen out. Just as they’re about to retreat in defeat Mr Trask calls down from on high and says he wants to do business with Jack and Tess. Huzzah! These kids are so jazzed when they exit the meeting they start making the fuck out right there in the goddamn lobby! Super unprofesh, dudes. They go back to Jack’s place and tear each other’s clothes off and do the thing and....I don’t know, y’all. It’s like—here’s this blue collar woman who is going full court press....using her business savvy to play on the big stage BUT also having an affair with this powerful male exec with all the right connections too. Couldn’t they have just given Harrison Ford the movie off? Maybe beefed up Joan Cusack’s character a bit....or thrown in Jackee as a wacky sidekick (actually any person of color would be a huge improvement as there are approximately zero). After they’re done balling Jack is like soooooo I kinda sorta have a girlfriend...prolly shoulda told ya before the what have you. I was gonna break it off but my GF was injured in a European skiing accident. Tess hears this and gets a horrible look on her face...like she just watched Fifty Shades or Grey on HBO or something. So Jack’s girlfriend is Katherine!?? THE Katherine!? Tess’s boss?? How Jack did not notice that Tess was working out of the same office as his other girlfriend we do not know. Maybe he’s just the most unobservant motherfucker alive.
Our girl Tess has gotten herself into quite the pickle! How is she gonna wiggle her way outta this one!? I guess we’ll just have to watch the last 20 minutes of the movie to find out! The day Tess and Jack are set to give a presentation for the bigwigs over at Trask just happens to be the same day Katherine is due to return from overseas! Katherine is, of course, unaware that Tess has been putting together million dollar mergers in her absence and immediately assigns Tess more secretarial-type tasks, like merging cream with coffee. She sends Tess out to the pharmacy for some percs and vics but when she returns she’s horrified to discover that JACK is in the apartment!! Tess hides in the closet, where she’s forced to listen to a lingerie-d Katherine beg Jack for his seed. This lady came home from Paris ready to procreate!! Must’ve been something in the baguette. Jack’s all “conceiving a child sounds like a blast but not right now GOTTA RUN!” He exits stage left and Tess emerges from the closet with a shopping bag full of painkillers and is all “here’s your drugs...maybe crush them up and snort them with a glass of wine GOTTA RUN!!” Katherine is instantly suspicious. Luckily...or actually...unluckily...Katherine doesn’t exactly have to start playing Columbo as Tess left her friggin’ planner right there on Katerine’s bed next to the bag of pills. And this planner? It’s incriminating as shit!! She knows where Tess is going and who she’s going with. “That little SLUT!,” Katherine screams, before jumping out of bed and hopping all the way to Trask Industries on her one good leg.
Meanwhile across town, Jack is settling into the Trask boardroom with Tess, blissfully unaware of the shitstorm that’s bearing down on him. Before the meeting gets underway he squeezes Tess’s hand and tells her that he LOVES HER!!! She smiles and says she loves him too and DUUUUDE!!! Why isn’t this girl sweating like a priest in church?? She’s gonna be exposed by the closing bell one way or another! Poor Olympia Dukakis is gonna be so fuckin’ disappointed. Sure enough--about three seconds later, Katherine blows the door down and screams IIII AM THE GATEKEEPER!!!! And everyone is like HUH!?? Seriously though--Katherine tells everyone that Tess is actually her secretary and that she came up with the idea for the Trask Radio thingy, not Tess. I don’t know, y’all--I find the fact that this lady would completely nuke a business meeting when there’s some serious dough on the table a bit far fetched. Maybe wait for Tess to exit the building and take out both of her kneecaps with her crutch. That I could totally see! Mr Trask is like “frig is going on with you loony toons??” but Tess is like “nah, she’s right--I’m just a lowly secretary. I’ll see myself out.” And that’s exactly what she does. She rides the ferry home looking 50 shades of despondent. I was seriously worried she might pull a Spaulding Gray! Things don’t exactly improve once she’s back on the island. She has to attend Cynthia’s wedding, where she runs into Mick, who says he has launched a successful boating business. Like...over the last 24 hours?? He’s also officially official with Doreen DiMucci, who caught the friggin’ bouquet because of course she did. She better work on her fake Spanish accent if she wants to marry Alec Baldwin, man.
When Monday morning rolls around, Tess returns to the office to clean her desk and THEY LET HER BACK IN THE BUILDING!?? She’s probably staring down a handful of lawsuits at this point. I’m thinking they’d just put her stapler and kitten calendar in the mail...IF THAT. The ladies in the secretary pool line up to say their goodbyes and to give Tess a hearty round of applause, even though she has not exchanged a single word with anyone else in this office at any point in the film. When Tess reaches the lobby, she exits the elevator and runs smack into Katherine, Jack, and Mr Trask! What are the chances! Katherine throws down some not undeserved shade and Tess throws it right back. Katherine offers to bury the hatchet and Tess says “you know where you can bury your hatchet? Now get your bony ass out of my sight!” Ummm….I don’t know Tess somehow missed out on Alien and Aliens, but I wouldn’t necessarily mess with this woman. Jack tries to defend Tess, prompting Mr Trask to ask him if he always lets women lead him around by his “Johnson”...which is sexist as all get out. Remember back in the 90’s when they used to sell those horrible Big Johnson T-shirts? I’m ashamed to admit that I owned one when I was 14. I was like--my teachers will never know my shirt is about a COCK!!! Stupid little asshole. Anyway, Tess manages to finagle a private audience with Mr Trask and she informs him that Katherine couldn’t have possibly come up with the radio proposal ‘cuz Tess got the idea from something she read in the back of a Hit Parader Magazine or some bullshit. When Trask asks Katherine what she has to say about this she tells him that she has nothing to say. She looks to Jack for a bailout but he says he’s staying on Team Tess. Trask fires Katherine ...even though I’m 100% certain that she does not work for him. He offers Tess a job but doesn’t immediately specify what that job will be. When Tess shows up for her first day at her new gig she sets herself up at the secretary station and asks the lady in the nearest office how she takes her coffee. The lady is all “Sorry!! I was just in there using the phone! I am YOUR secretary!! So tell me--how do YOU like YOUR coffee!??” Tess orders a coffee with skim milk and two Equals. When the coffee arrives, she takes a sip and calmly places the mug on her desk. Then she picks up the mug and throws the hot coffee in the secretary’s face, causing first and second and degree burns. “You don’t think I can’t tell the difference between Equal and Sweet & Low you stupid trash ass HO!??” Then she boxes her ears!!! Ahhh...I’m just fuckin’ with you! Tess tells her new secretary that she considers her a colleague, not a secretary, and says she's gonna be a mad chill boss ‘cuz she knows what it’s like, you know? Tess closes the door and calls Cynthia and tells her that all of her dreams have now come true. She’s a rich white executive. A WORKING GIRL!! And here comes the hit one more time to play us out! “Leeettt….the river RUUNNNNN!....da da da SOMETHING….” The end.
When I was about six months old my parents took me to Sears or some such place to be professionally photographed...because that’s what you do with babies. They had me pose with a football and then printed wallet-sized copies of the photo and passed them out to their friends, who ooh’d and aah'd and said things like “Danny is gonna be a quarterback someday, YES HE IS!!!” Little did they know that this photo would mark the first and last time I would be spotted smiling in the vicinity of a football. There are 206 bones in the human body, and for me, not a single one of ‘em is athletic! I am, and have always been, just shit terrible at sports. A bowlegged klutz with an arm like a wet noodle. Last picked for anything and everything. Perpetually scorned by my high school gym teacher for letting “the broads” beat me at volleyball. Just how bad am I at competitive sports? A couple of years back I attended my buddy's bachelor party weekend where we played an entire afternoon's worth of Wiffle Ball. Everyone at the party took mushrooms...except me (don’t worry...I was doin’ all of the other stuff)...and everyone ended the day with a handful of hits and RBI’s...EXCEPT ME!! 0 for 18 on the day! Ten strikeouts against a pitcher who couldn’t stop giggling and who kept asking if we were in Medieval Times (note: I’m still not sure if he was referring to that cheesy restaurant where the waiters dress up in suits of armour and role play and shit...or actual Medieval Times. I should text him). Seriously, people don’t even want me on their Cornhole teams. I’m incapable of not ruining a game. I could bowl a gutter ball with the safety bumpers on!! I once gave myself Carpal Tunnel from playing an hour’s worth of Dutch tabletop shuffleboard and had to wear a brace on my wrist for an entire month! Now, given all of the things I just told you, you might be surprised to hear me turn around reveal that I actually played eight seasons worth of hockey, seven as part of a local intramural youth league and one more year in high school. How did that go? I would say mostly shittily. Because here’s the thing--I can actually lace up the skates and carve it up like a champ. It was the whole everything-else-about-the-game-of-hockey that was a problem for me: shooting, passing, puck handling, camaraderie, feigning interest for the sport of hockey? There, I foundered. I spent most of my playing years shivering in the cold during 6 AM games fantasizing about being back home in my heated waterbed watching Who’s Harry Crumb? One of my earliest coaches told me that I could actually be a decent player if I didn’t have my head “permanently buried up my own ass”...which was the first time I think I ever heard someone make reference to a human head going up an arsehole. I was 7. This was the same guy who would smoke Winston’s during the games and, when the refs would tell him to stamp it out, would do this thing where he’d put the entire cigarette, filter to cherry, into the inside of his mouth...and somehow continue smoking it in there!! I gotta admit...I begrudgingly respected that dude. I mean--I wasn’t THAT bad. I actually scored a Hatrick one season….in a game where we were accidentally scheduled to play children who were exactly half our ages. I think the final score was 24-0 or something. Why they let the game go on for a full three periods is still a mystery to me...but hey...I put up 3 and have still have the patch to prove it. One weekend, while my dad and I were en route to my grillionth Sunday night game in some bumfuck town that was nowhere near where we lived (hello Winchendon Mass!) instead of sitting at home watching Chuck Norris flicks on the couch, my dad turned to me and asked me if I even liked playing hockey. I told him that I did not, no. He pulled the emergency brake, spun the car around, and we sped straight home, where we watched Invasion USA and Delta Force and ate crab rangoons. And that was that!
Since I was a hockey player in practice, I was forced to watch every hockey-adjacent film on an endless loop, which, as of 1989, was approximately three movies; Slapstick, Youngblood, and the one with Michael Keaton, the name of which I cannot recall. In 1992, though, the floodgates opened-ish and we got The Cutting Edge AND The Mighty Ducks, the latter of which was such a cultural juggernaut that it inspired an entire NHL franchise, which I was aware of, and birthed a cinematic trilogy, of which I was only fleetingly aware. Kind of like Lord of the Rings but with less Hobbits and way, way easier to understand. We already talked about how The Cutting Edge is an ice cold classic a few years back (two words: toe...fuckin’...pick!) so today we’re gonna check in with the OG Mighty Ducks and see how that one holds up. What happens is this: we open at a Minneapolis hockey rink in the 1970’s, where the GAME IS ON THE LINE!!! It’s also, like, pitch black in this rink. Is that just how they played hockey in the 70’s or is the darkness supposed to let us know that the events we’re witnessing are in the distant past? Hawks Coach Coach Reilly (the dad from Pauly Shore’s Son-in-Law), grabs his star Hawk Gordon Bombay and tells him the entire game, as well as the fate of all mankind, is resting on his little 10 year-old shoulders. It’s the end of the game and the kid has to take a penalty shot, which is a fairly rare occurrence. I’m already super confused about how the game can possibly come down to this one shot as the shootout rule wasn’t adopted until 2005. Right, so assuming the game is already tied and he misses the shot, wouldn’t they just go into overtime? And if they lose in overtime, won’t the blame be spread around?? It would be REALLY helpful if you told us the score of the game, dudes! Anyway, the kid squares up and takes his shot and it bounces off the goalpost. He muffed it! Gordie muffed it! The poor kid buckles to his knee pads and weeps. The coach looks at him like “you worthless sack of shit” because that’s how coaches roll. Coaches are the absolute worst.
We flash forward to 1992, where Gordon Bombay has morphed into a smug ass hotshot attorney played by Wisdom director and significantly less troubled Esta/Sheen sibling Emilio Estavez. He’s so cocksure in the courtroom, this Bombay cat, that he basically tells the judge that he doesn’t know how to judge and the judge is all “you actually make a solid point. YOU WIN!” Gordon returns to his law firm and stalks the hallways pumping up his fists, stinking up the joint with his noxious braggadocio. He boasts that his latest courtroom victory brings his record to 30-0. He also talks about banging one of the court reporters and is rude to his secretary. I already don’t like gloating prick one shit. Gordon is summoned to meet with the head of the law firm, Mr Ducksworth, expecting the old man to crack out a bottle of Asti Spumanti and make him a full partner. Instead, he tells Gordon to tone it down about a million percent. Says that life isn’t all W’s and L’s. So what does Gordon do? He hops in his fancy sports car (license plate: mustwin) and goes tearing ass around town, slugging hard booze straight from the bottle. For god’s sake man, at least pour that shit in a travel mug or something! He gets stopped by the fuzz, who can already smell the Crown Royal before dude even rolls down his window. More like Gordon Bombed-bay, amirite?? They ask him to step out of the vehicle but he’s all “heyyy...dontcha seen me in ssssaint elmoses fire??” They put him on the ground and pump 18 bullets into his torso. Just kidding...he’s a white lawyer! He doesn’t even have to change out of his clothes or see the inside of a holding cell. The judge from earlier is like “who’s the asshole now, asshole??” The judge brings up the fact that Gordon has 12 prior moving violations on his record aaaaaand then immediately releases him on his own recognizance. Gordon immediately returns to work in search of that 31st dubya but Mr Ducksworth has another set of plans in mind. He feels like Gordon needs to eat a slice or two of the old humble pie. He says he’ll let Gordon skate (heh) on the whole DUI thingy, which is awesome. But he will also have to take a leave of absence from the firm and complete 500 hours of community service that will involve him coaching a District 5 pre-teen Pee Wee hockey team, which is less awesome. It’s cool, though--they’re giving dude complimentary 24 hour limousine service and his own private chauffeur during his forced sabbatical. I have SO MANY questions!! Like how does Gordon’s boss have the power to vacate his DUI conviction?? Isn’t attending substance abuse counseling an important part of the reconciliation process or is the DUI just for laughs? Also--are people sentenced to community service for felony drunk driving typically placed in situations where they will be responsible for the supervision of large groups of children?? Furthermore, does Mr Ducksworth know that Gordon carries deep psychological hockey-related scars?? If so, this whole hockey coaching assignment is a total cock move!
Gordon hops in the stretch and heads out to the bad-ish part of town...the part where they filmed Untamed Heart...to see what fresh hell awaits him. He rolls up on a practice session, which is taking place OUTSIDE on some random patch of pond in the middle of downtown. Jesus man--we practiced in some janky rinks growing up but they always had roofs! And...like...a Zamboni and shit. Gordon instructs his driver to pull the limousine right out on the ice. He jumps out to greet this nameless team, who are naturally a ragtag assortment of unruly menaces (and one menacette). Gordon tells them that the only thing he hates more than hockey is children. Tells ‘em kids are subhuman. The kid from People Under the Stairs tells him to get his sorry vanilla booty outta there. Gordon tells him he’s there under court order ‘cuz he’s a crazy alkie so they’re just gonna have to learn to live with him. He tells them he’s gonna luxuriate in the warmth of his limousine while the kids conduct their practice. Says if they need to get into touch with him, they should send him a fax, which is funny (to him) because these children are poor and the fax was the ultimate symbol of wealth in the early 90’s. The kids hit the ice and they just can’t fucking play AT ALL. They can’t even skate! They just keep screaming and falling on top of each other. Like, whyyyy would these kids even bother joining a hockey team?? Gordon’s afternoon tea time is rudely interrupted when the kids decide to bum rush the limousine. They dogpile into the backseat and try to hotbox the vehicle with kid farts, prompting Gordon to scream “get away from me, you monkeys!”....which....eeeee. The overloaded limo falls through the ice and everyone dies. The rest of the movie is a mournful tone poem that follows Ian Holm as he visits the bereaved parents of the drowned hockey players like in that Sweet Hereafter movie. I mean—I wish! Speaking of parents—this scrum is broken up by the arrival of Casey Conway, the mother of Charlie Conway (the kid who plays Percy on Dawson’s Creek). She balls Gordon out for endangering the lives of children. Hey lady—that’s what happens when they put a narcissistic alcoholic in charge of ya kids! I’m thinking he’ll eventually end up balling her out, though, because she appears to be the only adult female character in this film...and you know Emilio Estevez gotta SMASH!
Gordon and the Whatever Whoever’s go straight from practice to a game against, you guessed it, The Hawks, who are still being coached by that Reilly dude 20 years later. He looked about 50 years-old in that flashback and he looks about 49-years old in the present day. I guess aging and deaging technology was not on the Mighty Ducks budget sheet. Coach Reilly is all grah hah hah good luck with your team, Sir Whiffs-a-Lot. Gordon’s kids hit the ice and they’re just a total disaster. Like—they aren’t even wearing proper gear! They’ve out there wearing ripped up Philadelphia Flyers jerseys and toy football helmets and shit. Not only are they unable to perform the fundamentals of the sport, their poor goalie (Goldberg) is terrified of people shooting pucks in his direction. He’s no Andy Moog, this kid. This game sequence goes on and on and we get it—they suck. After about 25 minutes Gordon slowly emerges from his catatonic state and starts paying attention to the game. I mean—there isn’t shit else to do there so might as well participate in the movie, right? Gordon offers a few halfhearted pointers and gently chastises the kids for their extreme absence of any and all hockey skills. “I thought we came here to play hockey! Why won’t you listen to me?” he shouts. “Why SHOULD we listen to you?” asks one of the kids. This kid is 100% on point. Respect is a two way street, dude. I don’t see anything like respect coming from this Gordon clown. The No Names lose horribly and the Hawks call them pansy and wuss breath and ask if their mom’s are banging the mailman. The same mailman?? Gordon decides the only way this team has a snowcone’s chance in hell at winning is by cheating. At the next game, Gordon tries to convince Charlie and some of the other kids to stage some falls to try to draw penalties and, I guess, try to bang out mad goals on power plays. In other words: play basketball?? This plan is popular with exactly zero people. The kids are even more embarrassed than they usually are. A couple of the parents come to the locker room to call Gordon a stupid asshole.
A thoroughly dejected Gordon decides to visit his mystical skate sharpening mentor, Hans, who operates a pro shop out of an enchanted mansion in the middle of the city. Real estate must’ve been real reasonable in the Twin Cities back in the day! They launch into a heavy duty therapy sesh. “Yes you are lawyer, vat are you happy?” asks Hans in his non-specific Eastern European accent. Hans reminds Gordon that he was straight fire on the ice. Says he scored 198 goals in his best season...which is 198 more goals than I scored playing at the high school level. Gordon says that he never got over missing that penalty shot, which we learn occurred just four months after the unexpected loss of his father (seems like a real missed opportunity for a Martin Sheen cameo right here. Must’ve been too busy filming his Hot Shots: Part Deux cameo with his hot garbage other son ). Hans pulls the whole “it’s not your fault” routine and calls Coach Reilly an “eejit.” Man, where were all of the skate sharpening life coaches when I was growing up?? The only thing the guy who sharpened skates at our home rink hated more than sharpening skates was children. You know what he did like? Meatloaf (the singer). Bat Out of Hell blaring out of his tiny vestibule during all operating hours! Anyway, Hans hands Gordon a brand spanking new pair of skates gratis because rich people should never have to pay for anything and tells him to “teach zee children how to fly!” Bro—maybe teach them how to skate first? Gordon heads outside and laces up and starts slicing away and...you know...the dude can shred! Now if only he can just teach those lovable misfits how to play hockey and start winning games and take it all the way to the Pee Wee equivalent of the Stanley Cup and OH MY GOD DO YOU THINK THAT’S WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN. I will literally shit my pants if it doesn’t...and yes...I know what “literally” means.
With his personality fully retooled, a chastened Gordon heads straight for Charlie’s apartment to apologize to his moms, which seems extraordinarily unnecessary at best. When Casey tries to slam the door in his face, Gordon jams his foot in the door. Just a court-mandated boozebag hockey coach forcing his way into the home of a single mother and child...nothing to see here! Moms is like ok apology accepted dude BYE but then the kid asks him if he’s hungry and he’s all “I do like to eat dinner now and then!” Does this man not have a home?? The next day he shows up at the law firm where he’s not technically welcome and straight up asks Mr Ducksworth to bankroll his craptastic hockey team to the tune of $15k. Shit, I don’t think my hockey team had a budget of 15 DOLLARS! I do remember that when tournament season rolled around they always brought in an unlimited supply of free oranges for us to chow on...which was nice. Mr Ducksworth is hesitant until Gordon offers to name the team after him. Not The Ducksworths, which would be a way better name if you ask me, but simply, The Ducks. The adjective “mighty” is never used in association with the team in this film. At least...I don’t think it was. What happened was: I bought a 4 pack of IPA to drink with this movie not realizing it had an ABV of 9.8%. Oops! The old man opens his checkbook and Gordon takes the team on a shopping/training montage set to “Good Vibrations” by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch...which means that I have now unintentionally referenced this song in 3 out of the last 4 reviews! Gross! I think the idea is that if the Ducks have the same gear as the rich kid team they’ll suddenly start playing like a bunch of little Mario Lemieux’sssses. Gordon teaches them the basics. They try to assuage Goldberg of his intense flying puck fear by tying him to the net and blasting him with slap shot after slap shot. Or as it’s also know—child abuse! Poor kid who played Goldberg ended up with a monster drug habit. Looks like he might be on the mend though. I wish him well....truly. They pick up a figure skating girl for the team but don’t even bother giving her any lines. Sup Figure Skating Girl? Gordon also comes face to face with this mysterious slap shot-adept street urchin who had been lurking in the background for the entire movie and..oh shit....it’s my college buddy Elden Ratliff! Let me clarify—I did go to college with Elden and we lived in the same dorm and, although we weren’t buddies, we DID hang out like 3.5 times. I can tell you that he has the Cadillac El Dorado symbol tattooed on his left arm and that we all called him...you know...El Dorado. His room was a good place to go if you wanted to have a smoke. A jazz cigarette, you dig? Last time I saw him he was coming off She’s All That and he told me he’d always have a career as long as people needed an “unfuckable fat buddy” for their flick. Solid guy, that Elden. I hope he’s well too! Anyway, Elden’s shot is so gnarly he could put a puck through a concrete barrier. Gordon wants him on the team like yesterday but the kid says he doesn’t know how to skate (note: unlike all the other kids?). He buys Elden a pair of rollerblades and sets him loose in the Mall of America, where he checks an elderly lady into the fountain. Ha.
So Gordon finally has his Ducks in a row but there is still a missing piece of the puzzle that he’s just THIRSTY for. Gordon learns that the Hawks’ star player Banks is residentially prohibited from playing on the Hawks thanks to some unexpected youth hockey Gerrymandering. He actually lives in the Duck’s district and Gordon insists that he pack up his shit, say his goodbyes, and start playing for Ducks post haste, which is an amazingly cruel plot twist! You know who else feels this way? ALL OF THE DUCKS!! They don’t want this friggin’ carpetbagging cake eater on their team! They also overhear Gordon say that the team can’t possibly win without Banks. They confront Gordon about this before a game and bring up his ignoble Hawk history. Gordon says “what do you want from me? I missed the penalty shot and we lost in overtime!’ AHH HA!!! See, now that finally makes sense! So Gordon Bombay is the Billy Buckner of the 1973 Hawks. All anyone remembers is the little roller that went through Buckner’s legs, giving the Mets the W in Game 6 of the ‘86 World Series. Nobody ever talks about the fact there was a Game 7 that was the Red Sox’s game to win but that they did not. Hell, Buckner even hit one out in game 7! Poor dude. I would say I hope he’s well too but I know that he is recently deceased. The kids are so adamantly opposed to playing with Banks they decide that they will simply refuse. They stage a mass walk out, leaving a forfeited game in their wake.
The next day, Gordon is called into Mr Ducksworth’s office, where he finds the old man sipping brandy and hearty white man chuckling with Coach Reilly and Banks’s dad. Turns out Ducksworth is country club buddies with Mr Banks and is hoping they can make their little redistricting issue disappear and allow Banks to return to the Hawks (wink). Hey...shit...they made this dude’s fucking DUI diappear...is anyone really gonna crow about some mild Pee Wee hocky malfesence? Gordon says he absolutely positively will NOT allow Banks to return to the Hawks. Says that the whole point of the forced sabbatical was to teach him about fair play and that Banks remaining a Hawk would be the opposite of fair play. I’m not sure I completely follow...but...it doesn’t really matter. Ducksworth tells Gordon that if he doesn’t relinquish control of Banks he’s gonna fire him. From the law firm!! Do these men not have more important, lawyering-type things they need to be doing?? Gordon continues to refuse and is quickly out on his ass. This cannot possibly be legal grounds for termination! I would have a strongly worded grievance filed with HR before you could say “quack!” But no--that’s all Gordon does. He starts quacking maniacally in Ducksworth’s face. That’ll show him...for sure. Question: does this mean he loses his chauffeur too?? Because that would be the pits! Gordon heads over to the school to try to save face with the kids. Even though these kids live in a major city and range from 10 to about 15 in age they all attend the same school and share the same classrooms. Gordon apologizes and tells the kids that they have a genuine shot at making the playoffs...because all but two teams in the entire league get to compete in the playoffs. Excitement reigns. The kids immediately go on an absolute tear, steamrolling teams from near and far. Their championship run is breathlessly reported by the local newspapers, who feature the Ducks on Page 1 for weeks on end. Hey, our hockey team was regularly written up in the Grafton News (circulation: your mom). I never saw much action but the dude who wrote the articles clearly felt bad for me and would try to give me a shout out every once in a while. My mom would tape articles to our fridge that always said something like “...and Danny Tebo pitched in with some tasteful stickwork.” Tasteful stickwork: that’s me!
When Gordon isn’t busy coaching, he spends all of his time hanging out at Charlie’s mom’s piece in his ugly ass Coogi sweater, scamming free suppers. I swear to god...this man does not have a home!! One night, Gordon takes Casey down to the magical holiday market that’s ceaselessly occurring in the town square. They gaze up at the castle that houses Hans’ pro shop (I think it’s the same building anyway. Also--what the hell happened to Hans??). Casey says she has long fantasized about living in this castle and points to the window of the room she’d like to live in. Gordon says “oh yeah? And where is MY ROOM!?” Casey is like not so fast, psycho! We haven’t even frenched and you’re moving into my fantasy castle??” Really what she says is that she hasn’t fallen in love with him...but that Charlie has...and if they get together and it goes south then the kid will be shit out of a strong male figure…..uhhhhhgain!!!” Gordon says he’s not going anywhere. Casey reminds him that Charlie isn’t going anywhere either and that children tend to live anywhere from zero to 101 years. He says he can get down with that. I already told you that I haven’t seen either D2 or D3 but I checked the cast sheet and she’s on it sooo...I guess maybe Gordo stays true to his word. They start to suck face. Seconds later they’re pants-around-the-ankles-balling up against the dumpster in the alley outside of her building. I’m just messin’ with ya...this flick is rated PG!!! Get your minds out of the gutter, ya friggin’ pervy bastards.
Anyway, the day of the big championship finally arrives and the arena is packed with a hundred THOUSAND people. The Ducks are facing off against the Hawks because of course they are. Coach Reiley only has one thing on his agenda at the outset of the game--putting Banks in a body bag. He wants to go full sweep the leg, Johnny on this poor son of a bitch, who has continued to be ostracized by his new teammates and who has worn the expression of a kid waiting to hear about his latest foster home assignment ever since he was forced to leave the Hawks. Sure enough, as soon as the puck drops, one of Banks’s former teammates executes a dirty hit from behind, sending Banks careening into the goalpost headfirst. He lays motionless on the ice, thoroughly concussed. I want to root for the Ducks but I just can’t stop thinking bout how bad I feel for this fuckin’ kid! What a punching bag of a character! They should’ve called this movie The Maltreated Banks. Anyway, the Ducks get a few good licks in. Elden hits the puck so hard that it goes THROUGH the netting of the net, which is not a thing that happens. Reilly tells his kids that, should they lose, he’ll personally see to it that none of them ever sets blade on the ice again. I know I already said this earlier...but coaches are the worst. The Hawks go up 4-2 but Figure Skating Girl does a couple of pirouettes and puts one in the net, bringing them within a goal. Thanks for playing, Figure Skating Girl. Elden tries to beat up all of the Hawks at once and gets 86’d from the game, depriving the Ducks of their not so secret weapon. The Ducks somehow scored again when I was scrolling through Facebook and temporarily ignoring the movie. Someone trips Charlie at the final whistle with the game tied, allowing him to take a penalty shot. The EXACT same situation Coach Gordon Bombay faced as a young man decades earlier. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES!?? Gordon tells Charlie that if he misses the shot he’s gonna tear off his skate, slice open his juggler, and watch him bleed out on the ice with a huge smile on his face. Just kidding--he tells Charlie that it’s NBD if he misses the shot. That he should just go out there and have fun. Gordon also says “who would’ve thought we’d make it this far!?” Ummm...how about EVERYONE WATCHING THIS MOVIE!!!! How about everyone who has ever watched a movie!?? We’re not stupid, man. So yeah...Charlie puts the puck in the net and the Ducks are the champions….of the worrrllllddd!!! Or, you know, the champions of Hennepin County at least. The Ducks pile onto the ice and hoot and holler and wail in ecstasy. Even Hans materializes from Deutche Neverland to tell Gordon that he’s real proud of him. The kids skate the championship trophy around the ice while Queen’s “We Are the Champions'' blasts from the arena’s soundsystem. I’m thinking that, between this flick, Wayne’s World, and Warrant’s career-ending cover of We Will Rock You from the non-Russell Crowe Gladiator, Queen must’ve made a FORTUNE in licensing fees in 1992. Small consolation after losing their legendary frontman in the waning weeks of 1991, though. Goddamn I miss Freddie Mercury.
Since Gordon still doesn’t have a job (or a HOME) he decides to accept an invitation to try out for the Minnesota North Stars minor league team. How you packed your cowboy boots, homie, ‘cuz the Stars moved to Dallas like six months after this movie came out. Also, this dude is thirty years old and hasn’t played hockey in almost twenty years...so you do the math. I’m thinking the existence of two sequels means that he does NOT make it in the bigs but I have yet to see either film so I really can't say. If someone has a VHS copy of either D2 or D3 and has a hankering for a review DM me and I’ll allow you to send me a copy. I’ll even send you my Hatrick patch from 1987 in return. Deal?? The end.
Mark Wahlberg is a bag of smashed assholes. I offered a fairly lengthy thesis on the career of my hometown homie and scion of the Wahlburgers dynasty in the review before the review before this one. Conclusion: garbage human being. I’m willing to acknowledge that he’s an occasionally brilliant actor...but...I just kind of hate him! Dude rubs me the wrong way, ok? Speaking of being rubbed the wrong way—we’re actually here today to discuss the 1996 flick Fear, Wahlberg’s first starring role and a film I have referenced dozens of times on this website but have only actually watched like twice. Fear came out just as I was starting film school so I was probably too busy pretending that I liked Dogme 95 movies to give this one much attention. Fear was described by producer Brian Grazer, a man who is responsible for 50% of the best movies released in the last 40 years (note: not an exact figure), as “Fatal Attraction for teenagers''...which begs the question: WHY did someone think it was a good and appropriate idea to make a Fatal Attraction for teenagers!? Come to think of it: I’m not sure why people thought actual Fatal Attraction was a good idea either!
What happens is this: we open in the city of Seattle, which the filmmakers appear to have chosen because they heard it was a hip, happening town...and then showed up 5 years too late to make their movie. Don’t worry—they made sure to pack the soundtrack with the hottest grunge bands. And by “hottest grunge bands'' I mean they just licensed a shit ton of songs by Bush, who are, of course, from LONDON. We meet 16 year-old high school student Nicole Walker, played by woman who doesn’t think you should give her a DUI because she’s an American citizen Reese Witherspoon. I kind of question the decision to introduce a 16 year-old character by filming her in the shower....but hey...at least she’s smiling I guess? Once we get a peep at the property where she currently resides I start to understand what the shit eating grin was all about. She lives in this sprawling lake house designed by her aggressive jogging enthusiast father Steven (Young Guns 2’s William Petersen) that offers billion dollar views of Puget Sound. The last time I was in Seattle I saw where the dude who invented Starbucks lived while I was looking for the house where Kurt Cobain died and it looked kinda like this joint. I’d call this a gated community but their property appears to be the only one located beyond the said gate. They’ve even got their own corpulent, around the clock security guard...and you know that shit can’t be cheap! As if we couldn’t already tell these folks are some serious one percenters by touring their crib, the very first conversation they have involves purchasing tickets for a fucking JAMES TAYLOR concert! Ain’t nothing but rich honkies at a JT concert, man. Turns out Nicole just moved up north from her mom’s LA manse. Now she’s living with Pops and his new wife Laura (Judging Amy Brenneman) and her 10 year-old son notgonnabothertolearnhisname. I’d say she’s got it made, but when she goes to say goodbye to her Dad, he totally slut shames her for the not particularly short skirt she picked out to wear to school. Ahh, so it’s one of those “Dad gets uncomfortably uncomfortable with his daughter’s burgeoning sexuality” movies. My favorite. Kind of like Tony Danza’s She’s Out of Control but without any jokes. Although, to be fair, they sorta forgot to put the jokes in that one too.
Nicole heads off to school, where she pals around with her non-threatening male friend Gary (some actor I do not know) and her considerably more threatening friend Margo (Who’s the Boss star and #metoo movement proponent Alyssa Milano). Nicole is a responsible kid but Margo is always trying to get her to skip class to rip butts and tool around town in her VW Rabbit convertible. Margo takes her to Bimbo’s Bitchin’ Burritos in a section of Capitol Hill that is now just a giant Whole Foods. Back in ‘96, though, you still couldn’t walk through that hood without getting mugged by former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan. Nicole and Margo order avocado burgers to go but, while they’re waiting for their food, Nicole spots Marky Mark engaged in some super intense billiards. She swoons. After school, the girls hang out and do typical teenage girl-type things….like sunbathe by Margo’s infinity pool and thumb through copies of Hustler magazine. “I’d totally pose for this mag,” Margo says, “Wouldn’t it be amazing to know millions of guy’s are strokin’ to you??” Nicole says that she does not think it would be amazing, no. Margo wants to take Nicole to a warehouse rave later that night but she already has plans with her folks. She tries to weasel her way out of it but Pops won’t even hear it. The family that James Taylor’s together stays together! Before they can pack their Clearly Canadien-filled cooler and lawn chairs into the back of their Jeep Grand Cherokee, Mr Walker receives a frantic phone call from his office. Apparently there’s an architectural emergency that will require him to fly to Vancouver for dinner. Laura is like “motherFUCKER!!! I bet he was gonna play Mudslide Slim from start to finish tonight!” Steven says if he doesn’t go to dinner he could lose his job and the family could starve to death. Laura waves her arms around their palatial living quarters and says “umm, no one here is starving to death.” Solid ruling, Judge Amy!
With dad out of the country for the evening, Nicole decides to join Margo for that rave. Margo is clearly an old hat at the rave scene. She marches straight in, lights a ciggy, gets herself sorted for whizz and E’s, and starts grinding on some bearish 50 year-old ogre in a black leather jacket Nicole, however, is a little green on the scene. She tiptoes around timidly, taking in the sights. She sees some dudes sucking face and is all “ohhh you FRESH!” AND here comes the pride and joy of Dorchestahhh, MA. He sidles up to Nicole and introduces himself as David and starts whispering this creepy baby talk to her even though it must be loud as shit in there. Everything about him is so icky! He makes me want to reach inside of my goddamn television and tousle his hair! Before he can show her his good vibrations, a fight breaks out! Or...is it a riot?? I really have no idea! All I know is that a couple of punches are thrown and suddenly there’s like a thousand people screaming and panicking and running in every direction. David and Nicole make for the roof because ok I guess so. There’s people jumping out windows and a police helicopter bearing down on the scene. Absolute pandemonium. Margo runs off with her scary ogre so Nicole decides to follow David down the fire escape...and into HELLLLL!!! Well, not yet. He gives her a ride in his Corvair. She’s like” isn’t this the worst car ever made?” And he’s all “it’s not the car’s fault...I saw her all alone in the junkyard and she looked so sad. Don’t tell Ralph Nader.” Like...dude...your act ain’t foolin’ anyone. We can still hear the Boston accent. He looks like he’s a Puma tracksuit and a Scally cap away from a racially motivated Southie bar brawl. Nicole, though? She’s a smitten kitten. When David decides the time is right, he grabs her and starts making out with the SIDE OF HER FACE!! Then he moves onto more standard mouth-type stuff, which only confirms what I suspected after watching Rock Star: Mark Wahlberg is the most disgusting movie kisser in the history of cinema. I thought maybe he was just showing off in that other flick ‘cuz he was with Jennifer Aniston...but no...this dude’s kisses FUCK!! So many aggressive tongue revolutions. He looks like he’s trying to swallow the poor girl’s uvula! She probably had to towel off after every take, the poor thing. After a bit of tonsil hockey, David heads right for tit and the brake lights come on. Nicole says “Umm...oh...sorry--I guess you found my flaw!” My flaw? MY FLAW!?? I’m assuming she means that she’s a virgin (she does)...and that’s supposed to be a flaw!? Just because you don’t want to go from kissing to penetration in less than ten seconds doesn’t make you flawed! You’d think this movie was written by some grody 48 year-old dude or something. What’s that? It was? That tracks. Anyway, David just says that it’s one more thing to respect about her, which is a fuckin’ line. I’m sorry--were you making a list of things to respect? I took copious notes while watching this movie and I don’t see anything here about a respect list. (Note: although I did write down “see when Zima came out...which is weird because no Zima is consumed in this film. Answer: 1993...in case you were wondering). David brings Nicole home unspoiled yet way, way past curfew. Her step mom tells her she looks like a slut. One day: two slut shames.
The next night David scoops Nicole in his Corvair and they cruise around town blasting cuts from Sixteen Stone. A look of pure ecstasy crosses Nicole’s face as she listens to Gavin Rossdale growl in feigned agony. “I don’t want to come back down from this cloud!! All this all this gri aye aye yah yah yah yah!” They shoot some pool and David continues to lap Nicole’s face like an amorous Golden Retriever. He tells her that every part of her tastes so good...even though he has clearly only tasted the above-the-shoulders areas. I puke in my popcorn. David insists on meeting Nicole’s family the following day. She brings him out to the spot and he ticks off every charming boyfriend cliche in the span of about ten seconds: he buddies down with her 10 year-old step brother...he charms their German Shepherd, Kaiser...he innocently flirts with her step mom, he offers to plant some trees around the property. Was this supposed to play like an SNL Hallmark sketch? Maybe tone it down about a million percent here. David heads up to Mr Walker’s office to compliment him on his ‘65 Mustang and to talk car talk. The old man is thinking this kid is just too good to be true!” Then David turns his head away and yells “Yo Nicole! Bring me a Diet Coke!!” and pops is like “daa fuqqq did he just say to my daughter!??” His bullshit antennae goes up AND FAST!! Mr Walker says that Nicole’s curfew is midnight and not one minute past midnight so David simply changes the clock in his office. Problem solved.
Aaand now it’s time for the infamous roller coaster scene!! The moment we’ve all been waiting for...ish. What happens is: David brings Nicole to a low rent amusement park and they board a rickety old wooden roller coaster. When the caboose starts to begin its initial ascent, Nicole spreads her legs, grabs David’s hand, and puts it on her area. He moves his hand gingerly while repeatedly and disgustingly licking his own lips (for a change). In the background we hear The Rolling Stones ``Wild Horses'' as covered by 90’s three-hit wonders The Sundays. I’m sure the original was far too expensive to license. I’m less sure that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote this tune hoping it would one day provide the soundtrack for a scene where a 16 year-old gets fingerblasted on a roller coaster….but who knows! When the car takes its first drop, Nicole cuts loose like HELLO CLEVELAND! She experiences her first orgasm, which is equal parts blessing and curse. Looks like fun, for sure, but imagine if the only way she can get off from there on out is on a roller coaster? I feel like that would get really expensive. He also wins her some sort of peace pipe playing the toss the beanbag game...which is totally bogus as everybody knows you never when shit playing those rigged ass games! Although when I was 7 I DID win a Motley Crue coke mirror playing the game where you shoot water into a clown’s mouth to try to fill up a balloon. I need to find that mirror.
Even though their daughter has a suspicious new boyfriend, the Walker’s decide to split town for the weekend, leaving Nicole all by her lonesome. They tell her to order Domino’s and rent some videos (what I wouldn’t GIVE!) and to not lose her virginity. She dutifully follows instructions...on the first two things, anyway. She immediately calls David (who has a cell phone??) and tells him she’s alone in her bed for the night. He says he can’t make it until later so she gives him the super secret security code so he can just let himself in (heh). I start to realize that we still know fuck all about this David character. I just assume he’s a bad guy because he’s Mark Wahlberg and because this movie is called Fear, leading me to believe that someone will eventually be afraid of someone. He asked for a Diet Coke like a real douche but hey...we all get parched now and then. All we know is that he has family “back east” and is an arborist and hangs out with a gnarly looking crowd. David lets himself onto the property as planned and makes his way to Nicole’s bedroom. By the time she opens her eyes he is already naked. And also--just ripped to SHREDS! I guess he was probably still modeling at this point. Can’t be selling no Calvin’s with a Papa Gino’s gut, amirite? He removes her undies and fornication happens almost instantly. Here I should mention that David is supposed to be 23 and Nicole is 16!! Did the people who made this film not see a problem with this!? Good god, man!
The next day Nicole is walking on sunshine (ohh oh)....but her post-deflowering golden hour quickly comes to a jarringly violent conclusion. When David arrives to pick her up for school, he sees Nicole lean over and give non-threatening Gary a non-threatening hug. Seemingly out of nowhere, David snaps like a snapdragon! He sprints up to Gary, throws him to the ground, and fucking kicks him half to death! When Nicole tries to intervene, David winds up and cracks her in the grill, blackening one of her eyes. It’s buh-nanas!!! Nicole immediately tells David that she will see him never PSYCHO but David is all “wha?? What’d I do??” He does NOT handle the breakup well. He covertly stalks Nicole through the halls of her high school, even though he’s like 7 years older than the average student. He retreats to his vaguely criminal flophouse where he resides with that Ogre dude and a handful of other anonymous goons with names like Hacker and Knobby (that’s what the internet says, anyway--no one is ever properly introduced). It’s like the drug house from Point Break but with 100% less Red Hot Chili Peppers. What’s wrong with these dudes? Drugs? Brains wired wrong? No one knows! We do learn that David sleeps on a cot next to a wall COVERED with pictures of Nicole. And also: his mug shot?? Maybe don’t go displaying that one, pal. Meanwhile, Nicole tells her folks that she caught that black eye in a volleyball game. They pretend to believe her. They’re just happy David is out her life without any lasting OOPS!!! Dad finds a used condom wrapper under her bed. Phew! I thought he didn’t use anything! Must’ve pre-wrapped it before he showed up that night!
The next afternoon, Nicole and Margo sit by the pool listening to Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Something's Always Wrong...because at this point in the film something is, in fact, always wrong. People are always busting on Toad but I’ll tell ya—Fear is a goddam solid album (and also: the name of the movie we are talking about). Walk on the Ocean? All I Want? Total bangers right there! Nicole lets slip that she and David did the deed and Margo calls her a ho. She’s like “thanks a lot—he also beat the piss out of me.” Margo tells her to brush it off. She says David wouldn’t beat her if he didn’t really love her. Well, if Poison Ivy 2 says so! David shows up at the pool and apologizes profusely and Nicole decides to give him a second chance because of course she does. She brings him back to her house where they continue to frolic in her swimming pool with her family. I gotta say—there’s a shitload of swimming pool action for a Seattle-set movie. Isn’t it 55 and rainy 51 weeks out of the year up there? Did the swimming pool industry have some secret dough behind this flick or something? Mr Walker arrives home just as David is about to playfully throw his wife into the pool. He’s profoundly displeased. He begins his rest-of-the-movie-long quest to alert the authorities to David’s behavior...a quest that gains so little traction that they didn’t even bother casting a doubting detective. They couldn’t have nabbed Brian Denehey or Davey Caruso for a one day walk on?? He does find out that David has a rap sheet longer than Long Island. Fuckin’...4 years in juvie...fostah home aftah fostah home...a bid down in Bridgewatah, kehd. Mr Walker decides it’s time to have a little one on one with this fricken kid. He tells David that he’s to refrain from having any and all contact with Nicole, effective immediately. David says that he understands and they shake hands and part like gentlemen. Just kidding! David calls Mr Walker a word that rhymes with maggot and accuses him of leaving his wife sexually dissatisfied, causing her to “crawl all over my stick.” David also says that he personally licked Nicole’s sweet tears....and I totally believe him. This dude is a licking machine! Mr Walker is not amused. He tells David that he’s going to rip his balls off and shove them so far up his ass they’ll pop out of his mouth. You used to hear that threat in movies a lot and I always wondered if it’s something that’s actually achievable. Maybe they can do a Mythbusters on that or something.
David repeatedly punches himself in the chest until he’s good and bruised and tells Nicole that her pops did the beating. She’s so upset with her dad she decides to take off with David and listen to MORE BUSH. They ball to that cover of Wild Horses I told you about before. I guess that’s their sex anthem. Aww. David invites Nicole back to his squat so she won’t have to face her family but she declines....but after David drives off she changes her mind and decides to follow him ‘cuz who doesn’t love a surprise?? Right but when she gets to David’s she looks through a window and sees Margo smoking fucking crack in her underwear with the Ogre. (They’re also listening to Prick! Remember that band?? I saw them open for NIN and David Bowie. Now that was a gig!) So that’s bad....but they’re fleetingly dating or whatever so. But then David appears and says that he will be having sex with Margo that night and carries her away like fresh kill. Ogre says that David can go right ahead and keep that “dirty bitch.” I bet Alyssa Milano wishes she could #metoo this movie right out of existence. Ugh! David shows up the next day completely unaware that he’s been found out. He’s all “hey babe—we still going to the Deep Blue Something concert?” but Nicole screams and runs away. David tries to give chase but Gary gets up in his face. Nicole goes home to sulk by the pool. Margo comes over and hugs Nicole’s little step bro and says “kid—when are you gonna grow up so I can ravage you??” I pick up my vomit-filled popcorn bowl and fill it with more vomit. Nicole tells Margo she knows that she’s a crack smoking backstabber. Margo says that David raped her but Nicole isn’t ready to hear it. While Margo is driving home, David runs her off the road, drags her from her Rabbit, and beats the shit out of her. Tells her that if she doesn’t “fix things'' with Nicole he’s gonna kill her. And they marketed this movie to teenagers?? This is some truly twisted shit right here.
David shows up at the Walker compound and makes another attempt to sweet talk Mr Walker (whom he called a homophobic slur like 3 scenes ago) with his doe-eyed baby talk routine but the old man slams the door in his face. So what does wacko do? Goes home and gives himself a giant “Nicole 4-eva” tattoo on his chest. Take it from disgraced former actor Johnny Depp—relationship tattoos are just like relationships: they never end well. I guess he could always change Nicole to Nico. She had some solid tunes. The next day David decides to follow Gary home from school. As luck would have it (for David) Gary’s route home involves a desolate path in the woods. They exchange brief pleasantries about growing up institutionalized and BAM!! David breaks Gary’s neck with his own bare hands. He dies. Then he heads over to Mr Walker's architecture firm and vandalizes his ‘stang. He also leaves a note that says “now I popped both of your cherries.” I can only dry heave at this point. David figures he might as well go 3 for 3 so he follows Nicole to the mall and attacks her in a bathroom stall. She tries to scream but David covers her mouth, puts his hand between her legs, and says “this is what it’s really all about.” Her vagina?? I’m so lost.
Mr Walker gets a hold of David’s address and shows up while David is out on his little midday killing spree. David not only has pictures of Nicole all over his bedroom wall...he’s built an entire crazytown SHRINE for the girl! Like...there’s a litany of items he stole from her room; jewelry and panties and such. He also seems to have somehow photoshopped her head on the Virgin Mary. Dude, I wonder who ended up with THAT shit?? Reese Witherspoon as the Virgin Mary?? I’d put that above my fireplace. It’s probably collecting dust at some thrift store up in Snohomish...silently crying out for a home. Anyway—Mr Walker trashes the place...which seems fair since David trashed his car/life. When David and his goons arrive home they’re none too pleased by what they discover. The guy broke fucking everything! Pool playing goon finds his pool cues snapped in half. Drumming goon finds all of his drum heads slit. He sits at his decimated kit with his drumsticks in hand, looking all forlorn. No YYZ today, pal! They call an emergency roommate meeting and decide they will smoke a ton of crack and then drive up to the Walker’s and murder everyone in sight. It’s a plan!
The Walker’s have already begun to batten down the hatches. Mr Walker continues to work the phones trying to summon help to absolutely no avail. Did he fail to mention that he’s a rich white dude?? SRSLY! Margo shows up and tells everyone that Gary was found with his head on backwards. Mr Walker says that he designed the house himself and that it’s an impenetrable fortress so long as no one did something foolish like tell David the super secret security code. Nicole is like “ummm....totally my B....but I did exactly that!” While they’re standing around trying to figure out the safest way to stay safe, little bro sees Kaiser poke his head in the dog door. He’s like “puppy want a treat??” but the dog cannot hear him as his head is no longer attached to the rest of his body. That’s right—they fucking beheaded the family dog. This ratchets the level of concern up a notch or two. They discover the phone lines have been cut and blah blah blah you get the drill. Speaking of getting the drill, one of the goons tries to open the door and Mrs Walker puts a power drill through his hand. He demands to be driven to the hospital but...I think the 10 year old runs him over with the jeep? It’s tough to care when I don’t even really know these dude’s names. Also--they are murderers. Or murdery, at least. See you on the other side, Trigger. Nicole manages to alert their security guard, but there’s only so much White Al Powell can do. He rolls up to the house and tries to collar David but David kills him. Then David and the Ogre and whomever else is still alive take Mr Walker hostage. I don’t think there’s any real game plan. They’re just gonna kill everyone and kidnap Nicole and keep her chained up in the basement for the rest of her life. But then Ogre tries to rape Mrs Walker and David blows his head off. That seems fair. David lapses into one of those manic, end-of-the-movie psychobabble psycho speeches. “You want this, don’t you, Nicole?? You want me to kill your daddy so we can run away together, right?” She does not want that, no. She grabs ahold of that peace pipe David won her at the carnival and impales him with it. He lets out this terrible howl that sounds like “yeeeewwwuhhh!” Good thing he didn’t get her the Motley Crue coke mirror. Well....not good for him, I guess. He’s still on his feet though ‘cuz this dude is a fighter (THE Fighter, actually). He trades a couple of blows with Mr Walker before the old man is finally like “you know—enough of this bullshit.” He grabs David by the sleeve and launches him out the window. Guy must’ve really put a little something extra in his toss ‘cuz David sails like 500 fucking yards before splattering on the lake’s rocky shore. The end credits roll. No denouements here, folks. Although I guess I have everything I need....you? I’m kind of curious about whether Nicole and Margo became friends again....but not really. And you know what band just completely fucking sucks? Bush. The end.
Regular readers of this website have probably noticed that I usually begin each review with a personal story that is almost always some variation of the exact same story. It involves the author (me) having to jump through hoops to rent or purchase tickets for a film that was howlingly inappropriate for a child. Occasionally I’d have to do battle with some video store clerk who’d elected themselves Supreme Arbiter of Morality (there was that one guy who told me he’d sooner shut down his business than rent me an Andre Dice Clay stand-up tape...and you know...he might’ve actually done me a favor) but I was generally able to watch whatever I wanted. My mom, bless her heart, has watched just seven movies since 1980. Our conversations usually went something like this: Mom: What movie did you rent? Me: Umm...Blue Velvet. Mom: What’s it about? Me:....Smurfs. Her: Sounds good! I’m an only child so it was easy to keep my hard R’s to myself. To simply close my bedroom door and get lost in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! I’m an Almadovar freak--what can I say!? So it’s September of 1992 and I’m 13 years old and about two weeks into my freshman year of high school. My mom, who worked nights, suggested it might be fun if I went to the movies with our reclusive downstairs neighbor, Joan. I suggested that neither of us really knew or spoke to Joan and HUH!? But...you know...I would never pass up an opportunity to spend a night at the flicks! So I met up with Joan, who said she was short on cash and suggested we see something at the second-run moviehouse, where tickets were only two bucks a pop. I pulled out the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, flipped to the entertainment section and saw that the Elm Draught House was showing Single White Female. I’d been hoping for Mo’ Money, but I figured SWF would suffice. We drove to the theater in Joan's black Nissan Pulsar and didn't speak a single word to each other the entire way. After we paid for our tickets, Joan noticed a SWF poster outside of the theater and stopped cold. “Ohhh wait,” she said, “is this a good movie for you? I mean...it looks like it’s rated R. 17 and older, right?” I told her that I was turning 14 in six weeks and not to worry. She considered phoning my mom at work for permission but I talked her out of it. Told her I was literally made of R rated movies...and yes...I know what “literally” means. So we took our seats and the movie came on and it was raunchy as fucking shit! Even watching it again now, as a grown ass 42 year-old man, I might’ve blushed a little. The lead actresses in this film are almost always naked and/or fucking. Like, they could’ve just called this movie Naked & Fucking. It exceeded my wildest expectations, inappropriateness wise. I mean--the movie itself kinda sucks. On the ride home, Joan wore the exact expression you’d expect to see on someone who just took her neighbor’s 13 year-old son to see a skin flick: wide-eyed...pale...mouth agape. I think there might’ve even been a tear or two. This poor lady was probably thinking “this kid is gonna go home and ask his mom what ‘came in my mouth’ means and she’s gonna come downstairs and beat me with a dust broom.’ Needless to say, this was our one and only movie outing. Not only did we never hang again, I don’t think we ever even SPOKE again. I’d see her in the hallway and be all “how’s it going, Joan!?” and she’d wordlessly scurry past me and slam her apartment door and start praying for my fallen soul.
I decided to watch Single White Female again for the first time since the last time...and what happens is this: we open with some pre-credits shots of creepy 9 year-old twin girls putting makeup on each other creepily. File that one under “prolly gonna be important later on in the flick (note: it is).” We crane in on a forbidding, Gothic-style apartment building on the Upper West Side, where we meet the scarcely clothed Allie (Bridget Fonda) and her almost fiancee, Sam (Steven Weber). They’re lazing around her bedsit explaining their entire backstory to the audience. I know I’m always busting on flicks with super expository dialogue...but I’m gonna go ahead and give this one a pass. Let’s just get this shit over with, right? Allie asks her beef how many kids they’re gonna have and asks if he thinks a naked skydiving wedding is a good idea. He does not think it’s a good idea, no. She mentions that she’s stoked to be living in this massive rent controlled apartment, even though she hasn’t been living in NYC for very long. Umm...yeah, so I did some googling and it turns out this building is called The Ansonia and Babe Ruth used to live there and apartments are currently renting for $40000….A MONTH! Is this woman a Kennedy cousin or something?? We’re only two minutes in and I’m already throwing my first bullshit flag. It’s also established that Allie’s upstairs neighbor Graham can hear her comings and goings (emphasis on the former) through a heating grate. This movie does foreshadowing with the subtlety of a snow shovel to the face. So, they ball and drift off to dreamland, only to be cruelly awoken by the sound of a ringing telephone. It’s the dude’s ex wife...who needs to talk about what exactly at 3 AM?? Sam hangs up on her. Allie decides to take a stroll around the apartment butt ass naked…’cuz in this movie, anything worth doing is worth doing butt ass naked. Ex wife calls again but this time the answering machine picks up. Remember when someone would call your house and you could gauge whether you wanted to talk to said caller by listening to a few seconds of their live answering machine message?? Unless you’re old as balls like me then you probably do not. The machine clicks on and ex wife is all “hey SAM--you think you can just come over here and ball me all afternoon and…” Sam picks up the phone and is all “ummm...you must have the wrong number...PRANK CALLER!!!” But our girl Allie--she heard what’s up. Dude is all “It was an accident...I swear! We had Pinot Grigio at lunch!” Allie flees to her upstairs neighbor’s place, who already knows what’s going on, having listened through his vent. I thought maybe a rebounder was in the cards since this dude Graham is shirtless and cut but I guess he’s also gay. Drat.
The next afternoon, we learn that Allie is a mad smart computer engineer who designs dressmaking software. Super futuristic shit. She even sends an email and purchases plane tickets online in the year 1992, which made my head literally explode (see, here I am misusing the word literally). She tries to sell her program to legendary character actor and man who I am never not happy to see until I saw him in this film, Steven Tobolowsky. Tobo is a douchey prick who gives her the runaround and also drops some crumbs about how Allie is rolling in the dough because she deep-sixed her software partner and kept the software. I figure this is going to come up again later in the flick but, you know, it totally doesn’t! Allie returns to her apartment and tears the sheets off of her bed and wails. She decides that since her boyfriend has a severe case of Wandering Penis Syndrome, he will no longer be welcome at that address. Even though she is apparently filthy rich and lives in one of the most exclusive residences in the city, she decides that she needs a roommate. I mean...come onnnn!!! That’d be like John Lennon trolling for a roomie for his pad at the Dakota. Male...40...heavy smoker...vegetarian….seeking roommate who likes The Beatles (no Paul songs, please). So she plants an ad in the classifieds: seeking a single white female. Why they gotta be white, huh? What if my grandma is part Bantu? Am I disqualified then? Why you gotta be so racist?? I will say--I’m TOTALLY on board with the S in SWF. Quick story--from 2011 to 2016 I lived in a four-bedroom apartment with three single roommates who all grew significant other-shaped appendages and allowed them to cohabitate. Not...like...officially move in...just sleepover 365 nights a year and pay no rent and eat and shit and shower and take nasty resin hits on the couch while watching a Glee marathon all day when I wanted to watch the motherfucking Beastmaster on the television that I paid for!! GRAH!! Eventually, those 6 roommates moved out and I got three new roommates and read ALL of them the riot act about unscheduled live-in S.O’s. And what did they, all three of them, turn around and do?? They all let their boyfriends/girlfriends move in ASAP!! Do I have “I like listening to my roommates fucking” written on my forehead or something!? One guy so angry at me when I told him his GF couldn’t stay over anymore he called me a “bitter old dickhead.” I was 36 years-old. Man, if only he could see me now! ANYWAY, Allie sets herself up for a quick roommate interview montage. She makes all of her applicants pose for Polaroids at the end of the interviews, which is awkward as shit. I’d be like “not so fast there Bobby Mapplethorpe!” But I’m not a SWF so what do I know? She seems to hit it off with this one applicant who I instantly recognized at Sleepaway Camp 2 star and youngest Esta-Sheen child Rene Estavez...which made me wish I was watching Sleepaway Camp 2 instead. Allie seems ready to pull the trigger, but when Rene leaves, Allie crumples to the kitchen floor in a sobbing heap. I guess she’s still not over whatsisname or whatever. Her ugly cry is interrupted by the sound of footsteps and a voice. She looks up and is greeted by the sight of Jennifer Jason Leigh standing in her kitchen! Allie is all “Oh snap! JJL! I’ve been a big fan since Fast Times, gurrrl!” JJL is like “hey! We both have famous Hollywood dads! We were born to share an apartment in this bizarro building!” Although JJL’s pops was helicoptered to death by John Landis. And..well..Peter Fonda is dead now too...so. What really happens is JJL, who introduces herself as Hedy, fixes a leaky sink, which impresses Allie so much that she throws all of her applications in the garbage and immediately offers Hedy the apartment. All of that Poloroid film...just WASTED!
Allie gives her new roomie a tour of the property and points out all of the areas of the building that will make good spots for chase scenes later on when the movie turns violent. Allie mentions that the elevator is janky as fuck and won’t move up or down unless you jam a sharp screwdriver into its control panel. Was it Chekov that said that if you see a pistol in the first act of a play, you can expect it to be fired in the second act (or something?). So it goes with this janky elevator screwdriver key. The ladies take a tour of the basement, which was once home to a gay bathhouse where Bette Midler would often perform accompanied by Barry Manilow on the piano. In the late 70’s, the space became the notorious Plato’s Retreat, NYC’s premier orgy emporium. That’s some legendary shit right there, y’all! I’m not sure if they actually filmed these scenes in that same basement but from the looks of it (utilitarian laundry room, storage units, garbage incinerator) I’m gonna say they did not! The ladies grow so hot and bothered by all of that decades-old sexual energy emanating from the concrete floor that they both strip themselves naked. Actually, I made that up. This is one of the few scenes where people remained fully clothed. Speaking of nudity--after Hedy moves in, she and Allie settle right into the roommate groove of eating ice cream cones and snuggling in bed watching classics and sneaking into each other’s rooms to see what kind of fun prescription drugs are available for stealing (hey, we’ve all done it! Right….Right??) and casually lounging around topless or bottomless or both of the above. Fairly standard roommate stuff.
Sam keeps leaving apologetic answering machine messages for Allie and Hedy immediately erases them before Allie can hear them. A little weird, no doubt, but maybe she’s just looking out for her new BFF, right? But the next day Hedy goes out and buys a fucking puppy without asking if it’s ok to have pets. A PUPPY! Do you know how much work dogs are? They cost a shit ton of money and tend to live anywhere from 10 to 20 years. It ain’t exactly a Betta Fish, know what I’m sayin’? Quick story: years ago I signed a one-year lease with a roommate who did not spend a single night at our apartment (shit, I guess all of that roommates-with-girlfriends drama from years later was some sort of karmic payback. I never really thought of that until just now). One day, my invisible roomie left me a voicemail saying she had subletted her room to a lady with a 3 year-old and “hopefully that’s ok BYEEEE!” Wha!?? I was 22 and having nightly ecstasy parties. Of course it wasn’t ok! So this lady moved in one day while I was at work. She saw me arrive home, and without even introducing herself, says “you have to meet my baby! You have to meet my baby!” Before I could get a word out, she dragged me into her bedroom and pointed to a glass tank that held not an infant but a motherfucking TARANTULA!!! Big hairy bastard, too. I offered her a Corona. She accepted and disappeared into her fully furnished room. The next morning I discovered that the lady and all of her belongings had vanished in the middle of the night. The tarantula haunts my dreams to this day. ANYWAY, Allie quickly falls in love with the puppy ‘cuz it’s a puppy. So far, besides the unplanned puppy, there’s only been a few innocent-ish red flags. Hedy says that her twin sister was stillborn and that Allie can be her twin sister now. Allie is all “Ohhh! Ummm...mmm hmmm!” One afternoon while headed out for a meeting, Allie runs into Graham, who says that he saw someone dressed in her clothes and jewelry but that it turned out to be Hedy. She’s skeptical..and you know...so am I. There were Bridget Fonda cosplayers ALL OVER NYC and the outer boroughs in 1992. When she arrives home from work, she discovers that Hedy has let her Sam into the apartment just to stir some shit. Dude begs Allie to go out and talk things over and, after some mild hemming and hawing, she agrees. This was clearly not Hedy’s desired outcome. We know this because she starts pulling her own hair out and paces around the apartment muttering to herself. Then she kicks the puppy upside the head! They always start with poor, defenseless animals, psycho killers do. Allie stays gone for like 48 hours, which drives Hedy halfway to insane. Hedy is too busy wantonly riding Sam in an armless swivel chair to see the murder that lives right across the hall! It certainly appears like Allie and Sam have reconciled. We know this from the riding, yes, and also from the giant rock we see on Allie’s finger when she digs her nails into Sam’s bareback. We cut back and forth from the sex to the apartment, where Hedy is lying in the bathtub naked. I mean, I understand that one generally does not put on swimwear to bathe privately, but this seems a bit excessive, no?
After however many days, Allie finally walk of shames herself home, where she finds Hedy in a highly agitated state. She’s all “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!??” and Allie is like “bangin’ my fiancee...what’s it to you, kookooroo? Hedy tears her a new asshole. Calls Allie a disloyal roommate and reminds her that she promised they’d be friends till the end. She’s like a human Chucky doll, this Hedy. She rants on and on about how Allie is so much prettier and how she’ll never find a man and Allie is like “now way, girl--you could have any man! You could even marry Noah Baumbach!” And she totally did, which was awesome! Then he ditched her for the 20 years younger Greta Gerwig, which was less awesome. Allie decides the best way to resolve this little standoff is to invite Sam over and sex him up while Hedy stews alone in her own bedroom. Parched from another marathon ball sesh, Allie heads to the kitchen for a glass of agua. When she returns she finds Hedy chatting with Sam...in her UNDIES! Sam is like “sooo...you wanna come in and hang” but Allie is not down AT ALL. Threefer: toast. Hedy retreats to her bedroom, where she starts masturbating. LOUDLY. Allie gets out of bed to see what’s the what (what does she THINK is happening??) and freezes up at the sight of her roomie fucking her pillow. She look like a little kid who just walked in on….their roomie fucking a pillow. Girl, you gotta close the door if yer gonna do that shit. Masturbating loudly with the door open is right up there with leaving the toilet seat up and failure to take out the recycling on the list of roommate don'ts.
The next morning, Hedy makes a little brekky for her oversexed roomies and everyone is happy and nothing is awkward. Allie and Sam decide to go out espresso machine shopping or some bougie bullshit and neglect to invite Heddy. That’s cool—she just hangs back and watches Melrose Place. Just kidding! She gets super pissed and throws the puppy out the fucking window! Did I mention that they live on the 11th floor? Well, they do. The puppy dies. Allie is inconsolable but Hedy feeds her a fistful of Valium and puts her to bed. While Allie is narco napping, Hedy half kisses Sam, who is not NOT receptive to her advances. When Allie finally rouses herself some two and a half days later she realizes she’s 9 hours late for an important meeting with Tobolowsky. I’ll tell you—she should’ve taken about 5 more Valium cuz this shit does not go well. Tobo starts to slam champagne and Allie is like “slow your roll there, Ned Ryerson!” Then it gets ugly. He says he’s not going to pay her if she doesn’t sleep with him. When she continues to refuse he decides he’ll just go ahead and rape her. He pulls out his pecker but Allie is quick on the draw and punches his dick off before getting right up out of there. It is terrible. She rushes home and tells Hedy about the attempted sexual assault because I guess Sam is out of town doing whatever it is that Sam does. Hedy is like “I know how we’ll handle this!” She calls Tobo at home and screams “you better pay my friend or I’ll murder your entire family you raping motherfucker!!” Allie is like “umm....thanks?” The next day they hit the salon together and Hedy apparently asks her stylist to make her look exactly like Allie. Now they’re BOTH rocking the Demi Moore. Allie finally starts to suspect this Hedy chica might be a few picnic baskets short of a picnic. She sneaks into Hedy’s bedroom and rifles through her shoebox of secrets. She learns that Hedy’s real name is Ellen Besch....and this Besch is crazy! It turns out her twin sister wasn’t stillborn but died from drowning, some 9 years post birth. She also learns that Hedy has been stealing the letters that Sam had sent to her while they were on a relationship hiatus. Instead of just....you know...ASKING HER TO MOVE OUT...Allie decides to covertly follow Hedy around the meatpacking district one night. Hedy goes to a basement sex club and gets her feet tickled (everyone’s got their thing, man). I’m thinking this scene is an homage to the sordid history of the Ansonia’s building...and I’m also thinking that approximately zero people picked up on this. Maybe if Wikipedia had existed in 1992...
Allie rushes back to the building, where she spills her tale of woe to her upstairs buddy Graham. Unfortunately Hedy is already home from her foot tickle and can hear every word they’re saying because of that heating vent thing I told you about way back at the beginning of this review. Graham tells Allie that if she doesn’t call the police ASAP then he’ll do it for her. He also chooses this moment to tell Allie about the heating vent and that he can hear ALL of her sex. Check your timing, bro! While Allie goes home to NOT call the police, Hedy sneaks into Graham’s apartment and beats him to death with a wrought iron door fastener, thus graduating to actual murderer. I don’t know, y’all—this gal is clearly unwell...but it’s a pretty big leap from killing puppies to killing people. A better movie might try to delve into her psyche (really any other background besides a dead twin sister would’ve been super duper helpful. The VHS box just describes her as “mousy.” Mousy=prone to violence, Capisce?). But this, my friends, is not a better movie...so into the abyss we go!
Allie decides that she will confront Hedy while she’s in the shower...where she’s unsurprisingly naked. Allie notices that the sink is full of blood soaked clothes but Hedy explains it away like “yeah, just got my period. You know how that is.” Allie starts to plead her case but Hedy is like “no need to chat—I’ll just move out! It’s totally NBD!” Allie helps her pack her shit and the movie ends with a shot of Hedy wistfully pulling onto Amsterdam Avenue in a U-Haul. Just kidding AGAIN! Sam is staying in a hotel until he and Allie can move into the apartment from Ghost together. Hedy somehow figures out the location of Sam's room, let’s herself in, crawls into bed with him, and starts to fellate him while he’s sound asleep. Sam has absolutely idea it isn’t Allie because they have the same darn haircut! When Sam DOES notice that his penis is in a strange mouth he freaks out and tells her to stop but it’s too late. He finishes. There’s a word for what I just described and that word is rape. Once finished, Hedy jumps out of bed all “ah hah! I knew you were a scum bag....letting me rape you so easily! Wait till I tell my bff Allie!” Sam calls her nuts and I’ll tell ya…”nuts'' must be the Pee Wee’s Playhouse magic word because Hedy proceeds to pick up her stiletto and bury it in Sam’s forehead. He dies.
Hedy, who now has half as many kills as the Zodiac under her belt, returns to the apartment all harried. She all “humina humina GOOD NEWS Allie--I’m moving out right now!!” Allie ignores her and continues to drink her kale smoothie until something on the TV news catches her eye. There appears to have been a murder at Sam’s hotel...in Sam’s hotel room. Allie barfs. While she’s hugging the porcelain, she notices a pair of stilettos on the bathroom floor. Covered in BLOOD! When Hedy returns from retrieving her Glock 9mm from her basement storage unit she can tell the jig is up. Allie says she needs to go upstairs and see Graham but Hedy is like “grah hah hah good luck with that, bitch!” Hedy inexplicably starts to get naked because we CLEARLY have not had our fill of JJL’s bare flesh. Allie asks her naked roommate, who is slowly slipping on a pair of OJ Simpson Isotoners, if she murdered Sam. Hedy answers in the affirmative but is sure to mention that Sam came in her mouth before she lobotomized him with a high heel shoe. Allie’s like “yeah...that’s mos def way gross...but I’m still pretty upset about it.” Hedy says that none of this matters as she no longer exists: Hedy has now become Allie. Except she hasn’t actually become Allie. At all. Hedy drags Allie up to Graham’s apartment and says that they’re gonna escape to Paris and eat baguette together. Dude, wouldn’t Graham’s corpse be stinkin’ up the joint by now? Hedy slits Allie’s throat...but...like...only a little bit. She also kisses her on the mouth...so there’s that. Allie plays along so Hedy won’t finish the job and give her a Columbian necktie (note: is that racist? I feel like maybe it is. Although I should tell you that my paternal grandmother was born in Columbia...so it’s cool). While all of this is playing out, Steve Tobolowsky is at his office watching Allie’s software delete itself from his company’s computers. Probably shoulda paid the bill slash not sexually assaulted your client, eh dickhead?? He hauls ass over to the Ansonia, where he walks in on Hedy slowly torturing Allie. He cracks her in the dome before rushing to Allie and pulling the duct tape off her mouth. Allie sucks in some oxygen and screams “BE CAREFUL!! SHE'S CRAZY!” Tobo is all “pssh, I took care of her! So how’s about you and me grabbing that cocktail?” OPE...Hedy was only mildly concussed. She’s back on her feet, pumping bullets into Steve Tobolowsky. And you know? Fuck that guy anyway, right? Now Hedy wants Allie to kill herself by slugging down the rest of her valium. What’s this gal’s endgame here anyway!? She already done killed almost the entire cast of the movie. OH WAIT! Fucking Graham wakes up in the bathtub!! He wasn’t dead after all...just unconscious and bleeding out for the last three days or whatever. He should be totally fine after about six months in a medically induced coma. Groggy Graham lurches himself on top of Hedy for long enough to allow Allie to escape from the apartment...but Hedy still manages to shoot Allie in the arm. I don’t know how many times I’ve mentioned this but a gunshot wound to the arm all but guarantees that the wounded character will survive until the end of the film.
Allie and Hedy pour themselves into the wonky elevator and just start beating the ever loving shit out of each other. A lot of deep-seated issues between these two at this point for sure. Allie pulls out that janky screwdriver (TOLD YOU we’d see that again! Or...Chekov did, anyway) and takes a few swings but Hedy gets the upper hand and pins Allie to the floor, where she strangles her to death. She dies. After she’s dead, Hedy leans in and kisses her on the mouth again. Dude...what ISN’T this girl into?? Necrophelia, voyeurism, animal murder, podophilia...THE WORKS! Hedy tries to drag Allie’s body into the trash incinerator but she comes back to life! There’s a pretty low stakes chase scene and honestly...I could really give two shits about who dies here as long as one of ‘em does! Eventually, Allie falls out of the ceiling like John Bender in Breakfast club and stabs Hedy in the back with the screwdriver and she dies. For real. After all we’ve just had to sit through that’s all we get? One quick shank?? Isn’t there some unwritten rule that says the psycho killer is supposed to die most gruesomely? Either by beheading and incineration or disembowelment by elevator or something of the like?? Far be it for me to advocate for violence against women...but this particular lady killed a puppy. Like Clint Eastwood said in that one movie that opened on the same day as this one: we all got it comin’. Or something. The movie ends with a voice over where Allie tells us that she’s mad bummed but that she has mostly forgiven Hedy for stalking the shit out of her and slitting her throat and strangling her and stealing her bomb earrings and for murdering her puppy and her fiance and her rapey boss. All’s well that ends well, I guess. The end.
If you’ve read any of the 150-plus VHS of the Week entries I’ve posted over the last three years, you might assume that I have a terrifying amount of useless film-related knowledge rattling around up in my cabeza. And you know--you’d be correct! But I’m here to tell y’all--my first true love was not actually film but the rock n’ roll music. Specifically, 1980’s hair metal. The more Aqua Net and eyeliner on a dude, the better! Poison, Cinderella, Faster Pussycat--I grew up on that shit! If you looked at a picture of me in the 7th grade you’d see a kid with a mullet who wore a brown leather jacket and the same Van Halen For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour ‘91 to school every single day for months on end (over baggy MC Hammer pants! No wonder I got dunked on so hard!). If you looked at a picture of me from the 8th grade you’d see a kid with cropped hair, a baggy flannel shirt, and a pair of Doc Marten boots who has replaced his Gn’R tapestry with a Pearl Jam poster. I was so concerned that people would uncover my heavy metal secrets that I threw all of my non-Metallica metal CDs in the trash. The actual trash! What can I say? Musical preference was deeply intertwined with social hierarchy back when I was growing up. If someone came to my house and saw that I had Mr Big’s “To Be With You” on cassingle I might be exiled to a less desirable lunch table. Obviously, now that I’m a grown ass man, I wear my metalhead past like a badge of honor. I own Warrant’s Cherry Pie on vinyl and I listen to it once a week. What are you gonna do? Beat me up for my milk money? In December of 2019, I went to see Ratt play at the back of a brew pub next to Gillette Stadium. Or, Stephen Pearcy, his bass player, and three twenty somethings they pulled out of the Guitar Center on Sunset, anyway. It would turn out to be the last show I would see before Covid-19 struck and still the last live music I saw in person, as of this writing. And I’m totally cool with that! (ish). While I love music and film with equal fervor, I firmly believe that the two should never meet onscreen. I mean--this happens all of the damn time, obviously, but I think you can count the number of good rock n’ roll biopics on one finger...and that finger counts the 1987 film La Bamba and nothing else. There’s a small handful of flicks that accurately portray the ins and outs of the lives of musicians (the Paul Dano half of the Brian Wilson flick Love and Mercy jumps immediately to mind...maybe Straight Outta Compton too) but the rest of the biopics are pretty much all some variation of Oliver Stone’s The Doors. And you can go tell that Bohemian Rhapsody bullshit to the fucking tourists. Ohh...but what about the Academy Award, Tebo?? To quote Sick Boy: It means FUCK ALL! Does this mean I don’t rush out to watch every music-related flick the second it hits screens? Of course not! If y’all don’t know that I love hot garbage by now…
One flick that I did not rush out to see but, in fact, waited a full 20 years until a VHS copy turned up at the local thrift store to check out is the 2001 Mark Wahlberg vehicle Rock Star. I only vaguely recall seeing a poster for this movie, featuring a gauzy shot of a long-haired Wahlberg with a guitar case slung over his back (note: he does not play the guitar in this film) and the words “Rock Star” and thinking...dude...fuckin’...NO! You see, kids--given my age and the fact that I grew up outside of Boston, I will always think of Mark Wahlberg as Marky Mark of the Funky Bunch. NKOTB superstar Donnie Wahlberg’s underwear modeling baby brother who liked to get dusted and prowl the streets of Dorchester committing racially motivated hate crimes. When he started to try his hand at acting by fingerblasting Reese Witherspoon on a roller coaster and then decapitating her family dog in the 1995 film Fear, few could’ve guessed Marky would eventually eclipse older brother’s fame and go one to be one of the highest paid actors in the world. But hey--that’s what happened! Donald Trump was a bankrupt casino owner back in the 1990’s. The world is unpredictable and often terrible. Do I think he’s a bad actor? Not really. His work in films like Boogie Nights and The Departed is unimpeachable and his Academy Award nomination for the latter was well deserved. Do I think he’s a good person? Not really. The amount of time I spend thinking about Mark Wahlberg on a given day is usually around zero minutes...but he’ll occasionally show up in the news for making a boneheaded claim like how he would’ve single handedly prevented 9/11 had he been aboard Flight 11 that fateful morning. Speaking to the New Yorker in 2012, Walberg said “If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.” You hear that, thousands of bereaved family members?? If only Mr Good Vibrations had been on the plane y’all’s loved ones would still be alive!! Here in Boston, though, the Wahlberg’s remain a beloved dynasty. They’re like a low rent, burger schlepping version of the Kennedy’s minus the Brahmin accents and all that untimely death.
First, a little bit of history: In 1992, Judas Priest lost their inimitable frontman when Rob Halford quit the band. This I knew. In 1996, Judas Priest hired the frontman of a Judas Priest cover band (Tim “Ripper” Owens) to be their new lead singer. This I did NOT know. By the late 90’s I was too busy listening to Elliott Smith and crying in my congee to pay much attention to the latest comings and goings in the decimated world of 80’s metal. At that point, a lot of arena superstars of yesteryear were slowly starting to regroup in severely diminished form, often sans an essential original member or two...or three...or four. I really can’t think of another genre that has continually fleeced ticket buyers out of their hard earned dollars with bullshit, ad hoc lineups with less shame than 80’s metal. If, for example, you want to see LA Guns you really need to pay attention as there’s often THREE different lineups simultaneously active, one of which is led by drummer Steve Riley. Who the hell wants to see that shit!? That’d be like Larry Mullen launching Larry Mullen’s U2 with a fake Bono, fake Edge and fake Adam. Here I should confess that, before the pandemic hit, I had tickets to see a Skid Row-less Sebastian Bach play the first Skid Row album in its entirety...and tickets to see a Sebastian Bach-less Skid Row play….whatever it is that the Sebastian Bach-less Skid Row plays in the year 2020. You want to see Joey Molland’s Badfinger play a Chinese restaurant at Hampton Beach, who am I to judge!? Judas Priest, though, were part of an upper echelon of metal bands (Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Def Lep) that took a hit in the 90’s but never ended up playing the nostalgia cruise circuit (note: I didn’t actually research that last claim before making it. They may have played a cruise. I hear those gigs pay quite well!). Yes, Judas Priest was fronted by a dude from a Judas Priest cover band during the lean years, but Halford rejoined the band in 2004 and they’re still going strong today. Or...actually...I just looked at their wikipedia page and their current lineup is Halford, bassist Ian Hill, and some hired guns. So maybe forget that last part!
Despite the fact that people were busy listening to a shitload of Limp Bizkit and nothing else in the year 2001, someone over at Warner Bros thought that the Ripper Owens story should be made into a movie and that people would want to pay money to see this movie. They changed the names to protect the innocent (Priest is Steel Dragon....Owens is Chris “Izzy” Cole...the music was written specifically for the film by a head-scratching crew of also rans from the worlds of both metal and alt rock ). They cast Brad Pitt as Owens, which is awesome, but he quit the film before shooting started and they replaced him with Mark Wahlberg, which is less awesome. Seriously, did they watch those scenes in Boogie Nights where Dirk Digger tries to record an album and think “this guy can SHRED!” (“You got the TOUCH….You got the POWER!!!). They cast Jennifer Aniston of the fuck you popular television show Friends...who looks like the heaviest band she listens to is the band who wrote the Friends theme song...as ChrissIzzy’s high school sweetheart, Emily. And behind the camera we have Stephen Hereck, who also directed Critters, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, Mr Holland’s Opus, and the original Bill & Ted. That’s a serious run of ace flicks right there but the vibe he brings to Rock Star is all over the map. It’s like he was shooting for something that would fall between the abject depravity of Motley Crue’s The Dirt and the safe, lightheartedness of Wayne’s World. Something with enough sleeze for the Judas Priest fans out in the Heavy Metal Parking Lot but not so much sleeze as to scare off the Aniston diehards. What he ended up with was something that played like a Behind the Music episode (seriously--there’s faux interviews and everything. I kept expecting to hear a narrator say “next up...Steel Dragon...BOTTOMS OUT!) that appealed to exactly no one.
What happens is this: We open at the practice space of Blood Pollution, a Steel Dragon cover band, in the city of Pittsburgh in the year 1985. Right off the bat I’m doubly confused ‘cuz the Judas Priest-related events recounted in the movie actually occurred in the late 90’s. Also--almost ALL of the music in this film came out AFTER 1985. Like...is that fucking EVERCLEAR on the soundtrack!? Come on, dudes! Anyway, Chris (Wahlberg) is the singer of the band and he is CUT! Like, from marble. Leather jeans, a leather jacket, and a bare chest all day long. He’s serious as a heart attack about this cover band shit, too. When his lead guitarist Rob (future Deadwood star and non-guitarist Timmy Olyphant) plays a lick that deviates slightly from the Steel Dragon original and Chris balls him out. Me? Speaking of balls, Wahlberg’s character sings like he has his stones in a vice...but his vocals were actually recorded by Steelheart frontman Miljenko Matijevic...and if you actually know who Steelheart is then you are totally someone I want to know! After practice, the fellas head to the local arena to check out the REAL Steel Dragon. Chris ends up in the front row, where he wails so loud that Steel Dragon singer Bobby Beers gives him the nod of approval from the stage because of course he does. Later, Chris and a thoroughly bemused looking Jennifer Aniston (Emily) try to get backstage, but Steel Dragon’s gross goblin of a manager Mats says that backstage can only be accessed via fellatio and the fellas decline. Later, the members of Blood Pollution run into the members of a rival Steel Dragon cover band in the parking lot and they argue over who has bigger dicks before brawling. Ho hum.
The next morning we learn a bit about Chris’ home life...which looks pretty friggin’ idyllic. Dude is pushing 30 and works at a Copy Cop by day but he gets to live rent free at his parent’s piece...and they’re mad supportive about this whole cover band business. Shit, his mom is the Sparkle Motion lady from Donnie Darko! Who rules harder than that lady!? To be fair, his older brother is a police officer who comes into his room and beats him gently with a nightstick and makes vaguely homophobic comments...but what are you gonna do? He’s a cop. At least he doesn’t, you know, shoot him. By night, when he isn’t screaming balls with his buddies, Chris sings in the church choir with Emily. Later, she comes over to his house and they swig Jack Daniels and listen to AC/DC and she rubs ice all over his nipples. I thought maybe dude just liked a hard nip but I guess this was foreplay for a little piercing sesh. Afterwards, Chris is like “i’ma do you now” and she’s like “umm...do you know how much money I make on Friends?? You think I’m gonna bare my breasts for this flick YOU GOT ANOTHER THING COMIN’!” Blood Pollution’s next gig is at a local steel mill and it’s attended by, like, five THOUSAND people!! Look, I know some cover bands do pretty well. Shit, right now there’s a Sublime cover band that outdraws the band with the actual non-deceased members of Sublime. But that band ceased to exist 25 years ago. This movie supposedly takes place when Judas Priest was still filling 20k arenas. Were there really cover bands that could pull in the thousands that were active at the same time?? I really don’t feel like looking it up so I’m just gonna say that there was not. Blood Pollution also has an elaborate, multi-level stage set (with STAIRS!) and a dressing room with those lighted showbiz mirrors. Tim Olyphant looks in the mirror and says that he just keeps putting on makeup until he wants to fuck himself. I laugh a little laugh. Look, I’ve worked as a tour manager for approximately one tour and have been backstage at clubs all over the lower 48. If you aren’t in, I don’t know, Green Day, then your backstage situation is probably either a dank, windowless closet with a complimentary bag of Tostitos and a sixer of Miller High Life or NO backstage area at all. Have fun taking shits next to your van before the show! ANYWAY, Blood Pollution takes the stage and the crowd roars like a lion. I’m not sure who wrote these faux Judas Priest tunes but they sure as shit doesn’t sound like Judas Priest. In fact, they make Firehouse sound like Cannibal Corpse. Halfway through the show, Timmy O starts to go off script again. He starts to go “needley needley NEEE” when he’s supposed to go “dun dun dun DAHHH!” Chris is livid. He pulls Tim aside for a long conversation about the importance of honoring the music of Steel Dragon in THE MIDDLE OF THE SONG! You ever been onstage while a band is playing? You can’t hear fuck all up there! Tim is like “whatever dude” and keeps finger tapping away. Chris is so pissed he unplugs Tim’s amp….which is NOT GOOD FOR YOUR AMP! Tim simply turns it back on and continues to play but now Chris, hothead that he is, grabs his mic stand and destroys the friggin amp! Dude, amplifiers are expensive! They immediately start beating the shit out of each other right in front of all of those thousands of fans. Show: over.
Chris and Emily show up to practice the next day all nonchalant like dude didn’t just annihilate a $5000 Mesa Boogie MK II for no good reason. Unfortunately, the band already has another dude singing. I’m directing that “unfortunately” toward the band because the dude they have singing is Third Eye Blind frontman Stephen Jenkins...and that dude is a Diiiiiiick! Legendarily unpleasant, that guy! Chris is all “time for this chump to leave...I’m the singer” but Tim says “bro, the only one leaving is YOU!” He tells Chris that the fellas are tired of playing in a cover band. Chris tells him to hush up his mouth...that they aren’t merely a cover band--they’re a TRIBUTE band! “I don’t just cover Bobby Beers...I AM Bobby Bears!” Tim says that the band wants to start writing original material but Chris scoffs and says “pssh, originals suck!” I mean, not always. See--The Beatles. And also--lots of other bands. Chris is like “fine fuck you then...but I’m taking MY mic stand and MY mic cables” and the other dudes are like “shiver.” Chris storms out but Tim is like “Yo Rachel--you wanna manage us?” and she said “sorry but all of the talent just left the room.” SNAP! So Chris is out and the other guys start writing songs and eventually morph into a little band called Nirvana! Not really, though.
Chris is a man without a country for like three minutes ‘cuz the very next morning he receives a call from Steel Dragon’s guitarist Kirk, inviting him to come to LA to audition for, you know, Steel Dragon. (I see that I unintentionally wrote “Steel Panther” in my notes a bunch. Isn’t that another famous cover band? Ahh, who gives a toss). This cat Kirk is sitting by a swimming pool, stroking his mane….bikini-clad groupie on each side of him. I have to say--I’ve watched countless hours of music interviews and documentaries in my lifetime and the only English rock stars I have seen who speak like the ones in this film are the ones in Spinal Tap. The word “caricature” doesn’t even do it justice. These geezers are all “alright then, luv--a bit of the old rumpy pumpy, then?” So Chris and Emily fly to LA (with David Lee Roth’s California Girls pumping on the soundtrack, natch) where they are picked in a limo by this statuesque, cokey brunette named Tania who does….what, exactly, I’m not sure. She tells Emily that she loves her tits. Ice: broken. They’re chauffeured to the type of mega mansion/recording studio that no actual band actually resides in. When Chris arrives, Kirk explains that Bobby quit the band and they’re auditioning singers and they received a tape of Blood Pollution from some groupies and OH SHIT...Bobby is there at the house! Holy awkward, Batgirl! He clomps around complaining about how he’s a sober professional who goes to bed at 11 on the dot every night and everyone else is getting lit up like a Xmas tree every night. Then he removes his wig, revealing that he had short hair all along! Oh, he also reveals that he’s gay...I guess...because Rob Halford is gay? I don’t know--they try to bend it like he’s quitting the band because of his sexuality...which is untrue. One of the other members says “it’s none of our business who you bugger, mate!” It’s at this point that I realize that the non-British Steel Dragon guitarist is longtime Ozzy sideman Zakk Wylde! Oh Shit! I’m sure he was just stoked to be in this movie. You could try to up this movie’s fun factor by taking a shot every time Zakk Wylde has a line (of dialogue). It’s cool--he only has like four lines so you’d probably still be OK to drive...after about six hours.
Chris passes the audition and the band calls an emergency press conference to announce their new singer. An MTV veejay asks Chris, who has decided to rechristen himself IZZY, if he can scream balls and he proceeds to unleash a sickening howl that goes on for, like, 30 full seconds. Seriously, I’ve heard animals die with more harmony. The interviewer asks Chris where he learned to belt like that and he’s all “umm...mostly in church choi…” but Dale cuts him off and says “ummm...what he meant to say was he got that voice from eating pussy!” Ehhh….Erm...are you supposed to scream whilst cunnilinging?? I knew I should’ve paid attention in 7th grade health class! Chris’s dad, watching the interview at home, hears this and turns to his wife and says “hey! Like father, like son!” I immediately barf all over myself.
Steel Dragon take their new hire right out on the road. We know this because there’s “preparing the arena for a tour” montage that was stolen wholesale from that MTV Pop Goes the Music commercial (Before the stage is set…before one lick of a guitar is played…before the crowd roars…!). When the house lights go down for the first gig, Chris comes bounding out on stage and falls right down the fuckin’ stairs. Steel Dragon have much steeper stairs on their set than Chris’s cover band did. Steel Dragon’s stairs go to 11. Dude struggles to his feet but the crowd boos and throws cups of warm piss and holds up signs that say “Bring Back Bobby!” Chrisizzy simply runs to the side of the stage, grabs a live fire hose, places it between his legs like a massive hose cock, and drowns the entire audience. And this crowd? They just lick it up….lick it up….OHHH...ohhh...OHHH!! Yeah, I realize that’s a KISS song but they used it in that montage I just mentioned. Now that he has the crowd eating out of his sweaty palms, he struts out his little Steven Tyler ego runway and explains that he was just a nobody until about a minute and a half ago...and “if you want it, dreams really do come true!” I’d probably roll the credits right here but I guess it has only been like 50 minutes so...on we go!
We head backstage after the gig, where shit is going OFF! It’s every cliche you’ve ever heard, seen, or read about...all under one roof! Throngs of people throw their bodies against a bouncer, who struggles keeps them at bay outside of a chain link fence. In the inner sanctum, people help themselves to pill and powder refreshments. Chris is “forced” to retrieve a shot glass of tequila from the bare cleavage of a groupie as some sort of boneheaded band initiation ritual. Here I should mention that my friends and I went backstage at a Radiohead concert 10 years ago and experienced the following: Thom Yorke sipped coconut water while discussing politics with the former sax player from the band Morphine. Bassist Colin Greenwood asked us if we’d like to commandeer his ipod and offered to fetch us a second round of beers. Drummer Phil Selway told us it was lovely to meet us and said that he thought they’d played a lovely show and that they always enjoyed playing at that particular venue, which he called, you guessed it, LOVELY! Later, we fed an octopus a bunch of ecstasy and cranked Basement Jaxx and let that motherfucker RIP! Anyway, Chris and Emily leave the venue and head to some nightclub for the after after party (did I mention he brought his girlfriend on the tour? Well, he did. Does she not have a job??). When Chris walks into the club people start to faint and shit. That gal Tania is like “yo, everyone here want to fuck you!” I mean...seriously!? After one gig this dude is catching panties like Tom Jones at the Flamingo?? Tania wants to set up a threefer with Chris and Emily and, you know, Emily seems into it. I know I was dunking on Jennifer Aniston earlier for the fact that she’s Jennifer Aniston...but she totally throws down here. I’d probably hire her to front Steel Dragon before I hired Mark Wahlberg. They all get out on the dancefloor and Aniston is making out with Tania and also Wahlberg...like...a lot. Like...disgustingly. Like...easy with the tongue there, Diggler. She’s probably thinking “wow, good thing I don’t have to make out with Brad Pitt, who is ALREADY MY REAL HUSBAND! UGH!” The next morning, Emily wakes up in bed with two people, neither of which are anyone I recognize as having been in this movie prior to this scene. She looks around the hotel suite and it’s just a bacchanal of boobs and butts. She can barely locate Chris through the thick coital chemtrails. She heads for the bathroom, where she finds Tania taking a leak….STANDING UP! Wait, so is Tania a dude or just a gal who enjoys peeing while standing up!? Honestly, if I knew the answer I’d totally tell you! She’s rarely seen or spoken of again.
After another two...two and a half minutes of tour montage, Emily decides that she’s already burnt out. Hey, you know what they say about the road: it ain’t no place to start a family! It probably didn’t help that they made her travel in the band aid limo...and that all of the women in this film who are not Jennifer Aniston are greasy groupies. She tells Chris that she just got a loan and that she’s moving to Seattle to start her own business. How she accomplished all of this from the back of a limousine in the year 1985 we do not know. Chris is like fine...cool...whatever...see you when the tour rolls into Puget Sound. Chris immediately returns to his job burning through every rock n’ roll cliche in the book. Does anyone watching Rock Star at home have “throws television from hotel window” and “drives motorcycle through a Ramada Inn” on their rock n’ roll bingo cards? Well mark ‘em off ‘cuz they’re both here! By the time the Steel Dragon party hits Seattle, our boy Chris/Izzy is fucking mangled! Emily tries to ride the elevator up to Chris’s suite but one of the bouncer’s is like “you gotta have a pussy pass if ya wanna party with the Dragon.” Yikes, dudes. Yikes. When she finally gets a hold of Chris, she’s dismayed to discover that he’s on everything but roller skates. She’s like “dude, we were supposed to hang out when you came to Seattle, remember?” and Chris is all like “whassisss Sssseaatttlle??? Lessss GO to there!” and she’s like “we’re already in Seattle, dickhead. See you NEVER!” While they’re in the middle of this super serious conversation, one of the groupies taps Emily on the shoulder and says “look, do you mind if I fuck him real quick? I gotta get to work.” I do not laugh.
With Emily out of the picture, Chris turns all sullen and prickish. When he isn’t on tour he spends his days listlessly tooling around the Hollywood Hills in his $100k sports car, wearing shades and a perma-scowl, occasionally stopping to dispassionately sign autographs and boobies for the fans camped outside of his mansion. He also gets the brilliant idea that he should start writing his own original music, even though he dismissed the idea way back at the beginning of the movie. He shows up to the Steel Dragon mansion/studio with a knapsack full of dope lyrics and chord progressions but the rest of the Dragon dudes are all “bah hah hah not so fast there Lenny Cohen!” Kirk says they need to stick to their formula or they’ll run the risk of turning into Ratt (good call. Brew pubs, dude). I see that I wrote “Zakk Wylde goes hunting” in my notes. I have no idea what that’s about but I don’t doubt its accuracy. That cat looks like he hunts. I also notice that the drummer of Steel Dragon is totally Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham’sssssss son Jason. So there’s that. Anyway, they decide to start recording their new album right then and there. You mean Chris is gonna record his vocals in the middle of a giant living room with high ceilings and marble floors!? I call major bullshit! They pull up the track and Chris starts to RAP! They’re like “what the fuck are you doing, mate??” and Chris is like “ummm...this song sounds a little stock to my ears...I’m just trying to do something unique with it.” For me, this scene dredges up memories of Mary Mark’s Boston-centric cover of Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side (“Charles killed Carol...collect a big check/blame it on a black man...WHAT THE HECK!?). That’s the shit nightmares are made of right there, y’all. Needless to say, they are not interested in having this kid rap on their album. He’s all butthurt about it too. So much so that he decides he will QUIT THE BAND! In the middle of the next gig, Chris hears a kid in the front row screaming along with the tunes JUST like HE used to do way back in the day 6 months ago! Chris pulls the kid onstage and is all “you want to be the lead singer of this band now? Have at it, homie!” The other dudes barely even seem to notice that Chris is gone so what the fuck anyway, right? In a bizarre twist, the kid who replaces Chris in Steel Dragon is Myles Kennedy, who replaced Scott Stapp in Creed (I believe they called themselves Alter Bridge tho) and also replaced Axl Rose when Gn’R played the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame and also replaced Paul Westerberg in The Replacements. Well, not really that last part...thank god.
So after riding the Dragon for just over a year, Chris decides that working at Copy Cop is just as good as playing to tens of thousands of fans...blowing rails for breakfast, lunch and dinner and waking up in a puddle of orgy in a different city every morning. It’s a completely abrupt, nonsensical turn of events and not AT ALL like what went down in real life. Ripper Owens was in Judas Priest for almost seven years and left when Rob Halford decided to return. That makes sense. This? Doesn’t! Maybe this is why the Priest was like “ehh...maybe don’t use any of our music or our name or anything else about us in your crap ass movie.” After he leaves the livin’, Chris moves to Seattle and shaves off his locks and starts wearing Docs and baggy flannels and a puka shell necklace. One day, he runs into his old buddy Timothy Olyphnat who, as luck would have it, has also cut his hair and given himself Seattle circa-1992 makeover. Wait, isn’t it still 1985 though?? Tim-O says that grunge is the wave of the future, maaaan, and Chris wholeheartedly agrees. Ten seconds later they’ve got themselves a coffee house circuit-ready alt rock band. Aggro, but with acoustic guitars and a cello player. One afternoon their new band is onstage at a cafe playing some hyper generic tune that sounds an awful lot like The Verve Pipe because it is The Verve Pipe. When Chris notices that Emily has entered the cafe, he leaps off the stage and tells the band to just vamp it up without him for a bit. Bro, this is some shitty two-chord song, not “Whipping Post!” He asks if she’s still single. Even though it has been somewhere between 8 months and 8 years since they’ve seen each other, and she is Jennifer Aniston, she is still single. They suck face aggressively. The movie ends. OH WAIT! This is one of those flicks with a gag real that plays over the credits. And tucked away way back here, we find the best part of the movie...and it’s this: Wahlberg is onstage, preparing to film some Steel Dragon concert sequences. Someone calls action but, instead of Steel Dragon tunes, they start cranking “Good Vibrations” by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Ohhh, baby Wahlburgers got CLOWNED!! And he looks PISSED, too! Show us your Calvin’s, Marky Mark!! Anyway, I’m gonna go throw British Steel on the turntable and try to forget this movie ever happened. And I’m gone….I’m gone...
Last year, while discussing David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, I clowned on Nicolas Cage pretty hard for his overwhelming Nicolas Cage-ness. I also spelled his first name wrong throughout the entire 5000 word article, which is wicked unprofesh and probably the reason why this website has very few regular readers. I said that Cage lives the sort of ostentatious lifestyle that makes Liberace look like Mother Theresa (I like that line so much i’ma use it again!). I said that he owned a Velociraptor skull and had a crippling castle-purchasing addiction and lived on a strict diet of komodo dragon meat. I didn’t really bother fact checking any of these claims before I made them but I had a strong feeling that I read this stuff somewhere...and I totally did! (well...maybe not the komodo dragon thing). In 2019, the New York Times dispatched ace interviewer David Marchese to ask Cage a lot of probing questions that were mostly answered in rambling, quixotic Cagespeak. Over the last decade, Marchese has developed a formidable reputation for getting good copy out of notoriously prickly celebrities, with the notable exception of the late Lou Reed, who ate Marchese’s lunch for him. Literally. Crab salad with avocado, if I recall correctly. Over plates of head-on branzino, Cage told Marchese that he thought his reputation as a profoundly erratic, eccentric kook was undeserved. Cage also said that he believed that his pet cobras were secretly plotting to kill him...and that he purchased property in the state of Rhode Island because he believes that the Holy Grail is buried there. The actual Holy Grail. Look, I spend a fair amount of time in the Ocean State. They have no shortage of red clam chowder and coffee milk...but the Holy Grail?? I don’t know, dude. Cage admitted that his poor financial decisions landed him in the straight-to-streaming B-movie ghetto, where he’ll take any paying gig that comes his way, sight unseen. Still, the sheer amount of product he’s been pumping out lately is kind of mind boggling. Cage amassed 15 credits over the two year span from 2018-2019...and you gotta figure they’re still paying that dude low six figs, right? Maybe not the type of dough to keep him decked out in bald eagle-skin jackets but probably more than I’m making waitin’ tables. Cage admitted that not all of his recent films are “Blue Chip.” Oh man--you mean the Nick Nolte basketball movie!? Making 15 different versions of Blue Chip is a total Nicolas Cage move. Oh wait--I think the movie I’m thinking of is Blue CHIPS. Never mind, then.
While we’re on the subject of Nic Cage’s questionable decisions, check out this timeline: after years of being dogged by cries of nepotism for being Franny Coppola’s nephew, Cage fully and properly broke through in 1987. The accolades came spilling off the page for his work in Raising Arizona and Moonstruck...and well deserved, I might add. At this point, the keys to the kingdom were his for the taking. He probably could’ve gotten Die Hard. He could've dressed up as Harry and met Sally. Instead, he took the lead in a low budget horror-ish flick called Vampire’s Kiss, where he fully cultivated the deranged, eye-bulging persona that still sends people searching for YouTube supercuts with titles like “Ten Minutes of Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit!” I realize that the entire premise of VHS of the Week involves me explaining plots of movies to you...but Vampire's Kiss kind of defies explanation. I kinda want to just stop right here and tell you that you need to see this one for yourselves (or watch one of those aforementioned supercuts) but I can’t, in good conscience, recommend viewing this film. (Unless you have a shitload of intoxicants on hand. Then, by all means, let her rip). It is uniquely terrible but also compulsively watchable. I have seen it thrice and I still have absolutely no idea what this movie is even supposed to be! I did some mild research and learned that it was written by Joseph Minion, the dude who penned the screenplay for the 1985 film After Hours, which is Top Ten Scorsese if you ask me. Depressed over a recent breakup, Minion wrote Vampire’s Kiss as a commentary on the toxicity of deteriorating relationships. To say that this is not at all evident in what ended up on the screen is putting it VERY fucking mildly. You remember that one flick Wolf where Jack Nicholson sustained a wolf bite and was like “oh shit--I think I might be a werewolf” and he totally was and we had to spend two hours watching the sixty-something Nicholson run around Central Park in khakis and werewolf makeup, eating birds and horses and David Schwimmer? Same idea here in Vampire’s Kiss except (spoiler alert) Nic Cage is not, in any way, shape or form, a VAMPIRE! Read on…
What happens is this: we open with an extended montage where the camera gazes lustily upon the gothic architecture of Manhattan. The dude who directed this movie clearly fancies himself a regular Sidney Lumet or some shit. The soundtrack: ominous. Tone: Candyman serious. We dissolve into a nightclub, where we meet heavily carousing literary agent Peter Loew (Cage). (Note: I’m just now remembering that Nicholson’s character in Wolf was also a literary agent! Shit man--must be a high risk of transforming oneself into fictional creatures in that industry!). Peter is drinking a glass of white wine at a nightclub, so right away, I do not trust him. Then he opens his mouth to speak and HOLY SHIT, Batman! I have absolutely no earthen idea what Cage is going for with this “accent.” I turned to my partner and said “what the hell is THAT supposed to be?” and she said “it sounds like he’s trying to impersonate Nicolas Cage.” Maybe he’s trying to sound like a pompous 18th century land baron or something? I really don’t know. He turns his “o’s” into “ewww’s.” Instead of pronouncing his last name, Loew, as “Low” he says “Leeeewwww.” Despite everything I just told you, this dude is a HIT with the ladies! He’s got this stunning gal Jackie (future Harriet director Kasi Lemmons) hanging on his every mangled word. They get ripshit drunk and retire to his brownstone, where she immediately gets buck nekkid, leading me to believe that intercourse is imminent. They move the action to the bed but, before they can get to the gettin’, a friggin’ bat flies into the apartment through an open window, which is not NOT a buzzkill. Smack that nasty bastard with a squash racquet and get back to business! But no--Jackie runs out of the apartment in her skivvies and I guess they decide to go to hers. The next morning, while in session with his therapist Dr Glaser, Peter admits that the bat episode left him feeling horribly aroused. The shrink is like “don’t you think that the naked lady straddling you caused your arousal?” But Peter says that his erection did not come to fruition until he was alone in the apartment with the bat. The doc is like “whatever you say, man. It’s your dime, kookaburra.”
When Peter arrives at his office, he learns that he needs a copy of a writer’s contract from way back in 1963. He summons his floral print dress-enthusiast secretary Alva (ass kicking Running Man star Maria Conchita Alonso) and tasks her with digging up a copy of the contract. And that, my friends, is the ENTIRE PLOT of the movie. Peter’s slowly gathering homicidal rage at his secretary for her inability to promptly locate a copy of the contract. Dude, I made home movies in elementary school with heartier plotlines. I mean...I guess there’s the “vampire” stuff too. About that: After work, Peter is back out on the scene trying to pull birds. He meets this gal Rachel (Flashdance’s Jennifer Beals) and she agrees to go home with him because this guy SMASHES! Even though he’s an uptight honky with a non-specific accent, ladies be all up on his business like HUH!? Rachel disrobes and layeth on the bed but, before they can ball, she bares a set of fangs, chomps down on Peter’s neck, and drinks his blood. Man, I did not see that coming! Or...maybe I did a little...but only because of the title of the movie. Ok so this usually means that he is now also a vampire and all of the usual rules governing movie vampires will start to come into play; don’t expose them to sunlight, don’t get them wet, don’t feed them after midnight, etc. But when he wakes up, Rachel is nowhere in sight, so he puts a bandaid on his neck wound, chugs some Maxwell House, and heads out (in the sunlight) to meet Jackie at the New Museum. My confusion spikes. While they’re strolling through the museum, Jackie asks Peter if he’s enjoying the what-have-you and Peter says “I gotta piss” and then immediately exits the building and hails a taxi, leaving poor Jackie high and dry. Later, she leaves him an answering machine message where she says “fuck you!...and also fuck you!” Peter hears this and says “well fuck you too, sister.” The feeling: mutual. He calls her up the following evening and apologizes and harangues her into meeting up for a conciliatory beverage or two. On his way to slam rieslings, though, Peter runs into Rachel and decides he’d rather spend the night doing naked vampire stuff. So that’s what he does...and hey, who am I to kink shame? If a dude wants to get his neck drunken then that’s his business. Jackie is less understanding. After sitting at a bar alone picking listlessly at a plate of spinach dip for three hours, she finally grabs a napkin and writes “stay out of my life!” Even though he never appears to actually receive said note, he does just that. He stays out of her life. She is never seen or heard from again. 86 Kasi Lemmons.
Back at the office, Peter starts to crack like a champagne flute. He falsely tells Alva that his client is furious that she can’t find a copy of that contract. He screams at her until she flees from his office, scared for her goddamn life. He chases her into one of the common areas and, in full view of all of their co-workers, leaps atop a desk, strikes an Elvis pose and howls “am I getting THROUGH to you, ALVA!?” What, does becoming a vampire turn you into an asshole or something?? Shouldn’t this dude be home hiding under a blanket during the daylight hours, crushing eps of True Blood?? He seems to grow more unhinged with each passing day. He chases Alva into the ladies room, where she cowers in a stall and tells him that she has a gun. This seems to just piss him off even more, even though I’m pretty sure vampires are impervious to the effects of bullets. Do they not have a human resources department at this publishing firm?? Sweet Jesus. Someone must’ve dropped a dime on Peter at some point because he’s forced to explain his behavior to his superiors. Luckily they’re all old white men, and they just sit around a conference table, smoke cigarettes, and have a good laugh at Alva’s expense because the 80’s were terrible.
Now dude starts to go completely off the chain. He destroys his own apartment...just cuz. He goes to see his therapist and asks her why his secretary can’t find the missing contract. She’s like “Huh? Dude...how would I know?? Who cares?” “The contract should be in the file!! Who misfiled it??” he screams. He then proceeds to recite the entire alphabet, growing more cartoonishly aggravated with each passing letter. It’s fucking nuts. When he returns to the office he decides to apologize to Alva for the way he’s been treating her. Ahh, so therapy DOES work! He tells her his behavior was the result of some bad mescaline. She says that she understands as she used to dabble in mescaline back in high school. Dude, maybe see if she wants to party! Don’t let those flowery dresses fool you: MCA will tune you up! But nope--the truce is short lived. He immediately goes apeshit again over that contract. While on the way home from work, Peter passes an illuminated crucifix outside a church and drops his groceries and starts screaming and IS HE A VAMPIRE OR NOT!? The only evidence we have in the pro vampire category is the fact that Flashdance shows up every night to drink his blood. But wait! One morning after their nightly glug-a-thon, he’s chatting with her in the shower and she ISN’T REALLY THERE! Ahh...ok...so if this was Fight Club she’s the Brad Pitt to his Ed Norton? Or--is the vampirish half of his personality Brad Pitt?? Sorry, I haven’t seen Fight Club in a long ass time. Also--sorry for ruining the end Fight Club for you...but not really. It’s 22 years old...maybe watch it already if you care so much. Anyway, he’s either a vampire or just fully spun. Probably the latter. Speaking of fully spun--after his shower, Peter dresses for work and walks through his kitchen, where he spots a fat ass city cockroach on his stovetop. He grabs the bug and disappears it right down his gullet. Check this out, though: that cockroach was real. And Nic Cage? He really fucking ate it!! The filmmakers were like “wouldn’t it be gross if this dude ate a raw egg?” and Cage was like “SILENCE!!! I’m a method actor! If vampires eat cockroaches (note: do they?) then I too shall eat a cockreeewwwch!” I heard he also strenuously avoided garlic and subsisted on the blood of freshly killed virgins for the duration of filming. Seriously, dig through the New York Times’ archives from the late 80’s. If there are any unsolved vampiric homicides from Manhattan or the surrounding boroughs from the summer of 1988, your suspect is probably Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage.
One afternoon Peter arrives at the office and discovers that Alva has banged out sick. So what does Peter do, crazy motherfucker that he is? He takes a taxi all the way out to Canarsie or wherever the shit and shows up at Alva’s house! He appears at her kitchen window, where she’s ironing in a bra, natch. He brings her a packet of Lipton’s Instant Chicken Soup as a peace offering and asks her out to dinner (note: what’s the instant soup for, then? An appetizer?). Even though this dude has abused her to the point where she’s afraid to show up for work, she jumps right in the waiting taxi! She even tells him that she isn’t really sick. And hey, maybe Peter has finally learned the error of his ways and decided to be a kinder….ope...scratch that! He starts to go ballistic before the cabbie even puts the car in drive. He works himself into such a lather that he actually starts to retch! It’s mad gross. A panicked Alva begs cabbie to pull into a gas station where her brother Emilio works. She rushes inside and asks Emilio if he’s packing any heat. Luckily, he is. Unluckily, his gun is loaded with blanks. Now, I know fuck all about guns so I’m curious: do Brooklynese gas station attendants typically carry pistols that are loaded with blanks? I thought they only used blanks in the movies. Like...do people go to gun stores and say “gimme a Glock 19...and a box of BLANKS!” ANYWAY, Peter is so pissed about this unscheduled gas station pit stop that he calls Alva the C-word. Jesus CHRIST, man! He drags her back to the agency and tells her that she isn’t allowed to leave until she finds that contract. He then retreats to his office, where he stares into the mirror and moans “I’ve become a vampire! It can’t be! It isn’t possible, right?” Is that a rhetorical question? Are you asking ME? Dude, I have no idea!! You certainly seem to think so..soooo...if the shoe fits. While he’s in the middle of probing whether he’s a mythological creature or not, Alva finally locates that stupid fucking contract. She rushes to tell Peter the good news but dude has gone full Lestat. He screams “it’s TOO LATE!” over and over in a creepy, singsongy voice while chasing Alva into the basement. She pulls out her piece but Peter is all “YEAH! Let’s party! Light me up!” She fires a couple into the ground but that duddn’t stop Peter. He tears Alva’s clothes off and knocks her to the ground and OH MY GOD THIS MOVIE! Peter picks up the gun, puts it in his mouth, and starts to pull the trigger repeatedly but nothing of note happens. I was always of the impression that you could still injure yourself with blanks. Isn’t that how Brandon Lee died….ish?? Again, not a gun expert! Having failed to expunge his brain from his head, Peter takes to the streets, where he wails “I’m a vampire!” like a shitfaced toddler….even though it is abundantly clear at this point that he is NOT a vampire.
So now what the fuck, right?? I mean, other than having verbally, physically, and sexually abused his secretary, Peter isn’t a complete lost cause just yet. He could totally get his life back on track after, what, 35 years in prison? Rachel’s apparition appears to him and says “you know what to do.” I mean...does he?? He sprints to the nearest occult shop and tries to purchase a pair of fake vampire fangs. But dude...he only has, like, 5 bucks so he has to buy the shittiest pair that they sell! A giant, white pair of plastic choppers that barely fit in his maw. He runs to a pay phone and calls his therapist but she can’t understand a word he’s saying because of the fake teeth. Mouth leaking drool like a sieve! He then grabs a pigeon off the street, takes it home, and eats it. In this case, I don’t think Nic Cage ate an actual pigeon...but do you know who has two thumbs and DID eat a pigeon once?? (Here I point to myself with both of my thumbs like a douche). THIS GUY! Don’t worry...it was at a proper restaurant in Portland, OR called Le Pigeon. I didn’t just grab a motherfucker off the sidewalk, smother it in Frank’s Red Hot, and wolf it down. Peter also starts sleeping under his sofa because why not. The next night, Peter takes his fake teeth out to a nightclub, where he prowls around making scary faces, only to be ignored by the clubbers. They’re probably just seeing what I’m seeing: a dude with ill-fitting vampire teeth who looks like he desperately needs to take a shit. In the VIP area, Peter sidles up to a woman all “I vant to suck your blood” but she’s like “drop dead, dickhead.” So what does he do? He MURDERS her! Right there in the club! He snaps her head back and sinks his fake teeth into her neck. Dude, no way you’re getting full pen with those chintzy $3.99 vampire teeth. But yeah...no...she dies. Gruesomely. Peter stumbles out onto the dancefloor where he runs into the vampire Rachel. He’s like “phew, thank god...I’ve had a DAY! Let’s Netflix and chill” but she’s like “ummm...am I supposed to know who you are or something?” Peter is super confused because he had been under the impression that this woman had been doing weird vampire/sex/butt stuff with him every night. So now we can officially, unequivocally say that this has NOT been happening! Let the record show: not a real vampire or vampire-adjacent creature. He gets tossed out of the club around dawn. He yanks a plank of wood off of some discarded pallet, sharpens the plank into a stake, and then runs around the Lower East Side begging random passersby to kill him. The people look extra disturbed by the sight of a blood-soaked Nicolas Cage begging to be murdered...and the reason for this is that they were actually being approached by stake-welding, blood-soaked Nicolas Cage. They filmed these scenes from concealed locations so the puzzled reactions you see are genuine. Man, it’s a good thing he didn’t catch me after I finished watching The Wicker Man. I might’ve taken a stab at him!
While Peter is limping down the streets, having a session with Dr Glaser in his head, Alva wakes up Emilio and tells him that Peter raped her. Dude hops in his Trans-Am and is crossing the Brooklyn Bridge before Alva even has a chance to fasten her seatbelt. Peter continues his imaginary dialogue with his therapist as he makes his way back to his apartment. He tells her that her profession is bogus and, I mean, he’s kinda got a point. If your patient is out murdering people as an ersatz vampire then you are probably a piss poor therapist. When Peter arrives at home, he crawls under his couch for a little vampire disco nap. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you’re in the group of people who can’t wait to see this movie end), Emilio busts into the apartment before Peter can start sawing logs. He pulls up the couch and discovers Peter crawled up in the fetal. Peter yells “leave me alewwwwnnnn!” but Emilio does not leave him alone. He grabs a hold of that wooden stake and stabs Peter to death. Just one stab, real quick-like, without much fanfare or gore or anything at all, really. As he’s drifting off to death, Peter sees an image of Rachel. She whispers “dream of me.” And that IT! That’s the entire movie! Although that ending kind of leaves the door open for a sequel. Nic Cage would totally do it, too. I know it has been 31 years but Cage mentioned Vampire’s Kiss like FOUR TIMES in that New York Times article I mentioned way back at the beginning of this review. Or a one-man broadway show?? That shit would be bonkers!
So to recap: Vampire’s Kiss is about a promiscuous literary agent who terrorizes his secretary over some misplaced paperwork. At some point he becomes convinced that he’s a vampire despite showing zero symptoms of vampirism. He rapes his secretary and commits an actual murder before being himself murdered by his rape victim’s brother. Like Morgan Freeman says at the end of Seven: the world is a terrible place and worth fighting for. Wait, I think I might’ve fucked that up. Whatever. The end.
Here’s the deal: I recently spent some time clicking through my medical records in my healthcare provider’s online portal. This is what has started to pass for entertainment after months upon months spent living in quarantine. Unbeknownst to me, my doctors/therapists/podiatrists were all required to enter notes in a digital log after each visit. I must say, I was shocked to see that a lot of the entries described me as being “easily agitated” and also suffering from OCD (not the podiatrist though...she just talked about my plantar fasciitis). My first thought was, “I can’t believe my doctor thinks I’m easily agitated! I’ll fucking KILL HIM!!!” After I slapped a couple of door jambs and calmed myself down, I tried to think rationally about these various secret diagnoses, particularly the OCD. I thought of the reviews on this website and how quite a few of them begin with a personal story about how I needed to see such-and -such film the minute it opened in theaters because my actual life depended on it. How many times have you heard me say “I was so upset that I missed the opening night of Uncle Buck, I cried for 48 hours straight and lost my sense of smell for six months?” Probably one time, if you read my review of Uncle Buck. I’m not a medical doctor, but I feel like the behavior I just described is textbook OCD. Having a pathological necessity to be the first in line for the latest hot flick or toy or gadget is hardly a unique phenomenon. Nor is cracking someone is the jaw when they grab that last Furby before you can get to it. If you want to spend four days living in a tent in subzero temperatures in the parking lot of a Best Buy just to be the first to get your hands on a PS5, who am I to judge!? Because, you see, there’s this one “first in line” episode from my past that stands out as particularly outrageous, especially considering that my interest in watching the film in question was middling at best. I’m talking about Batman Returns, Tim Burton’s follow up to his record-shattering 1989 flick Batman, a film that arguably gave birth to the summer mega blockbuster as we would come to know it over the last three decades. As I have mentioned time and time again, I do not enjoy superhero films. Any of them. I would rather spend three hours in a sensory deprivation tank than watch one of those Avengers movies. The Nicholson/Keaton Batman, though, was marketed aggressively toward 10 year-olds (like me) and I dove in whole hog. I had the trading cards, the ball cap, and that Prince soundtrack album with all of the weird sex songs on it. I still think it’s the only superhero movie worth watching ...but again...it’s one of a small handful that I have actually watched...so maybe don’t listen to me.
Batman Returns, which opened on June 19th, 1992, wasn’t even near the top of my Hotly Anticipated Summer Movies ‘92 list (the #1 spot was reserved for the Eddie Murphy flick Boomerang, which is horribly underrated, and also, screamingly inappropriate viewing for a 13 year-old ! I think we had to buy tickets for Cool World and then sneak into Boomerang). A crew of recent 8th grade graduates from Grafton Middle School were planning on rolling into the 12PM Saturday matinee of Batman Returns...and we were planning on rolling DEEP. At least a dozen heads, boys, girls, and all. In the week leading up to the screening, I would lie awake in my waterbed riddled with anxiety, trying to tour manage the event in my head. How the hell was I going to make sure that everyone got tickets!? AND twelve seats in the same row?? You see, kids (pulls out old man soapbox...clears throat) nowadays you can reserve your seat online and have a plate of steak frites with bearnaise sauce and a glass of Cab Franc waiting for you before they roll the coming attractions. Back in the early 90’s you just had to pull up and pray. I knew we’d have to show up at least an hour early, if not earlier. I ran the details of my latest neuroses-filled cinematic escapade by my mother, who also functioned as my long-suffering chauffeur. “I have to work early Saturday morning, so you’re shit outta luck,” she replied like a bucket of cold water. My mom is an ornery cuss just like me. It’s where my salty tongue comes from! I paced around our living room covered in flop sweat, gray hairs beginning to prematurely sprout around my temples. “But...but,...what if you just dropped me off on your way to work then?” I stammered. “At 7AM!?” she asked, “Hey, your dime, kiddo!” Everything was going to work out after all. 7 AM was five hours prior to showtime. I figured arriving on the scene that early would guarantee me a spot near the front of the line, right? Oh man...you have no idea! Early Saturday morning we pulled into the parking lot of the White City Triplex, which sat in the far corner of a shopping plaza on the banks of Lake Quinsigamond, which is apparently one of the top rated lakes in the country for hosting competitive rowing races. It’s also where our Datsun 280ZX went to its watery grave after it was stolen from outside of our three-decker...so there’s also that. Much to my surprise and my surprise alone, there was no one lined up to see Batman Returns at 7 AM. I hopped out of my mom’s car, walked to the front of the building, planted my feet, and just STOOD. For five hours. With nothing but the shirt on my back and the $3.50 in the front pocket of my Umbro shorts. No walkman to listen to my recently purchased cassingle of Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway” on. No books, no magazines, no deck of cards, no yo-yo, no food, no water. NOTHING! Just me, alone with my own sick thoughts. I mean...spoiling a movie was a long, slow process in 1992. Why the hell was I standing out there for all that time? Bragging rights??
Off to my left ran Route 9, a four-lane thoroughfare that was, and still is, choked with traffic pretty much around the clock. At some point during my epic stand around, my reverie of blankness was interrupted by the sound of screeching brakes and shattering glass. Two cars in the eastbound lane had collided! A dude in an ‘86 Dodge Caravan rear ended a dude in a Honda Prelude, causing the Honda to gently careen into the jersey barrier. It was a fairly low stakes car accident as car accidents go. Maybe a broken tail light or two and some minor cosmetic damage. These dudes were hopping mad, though! They leapt from their respective vehicles all “motherfucker motherfucker...I’m gonna sue/kill you!!” Not much I could do, being a child and all, but some brave couple in a Ford pickup pulled over and got between the dudes while someone ran into Burger King to call 911. Within 20 minutes the scene was swarming with police cars, ambulances, and firetrucks. Even the Umass Life Flight Helicopter did a flyover, but prolly only because the hospital was a literal stone’s throw away, on the opposite side of the narrow lake. Maybe the chopper pilot was having a slow morning or something...I don’t know. It was abundantly clear that no one was injured, but both drivers requested medical attention and were both eventually laid out on the asphalt with collars on their necks and oxygen masks on their faces. They were loaded into ambulances for a $1000 ride to the hospital that was 1/18th of a mile away. Next came the flatbed tow trucks to sweep up the debris and remove the still-drivable vehicles from the road. This little car crash side drama took about 90 minutes, soup to nuts. And by the time the last remnants of the minor violence had been cleared from the scene, I was STILL the only person standing there waiting for the goddamn movie! Like, the ushers and popcorn hustlers were probably still riding the snooze button and I had already spent three hours in front of their place of business, waiting for them to come sell me a ticket and tear it in half. When my friends finally started to trickle in around 11:15 they refused to believe the car accident story, which was already ancient history by that point. Nary a red sliver of busted tail light remained as evidence. I was possibly in a manic state by then, swinging wildly from “I can’t believe we’re finally gonna see Batman!” to “Fine I don’t care I don’t even want to see this stupid fuckin’ movie I don’t care I’ll go see Sister Act instead I don’t even care!!!” People did eventually start to queue up, and the movie was sold out, but it wasn’t THAT sold out! We could’ve easily strolled in at 11:45 and still purchased tickets. Once we had our Butterfingers and extra large Mountain Dew’s we finally took our seats in the dark, air conditioned theater and watched Batman Returns. What I remember is that I remember everything that happened in the five hours I spent waiting to watch Batman Returns far more vividly than I remember anything that happened in Batman Returns.
I decided to watch Batman Returns for only the second time because it is Christmas Week and I am shit out of Christmas flicks to write about. Before you get all aggro and hurl your hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps at your tablet, please know that I plucked this film from someone else’s list of Xmas movies. I realize there are reams of contentious articles that have been written about whether certain films (Die Hard, Gremlins, etc) are actually Xmas movies or merely Xmas-adjacent. This would/should be amusing but people are serious as a heart attack about this shit. Check out the comments section of one of these articles if you have a minute to waste. Peg T. from Malden, MA says that Die Hard bears Satan’s fingerprints and is an affront to her family’s Christian values! Holy smokes! Me? I could give a figgy fuck either way. Right now I can’t run to the 7-11 across the street from my apartment for a bag of Hershey’s Kisses without worrying about potentially contracting a deadly virus...so I tend to worry more about that and less about whether The Ref is still a Christmas movie even though Kevin Spacey is a sexual predator. Does the flick have a Christmas tree? Works for me! Does Eyes Wide Shut make me want to spin my Nat King Cole vinyl and also attend a masked orgy? Yes and Yes. Double win! Man, I am RAMBLING! We should really get around to talking about Batman at some point. I’m surprised those doctors didn’t include logorrhea on my rap sheet!
Anyway, what happens is this: We open at a mansion in the City of Gotham, where a couple of local upper crusties have just given birth to something fetid and foul. We know this baby child is no bueno ‘cuz he grunts and growls in his bazinet and chows the family cat. His mom and pops look on in terror, clutching their martnins, and HOLY CRAP the dad is Pee Wee Herman!! He was persona non grata in Hollywood by 1992. Maybe he filmed his cameo before he got busted doing the five knuckle shuffle in a Florida porno theater. Big kudos to Timmy Burton for leaving his scenes in this flick. Pee Wee and his wife look at this fell ghoul and shoot each other looks of “ain’t nobody got time for this shit!” They wrap this what-have-you in swaddling clothes, take him to the nearest river, and dump him in the drink. He floats on down down down, ok, down through the subterranean tunnels below Gotham, where he is taken in by a raft of penguins. The opening credits roll. Right away I noticed that the screenplay was written by Daniel Waters, whose big credit up to that point was the profoundly un-kid friendly flick Heathers. I wonder if this means that Batman will ask someone to fuck him gently with a chainsaw!? I guess we’ll see! Also--whereas Gotham ‘89 was all sleek and supermodern, this film looks like it’s set in the early 1900’s. The gentlemen all wear top hats and carry canes and newsies prowl the streets hawking their morning editions. The main set piece, Gotham Square, is an homage to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, a flick I discussed endlessly during my four years at film school but never actually watched. I feel like the producers went to Burton and said “look, since you made us a chunk of change on the last pic we’ll let you do your sad outcast jig if you promise to blow a bunch of shit up at the end.” And Burton said--cool. If Nightmare Before Christmas Burton is your Burton, there’s much to like here visually.
We settle into present day Gotham City, which is decked out like the wide aisle of a CVS in the middle of December. We meet local business bigwig Max Shreck, who is played by the world’s most impersonated actor and man who has been 75 for the last 30 years Christopher Walken. Shreck is supposed to be an homage to the Nosferatu vampire, not the green ogre who did not yet exist when this film was made. Shreck is discussing his plans to open a massive power plant with Gotham’s mayor but the mayor is refusing to play ball. While Shreck and the mayor trade unpleasantries, Shreck’s secretary Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) dawdles around in the background looking all mousy. We know she is unsexy because she wears eyeglasses. Shreck and the mayor head outside to attend the lighting of the Gotham Christmas tree, which is all the proof I need that this film is a Christmas film. You don’t go lighting Christmas trees in non-Christmas movies, DO YOU!? Before they can do the honors, a massive gift box creeps on the scene. It’s being driven by the guy who played the subway ghost in Ghost and real life Ghost Vincent Schiavelli, so you know that can’t be good! The gift box explodes, raining evil henchmen all over the town square like lollipops. The gift box is equipped with a friggin’ Gatling Gun so old Vincent takes aim at the crowd and blows holes in about 200 innocent bystanders. Not really, though. There’s a lot of gunplay in this film but few people actually receive gun-related injuries. The bullets mostly hit the Christmas tree and shatter bulbs and lights (“Shoot….the glass!”--Hans Gruber). Nothing a really solid dustpan and brush couldn’t take care of. A voice screams out for Batman and the Bat-Signal suddenly illuminates the night sky. Meanwhile at Wayne Manor, our dude Michael Keaton is lounging around in his Bruce Wayne costume, looking all glum, chum. Maybe he’s thinking “if only Pacific Heights had done better at the box office I wouldn’t be stuck putting on this silly ass cape again.” But suit up he does. He hops in the Batmobile and rolls into town pressing all of the right buttons, neutralizing about a dozen bad guys. Le sigh. In the middle of the melee, Shreck is kidnapped and brought to the multipurpose underground city zoo/villain lair, where he comes face to face with...The Penguin! Oh shit, remember that gross baby from two paragraphs ago?? I guess he was raised by penguins and went on to form an evil crew of fucked up carnies and Crow (the movie) cosplayers called The Red Triangle Gang. What does The Penguin look like? A jaundiced potato stuffed inside of a pair of shit-stained pajamas with the head of Tiny Tim (the dead ukulele player) and the voice of Danny DeVito (because it is Danny DeVito). The Penguin tells Shreck that he’s a reasonable dude...that all he wants to do is to enter society and not be scorned because of his appearance. He also wants to search for his birth parents. Shreck is like “I’d love to help but I gotta practice my dance steps for that Fatboy Slim video. Maybe try Ancestry.com?” But see--The Penguin has the goods on Shreck. He knows that he’s crooked as a barrel of snakes and plans on profiteering with his power plant and whatever whatever. Shreck knows he’s dead to rights, so he agrees to bring the Penguin up to Gotham and help him press some flesh.
Meanwhile aboveground, Selina arrives home from work and spends a good ten minutes talking out loud to herself about how slovenly and unloved she is. She plays a bunch of disappointing answering machine messages and laments that her cats are having more exciting sexual escapades than she is. Dude...WE GET IT! No one loves nasty ass Michelle Pfeiffer! Move on, already! Selina realizes that she left the Xerox machine on and has to rush back to the office, where she encounters Shreck. He’s in a foul mood, as one tends to be post-kidnapping. She unwisely mentions that she accidentally accessed Shreck’s secret files and knows of his nefarious plot to steal power from Gotham with his, umm, power plant. Ok, so this movie is like Chinatown but with no incest and power instead of water. Got it! Shreck is super PO’d. Selina says “you can’t kill me..I...OH DAMN!!! He throws her right out the fuckin’ window! An awning breaks her fall, but when you are thrown from the 80th floor, there’s not much fall to be broken. She’s dead. Within seconds, she’s smothered in kittens, which is adorable! Then they start to gnaw at her flesh, which is less adorable. She wakes up but now she’s some sort of...cat zombie? She returns to her apartment, where she immediately chugs a gallon of milk, which is terrible for cats!! They didn’t know about all of this back in ‘92, but if your cat really needs something to wash down their free range, grain free chicken pate, give them a squirt of organic oat milk. Here I should mention that I have a cat named Gary, who has about five times as many Instagram followers as this website you are reading does. That’s OK--I still love ya, Gar! Anyway, after she’s full of dairy, Selina puts all of her stuffed animals in her garbage disposal, destroys her own apartment, and starts licking her own butt. Now only two of these things I just told you are true but I ain’t saying which ones! She tears open her closet and pulls out her one BDSM outfit and voila! It’s Catwoman! Let the double entendre’s flow like skim!
The Penguin makes his entree into society by foiling a bogus kidnapping plot. They hook him up with an attic apartment and agree to let him search for his parents, who are dead as Dillinger. He learns that his birth name is Oswald Cobblepot, which sounds an awful lot like Chester Copperpot, who was a character in a movie that is better than this one. I see here that I wrote “Danny DeVito crawls out of a couch naked” in my notes, but I think I was just trying to remind myself to watch a certain episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Over at the Wayne Manor, Bruce is flipping through articles about the Penguin’s gang on microfiche while his long suffering butler Alfred decorates the Xmas tree. Actually, Alred still has TWO Joel Schumacher Batman flicks to act in, so maybe he’s only medium suffering at this point. Or simply: suffering. Bruce thinks that The Penguin’s has more malicious intentions because he’s a gruesome talking penguin. He brings his concerns to Shreck, who brushes him off. While these two are chatting, Selina appears sans eyeglasses, hair all mussed into an I’ve-just-been-sexed shape. Remember: glasses=homely house frou. No glasse=sex bomb! Oh, she also has a bandaid on her forehead, cuz falling out of an 80 story building will scratch up your dome something awful. Bruce gives her the elevator eyes. Hard.
Shreck goes to see the Penguin bearing two gifts: a dead fish (for eating) and news that he has started an exploratory committee to feel out the Penguin’s prospects for being elected mayor of Gotham. Dude has got a campaign office and everything! Shreck figures he can use the Penguin as a puppet while he siphons power from Gotham, literally and figuratively. “You’ll be my own personal Reichstag Fire,” Shreck tells him. Man, all of this shit went WAY over my head back in the day. Who knew that the Penguin from Batman Returns would foretell the rise of Donald Trump!? While The Penguin is being introduced to his staff, a campaign worker makes a comment that rankles the Penguin, so he grabs the guy and bites his friggin’ nose off. Blood is spilled all over the office. Happy summer movie season, kids!!
As night falls on Gotham, the Catwoman heads out to Catwoman it up. She meows a bunch and snaps the heads off of mannequin dolls with her whip. She attempts to blow up one of Schreck’s department stores but Batman intervenes and they have the first of like 15 rooftop fight scenes. Batman is all like “who ARE you!?” and I’m like DUDE--her face is barely obscured! She’s clearly that secretary you were eyeballing in Schreck’s office earlier in the day! Duh! So now these two hate each other like cats and bats. The next day, Catwoman goes to visit the Penguin in his boudoir. When he sees her he says “just the pussy I’ve been looking for!” She says she wants him to help her frame Batman for some future murder becuase, what, she already hates him THAT MUCH!? This all feels a bit thin to me, y’all. The Penguin asks why he should trust “some cat broad.” They talk about scented ointments and Catwoman sprawls out on the bed to give herself a tongue bath. The Penguin gets all excited and micturates all over himself. I wonder how many children walked out of this movie and asked their parents to drive them to MacDonald’s so they could order a Happy Meal with a Batman Returns toy inside. My guess: zero children.
In a crazy twist that I’m sure NO ONE saw coming, Bruce Wayne asks Selina Kyle if she’d like to join him at his manor for an obligatory dinner scene (all of these flicks have one). While Alfred dutifully tops off their glasses of riesling, Selena asks Bruce if he has ever been in a serious relationship before. He says yes--to Vicky Vale, but that their relationship ended badly when Vicky Vale let Prince record the two of them having sex and set it to music before releasing it as a single that few people purchased. They make out a little, Bruce and Selena do, but they keep it over the clothes. The next night, though, they’re back in costume and back kicking and scratching and licking the shit out of each other. Catwoman even manages to piss off the Penguin, who calls her a lousy minx and threatens to have her spayed. He throws her off yet ANOTHER building, but now that whole “cats have 9 lives” countdown begins in earnest (7 to go, according to my math). Batman tries to hightail it back to the Batcave but the bad guys done gone ahead and jacked up the Batmobile. He careens around town smashing into everything in sight, driving the movie’s budget skyward. He escapes unscathed but now he’s wicked cheesed. At some point, he burns a CD of the Penguin clowning on the people of Gotham. When the Penguin goes to give his next stump speech, Batman hacks into the PA and plays the Penguin popping off. (“And when you’re famous, they let you do it!”). It’s his Access Hollywood tape moment! The Penguin looks at Shreck like “help a Penguin out here, man!” but Shreck looks back at him like “ehh, you’re on your own now, bird buddy!” The crowd starts to boo and throw eggs and tomatoes. Luckily, the Penguin carries an umbrella with him at all times. Unluckily, his umbrella is also a machine gun, which he trains on the crowd before opening fire (again...loads of bullets...no deaths!). Mayoral hopes dashed, the Penguin decides to bare his teeth. “I’m not a human,” he howls, “I’m an animal!” He announces that he’s going to kidnap all of the firstborn sons and daughters of Gotham while they sleep in their beds and send them to a dark, icy grave. Like, holy shit, dude! You are gonna murder CHILDREN!? This shit might give me nightmares now and I’m in my FORTIES.
Despite this credible threat, Max Shreck refuses to cancel his annual holiday masquerade ball. Dude’s still gotta get HIS, right?? Everyone and their friggin’ mother shows up and they have scallops wrapped in bacon going ‘round and a cover band that only knows how to play Rick James’ “Superfreak.” Looks like a good ass time! Bruce Wayne arrives sans mask (irony). He locates Selena and they dance to this Siouxsie and the Banshees tune that was the only pop song associated with this movie. Don’t get me wrong--I love Siouxie Sioux as much as the next cat...but one single single isn’t much of a substitute for an uncomfortably sexual full-length Prince album. Bruce and Selena kiss under the mistletoe and reveal their true identities to each other. Like they didn’t already know!? “Does this mean we have to start fighting now,” Selena/Catwoman asks. That’s a solid line...I’ll give ‘em that. Suddenly, the room is rocked by an explosion and the Penguin emerges from underneath the ballroom floor like the Buzz Killington that he is. He glances around the room at the people dancing the Roger Rabbit and noshing on tuna tartare crostinis and screams “look at all of you dressed up like a bunch of JERKS! My minions are out there RIGHT NOW preparing to kill ya kids!” You know--I’m on the Penguin’s side here. He DID tell them that was his plan! These rich assholes have no one but themselves to blame! The Penguin releases waddles upon waddles of penguins with frickin missiles strapped to their backs onto the streets of Gotham. Apparently Warner Bros. got some serious static about this scene because they used real penguins...but it died out quickly. It’s not like they used real missiles for chrissakes. The killer baby penguins are supposed to blow up Gotham but Batman jams the signal and redirects the missiles toward the zoo. The bombs start to fly and it’s like ten straight minutes of explosions. My eyes start to glaze over. The Penguin kidnaps Max Shreck aaaaaagin and retreats to his underground lair. Batman flies his Batplane right up in there like what’s up and knocks the Penguin into a river of toxic waste, where he turns into Jack Nichiolson’s Joker from the last movie. I mean...I wish. Shreck tries to escape but Selena shows up with her Catwoman costume shittly applied. She’s hanging out of that thing big time. If there was any doubt about her true identity it has evaporated like my desire to finish writing this review. Batman tells Catwoman that they should apprehend Shreck and turn him over to the proper authorities. He even rips his own mask off, Batman does, and it looks chintzy as fuck! Was it made out of rubber?? It looks like one of those costumes you used to buy in a box at Toys-R-Us back in the day, remember those? Shreck pulls out his pistol and shoots Batman but dude is impervious to the effects of bullets. He starts to shoot Catwoman, who still has a few lives to spare, but her tank is on E! Catwoman grabs a live powerline and shoves it in Shreck’s mouth like he’s the shark at the end of Jaws 2. She gives him an open mouth power kiss and they both explode! The Penguin emerges from the toxic sludge looking like Jason Voorhees at the end of Friday 1 and promptly drops dead. The penguins carry him off to his penguin grave. I’m gonna miss that nasty bastard, not gonna lie.
One night however much time later, Bruce Wayne is being chauffeured around town when catches a glimpse of what he thinks might be Catwoman in an alley (she possibly used up her 9th life in that big explosion? It’s super unclear). Bruce calls out for Alfred to stop the car. He runs into the alley but it’s a real cat...not an adult woman actress miming cat. He decides to take the cat home with him. I don’t know, dude--you got a litter box and toys and scratch posts at home? Cats can be a lot of work! They head to the manor for a subdued Xmas celebration. Alfred wishes Bruce a Merry Christmans “and goodwill toward men (long pause) AND women!” Alfred the butler--practicing inclusivity since ‘92! The flick ends with a shot of the Batsignal burning up the sky above Gotham City. Before we fade to black, the outline of Catwoman’s head appears at the bottom of the screen! She still had more lives to live after all! Me? I feel like I used up most of my lives waiting to watch this movie that Saturday morning back in 1992. But wait--why didn’t Catwoman get her own movie then?? Was the Catwoman they made with Halle Berry supposed to be a belated follow up to this flick? I know people HATED that Catwoman but I’m not sure if it was because the movie was terrible or if people are just racist. Probably both. I suppose they could still make a direct sequel to Batman Returns though, right? Keaton? He’s been hot again ever since Birdman. DeVito and Walken are still alive, even if their characters are not. I saw Michelle Pfeiffer play Bernie Madoff’s wife in an HBO movie a few years back and she looks like she could still rock some bondage gear at 62. Bring back Tim Burton to direct and I would totally watch this new Batman on opening day...on HBO Max on my couch in my own goddamn living room just like everyone else. The end.
Every year around this time, I can usually be found humbugging about how people rarely watch holiday-themed films that were released after 1994. Sometimes I wonder if this is actually untrue and that the reason I think this way is that I’m old. Maybe it’s a generational thing. Maybe people born in the 1990’s watch Ben Affleck’s Surviving Christmas on an endless loop while they’re chugging nog and tinseling their trees. Me? While I have no problem firing up the Die Hards every December I would love it if someone made a modern Christmas Classic. I even had medium hopes for The Christmas Chronicles 2 with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn but, honestly, I couldn’t even make it through the trailer. With the exception of Elf and Bullshit Actually, Xmas programming is still restricted to A Christmas Story, Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, and a small handful of other flicks from back around then. Scrooged, Bill Murray’s 1988 piss take on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, definitely keeps company with that handful of flicks I just mentioned. Over the years, a lot of people have asked me for my take on Scrooged and I didn’t really think I had one. I saw it in the theater when I was 10 years-old and I loved it because Bill Murray was my Rushmore and thus incapable of disappointing me. But just last week a bold declaration caught my eye and made me think it might be time to reevaluate. I was thumbing through my copy of Robert Schnakenberg’s The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray and was rather puzzled by the author’s declaration that Scrooged is “easily the worst film of Murray’s career.” Easily!? This guy made TWO Garfields and that stupid ass elephant movie! He was in Barry Levinson’s Rock the Kasbah, which is one of the worst movies made by anyone ever. I decided to follow up with the late Roger Ebert, who called Scrooged “one of the most disquieting and unsettling films to come along in quite some time” in a scathing one star review. Dang, Rog! According to the interwebs, the film’s production was rocky. Like, Apocalypse Now-level rocky. Murray, who, it must be said, is so notoriously prickly that Danny Aykroyd nicknamed him the Murricaine, clashed furiously with Scrooged director Dick Donner (Superman, Lethal Weapon, lots of other movies that are not comedies). Donner’s idea of funny was to have Murray scream all of his lines at the top of his lungs, so that’s exactly what he does! The screenplay, by SNL O.G. Michael O’Donoghue, was neutered to the point of unrecognizability. O’Donoghue had this to say about what ended up on the screen: “We wrote a story that could make you laugh and cry. You would have wanted to share it with your grandchildren every fucking Christmas for the next 100 years. The finished film was a piece of unadulterated, unmitigated shit.” Holy smokes, people! Here I thought that everyone who isn’t New York Dolls bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane (more on him in a bit) LOVED Scrooged! Had I just misremembered the whole thing?? I decided to go ahead and give it another spin to see what was what.
What happens is this: Scrooged opens with a series of trailers for fake movies/TV shows, most of which look better than actual Scrooged. There’s The Day the Reindeer Died, featuring Fall Guy star and subject of the obscure late-era Beastie Boys track “Lee Majors Come Again,” Lee Majors. There’s Robert Goulet’s Cajun Christmas Special as well as a live performance of A Christmas Story, starring Buddy Hackett, Mary Lou Retton, and the Solid Gold Dancers. All of these cameos feel like a horribly misguided flex by Donner, who was already pushing 60 when this film was made. I’m gonna say that I had my finger firmly on the zeitgeist in 1988, being 10 years-old and all, and none of these dusty references rang my bell. I mean, the 1984 Olympics were pretty far in the rearview by this point. We cut to: a board room at IBC Television, where we meet network president Frank Cross (Murray), who immediately starts screaming at his assembled underlings. The trailers? He hates them. He says that he produced his own trailer for the Dickens Xmas Special (which he claims will cost $40 million dollars...which is $8 mil more than they spent on this unnecessarily lavish movie we are watching) and proceeds to unveil it. It features the following: a man shooting heroin, a freeway drive by shooting, and a commercial airliner exploding. A voice over says you need to watch the special because “your life depends on it.” Frank looks on, mouth screwed open, face twisted up with sick joy. Look...already...there’s no way that someone with these kinds of dark, demented thoughts would be put in charge of an Orange Julius, let alone a major TV network. Didn’t you see what happened to Dudley Moore in that Crazy People flick (hello?....hello?). Everyone in the room is thoroughly horrified, particularly this cat Eliot Loudermilk (Bobcat Goldthwait, buttoned down in costume but not temperament). Bobcat tells Frank that his commercial looks like an ad for The Manson Family Xmas Special. Frank thanks him for his input and then orders him to be fired and removed from the premises immediately. After the meeting, Frank is visited by his boss, played by legendary scofflaw Robert Mitchum, looking thoroughly bemused by the fact that he is appearing in this film. Mitchum tells Frank that television watching is on the rise among domestic cats and dogs and that the network should consider producing more pet-friendly programming. I feel like this is the set-up for a huge payoff later in the film. We’ll see if I’m right! After Mitchum waltzes off with his paycheck for two days of shooting, Frank starts to browbeat the shit out of his long-suffering secretary Grace, played by the lady who recently found herself on the New York Times list of the top 25 actors of the 21st century, Alfre Woodard. Frank insists that Grace work late so he can dictate his Xmas list (bath towels for most). Grace says that she needs to take her youngest son Calvin to a doctor’s appointment. Frank screams that he does not care and then tears up the child’s Xmas artwork that Grace has hanging in her cubicle, deeming it amateurish. The guy is THAT MEAN! Frank also receives a visit from his brother and real life Murray brother John Murray, whose shameless attempt at forging a career out of impersonating his brother yielded approximately one movie (1985’s Moving Violations...which isn’t all that bad. Sally Kellerman is in it!).
When Frank and his brother exit the building, they pass a band of street musicians that features Paul Schaeffer, cheese whiz sax maestro Dave Sanborn, and Miles Davis. ACTUAL MILES DAVIS! Talk about a flex! Frank steals a taxi from an elderly lady and flips her the bird. He attends a gala where he is presented with some sort of prestigious TV trophy, only to turn around and discard the trophy in the back of another taxi. In case you somehow weren’t already picking up on it, this guy Frank Cross is a total fricken’ jerk. Meanwhile up in Harlem, poor Grace is dragging her son home from an unsuccessful doctor’s appointment. The boy? He can’t speak...and no one can do nothin’ about it. I feel like they already had a pill for that sort of thing by the late 80’s, but I’m not a medical doctor so please don’t quote me on that. When Frank returns to his office, he pours himself a Vodka and Tab and proceeds to do whatever it is that miserly network presidents do after hours. His lie-around-and-sulk is rudely interrupted by the appearance of special effects-laden apparition played by the dude who played Blake Carrington on that Dynasty show. This grey ghoul is the ghost of Frank’s former boss, who died youngish and unfulfilled or whatever. He tells Frank that he’ll be visited by three ghosts starting at noon the following day. I guess that’s more or less how the plot of the Dickens story goes, right? I should already know this shit. After all, I played young Ebeneezer Scrooge in a 7th grade production of A Christmas Carol that was begrudgingly attended by my parents as well as the parents of everyone else in the cast and no one else. Old Boss Ghost tells Frank that he’s pissing his life away being such a prick to everyone...and that he should fill his life with charity, mercy, and kindness. Frank calls bullshit and wonders aloud if his vodka was poisoned by the Cherynobyl disaster. This was a hot reference back in ‘88 and, you know, it’s a hot reference in 2020 too thanks to that bomb ass HBO show. The ghost slaps Frank around a bit and throws him out the window, where he plunges 80 stories and lands back in his office. He looks over at his phone to see that it is automatically drunk dialing Raiders of the Lost Ark star Karen Allen, who is Frank’s severely estranged ex-girlfriend Claire. He tells her answering machine that he needs to speak with her immediately. Mmm...mmm hmm.
The next day, which is Christmas Eve y’all, Frank arrives at work to news that his Xmas TV spot scared an 80 year-old lady to death. Frank is psyched ‘cuz dead old ladies=solid comedy gold. Speaking of Solid Gold, Frank is summoned to the set because the censors have an issue with one of the Solid Gold dancer’s exposed nipple(s). Ahh...Solid Gold--another cultural touchstone that was stale as shit by 1988. What’s next? Is Mikey Likes It from those Life cereal ads gonna show up and eat Frank’s breakfast? Frank screams at everyone on set and suggests stapling a pair of fake antlers onto the head of a real mouse. I mean...that mouse bit is kinda funny, no? Claire arrives on the scene and tells Frank that she came as soon as she got his message, even though they haven’t seen each other in 15 years. While Frank has been carrying on like a malevolent Jack Donaghy, Claire has been running a homeless shelter. Gotta have some character juxto, amirite? Even though Karen Allen is still in her Animal House, ass-baring prime, she tells Frank that she is unmarried and single because of course she is. She asks Frank why he’s so angry. He evades the question and continues to scream. The entire set collapses.
Frank heads out to the Savoy to meet Mitchum for a three highball lunch. Before he can order his oysters rockefeller, Frank realizes that it’s almost Ghost O’Clock and starts to hallucinate and ad lib profusely. Mitchum looks on in horror, perhaps wondering how his career led him from Cape Fear to Scrooged. Franks sees an eyeball in his cocktail that isn’t really there. When he spots a waiter fully engulfed in flames, Frank leaps to his feet, grabs a champagne ice bucket, and douses the waiter, who isn’t actually on fire. “Sorry,” Frank says to the waiter (who is white), “I thought you were Richard Pryor!” Wait a minute! Is this a joke about how Richard Pryor gave himself third degree burns over 50% of his body in a cocaine freebasing accident!? Dude, that is NOT FUNNY! Show Dick some respect! Frank sprints out of the resto and jumps into one of those old timey NYC Yellow Cabs driven by none other than Buster Poindexter! That’s right--the great David Johannson, frontman of the seminal glam outfit New York Dolls. He’s the Ghost of Christmas Past and man am I happy to see him! You know who was NOT happy to see him? His former bass player, Arthur Kane. Legend has it that an already down on his luck Kane was hanging around his squat one evening when Scrooged came on the TV. Kane was so distraught to see his former bandmate achieving silver screen success he fucking defenstrated himself. Sustained permanent brain damage in the fall and everything. It’s cool though ‘cuz eventually xenophobic vegan lunatic Steven Patrick Morrissey plucked Kane out of the wastebin of history and reunited him with the Dolls. They played a series of successful, sold out gigs in London in 2004, which is awesome. Two weeks after the shows, Kane went to the hospital with a headache and died three hours later of cancer of the everywhere, which is less awesome. ANYWAY, the cigar-chomping Ghost of Xmas Past brings Frank all the way back to 1955. Oh man--I wonder if they're gonna run into the McFly’s! You want a tab, you gotta order something! Nah, he brings Frank to his sad ass family home, which is the only house on the street where the halls remain undecked. Four year-old Frankie is aggressively ignored by his parents and spends all day glued to the telly. His dad comes home from work and he’s totally Bill Murray’s real life older brother, Brian Doyle. For those of y’all watching at home with a Murray Brother stamp card, please mark off spot #2. Pop Cross tosses the kid a package of veal shanks for Xmas. The kid whines and says that he wants a PS5. The old man tells the kid to get off his 4 year-old ass and get a friggin’ job then. Present day Frank, watching the scene unfold, sides with his old man. “A fine piece of milk-fed veal retails for $40-$50!” he says. And you know what? I kinda agree with him! Frank tells Buster Poindexter that he did have some actual happy memories from childhood, but Buster Poindexter tells him that his memories are actually the plotlines to famous television shows. I feel your pain, dude. I was a latchkey kid with a serious boob tube habit too. Remember when my family took in a wisecracking alien who ate all of the neighborhood cats? Remember when I had to pretend I was gay because my fusty downstairs landlord disapproved of a straight man rooming with two straight women? I do.
They journey forth to 1968, where a mulleted Frank is working as an assistant something or other at ICB. The swinging staff Xmas party is in full swing and everyone is hammered but Frank already looks miserable. One of the office gals sits on the copier and photocopies her asshole and hands Frank a copy and asks him out to Chinese food. Frank says that he doesn’t eat Chinese food because it is made from cats, which is a popular urban legend, and also, racist as shit. I’m fuzzy with the whole math thing, but if Frank was 4 in 1955 wouldn’t he only be 17 in 1968? Ahh, like Bill Murray said in an earlier flick: it just doesn’t matter! On his way home from work, Frank literally slams into Claire in the West Village and that shit is on like billabong. These two are living together in post-coital, pre-marital bliss in no time. Frank suddenly loves Xmas so much that he insists on opening presents on Christmas Eve. Dude cannot wait! He buys Claire a set of steak knives. And for him? A Kama Sutra book. Later that evening, they unwisely try to combine the gifts, bringing the film to a shockingly gruesome early conclusion. I mean...I wish! We jump ahead to ‘71, where Frank is appearing on a children’s variety show in a big floppy dog costume. Claire watches from the wings, with smiles for miles. After the show, a still alive Blake Carrington invites Frank and Claire to accompany him and his lady du jour to dinner that evening. Claire says that it’s Xmas Eve and they already have super unbreakable dinner plans with friends. Frank says that dinner with his boss is a huge opportunity and more important than friends dinner. Claire tells Frank that if he feels that way then they should separate. Frank is like fine, fuck you, BYE! Man, that shit took a TURN!
Frank is deposited back in the present day, where he materializes on the set of the Xmas Special. He screams some more and calls a woman a bitch. I see here in my notes that I wrote the word “Muppets” but I have no idea why. I think I wanted to suggest that this film would be a lot better with Muppets, much like A Muppet Christmas Carol, which also features Muppets. That one was a little tough though because it was the first Muppet flick after Jim Henson died and it was jarring to hear Kermit voiced by someone else. Less jarring than hearing Kermit voiced by a beyond-the-grave Jim Henson? Probably. Anyway, Frank hauls ass over to Claire’s homeless shelter. Among the assembled needy is the actor Michael J Pollard. Dude, I was just making jokes about you having sex with Charlize Theron in the review I wrote before this one! And look--here’s Anne Ramsey! Mama Fratelli! Oh right cuz Dick Donner directed The Goonies too. She really got the Roy Orbinson special, didn’t she? Long career...late 80’s comeback...followed by instant death. Claire shows up and she’s immediately sweet on Frank, even though he was a complete ass to her, what, earlier that same morning?? He wants to whisk her away to eat Chinese food. Claire says that she’d be happy to join him but that her volunteers were unsuccessful in procuring turkeys for the shelter and she needs to stay long enough to make sure no one goes hungry. Frank hears this and loses his shit. He calls the volunteers, women both, fat. He tells Claire that her staff is incompetent and demands that she liquidate them. Despite this unbelievable display of assholery, Claire remains calm and keeps pleading with Frank to just wait an hour or so. “Take the rest of your life,” Frank says, before storming out. Man, what a cock. Lessons learned so far: none.
Frank returns to the studio, where he finds an empty set. And also--Carol Kane in an angel costume, flying around the room on barely concealed ropes. She’s the Ghost of Xmas Present and the running “joke” is that she keeps beating the shit out of Frank. Well apparently Kane decided to get all method and really beat the shit out of Bill Murray. Of Kane, Murray said “she hit me so hard that she separated my teeth from my gums,” which seems like a really roundabout way of saying “she knocked my friggin’ teeth out.” These scenes are already kind of unbearable to watch without the knowledge that actual violence was involved. Although some hack at the Hollywood Reporter praised Kane’s performance and called her a “certified hoot” so what the hell do I know? Kane flies Frank up to Harlem, where they peep in on Grace and her SEVENTEEN children! They can’t afford a Christmas tree so they decorate Calvin ‘cuz that’s what you do with mute kids. Why no one in the present can see Frank when he’s with the ghost is never properly explained, just like whatever the hell happened to get this guy trapped on Groundhog Day. Kane stops beating Frank for long enough to tell him that Calvin stopped speaking after witnessing his father’s murder. Well why didn’t you tell us that before!? No wonder the doctor couldn’t help him! The kid needs a therapist, not a pediatrician! Next they fly over to Frank’s brother’s apartment, where the assembled Xmas Eve cocktail guests include real life Murray brother and man who got so shitfaced on Mad Men he pissed his pants, Joel Murray. That’s three stamps on the Murray brother card! Frank had intended to gift his brother a bath towel but Grace went behind his back and sent the brother a top of the line VCR (note: SIIIICK!!!). Frank says that he will now fire Grace. John Murray’s friends complain that his brother is an asshole jerk but John defends him and says that he got him a framed picture of the two of ‘em for Xmas. Everyone toasts to Frank. Speaking of toast, Carol Kane smashes Frank in the face with a toaster. Frank says “that bitch hit me with a toaster.” Yeah dude...we saw.
Frank is deposited in the ice-covered sewer from those C.H.U.D. flicks. He takes a look around and says “what is this? Trump Tower?” We could chuckle at this back then because Donald Trump was just some clown businessman and not the goddamn leader of the free world. GAH!!! Frank finds Michael J Pollard frozen to death and feels a tiny bit bad...but just a tiny bit. He ends up back in his office, where he pours himself a tall vodka and Tab. I gotta say--the product placement in this flick was super effective. I found myself thirsty for a Tab for the first time since their massive “Tab’s got SASS!” campaign in the early 80’s. Then I went 7-11 and learned that Coca-Cola just discontinued Tab THIS MONTH! Man, 2020 just keeps right on sucking. The Ghost of Christmas Future finally shows up, and he’s a big, scary FX monster. You know what’s even scarier than that, though? Bobcat Goldthwait also shows up brandishing a shotgun, looking to exact a little workplace revenge. I mean...I guess we didn’t have weekly mass shootings back in the 1980’s...but these scenes are tough to watch now. They certainly aren’t, you know, funny. Or Christmasy. My already dampened holiday spirits remain damp. Before Bobcat can blast a hole in Frank, Future Ghost tosses him in an elevator and drives him off to, you know, the future...which looks all Minority Report-ish. They must’ve spent a friggin’ fortune on this movie. It’s like Christmas Avatar. First, Frank checks in on Claire, who is at some fancy wine and cheese party. She’s somehow transformed herself into Nicole Kidman’s character from (pick any recent HBO Limited Series). She’s all posh now and she laments having wasted 20 years of her life helping “beggars.” Next, Frank drops in on his own funeral, which is being attended by exactly two people: his brother and his brother’s wife. Wait, what about Claire?? Why would she have undergone this massive personality change if she hadn’t gotten together with Frank? Did she just arrive at horrible on her own?? As Frank’s casket starts to slide into the cremation fireplace, undead Frank tries to stop it. “I want to LIVE!!” he wails. But….but...WHY!? What did you see over the last 30 minutes that made you decide that you cherish life?? What did you see, FRANK!? I’m really at a loss here, folks.
Frank arrives back in the present uhhhhhh-gain with his completely illogical newfound lust for life. Problem is there’s a dude in is office who still wants to murder him. Frank grabs Bobcat and plants a wet one on him and drags him down to the studio, where that Xmas Special is broadcasting live. Frank plans to interrupt the broadcast so he dispatches Bobcat to hold everyone in the control room at gunpoint so they won’t cut the feed. Bobcat points his shotgun at people’s heads while they whimper and cry plead for their lives and THIS IS A COMEDY HOW?? So apparently Bill Murray was supposed to jump on set and deliver this climactic speech but decided to go off script and have what onlookers described as an actual nervous breakdown. This whiplash character reversal makes absolutely no sense. I know that’s how A Christmas Carol is supposed to end….with Scrooge learning from his mistakes and changing his Scroogely ways. But this Frank fucker hasn’t learned jack shit! Robert Mitchum, watching the broacast from his mansion, is so upset by what he’s seeing he fucking kicks one of his cats! There’s your big payoff to that cat bit from earlier. Claire sees this slow motion car wreck on TV and rushes to the set, where Frank is still spewing his yuletide logorrhea. “It’s not too late! You can still spend Xmas with someone you love! Call an old friend! Call an army buddy! Here’s a picture of me and my way less famous younger brother!” Dude, tell it to your shrink, not 10 million strangers. Narcissism is a serious problem too, you know? After Frank finally tuckers himself out, he looks down to see little Calvin, who whispers “god bless us everyone.” Oh come ONNNN!!! This mute kid with severe PTSD...whose mom is gonna have her own PTSD from working for Frank...was so moved by that holiday word salad that he was finally moved to speak!? Bah Humbug to that friggin crap! Everyone is as happy as pigs in shit (except Michael J Pollard, who is still frozen under the 6 train). The ghosts of past, present, and future beam with pride. The whole cast breaks into a big show stopping performance of the Jackie DeShannon non-holiday classic “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” but they sing it all fucked up. They totally jack up the song’s cadence. It’s supposed to be “putalilLOVE in your heart” not “put-a-little-love-in-your-heart.” I have been annoyed by this for 32 years and counting. The credits roll. Bill Murray looks into the camera and yells “Feed me, Seymour!,” which is a line from a movie that is not this one.
OK, so I know I just talked a bunch of smack about Scrooged but I still think it’s a halfway decent flick. It’s a solid C+. I’d still rather watch this flick than Four Christmases or whatever bullshit any day. I often end my reviews with “god bless us everyone” but that friggin’ little quiet kid already beat me to the punch this time. God help us, everyone? That works. The end.
So here’s what happened: in 1999 I decided to spend the fall semester of my senior year enrolled in Emerson College’s Los Angeles Program. The program required all students to work a full time entertainment industry internship for school credit. There was really only one company that I was interested in--the company that released almost all of the flicks that inspired me to pursue a degree in filmmaking. The folks who put out Pulp Fiction and Clerks and Beautiful Girls. That company, of course, was Miramax. I mean...how was I supposed to know that the Weinstein Brothers were fuckin’ assholes?? And that Harvey Weinstein was a serial rapist?? There was already some serious stank around that company way back then. My internship advisor was already like “mmm...Miramax is a tough get...maybe not the best place for you to work.” BUT! There was a producer by the name of Marty Katz who had a first-look deal with Miramax...and whose VP of Development had just started teaching at Emerson and was looking to curry favor with the school by abusing the shit out of one of their interns. Within 24 hours of touching down at LAX I had two internships in the bag: Katz...and also Tollin/Robbins productions, where I would have been given the opportunity to do some PA work on the David Arquette wrestling flick Ready to Rumble. Even though Tollin/Robbins was a ten minute drive from the fabled, bizarro Oakwoods complex where they housed us (if you haven’t had a 3-way argument with Questlove and Dan Cortese of MTV Sports over a washing machine then you haven’t truly lived) and Katz’s Santa Monica office was a 90 minute trek when traffic was light, it really wasn’t much of a decision. The self-proclaimed “savior of Titanic'' versus the director of Varsity Blues?? Sheeeit. I figured I’d bust in there like Kermit the Frog and ask for the standard rich and famous contract and find myself out partying at Miyagi’s with the P-Word Posse by Thanksgiving. What ended up happening was--the kids who worked on the Arquette flick bragged about their amazing internship experience all semester and they all went on to lucrative careers in showbiz. I got donkey punched and flew home to Boston and Boston was like “here’s an apron and a clip-on bowtie. Don’t forget to upsell the French Onion Soup or you’re fired.” And that’s where you’ll still find me today...some 21 years later!
We’re actually here today to talk about the film Reindeer Games, which I have strenuously avoided watching until now, despite knowing loads of juicy, behind the scenes gossip about the flick. I have already spilled a lot of this gossip in various Facebook posts over the years to middling interest...probably because it is gossip about the film Reindeer Games. Before I sent in my resume, I had already read that Reindeer Games was supposed to open in December of that year and finally establish Ben Affleck as an action superstar or whatever whatever. I also knew that Vin Diesel had quit the film because he had this ridiculous contract that specified that there were to be no close-ups of his biceps, as those were reserved for “Vin Diesel Pictures.” I remember reading that and thinking “no one is ever going to leave their home to see a film just because Vin Diesel is in it.” Hey...when I’m wrong I’m wrong! I figured I was gonna get to assist in the flick’s post production. Maybe even get to attend the premiere and run my fingers along Danny Trejo’s tattoos. So—Day One I cruise into work in my white Pontiac Sunfire rental, decked out in Structure drawstring cargo pants and a striped Abercrombie and Fitch sweater. I walked in all “Whaddup y’all--where’s my ho ho ho hometown homie, Affleck? Is he here!?” One of the other interns was like “Ok shithead--here’s the intern welcome packet. It is 10 inches thick. You will spend the entire day locked in the conference room reading it. If you get hungry, there’s water.” On the front page, in giant bold letters, the words “GET READY TO RUN!!!” It began with a bio of Katz: a tour in ‘Nam...a producer credit on Albert Brooks’ Lost in America followed by a stint as VP of Production at Disney in the 80’s. At some point during Titanic’s rocky production he came aboard to help drag that beast across the finish line. Katz’s contributions were so significant that Jimmy Cameron forgot to mention him in his acceptance speech when he won his Best Director Oscar. I know this because Cameron was forced to issue an apology--a fact that clearly tickled Katz as he framed the apology and hung it in his office...right above his life-sized stuffed dummy of the murdered Hooch dog from that Turner & Hooch flick (sorry if I just ruined Turner & Hooch for you). Chapter two of the intern packet...perhaps the lengiest of all chapters...contained detailed instructions about how Marty Katz’s office was to be set up every morning...right down to the number of granules of sugar that he wanted in his coffee (served black...not too hot...and not cold either. Failure to comply will result in immediate termination). His copy of Daily Variety was to be placed five inches from the bottom left hand corner of his desk and opened to Page 2. Why he could not simply turn the pages himself, we do not know. You know what else we do not know? How this Napoleonic nightmare morning scenario played out...because I never got to meet Marty Katz. By the time I showed up that September, Katz had already moved on to his next Miramax assignment: a Gary Sinise sci-fi flick called Imposter, which was shooting at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach. Katz was on location for the entire four months that I was interning at his namesake company. Once a week, I had to bundle up his mail and drive it down to the set. Occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of his arm as he reached out and grabbed the mail from one of his assistants. Dude was like the friggin’ nanny from Muppet Babies to me: heard his voice...never saw his face! It’s really a shame he never got to see me run his morning relay ‘cuz I make a mean cup of joe and turn pages like a motherfucker!
So with Katz permanently out of the picture, I reported directly to the VP, who was busy writing books on the company dime and giving few shits about anything that Marty Katz Productions had going on. I quickly learned that everyone was profoundly unexcited about Reindeer Games...and I was about to hear about it like whoa! You see, kids--there was some insane glitch in the phone system at the office, wherein you could transfer calls to Marty at the Imposter set, but only if you played the calls through the speakerphone for everyone in the Santa Monica office to hear. Most people don’t believe this when I tell them...but there are instructions on how to execute this maneuver in my employee hand bible, which I still have! To this day I still have no idea why people wouldn't simply call Marty in Manhattan Beach when they knew he was there. To this day I also have no idea why they never made me sign an NDA...but...they didn’t! So....off to the races! The first issue they had with Reindeer Games was this: it fucking sucked. Test scores in the crapper. That’s not NOT a huge problem...but Hollywood has always been in the turd polishing business. I heard they wanted to hire a different editor to recut the picture. How did I hear this? Bob Weinstein called the office and screamed it into my soul. By now all of y'all have probably read all about the Weinstein brothers and their affinity for hurling cell phones at people and putting them in headlocks. To actually bear witness to this volcanic rage is something that I will never forget. I’m 42 year-old as of this writing and I don’t think I have ever heard an adult scream at another adult like Bob Weinstein screamed at Marty Katz...and I’m from Massachusetts...where people go from zero to “Go Fahhhk Yuhhself!!” in less than one second! Brother Bob’s speech pattern vacillated between mumbling drunk Woody Allen to bear howls...often within the same sentence. Weinstein was hot because the editor that Reindeer Games director John Frankenheimer hired was “a fucking idiot with fucking Alzheimer’s.” I always thought he was just saying that to be a cock...but I looked it up recently and I think the guy (Tony Gibbs) actually DID have some sort of dementia. Either way...RUDE! Bob says they need to get legendary Spielberg scissorman Michael Kahn to fix the flick. Only problem was...dude was on a cruise ship off the coast of the Azores or some shit. Didn’t matter to these assholes! They called the ship and had someone swim out to Michael Kahn at the pool bar and tell him that he had an emergency phone call in the captain’s quarters (this being slightly before widespread cell phone use and all). About a month later the VP hauled all five of us interns (unpaid...all) into the conference room and told us no one was allowed to leave until someone fessed up to making a $200 overseas phone call. Someone figured out it was the cruise ship call and we were off the hook...but this seemed to only make the VP angrier. Sigh.
So Kahn recuts the movie...and it still sucks. The next gripe had to do with the music. I want to say there was a score in place by Jerry Goldsmith but don’t quote be on that. Someone at Miramax wants to bring in uber music supervisor Karyn Rachtman (Reality Bites, Clueless, Reservoir Dogs) to give the movie some hipster cred. Miramax hated her cuts. She blamed their dismissive reaction on the movie being inherently terrible. Katz told everyone that she was too coked up to do her job properly, leading to a disastrous phone non-apology that we were all forced to listen to wherein Katz kept apologizing but also asking her what kind of drugs she was on. By this point it’s becoming increasingly clear that they just want to bury the movie. Reindeer Games was actually produced by Miramax’s “genre division” (a nice way of saying ‘all of our black and horror movies”) Dimension Films. Miramax’s big prestige holiday season flick that year was Cider House Rules, which also starred Charlize Theron. The Weinstien’s were gonna go full court press to terrify the Academy into nominating Theron for best actress (they failed). The line they eventually came up with was that they didn’t want two Charlize Theron pictures to open at the same time. They got Affleck and Theron to refuse to loop their Reindeer Games dialogue unless they moved the release date to spring 2000. Frankerheimer, who sounded like the kind of old school cat who still called women “broads” in 1999, was hopping mad. He would call Katz and scream about how he directed Frank Sinatra in the Manchurian Candidate and had never been so thoroughly disrespected. He also mentioned his friendship with Bobby Kennedy a lot...which was admittedly an epic namedrop but one that had little to do with filmmaking. Katz was not unsympathetic. He wanted his Xmas movie to open at Xmas too. He suggested a second round of reshoots where he would expect Affleck to “actually act” instead of “sitting around grinning like a fucking pretty boy.” In the end, the decision was made to delay the film until February. So now they figure they’ve got to come up with a new title ‘cuz you can be playing no Reindeer Games in February, can you!? The VP instructed us interns to each bring in a list with potential new titles (I think I put Good Will Hunting 2 on my list because I am an unserious person). I mean...I hadn’t even seen the movie, save for some scuzzy dailies they had laying around the office on VHS. What the hell would I know/care!? One afternoon, we welcomed an unrepresented writer by the name of Sheldon Turner into the office to pitch his screenplay called The Inside Man. Everyone in the office dug it and thought the VP should kick it up to Katz to see if Miriamx would option it. After the meeting was over, the VP spoke with Katz, who immediately called Miramax and said he had the perfect new title for Reindeer Games: The Inside Man! Filthy motherfuckers, these guys. In the end, The Inside Man was directed by Spike Lee and has nothing to do with anything we’re talking about. Reindeer Games opened on February 25th and was savaged by critics and had the shelf life of a mouse fart. It never even occurred to me to try to watch it...until now!
What happens is this: we open at the smoldering ruins of a rural, small time casino. The bloodied corpses of brutally massacred Santa Clauses are strewn about the premises. “I’ve never been a fan of the holidays,” announces our man Benaffleck and the Flecktones, speaking to us from the bowels of a maximum security prison located in a frosty part of Michigan that is totally British Columbia. He tells us that his name is Rudy and that he’s doing a five year bid for grand theft auto...living among the rapists and murderers. That seems a little harsh to me. I feel like you’d only get 3 years for boosting a set of wheels, tops. I feel this way because I looked it up on the internet. I don’t know, maybe the dude had a ton of priors on his rap sheet or something. I’ll tell you this, though—the guy looks like he just stepped out of a Dolce and Gabbana ad and not at all like someone who has been in the slammer for five years. They couldn’t have at least given him some five o’clock shadow or some shit?? I will say—I did eventually meet Ben Affleck when he filmed a scene from The Town at a restaurant I used to work at...and he is shit tall. Just oozes handsomeness, that guy. Not really much you can do. Anyway, Rudy is getting sprung in just three days time...as is his bunkie, Nick...who is in jail for actual murder. Nick is particularly anxious to get outta dodge ‘cuz he became pen pals with 13 time People Magazine World’s Most Attractive Human winner Charlize Theron while he was locked up. Their jail cell is just COVERED in pictures of her. Rudy stares at pictures of his buddy’s extra long distance girlfriend (Ashley) and says “hey, want me to take her for a test drive if I get out before you?” Ahh...so it’s gonna be THAT kind of movie, eh? Nick razzes Rudy because he has a gorgeous South African Oscar winner waiting for him on the outside and Rudy does not. Rudy says all he really wants is a cup of cocoa and a slice of pecan pie. Cuz it’s Christmas, you dig? These prison scenes feel so bogus. You’d never suspect John Frankenheimer made Birdman of Alcatraz 75 years before he directed this flick.
The next afternoon, the fellas go waltzing into the cafeteria all “I can’t believe we’re gettin’ out of jail in just two days!”...which means someone is about to be die ASAP. I completely missed this during my viewing...but I guess Issac Hayes was in this cafeteria scene, which is awesome, as was disgraced porn star Ron Jeremy, which is less awesome. But hey—at least the Hedgehog got a little sneak peek at the place where he’ll take his last breaths! Maybe he’s walking the yard with the guy who executive produced this movie as I sit here typing! Before Rudy and Nick can scarf their American Chop Suey, their fellow inmates start finding cockroaches in their green jello and a food fight ensues. Food fights: fun in theory, horrible in execution, particularly in a prison setting. Rudy and Nick manage to stay below the fray and OH SHIT! Scary black man alert! Someone Rudy has beef with sees and opening and charges right toward him with a knife in his hand. Nick throws Rudy out of the way and takes a blade between the 6th and 7th rib for his BFF. Rudy cradles Nick and wails but that doesn’t really do much for Nick, medically speaking. He dies. The guards are super sympathetic to the newly bereaved Rudy. Just kidding! They pin him to the ground and offer to do butt stuff to him. He declines. He retreats to his cell where he stares longingly at the photos of his dead roomie’s hawt ladyfriend.
When release day finally rolls around, Rudy shuffles out of the penitentiary with a pocket full of frowns. Sure enough...there’s Ashley in the parking lot looking all expectant. Rudy just mopes on by and boards a bus to anywhere. But...hold up a sec: it appears that Ashley doesn’t actually know what her convicted murderer prison boyfriend looks like!? Oh what the fuck, people!? You mean she sent him thousands of pictures and he didn’t send her a single pic in return!? He could look like Michael J Pollard for all she knows!! Deep down, Rudy knows that presenting himself as his dead cellmate is sketchy as shit. Does that stop him? No sir/ma’am. He hops right off the bus and Ashley is all “are you Nick?” and Rudy is all “yep—Nick—that’s me...100%...and she’s all “great, let’s hop in my tan Sierra and drive to a motel and BALL!” So that’s what they do...and it’s SUPER graphic! I kind of had an inkling that this was coming (tee hee) because, one day while I was cleaning/ransacking the boss’s office, I read Ben Affleck’s nudity clause. That thing was insanely detailed...right down to which of his ass cheeks we’d get to see...how long we’d get to see it...and how many thrusts we’d get out of that thing (maybe four thrusts?). Dude is so stoked he immediately flushes his Rudy ID down the toilet. She seems pretty jazzed too. She tells him that most men don’t want to know what’s inside her...just want to get inside of her. Did they just have outercourse, then? Also—ick.
Ashley takes Rudy to the Z Cavaricci outlet and styles him out with some new duds. When they return to their motel room they find the following actors assembled inside: Danny Trejo, the guy who played Linc on The Mod Squad, Donal Logue of the Logue family, and ultra republican actor/”musician” Gary Sinise, looking like the lead singer of the type of Christian Rock band that plays at the post-Sunday mass social mixer (not unlike Gary Sinise’s actual band). Before Rudy can get to the “hi, how ya doin’s?” Trejo cracks him in the ribs. These dudes are part of some sort of trucker game and Sinise is Gabriel, Ashley’s brother...and he’s already super duper pissed at Rudy for trying to “get down his sister’s chimney.” Oh ho ho you didn’t! Gabriel is all “listen here, Nick--we hear you used to work is some casino and that you aren’t queasy when it comes to taking a life or two.” Rudy is all “OH SNAP! I’m actually not Nick, doe! I don’t know shit from shinola.” Gabriel says that, if this is true, they will cut him to pieces and bury him all over the place. Rudy hears this and is all “wait, did you say NICK!? Of course I’m Nick! Sorry, I got the tinnitus real bad when I was in the pokey.” Gabriel tells Rudy that he had better not be playing any reindeer games, which is the name of the movie that we are talking about (take a shot?). It appears that Ashley was just catfishing prisoners until she found one who worked at this specific casino that her brother and his trucker gang wanted to rob? Could totally happen. So that’s why she wasn’t concerned about what this dude looked like! They really should’ve cast Michael J Pollard. He was still alive back then...and watching him and Charlize Theron screw would’ve been amaze-balls! Rudy agrees to help the gang with their casino caper...but he’s wicked disappointed in Ashley. Tells her that he had better sex in prison. He man--you gotta do what you gotta do.
So like I just mentioned at the end of the last paragraph, Rudy has to help this gang rob a casino. And that’s pretty much all there is to it. What we are left with is a futile attempt to hold the audience’s attention for the next hour or so until the big climactic robbery, by which point everyone in the theater should be actively wishing death upon everyone in this movie. They bring Rudy to the casino to case the joint but make him dress up like a cowboy so his former co-workers won’t recognize him. What do we hear on the soundtrack instead of Elliott Smith or Modest Mouse? Love Rollercoaster. Karyn Rachtman—you are missed.The casino is run by the late Dennis Farina, essentially reprising his role from the far superior film Midnight Run (Sidney, I’m gonna bury that phone right in your head!). The entire casino, which is in the middle of nowhere, is smaller than a Flying J. Why don’t they just ride in there a whompin’ and a whoopin’ and get this shit over with?? Anyway, Rudy exchanges costumes with some random dude in the bathroom and attempts to escape. Gabriel immediately spots him and starts pulling an entire arsenal out of his trunk right there in the parking lot...right in broad daylight! Did I mention that this movie looks like it was filmed in a dirty ashtray that was left out in a blizzard? Well, it does. Rudy starts sprinting toward a frozen lake (to do what? Ice fish?) but Gabriel gets a bead on him...only to be knocked over by his own sister. I guess she still likes Rudy or feels bad for him or I don’t know who cares whatever. They run across the lake together but homegirl falls in! Rudy jumps in and tries to save her, even though she’s a double crossing double crosser. Now they’re both trapped under the ice but luckily one of them somehow has a machine gun? Sorry, my attention was frequently found to be wandering during this film. They simply shoot upwards, which proves to be surprisingly effective. Next time I step out for some pond skating I’m bringing a machine gun JUST IN CASE!
Now Gabriel is so cheesed off at Rudy/Nick that he ties him to a chair and throws darts at him, which has gotta hurt like a bastard! They hold him captive but Ashley keeps coming to him as a friend and keeps telling him that she loves him. He keeps telling her to get bent. There’s all of this back and forth about his true identity: is he Real Nick?...is he Fake NIck...is he Saint Nick?...is he fuckin’ Jimmy Hoffa? Big zzzz’s all around. Eventually they decide that the big heist is gonna go down on Christmas Eve...because this is still supposed to be a Christmas movie somehow. The night before the gig, they all check themselves into a slightly fancier hotel. Later that night, while Rudy is out looking for the ice machine, he passes by the indoor pool and OH SNAP! Guess what he saw!? A topless Ashley stradling Gabriel! So she’s fucking her brother then!? GROSS! Oh wait--looks like Gabriel is actually her BOYFRIEND! So this whole thing has been...a triplecross? Rudy watches for longer than he needs to, scoffs, and looks toward the camera and says “see you later, assholes!” You're the asshole who made this awful movie, asshole! Rudy considers escaping (again)...but Danny Trejo’s face. Before they check out, the front desk manager tells Gabriel that one of the fellas racked up $200 in incidentals watching pay-per-view porn. That’s the closest this thing this movie has to a joke. Ha?
The entire cast pile into a semi and drive toward their casino caper dressed as Santa Clauses! CLE-VER!!! The suspense-o-meter stays pinned at zero. Not only is every character in this flick terrible (except Donal Logue. He seems like a great dude in real life), we already learned that most of the santa’s die from the opening scene! They bust into the casino and shoot the place up like a bunch of jerk off murder santas. The casino security guards return fire but Ashley drives her tan Sierra right onto the casino floor, crushing about a baker’s dozen worth of dudes to death. They beat the living daylights out of Denny Farina and Gabriel is all “tell Nick where the secret powwow safe is!” Farina is like “Nick? Isn’t this the kid from Phantoms??” Farina says that there is a safe but it’s full of guns, which he uses to kill the entire supporting cast in one fell swoop. Until we meet again, Clarence Williams III. Now they know that Rudy is officially NOT Nick. Ashley suggests they murder him and throw his body in one of those SoCal movie car crash ravines. Her personality has also undergone a complete transformation with like 10 minutes left in the movie. She’s all femme fatale-y now. Rudy tells her that Nick really loved her. “Who wouldn’t,” she says. Touche. So they split the scene with their haul, which looks like it’s in the tens of millions, even though they just robbed a penny slot joint that didn’t even have a buffet!
Now we’re on the banks of the ravine but, before they can send Rudy to his grave, Ashley accidentally reveals that she knows some information about Rudy’s prison attack that she couldn’t have possibly known. I couldn’t really tell you what she said. My concentration --drifting like snow. All of a sudden we hear someone whistling Silver Bells in the distance and HOLY SHIT IT’S NICK!!! I did NOT see that coming! What a crazy twist! You gotta understand: this movie was in post production when The Sixth Sense opened. After that, film companies became obsessed with producing movies with twist endings. It was almost a necessity. Producer: Whaddya got for us? Writer: The Griswold’s...in SPACE! Producer: Meh. Writer: But at the end “space” is revealed to be the interior of John Malkovich’s testicles! Producer: (opens checkbook). Anyway--so now we have to sort this out. Rudy was quadruplecrossed?? Nick says that Ashley was actually his real girlfriend all along….but that her name is Millie Bobby Brown or some shit. She spent FIVE YEARS writing fake letters to her REAL BOYFRIEND in the longest, most nonsensical con since the invention of the con. While she was spending a small fortune on stamps, envelopes, and Kodak disposables, she was also living as Gabriel’s girlfriend. (I forgot to mention that Ashley murders Gabriel as soon as Nick shows up. 86 Lt Danny). Then Nick got himself stabbed for real to fake his death, but it was merely a flesh wound. I mean...dude...come onnnnn!! How were they so sure that Rudy was definitely gonna slime on his dead buddy’s girlfriend? What if he just took that bus straight to the nearest Outback Steakhouse and got shitfaced on oil cans of Foster’s? This would be a much better movie, that’s what! Real Nick and Ashley tie Rudy to the front seat of the tan Sierra and prepare to push him over the cliff. They even light the car on fire...just to be extra douchey. Rudy frees himself and hotwires the car (cuz he’s a car thief, remember??) and backs over Nick. Ashley appears before him and dude doesn’t miss a beat. He puts the pedal to the floor and takes her the fuck out! I watched about 10 takes worth of dalies of this scene back in ‘99 and it was never not going to be unintentionally hilarious. NIck is still alive but barely. He starts pleading his ass off--”come on, MAN! I was gonna kill her and save you! We’re friends till the end!” Rudy throws him in the back of the semi and rolls that thing off of the cliff. Bang meets buck...twice. The camera pulls back up to the edge of the cliff, where a shirtless Slash plays the solo from “Don’t Cry.” I mean...I wish!
Rudy slings that fat sack of cash over his shoulder and decides to ride the heel-toe express back to his family’s piece. That’s cool that he’ll have some money to help get his life back on tra...WAIT...why is he putting piles of cash in random mailboxes?? And why has no one called the authorities on this blood soaked, six foot four Santa tossing out stacks of thousands like Hershey’s Kisses?? By the time he arrives home he’s just a broke ass bum ex-con with an empty sack and the Santa shirt on his back. His folks must be so proud. They bring him inside and feed him pecan pie. He flashes his million dollar grin right at the camera. The movie ends. Santa wept.
So it’s the fall of 1992 and I’m at the cinema checking out either The Mighty Ducks or The Bad Lieutenant...I can’t really remember which. I take my seat, the lights dim, and they start rolling out the coming attractions. At some point, the Twentieth Century Fox logo flashes across the screen. Robin Williams materializes. He’s standing in a field and he’s sporting the worst blonde dye job since Californication-era Anthony Kiedis. He stares into the camera and asks the audience if they hated the last preview as much as he did. First--how does Robin Williams know what previews are showing at the Webster Square Cinema in downtown Worcester, MA?? Second--why you gotta harsh on Lorenzo’s Oil, bro? I thought it looked pretty tight! He says that he’s come to discuss his new flick called Toys. He then proceeds to spend the next minute and a half Robin Williams-ing his ass off; he says the name of the film repeatedly; he lapses into actual gibberish for about ten seconds, which is either a vaguely racist attempt at a non-specific Middle Eastern accent or the effects of 16 gin and tonics taking hold; he screams “the Toymintator!” and starts to Schhwarzenegger; he says “hey...Toyz-n-the-Hood!” and starts to motherfucking BEATBOX! He ponders when the appropriate time to release a film called Toys might be: “Should we put it out at Rosh Hashanah? No way! CHRISTMAS!” He mentions that Toys was directed by Barry Levinson of Rain Man fame and launches into a horribly ill-advised impersonation of Dustin Hoffman’s character from that film. The closing text announces that Toys will indeed be released, not at Rosh Hashanah, but at Christmas. You hear that, JEWS!? This flick ain’t for y’all! I’m not sure what disturbed me more that day: the sight of Harvey Keitel swinging his pecker around while smoking crack or the Toys trailer. Possibly the latter. Like...what in the name of Sampson was this movie even about!? A few weeks later, Toys promotional posters started showing up in theater lobbies. They featured the following: an image of red bowler hat-wearing Robin Williams set against a brilliant blue backdrop in an homage to Rene Magritte’s painting The Son of Man...and the word “Toys.” And that’s it! It felt like there was some serious obfuscation being perpetrated by Fox’s marketing department. A sort of disinformation campaign to prevent the public from learning what Toys was actually about. Like if they just put the words “Toys,” “Robin Williams,” and “Christmas” on a poster people would stop with the nosy fucking questions and just fork over their cash already. I know that’s what I did! I was 14 years-old and pretty hot to trot for The Crying Game...but I wasn’t above doing some little kid shit every now and then. I think we left halfway through Toys to sneak into Captain Ron...which we had already seen TWICE.
Here’s what I think went down: in the 1980’s, Barry Levinson had himself a decade. Everything that dude touched turned to at least silver. We’re talking Diner, The Natural, Tin Men, and Good Morning Vietnam just to name most of them. It was 1988’s Rain Man, though, that brought home a mountain of Oscar gold. Full sweep! Who wants to watch Judge Wapner?? Everyone, that’s who. By the time he kicked off the 90’s with Warren Beatty’s Bugsy, another smash ass hit, dude was bona fide! He was fully entrenched on the A-list...mentioned in the same breath as the Scrosesse’s of the film world. Levinson had carte blanche at this point so what better time to dust off his long-gestating passion project and completely torpedo his career!? He walked into Twentieth Century Fox and said “Robin Williams...Toys” and they turned on the confetti cannons and cut him a check for $50 million clams on the spot. That was a ton of cheddar back in ‘92! Kevin Smith could’ve made Clerks 1700 times with that dough! I can really only speculate how Toys became one of the most wrongheaded cinematic disasters of the 90’s...but there HAD to be massive studio interference. It’s as if they took a script that deals primarily with war, PTSD, mental illness, and absent mothers and said “if we can somehow shoehorn Christmas into this story we’ll have us a hit!”
What happens is this: Although the film does not take place at Xmas, or at any actual time or actual place, we open with a Nutcracker-y Christmas pageant at the fully self-contained Zevo Toy Factory. Everyone in the film works and lives in what is clearly a backlot movie set. Levinson seems really proud of this fact...and hey...it worked out so well for Franny Coppola on One From the Heart. Hundreds of children watch enraptured as ballet dancers do ballet things. At the halfway point, though, the music takes a HARD left turn into some bullshitty original Xmas song that sounds like Enya covering Yes’s “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” Sample lyrics: “Christmas comes at the closing of the year!” I ran a fact check on this...and it’s totally true! It’s garish as hell, but hey, the lady soloist is Wendy Melvoin from Prince and the Revolution! (Wendy...Yes Lisa?...Is the water warm enough?...Yes Lisa). Here I should mention that the reason the music sounds so gaudy is that it was, in fact, produced by 80’s cheese whiz master Trevor Horn, who wrote and produce the Yes tune “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” giving them their only #1 hit with a song that sounds absolutely nothing like Yes. Once this opening pageant finally ends, some 45 minutes later, the filmmakers start begrudgingly introducing things like a plot, characters, etc. Turns out the president of Zevo toys is about to croak. His consigliere Owen assumes that he will bequeath the company to his son Leslie (Williams) and daughter Alsatia (Joan Cusack) but pop Zevo has a less sensical plan in mind. Instead, he summons his highly decorated Lieutenant General brother Leland to the factory. Leland is played by the actor who I thought was the same guy who played the coach in Major League (Come on, Dorn--don't give me this Ole bullshit!) but that’s James Gammon and this guy here is Michael Gambon. No relation to the Pulitzer-winning author Michael Chabon...for extremely obvious reasons. Leland has even less interest in running a toy factory than I do in watching this movie. But the old man says that Leslie is a flake and Alsatia is “Well....you know!” No dude...I have absolutely no idea! What I do know is that every time someone says Alsatia’s name I start to think about this pizza I ate this one time that was covered in bacon, onions, and gruyere cheese. That shit was delicious! The old man drops dead immediately. At his funeral, which is sparsely attended, even though he’s the president of a factory whose workers all live onsite, his casket starts laughing. A friggin’ trickster till the bitter end, that old man Zevo.
The next day, the General finally gets a tour of the toy factory. I gotta say—they threw up some pretty impressive sets with all of that Fox coin. If Terry Gilliam had directed this movie it would probably look....exactly like it already does. Less impressive is the song that soundtracks this scene. It’s called The Happy Worker and it sounds like Tori Amos covering the Cops theme song (I’m not joking....it’s really Tori Amos). I can’t really imagine anything worse unless there’s somehow a remix of this same song later in the movie and.....what’s that?? There’s a remix of this song later in the movie?? Well I’ll be dipped in shit! The workers all engage in a synchronized dance routine from a Color Me Badd video while they hammer the toys together. The General looks down his nose at all of this revelry and scoffs “people get paid for this!?” Someone tries to show him some new products but he says he isn’t into “sissy stuff.” But his wheels...they’re a turnin’. He heads straight for the factory hospital (which is just....a tent?) where he chats with an elderly bedridden man played by the great Jack Warden, looking even more miserable than he did in the Problem Child franchise. I thought maybe he was actually dying but it turns out he still had 14 more years of life to live. I have no idea who Jack Warden is supposed to be. They either forgot to tell us or told us and I wasn’t paying attention when they did. Both are extremely possible. The General tells Warden that he wants the factory to start making military toys. Says he feels like he needs to finish what he started in Vietnam...which ended some 17 years before the events in this film. The General goes to visit the Zevo kids (exact ages: Robin Williams—41. Joan Cusack—30) to tell them of his dark vision for Zevo. Leslie doesn’t seem to care either way. Alsatia eats a sandwich full of pills. So she’s a drug addict then? The General decides to bring in his son to help beef up security. His son is played by....wait for it....LL Cool J!! His father is English. And his mother? Isn’t! Ladies Love Cool James turns Zevo into Gattaca overnight. All of a sudden you need to get a friggin retina scan just to use the xerox machine. LL prowls the premises in his red beret, shaking people down and demanding that he be served orderly plates of food (peas and carrots must not touch!). One day, he starts harassing a young lady in the “duplication room” for having improper credentials...and holy smokes...it’s President Claire Underwood! Or...I think she became president? I stopped watching House of Cards after the...what have you. Right...so it’s Robin Wright, with the fakest sounding southern accent ever attempted by an actual Texas native. Robin Williams comes to her rescue...which is problematic as they are both named Robin! I wonder how many times they joked about having the same initials during filming. I’m gonna say at least three times. To avoid confusion I’m gonna refer to her by her character’s name...which is Gwen. Leslie is immediately sweet on her. He follows her home one afternoon and says he needs to get laid. Mmm hmm.
The General takes a trip to an arcade where he sees kids playing a shit ton of Afterburner and Choplifter and comes down with a severe case of the bad ideas. He will design a fleet of lethal toy aircraft that can be deployed into actual war zones. Instead of using trained soldiers, these tiny killing machines will be operated by unsuspecting children via remote control. Why should the military spend millions on a single jet fighter when they can get just as much massacre for next to nothing?? So...ok...some fairly heavy business right there. This concept would probably make for a decent movie...but that movie is not Toys. Why someone would take a story about the role of emerging technologies in modern warfare and try to package it as a Christmas movie is beyond my level of comprehension. They wanted people to watch it, obviously, but there is a 0% chance that anyone would want to watch Toys at Christmas....or ever, really. There are so many conflicting tones at work here and they’re all supposed to just uncomfortably coexist. They really needed to pick a lane but chose to ride in every open lane simultaneously. A lot of the blame, it should be noted, lies on Robin Williams’ shoulders. I mean....I get it—the guy was never NOT hot. He and Levinson were boys going back to Good Morning Vietnam, which fully established Williams as a dramatic actor. But he looks bored as balls here. He pretty much sleepwalks through the role, doing his Robin Williams shtick until he’s red in the face. There’s the usual flashes of brilliance (the scene where he and his co-workers debate the ethnic content of fake vomit is hilarious and belongs in a better movie)...but they are fleeting.
So what the hell else happens then? I wrote “sings In the Still of the Night on the crapper” in my notes. I’m fairly certain that this happens but I have no memory of it and no idea why I felt the need to jot it down. Leslie takes Gwen on a champagne-fueled horse drawn carriage ride through a miniature replica of Manhattan that must’ve cost more than Manhattan (the movie). General Leland keeps taking over more of the factory, shrouding his activities in secrecy and denying access to anyone from the Zevo family. Leslie and Alsatia decide to sneak into the forbidden areas to see what’s the what. How do they go about this? He and his sister trick the guards by making a music video ON THE SPOT and transmitting it to their security screens. They disguise themselves as a duo called Yolanda and Steve and play a song called The Mirror Song that was written by Thomas Dolby but sounds EXACTLY like Talking Heads. And you know? It’s incredible! Robin Williams’ David Byrne impersonation was spot fucking on! It’s not at all worth watching this movie just for that one scene but it’s absolutely worth searching for a clip of it on YouTube. When they finally penetrate the inner sanctum they find a massive war room full of children seated at gaming terminals (note: did they just steal these children?? Do they not have families??). Leslie sees this and mutters “uh oh...it’s FAO Schwarzkopf.” That was a hot reference back in the years after Persian Gulf #1. Leslie approaches one of the little boys and warily asks him what he’s doing. “Blowing up stuff....like PEOPLE!” Leslie asks how many points you get for killing a person. Answer: thousands! Leslie is horrified...but...I don’t know. I legit haven’t owned a home gaming system since the Sega Genesis...but aren’t most video games based around murdering people these days? Leslie's escape is impeded when he falls into a moat and is attacked by the fearsome Sea Swine, a creature the filmmakers were so proud of they decided that the audience shouldn't be able to get a good look at it. I know you don’t see much of the shark in Jaws....but you DO see it at some point! Maybe they ran out of Sea Swine money?
Leslie finally makes it to Gwen’s apartment, where he tells her how upset he is about the war children. And you know what Jethro Tull album sucks? War Child. Leslie asks if he can spend the night. Gwen says yes and immediately removes her bra and prepares for intercourse. What they don’t know is that they are being surveilled by a camera that’s hidden away in a robot toy (why this grown woman has toys in her apartment we do not know). Fortunately her discarded bra landed on the robot toy, blacking out the video. Unfortunately their sex noises can still be heard by a security guard played by future Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx, making his big screen debut! He hears their fuck noises and starts to get all hard and tries to harmonize with their moaning and HOW DO YOU LIKE TOYS SO FAR, KIDS!??? Aren’t you glad you didn’t go see Home Alone 2 instead??
General Leland summons the top military brass to the factory to unveil his new child warfare scenario. Dude is so jacked that he’ll finally be able to finish what he stated in ‘Nam. “The kids are gonna do the wars! The future is anarchy!” They other generals look at Leland like this motherfucker better switch to Sanka pronto! They say thanks but no thanks. They’re all like “we’ll just grab a couple of slinky’s from the gift shop and be on our way” but Leland snaps like a breadstick. He actually starts choking out one of the other generals! So now what’s a deranged warmonger to do with a factory full of unusable war toys and bloodthirsty children? Well....get shitfaced on whiskey and listen to opera for starters. He pulls out a pistol and screams “I’ll show Washington'' but then shoots himself in the foot. Literally. While this Tony Montana-esque bottom out is going down, LL receives a visit from his girlfriend Debi Mazar. I was gonna make a joke about how she was married to some right wing troll who claimed to have invented the internet but that was totally Fran Drescher. Debi Mazar used to date....erm....Pee Wee Herman....and you know that guy smashes! Debi Mazar sits on LL’s lap and he asks her if she ever had sex with his father. She says that she has, yes, but that it was an accident. Now a furious LL decides to help the Zevo kids wrest control of the factory back from his out of control double-dipping dictator father. I was wondering why they would introduce a new character 3/4th of the way through the movie! Debi Mazar’s only function here is to show up and get LL to turn on his father. That’s some C-minus screenwriting right there. (note: I had really hoped to work a “Mamma Said Knock You Out” reference into this review but was completely unable to. Sorry doodz).
Since there’s no room at the Inn for his kill toys, Leland decides that he will bring them online and absolutely positively kill every motherfucker in the factory. Leslie, Gwen, and the rest of the underutilized cast members wrangle all of the non-bloodletting toys together as a first line of defence against the murder bots. I don’t know, y’all--weapons tend to win out over non-weapons pretty much every time. Leslie gives the toys a big, dumb, Robin Williams-y pep talk before they head into battle: “Once more into the breach, dear toys….Ask not what Zevo toys can do for you!” Snorrrreeee. So they go to war and it’s violent as shit, as wars tend to be. The nice guy toys get absolutely annihilated by the General’s monster toys: A toy bear gets its head blown off...A duck wails in agony. Eventually, Leslie and Leland board toy bombers and battle it out high above the fake NYC skyline...but the entire sequence is filmed with this jarring strobe effect that was used everywhere in 1992 and then never again (see my review of The Cutting Edge for more info on this effect). Leland tries to strangle Leslie (strangulation--totally his signature move) but they both go crashing into fake Central Park. Leslie gets the upper hand on Leland, who says the whole thing was a joke. Just one big goof! Leslie says “You tried to kill my entire family! That’s not funny!” And you know...he’s right. It isn’t funny. Before Leland can turn off his war machines one of them blows Alsatia’s head off and HOLY SHIT!!! She’s a ROBOT! Everyone else in the cast is like “holy shit! She’s a robot!” Leslie is like “oh yeah...my dad built her for me so I’d have a pal!” So that’s what was wrong with her?? I thought maybe she was autistic and no one wanted to say it out loud. She’s missing a head but Leslie says they can put her back together with a swiss army knife so all’s well that ends well. While Robin Williams is busy talking to Joan Cusack’s served head, the elusive Swine Monster appears in silhouette and blows LELAND’S head off. Man, the amount of decapitation in this film is truly staggering. It’s all good though ‘cuz in the next scene Leland is re-headed and chilling in the hospital tent. He apparently has to live out the remainder of his days in a cot next to Jack Warden. There are worse fates, I suppose. “Hey Jack--I know you did two movies with Warren Beatty: Is he really as controlling as everyone says he is?”
Before we can go the hell home the movie serves up another superfluous Christmas bookend. Maybe if Xmas is the last thing people see they’ll walk out of the theater thinking they’ve just watched a Christmas movie? It’s basically a reprise of the scene that opened the movie...which also had nothing to do with anything. Leslie and his official GF Gwen and the rest of the crew go to old man Zevo’s laughing grave to tell him that they saved the toy factory and are back to making etch-a-sketches. He can’t hear them, of course--being dead and all. Everyone lives happily ever after. I mean...except for the people who took their kids to see Toys in 1992. Those kids are still all fucked up about it. Maybe some of them have gone on to have children of their own, whom they routinely threaten with Toys. “Don’t forget--If you’re naughty this year you’ll get Toys for Christmas...WITH ROBIN WILLIAMS!!! And god bless us everyone...
Greetings! I’m writing to you from the advent of the 2020 holiday season, which is bound to look and feel exactly like the last three seasons we just lived through: craptastic. This year, Thanksgiving and Christmas will be virtual events...for those of y’all who believe in science, anyway. How am I gonna chow turk with my grandma via Zoom? I guess I’m about to find out, eh!? One might expect that the CDC begging people not to congregate with their loved ones would drain the holiday spirit out of folks but, in fact, the exact opposite seems to be happening. People seem bent on aggressively enjoying the holidays this year. The other night, the evening news told me that people started purchasing live Xmas trees the day after Halloween KNOWING that they would probably be dead long before Xmas (the trees...not the people. Or--who knows??). Is that not the most 2020 thing you’ve ever heard or what?? Me? I generally remain neutral around this time of year...but even I started to feel the feels when I saw a print ad for Netflix's upcoming Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn Xmas flick! Do you think it’s gonna be like Overboard at Xmas? Is Kurt gonna kidnap Goldie and force her to clean his toilets and make gingerbread houses with his delinquent sons? You know what movie is more than a little fucked up? Overboard! Anyway, we’ll get around to some Xmas flicks in good time. If anyone has a copy of the Silent Night Deadly Night flick with Mickey Rooney they want to loan out please DM me immediately. First, we gotta get through Thanksgiving...and you know that I know that you know that there’s only one Thanksgiving film worth talking about...and it’s the 1987 John Hughes classic Planes, Trains and Automobiles. We’ve discussed PT&A every November since I started VHS of the Week way back in the halcyon days of 2017, some 55 years ago. I’d be more than happy to talk about it again, and you can bet your sweet asses and assettes I’ll be watching it for the 333rd time this Thursday with my pumpkin pie, but I don’t know that I have anything else to say about it. It’s a truly flawless film. Full stop. Fortunately (or...actually...unfortunately) John Hughes wrote and produced a sort of PT&A reboot in 1991 called Dutch. In 2019, I began my searing takedown of Hughes’ directorial swan song Curly Sue with the following statement: “I love everything with John Hughes’ name on it--even Dutch!” I guess I owe y’all an apology because that statement is a whopping shitburger of lies. Things with John Hughes’ name on them include Home Alone 3 and the Beethoven film series. You think I’m gonna stan for Baby’s Day Out? Please. I also wrote that statement knowing that I hadn’t seen Dutch since the week it opened in theaters (in the middle of JULY! Nothing says “we have full confidence in our Thanksgiving movie” like dumping it into theaters four months before said holiday. Maybe they thought it would have Home Alone-like staying power?). Since it has been almost 30 years, I figured now was as good a time as any to check out Dutch again to see if maybe there was an unheralded Hughes holiday chestnut that people had been snoozing on. After watching it for the second time, I can say with full confidence that the reason people do not watch Dutch at Thanksgiving, or ever, is that it balls bad. John Hughes appears to have taken the basic structure of PT&A (a mismatched duo attempts to travel to Chicago for Thanksgiving--hijinks ensue), amputated its heart and filled it with palpable menace and enough racist stereotypes to make Long Duk Dong wince. Let this review stand as my official recantation of my previous statement--I do not, in fact, love Dutch.
What happens is this: we open at some ostentatious mansion party in, you guessed it, the suburbs of Chicago! Party guest Natalie Standish (two time Poltergeist survivor Jo Beth Williams) lays out the entire plot of the movie in one tiny snatch of dialogue in the first 30 seconds. Hey, my college screenwriting teacher always told me “show..don’t TELL!” My college screenwriting teacher is currently selling yoga clothes and John Hughes was worth $150 million dollars when he died...so there’s that. Natalie tells a crowd of severely disinterested local aristocrats that she was just a lowly bartender until she got knocked up by some fuck you rich corporate raider type. He gave her a son named Doyle...and a whole lotta headaches! So she divorced him and took up with a local blue collar construction something-or-other by the name of Duth Dooley (Ed O’Neill...warily reprising his Al Bundy schtick on the big screen). We know Dutch is a blue collar stiff because he has shown up to a black tie party in a flannel shirt and corduroy blazer. Other than that, there isn’t really a whiff of the working class on this guy. He’s smart, drives a Lincoln Towncar, and maybe owns his own business? What? Just because the dude gets grossed out by the caviar crostinis being passed around we’re supposed to think he’s some piece of shit? Had John Hughes disappeared so far up his own ass by 1991 that he thought that someone who makes $50k a year was pitiable? Looks that way, folks. Speaking of pieces of shit--Natalie’s estranged husband Reed shows up and he’s totally Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore! Gotta keep an eye on that guy...always! So he’s an asshole and he says a bunch of asshole stuff to Natalie, prompting Dutch to grab him by the collar and say “You hurt her and I’ll hit you so fucking hard your dog will bleed.” Oh man! How, exactly, would THAT work!?
The kid Doyle is played by a 12 year-old actor by the name of Ethan Randall. I googled him to see what he’d been up to, figuring he was probably schlepping around the disappeared 90’s child star circuit with Austin O’Brien and Chuck Korsmo. But check THIS out: Ethan Randall is actually Ethan Embry! From Can’t Hardly Wait and shit! Everyone knows that guy! In 1999 I was in the checkout line at the Ralph’s on Sunset when I realized he was behind me. I said “hey.” He said….”hey.” What a nice dude! His character in Dutch, though? Complete fucking asshole. Just a miserable, malevolent, unrepentantly elitist piece of shit. He’s like the demon love child of Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner. He lives at a boarding school in Georgia where he has zero friends. He spends all of his time practicing karate and listening to Brahams and being profoundly unpleasant to everyone he crosses paths with. His mom gets him on the horn and tells him that paw dukes had to fly to London for the holiday but that she bought him a plane ticket to spend Thanksgiving with her. He says he'd rather gargle broken glass. She tells him that she loves him. He hangs up on her before retreating to his dorm room, where he cuts up pictures of her. Real future serial killer-type shit. Doyle calls his dad’s office to suss out the London sitch...but when his secretary says that he’s unavailable he tells her she should start looking for a new job. Then he hangs up the phone, walks over to a janitor, and kicks over his trash can, scattering garbage everywhere. Stephen Miller...I’m telling you!
One night, while Dutch is making Natalie a bomb ass 10 course dinner (this guy COOKS too? Total neanderthal), she relays her tale of familial woe. Dutch offers to drive down to GA to retrieve him. Natalie is all “ehh...you don’t know my son--he’s kind of a prick.” Dutch promises to charm the pince-nez right off the kid. Says they’ll be tossing around the pigskin in no time! So Dutch drives to the boarding school and lets himself into Doyle’s dorm. When the kid walks in and sees Al Bundy standing in his room he freaks out. He throws a book at him and kicks him right in the goddamn face, instigating the first of about a dozen violent altercations that will occur between this six-foot-one 44 year-old man and this 12 year-old child. They rassle and then Doyle pulls out a GUN and then they rassle some more and Doyle shoots Dutch and the movie ends. I wish--turns out it was just a BB gun! So it’s cool then? Once they retreat to their respective corners Dutch tells the kid he was sent to shepherd him home. The kid says that he already has plans for the week. “Like what,” Dutch says, “hanging yourself in the shower?” I laugh a tiny laugh. Doyle refuses to leave so Dutch gags the kid with a pair of dirty undies, binds his wrists and ankles with rope, and simply carries him out to his vehicle. Most people would call this action kidnapping...because that’s what it is.
So now these two are officially Chicago bound. I’m not sure where exactly in the state this fictional boarding school is supposed to be but it is a 14 hour drive from the southernmost corner of Georgia to Winetka, IL. I know because I plugged the route into Waze. So they should be exiting the Dan Ryan Expressway before sunrise if they don’t do any stupid bullshit...like everything they end up doing over the next interminable 90 minutes. Whereas our PT&A pals Neil Page and Del Griffith were waylaid by fleetingly believable disasters,, there is NO GOOD REASON why Dutch and Doyle can’t make it home on time unless they make the absolute worst decision possible at every critical juncture. As soon as the rubber meets the road Dutch tries to engage Doyle in a little friendly road movie banter but the kid clams up like Peter Stormare in Fargo (“Where is pancakes house?”). When he does start to talk we immediately wish he still had those briefs jammed in his trap. He drags Dutch for being from the working class (in his $40k sedan) and accuses him of dating his mom for her dough. Dutch says he’s proud of his solidly middle class heritage. Doyle says money that you have to work for isn’t real money. Dutch tells Doyle that he’s about as worrisome as a cloudy day. And so on. In order to shake things up, Dutch pulls into a rest area and purchases a deck of playing cards with naked ladies on them and about $5000 worth of fireworks. He drives the kid out to some field and sets off the fireworks in a sequence that feels like it goes on for longer than the entirety of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. After the grand finale the kid calls Dutch a “big, deranged child.” He also says that they could already be at Charlie Trotter’s crushing escargot if they weren’t in some random field shooting off roman fucking candles. He doesn’t actually say that last part...but I can tell he’s thinkin’ it!
They get back on the road and continue to bicker over the heat and the stereo and blah blah blah. Dutch lights up a cigar and the kid is so thoroughly disgusted that he yanks it out of his mouth and attempts to light his crotch on fire with it. This goes over poorly. They pull over and start screaming at each other by the side of the road. Dutch threatens to abandon Doyle by some 50 miles from the motel where they’re supposed to bunk down. Doyle is like fine...fuck you...good. So Dutch splits and the kid has to walk 50 miles! (note: I think he might’ve said 15 miles...not 50. 50 seems kind of harsh...even for this movie). When Doyle finally arrives at the hotel he’s BULLSHIT. He busts into the room all “You asshole! I could’ve froze to death!” Dutch fires up another stogie and says “I’m working class and I don’t take crap from kiddies!” What does social status have to do with anything at this particular point?? Also--who does he take crap from? The elderly? Doyle immediately runs outside and steals the Lincoln. He parks it in the middle of the road, where it is creamed by a speeding 18-wheeler, which is awesome. It turns out the kid jumped out of the car just before it was pancaked, though, which is less awesome. Doyle is alive but the Lincoln is fuuucked. Dutch is understandably upset so he grabs the kid by the neck and throws him into the bathroom. He tells Doyle he wants to have a proper fistfight. “None of that karate shit--just a classic, All American street fight.” Whoa, is street fighting an american invention? I had no idea! Thank you, John Hughes! Doyle says that he’s down and promptly throws a nasty haymaker and knocks Dutch the fuck out. Clock: cleaned. Completely unconscious...likely concussed. Does any of this shit sound funny to you?? This is truly the darkest stain of dark comedy. When Dutch regains his consciousness he’s in his own motel bed. He glances over at Doyle’s bed, where the kid is cracking his way through that deck of naked lady cards. For the first time in this flick...the kid looks happy. Even though these two have done nothing but beat the piss out of each other for the last half hour, the sight of Doyle pitching a tent to some smutty cards makes Dutch beam with pride. He sighs, smiles, and drifts off to sleep to sound of Doyle gently bopping his baloney.
The following morning these two ding dongs are back at each other’s throats. It’s almost as if their evening full of felony grand theft auto and quiet masturbation never even happened. It is suggested that a simple collect call could bring this ill-advised road trip/movie to its conclusion in about 15 seconds. Nevertheless...they persist. They both begrudgingly agree that asking people for help ain’t baller and that they need to just gut it out the rest of the way home. The entire purpose of this trip was to show the kid how the other half lives. Teach him some life lessons, you dig? So far the only lesson learned is ME learning that I should’ve tried to watch Jodie Foster’s Home for the Holidays instead. They board a Greyhound, where Doyle rudely asks a black teenager to turn down his boombox. The teenager responds by stealing Doyle’s shoes. For those of you keeping score at home there is approximately one black person in this film so far and he is a thief. They pull into the bus terminal in time to catch the El Train up to...WHAT THE!?? They STILL haven’t reached Chicago?? Sweet Christ on a cracker! Although Doyle has $200 in his wallet he insists they thumb the rest of the way home (seriously...aren’t they close enough to call an Uber??). They are scooped up by two comely young ladies in a bitchin’ Camaro with a mint louver on the rear window. About a minute into the ride we learn that the ladies are hookers….because of course they are. With hearts of gold, natch. Doyle rides in the backseat with Hooker #2, who imparts some matronly advice. She tells the kid that he really needs to mend fences with his mom. Then she offers to give him an over-the-jeans handy for $20 but Doyle does not have $20. Instead, she agrees to let him sleep with his face buried in her bosom. Now...only one of those things I just mentioned is true...but I ain’t saying which! Meanwhile, Hooker #1 steals Dutch’s wallet after he falls asleep. So maybe just hearts of bronze then, these hookers.
When dawn breaks, the foursome rolls into a truck stop in a part of the country that is still not Chicago. What in the actual fuck, people!? Did they take a shortcut through Tulsa?? The fellas head inside to order everyone a round of Moons Over My Hammy’s. When Dutch reaches in his pocket he realizes his wallet is gone, much like the hookers. Goodbye hookers. Now Dutch lashes out at the kid. “I can’t believe you let us get bamboozled by a could of missile twisters!” (Note: missile twisters??). Doyles resorts to “yo mamma” snaps, prompting Dutch to punch the kid in the chest, knocking him flat on his ass. Look, I hate this turd with wings too, man--but you just can’t keep assaulting a 12 year-old. At least not in public! Dutch says that he hates Doyle SO MUCH that he has decided to end his relationship with his mother. Out of nowhere, the kid inexplicably grows a shit to give. I’m not sure why, when this man has done nothing but physically abuse him for the last however many days. Doyle apologizes profusely for the hooker hoodwinking. “It’s my fault--you fell asleep and I got horny.” Dutch’s eyes light up when he hears this. “You got HORNY!? Awww!” Dutch explodes with joy because HUH!??
Even though it must be the middle of February by now, these two keep on keepin’ on. They gotta get home for Thanksgiving! I mean...maybe they do? The holiday is almost never mentioned. I bet this little prick Doyle is vegan or some shit. Tofurkey all the way. For their next nonsensical move they decide to stow themselves away in concrete culverts in the back of a semi. Shit man--even Candy and Martin got to ride INSIDE of the truck. They arrive at a still-not-in-Chicago trailer yard, where they brawl with a couple of security guards. I couldn’t really tell you what they were fighting about as I was busy reading the directions of the barf bag at this point. Dutch and Doyle drag their beaten and bloodied asses to a local restaurant and ask to use the restroom to wash away the violence but the manager freaks out and threatens to call the police. Luckily, a nicewhitecouple decides to abandon their chicken marsala-ses and help the dudes out. They drive them the rest of the way to Chicago and the movie ends. OH WAIT! I mean--they drop them off at a motherfucking HOMELESS SHELTER!! Instead of saying, you know, we aren’t actually homeless but, in fact, quite wealthy, they decide they will go inside. Where is this shelter, you ask? Hammond, Indiana. How far is Hammond from Chicago? Just 27 miles!!! If they walked briskly they could be home in time to watch Johnny Carson. Instead, they opt to spend the night in a homeless shelter. I am 100% going to snap this movie in half when/if it ends. They sit down to dinner in the soup kitchen and pantomime eating out in a a fine dining restaurant (sipping soup with a pinky finger in the air and all that stupid shit). Unlike literally everyone else in the shelter, these two assholes can actually afford to eat at a fine dining restaurant. Once their bellies are full of grub earmarked for the needy, they help themselves to a pair of cots. Maybe Dutch figures that a kindly African American family will befriend Doyle in the middle of the night and teach him the true meaning of Thanksgiving (appropriating things that belong to other people?). And hey! That’s exactly what happens! He meets a black lady who says that she’s been living in her car with her husband and young daughter ever since her husband lost his job. “But it’s real nice here though, huh?” she asks. Doyle is all “Ahh...Mmm... Mmm Hmmm.” For those of you STILL keeping track at home--the only people of color in this film are either thieves or homeless. She asks Doyle if Dutch is his daddy. He smiles wide and says “yes.” The music swells. I barf all over myself.
Thanksgiving morning--the homeless family agrees to drive the fellas the rest of the way home in their station wagon house, which looks like the Wagon Queen Family Truckster AFTER Chevy Chase drove it off that cliff. They roll up to Natalie’s place and OH MY FRICKEN GOD it’s a 20 bedroom mega mansion. The kind of gilded estate that makes the McCallister’s house look like a fuckin’ hovel. There are free-range ponies galloping around the grounds and everything, I shit you not! In the spirit of the holidays, Dutch invites the family in for dinner and offers to let them squat on the outskirts of their 300 acre property until they can get back on their feet. Just kidding! They say see you never and head inside to chow face on a meal prepared by a private chef and served by white glove-wearing servants. They couldn’t have at least slipped this poor family a tenner for gas?? Ice cold, man. Anyway, Doyle is super sweet on his mom because he likes her now or whatever. But then Shooter McGavin shows up and tells Doyle that he cancelled his trip to London just to spend Thanksgiving with him. Doyle calls bullshit. Says he knows that his dad was really just off banging his secretary and would prefer to stay put. Shooter tells the kid he can choose only one parent and Doyle chooses his mom (zzzzzzz). Pops is pissed and says that he is evicting them from the property immediately. Hey folks--I know of a Plymouth Volare about 10 miles down the road with plenty of extra sleeping space! Dutch doesn’t appreciate what he’s hearing so he follows Shooter outside and punches him in the head with such terrible force he leaves a pinky ring imprint on Shooter’s head. Shooter now says that the family can stay for another six months...probably because he has just sustained a traumatic head injury. The cockles of my heart have rarely been less warm. At long fucking last everyone sits down for Thanksgiving dinner. Dutch asks Doyle to leave the table for a minute so he and Natalie can have some privacy. Doyle starts to leave the room but gets a bad feeling. He turns around to see Dutch with a gun trained on him while everyone else looks on in horror. He shoots Doyle in the dick. The kid screams and BANG! The movie just ends! Like that! That’s the end of the movie. Oh wait! There’s a fireworks montage that plays over the closing credits...in case you didn’t get your fill of fireworks from the fireworks montage that happened earlier in the movie...back before my hair went completely grey. And oh shit--Arnold Palmer was in this movie?? As himself!? How did I miss that!? I could totally drink an iced tea with lemonade right now. And whiskey. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Note: I was kind of reluctant to write about Alive. VHS of the Week is all about the jokery and there’s nothing funny about the events depicted in this film. Real people really died and others suffered horribly. I know for a fact that I have at least THREE regular readers in South America and would hate for one of the survivors to come across this review and have to listen to me make fun of their ordeal. That said--I DO think the fact that Disney took a look at the source material and thought that a schlocky action movie full of preppy caucasians was the right path to go down is ripe for some piss taking. So off we go!
Here are the actual facts of the case: in October of 1972 a chartered plane carrying an Uruguayan rugby team along with some of their friends, family members, and a few randos crashed into the Andes Mountains. 18 people either died on impact or shortly thereafter, leaving 27 dudes and one ladydude stranded at a suffocatingly high elevation where the dining options included snow, more snow, and other snow. A search and rescue mission was called off after 10 days, which sucks, and 8 more people perished when the plane’s battered fuselage was buried in an avalanche in the dead of night, which sucks harder. The remaining survivors eventually resorted to cannibalism in order to, you know, survive. Finally, after 60 some odd days, rugby studs Roberto Canessa and Nando Parrado decided it was time to hop on the good foot and do the bad thing. They filled their bellies with the choicest cuts of human flesh and, without the aid of any real hiking knowhow or gear, climbed out of the Andes. On day 72 they were finally spotted by a Chilean muleskinner, who alerted the authorities. The remaining 14 passengers were rescued by helicopter the following day. Cool story, huh!? I’ve always thought so! I read Alive, Piers Paul Ried’s 1974 account of the tragedy back in high school. In 2007 I went to NYC to catch the premiere of Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains, an indispensable documentary narrated by almost all of the survivors that should really be the last word on the subject. Hell, I even own a copy of Nando Parrado’s autobiography Miracle in the Andes, where he spends an inordinate amount of time talking about getting laid (not on the mountain, of course).
In the early 90’s, Disney optioned Reid’s novel and decided to Hollywood the shit out of it. Alive was released in January of 1993 and the trailer for the film was shown incessantly throughout the holiday film season. I don’t feel like conducting any actual research on this because accuracy ain’t my jam….but I feel like they really played up the cannibalism angle in the promotional materials. It was like “It’s the Donner Party with wings! It’s Die Hard on a mountain but with 16 John McClane’s and the mountain is the villain!!” All I can tell you is that 14 year-old me quickly became OBSESSED. I knew I had to see this flick the very second it landed in theaters or I would lose my goddamn fucking mind. I even went to see the fleetingly watchable Eddie Murphy comedy The Distinguished Gentleman three times because I knew they were going to run the trailer for Alive before it (don’t worry...I bailed halfway though to go watch Hoffa...which I bailed on to go watch Toys...before just up and bailing altogether). When opening day rolled around I dispatched my unfailingly accommodating mother to buy my buddies and I tickets for the 7:30 showing of Alive while I was still at school. I should’ve just stayed home from school ‘cuz I was completely useless that day. I could do only two things: daydream about Alive and drool on myself. The math teacher was all like “Mr Tebo--what’s the square root of 64?” and I was all like “umm...cannibalistic rugby player?” So we get to the theater and we’re standing in line to purchase our concessions when my pal Howard notices that a gaggle of girls from our freshman class have entered the lobby. He suggests we go say hello, even though they sit atop the social pyramid and I stay at home making scrapbooks full of Freddy Krueger pictures and kill stats. They ask us what movie we are seeing. “Alive” Howard tells them dismissively. “It’s about people eating PEOPLE!” I tell them, less dismissively. “Ew gross!” one of them squeals, “you guys should come see Aladdin with us instead!” You know--I totally understand my friend’s reaction. These were the girls who wouldn’t let us sit at their lunch table even if we showed up with a four pack of strawberry wine coolers. And now they were inviting us to watch a movie with them?? NEXT TO THEM!? In a darkened theater!? Quite the coup right there. Me? I couldn’t have given a shit less. “Umm...I’m what they call a cinephile--I don’t watch cartoons...come on fellas, let’s go.” And what did my friends do? Disappeared into Aladdin with the ladies and left me standing alone in the lobby clutching my Milk Duds. I simply said “their loss” and headed off to take in Alive solo. Just kidding! I friggin’ spazzed out. Had a full on meltdown and lost control of all of my faculties! I marched into Aladdin and started to berate my friends. “We had a plan….a VOW! And y’all broke the vow!!!” “Tebo--if you really want to see Alive so bad...GO SEE IT,” Howard said. I told my friends that I would report them to the ushers….that I would never speak to them again...that I would spend the rest of my life holed up in my basement burning effigies of both of them.” I was apoplectic. One wall away a plane was about to make contact with an Ande and we were going to miss it. Finally my other pal Brett said “man, we can’t watch you crying and pissing yourself in front of the ladies for much longer….let’s just go see the other thing.” We snuck into Alive just as the Fairchild started to fall from the sky. We watched all two hours and four minutes of Alive and...you know...it just wasn’t very good. Had I known then what I know now I would've watched the crash scene and said “I bet there will be a documentary that does a much better job of telling this story that will come out 15 years from now so let’s go see what the ladies are up to.” Dudes...if you’re reading...I’m wicked sorry! Cool story, huh? This time...not so much.
Anyway, what happens is this: Alive opens with an aggressively uncredited John Malkovich sitting in front of a slide projector, ripping butts and bloviating his ass off. I guess he’s one of the survivors looking back at old photos 20 years later or whatever. Alive’s screenplay was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley, who also directed severely underrated Joe Vs the Volcano as well as the accurately rated Moonstruck. Right away he lays on the pretense with the thickness. “We were affronted by solitude without decadence. There’s God and then there’s the God I met on the mountain.” Yeah. maybe dial it down about a million percent! Here I should mention that, when John Malkovich moved to Cambridge in the early 00’s, his publicist told the local newspapers that he was furiously private and should not be approached in public or at restaurants under any circumstances. A few months later I saw Malkovich walking into a Red Sox game wearing pink capri pants, ballet slippers, and an oversized white cashmere scarf, all but guaranteeing people would walk up to him and ask if he was the dude from Being John Malkovich. Maybe try a Nomar jersey and a pair of Ray Ban’s if you want to blend in with the Fenway Faithful, bro.
CUT TO: 13 October 1972--an aeroplane flying high above the Andes. The passengers, South American all, are almost exclusively portrayed by gringo actors. A couple of them speak English but with a slight accent, like they are showing off while ordering at a tapas restaurant: “yes, I’ll have the tortilla espanola” (rolls the R hard). White Fang star Ethan Hawke plays Nando Parrado, traveling with his mother and younger sister Suzy. And then there’s pre-med student Roberto Canessa, played by Josh Hamilton, looking less like a rugby player and more like a dude who got lost on the way to the set of the latest Noah Baumbach flick. The plane hits turbulence but the passengers whoop and shout Ole because they are young, dumb, and full of scrum. The pilots get on the PA and tell everyone to settle down and that they’ll be on the ground in a few minutes. Dude, yeah you will! I don’t trust these pilots one shit, man. They force the flight attendant to make them Yerba Mate...just to throw some weight around. Speaking of weight--the pilots quickly realize that they began their descent prematurely and are about to hit the slopes. They throttle up the engines but that big bastard is just too heavy. They come THISCLOSE to clearing the peaks...but yeah...not good. The rear of the plane kisses the edge of a cliff, shearing off the tail and both of the wings. How does a plane without a tail or wings continue to fly? Shittily. I gotta say--this plane crash scene still packs the same visceral punch that it did almost 30 years ago. There’s a moment, after the violence of the collision, where the fuselage is hurtling through the air and everyone on board is silent and the only sound you hear is the wind rushing through the cabin that is one of the more harrowing moments captured on film. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there...for the plane and for this movie. The fuselage belly flops onto the mountain and toboggans down the hill in a death sprint before crashing into a snow bank at 200 MPH. The force of the crash tears the seats from the floor of the plane and throws them toward the cockpit wall, pancaking all of the passengers. Injuries range from completely unhurt to sudden death. One lady’s legs are broken and trapped under the seats. Another dude had his leg mostly severed when the propeller cartwheeled through the cabin. Among the less injured are Canessa as well as team captain Marcelo Perez, played by man who was in every other movie in the 80’s and then nothing ever again Vincent Spano. And look! There’s that actor Jack Noseworthy! Remember in the early 90’s when he was hot property and starred in a Bon Jovi video and an MTV original show called Dead at 21? Neither do I. Canessa assesses the situation and gives his prognosis: no bueno. They check Ethan Hawke’s vitals and Canessa shakes his head and says “I don’t think so.” Umm...he’s...like...way more famous than everyone else in this movie. Maybe check again!?? They check on the pilot, who is still alive but whose body has fused with the plane’s instrument panel. He asks the fellas to bring him a pistol so he can take care of what needs to be taken care of. They tell him they can’t be involved in that sort of thing. So enjoy your slow, terrible death, Capitan!
Once darkness falls, the survivors try to catch some Z’s in the mangled fuselage, which proves nearly impossible as it is no shit 50 below zero and almost everyone boarded the plane wearing mesh tank tops and Tevas. The lady with the busted legs wails through the night, causing one of the kids to call her a stupid cow and threaten to kill her. It’s cool though—she doesn’t live through the night. The kid says he’s so ashamed but doesn’t really sell it. The more anonymous members of the cast have an acting skill set more suitable to, say, a porno flick. The dudes conduct a little inventory and discover that they have one Toblerone, a case of Chilean Syrah, and 16 saltines....for 27 people. Good thing the crash didn’t happen post 9/11 or they wouldn’t have had fuck all to eat on board! You know—back when I got a body cavity search at LAX because I forgot I had a 2 oz tube of eczema lotion in my carry on. Anyway, they figure that’s more than enough to nosh on while they wait for the rescue wagon...which should be arriving with the quickness. Someone suggests that Ethan Hawke might just be able to rouse himself to carry the movie after all. Canessa brings him a cap full of Syrah...’cuz those tannins really help reactivate your palate after you’ve been in a coma. He’s like “dude, where are we?” and they’re like “I’m afraid we have some bad news...and well...also some worse news.” His mother is dead and his sister is bleeding internally and they can’t really perform surgery with just a first aid kit. She dies too. It’s really sad. While Canessa is inside triaging, a plane flies overhead and appears to dip its wings. Folks assume they’ve been spotted and that their grizzly mountainside sojourn has come to an end. They crush all of the crackers and vino in one fell swoop. When Vincent Spano finds out he loses his shit and screams “you are playing with our lives!!!” For months after we saw this movie, Howard and Brett screamed “you are playing with our lives!” at me every time they passed me in the hall. When Hawke/Nando finally emerges from the plane and is told there’s no food left he doesn’t miss a beat: “Well then we’ll eat the pilots. They got us into this frosty pickle!” According to Parrado’s book, they tried to eat glaringly non-edible parts of the plane, like the seats. THE SEATS!!! (“When there was no crawdad to be found we ate sand. You ate SAND??”—Raising Arizona). Some of the dudes try to hike to the tail to find batteries to power up the plane’s radio...but it’s hella hard when you're subsisting on a daily ration of one sip of vino and sun dried shoelaces.
After 10 days on the mountain word comes across this wire that the search and rescue mission has been called off. Nando gathers everyone together and tells them that this is “great news.” That now they can officially get busy living or get busy dying. Or get busy dying to live? Or live trying to die? I forget what he actually said and didn’t write it down. You get the gist though, right? Here I should mention that Ethan Hawke is starting to look dead....SEXY! He has started to grow a goddamn goatee. A finely etched goatee. Did he go to the producers and say “look, I gotta play a grungy heartthrob in Reality Bites after I leave here...so can we make me look less like a malnourished castaway and more like Chris Cornell circa Superunknown? Thanks!” The rest of the survivors seem to grow more handsome the longer they’re on the mountain too. It’s an entire plane full of Gabriel Garcia Bernal’s! Nando eventually tells the gang that they’re gonna have to eat the bodies of their dead friends ....and everyone freaks the fuck out. “We can’t eat people...they’re people!” (People are People—Depeche Mode). Nando lays down some trip about how Jesus offered his flesh as a sacrifice and that their fellow passengers are essentially doing the same thing. Most of them are like “mmm yeah—I guess that tracks. Where the utensils at?” The next morning they wake up ready to chow face. Literally. I want to say this film avoids sensationalizing cannibalism...and it does....but it also doesn’t? I guess it’s handled as tastefully as possible (I know—there’s a million cheap jokes floating around in my head too). Canessa grabs one of the bodies, slices a hunk of flesh from the ass area, and chokes it down. How does it taste? Like ass! (Iiiiii know! I’m sorry!!). They figure now that they’re satiated they’ll have enough energy to go look for those tail batteries again.
One night as the gang is bedding down in their makeshift one-star Air Bn’B, the plane’s lone surviving lady passenger Lilliana (the always incredible Ileana Douglas), tells her husband that she’d like to have more children if she ever gets off the mountain....which is screenwriting code for “this character will die in the very next scene.” Sure enough, later that night the plane was buried by an avalanche. Wounds—meet salt. Ileana Douglas dies along with 7 other passengers including Vinny Spano, who hasn’t really done much but sulk around in the background ever since Ethan Hawke woke up. This flick treats the avalanche like a fatal yet minor hiccup. In actuality, folks were trapped in the snow packed fuselage for DAYS! So long, in fact, that they had to eat the newly dead that they were stuck on top of. They also smoked a shit ton of cigarettes in there with little ventilation. Honestly, I’m not sure what grosses me out more. Maybe the smoking?
The survivors emerge from the avalanche with a newfound resolve to get themselves off the mountain. I mean...kinda. Another month goes by and they don’t really do much of anything. What are you really gonna do marooned way up in the Andes in 1972? Post TikToks? Nando leads a crew up to the tail where they find some toothpaste to eat, which is awesome. They also discover the long sought after batteries are useless, which is less awesome. They finally figure the only way they’ll get off the mountain alive is to to hike off. So...you know...that’s what they do! And this is where things really go sideways for this flick. The final 30 minutes play out like an utterly suspenseless meat and potatoes action flick with a preordained outcome. Even if you somehow went into this movie completely ignorant of the true story that it’s based on, you must know that some of them survive as one of the survivors narrates the beginning of the movie. Also—it’s called Alive ....not fuckin’ DEAD. The rugby kids were all intelligent and spiritual and have had really amazing insights into their ordeal throughout their lives. I’m gonna guess that there was a draft of the Shanley screenplay that read like a Samuel Beckett play and that the producers tossed it out decided to film like 15 different sequences where a dude almost falls off a cliff and has to be rescued by another dude (actually this only happens like 3 times...but it’s shit annoying. We already know that no one fell off a cliff!). After 10 days and like a million movie minutes of hiking, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa finally spot a dude on a donkey. They lead a fleet of helicopters back to the wreckage and rescue their buddies. Cue Aaron Neville singing Ave Maia, roll credits, and call that shit a WRAP! No mention of how people reacted when they learned the dudes survived by eating other dudes (answer: poorly at first...but they explained it away pretty well...and South Americans aren’t fucking idiots about stuff like Americans are). Everyone who lived lived happily ever after. Especially Nando Parrado...who was palling around with Jackie Stewart and judging bikini contests by the end of 1972. As of this writing I have still yet to watch the 1992 version of Disney's Aladdin. The end.
In the two decades that I have worked in the restaurant industry I have worked with people from nearly every corner of the free world and beyond. I can stumble through a little Spanish, a hint of Portuguese, and know my way around cuss words in most languages. I’ll tell you, though--there ain’t nothing like doing time with a co-worker who speaks 1980’s Horror Flick. A couple of years ago I worked with this cat by the name of Alex who was about a decade younger than me but who knew his Witchboard from his Witchcraft. You could schedule us together but we’d spend most of our shift discussing the finer points of Chopping Mall and ignoring the customers. It’s like...hey...can I get someone to refill my Malbec!? Sorry, the servers are busy arguing about whether Friday the 13th jumped the shark after Paramount sold the franchise to New Line (it did). One flick that came up alot during our lengthy horror raps was the 1988 Lukas Haas film Lady in White. Alex said that it scared the shit of him. I said that it scared the shit out of me also (high fives). Since Halloween is this week, and there isn’t nearly enough terrifying real world stuff going on, I decided to go ahead and check it out again. I was shocked to learn that, despite all of our conversations to the contrary, I had never actually seen Lady in White before! So what the hell was I thinking about then!? The Lady in Red by Chris DeBurgh?? That’s a song, not a movie! The Gene Wilder flick Woman in Red?? That’s scary bad but otherwise not a horror movie. Lair of the White Worm by Ken Russell? Shit man--I really have no idea! I know I probably owe Alex an apology next time I see him.
Anyway, what happens is this--a famous horror writer arrives at an airport in Anycity, USA and hails a taxi to the fictional town of Waypoint Falls. We know he’s a famous writer because the cabbie is all “holy guacamole--I can’t believe I got the author of A Fog in the Night in my cab! You don’t believe all of that spooky stuff ya write about, do ya?” The writer asks the cabbie if they can make a pit stop at a cemetery on the outskirts of town. Not only does he consent to said stop, the cabbie, he jumps out of the cab and goes strolling among the tombstones with this guy. Shit man--I can’t even get an Uber driver to pull into 7-11 for a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos! Different times...different times. Without warning or even asking the cab driver if he’d like to hear a 113 minute story, the writer launches into a 113 minute story. “It was a town just like any other…” aaaand just like that we’re in the Waypoint Falls of 1962, which is super Norman Rockwelly; kids in propeller hats whizz up Main Street on their bicycles, the apothecary doffs his cap to the apple-polishing grocer who winks at the Italian tailor. You know the drill. Whenever a film is set in the early 1960’s I always wager a bet that there will be a scene where people crowd around a department store window to watch news of the Kennedy assassination. In this case--my wager is lost. Kennedy does not die...at least not in Lady in White.
At a farmhouse out in the sticks, we meet 9 year-old Frankie Scarlatti, played by man who still looks exactly the same as he did when he was 9 years-old Lukas Haas. Frankie lives with his dad, who is totally Moe Green from The Godfather (I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders!), and his grandparents, who are walking caricatures of Italian grandparents. They don’t speak a lick of English, either of them. They just run around the house screaming in unsubtitled Italian. His house feels like an Olive Garden during the lunch rush. I’m guessing there’s more than a little autobiography going on here as this film was written and directed by a guy by the name of Frank LaLoggia (no relation to deceased Opportunity Knocks star Robert The Loggia). Frankie and his older brother Geno, played by Jason Presson, the unfamous kid from the 1985 flick The Explorers, ride their bikes to school in a sequence that lasts about 90 minutes (note: apparently there’s a director’s cut with an extra THIRTY minutes...which is absolutely insane cuz the friggin’ movie already feels longer than Kenneth Brannagh’s unabridged Hamlet). Geno dumps Frankie in a puddle of wet cement but the kid just laughs it off like no big shakes. Wet cement!? I’da put a blade in Geno’s tires! Up in the schoolhouse, Halloween is in full effect: pumpkins are carved, candy corns sail through the air, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers plays on an endless loop on the school’s one television set. Frankie, who is dressed as Frankenstein (get it?), is summoned to stand up in front of the class and read an original short story called The Beast Who Ate London. Regular goddamn Howie P Lovecraft, this little Frankie (minus the abject racism). I guess this also means that Frankie is the guy narrating the movie. That was totally not 100% clear...but...you know...I kinda figured. Frankie’s story is hella scary but the other boys in the class make fun of him…’cuz they’re dicks. That’s cool though--the cute girl in the angel costume hits Frankie with the googly eyes and tells him she wishes she was as weird as he is. I’m thinking it’s on like Donkey Kong between these two but nope--she is never seen again! Also--they are 9. So there’s that. Frankie tries to head home after school but is impeded by these two asshole classmates Donnie and Louie. We know they are assholes because one of them says the friggin’ N-word! Good god, man! They tell Frankie that he left his hat in the cloakroom. Why Frankie does not know that he left his own hat in the cloak room, we do not know. I actually had to look up the word “cloakroom” as this is the only time I have heard it used outside of the film Trading Places. Turns out--it’s a closet. Frankie grabs his cap but the two little dickheads lock him in the closet and split. So that’s a shit sandwich on any night but PARTICULARLY on Halloween. Frankie wants to be out crushing Bit-O-Honey’s and watching Pumpkinhead with the rest of the kids!
Frankie curls up into a ball and tries to drift off to sleep. The narrator pops up to draw in some deets for us: “I heard the familiar toll of the bells and drifted off to sleep...but Hallows Eve chilled me to the bone.” First off--anyone who refers to Halloween as Hallows Eve is a pretentious motherfucker and no one I want to know. Second--is he still talking to the cabbie!? I hope that dude left the meter running! Frankie dreams of his mother’s funeral...so in case you didn’t already know: his moms is toe up. He wakes up to find the ghost of a young girl conversing with an unseen presence through the door of the cloak room. The unseen presence starts to sing “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking” by Bing Crosby, which causes the little ghost girl to cry and call for her mommy. Something grabs her by the throat and murders her horribly right in front of Frankie, who is scared shitless. Me? I’m not NOT scared! Frankie hears something fall into the heating grate on the cloakroom floor. And then...and then a REAL non-ghost man enters the cloakroom and tries to pry open that heating grate I just told you about. Frankie tries to remain quiet but a rat crawls up his leg and starts nibbling on his balls. What’s a kid to do but scream!? The man grabs Frankie, throws him on the ground, and starts strangling him to death. The narrator takes over: “I was dying. I saw myself flying over town.” I don’t know about y’all but I’m not really worried about this kid dying as he is NARRATING THE SCENE as an adult. Frankie flies over town and lands in Cherita Chen’s “Autumn Angel” set from Donnie Darko. There’s a ton of fake trees and glitter falling from the sky and shit. A good chunk of the rest of the movie takes place in this bizarro low budget backlot woods. Since they couldn’t afford actual special effects they just went out and bought a assload of colored gels to put over the camera lens. The time of day always seems to be half past orange. Anyway, half dead Frankie lands at a cemetery where he finds the little girl he just witnessed being murdered. She introduces herself as Melissa and says that she would like some help finding her mommy. Before Frankie can say yay or nay to this big ask he’s jolted back to life, where his dad is attempting to resuscitate him on the floor of the cloakroom. There’s a bunch of cops and paramedics standing around but they apparently waited for the kid’s dad to try to bring him back from the dead?? Shit.
Frankie gets sent home to convalesce with little more than a neck brace. Neck braces: good for whiplash AND botched strangulations! The local po po arrest the school’s black janitor ‘cuz this movie is racist as shit (but also anti racism? Frankie’s dad watches a news report about segregation-related violence at one point and seems bummed about it. Maybe just stay in your lane and stick to the scares, folks). Here’s the thing though: the janitor didn’t just attack Frankie. He’s also a serial killer with ten dead kiddo’s on his kill sheet! First I’m hearing of this serial killer...you? Ghost Melissa was the killer’s first victim! So what? So let’s dance! I don’t know, dudes--things get awfully confusing from here on out. Frankie’s dad sits around with his pals Phil and Other Guy Whose Name I Forgot and has a super long conversation about how he thinks the janitor is innocent. His pals do NOT think the janitor is innocent. I’m thinking we are only meeting these characters because one of them is the real killer (note: I am correct. You can probably go ahead and stop reading now). Frankie keeps seeing Melissa’s ghost is his dreams and she keeps leading him to this janky cabin perched on a cliff above the ocean* (I’m pretty sure this movie was filmed in Rochester NY...but I guess the great lakes look oceany from the right angle). Frankie asks about the house on the cliffs and is told to stay away from there as the area is haunted by the lady in white. I was wondering when we were going to get around to that since it’s, you know, the TITLE OF THE MOVIE! Eventually Christmas rolls around at the Scapaglia’s sing Dominick the Italian Donkey and sip anisette and shove cannolis in their faces. Frankie’s grandpa tries to drown himself in the bathtub because his wife won’t let him smoke cigarettes. They go to church, where they see the janitor’s wife and children spat on by the guilt-stricken parents of his victims. I mean...that tracks. Maybe find a new church...at least until the damn trial.
Frankie leads those jerkoff racist kids out to the house on the cliff where they encounter an apparition of a lady in white. But then there’s also another lady in white who isn’t an apparition?? And also much older? And also Mona from Who’s the Boss?? This shit doesn’t even make crazy sense! Frankie convinces his brother to go out to the cliffs...where they see the younger lady in white wailing for Melissa before throwing herself off of the cliff. Ok, so that makes a bit more sense then….but just a bit. As best as I can tell--the events surrounding Melissa’s murder repeat themselves in some sort of inbetween ghost world that is only visible to Frankie and whomever happens to be riding shotgun with him at the moment….EVERY GODDAMN NIGHT! But….but….what about all of the other murders?? Are they not rerun worthy?? Frankie and Geno break into the cloakroom and pull the lid off of the grate and discover a class ring. Frankie immediately brings the ring to the attention of his dad, who simply locks it away in his don’t look in my trunk...thus ensuring this movie will run on for another 30 minutes at the very least. Papa Braciole also tells Frankie that they’re releasing the janitor due to insufficient evidence. He walks out of jail with his head held high...which is awesome...and then one of the victim’s mothers puts a bullet in him...which is less awesome. You know what’s even less awesome than all that?? The bullet exits his body and plants itself in his wife...who also dies!! Sweet lord in heaven and all 12 of the apostles!
Eventually Geno decides to crack into the old man’s trunk and fish out the class ring from the cloakroom. It’s got initials on it and, wouldn’t you know, they belong to PHIL! Actually you do already know ‘cuz I already done told you like two paragraphs ago. (Side note: Phil’s last name is Terragrossa...because everyone in this movie is Italian as fuck). So that’s all well and good...except for the fact that this information comes to light when Phil is out teaching Frankie how to shoot a bow and arrow! Oh dayyum! Cut to: that. Phil and Frankie are engaging in a little harmless archery….but when they start to pack up the car to head home Phil starts to whistle that Bing Crosby song! Dude, never whistle your trademark murder song! You don’t see Jason Voorhees standing around humming “cha cha cha….kill kill kill”. Dead giveaway, right? Frankie panics and tries to lock himself in the car but Phil goes bananas and shows his teeth. “OPEN THE DOOR'' he screams, face screwed up like a werewolf. It’s wicked scary! Frankie frees himself and runs into a part of the woods that looks like a set from a Lita Ford video. Also--it is suddenly nighttime. Phil gives chase and apologizes for the strangling. “I didn’t know it was you, kid! You had that Frankenstein mask on! I try to make it a rule not to kill the children of my old high school buddies!” Phil says that he won’t hurt Frankie if he’ll just return the class ring (that he doesn’t have). I mean--are we really gonna believe this prick?? Dude’s a stone cold serial killer. Prolly have his own podcast in about 30 years! Phil chases Frankie to the cabin on the cliffs and tries to strangle him again but Who’s the Boss lady knocks him out (Phil, not the kid). She carries him in the house where there’s something like 10000 candles lit and WHAT THE FUCK ever happened to the narrator!?? He stopped narrating like an hour ago! Is no one concerned? Maybe that cabbie got sick of listening to his flowery jibber jabber and strangled him to death. Anyway--it turns out Who’s the Boss is not the titular Lady in White...but, in fact, the lady in white’s sister! Melissa’s aunt! She’s also not a ghost. We know this because Phil wakes up and beats her to death (which...I guess...makes her a ghost now, right?). The cabin goes up in flames cuz candles and Phil and Frankie run outside where they try to throw each other off of the cliff. While this is happening Melissa’s ghost is reunited with her mother’s ghost (just don’t even ask why at this point) and they transform themselves into two glowing light pods and blast off into outer space. (If they made a Lady in White 2 set in outer space I would possibly watch it). Mr Scarlatti shows up in the nick of time and pulls Frankie to safety. He even offers to pull Phil to safety! That’s a severely loyal pal right there...offering a helping hand to a dude who tried to murder his own son...like...THREE TIMES! Phil weighs his options and decides plunging to his death on the rocks below is probably better than whatever is waiting for him up above. And you know? He’s probably right...so that’s what he does. So that’s that. Everyone lives happily ever after. I mean...except for the janitor’s kids. They are shit out of parents. Happy Halloween, everybody.
Here’s something that actually happened: in the fall of 1999, when I was in my senior year at Emerson College, I spent a semester living in Los Angeles. The LA Program required students to hustle up an entertainment industry internship for school credit. I landed myself a gig with a Miramax-adjacent producer who shared office space with the late writer/producer Debra Hill. Hill created legendary silver screen boogeyman Michael Myers, which is awesome, and was also more terrifying to her underlings than all of the Halloween films combined, which is/was less awesome. Pity the poor SOB who brought Debbie the wrong Starbucks order! That motherfucker was gonna drive home on the 405 covered in soy latte and first degree burns. The fact that I didn’t actually work for her provided me with an immunity shield...but I still caught a few rations of rage here and there. One afternoon I was out grabbing lunch on the Third Street Promenade when I spotted Jamie Lee Curtis. I immediately ran back to the office and said “Hey Debra Hill!! I Just saw Jamie Lee Curtis walking out of Koo Koo Roo!” I figured she’d want to know because...you know...Halloween. She looked me up and down, walked into her office, and slammed the door. About two minutes later her assistant emerged and told me that it was probably a good idea if I avoided so much as making eye contact with Debra. Duly noted! Eventually the ice thawed a bit after I told her how much I loved The Fisher King, which she also produced. She let me and one of my fellow interns fill out her AFI Top 100 Comedies of All Time ballot if we promised to sprinkle some of her films on the list. You mean like Clue and Adventures in Babysitting?? Those flicks are BOMB! You got it, lady! In the middle of October she received a box full of random Halloween merch with John Carpenter’s signature on it. She was supposed to add her John Hancock so the merch could be distributed to some lucky so and so’s. Debra asked all of the interns in the office if anyone would be interested in learning how to forge her signature so she could go out shopping for clogs (she loved yellow clogs...I don’t know what else to tell you...). Hey, anything to get me out of taking my bosses’ dog to the dog wash! So somewhere out there...someone has a Halloween poster or VHS or black and white photo signed by yours truly. Facts!
Anyway, we’re actually here today to discuss the 1988 fan favorite sequel Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. This film was my first exposure to the Halloween franchise and it scared me to the point where I was afraid to sleep...for YEARS! My parents brought me to the doctor to see if there was anything he could do to help me sleep. He recommended they give me a tablespoon full of brandy every night before bed. He also smoked cigarettes in the examination rooms. I am 100% not kidding about any of this. Is Halloween 4 really that scary? I mean...sure. What was particularly terrifying was hearing about the events of Halloween’s 1 & 2 and having to visualize them with my 10 year-old imagination. I became irrationally afraid of Halloween (the holiday). Afraid of the boozy British character actor who played Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasance). I was even afraid to watch the Gregory Hines/Sammy David Jr tap dancing flick Tap because it was directed by the guy who played Michael Myers in the original Halloween!
There are, as of this writing, 13 Halloween films...and there’s really no other long-running film franchise that has asked its fans to constantly disregard the events of the previous films in the series. Jamie Lee Curtis’ character (Laurie Strode) has been killed off and resurrected twice. Halloween 4 star Danielle Harris, who plays Strode’s 10 year-old orphan daughter Jamie, was killed off after part 6 but Harris resurfaced in Rob Zombie’s ill-fated 2007 Halloween reboot as Nancy Kyes’ character Annie from the original Halloween. If this information makes your brain feel like it’s about to start leaking out of your ears, you are not alone. Timelines REALLY matter to horror nerds and the Halloween producers have not been gentle. There have been a lot of big asks over the decades. “Forget parts 3 through 7--here comes the real sequel to PART TWO!” What I have always pined for, however, is a proper sequel to parts 4 & 5. In fact, I even started writing my own screenplay for Part 6...but I was only 12 years-old and only got about two pages done. They were damn good pages, though. Fresh copy. Maybe I should revisit it soon. Of course, there is already a sequel to Part’s 4&5 called, you know, Part 6....but it is balls bad. It came out after a six year hiatus during which Miramax bought the franchise. And those Weinstein brothers....the fucked (up) everything. I think I read that there was an alternative version of Part 6 that’s actually good. I don’t know...maybe watch the Halloween documentary if you are actually interested in this shit (like me...clearly). Watching it today as a slightly less terrified grown ass middle aged man, I still think Part 4 is an extremely solid flick. It’s both a satisfying continuation of the series and an above average 80’s B-movie. It respects the source material and offers unridiculous new angles without trampling on the feelings of die hards. You know--the (mostly) dudes who hang out in their mom’s basements clipping articles out of Fangoria magazines and who go to Horror Con’s and wait in line to get their picture taken with Kane Hodder? Those folks.
Anyway, what happens in Halloween 4 is this: the film opens with an homage to the original: a pitch black, rain soaked night....a desolate country road...an ambulance cautiously approaching an insane asylum (it’s cool...it’s the 80’s...you can still say “insane asylum.” Or “looney bin” if you’d prefer). A pair of doctors exit the ambulance and approach the gate house. They tell the security guard that they have come to transport Michael Myers to a federal prison hospital. The security guard unlocks the gate and launches into a little refresher course for the unfamiliar (like 10 year-old me...at home...hiding under my waterbed). “Jeez--Michael Myers? He killed 16 kids on Halloween night back in ’78 trying to get to his sister. Nearly got her too. Luckily she survived and went topless in Trading Places just a few short years later.” He also mentions that Myers’ doctor shot him six times and set the two of them on fire. Here I need to throw a flag: I hadn’t seen Part 2 and didn’t know that Doctor Loomis didn’t merely light them on fire...he blew both of them to friggin’ smithereens! Part 2 ends with a shot of Michael Myers’ hollowed out skull slowly burning to a crisp. Completely unsurvivable! So even here...Part 4 is asking us to ignore the ending of Part 2 (Part 3, it should be noted, does not feature Michael Myers and should not be viewed by anyone). The security guard brings the doctors down to the basement boiler room, which is where they keep all of the super scary ass patients. Mops, cleaning supplies, Freddy Krueger’s fedora, and uber killers. Our boy Mikey has been comatose for an entire decade but he’s still wrapped up like a goddamn mummy. Would he still need to bandage his burns after 10 years? Wouldn’t that musty basement air be terrible for a burn victim?? The doctors start to roll the stretcher out to the ambulance and that’s when we hear it for the first time: John Carpenter’s Halloween theme! But it’s a late 80’s redux with tons of added kick drum and auxiliary percussion. A house remix of sorts. You could totally rave to it if you were so inclined. As the ambulance races through the night the doctors engage in some expository chit chat. Doctor 1: So does this Myers fella have any surviving relatives? Doctor 2: Just a niece back in Haddonfield. Michael Myers hears this and is all “humina humina humina WHAT NIECE???” He’s immobilized but all of this niece talk gets his blood flowing. Speaking of flowing blood--Michael Myers grabs one of the doctors and starts to bash his head against the wall. Then he jams his thumb all the way through the doctor’s forehead and into his brain...just to put an exclamation point on it.
Back in Haddonfield, said niece Jamie (still Danielle Harris) is up late with a severe case of the heebie jeebies. We learn that her mom was killed by Jamie Lee Curtis’s salary demands and she’s been shunted off to live with the Carruthers, a local foster family who have a high school-aged daughter named Rachel. Rachel tries to talk Jamie to sleep...but Jamie hides in her closet and looks at old pictures of JLC and wails “how dare you abandon me for A Fish Called Wanda??” Don’t worry, kid--your mom will be back in just three sequel’s time...but you’ll be written off by then...only to be resurrected in 2018...but played by Judy Greer of all people! Jamie says her prayers...now I lay me down and all the big hits...but Michael Myers is already in the house!!! OH WAIT!! It’s just a dream! I was gonna say! The next day, which is October 31st, y’all, Rachel tells her folks that she plans on spending the night balling her boyfriend Brady. Her parents tell her that their babysitter broke her spine and that Rachel will have to take Jamie trick-or-treating instead of having the sex. Rachel is mad bummed, natch.
Dr Loomis shows up at the insane asylum six Cutty Sark’s deep and starts to over-emote like a motherfucker. “You let them take it out of here?? The evil was taken away!??” he whisper/scream/slurs. The doctor on duty starts rolling his eyes, prompting Loomis to show off his burns which, honestly, don’t look all that bad. I bet Debra Hill’s interns have gnarlier scars from hurled cappuccinos. Loomis’ shitfaced Shakespearean soliloquy is interrupted by a ringing telephone. The ambulance...it has crashed! Aye Dios mio! The doctors race to the scene, where they find the ambulance upside down under a bridge, submerged in like six inches of water. Like, less water than Teddy Kennedy’s Oldsmobile. Even though the accident occurred at night and it is the following afternoon and there are dozens of first responders on the scene....NO ONE had looked inside of the ambulance yet. What the fuck have y’all been doing out there?? Collecting time and a half? Loomis asks if he can look inside the vehicle and they’re all “sure--better you than us! Get your fill.” Loomis peers into the blood spattered ambulance and screams “the evil is gone! You let him get away!” One of the cops standing ‘round says that Myers could’ve been thrown from the vehicle....that he’s seen bodies thrown up to 50 feet after bad crashes. Hey Columbo...maybe...I don’t know...go SEARCH THE AREA??? This missing dude has 16 kills under his belt! 19 if you count those poor bastards in the ambulance! Speaking of kills--Michael Myers somehow gets himself to a local gas station diner rest stop and murders the living shit out of everyone in the fricken joint. How nobody spotted an escaped serial killer wrapped in medical gauze from head to toe skulking up the highway we do not know. Unfortunately, Loomis wanders into this very same rest stop looking to wet his beak. Shoulda held out for a rest stop with a Sbarro, bro. Instead of coffee and Sambuca, Loomis finds about half a dozen bodies and cut phone lines. And in the kitchen? The Shape himself! One Michael Lindsay Myers (note: I don’t think MM has a middle name...but I feel like, if he did, it would be Lindsay). Michael is somehow already wearing his trademark Halloween killing mask. I don’t know...maybe they sold Halloween costumes next to the Pennzoil or something. Loomis pleads with Michael not to return to Haddonfield. Then he pulls out his pistol, Loomis does, and squeezes off six shots (‘cuz that worked so well back in ’78) but Michael is off like a Halloween costume. He blows up the gas station, steals a tow truck, cranks the Blue Oyster Cult, and sets the GPS for Haddonfield, IL. I know he’s, like, an evil monster and whatnot...but that’s gotta be the quickest coma recovery since Steven Seagal in Hard to Kill. And Michael Myers didn’t even have Kelly LeBrock on hand to perform acupuncture on him and shit.
Back in Haddonfield, Jamie’s school day has gone shithouse. Her classmates taunt her mercilessly for being an orphan, which is fucked up. They also rag on her for being the niece of the man who effectively butchered half of the town’s population...which is not NOT worth mentioning. Like...Jamie Lee Curtis’ brother killed 16 people in a small town and they never considered, I don’t know, MOVING AWAY?? You’d think all of this would dampen Jamie’s Halloween spirits on the forever tip but noooo--the kid still wants her foster sister to take her trick-or-treating. Rachel brings Jamie costume shopping at the town’s everything store...where Michael Myers’ tow truck is parked out front! Inside, we meet Rachel’s dude Brady, who is totally the kid who plays Donny in Dazed and Confused. Kid is blazin’ hot in a pinstriped blazer! He and Rachel vacuum each other’s mouths for a sec but then Rachel has to break off some bad news--she can’t Netflix and chill with him that night. Her little foster sister is a major C-block. Brady is irrationally angry. He’s all “why didn’t you text me...I thought we were gonna BANG!?” Rachel says she’ll call him later but Brady already has his eye on his raspy voiced co-worker Kelly Meeker, the sheriff’s daughter (ohhhh). While this little small town soap opera is playing out, Jamie wanders to the back of the store, where she takes a shine to a clown costume. As in...the same clown costume that a young Michael Myers donned before killing his original sister back in the original! Oh yeah--Michael Myers is in the store too! We see his hand reach over and grab a Michael Myers mask off the rack. First: we just saw him with that mask five minutes ago. Does he need a backup or something? That’s fair...those things get hella stinky after a couple of hours. Second: are they really selling masks of the masked murderer in the town where he did all of his murdering?? They don’t sell Ted Bundy masks at the Lake Sammamish concession stand, do they?? Jamie sees her Uncle Mickey and screams and breaks a mirror (7 years of baaaad luck). Brady and Rachel rush to her aid but Myers has already split the scene to rack up some extraneous kills.
And just like that it’s already Halloween night! This flick is 88 minutes long without an ounce of fat on it. Takes care of business, it does. While Rachel and Jamie head out to scare up some Charleston Chews, Michael Myers breaks into their house. He goes right for the closet, where he finds that box full of Jamie Lee Curtis pics. This seems to piss him off something awful. Not a big Prom Night fan, I take it. He kills the family dog. Doc Loomis finally arrives in town and stumbles into the police station, where he starts howling like a boozehound on payday. “Michael Myers has returned! Six bodies! A gas station in flames!! A child in danger!!” He finds a sympathetic in Sheriff Meeker, who is played by man who is Mike Starr’s brother, Beau. Meeker asks Loomis if there’s anything that can be done to avoid a repeat of Halloween ’78. Loomis says not really, no. They try to call in reinforcements but the town’s phone lines have already been disconnected. Michael Myers--mass murderer and tech whiz.
Rachel and Jamie knock on Sheriff Meeker’s door. Daughter Kelly opens the door looking all flustered, wearing a T-shirt that says “Cops Do it by the Book” and nothing else. Girl, don’t you know you gotta shut your porch light off if you don’t want to give out mini Peppermint Patties?? Rachel looks past Kelly to see Brady chilling by the fireplace with half a chub. She starts to run away but he runs after her. She’s like “what the actual fuck, dude??” and he’s all “well you blew me off this one time soooo...” Rachel is unimpressed. She tells Brady that she’ll let him get back to “Little Miss Hot Pants”. (Note: Kelly is not wearing pants of any kind). He’s like “sounds good to me!” He’s a real asshole, this Brady. I won’t shed a single tear when he’s inevitably murdered in the next half hour or so. While Rachel and Brady are arguing Jamie manages to slip off into the night. Man, Rachel’s night is just a bus ride from bad to worse! She eventually locates Jamie...so night saved, right? Wrong! Loomis and Meeker roll up on them and announce that they are being pursued by Jamie’s bloodthirsty uncle...and he ain’t in town to exchange pleasantries! It’s quickly determined that the police station is the safest place to weather the murder storm...so off they go.
Meanwhile over at the local tavern, a crowd of grizzled clock out drinkers and other assorted Stephen King townie cosplayers are busy getting happily hammered when they’re distracted by a special report on the TV (note—dig the Spuds MacKenzie doll next to the TV. He’s dead....right?). The police have issued a curfew and are asking all Haddonfield residents to shelter in place. If we’ve learned anything this year it’s that people HATE being told to stay indoors. The bartender immediately calls over to the police station but the phone just rings and rings. They decide to pile into their pickups to go see what's what. Luckily-ish, Loomis and Meeker beat them to the station. I say “ish” because, once inside, they find that Michael Myers, omnipresent motherfucker that he is, has gone ahead and slaughtered the whole damn police force. Nastily too. Dude’s are missing their heads and shit. “What kind of man would do this??” asks the sheriff. “He’s not a man, he’s evil!” Loomis says, just in case you didn’t hear him the first 30 times he told us that Michael Myers is evil. They exit the station to find a fleet of barfly-carrying pickup trucks assembled outside. They ask Meeker what in the Sam Hill is going on. He’s all “ohhh nothing....the fellas are just doing a little spring cleaning!” But Doctor McGillicuddy blurts it right out: “it’s Michael Myers and he has come home to kill!” The townies decide to arm themselves to the teeth and see about meting out a little vigilante justice. This whole renegade militia plot device really appealed to me back in ‘88. In 2020? Not so much. For example—the very first thing these yokels do is hunt down a kid in a Michael Myers mask and shoot him 75 times...only to find that he is just some kid in a Michael Myers mask. Quick aside—I know Myers is a callous monster, but he must feel a tiny twinge of pride seeing so many people dressed up like him for Halloween.
Back at the Meeker residence, Brady and Kelly are about to start balling. Kelly takes her t-shirt off and Brady says “I’m in heaven!” Hey! You will be soon enough, asshole! Before they can get to the gettin’, though, the sheriff busts through the door with all of the surviving cast members in tow. Brady thought he was about to get some and now he’s got his girlfriend, his goomah, and her daddy the sheriff all in the same room smelling their almost fuck fumes. The sheriff orders Brady to batten down the hatches (literally) and stations his last surviving deputy at the front door with a shotgun. While Rachel tries to put Jamie to sleep, the sheriff breaks out his old CB and attempts to radio neighboring towns for help. This whole claustrophobic set piece? Super effective! You know what’s less effective? Michael Myers-proofing the house. OF COURSE dude is already inside! He waits until Loomis and Meeker head out for coffee or whatever and then he decides to get his kill....ON! The cop guarding the front door is toast. Kelly Meeker is impaled with a shotgun (bye, Felicia). Brady tells Rachel and Jamie to run up to the attic and hide...because this is still a dumbass horror movie at the end of the day. Brady tries to fight Michael Myers with fists....but evil trumps fist every time. Myers crushes Brady’s fist into a fine powder and then squeezes his head until the spaghetti pops out. Rachel looks on and wails. She’s way bummed about her profoundly unfaithful not a boyfriend. You can do better than Brady, girl! Michael Myers just did you a solid. Might not feel that way tonight, but...
Now it’s time for the obligatory rooftop chase scene. Meh. Jamie is lowered to safety but Rachel is thrown from the roof. She “dies.” Loomis finds Jamie and suggests they’ll be safe if they hide out in the schoolhouse. And how does he access the schoolhouse? He smashes out a window, setting off the alarm, which rings incessantly and is loud as a bastard. He’ll never find y’all now! Excellent work, Captain Morgan. Myers tracks them down in about 20 seconds and launches Loomis through a glass door like the human-sized Weeble Wobble that he is. Jamie manages to escape to the parking lot, where she finds the townie militia. And also—Rachel. She’s no longer dead. The townies load the ladies into one of the trucks and they put Haddonfield in the rearview with the quickness. As they pass town limits they see a parade of state police cruisers rushing toward them. It looks like this night of terror is finally ov....OH SHIT!!...Michael Myers was under the truck this whole time! I mean come ahhhhn! He hops into the bed of the pickup and murders the three lookout dudes. Then he smashes the driver’s side window and rips the driver’s throat out. Ahh...the Patrick Swayze! I dig it. Rachel has to assume driving duties but it’s tough going with a killer on the roof continually stabbing downward. Rachel jacks the brakes and Myers flies off the roof and hits the pavement, where he rolls about 40 times but DOES NOT drop his knife! That’s some serious dedication to craft right there. Rachel puts the hammer down and crashes right into his solar plexus but nothing seems to phase this fricken guy! He struggles to his feet for another round but this time the militia is in position. They shoot him about 900 times (not an exact figure). He falls into the foundation of an abandoned substation...Swiss cheese for sure this time, right?? They’re gonna go check his vitals, right!???
Rachel and Jamie are finally returned to the Carruthers’, where they find Loomis with a bandaid on his head. Can’t kill that old sod either! Sheriff Meeker seems particularly relieved that everyone is safe. Did nobody remember to tell him that his daughter is back home mounted on the wall like a 12-point buck?? Mrs Carruthers goes upstairs to run a bath for Jamie, ‘cuz running from a masked monster all night will dirty you up something awful. But wait! The clown costume eyes suddenly slip over the camera! It’s the same POV shot that opened the original Halloween! Nice callback! Jamie arms herself with a pair of scissors and stabs the shit out of her foster mom. The evil....it’s in the bones! Shit is hereditary! Doctor Loomis hears the commotion and rushes to the stairs, where he finds Jamie holding the bloody scissors aloft. He starts to scream ”no no no” but it sounds more like “now now now” with his cocked cockney accent. He pulls out his pistol and points it up at Jamie. This crazy old motherfucker is actually gonna kill the kid! Meeker manages to knock him down before he can pull the trigger. The whole crew looks up at Jamie like “nope....not good....not good at all.” And BAM! The movie ends! Pretty awesome, huh? The movie....not this review. I feel like it’s just ok. So that’s it...until I get my hands on a VHS copy of Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. Then we’ll chat some more. If you think Donald Pleasance was over the top here, my friends, you have no idea what’s in store for you. The end.
When people ask me what it was like to have grown up when bands like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Alice in Chains were at the peak of their powers I tell them the following: while some people did listen to those bands pretty much everyone else spent the early 90’s listening exclusively to The Bodyguard Soundtrack. (note: no one has ever asked me this question but...well..there’s my answer!). Whitney Houston’s singles from that soundtrack, bangers all, propelled that disc to the top of the charts, where it would remain for twenty weeks. It spent almost THREE YEARS in the Billboard Top 200. It charted when Nirvana were still touring Nevermind and didn’t fall off until Nirvana no longer existed but the Foo Fighters did. It still holds the title of highest grossing soundtrack of all time some 28 years later and will probably hold that title until the end of time (which...let’s be honest...could be any day now). The movie also raked in about half a bill worldwide. It opened in November of ’92 and was still going strong on Valentine’s Day ’93, when Warner Bros. launched their “Relive the greatest romance of all time” campaign. And you know what? People listened! They went out and saw The Bodyguard again and again. While cuts from the soundtrack are still played 7 days a week at locations where music is still played, the film has more or less faded from view. And the reason for this....and I’m in a position to say so because I just finished watching it...is that it is shit terrible.
What happens is this: at the opening of the flick we meet Frank Farmer, a vaguely disgraced former Secret Service agent who now works as muscle-for-hire. We assume he’s an effective bodyguard because he shoots an intruder to death before the opening credits finish rolling. Frank Farmer is played by Postman star Kevin Costner, trading his form hugging dungarees for a drab monkey suit and a perma-frown. He has also traded his luscious, sandy, Robin of Locksley locks for a caesar...five years before George Clooney made it acceptable for a guy to rock a caesar. Costner was always a bit of an enigma back in the day in that he often came across as both supremely talented and also the world’s worst actor. It was not uncommon for him to be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar and a Worst Actor Raspberry in the same calendar year. His work in the Bodyguard is pure Hall of Shame material. His character rarely flies above a 3...maybe 3.5 on the enthusiasm scale. Farmer is congratulated for saving the life of the ponytailed Richard Branson knockoff that he works for. Ponytail offers Farmer a bundle of dough to remain in his employ but Farmer says that he’s all set. Says that he’d rather go back to his dumpy ass two bedroom ranch out in Covina and eat canned soup straight outta the saucepan. So that’s exactly what he does.
Farmer’s retirement lasts less than 12 hours. The following morning he is visited by an older gentleman by the name of Devaney, who says he wants to hire Farmer to protect his uber famous client, star of stage and screen Rachel Marron (played by uber famous star of stage and screen Whitney Houston...hitting it in the park in her film debut. A single...maybe even a double). Yeah, so the previous scene involved some sort of bomb going off backstage at a concert somewhere...but it was so shittily directed and edited that it was impossible to tell exactly what happened and to whom. Someone is out to get Rachel and Devaney offers Farmer $2k per week if he can prevent this someone from doing that something. Farmer says that he doesn’t mess with celebrities and hasn’t bought a new album since Tammy Wynette’s Stand by Your Man came out so he has no idea who Rachel Marron is. Devanaey ups the purse to $3k per week. Farmer says that he’ll at least come suss out the sitch but to watch him throw some throwing knives first. So he does. He watches Frank Farmer throw knives. Farmer rolls up to Rachel Marron’s hysterically massive fuck you mansion in his El Camino (it’s a car...AND a truck!) and can instantly tell that the security protocols they have in place are whack as crack. The front gate intercom is all staticy and there’s a stalker circling the premises in a Toyota 4-Runner and they let him into the house even though he tells them his name is Alexander Graham Bell. He’s led to Rachel’s indoor soundstage, where the smoke machine is turned up to 11. I know that I use that line all the time but, in this case, there is an ACTUAL smoke machine visible in several shots (whether said smoke machine goes up to 11 or not is not known). Rachel is surrounded by her entourage of flunkies, including her knobhead British manager Sy, her palpably jealous older sister Nicki, and her burly Italian head of security Tony, who is played by Mike Starr, the Irish actor who has played about 300 burly Italian tough guys...and who is not to be confused with the Mike Starr who played bass in Alice in Chains and who is now dead. Rachel also has an 8 year-old son named Fletcher (father: unknown. Never spoken of). They ask Farmer if he’d like a beverage and he requests an orange juice. He then proceeds to crush OJ in pretty much every scene that he’s in for the rest of the movie. If restaurants ever open their doors again I’m gonna start asking servers for a “Frank Farmer” and then get all pissed off when they don’t know what I’m talking about. (Ummm...The Bodyguard??....Orange Juice????....Duh!!!). Rachel starts undressing Farmer with her eyes right from “hello”...which makes absolutely no sense. She’s a gorgeous superstar musician and Academy Award nominee (don’t ask) and he’s an unsmiling security guard with the personality of a wet fart. Frank is just as uncomfortable as us folks watching the movie are and tries to get up outta there with the quickness. He agrees to head upstairs with Sy and Devanaey to look over the threatening letters Rachel has been receiving, most of which look like pages torn out of a steampunk novel. This stalker...he’s got a gift! Sy tells Farmer that Rachel doesn’t know about the letters or about the exploding doll in the dressing room (so THAT’S what happened in that scene!? Good to know). He also tells Farmer that someone broke into the house, went into Rachel’s bedroom, and jizzed all over goddamn bed! “Umm, that’s a problem,” Farmer says. And the award for Understatement of the Year goes to!! Sy doesn’t see it that way at all. He says it isn’t a big deal and then starts grilling Farmer on his resume. Farmer says that he did two years with Carter and four with Reagan. “Reagan was shot!” Sy says, not unreasonably. “Not on my watch” says Farmer. Ohhhhh...
Farmer takes the job and settles in for a quick “beefing up security” montage. He brings over a shitload of guns and installs security cameras and teaches the staff chauffeur how to drive the limousine like an Indy 500 car. He has a quick heart to heart with Nicki, who tells him that she used to be the more talented of the sisters. She and Rachel even had a Led Zeppelin cover band in the fourth grade (there is a picture of this. It is amazing) but then Rachel eclipsed the living shit out of her and “sigh, I guess that’s fine, deeper sigh.” And look, if you don’t think that this eternally jilted, unfamous older sister doesn’t have something to do with Rachel being stalked then you have never seen a movie. I would’ve prefaced that with a spoiler alert if I thought there was anything to spoil.
Rachel takes her crew out to brunch but things go asswards when a young fan approaches for a selfie and Frank chokes her out (the kid....not Rachel). Rachel is pissed but then they are followed home by that same 4-Runner from earlier. Farmer dives out of the limo and tries to catch 4-Runner but he’s on foot and 4-Runner’s screw. Sy gives Farmer a ration of shit when he gets back to the house. “Look mate--if she wants to brunch she needs to be able to brunch!” Farmer suggests she try brunching on Tuesday instead. Sy is beside himself. “Brunch!?? On Tuesday?? There’s no bottomless mimosas on Tuesday!!” Symalso complains that the house is now so secure that Robin Leach of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was turned away at the gate. Bummer dude! I guess he’ll have to head down to Rodeo Drive and cameo in Troop Beverly Hills instead. Farmer says “this shit is NMP, Spandau Ballet!” I wrote that last line because this is the point in the movie when I realized that Sy was being played by Spandau Ballet frontman Gary Kemp! Ahh...so Whitney Houston isn’t the only 80’s pop superstar in this flick! True story: I once walked into a film festival in NYC next to Gary Kemp. I was on my way to watch a documentary about Elliott Smith. He was on his way to watch a documentary about...umm...Spandau Ballet.
Rachel makes Frank take her clothes shopping at a boutique on Melrose. She models outfits for him flirtily but Frank huffs and says “I’m not here to watch you shop.” Man, for $3k a week!? I’d watch her SHIT! Later, Frank is chugging a glass of Grovestand when the crew inform him that Rachel has some sort of club gig THAT NIGHT. Like, how does the head of security have NO IDEA that there’s a live performance on his client’s schedule until 10 minutes beforehand. I’m starting to feel like everything in this movie exists solely to piss me off. They all pile into the limo and Frank slips Rachel this secret crucifix buzzer and tells her that if she presses it, he’ll magically materialize. Man, I want a little buzzer that makes Kevin Costner appear! “Hey Kevin! Kevin! Do Ray Kinsella! No wait--do Jim Garrison!!” They pull up to the club to find like five THOUSAND screaming fans waiting outside and of course they have to bring her through the front fucking door. Everyone recognizes Rachel even though she’s wearing a Darth Vader shroud (with Madonna’s Blonde Ambition Tour costume underneath). Inside, they find yet another threatening letter. This one says something like Marron Bitch--you are going to die!” #1--he ain’t wrong...and #2--I’m going to use Marron Bitch as the opening salutation for every letter I write from here on out. Devaney is like “man, another letter” and Rachel is like “what do you mean ANOTHER letter??” Devaney finally spills the beans. “There was a man in the house and he beat off all over da bed!” Wait a minute--I realize I’m thinking in real time here...but if Rachel didn’t know she was being stalked then why would she consent to let them beef up her security with this Farmer?? What’s wrong with Mikey Starr?? Rachel says she’s scared and that she wants to go home...only to turn around and say “no fucking freak is gonna run me off of my stage” like eight seconds later. Spandau Ballet finds Frank and gives him another tongue lashing. Says that Rachel needs to perform otherwise she’ll end up in the poor house and that she might as well be dead if she can’t be in the public eye and COME ONNNNN!!!! This lady lives in a $20 million dollar mega mansion and is up for an Oscar for a film that doesn’t appear to exist (seriously, they couldn’t have filmed some fake clips or something??) and she has to schlep out to play club gigs under the threat of assassination?? You would fly this lady to Guam and hide her under a pile of snakes until the stalker is neutralized ASAP. Wouldn’t make for much of a movie if they just went ahead and did that though. Although...I don’t know that what we’re watching is much of a movie either....so there’s that. Rachel goes out on stage and it’s fucking bedlam. The venue has the shittiest security this side of Altamont. Hell’s Angels and golden retrievers just wandering all over the stage. The crowd bum rushes Rachel and knocks her onto the top of the mosh pit, where they start tearing her Blonde Ambition outfit off piece by piece (it’s cool...there’s a lot of pieces). Frank tucks her under his arm like a football and rushes her through the crowd, punching out a baker’s dozen worth of dudes along the way. For his efforts, he gets to read her a bedtime story.
The next morning, after an epically unsafe jog, Rachel encounters Farmer and expresses concern that she might not be able to go out on dates with such an intense security detail. “So why don’t YOU take me to a movie then, Frank Farmer?” she asks. Riiiiight...this beautiful black celebrity wants to go see Fried Green Tomatoes with this white tub of plain yogurt in Dockers and a polo? Who wrote this shit anyway!? What’s that? Legendary Empire Strikes Back writer and Big Chill director Larry Kasdan? Well....shit. Frank takes her to see Yojimbo because of course he does. Later, they go to some dive bar to sip Bud Lights and listen to The Allman Brothers. Upgrade from the OJ, I guess. Frank tells Rachel that he was only in love once but that the lady was murdered while under his protection. Then he tells her that he is just busting her balls! What a DICK! Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” comes on the juke (not her version though...some awful man version) and Rachel is like “what is this sad cowboy shit? You like this shit, Farmer?” He does. In fact, it was Kevin Costner who recommended that Houston cover Parton’s torch song for this movie. You can totally see the Cos cruising up to Spago in his Porsche with Dolly Parton dimed out on the Blaupunkt, can’t you? I can. Rachel gives the tune a listen and her eyes fill up with dollar signs. Instead of enjoying the spoils of Rachel’s luxury fortress, Frank takes her to his utilitarian basement (foosball table...framed Ansel Adams photos...exposed hot water heater). He tells her that he can’t get involved with his clients...even though they have been on this date since the beginning of time!! This date sequence is interminable!! The start smooching and sparks are not seen flying anywhere in greater Los Angeles County. Seriously, there was more chemistry between Tom Hanks and his volleyball than there is between these two. So they ball...but the next morning Frank is up and out. No morning after victory lap and certainly no cuddle. Rachel is like “what the fuck? For real, dude?” And Frank is like “yup--I already told you I don’t mix business with pleasure...except for last night when I mixed the shit out of it. I have to go to work now.” Wait a minute--doesn’t he work for HER? He isn’t even gonna give her a lift to her own house?? Nope! He tells her if she doesn’t like it she can fire him. That’s some subzero assholery right there.
Inexplicably, Rachel decides to keep Frank in her employ. She makes him accompany her to Miami, where she’s scheduled to perform at a $1000 a plate gala at the Fontainebleau Hotel. There, Frank runs into his old Secret Service buddy Portman, who asks Frank why he went underground after “the whole Reagan thing?” Wait, I thought he just had the day off, no? Rachel meets Portman and decides she would like to have revenge sex with him immediately....but then just as immediately changes her mind, causing Portman to get super rapey. I got a bad feeling about this Portman guy. The next morning Rachel is hungover as all get out and she comes to see Frank, who erupts at her. “I didn’t tell you to fuck every guy in the hotel!” he screams like a crazy animal. Number of guys actually fucked in the hotel: zero. By Rachel, anyway. Frank goes down to the parking garage to cool off but then sees a guy looking at him askance and beats the living shit out of the guy. He elevators back upstairs to quit...but word has come down that the stalker has called Rachel on the telephone. She’s scared. People beg him to stay on. “I can’t work with her--she’s not reasonable!” Maybe she’s not reasonable cuz you fucking dicked her over, Silverado! Rachel says she’ll do whatever Frank says to prevent him from quitting. He says “I know this much is true--Spandau Ballet has got to go!” He then suggests that they hide somewhere off the grid until this stalker thing blows over. Now why didn’t someone think of this earlier?? They could’ve lobbed a good 90 minutes off of this flick!
Frank brings Rachel, Nicki, and Fletcher to his old man’s lakeside cabin up in the mountains, where it is wintertime. They sit down to dinner and pop Farmer tells everyone that Frank never recovered from Reagan’s shooting. Unlike, you know, REAGAN!! It turns out that he had to miss work on the day of the assassination attempt because it was also the day of his mother’s funeral. Dude, that is a LEGIT excuse! So that’s why he’s such a grouchy lone wolf?? If you brought that story to a therapist they would laugh you right out of the goddamn office! After everyone bunks down for the night, Nicki gets cocked and tries to hook it up with Frank. “Come onnn...aren’t you into sisters??” He is not. “Why does SHE always get the good ones??” Fletcher tries to take their little motorboat out on the lake for a solo cruise but Frank sees this and freaks out and yokes the kid into the frigid water. Rachel is ripshit. “Are you crazy!? You could’ve killed him!! He..” OH SHIT!! The boat explodes!! There was a bomb onboard! And someone has cut the phone lines and the gas lines to the cars! Frank suggests they stay there one more night and then walk out in the morning. You know...night--when the killers come out. Do they not have Ubers in this town? Frank is confused cuz no one could have known their location unless Nicki was somehow the mastermind behind the plot to stalk and murder her own sister...which is exactly what’s happening. Try not to faint. She confesses to Frank. “How can I compete with Rachel--she’s every woman!!” Later that night someone breaks into the house but shoots only Nicki to death. Frank gives chase in the snow and fires his gun 20 times but the bad guy gets away. When Frank finally reaches a payphone he calls the FBI, who inform him that Rachel’s stalker has been in custody for the last 24 hours!! And he’s...some random dude with a grey mullet who I have never seen in another movie before or since. So who shot Nicki then?? I bet it was that damn Sasquatch.
Nickie is quickly laid to rest at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. You are probably wondering how Rachel feels about her own sister launching a murder-for-hire plot against her. Well keep wondering, motherfuckers, because it is NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN! Not a peep! Gotta keep on keepin’ on and get ready for Oscar night. Remember, Rachel is nominated for Best Actress for a movie that does not exist. At least it has a title now: Queen of the Night. I’m sure it’s awesome. Spandau Ballet is back in the fold and the pressure is on for Rachel to keep up her appearances...even though no one knows who murdered her sister (except her sister, obvi). Frank is freaking the frig out, even though I’m sure the Oscars must have their own security. All those famous assholes under one roof?? Forget about it! They arrive and some pushy house manager who is totally Toby Ziegler from the West Wing makes Frank shut off his headset comms, making it impossible for him to guard body. First Rachel wants to go out and present an award. Then she doesn’t. Everyone bickers endlessly and annoyingly. Even Debbie Reynolds is overheard to say “these people are fricken nuts.” Frank runs into that rapey Portman guy from Miami, who says he’s there to protect Batman star Robert Wuhl. Dude, ain’t nobody trying to get at Bobby Wuhl! So now we probably know--Portman is the killer. Why he did not kill Rachel when they were alone in a bedroom in Miami we do not know. Portman is able to blend into the crowd because he’s carrying a camera....that shoots bullets! So blah blah blah....Rachel wins her award and comes to the stage to give her acceptance speech. Portman fires one off but Frank dives in front of Rachel in super slow motion and takes the bullet to the chest. He remains conscious for long enough to spin around and return fire. He hits Portman in the video camera, which is next to his face. They both explode. It’s mad gnarly. Rachel throws herself onto Frank’s bloodied body and wails “please don’t die!!!” but my man is cashed out. He starts to fade to black and PLAY THE HIT ALREADY!!!!
Cut to: an airplane tarmac however many days later. Rachel and her posse are about to board a private jet. And who’s that waiting in the shadows like a dope with his arm in a sling? Frank Fucking Farmer!! Is that what they give you for a chest wound?? An arm sling? He didn’t get shot in the friggin’ arm! Rachel is super chilly to him, which makes little sense especially when you consider the fact that she was just crying over his almost dead body like two minutes ago. Frank says he is leaving the job. Rachel says that that is cool with her, boy BYE. See you on the never. She hops on the plane and they start to taxi down the runway but Rachel screams “stop the presses!” and the pilot is like “what presses?” Rachel ejects herself from the plane and lunges into Frank’s good arm and they make out like bastards. She changed her mind! So that’s really the theme of this entire movie: Rachel Marron is a goddamn flip flopper. They finally play the hit...so there you have it: she will always love him or whatever. Rachel keeps on Racheling. Frank gets a new gig guarding a corrupt senator. The movie ends on a freeze frame of Frank’s bored ass looking face...and a reflection of my bored ass looking face looking back at this boring ass movie. Everyone lives happily ever after...ish. The end.
Here’s what happened: a friend texted me from a thrift store recently and asked me if I wanted a copy of Crossroads on VHS. I immediately said yes because I thought he was referring to the Britney Spears vehicle from 2002. I have never seen that film but I’m sure it’s just the bull’s bollocks. Just look at that cast!? Dan Aykroyd, Kool Moe Dee, Jesse Camp of MTV “fame,” and Brit’s little sis Jamie Lynn. Did you know that I worked at a restaurant that made me serve Janie Lynn Spears a margarita when she was only 13? Well you do now! Sadly, that is not the Crossroads that arrived in my mailbox this week. Today we are going to talk about the 1986 film Crossroads, which was directed by the great Walter Hill, who made 48 Hrs., which is awesome, and also Another 48 Hrs., which is less awesome. I think my parents tried to force me to rent this movie every single time we went to the video store in the late 80’s and my reply was the same then as it is now: I’m sorry but I just don’t buy Ralph Macchio as a badass blues guitarist. Mostly because....and this is true...he is not a blues guitarist. Or any kind of guitarist. Apparently he CAN tap dance like a motherfucker...so he’s got that going for him. I would just lie and tell my mom that I shouldn’t watch it because it’s rated R...and then turn around and make her rent me Sleepaway Camp.
What happens is this: the title Crossroads refers to the legend of apparitional blues legend Robert Johnson, a man about whom little is known but who influenced thousands of white British guitarists decades after his death nonetheless (oh my god...is the Britney Spears movie about Robert Johnson too?? I never even considered this!). The story goes—Johnson was a passable guitarist who made his bread playing cover tunes in juke joints around the Mississippi Delta. You know—listlessly plucking away at Brown Eyed Girl and Santeria while people picked at plates of nachos and watched SportsCenter on mute. One night while on a walkabout Johnson ran into the devil at the intersection of two roads that have never been properly identified. You know—a crossroads. Old Beelzebub presented Johnson with the deal of a short lifetime—sign away his soul and the devil would gift Johnson supernatural guitar playing abilities. Johnson said “cool” and the rest is highly suspect history. When Johnson got back to town he pulled out his axe and said “check THIS out, fuckers” and tore into Van Halen’s Eruption and people fainted because it was 1936. Johnson recorded just 29 songs across two sessions and died as mysteriously as he lived. If you want to know more about Johnson, I don’t know, maybe read a book or some shit. Listen to that one Cream song. Definitely DO NOT watch the 1986 film Crossroads though!
Most of the events I just mentioned are acted out in a tidy, sepia-toned montage at the start of the film. We then jump ahead to the 1980’s. We know it is the 1980’s because Ralph Macchio is there and he’s listening to cassettes on a Walkman. There’s some Johnson tunes on the soundtrack but they are re-recorded by Ry Cooder. I have no beef with Cooder. He’s got lifetime brags for Paris, Texas in my book....but the music here is smothered in 80’s gloss. Like...is that a friggin’ Linn drum?? On a blues standard?? Anyway, Macchio plays 17 year-old Juilliard student Eugene Martone, which leads me to believe that Macchio has some sort of lifetime clause that specifies that he will only play characters with super Italian-sounding names (kind of like how Tony Danza will only play Tonys). He oversells the shit out of his Italian-ness too. He’s all “ehhh...I’m You-Gene Maww-TONE, vaffanculo!” I’m not sure if Ralph Macchio is actually super Italian or if he learned how to act from watching John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Answer: both. I do know that he’s woefully miscast in this movie. He was prolly the golden boy over at Columbia because of that whole Karate Kid business, but I can think of a lot of other young 80’s actors who could’ve done a better edgy bluesman. Like...literally all of them. Corey Haim even! Sure he was only 14 when this movie went into production...but that kid could RAGE!
Anyway, Eugene Martonioni is studying classical guitar and the kid can shred but his jerkoff professor with a non-specific, vaguely Eastern European accent is always dunking on him. “You cannot play zee Mozart if you haff no respect for zee Mozart!” The professor then calls on a female Asian student to get up and play the piece the proper way, because this movie only has 100 minutes to work through every stereotype in the book. It’s cool though cuz Eugene’s true love is the blues...which he can also play like a bastard. He spends all of his free time at the library researching Robert Johnson-ology on the microfiche. Through his research he begins to suspect that there’s a contemporary of Johnson’s by the name of Willie Brown (stage name: Blind Dog Fulton) wasting away at a minimum-to-no-security prison hospital up in Harlem. He heads to the hospital and asks after Willie Brown but the lady at reception says “I know this doesn’t look like a prison because the filmmakers couldn’t afford to film in a prison but it is, in fact, a prison and no you cannot see Willie Brown.” Eugene is all “madonna mi, well hire me as a janitor then.” So they do. Like....that very same day. Kid is mopping the floors and doing a piss poor job of it. Somewhere in California Mr Miyagi is waxing both on and off and shedding one tiny tear. Eugene locates Willie Brown right away because, like I said, this is an open plan prison where janitors are free to fraternize with inmates whenever they please. Willie Brown is playing the harmonica so Eugene figures he has found his man. He busts into the room all “Hey paesan! Ain’t you the cat who used to rock with Bobby Johnson back in the day??” Willie Brown says that he is not that Willie Brown and that Eugene should go shit in his hat. “How come you’re such a good harmonica player then?” Eugene asks. “You don’t blow no harp...you don’t get no pussy,” comes the reply. Yikes, folks. Yikes.
The kid keeps right on janitoring away undeterred...and Willie Brown continues to insist that he is just some rando Willie Brown. After failing to charm Willie with his charmlessness, Eugene decides to simply bring his axe into the hospital and start wailing away. His supervisor hears this and says “hey John Mayer--put your toy down and go change some urinal cakes.” Seriously though--Willie likes what he hears enough to admit that he is the real Willie Brown....which is a relief because god knows where this movie would be headed if he WASN’T! So what now? Eugene says that he’s a bluesman and Willie Brown laughs his friggin’ ass off cuz look at the kid: mullet...oversized blazer and shoulder pads....white British Knight high tops...white FACE. “Man, you ain’t a pimple on Robert Johnson’s ass!” Willie Brown says. “You can’t play the blues....you ain’t got no miles on you!” Eugene says that he heard a rumor that Johnson actually recorded THIRTY songs, not 29. Which, of course, means that there’s a lost song out there somewhere. Eugene wants to record the song so he can become the next Johnny Lang or some bullshit. “So another white boy ripping off black folks, then?” Brown asks, which is a valid fucking question. Let’s say there IS a lost Robert Johnson song--why should Jimmy Bagadonuts here be the one who gets to record it?? Some 17 year old guinea from Bayonne? Why would he assume this song would A--be any good and B--an automatic smash hit. I was alive in 1986 and I can personally assure you that people were listening to a ton of Cutting Crew back then and not much else. Wille is just as skeptical but Eugene is like “nah, I’m really good...check it out (plays blues lick) is this Son House?”
Brown: “No, it’s bird shit!” Eugene says he’ll just bring his laptop to the hospital and Willie can hum the lost tune into GarageBand. Willie says they need to go to Yazoo City, Mississippi to find the song. They also need to stop by the titular crossroads because Willie Brown also sold his soul to the devil (represented here by Brother from Another Planet star Joe Morton) and needs to see about getting it back. I’m not entirely sure what Willie Brown got out of his deal with the devil as he is spending his twilight years wasting away anonymously in a prison hospital.
So now Eddie Spaghetti has to break Willie Brown out of prison, which is no big shakes as there is no security of any kind. Eugene promises Willie that they’re gonna ride in style and then brings him to the Port Authority and shunts him onto a Greyhound. To MEMPHIS! If there’s a hell worse than prison it’s a Greyhound ride from NYC to Memphis. When they arrive in Tennessee Eugene asks Willie how it feels to be “back in the land of cotton?” Willie asks Eugene how it feels to be a racist motherfucker. Willie had promised to pay for the second leg of the trip but when they go to purchase their tickets for Yazoo City (where busses are no doubt leaving every hour on the hour) Willie pulls out two pennies and a ball of lint. Eugene only has $40--more than enough to go to Graceland and maybe grab a tour of the Stax Museum. Or they could probably busk on Beale street and make enough to bus it to Anchorage in like half an hour. 80 year old black man and the karate kid?? I’d throw down a tenner! Instead they start to hobo through the south and engage in a little road movie, gettin’ to know ya banter. Willie says that he had four wives but that he “wore ‘em all out!” Eugene says that he thinks the crossroads story might be a bunch of hokum and Willie slaps him in the face. And so on. Willie decides that Eugene needs a proper gee-tar so he takes him to a pawn shop and buys him a choice Fender Telecaster and a portable Pignose amp. Oh, and a fedora too, so now he can look like a REAL asshole. How do they pay for all of this swanky gear, you ask? Willie simply trades in his $11000 wristwatch. Wha?? This guy has been holding out like a sonofabitch! They could’ve been cruising through the south on an air conditioned coach, feasting at rest area Sbarros like a couple of goddamn kings!
Instead they keep right on riding the heel-toe express. They find an abandoned house to bunk down for the night, which would be fine if Lost Boys star Jamie Gertz wasn’t waiting inside, naked save for a T-shirt and a switchblade. My first thought is...wow...I haven’t seen Jamie Gertz in a movie since Twister! I figured she was probably bumming around Boca Raton doing dinner theater with Daphne Zuniga. But oh no, dudes--she’s a friggin’ billionaire and part owner of both the Milwaukee Brewers and the Atlanta Hawks. Ain’t that some shit! Good on her, right?? Anyway, Gertz is a 17 year-old runaway by the name of Frances. After some unpleasantries she inexplicably decides to join the this 80 year-old escaped convict and his bougie blues buddy out on the road. I guess someone realized we were quickly running out of movie with no female characters in sight. So now: meet Frances. The trio happen upon a roadhouse/brothel and start busking in the parking lot outside. The crowd seems to love it but the club owner shows up and calls Willie and mud duck. Eugene hears this and says “oh man! I didn’t realize racism still existed!” Oh honey...just you wait! The owner guy asks Frances if she’d like to start whoring in his brothel and she says that she would like to, yes. He takes her to his private cabin and says that he likes showering with young girls and that 17 isplenty old enough to give consent in the south and GARRRROOOSSS!!! Come on, y’all! The guy gets in the shower and I assume that Frances is going to rob him but she just starts getting naked! She was totally gonna shower with this pedo! Eugene and Willie arrive just in time to save me from destroying my own VCR. Eugene tries to kick the owner dude’s ass but he’s literally half his size. Maybe try that crane movethat worked so well for you that one time? Luckily, Willie is strapped cuz “blues man always gotta have a pistol.” In 1986? Whatever you say, grandpaw.
They rescue Frances and steal the club owner’s convertible and drive further on down south. At the next bunk down Frances tells Eugene that she’s afraid that Willie’s an impostor and that there is no 30th song. She also tells him that she likes him, even though there has been less than zero (get it) chemistry between them thus far. They ball. The next night they check into a hotel in a town where the bars are still racially segregated...but on the same street...which must get awkward. Eugene parades around on the black side of the street with his Tele slung around his neck just begging to get his ass kicked. Willie tells him to go into the black juke and to “use your dick!” So that’s exactly what he does. He gets up on stage and plays the kind of chickenshit licks Stevie Ray Vaughn would dissolve in his whisky and cocaine-laced morning coffee. He also makes the most punchable raunchy guitar O faces I have ever seen...made all the more punchable by the fact that he is not really playing the guitar. The black folks love him, because of course they do, and hand him an envelope with $300 cash money because why? Back at their hotel Eugene is just feeling the shit out of himself. “I’m red hot, baby! I’m gonna record that song and go straight to the toppa the charts!” (Note: the #1 song in the country the day this movie was released was Kyrie by Mr Mister sooooo). Frances tells him to pump the brakes...that he’s good but he’s still no Johnny Lang. Willie enters the room and is even less impressed. Tells Eugene that he was playing “pussy chords.” Frances defends Eugene, even though she was JUST dunking on him like 15 seconds ago. They all hit the hay but Willie wakes Frances up just before dawn and offers her $100 if she will leave the movie forever. She totally accepts. 86 Jamie Gertz. Eugene is wicked upset. One might even say he has....drum roll....THE BLUES!! His guitar playing is suddenly markedly improved though. Seriously, that’s all it took. Some gal he knew for less than 60 hours ran out on him and now he’s Howlin‘ Wolf?? Lord have mercy on us all!
The following morning Eugene asks Willie if he’ll finally give up that goddamn lost song so we can get this movie over with already. Willie tells him that the song doesn’t exist. Willie says “blues in here (points to heart) not in here (points to head).” They wend their way down to the crossroads and try to flag a ride. Willie is like “where the devil at” so Eugene plays the “may I help you?” riff and the devil comes rolling up in a mint ass Trans-Am with t-tops. I’m still kind of fuzzy on what happens next and why. Willie wants his soul back, even though he seems fairly undisappointed with the way his life turned out. The devil will not release Willie’s soul but does present him with an option: cutting heads...which is the name of a John Mellencamp album that most people do not own. It also refers to a guitar duel of sorts. Basically, Eugene can take part in a guitar battle with the devil’s right hand session guitarist, the nefariously named Jack Butler (shudder). If he wins, the devil will release Willie’s soul. If he loses, Eugene’s soul will belong to the devil. I have SO MANY questions! Shouldn’t Willie be the one who has to play for his own soul?? What kind of venue can host a netherworld guitar battle on such short notice?? (Tonight: The Devil presents: Cuttin’ Heads @ 7. Puppet Show @ 9). How does one even judge such a contest? Will this club have an applause-o-meter or something??
They show up to the club to find that Jack Butler is actually 80‘s guitar overlord Steve Vai! Bah hah hah what was Yngwie Malmsteen all booked up that week?? The Steve Vai whose name your older cousin (the one who still lives in his mom’s basement at 48) threw at you every time you mentioned any guitar player ever. “Frank Zappa?? Slash?? Not as good as Steve Vai!” The same Steve Vai who played a triple neck heart shaped guitar in David Lee Roth’s “Just Like Paradise” video. Here I should note that I actually saw Steve Vai play with Whitesnake on the Slip of the Tongue tour in ’89 and I thought he was siiiiiick. He broke out that heart guitar too! ANYWAY, Eugene gets up and starts trading licks with Steve Vai and it makes absolutely no sense. Eugene is playing the blues and Vai is playing his super speedy metal riffs (binninininininininNEHHH!). What’s the criteria for this showdown? Just play stuff? Eugene realizes that he can’t match him with his blues so he decides to show off his classical chops. So now we are watching two white men, neither of who are playing the blues, competing for the soul of an old black man. Seriously, WHO thought that any of this was a good idea?? What’s that? The guy who wrote the Young Guns movies? Well...there you go. Vai hears Eugene play his Pagliacci riffs and his fingers turn into concrete sausages. He completely loses the ability to play the guitar in a way that no one would ever lose the ability to play the guitar unless you suffered a stroke on stage. He hits the strings but all that comes out is “neep...deet neet....nee....eeep.” Eugene wins by TKO! Willie Brown is reunited with his soul and you know what that means!? Absolutely nothing!! Eugene asks Willie what he’d like to do now that he is re-souled. Willie says that he would like to visit Chicago. Eugene says that he would like to visit Chicago as well. They go. And that’s the ENTIRE MOVIE! Shit man--if you’re looking for an authentic blues movie you’d be better off just watching the blues club scene from Adventures in Babysitting. “Ain’t nobody get outta here without singin’ the blues!” The end.
Here’s something that happened: when I arrived for the fall semester of my 8th grade year I noticed that my class was light about four dudes. I went up to the teach to ask where the dudes were at. He told me that they were skipping class to act in a “major motion picture” starring Steve Martin. I heard this and nearly shat my Skids, man, I needed to find out what this movie was...where it was...and how to get cast in it immediately. Since it was 1991 this took me at least two....two and a half days of old fashioned detective work. I had to pound the pavement...crack the yellow pages...knock on doors! I eventually learned that the flick was called School Ties. I got the casting people on the phone and said “I would like to be in your movie, please” and they said “cool with us.” I arrived on set to find that not only was there no Steve Martin, there were no famous people at all! (Steve Martin was filming Housesitter down the street). To be clear, the cast of School Ties does include names like Brendan Fraser, Chris O’Donnell, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck but no one knew who those guys were in ’91. Shit, Encino Man hadn’t even come out yet! I also learned that my classmates weren’t actually acting but were, in fact, just extras. So I was gonna get paid $50 to sit in the bleachers and watch Matt Damon pretend to drop a touchdown pass for 12 hours straight? Dude, sign me up! After my five days on School Ties I caught the extra bug...hard! I went out and got professional headshots (see bio) and spent all of my momma’s hard earned money making long distance calls to the Massachusetts Film Office to try to suss out what films were filming in the state. I went out for Hocus Pocus, The Good Son, and The Next Karate Kid...and I rolled snake eyes every time. As of this writing my only film credit remains “Kid Who Runs into Church Alongside Anthony Rapp” in School Ties.
There was ONE film I got an actual callback for. In the fall of ’92 there was an Alec Baldwin/Nicole Kidman thriller called Damages filming in the state. Someone from the casting agency called me at home late one Friday evening. “We are mostly looking for college aged extras but we can use you for some backgrounds. Can you be in Northampton at 5 AM Monday morning?” he said. “Damn skippy!” I said, hoping that Northampton was somehow close to Worcester (it isn’t). “Wait, you’re in SAG, right?” Definitely (not). “Make sure you bring your SAG card Monday morning,” he said. I ran into our living room and told my mom that I needed a SAG card and a ride to Northampton and that I needed both of these things before 3:30 AM Monday morning. What happened next was that I did not end up working as an extra on the film Damages. When the flick was released in late 1993 it had been retitled Malice, so as not to be confused with a smutty Louis Malle film called Damage. It was poorly received, probably because a lot of people went in thinking they were about to see a film about the obscure 80’s metal band Malice and had to spend two hours watching Alec Baldwin chew scenery until his friggin’ jaw fell off instead. I remember thinking that it sucked when I saw it back in the day...but I wasn’t sure if my reaction was colored by my lingering hurt feelings or if the movie actually did suck. I decided to check it out again and the answer is....yes? I always remembered this film (if I remembered it at all) as some low rent potboiler. But as I’m watching the opening credits I’m seeing some NAMES! There’s the cast. We’ll get to them in good time. But look....the cinematographer is Gordon Willis of The Godfather fame! And holy smokes! It was written by Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing fame....and Scott Frank of...the Frank family! (actually, Frank wrote Get Shorty and Logan so he’s a bit of a legend too). There might be some bits to enjoy here after all! Unless you are a woman or a service industry worker. This film is seething with contempt for women and waiters and bartenders.
What happens is this: we open with an extended montage of a young female college student peddling her bike through the Dan Tebo-less streets of Northampton. When she arrives at home she thinks there might be an intruder in the house but it’s just her cat. OPE! Save those “phew’s!” There’s a cat AND an intruder. He assaults her mercilessly. She is rushed to the OR, where the attending surgeon, Dr Jed, is new on the job, but also, disgustingly overconfident. The reason for this is that Dr Jed is played by young Alec Baldwin and young Alec Baldwin is ALL THAT IS MAN!! Glinty-eyed...hirsute...and with a head of hair so finely coiffed it looks like you could simply detach it from his skull and put it on display at the Smithsonian next to Archie Bunker’schair. Dr Jed is slicing and dicing but Dr Doubting Thomas, played by the man who is one letter shy of having the coolest name ever David Bowe, is all “we’re losing her!” Dr Jed ties the victim’s liver together with dental floss cuz dude is a phenom. Later, in the locker room, after showing Dr Thomas the animal pelt that lives where his chest should be, Dr Jed tells Dr Thomas that if he ever second guesses him during surgery again he’s going to “tear out (his) fucking lungs with an ice cream scoop.” Jesus Christ, man! Way to make pals at your new gig! Also--would having your lungs ripped out with an ice cream scoop hurt more than having your lung ripped out by, say, literally anything else? I feel like that’s a valid question.
Out in the lobby, Andy Greeklastname (Billy Pullman) the Associate Dean of Students from Whatever Whatever Fictional University, has arrived to check the status of the assaulted student. Apparently she’s just the latest victim in a series of sexual assaults that have rocked the campus. We know this because a hard-nosed detective played by the lady who played Lilith on Cheers (Bebe Neuwirth) tells us so. Despite having spent 7 seasons acting in the most quintessentially Boston show of all time, Neuwirth puts on the most mangled Boston accent since Kevin Costner in every movie where Kevin Costner attempts a Boston accent. “You expect me to catch an attackahhh? I can’t even break up a keggahhh??” Andy goes to see Dr Jed to inquire about the status of his student. Since HIPAA wasn’t signed into law until 3 years after this movie came out, he tells him: she’ll live. Andy asks Dr Jed if he remembers him from high school and he totally doesn’t...‘cuz he’s a schlumpy associate dean and Dr Jed is a swinging dick surgeon. Andy IS married to Nicole Kidman (Tracy), who somehow looks older here than she does now, some 27 years later. Being married to Tom Cruise will put some serious stress lines on ya face! Andy and Tracy live in a huge Victorian on the outskirts of town but it’s all janky and needs a five-figure bathroom upgrade. Andy can’t afford it, even though they own an actual Degas sculpture! Folks, put that shit on eBay and then move to Guam! Tracy seems displeased with life in general. She’s always grabbing her stomach and doubling over in pain and staying out late with Peter Gallagher when she’s supposed to be home wifing. Andy is like “why are you hanging out with Peter Gallagher?? That motherfucker is always up to no good!” But then Tracy calms Andy down by sexily feeding him Chinese food in bed. I don’t know about y’all but nothing gets me going like General Tso’s Chicken stains on my pillowcase! Tracy removes all of her clothing and signals that it is time to ball. Andy is not unopposed but requests that the lights be turned off as there is a 10 year-old child across the street sitting in the darkness, staring directly into their bedroom window. Tracy says “ahh, let him watch...he’s just lonely.” So that’s a how the scene ends: a silhouette of a small perverted child watching Nicole Kidman ride Bill Pullman. Totally normal stuff.
The next day Andy is in his office reaming out one of his students for being a lazy student and HOLY SHIT! The lazy student is totally Gwyneth Paltrow! She offers him a candle that smells like her orgasm to set things straight but the Dean ain’t having it. He puts her on double secret probation and says he’s gonna give her a personal wake up call so she won’t miss her next exam....’cuz that’s not creepy or anything! As she’s leaving the office we get a quick glimpse at the janitor and it’s friggin’ Jigsaw from those Saw movies! I wonder if he’s the serial rapist?? (Note: he is). Andy and Tracy decide to let Dr Jed rent a spare bedroom in their house to scare up some extra cheddar. He moves in and proceeds to spend his first night fuuuuucking. Like....for three hours straight. He lays there like a hairy beast blasting Bryan Ferry and drinking champagne straight from the bottle while he is fellated every which way. He also declares himself to be impervious to the effects of alcohol. Unable to sleep, Tracy stares up at the ceiling looking super annoyed slash turned on. Despite his Korbel fueled fuck-a-thon, the doc is up at the crack for a six mile run. He tells his landlords that six miles a day will keep the doctor away. Might want to call 2020 Alec Baldwin and tell him the same thing. I’m not sure how many calories you burn breaking stranger’s jaws over parking spaces...but it’s probably not that many.
Andy arrives at work to find that Gwyneth Paltrow did not show up for her Primitive Cultures exam. He drives over to her apartment where he finds her under the bushes, having had the shit murdered out of her. Looks like our serial rapist has graduated to serial killer! Either that or he just has a huge problem with those jade vagina eggs. Andy heads out to meet Dr Jed at the same bar where I sent back my brunch steak and eggs in 2012 (it was WAY over cooked). Andy vents his spleen about his wife’s cramps and his dead student epidemic but the doc is more interested in joining a dart game with two comely college students who are day drinking whiskey. Andy peaces out but Dr Jed joins the ladies and they slam shots while listen to the friggin’ Spin Doctors. Threefer—in the bag.
Andy’s already not very good day takes another craptacular turn when Detective Lilith shows up with some more bad news: “we found dirt from ya yahhhhd at all of the crime scenes.” The Dean is suspect numero uno! She says he can clean things up if he agrees to submit a sperm sample on the spot. Dude, call your lawyer! While Andy is headed to the john with a Dixie cup and a Hustler, Tracy is somewhere collapsing from her...what have you. She’s rushed to the hospital. Dr Jed’s beeper goes off and, even though he’s 10 Knob Creek’s deep, he drunk drives straight to the hospital and prepares to get his hands gory. He sees that the patient is his new landlady and that she’s pregnant and has a busted ovary....so he’s gotta 86 all of that stuff. But first he falls real silent like. The attendants are all like “doctor?....doctor??” Man, this motherfucker is cocked! Prolly passed out! He eventually comes around and asks for a scalpel. Even though he smells like Shane MacGowan at Xmas they give it to him. They take out the bad ovary but then there’s some evidence that the other sucker is jacked up too. Dr Jed requests some equipment to perform an elaborate procedure. The other doctor is like “umm...yeah this is Western Mass. Good if you are looking for antiques or Dinosaur Jr...bad if you’re grievously ill. We have only scalpels and an x-ray machine.” Dr Jed leaves Tracy open on the operating table to have a little chat with Andy, who has ALREADY been seminally eliminated from the serial killer lineup. Jed says he can take out the other ovary but if she is down to zero ovaries she won’t be able to have children. Thank you, Doctor Obvious! Andy thinks about fatherhood...but then also thinks of a dank bathroom with a jacuzzi tub and a heated floor and gives the doc the green light. The other doctors are adamantly opposed to the ovary removal, but the threat of an ice cream scoop lung removal is still fresh, so away it goes!
Later that evening the head of all doctors informs Jed that he removed a perfectly good ovary. He offers to bury this info but Jed offers some Trumpian logic like “even my mistakes are not mistakes I will not be apologizing.” Because this hospital has no protocols regarding doctors visiting patients after catastrophically botching their surgeries, Dr Jed goes to visit Tracy, who is understandably apoplectic. She tells Jed that he’ll be hearing from her lawyer Peter Gallagher (shiver). She also decides that she’s going to leave Andy because he gave surgical consent, which seems way harsh. Andy is like “this is the day I celebrate my independence!” Just kidding....he’s wicked sad. Dr Jed, however, is girding for a fight. Tracy wants $30 million but my dude ain’t breaking a sweat. He suggests they call veteran actor George C Scott and see if he wants to do a one scene cameo as Jed’s Harvard Medical Professor. Luckily...he does. The lawyers and doctors square off in a conference room in a Boston high rise with sweeping views of the Harbor and what the fuck happened to the serial killer!?? He’s been out of the movie for a good 30 minutes now! Anyway, they begin to arbitrate and it’s BANANAS! Dr Jed is getting hammered (with negative testimony...not booze). George C Scott is supposed to be a character witness but he apparently wrote a memo where he said that Dr Jed has a God Complex. Jed hears this and throws an Alec Baldwin-in-Glengarry-Glen Ross-sized fit. After rattling off his bona fides and a list of the women that he’s slept with he looks into the camera and says “Do I think I have a God Complex? Let me tell you something: I AM GOD!” Oh ho ho now THAT is a line! That shit is gonna be on Alec Baldwin’s headstone...right next to a set of steak knives. The legal people are unimpressed. Jed loses and the hospital has to pay Tracy $20 million dollars. She sulks out of the room and says it isn’t really about the money. Suuuuure it isn’t.
Andy tries to bury himself in his work. Someone’s gotta do a piss poor job of keeping the students safe! First night back on campus Andy is up late grading some papers when the lights start to flicker. He heads down to the scary basement to look for a fuse box. There, he finds that Jigsaw has set up a makeshift bedroom. And next to the bed? A cigar box full of human hair! (The killer likes to collect his victim’s hair. I feel like I forgot to mention that. Ahh whatever). Jigsaw rolls up and Andy is like “dude, are you that serial killer from way earlier in the movie?” Jigsaw says that the hair belongs to his dead mother. Andy apologizes and they laugh it off. But then he tries to murder Andy because HE IS THE SERIAL KILLER (try not to faint). They tussle it up and Andy gets the upper hand cuz he’s part Lone Starr. So the killer is behind bars and the movie can end now, right? If only, folks. If only.
Lilith comes to take Andy out for a little congratulations on capturing a serial killer beverage. While they are toasting to Andy’s fortunate misfortune Lilith casually mentions that Tracy couldn’t have been pregnant as Andy has junk for spunk. Correction—she COULD be pregnant...just not with Andy’s child. So if we’re keeping score/still awake, the entire serial killer angle...which initially seemed like the main focus of the movie...was just a ridiculously elaborate plot device to help get a semen sample out of Bill Pullman. That is some z-grade screenwriting right there. So it’s looking like poor Andy got grifted. But how?? And more importantly--who cares?? He goes to see Peter Gallagher, who sends him to see Tracy’s Mom, who does not have it going on. She’s an alcoholic shut in living in a squalid apartment over in Charlestown. She is also Mel Brooks’ dearly departed wife Anne Bancroft, which is kinda cool. Andy brings her single malt scotch and she spills her goddam guts. Tells him that Tracy is just a rotten gold digger who has been trying to catch a whale ever since she was out of diapers. She also tells Andy that their Degas statue was purchased at Marshalls for $89.99, which is good to know! No one wants to go on Antiques Roadshow with some fugazi statue and get the shit embarrassed out of them! Andy tracks Tracy to a cape cottage on, um, the Cape. He sneaks inside so he can yell “surprise!” when she comes home. But when she enters she’s not alone. Dr Jed is with her (zzzzz). Oh man! I wonder if they are hooking up. Tracy asks Jed to take her upstairs and fuck her so...I guess that’s a yes! Somewhere in a screening room in 1993 Kim Basinger folds her arms and looks unimpressed. Andy is so upset he drives all the way back to Northampton (a three hour trip!) just to trash his own bedroom. After he clears off a dresser or two he discovers a syringe on the floor. Man, were those two partying as well??
The next morning Tracy and Dr Jed are taking a leisurely stroll on the beach, looking for clam cakes or whatever. Jed is his back to being his insufferably smug self...and why wouldn’t he be? The old sawbones is sitting on half of $20 million dollars! He berates Tracey for using improper grammar, which must make her horny because they sprint back to the cottage and get buck naked. Jed only gets in a single thrust before Tracy is pricked in the back by a misplaced syringe. They immediately suspect Andy because he is the other main character in this movie. Hey, the previous Air Bn’B’er could’ve been a diabetic. You don’t know! Tracy says that she’ll take care of Andy. She agrees to meet him at a restaurant, where she tells the waitress that she’d like a chardonnay “and some privacy!” Easy there, Mrs Urban! Tracy tries to give Andy an under the table foot job. He declines said foot job. Tracy is pissed...but not nearly as pissed as I am about the size of the wine pour! It’s MAYBE two ounces. Way to make an unbearably tense situation even more tense! Andy says that he has finally figured out the plot of the movie. Well that makes ONE of us, dude! I guess Tracy has been letting Jed inject her with overdoses of a fertility drug that causes her to develop cysts on her ovaries. No word at all about who the aborted kid belonged to (My money is on that George C Scott. He was looking particularly virile in his big scene). Their entire relationship was one obscenely long, nonsensical con. When Tracy hears that she’s been figured out she gets so angry she shatters her wine glass. The waitress appears and tries to dutifully clean up but Tracy screams at her. Asshole...I bet she left a crappy tip too. Andy says that he wants a cut of the 20 mil but Tracy is all “I ain’t giving you SHIT!” She makes some not so thinly veiled threats but Andy says that he has a witness that can back up the whole fertility plot: the peeping pervert child from across the street. So wait--they had this huge Victorian house..but Dr Jed was injecting Tracy with fertility drugs in front of the master bedroom window. Oh come onnnnn!!!! Was this movie really written by the same guy who won an Oscar for The Social Network?
Tracy rushes to tell Dr Jed that they’re in a bit of a pickle. Dude remains completely unruffled. He’s like “whatever, throw Andy some change. $6.5 million is still a lot of dough.” Not only does Tracy NOT want to do that...she wants to murder Andy AND the kid from across the way! “That fucking little troll deserves to die!” she screams. Hey lady--you had no problem letting him watch you screw like two hours ago! Jed hears this and cracks her one. She doesn't take being struck very well. At all. She pulls out a gun and shoots Jed, who friggin’ dies. I guess he’s not impervious to the effects of bullets, eh? Tracy drives back to Western Mass drunk on murder lust. This movie is so far off the rails at this point that all I can think about is how much she must have spent on tolls going back and forth across the Commonwealth. She breaks into the neighbor’s house and finds the little boy in his peeping chair and wraps a plastic bag over his head. Bill Pullman flips on the lights and Tracy looks down to see that she is suffocating a CPR doll. Fooled you!!! She starts beating the shit out of the doll, which looks just as fucking funny as it sounds. Tracy lunges at Andy and they crash through a railing and fall three stories down to the foyer like the Roses in War of the Roses. Unlike that flick, though, no one dies. Sorry if I just unnecessarily ruined War of the Roses for you. Lilith is waiting at the bottom to bring Tracy to jail for....a whole bunch of bad stuff, I guess.
As they are escorting a handcuffed Tracy out of the house, the real 10 year-old resident comes home and...wait for it....wait for it...he’s FUCKING BLIND!!! Bah hah hah if that isn’t the dumbest shit I have ever seen. A blind Peeping Tom! Maybe he could smell the sex from across the street? Whaddya lookin’ at, Feliciano?? Man alive! So offensive to blind folks. And children. And everyone else too, really. Lilith asks Andy if he'd like to grab a couple of whiskeys. He says yes. I know I could use about 20 whiskeys after watching this movie. I also know that, had I actually worked as an extra in Malice, I sure as shit wouldn’t have told anyone about it! The end.
Way back on Memorial Day Weekend of this year, some three months, 17 lifetimes, and 1500 horrible news cycles ago, I came here to ponder just how depressing a movie-less summer movie season would be. Now we finally have our answer: extremely very depressing. Sure, drive-ins and other outdoor venues that were able to offer a socially distant moviegoing experience did brisk business...but the programming was usually limited to Back to the Future and other chestnuts from the Reagan administration. Thanks to streaming services we still got to enjoy Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods and Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island, but not in a meat locker-cold theater with 750 of our friends and neighbors and a $20 bucket of popcorn covered in butter-flavored topping on our laps. As of this writing, some theaters have finally begun to reopen, but visiting them remains a life or death proposition. Am I really going to risk my life to watch the latest Halloween jam this fall? You know...I just might have to! As the summer of 2020 slouches to a close, I thought we’d turn the page all the way back to the summer of 1990, since it’s turning 30 this year and all. At the outset of the ’90 summer movie season all of the trade magazines were predicting that the #1 box office champ would be Ghost.....DAD!...starring America’s favorite dad and convicted serial rapist and directed by (wait for it...wait for it) Academy Award winning icon Sidney Poitier! I’m just messing around--everyone thought Ghost Dad was going to suck and it did and no one went to see it. People were expecting big returns from Total Recall and Dick Tracy and Die Hard 2 and expecting nothing at all from the summer’s second ghost-related flick (third if you count Flatliners). The one from Airplane! co-director Jerry Zucker and starring Brat Pack expat Demi Moore and Roadhouse throat destroyer Patrick Swayze? Who the hell was gonna go see that?? Literally everyone, that’s who. And yes...I know what “literally” means. Ghost was a bona fide cultural juggernaut. It was the highest grossing film of the ENTIRE YEAR! People lost their goddamn friggin’ minds over this flick. Ladies swamped hair salons and demanded boy haircuts. Tens of thousands of babies were conceived during phallic pottery sessions gone awry. The Righteous Brothers 1965 version of “Unchained Melody” raced back up the Billboard charts and started to get spun and middle school dances, right between Bell Biv Devoe and “High Enough” by Damn Yankees (I can personally assure you that this last thing is 100% true). So why this movie? I guess it’s highly relatable. Few people have traveled to Mars to cavort with three-breasted women, but almost everyone knows a handful of dead people.
What happens is this: we open on three face mask-wearing figures (VERY 2020) doing some intense demo on an abandoned Soho loft. These figures are Moore, Swayze, and man who is only famous because his last name is Goldwyn, Tony Goldwyn. The fellas are shirtless and just ripped to shreds. Moore is Molly, a scarcely employed potter and Swayze is Sam Wheat, her medium successful banker boyfriend. Goldwyn is Sam’s coworker and BFF Carl. And the loft? The loft is obnoxiously massive. They don’t even realize how big it is! They pull down a ceiling and Molly coos “Ohhh and extra 20 feet...we can build ourselves a second floor!” You know who lives in an apartment this large? No one! You could fit John Lennon’s entire Dakota apartment in the foyer of this joint. The chances that people who could afford a spot like this would do their own construction? Less than zero chances. Carl suggests that they fix the place up and sell it for a profit. Molly tells Carl that he’s obsessed with money. So we already know: Carl=obsessed with money. The next morning Sam and Carl are on the way to their jobs at a non-specific Wall Street money making institution when Carl spots a Ferrari and turns green with envy. Just in case you weren’t paying attention in the scene that happened 10 seconds ago: Carl is wealth obsessed! Sam and Carl work at a bank (I guess) and Sam is higher up the food chain as he has an actual office whereas Carl works at a random desk under the fluorescents out with the Plebeians. Sam’s office ain’t much to look at either, to tell you the truth. It hardly looks like the office of a Master of the Universe (note: this is a reference to Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities....not He-Man and Co). Carl asks to borrow Sam’s super secret passwords to move some funds around and Sam gives it right up. I scratch my chin.
Back up in Soho, Molly has got the loft tricked out like WHAT!? Did they send an emergency reality TV crew in there or something?? She’s got an espresso machine and a jukebox and Haagen-Dazs kiosk and pretty much every item that defined status in the late 80’s. She has even hired movers to crane lift a ten foot stone statue of Our Lady of Whatever into the apartment because fuck you. One night while lying in bed Sam starts to look like he’s got something on his mind grapes so Molly asks what’s the what? Sam says he’s full of fear because his life is going TOO damn good. He says he’s afraid he’s gonna lose everything. I mean....he’s not wrong! Later, Sam wakes up to find Molly spinning pottery on her...you know...pottery spinner. Sam sits behind her and they clasp hands and stroke a mound of clay into a pottery dick. Molly is all “you fresh! Let’s crank Unchained Melody and BALL!” And so begins one of the most famous sexless sex scenes in cinema history. They just kind of stand there smooching and threatening to feel each other’s areas. You almost see the upper tier of Sam’s pubes....but it could just as easily be a shadow. They gotta keep it PG-13. Lots of smoke....no actual flames.
The next day at the office Sam is in a twist when he discovers that there’s too much money in some of the accounts he’s in charge of. Herelays his concerns to Carl, who says “I’m sure it’s nothing...don’t even worry about it. Also—where will you be at 10 o’clock tonight? Exact location, please?” Turns out Sam and Molly have tickets to see Macbeth (Scottish play...bad luck...do not go!). After the performance the kids decide to casually stroll through a rough part of town and discuss their dreams for the future. Molly wants to get married but Sam can’t even bring himself to tell her that she loves her! He just replies “ditto” when she tells him that she loves him. How can they get mar....OH SHIT!!...the dude from the third vignette in Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train emerges from the shadows and puts a gun up in Sam’s face! Here I’d like to mention that I was once mugged at gunpoint and offered my muggers the bag of Chinese takeout that I was carrying. They declined because they said they did not like Chinese food. Anyway, the mugger wants Sam’s wallet...and he’s ready to give it up...but then the mugger smashes Molly in the grill so Sam rips his throat out! Not really, though....but he should have! Always go with your signature move, dude! They tussle some and the gun goes off and Sam chases the mugger up Astor Place. When he returns to check on Molly he finds her unharmed, which is good, and also cradling his dead body, which is NOT so good! A brilliant white light appears in the sky so...you know...step into the light, Carole Ann. But Sam runs from the light ‘cuz dying ain’t baller.
Sam rides to the hospital with Molly and the dead version of himself. While he’s seated in the waiting room waiting for...some news?...a ghost who looks like Abe Vigoda’s balls approaches Sam and lays down the law. Sam is dead, obvi, and he’s gonna be there (wherever there is) for an indeterminate amount of time. So that sucks. He can’t touch anything... HOWEVER....he can walk through walls and through people and shit. And when he walks through stuff he makes a cool lightsaber whooshing sound. These special effects look like velveeta now but they looked pretty boss in 1990. While Sam and the old man ghost are rapping about the afterlife some rando in the OR dies and is immediately sucked up into whatever lies above. The old man says he’s glad the newly dead man ascended and was not taken by “the other ones.” The Other Ones as in the Grateful Dead spin-off or...like...The Others from that Nicole Kidman flick? The rules of ghosting are super confusing so far! After his funeral Sam spends most of his days hanging around the loft in the unfortunate maroon polo shirt that he died in. Hey man...at least he didn’t die covered in pottery and sex. Or on Halloween! He sits back and watches while Carl comforts Molly and helps her sort through his belongings. Carl is like “hey...do you want me to throw out slash keep Sam’s book of secret passwords?” Molly says that she would like to hang onto it. Carl looks nervous. They obviously can’t see Sam but you know who can? The cat!! This just confirms what I have long suspected about my own cats: that they spend most of their days staring at Patrick Swayze’s ghost.
While Molly and Carl are out shopping for $15k coffee tables, the murder mugger breaks into the apartment. Sam is like WTF!? I’m like WTF!? Is this guy just a super thorough mugger who is still p.o.’d that he never got Sam’s wallet?? Or is something deeper and more nefarious at play here? The latter. Definitely. Molly comes home while the bad dude is still in the apartment and starts getting undressed because of course she does. Sam wants to warn her but he cannot as he is the titular ghost. Instead, he screams at the cat, who scratches the mugger’s face off! Sam chases the mugger back to Brooklyn....which seems like a real gyp to me, him having to run. I mean, can’t he just float?? Here I want to mention the fact that the mugger is so dedicated to his craft that he leaves the house wearing a filthy T-shirt, black gloves, and a perma-scowl....in the middle of July in NYC! So Sam is on the MTA mean mugging the mugger when the big tall dude from Better off Dead and actual dead person Vincent Schiavelli starts screaming at him to get off the train. Sam is all “are you talking to moi??” He is. He’s so pissed that there’s another ghost on his train that he smashes a window. Wait, ghosts can break windows?? Ahh, I’m sure they explain it to us.
The mugger lives in a part of Prospect Heights where you can’t get a pour over for less than $10 in 2020. According to this movie this was where all of the blacks and Puerto Rican’s lived in 1990, which leans racist. Now we know the mugger’s name is Willy Lopez and that he lives in a one bedroom squat on Prospect Street (current Zestimate: $3200/mo.) and that he’s working for someone else. Some who REALLY wants Sam’s book of secret passwords. Oh man—I wonder if Willy’s paymaster is Carl!? Just kidding....I already know that it’s Carl. I’ve seen this movie like 40 times. Since there aren’t any good craft cocktail bars in the hood yet (can ghosts drink booze? God, I hope so. For their sake) Sam wanders into some schlocky fortune teller joint, where he meets Burglar star Whoopi Goldberg’s Oscar winning character Ms. Oda Mae Brown. She’s apparently a sham clairvoyant (unlike the rest of them?) but when Sam starts to offer his commentary on her bogus fortune telling skills, Oda Mae can hear him speaking! At first she’s like “nahhh” but Sam is all “say Sam Wheat!” and she says “Sam Wheat” and this shit is on like mahjong! Why she can suddenly hear dead Patrick Swayze and not everyone else in the universe who has died is never properly explained. It is what it is!
Although speaking to the undead dead should totally be a boon to her business, Oda Mae looks dimly on this new supernatural ability from the get go. Sure, she can talk to a ghost, but he’s pushy and wants her to do shit. Sam figures he can have her contact Molly and tell her that he’s...still dead? They show up at the loft and Sam feeds Oda Mae personal details about their private life to try to convince Molly that she isn’t a charlatan. “I know about the picture in Reno! I know you like to put toenail shavings in your lattes! I know you write your name in your undies!” Molly is still skeptical because JESUS CHRIST but she agrees to head out to a cafe with Oda Mae for a light lunch. Man, I’d hate to be the poor bastard stuck waiting on THAT table. “Hi...table for 3? Well...actually....really only 2.” Luckily they are seated at a 4 Top because Patrick Swayze still occupies space. Oda Mae lays down the Will Lopez angle but Molly calls bullcrap and tries to run out of the cafe. Sam makes Oda Mae call ditto. The music swells. Molly believes! So that’s awesome-ish but Oda Mae is all set with this nonsense. She tells Molly to have a nice life, and Sam, a nice death, and then she catches the JZ back to BK. What does Molly do with this profoundly life-upending information? Immediately calls Sam’s sketchy squash buddy Carl, of course (note: they are never actually shown playing squash....but it is assumed. By me.) Carl doesn’t believe Molly because why would you? I mean....ghosts don’t really exist, right?....RIGHT!??
Carl is definitely rattled to hear the name Willy Lopez come out of Molly’s mouth. He tells her he’s gonna go asses the sitch. Sam tags along so he can watch his buddy tune this fucker up. But when Carl reaches Willy’s crib the only buddies to be found are Carl and Willy! Try not to shit your drawers, people. So Carl is the evil Svengali behind all of this evil....but also...not really? He’s got $4 million dollars tied up in a bank account but he owes it to some shittily explained drug dealers. The only way to access the account is with Sam’s secret passwords. So Sam has been dead for, what, four months and they haven’t changed his passwords?? Come on, now! Also—Carl’s cut is only $80k! Ain’t gonna be buying many Testarossas with that kind of change, bro. Certainly not enough scratch to kill your BFF over! Carl still orders Willy to murder Oda Mae cuz he’s a crazy animal. He must have mad reasonable hitman rates, this Willy Lopez. Sam is predictably apoplectic when he learns that his best friend had him murdered. He tries to beat the shit out of Carl but non-ghost beats ghost every time (or does it??).
Molly tries to tell her tale of celestial woe to a NYPD detective who is totally Milton from Office Space. He looks at her like “I know you’re bereaved but maybe maybe lay off the Bartels & Jaymes.” She asks if he’d at least check for a file on Willy Lopez. Turns out Willie doesn’t have one, ‘cuz he’s a smooth criminal, but our friend Oda Mae Brown has one that’s ten inches thick (their words...not mine. It looks a half an inch thick at most). Just petty larceny and whatnot but Molly is still crushed. Her little ghost fantasy is proving to be as fleeting as a ghost. Meanwhile Carl finally has got his ill gotten gains prepared for transfer (he must’ve stolen the password book while I was refilling my wine). He’s feeling the boldness so obviously his next best move is to go put the moves on Molly. He shows up at the loft super late and asks Molly for a cup of coffee, which is a HUGE red flag. A cup of coffee at night? Might as well ask for a Bloody Mary, ya douche. Sam, who already understandably hates Carl for having caused his death, is particularly displeased to see him creeping on his former lady. Hey, maybe he just wants to chit chat...OPE!....Molly turns around and Carl spills the entire cup of coffee on himself accidentally on purpose. She’s like “oh shit...let me get you a hoodie or something.” But Carl is all “Nah, I’ll just tear my shirt off and sit here like a quivering half-naked mass of man meat,” which would be super awkward even under normal circumstances. Molly is upset because the cops told her that her dead boyfriend is actually really dead. Carl tells her that she’s fantastically gorgeous and then moves in for a rape kiss. Sam looks on like “could my death get ANY shittier!?” He leaps to his feet, Sam does, and punches a picture frame off of an end table, scaring the shit out of everyone, himself included. Molly makes Carl put his Sanka-soaked shirt on and leave.
This little picture-punching incident lights a fire under Sam’s dead ass. He decides that he needs to find that guy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ASAP and beg him to teach him some ghost tricks. So that’s exactly what he does. Old Vinny Schiavelli tells Sam that he needs to forget about his body. That he’s dead....he’s nothing! Then he tells Sam he needs to use his mind. But if he’s dead then would he still have a mind? I’m still fuzzy on the whole alive/dead thing. Basically it turns out that, if you are a ghost, you can still make contact with earthen objects if you just focus like a motherfucker. Now who’s kicking his can all over the place? Sam Wheat, that’s who!
Same busts ass down to Brooklyn to show his new pal Oda Mae his new parlor tricks. He shows up at her studio to find a queue of ghosts stretching all the way back to the Barclay’s Center. So now Oda Mae can hear other ghosts who aren’t Sam?? Just nod your heads, y’all. While he’s waiting to flick pennies at her head some ghost from Jersey jumps into Oda Mae, commandeering her body and speaking through her mouth. Oh yeah....turns out that’s totally a thing. Why wouldn’t ghosts just go jumping into strangers all willy nilly? I guess it makes the ghosts crazy tired afterwards. Just wipes ‘em the fuck out....and no one wants to see a pooped phantom! Sam pulls Oda Mae up out of there before the murderers show up. Turns out that he’s got a plan to stick it to the man, crafty casper that he is. He wants to enlist Oda Mae to empty out Carl’s bank account before Carl can transfer the money to some Bahamian bank account. They head to the bank for a hilarious extended sequence that proves that hiring the dude who directed Top Secret! was a good call. And the Whoop? She really deserved that Oscar. Sorry for your luck, Karen from Goodfellas. They take Carl’s $4 mil but Sam makes Oda Mae donate it to the catholic church. SUPER bad call, homie. Super bad.
Back at the office Carl is expecting to transfer his ill gotten gains with the smoothness. When he opens the account, however, it shows a balance of zero dollars. The dude FUHH-REEEKS! He starts running around the office like a dickhead screaming “What’s going on?? Is someone playing around with the computers?? Yeah man--your co-workers are just yanking your chain! They just thought it would be funny to spoof four million dollars out of your customers account. Also--was there no such thing as an IP Address in 1990?? Could you really just steal 4 large undetected if you had the right password? Carl races over to Molly’s and bursts through the door looking like absolute balls. Homeboy is sweating like a nun in church. He tells her that he had a big important account go wonky on him earlier in the day. Molly says, “that’s funny--I saw Oda Mae Brown withdrawing $4 mil at your bank earlier today! I wonder if these two events are related??” Carl hears this and vomits in his mind. He runs off to grab Willy Lopez so they can go murder Oda Mae. Carl...man...what’s your endgame here? Are you just gonna gun down the entire cast (the living members, anyway. Ghosts cannot be killed twice...I don’t think). The money is already gone. What are you gonna do? Audit the catholic church? Like a customer once said to me when I showed up to a brunch shift hungover as all get out: “Man...you are Fu-King-UP!”
When Carl and Willy show up at Oda Mae’s magic parlor Sam is laying in wait with his new bag of ghost tricks. He rattles his chains and fucks with the lights. He slaps Willy around and writes “boo” on the bathroom vanity, causing Willy to run from the building screaming. Ultimately ghosts are some scary shit...even the Patrick Swayze ones. Willy runs into traffic, where he is pancaked to death by a linen delivery truck. Willy’s ghost barely has time to adjust his ghost eyes before a fleet of gurgling, growling, dry-heaving black Pac Man ghosts emerge from the gutters and drag Willy down to where they make the CHUD’s. I’m willing to give most of the special effects in this movie a pass because 1990...but the angrily shitting hell ghosts are fucking hilariously terrible. Most of the movie’s expertly built suspense just evaporated like Demi Moore’s post-90’s film career.
Sam and Oda Mae hustle over to Soho to warn Molly about Carl’s murder lust. When she sees Oda Mae at the door Molly is all “Oh HELL no! I’m not opening the door...I don’t care if you know what color panties I have on!” Sam slips through the door and describes Molly’s outfit to Oda Mae...who describes it back to Molly. That’d prolly do it for me but Molly still ain’t having it. Finally, Sam asks Oda Mae to push a penny under the door. Good thing it’s 1990 otherwise people be having NO CASH! Oda Mae would prolly have to Venmo him that penny. She slides the penny under the door and Sam lifts it up with his finger and hands it to Molly. She’s impressed, don’t get me wrong, but that’s a pretty low rent ghost trick. They couldn’t have had him shoot some ectoplasm or morph into a 30 story Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? Anyway, now Molly believes. They call the police who, it should be noted, never do arrive....even though they are in the middle of Manhattan. Oda Mae decides to allow Sam to jump inside of her (hey now) so that he and Molly can have one last dance to, you guessed it, “Unchained Melody!” Did they only have the budget to license ONE song for this flick? There’s not much necking this time ‘cuz Molly thinks she’s dancing with Oda Mae...but it doesn’t really matter. Carl breaks down the door before the Righteous Brother can hit his high falsetto part. He’s got a gun and is ready to make some Ghost sequels and our boy Sam is too sapped to spook! Molly and Oda Mae run out on the fire escape and head to the scary abandoned loft upstairs ‘cuz that location will probably make for a much better movie climax than whatever’s downstairs (neighbors....the police...safety). Carl catches up to Molly and puts a gun to his head and tells Sam the invisible ghost that he wants his 4 mil pronto or he’s gonna deprive the world of G.I. Jane. Sam springs into action and beats the shit out of Carl. He must be focusing like a BASTARD, man! Not much Carl can do against an invisible opponent who has nothing to lose. After Sam throws Carl through a window, a massive falling shard of glass penetrates his midsection, sending him on a one-way trip with the belching satan ghosts. Good riddance, Goldwynator. See you at the 2016 DNC, where you inexplicably gave a speech and made Hillary Clinton lose the election.
Sam asks the ladies if they are OK. Molly says “yeah, we are fine...wait...WHAT!?” She can actually hear his voice now! And then...and then a brilliant white light shines down from heaven, illuminating Sam’s human form. Why does SHE get to see him now? Maybe JC heard about that $4 million dollar check and decided to do Sam one last solid? I don’t know. But I do know that Sam suddenly looks like a character from Ah-Ha’s “Take on Me” video. He’s all flickery and janky and they try to kiss, Sam and Molly (Oda Mae just looks on and smiles about her impending Oscar), but it looks silly as shit. Neither of them even try to move their mouths! So Sam is back but now he has to die for real...which just completely sucks. What’s the message here? If you love someone, set them free and they’ll return as a ghost...before immediately leaving again. God, can’t he just bum around Soho in his red polo eating cronuts and shit? But no--heaven or wherever is waiting. Sam says “I love you, Molly.” She says....”ditto.” Sam says “that’s nice--I’m about to die for real and you’re telling fuckin’ jokes? See ya.” Actually he just says “see ya” but I feel like there’s a little bit of stank on it. In loving memory of Patrick Swayze, Rick Aviles, Vincent Schiavelli, and summer movie seasons of summer’s past. The end.
When I sat down to write this review I followed my typical routine; open the computer, stare at the blank screen for 30 minutes, then close the computer and spend hours dicking around on the Internet. While I was scrolling through the bad news I noticed that the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High was trending. I was pleasantly surprised because Fast Times is a 38 year-old movie and it’s increasingly rare these days to see something trending that isn’t YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!!! I was excited to learn that Sean Penn would be hosting an “anything goes” table reading of Cameron Crowe’s Fast Times screenplay to raise money to help stop the spread of Covid-19 among our incarnated populations. That Sean Penn—he’ll come over and help you change your fuckin’ oil if you need him to! My excitement lasted a good six seconds...or as long as it took me to glance at the cast list and see the names Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston and realize the only reason people are talking about this reading is that those two ding dongs used to be married until Pitt took off with Angie Jolie and fathered 10 children in 5 years. But wait! It gets worse! Not only will Sean Penn NOT be reprising the role of Jeff Spicoli, the rest of the perfectly acceptable and mostly still alive original cast members have been replaced by A-list actors like Julia Roberts and Morgan Freeman and Shia LaBeouf’s crazy ass. Unless there’s an emergency Gremlins Zoom reunion occurring simultaneously I just don’t see how you can hold a Fast Times at Ridgemont High ANYTHING without Phoebe Cates and Judge Reinhold. What, is Morgan Freeman gonna jump out of a pool while Shia LaBeouf J’s off?? You know he’d do it, too—even at a table read. The ‘Beouf is friggin’ starkers!
Anyway, we’re actually here today to talk about the 1984 film The Wild Life, a sort of spiritual sequel to Fast Times. Remember back in 2016 when Richard Linklater made a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused called Everybody Wants Some that was adored by critics yet reviled by everyone who actually watched it? The Wild Life met with a similar fate as Everybody Wants Some except that critics didn’t like it and it cannot be watched, streamed, or purchased under any circumstances (I mean...you can buy a used VHS copy on eBay for $50...but who would actually do something like that?? Besides me, I mean). The film isn’t unwatchable because it’s unwatchable (and it is) but because of music clearance issues. See kids—The Wild Life was scored by one Edward Van Halen, and Eddie ain’t letting his tunes go out for cheap. So what if the dude has a net worth of $100 million? The Van Halen’s have a reputation for never doing anything decent for anyone to uphold. Man’s gotta eat!
Like Fast Times, The Wild Life was written by Cameron Crowe, a guy who is increasingly starting to look like the Weezer of film directors: two classics and loads of chaff! And look...I don’t want to drag the guy too hard. He’s got Say Anything and Almost Famous on his CV. Those are forever movies. He was hanging out with Jimmy Page and Gregg Allman when he was 12 years-old and he was married to the non-singing Heart sister for way longer than most famous people stay married. But when was the last time you found yourself reaching for Elizabethtown. Or friggin’ Aloha?? Sure, Singles has one of the most essential soundtracks of all time...but the movie is completely inessential. Crowe’s latest project, a hagiography on the C in CSNY David Crosby, was so embarrassingly fawning that I kept expecting to see Crowe leap into Croz’s lap and start braiding his mustache.
All that said, I was still super stoked to watch The Wild Life...right up until the moment I actually started watching it. This is the point in the review where I usually say “what happens is this” and then proceed to lay out the plot points and crack wise. That is simply not possible in this case as this film is entirely plotless. Don’t believe me? Even the movie’s Wikipedia plot summary is like 30 words long. And look...a plot isn’t necessarily necessary if you’ve got other things going on. This film does NOT have other things going on. They simply threw together a group of profoundly unappetizing characters and filmed them acting like assholes for 90 minutes while Eddie Van Halen did pick slides in the background and called it a movie. It purports to observe a group of young adults as they navigate life after high school. How do they navigate said life? Shittily. Humorlessly.
I mean...generally what happens is: the film opens with an agonizingly long sequence (think There Will Be Blood but set to Born to Be Wild) of the kid who played Wyatt in Weird Science and then quit acting to become a college professor and professional D&D gamer breaking into a high school after dark. This is Jim. He’s a foul-tempered 15 years-old chain smoking alcoholic who is obsessed with the Vietnam War. He’s got a giant fucking attitude problem for reasons that are not, and will never be, explained. Jim blows the head off of the school mascot with homemade explosives. Ho hum. Cue meaty Van Halen riffage. Now...I love me some VH (all eras!) but take away the slick vocals and Michael Anthony’s honeyed harmonies and their music kind of sounds like 8 frat boys in a 4-seat mustang. And with all of the subtly one would expect from a band who would go on to make an album called F.U.C.K. Perfectly suited for a movie of this stripe, in other words!
Next up we meet the movie’s “hero” Tom, played by Chris Penn, the Penn brother who is less famous than Sean but more famous than Michael and who is now mostly famous for being deceased. Tom is 18 and fit with a glorious head of wavy blonde hair. He’s also quite possibly the least redeeming character I have ever seen in a film. When we are first introduced to him he’s drunk driving his bomb ass convertible all over LA. He shows up late to his job at a bowling alley and smokes a joint in the bathroom before going on shift. He works with his best bud Bill (Eric Stoltz) who is so shockingly zero dimensional that I’m almost at a loss for words. Bill isn’t so much underwritten as he is unwritten. And you know....I’ve never had a problem with Eric Stoltz....but now that I’m watching this movie I’m thinking that maybe I DO have a problem with Eric Stoltz! His ex-girlfriend Anita is played by the unfailingly lovely Lea Thompson...and her association with this flick led to her being cast in Back to the Future. Right...’cuz Eric Stoltz was cast as Marty McFly! Grah hah hah how did that work out for ya, Stoltzy?? Lea Thompson works at a donut shop, where she receives a visit from a creepy mustachioed police officer who is 100% the guy who played Elliott in Die Hard. Can I get a Hans....BUBBY?? He says he needs to check her back entrance...which means exactly what you think it means because this movie sucks like that. Apparently these two...they got a thing going on. Lea Thompson says she wants to go on a normal date but the copper says he just wants to make her squeal. He drags her in the back room and tears off her underwear and HOLY SHIT! The melody playing in the background is from the Van Halen song “Right Now”....which wouldn’t come out until 1991! That’s some crazy shit right there. Apparently there’s another track in here somewhere that eventually ended up on the album that VH made with David Lee Roth in 2012 but I, like most people, like to pretend that album doesn’t exist.
Right, so the idea here is that Stoltz is 20 years-old and really feeling himself and doesn’t want to date Lea Thompson because she’s still in high school. He’s confusingly thrilled to be moving into this bland ass, cookie cutter apartment complex that’s run by the dude who played the Colonel in Boogie Nights. Penn keeps referring to it as the House of Love. I didn’t find it to be as such. It isn’t even nice! Sure, there’s a pool, but it’s friggin’ LA. Penn says that they will rage in this apartment. Stoltz says that they will not...because he is not interested in anything at all, really. Before Stoltz moves out of his family’s piece we learn that jerk ass Jim is his younger brother...and that he is really handy with a set of nunchucks. I’d probably be all aggro if I had a vanilla ginger wanker like Stoltz for an older brother too.
One third of the way through the movie we finally meet Eileen, played by actress I have never heard of Jenny Wright. Eileen works at a mall store called Dynasty, that could not be more 80’s if it were a Flock of Seagulls video filmed inside of a can of New Coke. Her boss is played by severely MIA Canadian comedy legend Rick Moranis. Eileen has spiky punk hair and posters of Wire (the band) on her bedroom wall, which is cool. She is also dating Chris Penn, which is less cool. Eileen and Lea Thompson are besties and they converse in a way that a 26 year-old male screenwriter imagines that female high school seniors converse. You can really feel Crowe still trying to find his wings as a screenwriter here (woka woka). These ladies are actually the only decent characters this film but only because everyone else is so
abjectly awful. Lea Thompson says that she liked Stoltz but that they only balled four times, whereas the rapey cop just grabs her and forces her to have oodles of orgasms. Dude, you had me at HELL NO!! Later, Eileen is at home checking out her bare breasts in the mirror like any good 80’s teen comedy character, and Penn comes crawling through the window like the goddamn Golden State Killer. She is not feeling this kid ...at ALL! Tells him that if he touches her she’ll scream. He grabs her ass. She screams. EVH’s guitar goes wahhhggg weeeennnnn.
Penn immediately starts to harangue Stoltz about moving into his dumpy apartment. He tells Stoltz that they are living the wild life. Like...really guy? I mean...I guess you are in a movie and I’m just a dude sitting here making fun of it 36 years later...so what do I know? Penn also decides that he will marry Eileen but neglects to mention any of this to Eileen. He mostly wants his too insignificant to mention buddies to throw him a stag party. They take him out to a strip club, where the bouncer is totally Harry from Harry and the Henderson’s (and also—The Predator...if yer nasty). He agrees to let them into the club if they abstain from touching the girls. Inside the strip club there is way more stripping than usual or necessary. The ladies dance to Little Richard tunes...which makes me think the Van Halen estate isn’t the only estate working to keep this movie on mothballs. When a particularly buxom stripper appears onstage someone shouts “titties as big as a house!” Chris Penn decides that he simply cannot take it anymore and jumps onstage and starts to motorboat the stripper (who loves it?? Jesus Christ, y’all). Penn and his chooch buddies are attacked by a group of horny businessmen. One of the strippers is punched in the face in the ensuing melee. Violence against women=comedy gold. Don’t worry, though—the predator jumps in and tears Chris Penn’s spine out. I mean...I wish!
The next afternoon, while sitting poolside, Penn tells Stoltz that they are having the best summer of their lives. Like...by what metric?? There must be some lost footage because the amount of amazing things that have happened in this movie is exactly zero. Stoltz continues to read Jude the Obscure and ignore Penn, much like he ignores the concept of acting in this movie. Penn decides that he will finally propose to Eileen since he’s already had his bachelor party and whatnot. How does he do this? He shows up at Dynasty and presents her with an EMPTY RING BOX! Eileen does not say yes. Penn causes a scene and Ricky Moranis has him escorted off the property. Such a good guy, that Rick Moranis. Oh wait...in the next scene he tells Eileen that he wants to sexually dominate her or something gross. Forgot what I just said about Rick Moranis being a good guy.
Back in Lea Thompson’s corner of the movie, she’s desperately trying to get that a-hole cop to date her on the real. She starts to wonder if maybe he’s married...which makes sense because he definitely is. She creeps over to his house to find that not only is the guy married, he’s married to Nancy Wilson!! As in the former Mrs Cameron Crowe, people! Here I’d like to point out that Lea Thompson’s “creeping over to the cop’s house” theme sounds a lot like the song “Turn Me Loose” by Loverboy, which means that either Eddie Van Halen ripped off Loverboy or Loverboy ripped off Eddie Van Halen. To be fair to Loverboy, their song came out a good four years before this movie did. Either way, a bad look for all parties involved! Anyway, Lea Thompson is done with the cop and wicked sad about it. Eileen tries to console her by reading her one of her own poems. Lea Thompson tells Eileen that her poem sucks.
Oh! I forgot to mention that Scary Jim cuts the brakes on the cop’s cruiser, causing him to crash into the donut shop’s neon donut sign...because Jim is just a fucking dangerous menace for no good reason. Later, he unsuccessfully attempts to buy explosives from Ben Stein (actual Ben Stein!!). He also takes his friend whose name I didn’t bother to learn to meet this Vietnam Vet played by Quaid brother who went crazy and torpedoed his career, Randy. This Vietnam guy is an alcoholic shut-in who lives in a dangerous part of town...but he’s also somehow Jim’s good friend. Jim...who is 15 year-old. Randy Quaid offers the children beer and then retreats to the restroom to vomit. And that’s his entire part in this movie! Ok then! You know...while we’re talking about Randy Quaid: I’m thinking that all of that bullshit he pulled back in 2009 would barely register in 2020. Like, he could probably even get invited to speak at this year’s RNC, if that’s his thing.
Back at the House of Love, Penn has gone full court press trying to get Stoltz to throw a rager. He’s also started hanging out with Fear frontman and dude who played Mr Body in the movie Clue Lee Ving, kicking this movie’s “what the actual fuck??” factor up another notch or two. Stoltz does not want to have a party. Instead, he shows up at the donut shop to act tough and try to win Lea Thompson back, even though he hasn’t really mentioned her or expressed any interest in her at any point in this movie. Lea Thompson sees Stoltzy and her heart is aflutter and she decides it’s ok to trade the orgasmatron for four pumps and a snore. Stoltz brings her back to his pad so they can watch Jaws 3-D on Betamax but they arrive to find that Penn has gone ahead and thrown a party anyway, the dirty dickhead. Man, people are drinking and having orgies and trying to microwave a poodle (seriously...an actual poodle). There’s a guy at the party who just looks like Michael Jackson but who is not Michael Jackson...and also a guy who looks just like Ron Wood and who is ACTUALLY RON WOOD! From the fuckin’ Stones! Rockin’ Ronnie...he’s in this movie too! Penn is in the closet trying to get sex from Sherilyn Fenn but she turns him down because Audrey Horne will have none of your rapey bullshit, Chris Penn!
When the sun rises the following morning the apartment has been completely destroyed and all of Stoltz’s furniture is floating in the complex’s swimming pool because of course it is. Penn comes to see Stoltz, who is wearing a blazer with nothing but a bare chest underneath, and tells him that he is a legend now. A legend for what!? For making it through the entire movie without contributing anything at all?? UGH!! It’s also now the first day of school, which means the characters who are still of school going age need to report for class. The dudes hit the scene to see whose fun they can spoil. Penn rolls up on Eileen, who still has less than zero interest in him. She tells him to leave her the hell alone. He grabs her and forces her into the car, kidnapping her. She squeals with delight. Eddie Van Halen squeals with guitar. I hang my head and weep. Stoltz drops Lea Thompson off and says “see you at Back to the Future” and she’s all “ohhh....ummm...yeah totally. You should....yeah!” Psycho Jim shows up sober and (hopefully) without explosives and decides that he will now attend high school without protest. The point of everything we’ve just watched continues to elude me. The credits roll. The same Cameron Crowe who wrote this movie goes on to win an Oscar for writing the movie Almost Famous. All’s well that ends well, I guess.
When I originally started writing this review I made reference to the lake where Baby and Johnny practice their anticlimactic climactic dance lift and how it has been dry for years. I have avoided finishing this article for so long now that the lake has actually started to fill up with water for the first time in almost 12 years. Alas, a sliver of good news arrives in 2020! I mean....if you like the movie Dirty Dancing. I mean...otherwise...whatever, right? We’re gonna spend some time talking about Dirty Dancing today because it is far and away the most requested title here at VHS of the Week (not to be confused with the Tom Cruise film Far and Away...which no one wants to hear about ever). I don’t really have much of a personal connection to this flick other than having watched it. My grandparents brought me to the cinema in August of 1987 and told me I could choose between Dirty Dancing and Steve Martin’s Roxanne. Now most of y’all who know me know how much I love Steve Martin’s banjo shredding ass...but did you also know how much I hate dancing (and being dirty)? Seriously, when people try to get me to dance at weddings I always tell them that I’m simply waiting for my jam. Full confession: I don’t have a jam!!
I eventually watched Dirty Dancing at home with the aforementioned set of grandparents...who in turn watched the fact that this movie is primarily about abortion sail right over my little nine year-old head. Me: Hey grandma....what’s “The Penny Situation?” Grandma: “ummm...ahhh...it’s a punk band from D.C.!” I liked the movie enough to purchase BOTH soundtracks, even though I was a devoted metalhead and none of the songs featured in Dirty Dancing are about satan. Not that I’m aware of, anyway. What I learned re-watching Dirty Dancing in 2020 is that I have somehow unintentionally learned a whole lot about Dirty Dancing over the years. I’m not sure if I saw a documentary at some point or watched a bunch of those VH1 Pop-Up Videos back in the day, but I do know that I could probably melt faces at a Dirty Dancing trivia night. The dry-ish lake? We already talked about that. I know that the dance scenes were choreographed by Hocus Pocus director and man who ruined singer Billy Squier’s career Kenny Ortega. I know that Eleanor Bergstein wrote the screenplay based on her own experiences coming of age in the early 60’s. I know that the casting director originally wanted Billy Zane and NOT Patrick Swayze for the role of Johnny Castle, which allowed my mind to run wild with fantasies of a world where Billy Zane got to skydive and surf and rip dude’s throats out and have weird pottery sex with Demi Moore while Patrick Swayze was just Kate Winslet’s bougie dandy fiancee in Titanic.
Anyway, what happens is this: It’s the summer of 1963 and Frances “Baby” Houseman (played by the actress who no longer looks like Jennifer Grey, Jennifer Grey) is headed to the Catskills with her rich white parents and tone deaf older sister Lisa. This little family vacay is gonna be Baby’s last hurrah before joining the Peace Corps come fall. She’s got a severe case of the white priv but she’s ready to do some good as a do gooder...which is good of her. The Houseman’s arrive at this shuffleboard and salsa dancing resort called Kellerman’s and get the red carpet treatment from Mr Kellerman hisself! Turns out Mr Housman is an MD and he helped old man Kellerman with his high blood pressure troubles. Now Kellerman wants to do the fam a solid by hooking them up with the phattest cabin on the property. Dr Houseman is played by dearly departed Law and Order star Jerry Orbach, who happens to be the greatest thing in this whole goddamn movie...or any other movie. Ever. Mr Kellerman seems like a solid guy all the way until the very next scene, where he is heard explaining to his exclusively Ivy League-educated waitstaff that fornicating with daughters (even the “dogs”) of prominent guests is an actual job requirement. While Kellerman is in the middle of his disgustingness, Johnny Castle shows up with his badass crew of badass entertainers. Mr Kellerman, seething with classist contempt, makes it a point to announce that the entertainers, unlike the waiters, may not fuck any daughters. This Kellerman--he goes from stand-up guy to sexual harassment goblin in like two movie minutes!
When night falls, the Houseman’s hit the function hall to take in some mambo, courtesy of Tito, the resort’s bandleader and the only person of color in this film with actual dialogue. We meet Robbie the waiter, who attends Yale medical school. And listen kids--I have been waiting tables for over 20 years and the number of co-workers I have had that were also enrolled at Ivy League universities is exactly zero (actually there was one dude who said he went to Harvard but it was totally just their Extension School). A fleet of med student waiters? I call bullshit. Mr Kellerman immediately starts trying to pawn his dorkus malorkus grandson Neil off on Baby. He’s probably next in line to inherit the resort but he tells Baby that he wants to join the Freedom Riders. Sure you do, pal. Their awkward repartee is mercifully interrupted when Johnny and his ex-Rockette partner Penny show up and set that fusty dance floor ABLAZE! Apparently Johnny and his crew are hired to just dance around the joint so the guests will have something to look at that isn’t impending death. Everyone seems to enjoy the shit out of the dancers...except for Mr Kellerman...who shoots them a look that says “you are beneath me and I shit on you all!”
After the gig, Baby spies the entrance to the staff quarters and figures the jazz cigarettes must be up thattaway so she decides to go have herself a snoop.She encounters this kid Cousin Billy who tries to turn her away. Luckily for her the kid is trying to carry three watermelons at the SAME TIME which is way too many watermelons for one person to carry. Baby carries a watermelon. Later she will state that she has done so and it will become the third most quoted line from this movie. When Baby arrives at the staff cabin she finds a whole swirl of people dancing...and dirtily! What does this look like exactly? Well, the man takes his lady partner, wraps one arm around her neck and places his other hand on her buttock (just one buttock though). He then places his pelvic area up against her pelvic area and begins to thrust gingerly. It’s all very subtle. It’s also the ONLY SCENE in the entire movie where people dance in this manner. The rest of the dancing is merely suggestive. Are you gonna buy a ticket for a movie called Suggestive Dancing though? Probably not. Baby sees Johnny on the dance floor and freezes like a sheep in headlights. She hits him with the hungry eyes (more on those in a minute). He sees her hungry eyes and raises her one dirty dance. She giddily accepts. She parts her thighs and Johnny comes a gentle jackhammerin’....and once they are up in each other’s areas they could not look LESS enthused. I guess these kids had some bad blood going all the way back to Red Dawn in 1984...and it shows. Often. Some quick math though while we’re talking about the actors: Baby Houseman is supposed to be 17. Patrick Swayze was 34 when they filmed this movie. Last I checked....34 is 17 TIMES TWO!!! Dude....ICK!!! But wait...Jennifer Grey was actually already 27...so it’s cool. I guess I’ll just keep watching these two borderline senior citizens hump each other’s legs then.
The following evening Baby is still trying to outrun the nepotistic nightmare that is Neil Kellerman. He takes her into the kitchen and offers to make her anything she’d like even though it’s clear he has never been in a kitchen or cooked food before. While Neil is searching for the caviar omelettes, Baby spies Penny crying in a corner. Neil is dispensed with and Baby returns to find out what’s the what. It turns out that Penny is knocked up, possibly definitely by Robbie the brain surgeon waiter. She’s afraid that she'll give birth to this asshole’s asshole kid so she wants to terminate the pregnancy. It happens. They got a guy in New Paltz who will do the business but they need $250. Baby is all “just ask Robbie for the money...he’s shit loaded.” They’re like “whoooo the fuck are you again?” Actually, what Penny says is “why don’t you go back to your playpen....BABY!?” Sickest of burns! Third degree yow! MYOB ‘lil Ms Seventeen!
Undeterred, Baby marches right into the resto the next morning and straight up asks Robbie for some abortion dosh. Robbie says that he isn’t even sure the kid is his as Penny has balled every dude in the Catskills. Here I’d like to point out that I have used the term “ball” as in “to have intercourse” in every single review that I have written but this is the first time I have heard it spoken by a character on screen! Robbie says that “some people count, and some don’t” which is the moral of this story, and also, of life in general. Baby is unimpressed. She takes a pitcher of ice water and pours it down the front of Robbie’s drawers. Baby Houseman: she’s a boss bitch like that.
Baby decides to ask Dr Housman for the deuce and a half...and he happily forks it over...even though $250 was like a million bucks in 1963. Such a solid guy, Dr Houseman. So Penny can go do her thing but now we have another problem...which will ultimately result in this movie having some semblance of a plot. With Penny in her delicate condition Johnny is shit out of a partner for their upcoming dancing engagements. Baby says that SHE will be his new dance partner. Everyone in the room is all like “YOU!? But you can’t even dance!” But she’s like “Umm...yeah, my dad is Joel Grey. Willkommen, motherfuckers!!” And so begins a good ten minute “learning how to dance” montage. At first, Baby doesn’t know a one from a four. (“All the white people clap your hands on the 4, now”—Prince). But she pulls herself up by the jean shorts and does her iconic solo Wipeout dance number on the stairs...and that shit is hawt. There’s your PG-13 rating right there. She and Johnny practice their moves to “Hungry Eyes” by Eric Carmen, who was the lead singer of power pop legends The Raspberries, which is awesome, and who is now a drooling far right Trump fanboy, which is less awesome. Here I want to go ahead and say that I have ALWAYS had a huge problem with the use of contemporary music in this film. It’s all Be My Baby and Do You Love Me until Hungry Eyes rolls in with its gauzy synths and cheese doodle sax solos. Was there a draught of oldies to license for this flick?? Stay in your lane, people!
So Baby is a regular Gwen Verdon in no time....but they still need to practice their signature move...which involves the following: Baby sprints at Johnny like a bull. He grabs her and raises her above his head where he holds her aloft for about five seconds. How this move is exciting to anyone remains a mystery to me. It ain’t exactly the pamchenko, know what I’m sayin’? One afternoon, following a particular grueling practice, Johnny realizes that he has locked his keys in his car. Instead of waiting for AAA to show up Johnny picks up a rock and smashes his own damn window (in his defense it WAS raining balls). Baby sees this willful destruction of personal property and goes gaga and howls “you’re wild!” It becomes the second most quoted line from this movie.
Baby and Johnny hit the Sheldrake Hotel to do their little Mambo #5. Everything goes according to plan until it’s time for that final lift thing. Baby charges at Johnny but decides to pump the brakes at the last minute and bust out some silly ass Wayne’s World dance. No one seems to notice. Oh! Speaking of noticing: while the kids are doing their routine they spy a profoundly elderly couple from Kellerman’s in the audience who may or may not be ganking wallets. I only mention this old couple because I’m going to have to mention them again like three paragraphs from now. They’re still pretty jazzed about their performance overall...but when they get back to the Kellz their upside down frowns turn back into frowns when they learn that Penny’s abortion went shittily. Cousin Billy tells them that the dude showed up with a folding table and a dirty knife or something hideous. She’s in a bad way. Baby has the good sense to go wake up her pops, who just happened to have brought his doctor bag to the Catskills. You never know when you’re gonna have to slice an errant dinner roll out of a nonagenarian’s trachea, amirite? Dr Houseman assesses the sitch with his trademark cool, calm calmness. He’s gonna save the day because day saving is his business! He asks the crowd of concerned onlookers who’s responsible for Penny. Johnny says that he is...which leads to the dumbest misunderstanding in the history of movie misunderstandings. He means he’s responsible as in Penny is his partner....but the kid is not my son, you dig? Dr Housman saves Penny’s life but his demeanor quickly darkens afterwards. Not an unreasonable reaction from someone called upon to fix a botched abortion in the middle of the night. On vacation. He spurns Johnny’s handshake and tells Baby that she isn’t the person he thought she was. Baby is so upset she collapses in her bunk and sobs. JUST KIDDING! I mean she runs to Johnny’s cabin where she finds him listening to Otis Redding like the shirtless adonis that he is. They dance sexily and Johnny takes her virginity. So...not a total loss. The night....not the virginity.
The next morning at breakfast Dr Housman tells his family that the summer is over like Grover and they are returning to Nyack post haste. Superfluous older sister freaks out as this means she will not get to sing her special solo at the big season-ending talent show. Dr Housman reverses course because he’s just the nicest fricken’ guy. Lisa confides in Baby that the real reason she wants to stay is so she can lose her V to the loathsome Robbie! Baby is all “ehhh....better make him double bag it!”
Baby jumps at the opportunity to jump right back in the sack with Johnny. While they are lying in bed after their latest ball sesh Baby asks Johnny if he’s been with many women. Johnny’s response: “what?? Humina humina...wha....NO!!” He then tells Baby that she cannot possibly know what it was like to grow up on the streets like he did...and then to wind up at Kellerman’s and have 2 to 3 women throw themselves at him every day. So the actual number of women he has been with is, what, 175? 225? Somewhere in that ballpark. One afternoon Robbie shows up at the guest quarters and gets all mouthy so Johnny rips his throat out!!! I mean...not really. But he does throw him a decent beating....which is prolly a bad move cuz the haves always trump the have nots (mmm hmm).
One afternoon, while the cast is practicing for the grand finale, we learn that there’s a certain breed of lady guest called the Bungalow Bunny. Basically bored rich husbands pay Johnny cash money to sex their bored rich wives. It’s mad gross. Johnny is offered some scratch to entertain the cougery Mrs Pressman but he declines because he’s in serious like with Baby. While this scene playing out Lisa Houseman is onstage practicing her screamingly terrible song for the talent show. I have always been curious about this song because it makes Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music sound like I Want to Hold Your Hand. Turns out the song is called Hula Hana and the actress who plays Lisa fucking WROTE IT!!! Sweet Christ on a cracker! I noticed that this tune didn’t make the soundtrack. Either of them. Crazy.
After she practices her...what have you...Lisa tells Baby that she’s gonna go all the way with Robbie...in case you already forgot the time she said exactly that like 5 minutes ago. Later that night she heads to Robbie’s cabin while a contemporary song with lyrics like “Yes, we're gonna make love it's gonna be tonight” plays in the background...just in case you were STILL CONFUSED about Lisa’s intentions! She gets to Robbie’s cabin and OH Snap! Guess what she saw?? Robbie balling out Mrs Pressman. Lisa...girl, you got lucky! You know who didn’t get lucky? Baby. I mean sexually she did...but the next morning Mrs Pressman sees baby crawl out of Johnny’s crib with coitus head. Even though Mrs Pressman got hers she still feels the jilt. She fingers Johnny for all of that wallet thievery I mentioned earlier. When the Houseman’s are chowing some brekky Mr Kellerman tells them that he had to let Johnny go. I’m sure he’s just heartbroken too, the heartless prick. Baby is all verklempt but she can’t spit out why. But finally...through wet rivers of tears...she says that Johnny couldn’t have possibly been out snatching wallets as he was in the hay with her! This news makes Kellerman even angrier. Dr Housman looks like he wants to drown himself in the fuckin’ lake (better hurry dude). Of course Johnny gets shitcanned anyway because the #1 rule in the Kellerman’s handbook is not “thou shall not steal” but “thou shall not ball the guests daughters.” Before he clears out, Johnny goes to see Dr Housman who is like “Christ, will no one give me a moment’s peace before the summer is over!?” Houseman STILL thinks that Johnny got Penny pregnant and Johnny STILL does not tell him that he did not. Dude, clear this shit UP, you daft prick! He goes to say goodbye to Baby, who beats his chest and wails. Patrick Swayze’s tune She’s Like the Wind starts to play in the background. Of all of the contemporary songs in this movie I have the least amount of beef with this one. It’s a pretty decent song, celebrity song-wise. I don’t know why Swayze didn’t write more music in his life. Or did he and I just don’t know about it?
Anyway...it’s finally closing time at Kellermans and the whole resort has gathered to join hands and hearts and voices....voices hearts and hands. Dr Houseman tries to slip Robbie a Med school recommendation (wait...I thought he was already AT Yale??) but then Robbie thanks the doc for the abortion assist and the recommendation is promptly unslipped. Johnny, who apparently did not even make it to I-87, blows into the room like Jesus in the temple and makes a beeline for the Houseman table. He utters the line we’ve all been waiting for: “nobody puts Baby in the corner!” HUZZAH!!! #1 with a bullet! I know it’s supposed to be...like...a metaphor....and I’m probably not the first person to point this out....but Baby is not really sitting in the corner. She’s next to this....stone beam? Or maybe it’s a mock chimney? Either way...it’s the best seat at that particular table! She can look straight at the stage without craning her neck. Anyway, Johnny gets up on the stage and talks about how Baby changed his life and how he always gets the last dance of the summer and zzzzzzz do the lift already!! Johnny slips the DJ a 45 of “I Had the Time of My Life” and everyone looks at each other like “what kind of futuristic 1987 bullshit is THIS!?” Baby and Johnny do their dance number and Mrs Houseman is heard to say that Baby must have inherited her dance moves from her. And who are YOU?? You haven’t had any lines throughout the entire movie! They finally execute the lift, which means that Robbie has to spend the next morning sweeping people’s jaws off of the ballroom floor. Dr Houseman apologizes to Johnny because when he’s wrong he’s wrong. He no longer hates Johnny and is happy to let him continue to have relations with his 17 year-old daughter. They really should’ve called this movie Dr Houseman’s Bummer Summer. The end.
According to the opening credits of Jaws 3-D, the film was “suggested by the novel Jaws by Peter Benchley.” Now, it’s been a minute or two since I’ve cracked open Benchley’s 1974 bestseller...but I’m gonna go ahead and say that nowhere in the book does it suggest that “this story shall be adapted into a summer blockbuster for the ages...the first of its kind!....followed by three sequels...each one shittier than the one that came before it!” (I mean...it would be kind of awesome if it actually DID say that). I don’t really have much to add when it comes to Jaws. I still watch it every summer, ideally on the big screen or at a drive-in, and it still does it to me. Every time. I watched Jaws 2 and Jaws: The Revenge on the regular when I was a kid ‘cuz I was a kid and didn’t know any better. I never watched Jaws 3-D, however, because...well...I heard that it sucked. If you have ever scrolled through the list of movies featured here at VHS of the Week you are probably thinking “wait a minute--don’t almost ALL of the movies you write about suck?” If you think this then you are not incorrect. I guess the reason I have strenuously avoided Jaws 3-D is the fact that it’s in 3-D. You see, kids: in the early 80’s there was a boom in 3-D technology that just happened to coincide with the release of a butt ton of horror movie threequels. This was all well and good when the flicks were on the big screen, but there was no way to duplicate the 3-D experience at home unless you purchased something called the Video High Density video disc system, a machine that was never owned by anyone anywhere. In the four years that I spent working estate sales I came across every antiquated home entertainment system you can name: Betamax, Laserdisc, CED (if anyone is looking for Tron on CED drop me a line and I’ll hook you up). But a Video High Density system? Why would you shell out extra dough when your viewing options were limited to Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, and Friday the 13th 3-D? Without the 3-D technology what we’re left with is regular ass Jaws 3, which ain’t much to look at. Like literally. Like the movie looks all weird and grainy and underdeveloped. Apparently the bigs at Universal realized they had jumped the shark (sorry...had to) with Jaws 2 and decided the third film in the series would be a spoof. It was to be written by John Hughes and directed by Joe Dante. So The Breakfast Club meets Gremlins but with sharks. Or...also with sharks? Gremlin sharks? Gremlarks? Either way...you had me at YES PLEASE!! That movie would have ruled so much ass. Unfortunately they scrapped that idea and brought on legendary sci-fi writer Richard Matheson to pen a more Jaws-like Jaws. That movie probably would have ruled too but they took Matheson’s screenplay and rewrote every line except for the one that says “Written by Richard Matheson.” Dude was pissed.
What happens is this: Two time shark-attack survivor Mike Brody has traded the uninhabitable waters of Amity Island for the controlled confines of SeaWorld. Brody is now being portrayed by Quaid brother who didn’t go apeshit and tank his own career Dennis. Dennis Quaid is 10 years older than the actor who played Mike Brody in the Jaws that came out five years before this one...but really...who’s keeping count? (ME...that’s who!). Quaid was already pretty famous at this point. Not for his acting, mind you, but for his prodigious cocaine intake. According to Quaid, he was zooted up on crank in “every frame” of Jaws 3-D. And you know...I really feel bad for the guy. Not because he had a substance abuse problem (he cleaned up his act and made Innerspace and married Meg Ryan and like four other ladies) but because filming a movie that requires you to constantly jump in the water fully clothed is an everyday drug user’s worst nightmare! Seriously, I’m thinking the pained expression Quaid wears throughout most of the film is probably the result of him realizing that he has a bag of waterlogged gak in his pocket.
Anyway, Mike Brody has a pretty solid gig at SeaWorld. He gets to smoke a ton of cigarettes and tool around on jet skis, barking orders at people. He’s also dating Dr Kay, the park’s chief biologist and closest thing this sequel has to a Dick Dreyfuss character. The park is just days away from unveiling its new underwater viewing complex, which will feature a maze of shark-baiting tunnels. And also--a cocktail lounge. People are crazy stressed out, particularly the folks on the cutthroat water skiing team. If they don’t execute the human water skiing pyramid perfectly they’ll be sent back to...wherever it is professional water skiers come from. It’s cool though ‘cuz the ski team counts Howard the Duck star Lea Thompson among its members. You know Mrs McFly gonna keep that shit on point! While peeps are scurrying around trying to put a bow on this underwater Atlantis, park owner Calvin Bouchard is the picture of tranquility. Bouchard is played by Louis Gossett Jr, who had just taken home the Best Actor Oscar for An Officer and a Gentleman and who looks ready to cash...the fuck...IN! As well he should, right? Big budget shark movie? Where’s my cocktail at? Seriously, the guy has a cocktail in his hand at all times. Hey, if Dennis Quaid and stuff his face full of drugs...
The park is self-contained yet connected to the open ocean by a set of retractable gates. The gates are supposed to keep their showpiece dolphins Laverne and Shirley or whomever from swimming out to sea and to keep sharks from swimming in. Unfortunately there’s already a shark in the park (now there’s a tidy name for a move: Shark in the Park!) and he busts his noggin on the gate while trying to swim home to Pensacola. Now the gate is all jammed up so Mike dispatches a mechanic by the name of Overman down to be promptly dispatched. The dude tries to fix the gate but the shark sneaks up from behind without so much as a tap tap and eats the SHIT out of him! His severed arm floats toward the camera for and just lingers there for an entire eternity like a fart in church. Was this thing supposed to leap out of the screen and swipe my Junior Mints in 3-D? Is it gonna do anything, this arm? Hello?
Back up on the dry things are moving along as planned. Mike’s little brother Sean has arrived from Colorado, where he has somehow taken to wearing cowboy hats and speaking with a slight southern drawl. We are also introduced to an Australian shark hunter called Phil FitzRoyce. Think Quint but without much dialogue (and zero WW2 monologues). I’m sure this Aussie will have something to do with something at some point. When night falls, Mike and Kay take baby brah out to the local watering hole to get him lit up on beer, which they refer to as “the champagne of the working class.” But wait--isn’t Miller High Life the “champagne of beers?” I’m so confused. At the bar, Sean runs into Lea Thompson, most likely because she is the only other female character in this movie. Sean and Lea Thompson make flirt faces at each other and then scurry off someplace to ball. That someplace: the water. Sean sees what Lea Thompson has in mind and is all like “maybe you haven’t seen me in such films as Jaws and Jaws 2 but I am really, REALLY afraid of the water!” Sean says that he will happily have intercourse literally anywhere else, but Lea Thompson is unrelenting, so into the drink they go. Meanwhile, Mike decides that it would be hilarious to sneak down to the beach and spy on his little brother while he’s fucking. I mean...what brother wouldn’t want to see his brother fornicate? Seriously, I’m asking this question as an only child! Mike and Kay bum rush Sean and Lea Thompson and they have a splash orgy. I see that I wrote the word “dolphins” in my notes so maybe Cagney & Lacey got in on the action too? I really don’t remember.
While all of this weird brother love is going on, a couple of random dudes in full camouflage gear break into SeaWorld in their janky ass canoe and dive into one of the lagoons to hunt for coral to steal. Before they can abscond with their ill-gotten gains they are viciously munched to death by the shark. Major spoiler alert here: they are never even spoken of again. Like, what was the point of all that?? I know these dudes were criminals and all...but to be casually discarded like so much chum? Do no one weep for the Coral Cowboys? I’m sure their mommas do.
The next morning everyone at the Brody residence is hungover as all get out. After they choke down some brekky Kay heads off to play with Kate & Allie while Mike does...whatever it is that Mike does. At the park, word has started to filter down that this Overman cat never resurfaced from his gate-repairing errand. Mike suggests that he may have gotten lost in the Spanish Galleon or tangled around an underwater skeleton who goes by the name of Oscar and what the hell kind of park is SeaWorld anyway?? I just realized that the number of things that I know about SeaWorld is approximately zero. I do know that Jaws 3 was filmed at the SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida...which is, last I checked, LANDLOCKED...thus nullifying the entire plot of the movie. Mike and Kay decide to go search for Overman in a submersible vehicle that fills with water. Their dolphin buddies come along for the ride (not in the vehicle, of course) and start to freak out and “eep eep eep!” Before Kay can say “sorry but I do not speak dolphin” here comes the motherfriggin’ shark! Mike and Kay grab a dolphin apiece to ride to safety, which is mad convenient. The shark gives chase but ends up knocking itself out AGAIN! Do these animals have no depth perception? Lou Gossett is immediately pulled away from his crab louis salad and martini lunch to assess the situation. He sees the concussed shark and his eyes light up and he sees warehouses full of shark T-shirts and shark posters and shark beer cozies. FitzRoyce sees an opportunity to murder a shark on live television. Says it’ll be the biggest thing since Geraldo opened Al Capone’s vault (three years in the future). They want to blow the shark up with grenades but Mike says he will not abide watching a shark be blown to bits, even though his pops has at least two shark murders notched on his belt. They agree to disagree for now.
Mike and Kay start to monkey around with the shark, who appreciates it none too much. The shark tries to eat Kay but Mike shoots it full of drugs (not his regular stash, though...more sleepytime-type stuff). Now the shark is in a K-hole but they want to keep its oxygen levels balanced so they can poke and prod it and HOW MANY laws are being broken in this film?? Surely you can’t just take a shark and do with it what you wish, right?! Kay says that they shouldn’t do anything that will aggravate the shark. Like, say, keeping it in captivity?! Rather than taking some time to develop proper shark storing and viewing protocols, Lou Gossett decides the shark is ready for prime time. That big bastard is immediately released into the touch tank and people haul ass on over there because who doesn't want to get a selfie with a great white shark!?? When Kay hears this news she sprints to the touch tank like John McClane, shouting “no no no, you stupid motherfuckers, NO!!” She immediately jumps into the tank and starts to massage the shark and whisper yoga mantras to it...but the fuckin’ thing rolls over and dies anyway. Spectators clutch their chests and cry and probably want refunds.
While all of this is going down, Lea Thompson is desperately trying to convince Sean to ride the bumper boats with her. Like, what the hell is wrong with you, lady?? This kid is CLEARLY terrified of the water! Maybe he can already sense that his character will be murdered by a shark in the first ten minutes of the next Jaws flick. Meanwhile the long-missing Overman finally floats by one of the tunnels.mOr...the top portion of his torso does, anyway. And that shit is DANGED...UP! Crabs crawling out of his mouth and the whole nine! Mike and Kay are called in to review the remains of his remains....which look like 50 cans of canned corned beef. Mike barfs everywhere. Kay rushes to tell a just-sitting-down-for-a-7-course-lunch Lou Gossett that there is most likely a far more problematic shark on the loose. Kay says that Overman was probably killed by the dead shark’s mother...and that the mother now wants to find hell with everyone in the park. “The shark’s damn mother,” Lou Gossett shouts incredulously. “Man, I got clams casino on the way!” Within seconds a shark appears through the window of the lounge and it’s like 75 feet long or whatever. Lou Gossett spits out his Cosmopolitan.
Once Mike gets a peek at the new/old shark he’s off like a shot. He decides the safest, most efficient way to warn the patrons is to steal a golf cart and speed around the park screaming “the shark is gonna eat all of us!” like a goddamn crazy coked up animal. Does this park not have an emergency plan...or IS THIS the park’s emergency plan?? Unfortunately lots of folks are still in tunnels or water skiing or water dancing and you can only reach so many people when you are just one single Dennis Quaid. Poor Sean is still on the bumper boats and the kid still wants to get the hell out of the water and Lea Thompson STILL will not let him. I mean, one can only bumper so much boat! She’s all “come on ya spoilsport...let” OH SHIT!!! The shark is in the bumper boat lagoon! Sean and Lea Thompson are knocked into the water where she is eaten by a shark...which sucks...but then she is pulled ashore with little more than a gnarly gash on her thigh...which HUH!? I clearly saw the shark consume this woman whole. Not that it matters much. She and Sean hop into an ambulance that drives them away from the set of this movie. Like...forever. They are not seen again. Character arcs: complete.
Lou Gossett gets on the intercom and tries to tell the remaining people in the tunnels to stay calm but the shark shows up and breaks the pipes open and water comes cascading in and people grab their wives/husbands/babies/grandmas and run like motherfuckers. They all end up trapped underground in chest-deep water...all crying a shivering and dreaming of lawsuits. While he watches all of this unfolding, Lou Gossett gets this horrible look on his face that says “I’m not gonna win any more Oscars, am I?” Anyway, there’s a way to rescue those people from the tunnel but it requires Mike Brody to complete some poorly explained welding project. I just know that I wrote “he’s welding” in my notes twice. The guy is welding, capisce?? Kay visits Mike in the welding shop and says that they should think about moving to Venezuela once the movie is over. Hey...task at hand, y’all!
FitzRoyce makes another pitch for his primetime shark snuff flick. This time no one objects. FitzRoyce tells Lou Gossett that he’s gonna lure the shark into a filtration pipe using live bait. Oh! He’s referring to himself?? Bad idea, dude. Sure enough the shark swallows FitzRoyce but there’s this dope POV shot from inside the shark’s mouth looking out. I start to think that it actually looks pretty roomy in there. Cozy even. I start to wonder how long once can survive in the belly of a shark with the proper scuba equipment. Maybe hitch a free ride around the ocean floo....OPE...blood and guts suddenly fill the screen. The answer: not very long. 86 FitzRoyce.
Kay dives down to help Mike put the finishing touches on his welding project. While Mike is doing his thing Kay turns around to see the shark swimming toward them at top speed, mouth agape. Kay taps Mike on the shoulder like “LOOK!!!” Mike turns around, sees the shark, and yells “ALLRULLLGHHH!!!!!” At least that’s what it sounds like underwater. It’s friggin’ hilarious, whatever it is. Luckily Thelma & Louise show up to provide an assist at just the right moment. They start booping the shark with their dolphin noses, which pisses her off even more than she’s already pissed off. The shark actually howls! Mike and Kay escape to the control room, where they pull some levers and manage to free all of those trapped tourists. So that’s cool...but while they are sitting in the window of the control room they look out and see that the shark is moving towards them in the slowest of slow motion. Like, at that speed they would probably have time to call up to the restaurant for some shrimp cocktail...and eat it...before the shark crashes through the glass. This shit must have looked RI-DIC in theaters! The shark breaks the glass and the control room fills with water. A character who was barely even a character is quickly eaten. Goodbye character. The shark returns for seconds and this is when Mike notices that FitzRoyce’s undigested corpse is still visible inside of the shark’s gullet. As luck would have it, FitzRoyce died clutching a hand grenade! Now all Mike needs to do is reach inside of the shark’s mouth and pull the pin out of the grenade! Shit, if I had a dime for every time I’ve reached into a shark’s mouth to detonate a grenade in a dead man’s hand I’d have...fuckin’...no dimes. The Brody’s, though, have shark annihilation in the blood. Dude knocks out the pin and the shark blows the fuck up like all of the other Jawses before and after it. I mean...I guess the shark in Part 2 was electrocuted....but... whatever. Louis Gossett Jr swims off to star in Iron Eagle’s I through IV. Mike and Kay reach the surface to find that their dolphin buddies have survived. Few shits are given by anyone. But I’ll let you in on a little secret that isn't a secret: the dolphins' names are actually Cindy and Sandy. Freeze frame. The end.
Here’s the deal: VHS of the Week has been on hiatus for the last two months. In that time I went back and re-read every article that I posted to the site and was shocked to discover that I have yet to review a Nicholas Cage film! I also discovered that I mention cocaine in every single review...but that’s a whole ‘nother problem. Nicholas Cage is an Academy Award-winning acting titan and box office superstar with a staggeringly excellent filmography. He is also out of his goddamn motherfucking mind. At this point he should be enjoying the spoils of the elder statesman status typically afforded to one after a successful four decade career. Instead, some extraordinarily questionable financial decisions have left him banished to the B-movie ghetto. We’re talking the type of ostentatious spending that makes Liberace look like Mother Theresa. Dude bought cars and mansions and castles and dinosaur skulls and komodo dragons and millions of dollars worth of Elvis memorabilia and Elvis’ actual daughter. He bought a bizarro white pyramid in a New Orleans cemetery that is completely useless to him while he is still living (I’ve seen it with my own two eyes). These days he’ll take pretty much any acting gig that pays the bills (anyone seen Kill Chain? Or Prisoners of the Ghostland? Didn’t think so). It has been a precipitous decline for a guy who didn’t really do anything wrong...BUT who didn’t really do anything right either. Nowadays you are far more likely to spot him in someone’s grainy cell phone video on TMZ then you are to see him on the big screen. There he is scream/cry/singing Purple Rain at a karaoke bar after his fourth wife divorced him after six hours of marriage. There he is again...shitfaced on the Vegas Strip in the middle of the day...trying to (unsuccessfully) prevent his pal, real life manslaughterer and alcoholic liver disease in human form Vince Neil, from punching a female fan in the face. Man, if I was walking up the street and I saw Nic Cage and Vince Neil coming my way I would turn right the fuck around. Nothing good gonna happen there! Anyway, you get the point: the guy is a couple of limes short of a margarita.
I searched my shelves and was disappointed to find that I own just two Nicholas Cage flicks on VHS. Since there aren’t a lot of yuks to be found in Leaving Las Vegas, today we’re gonna talk about David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (which is a yuk factory?). We’ve covered Lynch extensively here at VHSOTW so I’m not gonna recite his bona fides again. He’s one of my favorite filmmakers...even though I would describe almost all of his profoundly disturbing films as unwatchably exhilarating (except for that G-rated flick about the old guy who drives his lawnmower mad far to see his brother. That one isn’t disturbing. I mean...unless you’re afraid of lawnmowers. Or the elderly). I also don’t feel like I need to bring up the fact that I saw Wild at Heart when I was 11 years-old again...but I just went ahead and did it anyway! All I knew of David Lynch at that point was Twin Peaks so I was expecting more damn good coffee and cherry pie. Wild at Heart might actually be David Lynch’s grizzliest movie...and that’s saying something! Story goes--after the first season of Twin Peaks Lynch fell in love with a novel called Sailor and Lula by Barry Gifford and decided to take a powder from the show to adapt that novel into a feature length film. Apparently Lynch had a hankering to make his own twisted version of the Wizard of Oz and found the perfect vehicle in Gifford’s novel. You’ll have to excuse me ‘cuz it has been a long ass time since I’ve seen The Wizard of Oz but I don’t recall seeing any aborted fetuses being casually tossed in the garbage in THAT film. I do know that you can apparently see a munchkin commit suicide if you slow down the tape and play Pink Floyd over it or whatever. Is that really what they were called: Munchkins? Is that still ok to say? I feel like maybe that word is problematic now.
So what happens is this: we open at a fancy ball at a fancy southern ballroom. Sailor Ripley (Cage) is with his blonde bombshell lady friend Lula (Laura Dern) and they are just minding their own. A man by the name of Bobby Ray Lemon approaches and tells Sailor that there’s a rumor going ‘round that he tried to fuck Lula’s mother in the loo. Sailor says “uh oh.” Bobby Ray Lemon pulls out a blade and says that he will now murder Sailor at Lula’s momma’s behest. Uh oh is right, dudes. Sailor doesn’t let this bother him none. He knocks Bobby Ray Lemon to the ground, crawls on top of him, and proceeds to smash his head against the marble floor until his brains are lying strewn about the ballroom like puddles of oatmeal. And when he’s done bashing brains? He lights a cigarette. David Lynch insisted that this film be marketed as a “dark comedy”. He also said that around 100 typically people walked out of the film after the first five minutes. I can kinda see why.
Quick aside: Laura Dern’s mother, Marietta Fortune, is played by the actress Diane Ladd, who I am only now learning is Dern’s actual mother! Hand on my heart...swear on a stack of bibles...I had no idea! I knew that Bruce Dern is her pops but that one required considerably less detective work. What a treat it must’ve been to share the screen with your 22 year-old daughter.....in a flick where she is sexed six ways to Sunday by Nicholas Cage. Diane Ladd was nominated for an Oscar for Wild at Heart...which is crazy because most folks HATED this movie. Except the French. They awarded it the Palm d’Or...a decision that so enraged Roger Ebert that he leapt from his seat and led the audience in a chorus of boos. That must’ve been friggin’ funny to watch. God, I miss that guy. Anyway, things worked out alright for Laura Dern. She was just three years away from putting high-waisted khaki shorts on the MAP in Jurassic Park! And another 27 years away from the great Laura Dernaissance of 2017. You know...when she starred in every other HBO limited series and won like 25 Emmys.
So Sailor is sent to the pokey for turning that dude’s skull into mashed potatoes...but only for 22 months...which is 20 months longer than Vince Neil served for killing the drummer of Hanoi Rocks. Lula is there to pick him in her dope ass Thunderbird convertible the minute he walks out of the joint. She brings him his snakeskin jacket, which is a symbol of his individuality and his belief in personal freedom. That’s what he says, anyway. Like...five times. (His entire performance here is just one long Elvis impersonation) They immediately drive to a motel and get right to the gettin’...and that shit is GRAPHIC! 23 positions in a one night stand graphic. Afterwards they laze around in their damp, fuck fog, rip a ton of cigarettes, and engage in your typical post-prison jibber jabber. Lula talks about how her Uncle Pooch raped her when she was 15. She also says that she believes people will be driving Buicks to the moon in the very near future. Ummm....ok then. There’s lots of cutaways (including this one shot of a random fire that keeps popping up because it must be important some which way) and flashbacks and flash forwards. We flash back to that infamous night at the ballroom and learn that Mrs Fortune DID try to fuck Sailor! She asks him if he’d like to do the thing and he says “no ma’am” and then offers her a cup of coffee. A real southern gentleman, this guy. Mrs Fortune does not take rejection lightly. She tells Sailor that he got too close to a fire one night. Not that cutaway fire we’ve been seeing?? What are the chances!? She also tells Sailor she’s gonna cut off his balls and force him to eat them. I feel like I would pass out before I got through the first ball. Just sayin’.
Sailor decides he’s gonna break parole and take Lula out to sunny California. To do what exactly we do not know. This is supposed to be a road movie so they gotta go someplace, right? Before they split they go out dancing at a heavy metal club. They check out a band called Powermad, who play super speedy thrash metal, (dun nun nun nun nun nun nun nun nun NAHHH) and dance like no one should ever dance at a metal club. While Sailor is busy flailing around, doing a dance that can best be described as “the Nicholas Cage,” some bozo tries to cut in on Lula. When Sailor sees this he stops the band....just stops them COLD! He asks the bozo to apologize...and then burns the dude’s hand with a lit cigarette when he refuses. Sailor turns to the band, who are patiently waiting to return to shredding ass, and says “y’all have a lot of the same power E had.” What do you mean, E? E as in ecstasy? He grabs the mic and starts singing “Love Me” by Elvis Presley. E as in Elvis. Powermad=Elvis. And the band...they know the fuckin’ song! They even know the harmonies. This whole scenario is really far-fetched, even for a David Lynch movie. Although I gotta say...Nicholas Cage has a totally decent set of pipes. I know I already mentioned this but so obsessed with The King, Nic Cage was, that he went out and married the man’s only living child. And we could talk about how weird it is that Lisa Marie Presley married a guy who was obsessed with her dead pappy...but the weirdness of that union shrivels in comparison to her previous marriage to MICHAEL FUCKING JACKSON! Girl, what the fahhhhh???
Sailor’s little live band karaoke Elvis performance gets Lula TURNT so they go back to the hotel for another NC-17 balling sesh. Afterwards she asks him why he didn’t sing “Love Me Tender.” He’s like “Love Me”....”Love Me Tender”....same shit. Just be thankful I didn’t sing “Suspicious Minds” or we’d still be at the bar!” No, what he really says is that he will only sing “Love Me Tender” to his wife. Tough break, slam buddy! They continue to lie around and shoot some breeze. Speaking of breeze--Lula asks Sailor if he ever randomly hears wind. Dude, David Lynch movies are built on random wind! That and jazzy Angelo Badalamenti tunes. That shit is a given. Lula says her daddy died in a fire. Not that cutaway fire we keep seeing for no apparent reason though, right? Couldn’t be! Sailor tells Lula he started smoking butts when he was 4 and that his folks both drank themselves to death shortly thereafter. I guess they both rolled snake eyes in the family lotto, eh? (note to self: review Nic Cage film Snake Eyes).
The next morning the kids light out for New Orleans....but old Marietta Fortune has other, less sexy plans in mind for the duo...and her other plans have other plans! She decides to hire her boyfriend Johnny Farragut, played by former world’s greatest human Harry Dean Stanton, to track down Sailor and kill him. She then immediately turns around and hires this cat named Marcellus Santos to kill Sailor AND Johnny Farragut! This lady done did more hiring than a Walmart at Christmas! Marcellus Santos is played by the guy who played The Dane in Miller’s Crossing (J.E. Freeman). I started to wonder why I haven’t seen this guy in much as of late so I looked him up and come to find out he’s been dead since 2014. So there’s that. Marcellus Santos works for some profoundly David Lynchian character named Mr Reindeer, who looks like an octogenarian caterer who hangs out in the private dining room of Galatoires surrounded by topless prostitutes. He tells Marcellus Santos that he’s down for some murder-for-hire gigs but that he needs one silver dollar for each gig. Seems like a fair price to me. Meanwhile, Johnny Farragut is barreling towards NOLA, completely unaware that there’s a bounty on his head. He also listens to the song“Baby Please Don’t Go” the ENTIRE WAY to New Orleans...but clearly does not pay attention to the lyrics.
Sailor and Lula arrive The Big Easy and hit Domilise’s to eat shrimp po’ boys and to tell each other more sex stories. Sailor talks of being deflowered by a woman who came equipped with “assault weapons and nasty magazines.” Says that this lady gave him a “boner with a capital O”..which is a weird ass way to spell bOner. Far from growing jealous, Lula tells Sailor that his story has got her “hotter n’ Georgia asphalt.” I have only visited the state of Georgia on one occasion...in the month of March...and I found the asphalt to be tepid at best....but I don’t doubt that shit gets hot in the summertime. They head back to the hotel...again...and scissor fuck for six hours straight....again. Afterwards, Lula tells this story about her alien and Xmas loving cousin Dale (Jingle Dale!). This story really doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. It is shown in flashbacks and is never mentioned again. The only reason I’m mentioning it now is because Jingle Dale is played by CRISPIN GLOVER...and the big payoff to this little aside is that Dale likes to let cockroaches crawl up his asshole! You heard it here first: George McFly is a bug fucker. Oh yeah--Sailor also tells Lula that he murdered her father at the behest of Marcellus Santos in that fire we’ve been seeing so much about. She is not even a little bit mad.
While the kids are going for their 18th sex in two days, Mrs Fortune starts to experience buyer’s remorse. She is racked with guilt for having double crossed HDS. As well you should be, madam...as well you should be! She gets so upset that she smears lipstick all over her face (like...her ENTIRE FACE) before barfing everywhere. She travels to NOLA to stop Marcellus Santos from killing Johnny Farragut but she’s too late! Or--she gets there in time but they kill him anyway? Things start to get really confusing right around this point. There’s a bunch of voodoo hoodoo and some blonde lady screaming “fuck me, Reggie” who may or may not be Isabella Rosellini. And there’s this other blonde lady with her leg in a brace...who is maybe also Isabella Rosellini? Does she really play two roles in this movie? I could look it up but I am way too lazy slash don’t care what the answer is. The thing to know is that Harry Dean Stanton is dead...and even though he’s only in the movie for like 5 minutes it is forever poorer without him.
Sailor and Lula keep driving west with the top down...cranking Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.” Now there’s a forest fire of a song! That Herb Ritts video?? Sexy with a capital X! Their reverie is cruelly interrupted when they spot a wreck on the highway. They hop out to see what the what and find bodies lying hither and yon. There’s one survivor and it’s Sherilyn Fenn...on furlough from Twin Peaks. She’s running around talking a bunch of nonsense and bleeding out her head/face/mouth area. Lula is like “oh shit I think this bitch is gonna die” and then she totally does. 86 Audrey Horne. Lula is super tore up about this. She thinks it’s a bad omen and whatnot. She’s like “remember what happened to Jim Morrison after he saw those dead Indianson the highway?? I don’t want to start writing bad poetry, Sail!”
Instead of getting back on the 10 and busting ass all the way to Pomona, Sailor detours to the town of Big Tuna, Texas. He needs to see Isabella Rosellini for some reason...maybe to ask her how she liked working with Ted Danson in Cousins. As soon as they check into their motel Lula starts to blow chunks. This movie cost $10 million smackers to make and I’m gonna say most of that money was spent on fake brains and fake vomit. Sailor sees that his lady is ill so he gives her one of those candy necklaces and tells her to think of him when she eats it. She’s like...that’s wicked sweet...but I would’ve preferred a spoonful of Dramamine, ya dense prick. When night falls they head out to sample the sights and sounds in the courtyard of the motel/trailer park they are staying at....and here’s where things go completely David Lynch. Out there they find John Lurie of Fishing with John fame...just hanging out. Jack Nance...motherfucking Eraserhead himself...shows up and spits a bunch of mumbo jumbo about his dog like HUH?? A gaggle of grossly overweight naked ladies appear and begin giggling and dancing around the fringes. And here comes the most DFW actor in the history of acting Willem Dafoe...looking extra Willem Dafoe-ish. Dafoe plays Bobby Peru, a Vietnam vet with Vietnam problems and a pencil-thin mustache and gums that look like pureed Gremlins. He says he wants to take his One-Eyed Jack peeping in the seafood store...and that is the least grossest thing he will say in this movie. Sailor and Lula are like “that sounds nice...we’re gonna go back to our room and see if Just the Ten of Us is on!”
Back in the room Lula tells Sailor that thinks he might be preggo...probably on account of the 117 sex-a-thons they’ve had overthe last hour and a half of the movie. Sailor says he’s stoked. He tells her he’ll take care of her...and that he won’t let things get any worse....which usually means that things are about to get much, much worse and quickly. And boy howdy! Do they ever! The next morning, while Sailor is out changing the oil on his T-bird for an obscenely long time, Bobby Peru forces his way into their hotel room. I’ll let Wikipedia describe what happens next: “While Sailor is out Peru enters the room and sexually assaults Lula, forcing her to ask him to have sex with her, before leaving, stating he has no time. I mean...ha...ha....ha? This scene is just fucking hideous. David Lynch and I....we go our separate ways on this one.
Ugh...anyway...afterwards Bobby Peru goes to find Sailor...who is STILL changing his goddamn oil. Seriously, don’t they have a Jiffy Lube in Big Tuna. Peru takes Sailor to the local watering hole for some local craft IPA and a plate of poutine and offers to deal Sailor in on an upcoming score: they will rob a bank and Sailor’s cut will be $2500. Man, what the fuck are they gonna do with $2500 in LA?? Rent an apartment at the Oakwoods for a month and a half? Shit, he could probably get that much for his snakeskin jacket at the right Buffalo Exchange if he turned on that Nic Cage charm. Sailor takes Bobby up on his offer. When Sailor arrives back at the hotel Lula is shit pissed ‘cuz dude has been changing his oil for like 10 hours. She cries hysterically and says “the whole world is wild at heart and weird on top,” which is the title of the movie we are watching plus a bunch of other words.
The next morning Bobby comes to pick up Sailor so they can commit felonies but he has Isabella Rosellini in the car. Sailor is pissed. He’s like “didn’t this lady suffer enough in Blue Velvet” but Willem Dafoe is like “I spent 1986 making Last Temptation of the Christ so I’ll show YOU suffering!” When they get to the bank Nic Cage puts some pantyhose on his head...which has GOT to be an homage to Raising Arizona! (I’ll be takin’ these Huggies and whatever cash you got). The robbery goes off without a hitch until Bobby Peru goes all Mr Blonde and starts plugging the tellers. Bang...bang...bang! Sailor trains his gun on Bobby only to discover that he has been given a gun filled with blanks! Peru and Isabella Rosellini are in cahoots with Marcellus Santos and Marietta Fortune and everyone else in the movie who is bad! It’s a quadruple cross or something! Sailor and Bobby run out of the bank to find a lawman lying in wait. The copper shoots Bobby like 12 times...which is bad. He then falls forward onto his own shotgun and accidentally blows his head off...which is worse! His skull sails through the air before splattering onto the pavement like an extra large cherry Slush Puppy. Sailor is arrested and sentenced to six years in the slammer...which is pretty damn lenient, all things considered. Lula clutches her candy necklace and wails and then starts eating the necklace. Marietta Fortune forces her to move back home and get a job at Hobby Lobby.
Sailor keeps his head down and does his bid and emerges after six years looking exactly like he did six years earlier. Lula is there to pick him up with their brand new son! Well...I mean...he’s not exactly brand new. He’s six. Lula has named him Pace for reasons that are unclear. Sailor hops in the coupe and they all ride off into the sunset together. Oh wait...first Sailor decides that he isn’t digging the vibes so he abandons his family for about 10 minutes. He walks along the Los Angeles river and is beaten by a flash mob of movie muggers. While he’s laid out on the concrete he receives a visit from Glinda the Good With, played by none other than LAURA PALMER! She tells him that he shouldn’t turn away from love...and when Laura Palmer speaks...you listen! Sailor chases down his family, who are conveniently stuck in traffic just two blocks away. He drags Lula onto the hood of the car and starts singing “Love Me Tender” while the kid looks on...thoroughly bemused. So I guess that means Lula is his wife now? He’s the one who made that bullshit rule! The credits roll. And you know...I think “Love Me” is a much better song than “Love Me Tender.” The end.
Ok folks...time for VHS of the week...
Hey! Check out the address on the sticker on the bottom right corner of this VHS case. You’re thinking...didn’t I go to 63 Salem Street and wait 5 hours to do something once? You did! It’s Neptune Oyster...and back when the joint first opened there was a video store called Video Cinema (points for name originality: zero) directly across the street. This was all well and good....especially with me...but you see Video Cinema had this awning where they strung up like fifty 100 watt light bulbs...and when they flipped that fucker on at night they blasted us Neptune folk OUT...just like that scene in Christmas Vacation. The poor oyster shuckers who had to work in the window probably still have some lingering ocular damage from Video Cinema’s Z-grade marquee special FX. Anyway...since the video store closed for the evening around the same time that we did (10 PM) the owner would always note when the marquee lights were turned off and immediately started pouring beers for the staff. So one Friday night we’re working away and the lights suddenly shut off at 7:30. The owner and I look at each other....he says “rules are rules!”...and beers are handed out to the staff (maybe you had to be there...it was funny...shut up). So the video store started closing early because they were going out of business...and a few days later a sign went up announcing a liquidation sale. So every day after work I’d take the $700 I made selling lobster rolls and go over to the video store and go bananas (not to be confused with Going Bananas...which is also a business on Salem Street). One afternoon I buy like 15 VHS tapes and walk up to Boarder’s to shop for books. As I’m leaving Boarders I set the security alarm off. The manager comes over and I’m like “sorry guy...must be one of these tapes.” He digs through my bag and calls over extra security and says “I’m sorry...I just don’t buy that someone is walking around with a bag full of VHS tapes in 2007.” I was like “I’m sorry your life is bereft of VHS joy...but you need to let me go! Do you even sell VHS tapes here? Do you think I’m smuggling out a copy of Infinite Jest in this Red Dawn jewel case??”
Oh right! I’m supposed to be talking about Less Than Zero! I saw a copy of Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel in a pile of books I nicked from an estate sale and thought “that looks just fine”. I read it in an afternoon. Here’s what happens: a super rich college kid returns to LA for Xmas break and does a shit ton of blow and stares at a poster of Elvis Costello. He goes out to restaurants and eats dinner with all of his other white rich kid friends....even though they are all doing shit tons of blow. He has sex with boys and girls and runs over a coyote with his car. He watches MTV and listens to X and the Go-Go’s and Human League. Then he returns to college. By the end of the book my nose was running.
The movie is just like the book in less than zero ways. It’s basically an anti-drug rom com. The lead is played by a hot off of Mannequin Andy McCarthy...who is absolutely nothing like the narrator of the book. He does no drugs whatsoever...and doesn’t even smoke and cigarettes. I wanted to yell “dude, at least smoke a butt, dude!” at the screen. He goes to a ton of parties with Jami Gertz from The Lost Boys...but not to party, you dig? They are mostly trying to stop their pal Robert Downey Jr. from smoking crack. Basically it doesn’t work and he dies. They took out all of the fun, gay stuff and replaced all of the cool ass bands with Aerosmith and Poison and shit. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are in the movie but you don’t actually get to see them cuz the producers thought people would be offended by their shirtlessness. (Hey...at least they usually wore socks, know what I mean??) There’s even a sex scene set to a David Lee Roth tune called Bump n’ Grind...a song with all of the sex appeal of a photo of Donald Trump’s loose neck meat. I see that Rick Rubin produced the soundtrack and have always suspected that he was a secret fratboy asshat. Anyway....read the book instead…
Back in the mid 90’s there was a brief moment where it looked like Belgian martial arts superstar and amphetamine enthusiast Jean-Claude Van Damme might graduate from B movies to more B plus-type fare. After a financially successful run in the action movie ghetto, Van Damme started to attract the sort of material typically reserved for dudes whose names rhyme with Schwarzenegger. It was reasonable to assume that, out of the Michael Dudikoff’s and Jeff Speakman’s of the world, JCVD could be the one to karate leap his way into the mainstream. I mean, he wasn’t about to be confused with a Stella Adler grad when it came to acting, but he was easy on the eyes and seemed like a nice enough dude. He certainly wasn’t a self-righteous, ponytail swinging creep like Steven Seagal. Unfortunately the Muscles from Brussels had other goals in mind. Namely, doing as much cocaine as possible...all day every day. He once told an interviewer that, at the height of his addiction (which coincided with the height of his film career), he was blasting ten grams of the devil’s dandruff A DAY!! It’s tough to imagine how he had time for anything other than being really, really fucking high...and maybe walking around in circles grinding his teeth. By the late 90’s JCVD couldn’t open an envelope, let alone a major motion picture. It’s all good though ‘cuz my man eventually sobered up and made a both a self-referential movie and also a TV show about a fallen Belgian action movie star who eventually sobered up. All’s well that ends well, eh?
We’re here today to talk about a flick that Van Damme made during his “golden era.” It’s called Timecop and it came out in 1994. While it’s based on a comic book, it’s one of those concepts that probably only required a one word pitch session. Screenwriter: TIMECOP! Producer: (tears off shirt...douses room with champagne). What happens is this: we open way, way back in Civil War times, where a group of soldiers on horseback are halted by a man ominously standing in the middle of their thoroughfare. The soldiers are transporting gold. The man says that he would like the soldiers to give him their gold. The soldiers say that they would not like to do that, no. The man responds by brandishing a high-powered machine gun and rat-tat-tat-tating all of the soldiers to death (note: the horses were fine). Right away you’re thinking...they didn’t have this type of weaponry in the Civil War! Something is clearly rotten in Denver! Flash forward to Washington DC on the afternoon of October 10, 1994. If that date sounds familiar to you it’s because it’s the day four days prior to the day when Pulp Fiction came out! A small group of senators and government so-and-so’s have gathered to hear a presentation from the head of the Space Program. Space Guy says that space travel is boring so they’ve gone ahead and invented time travel. Everyone in the meeting is all “grah hah hah beam me up Scotty.” Space Guy ain’t laughing. Shit is for real. He goes on to explain a couple of important rules/plot points of this blend of time travel. Apparently you can go backwards (“It feels like I only go backwards”--Tame Impala) ...but you cannot go forwards...which is the EXACT same problem I’ve been having with my 2010 Chevy Cobalt. Seriously...$200 for anyone who’s looking for a car that only drives in reverse. Perfect for your high schooler. Email me. He also says that while one can travel to the past they should not attempt to change things as it could be catastrophic. Dude, has no one in the room seen ANY of the Back to the Future trilogy and pondered what would’ve happened to Marty McFly had he balled his own mom in 1955?? We all know not to mess with that shit. Space Guy says he needs a budget to create TEC, the Time Enforcement Commission, which will be headed by the actor Bruce McGill, a man who has been in so many movies that I could change this website to Bruce McGill of the Week and not run out of material until 2045. Also in attendance at the meeting is the man who played Alan Dershowitz 30 years ago but who is no longer alive (unlike Alan Dershowitz) Ron Silver. Silver plays Senator McCone and we have to assume he’s about to get up to no good because, I don’t know, he has a beard and is quiet for much of the meeting. They say it’s the quiet ones...
The action moves to the local mall, where we drop in on Mia Sara, who OWNED in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and then proceeded to do little else of note ever again (like acting in Timecop). That’s right...mother effin’ Sloan Peterson!! I remember my grandparents bought me this teen celebrity magazine back in 1987 and they asked people like Charlie Sheen and Corey Feldman and Robert Downey Jr which actress that would most like to work with and they all said Mia Sara. I bet you would, you goddamn gross bastards. She retired from acting a while back and is now married to Jim Henson’s kid Brian...which means their house must be totally tricked out with rare Muppets swag! Like a banana phone in every room and a Fozzie the Bear toilet that says “waka waka” every time you drop trow. ANYWAY...Mia Sara is looking for Magic Eye posters when her husband comes creeping up on her. It’s JCVD...and he looks like hammered horse shit! It’s like he aged thirteen years in the three years since Lionheart. His voice is also super raspy ‘cuz that cocaine drip will fuck up your throat something awful. He tells her that he’s been asked to head up the Time Police (they live inside of my head!) She asks if it’s dangerous. He tells her that he doesn’t bake cookies for a living. Fair play, mate. While they’re grabbing their Orange Juliussss’s JCVD notices that he’s being mean mugged by some straight out of central casting bad guys in trench coats. Instead of sussing out the situation, the happy couple head home to their baller Victorian over in Georgetown and start fuhhh...king!!! Like, Yankee candles burning...Dave Sanborn on the soundtrack...multiple positions. Pretty early in the flick for such an aggressive sex scene, y’all. I haven’t even opened my Junior Mints yet!
Their post coital loungearound is cruelly interrupted when JCVD is called into work. Mia Sara says she suddenly has something very important to tell him. I’m thinking she either secretly purchased the Magic Eye poster with the schooner that he’d been fawning over...or she’s pregnant. I’m gonna prolly go with the latter. He says she can simply tell him later...provided those suspicious men from the mall don’t break into the house and murder her in the next 30 seconds. Unfortunately that’s exactly what happens. They pump JCVD full of lead (it’s cool, dudes, he’s wearing a bulletproof vest) and blow his house the fuck up with Mia Sara still inside. She dies. Now we jump back to Wall Street on the day of the stock market crash of 1929. People are leaping to their deaths right and left but there’s this one guy Atwood who isn’t about to kiss the concrete ‘cuz he has a copy of USA Today from October of 2004 in his briefcase. Not sure what that has to do with the stock market. Maybe he’s a huge Red Sox fan and wants to read about their historic playoff run of October ’04?? We get it, though--he’s from the future and he’s got future stats just like Biff and his sports almanac in BTTF 2. Atwood is like “buy me a million shares of whatever whatever stock that’s about to go through the roof” but before that can happen the walls of his office turn into the liquid metal terminator and an unsmiling JCVD pops out. We know he is not the same JCVD from ’94 because he has grown a mullet and looks even more hungover than he did before. Turns out Atwood is JCVD’s former partner and he’s come to take him back to the future. Atwood explains that he’s in the past doin’ dirty work for Senator Ron Silver and that they’ll wipe him out if he goes back to 2004. JCVD is unmoved. He half-heartedly kicks a couple dudes asses and makes a reference to the Tyson/Spinks fight that lands with a thud.
Having lived through both 1994 and 2004 I know that 2004 was just like 1994 but with way less OJ Simpson. The filmmakers, possibly due to budget constraints, don’t really do much to Jetsons up 2004. Instead of flying cars everyone drives a 1980 Chevy Caprice covered in scrap metal. Cars and homes DO include computers that respond to vocal commands...so there you have it: Alexa was invented by the movie Timecop. When JCVD and Atwood arrive in 2004 Atwood goes on instant trial. JCVD is all “tell them what you told me about the corrupt senator” but the dude refuses and is sentenced to death...a punishment that is meted out faster than you can say “Innocence Project.” JCVD just happens to arrive back at the office at the same time Ron Silver is being given a tour of the TEC facility. So the guy responsible for bankrolling time travel waited 10 years before touring the time travel facilities? I call bullshit. The evil senator wants to defund the TEC...and that’s fine with me because it’s SUPER vague as to why they even exist in the first place. Presumably they have to go back and prevent people from jacking up the timeline...but it’s unclear who gets to travel through time. And how. And why. So many questions! We DO learn that it’s SUPER bad news if you go back in time and encounter your earlier self. It’s like crossing the streams: bad. I guess Ron Silver is stealing money from the past so he can graduate from evil senator to evil president. While riding in a limo casually munching on pretzels, Silver tells one of his aides that “elections are won on TV. You don’t need the truth!” Eee...sounds like another guy I know who was doing jack shit in 2004 but who is doing a great deal (of awful things) nowadays. When the aide disagrees Silver breaks his nose. Rude.
JCVD drags his sorry ass home to his sorry ass apartment where he slugs booze straight from the bottle and watches old home movies of his dead wife. His whiskey-fueled reverie is cruelly interrupted when like 10 bad guys show up and try to murder him. The henchman crew even includes our friend the indestructible Asian hand-to-hand combat expert. Dude, you usually don’t show up until the last 5 minutes of the movie! What gives?? JCVD is discovered wearing a pair of nut-hugging boxer shorts...but that doesn’t mean he can’t deliver a furious flurry of his trademark roundhouse kicks. So that’s what he does. He kicks all of the bad guys to death, does a split, and then goes back to sleep. The next day at the office JCVD is assigned a new partner in the form of Mr Robot star Gloria Reuben. Bruce McGill says he’s gonna send them back to 1994 so they can investigate the corrupt senator and his corruption. We finally learn how they travel through time, too: they are strapped into this rocket vehicle and blasted directly into a brick wall. When they arrive back in time they simply fall out of the sky. No idea what happens to the rocket or how they return! Maybe there’s a DeLorean dealership nearby or some shit.
So JCVD and his new partner are in 1994 and MAN how I would love to travel back to 1994. I would tell my 15 year-old self that I should NOT try to smuggle reefer into that Aerosmith concert. They are totally gonna find it and call your mom, kid! And maybe cool it with the jorts too. They go looking for Ron Silver and find 1994 Ron Silver AND 2004 Ron Silver!! 2014 Ron Silver was unavailable as he is deceased. I honestly have no earthen idea what is going on in the movie at this point. Future Ron is trying to tell old Ron to be more corrupt and invest in Monster.com or something. There’s some “two Ron Silver’s onscreen at the same time” action...just like there were two JCVD’s in the 1991 film Double Impact. I bet dude was psyched he didn’t have to pull double duty on this one though. More time to hang out in his trailer and run/blow lines! JCVD’s new partner turns out to be dirty, though, and soon all guns are on our man Van Damme. He has this look on his face like “fuuuuck I gotta do STUNTS now??” So he does. There’s a massive movie warehouse fight and the dirty partner takes a couple of bullets and JCVD zaps himself back to 2004 with a little clicker device. I guess I just answered my own question from the previous paragraph right there, didn’t I?
JCVD arrives back in ’04 to find that the TEC is all dumpy and Ron Silver is super wealthy and about to be elected president. It’s the inverse of what happens to the McFly family at the end of the original BTTF. JCVD explains that he needs to go BACK to 1994 to see if the dirty cop survived so that she can testify against Ron Silver. Dude, didn’t anyone tell you to make sure you have everything you need before you leave someplace?? And then...and then...I don’t know what. The movie is getting awfully plotty at this point. We all know what homebody REALLY wants to do is to go back and save his wife from being murdered. I mean...unless he’s a real dick or something. So don’t bore us and get to the chorus, amirite? They figure out that Ron Silver is time traveling in a secret prototype. My stars. JCVD gets back in time and finds his crooked partner in the hospital and she apologizes...which is good...and then the bad guys murder her...which is less good. Now it just happens to be 10/10/94...so he knows his wife is probably about to chow some Sbarro at the food court. He finds her at the mall and tells her he’s himself from the year 2004. She tells him he looks like shit. He tells her that his last seven consecutive movies went straight to video. She understands. He tells her that she’s pregnant (she already knows this) and not to tell 1994 JCVD until he is called into work after they boink. He then plants a big sloppy kiss on her. What, is he gonna go watch his younger self screw too?? So sick.
So the bad guys come knocking again but this time they have to deal with both 1994 AND 2004 JCVD. There’s an interminable rainy rooftop fight scene and ’94 JCVD is shot in the bulletproof vest just like he was back in ’94. Mia Sara is shot in the arm...which is action movie code for “ an injury that has a 100% survival rate.” Just once I would like to see someone take a bullet in the arm in an action flick and fucking DIE! You’d never see it coming! Speaking of things we see coming: 2004 Ron Silver shows hoping to kill everyone and repair the timeline. He tells JCVD that he’s a fucking idiot and that “you can only use that fancy kicking on Broadway.” I’d probably go see Jean-Claude Van Damme on Broadway...just sayin’. But then 1994 Ron Silver shows up and JCVD remembers the whole “don’t cross the streams” bit. He pushes the Ron Silverssses together and they explode into a ghastly Blob monster before melting down into a puddle of Pepto Bismol. It’s wicked gnarly.
This time when JCVD materializes back at TEC he finds the place tricked out like the McFly house at the end of the original BTTF (yes...that again). He asks Bruce McGill what happened to Ron Silver and he’s all “never heard of him!” He heads to his sweet Victorian and finds it unexploded. Mia Sara is alive and fully recovered from her 1994 gunshot wound. And bonus: JCVD has a son now!! And double bonus: he didn’t even have to raise him! No dirty diapers and Baby Shark for this dude! He gets to skip the icky stuff and hang out with his 10 year-old boy! I wonder if they’ll do what my dad and I did when I was 10: veg out on the couch and watch Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. That would be SO meta. The end.
Regular readers know that they can come here every Friday and watch me barf up 3000 words about an 80’s movie that is typically 60 shades of unwatchable. Having just lived through one of the most turbulent weeks in the history of the United States, in my lifetime anyway, I found the desire to crack wise about, say, Steven Seagal and how he’s actually 172 weasels in a human suit has left me completely (unless you want to send me a copy of Above the Law. Then i’ll see what I can come up with). Instead of trolling the cinematic junkyard, this week I re-watched the 1990 black comedy I Love You to Death. I saw it in the theater when I was 11 years-old...after my too-trusting mother allowed me to hit the flicks alone if I promised to watch Ernest Goes to Jail and specifically NOT watch I Love You to Death. All apologies to my dear mother and the late James Varney but there’s just something about the sight of a mustachioed Kevin Kline that inspires confidence in a young man. I watched it again this week after a good long while and, you know, I still love it. Possibly even to death. If I were to make a list of movies that make we want to hit pause and immediately make a beeg-a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs this one would by #2 with a bullet. Behind Goodfellas, of course. You gotta slice the garlic razor thin so it liquifies in the sauce.
I don’t have a whole lot to say about this movie...but since we’ve gathered here anyway I might as well say a bit. I Love You to Death was directed by Lawrence Kasdan, a man whose unimpeachable resume includes screenwriting credits for Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back. He also adapted Stephen King’s novel about alien shit monsters (Dreamcatcher) for the big screen...so there’s also that. I Love You to Death is sort of an amalgam of all three of those movies I just mentioned but with a better ensemble cast and way more onscreen pizza. This film was loosely based on the story of an Allentown, PA lady who tried to murder her philandering husband by shooting him several times and THEN feeding him poisoned soup when he refused to die. The husband’s refusal to die proved steadfast. Not only did he survive...he decided to remarry his homicidal bride after she served a stint in the pokey. They are somehow STILL together, at least of this writing. Someone saw this story on the news and thought “10-part Netflix series!” But since Netflix was still 17 years away from streaming they decided to move the action to Seattle, hire recent Oscar winner (for A Fish Called Wanda) Kevin Kline, and turn it into a comedy. Bold moves, Hollywood people...bold moves.
Kline is Joey Boca, a greasy paesan who runs a pizza shop with his dutiful wife Rosalie, played by hyper versatile comedy utility performer Tracey Ullman. Y’all remember when the Fox Sunday night TV line-up was The Simpsons followed by the Tracey Ullman Show, the It’s the Garry Shandling Show...and....some other show I cannot recall at this time? If you know what that fourth show was please send a S.A.S.E. to vhsoftheweek@gmail.com. I’ll send you back one of my Blockbuster membership cards...in case you find yourself in Bend, Oregon. Anyway, Joey is a family man with a family business. Unfortunately, according to the VHS box, he’s been squeezing more than just tomatoes (dudes...GAH!). I mean...look just look at the guy! All barrel-chested and oozing with machismo. He’s like Freddie Mercury but...umm...less musical? He’s hooking up with Rollergirl, which is cool, and also with lady who was awesome in the 80’s but who is now a piece of shit anti-LGBTQ crusader Victoria Jackson, which is less cool. Rosalie is mostly content to hang around the shop with her much younger co-worker Devo, played by former Aleka’s Attic frontman River Phoenix, and her much older mother Nadja, played by Sir Larry Olivier’s widow Joan Plowright. Plowright is now 90 years old and Phoenix has been dead for 27 years. Crazy how shit works out sometimes. I’ll tell you this, though: every time Devo appears on screen I immediately get Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction” stuck in my head...and I guess...also actual “Satisfaction” by default.
Devo, who is totally sweet on Rosalie, gently suggests that Joey might be afflicted with W.P.S. (Wandering penis syndrome. Prognosis: fatal). She tells Devo that if she ever caught Joey cheating she would kill herself. “And if that doesn’t work I’d kill him too.” Might want to check the sequencing on all of that there, Rosalie. Joey remains blissfully oblivious to all of this. He makes his wife serve him dinner and several brewski’s before heading out to a nightclub where he meets Judge Reinhold wank fantasy Phoebe Cates. They go back to her place and make-a the Frankie Cosmos! That’s not some sort of weird Italian sex move...it’s Kline and Cates’ actual real life daughter (or...her stage name anyway). I don’t know that she was actually conceived on set...but one never knows! Actually...it says here she was born 4 years after this movie came out...so maybe one does know.
Eventually Rosalie discovers Joey and some rando playing grab ass in the public library and decides she will go ahead and kill herself but swallowing a ton of Bayer. It does not work but, you know: lots of aspirin=good for the ticker. She confides in Mama Nadja, who is no fan of Joey to begin with. Nadja says that she will hire someone to rub out Joey. “A good boy...very nice. Not a real killer...only for money,” she tells Rosalie in her spot-on Serbo-Croatian accent. Plowright just absolutely murders every scene that she’s in here. If there’s some sort of retroactive comedy Oscar they should award it to Joan Plowright for this movie. “In America people kill each other left and right. It’s a National Pastime!” she says. Truer words have rarely been spoken. She hires a guy who shows up outside of Joey’s house in an Abraham Lincoln mask and tries to beat him to death with a baseball bat. He fails. Police detectives arrive in the form of the guy who played the coach in Major League and another guy who I long assumed to be Risky Business killer pimp Joe Pantoliano...but who is not actually Joe Pantoliano. They ask Joey what his assailant looked like. Joey: “ehh...he look-a like Abraham Lincoln coming up to bat!”
After a failed attempt at car bombing Joey to death, Rosalie and Mama Nadja decide they will simply sprinkle five bottles of sleeping pills into his dinner. They cook him beeg-a bowl of spaghetti with poison interlaced with the sauce and tell that motherfucker to mangia mangia. He crushes like five bowls of pasta and six beers and comes out feeling like a CHAMP! If you think you can kill a big swingin’ dick like Joey with a couple of fists full of NoDoz, think again! Actually they do think he’s dead at one point but he wakes up and takes a shit and is totally fine. Not only is he fine...he suddenly wants to play Monopoly! This is the part of the movie that I still quote on the regular 30 years. I don’t know why it’s so goddamn funny...but it is! Since they failed to summon the reaper with the spaghetti they call Devo over to finish the job...but dude is a vegan or some shit and he refuses. He doesn’t want to leave his peeps hanging though, so he heads out to a dive bar and offers a couple of local deadbeats $300 to finish off Joey. Shit man--I’ve had raw bar lunches that ran me more than 300 bones. Maybe that was a good chunk of change in 1990...but...I doubt it. One of the hitmen is Keanu Reeves. The other is man who has made an enemy of everyone he has ever met in his life Bill Hurt. This means that there’s suddenly a whole ass ton of famous people in this movie.
Hurt and Reeves take a taxi to the Boca residence because they are the worst hitmen in the history of hitmen. While Mama Nadja desperately searches for a Johnny Mathis album to help drown out the sounds of execution, the killers putter around Joey’s bedroom and fawn over his autographed Reggie Jackson baseball bat. They start to chant “Reggie! Reggie!” The people downstairs think they’re chanting “Reggae! Reggae!” It is medium funny. Finally, they pump one into Joey’s testa. He’s dead. Rosalie breaks into chest-heaving sobs, even though she’s the one who done got him murdered. BUT WAIT!!! Joey wakes up and asks Rosalie to fix everyone a charcuterie board. Dude...will...not...DIE! She carries him back to bed and he suddenly wants to fuck...‘cuz he’s an unrepentant lothario who will not let a bullet in the brain get in the way of a good ball! Eventually the detectives from earlier in the movie turn up at the house and the jig is up. Everyone goes to prison. Well, they SHOULD be going to prison...but Joey manages to pull through his various assassination attempts with little more than a bandage on his head and pleads for amnesty for all of his killers. He’s actually not a bad dude after all, this Joey Boca. He manages to repair his relationship with Mama Nadja with a Whitman’s Sampler. Joey and Rosalie re-consummate their marriage in the janitor’s closet of the courthouse. Just because he’s suddenly faithful doesn’t mean he isn’t still horny! Everyone lives happily ever after. Well...except for River Phoenix. The end.
I was kind of reluctant to do this one because I feel like it’s pretty well worn territory. Low hanging fruit, if you will. There have already been countless podcasts, think pieces, and running late night TV gags dedicated to Mac and Me and its abject awfulness. A lot of what I do here at VHS of the Week involves excavating movies from my childhood, particularly ones I had previously declared to be my “favorite movie of all time” (this label was generally applied to every movie I watched in the 1980’s). I will then proceed to watch said favorite movie of all time and discover that it is actually terrible, thus retroactively ruining my own childhood. I was at the video store with my dad in late ’88 and he asked me what I wanted to rent and I said “Mmm...The Unbearable Lightness of Being looks pretty solid”...‘cuz I was already a real pompous cineaste at age 9. He said “how about the unbearable lightness of being grounded for a month if I catch you watching that movie!” Not a direct quote, of course, but something in that vein. “Here...why don’t you try watching something for kids your age for a change” he said, yanking Mac and Me off of the shelf. I complained bitterly...until I actually watched it. After it was over I demanded to be driven to the nearest McDonald’s so I could slam Big Mac’s, pound Coca-Cola, and spend my entire allowance on Mac and Me swag. I loved that movie. If you mentioned Mac and Me at any point over the last 32 years I would say “I loved that movie!” When I met my girlfriend 8 years ago we immediately bonded over our shared love of Mac and Me. “We’ll have to watch it together” we told each other. This would be easy to achieve as we BOTH own a copy of the flick on VHS. And then...we just never watched it. If there was one favorite movie from childhood that was guaranteed to NOT hold up it was Mac and Me. But difficult times require difficult decisions...so last week we popped a gauzy, degraded copy of said flick into the VCR and held our breath.
What happened was this: In the late 80’s this fella by the name of R.J. Louis decided that the “next generation” needed an E.T. of their own. Now...I don’t know exactly how many years a generation contains...but I’m gonna go ahead and say that it’s more than six, which is the number of years that separate E.T. and Mac and Me. Louis produced the Karate Kid flicks, which is cool, and also worked as an ad exec for McDonald’s, which is less cool. He figured enough time had elapsed since E.T. that people were just starving for another little kid/googly alien buddy flick. And also--starving for french fries! Specifically McDonald’s french fries. They must have held a board meeting and said “remember when we see Reese’s Pieces in E.T.?? What if we did that again but with 300 different products instead of one? Like...shoot a 99 minute commercial with a superfluous alien storyline?” So that’s exactly what they did. I would say you could make a drinking game where you took a shot every time there’s product placement in Mac and Me but your liver would fall out of your asshole before the 30 minute mark.
Anyway...so the movie begins on an unspecified planet that is totally just a rest area off of the interstate somewhere in Arizona. Seriously, I think you can even see a Cracker Barrel in the background if you squint real hard. They don’t even try to make it look outer spacey AT ALL. A NASA rover lands on the planet/rest stop and a family of naked aliens come trundling out to see what’s what. Here I just want to take a second to say that I have reviewed almost 100 films and the NASA name/logo has been invoked in about 50% of them. Apparently, in the 1980‘s, all you had to do to get the NASA logo in your flick was simply ask. No scruples at all, those space nerds. What do these aliens look like you ask? Imagine if you took the actor Mickey Rooney, popped him with a pin, stripped him naked and then slathered vaseline all over his body. Kind of like that...although the dad also looks kind of like what the actor Ed Begley Jr might look like if he lives to be 105. The aliens; mom, dad, sis, and baby bro, don’t speak but they do whistle. Specifically, a melody that sounds eerily similar to Gizmo’s theme from Gremlins. Oh and that familiar-ish score in the background? That’s courtesy of Back to the Future composer Alan Silvestri. Everything is this movie is hijacked. Literally everything.
Speaking of hijacking...the rover extends a vacuum wand that reverses itself from blow to suck. The suddenly amorphous alien family is sucked up like cracker crumbs in a couch crack. They are secreted back to a secret laboratory at Area Wherever Whatever where they are spat out before a crowd of horrified scientists and government officials. They immediately start blowing stuff up with their minds and smash their way through a maze of walls and electric fences. The baby alien makes his way to the interstate, where he is squashed onto the windshield of a passing vehicle, causing a horrific car crash. Traffic is brought to a standstill while the paramedics douse a burn victim with the foam from a fire extinguisher. This is some pretty gnarly shit for a PG! My dad really should’ve let me take home my Milan Kundera instead. Caught up in the accident traffic is the Cruise family, en route from Chicago to Southern California in their mint ass Volkswagen bus. Wait a minute--their last name is CRUISE!? Oh come on!! That is NOT a real name! Even Tom Cruise’s last name isn’t really Cruise! Anyway the Cruise family is cruising west so Mom Cruise can start a new job. She’s got her teenage son Michael and her wheelchair-bound younger son Eric in tow. Everyone in the van is just crushing cans of Coke like it’s the nectar of the gods. The little alien fella manages to climb aboard the Cruise wagon ‘cuz he wants to see what Cali is all about. He also drinks some Coke.
The next day the family arrives in Cali and, shit you not, their neighborhood is the EXACT SAME NEIGHBORHOOD from E.T.! They must’ve been running a special housing program for single moms raising young boys and contraband aliens. Moms must’ve hit the lotto too ‘cuz their new spread is tight. They start to move into their new digs and about 15 products are hawked in about 3 minutes. We see boxes from United Movers, bottles of Gatorade, Energizer Batteries, and gallons upon gallon of Coke. The kids are from Chicago so that means their rooms, which are fully decorated faster than you can say copyright infringement, are covered in posters for the Cubs and the Bears. Sports teams wanted a piece of the Mac too! You know how in The Truman Show the characters were required to shill different products directly into the camera? It’s exactly like that. I kept expecting little Eric to break the fourth wall and say “Gatorade really IS thirst aid for that deep down body thirst!!!”
The family settles in with the quickness and the Cruise boys meet their female neighbors Debbie and Courtney...who just happen to be the same ages as each of the boys. The younger sister, Courtney, appears in her “Gertie from E.T.” Halloween costume throughout the film. You know who isn’t settling in? The poor little alien dude. He misses his folks something awful. He cries. It’s wicked sad. He doesn’t immediately reveal himself to the family, though. Instead he pulls a bunch of pranks, like drilling through the walls like the killer in those Slumber Party Massacre flicks and dragging a bunch of trees inside and rearranging the dining room to look like the set of a Michel Gondry video. When mom sees that her new home has been destroyed she is predictably bullshit. “Ma, it wasn’t me...I’m in a wheelchair!” Eric protests, not unreasonably. She believes him. It is not mentioned again. Later that afternoon Eric goes out exploring and accidentally sends his wheelchair careening down a hill in his backyard. I’m thinking...this hill doesn’t look that big...he can probably HOLY SHIT!!! The friggin’ wheelchair suddenly plunges off of a 200 foot cliff and crashes into the rapids below. Dude...there is NO WAY this cliff is anywhere near this kid’s house! It’s not even the same terrain. Did they not hire a continuity editor for this movie?? So poor Eric can’t swim but luckily the alien, who has his lifeguard certification, has been stalking the kid. He pulls him to safety. Now Eric knows the alien is real. While Eric is in the hospital recovering from his precipitous fall he starts to tell the doctors that he saw a little man. The doctors are all “humina humina better pump this kid full of valium and maybe call DSS!”
Eric is now hellbent on capturing this elusive little sumbitch. His mom doesn’t believe him, natch. Says to leave her the hell alone so she can focus on her new job...at SEARS! Eric enlists Courtney to help him out. They manage to capture the little fella in the vacuum cleaner but then then the vacuum cleaner turns evil and drags Courtney across the ceiling in an homage to, I don’t know, The Exorcist? They blow him out of the vacuum and dude is cashed out. He’s had a tough week...just like everyone watching Mac and Me. What do they give an alien for his severe fatigue? You guessed it: a can of delicious Coca-Cola! Ohhh...and he loves it too. “They must drink this at home,” Eric says. Sure they do, kid, Sure. Mom comes home to find her house trashed yet again and asks what in the actual fuck is going on. “We sucked him up and blew him out, mom!” Eric beams with delight. Mom gets right on the phone to inquire about empty beds in the psych ward at Cedars-Sinai. The alien feels bad the kid caught hell for his vacuum shenanigans so he fixes the house up while everyone is asleep. He spackles the walls and puts down a fresh coat of paint, repairs the broken woodwork, purchases new artwork and elaborate floral arrangements, and puts photos of horses all over the house. Mom is psyched when she wakes up. I mean...does she really think her sons are responsible for all of this new construction? Also--horses?? Does this alien have some sort of weird equestrian fetish? Meanwhile back in AZ the rest of the alien family are just lying around the desert three miles from the NASA compound...completely exposed and likely starving to death. Could the government really not find three aliens in an open field right across the friggin’ street?? Jesus.
The alien mostly hangs around the Cruise residence making weird flowers out of drinking straws and watching Morton Downey Jr on the TV. This is all well and good until Eric realizes that he double booked: he was supposed to alien sit AND go to Courtney’s birthday party! Even though the alien is coming down with some sort of flu (hope it’s not the Covid, dude) Eric decides to kill two birds with one stone and just bring the alien with him. While Courtney and her family wait impatiently in the driveway Eric finds a giant teddy bear, hollows it out, and stuffs the alien inside of it. They hop in the backseat like nothin’ to see here! The birthday party is, of course, at a McDonald’s...and it’s friggin’ bonkers! The camera gazes lovingly upon the McDonald’s facade like it’s gazing on Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I realize that there’s supposed to be a kid birthday party in progress but there’s, like, 200 amazingly overwhelming things occurring simultaneously. It’s a giant bacchanal but with children and filet-o-fish sandwiches. There’s a flash mob of dancers in football costumes. In fact the entire place breaks out into a synchronized dance routine. Even the bear-suited alien jumps up on the counter and starts to pop-n-lock! I wonder...did they ever question the logic of staging an elaborate dance sequence in front of the wheelchair-bound star of the movie? Like...dancing is the BEST! Well...maybe not for you though...
Someone drops a dime on this break dancing teddy bear and now the FBI is after Eric and Mac. Did I mention that Eric decides to name the alien “Mysterious Alien Creature” about 3/4th of the way through the movie? Well he does. So there you have it: Mac and Me. Well...I mean...not ME...but him. Eric. The FBI chases Mac and Eric down all of the same streets that Elliott and E.T. rode down. Too bad the chase occurs in broad daylight because I could totally see those two motherfuckers flying right across a full moon. The filmmakers are THAT shameless! I haven’t even mentioned all of the songs on the soundtrack that sound exactly like the band Chicago but are not Chicago...and I’m not going to. Or...I just did! Eric hauls ass into the Sears where his mom works and Mac makes all of the TV’s explode with his mind. You know that shit is coming out of her paycheck. Big brother Michael rolls up in the VW bus with the neighbor gals in tow and rescues Eric and Mac. Mac keeps pointing east. Like...home. He wants to go home. E.T. phone home. Mac is WIPED OUT so they decide to feed him Skittles. “I hope he doesn’t have a disease,” says one of the girls. Ever think that maybe he’s just sick because y’all are feeding him fuckin’ Skittles??
They decide they’re gonna let Mac lead them where he leads them. “Maybe we’ll have a close encounter of the third kind” says Michael. As if this movie was already cemented onto Steven Spielberg’s dick. If the entire family was suddenly eaten by a shark (on land) I wouldn’t even flinch. Mac directs the crew to a cave way out in the desert where they find his family near death. They start listening to heartbeats and checking for pulses and bah hah hah do aliens have pulses?? Someone suggests calling 911. I’d love to be on the receiving end of THAT emergency call. Instead, some genius has the genius idea to feed the aliens an ice cold can of delicious All-American Coca-Cola. Ahh yes...coke: the sweet elixir of alien life! And guess what?? They all perk right the hell up!! Must be some of that original recipe stuff, knowwhatimsayin’? Now they’ve got a busload of aliens and no particular place to go. The aliens can’t tell them what they want because they do not speak. Mac could have the voice of Gilbert Gottfried for all we know! They couldn’t have had that thing croak out a “Fweeennndss” or something?
The gang heads to a local Stop & Shop ‘cuz the aliens are fiending for more cola. Mikey tells the aliens to wait in the car but they only understand Mogwai whistle so they grab a cart and head straight for the snack aisle. Naturally, when people see a family of aliens that look like Mickey Rooney’s balls they freak the fuck out. The police are quickly called to the scene as are the FBI and guns are drawn and tempers flare. I think there’s some sort of deeper themes at play here about judging people for looking different but...frankly...I don’t feel like getting to all of that right now. The aliens try to escape peacefully but some hothead with an itchy trigger finger starts a shootout and the aliens explode themselves. They die. And oh no’s, y’all! Little Eric is laid out on the ground too. The EMT’s attend to him for like three seconds and are all like “yeah, he’s dead. Sorry for your luck.” Wait...he’s fucking DEAD!? Why would my father let me watch this movie!? Everyone is crying. I’m crying. Mom shows up on the scene and starts wailing “my baby my baby!” Before they can get the kid bagged and tagged, though, the aliens walk out of the fire completely unburned. They form a circle around Eric’s body and pull some Mr Miyagi shit and the kid comes back to life! They couldn’t have done the kid a solid and healed up his spinal bifida while they were at it? Lame.
So ok--that was bad...but it wasn’t THAT bad. I didn’t enjoy it but I wasn’t full of rage the entire time either. I’m thinking the reason for this is that the movie is essentially E.T....and I like E.T. Who doesn’t like E.T.? No one I want to know! Oh but wait! There’s a denouement. Since the aliens were kind enough to resurrect a young child the powers that be have decided to grant the aliens AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP!! Bring us your tired...your weak...your naked coke-guzzling aliens. Man, don’t let Donald Trump see this movie! Actually he’s probably already seen it because McDonald’s. There’s a big to-do at city hall or wherever it is they award citizenship to aliens. Afterwards the aliens hop in a pink Cadillac and drive down the 101 Freeway. A title card that reads “We’ll be back!” appears on the screen. If you are holding your breath for a sequel then you’ve been holding your breath for 32 years. We’re waiting, dudes, we’re waiting. The end.
Ever since I launched VHS of the Week three years ago I have used the Friday before Memorial Day to hit the pause button and pay tribute to the summer movie seasons of yesteryear. The years when you got your Oscar contenders around Christmas, your action blockbusters and sleeper comedies between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and little else worth watching the rest of the year. The days when I would be so sick with excitement over the arrival of my Entertainment Weekly Summer Movie Preview issue that I seriously considered faking an emergency so I could go home and check the mail to see what Owen Glieberman had to say about the box office prospects of The Rocketeer. Last spring I mentioned that the walls that once held these seasons intact evaporated years ago. There are still tentpole summer blockbusters but they are almost always reboots and superhero flicks. Everything else is shunted to streaming and dies anonymously. It’s no great mystery what happened: all of the talent went to television, where it’s possible to let the story of the Chernobyl disaster unfold over 8 hours instead of trying to shoehorn it into a two hour feature film. Again, why leave your house when one hour of Breaking Bad is better than any big screen drama from the last decade (and there are MANY hours of Breaking Bad to watch).
Still, as someone who grew up in a dark theater, eating popcorn and laughing and crying with hundreds of strangers, I have always felt...and continue to feel that there is something irreplaceable about a trip to the cinema. Even if that means going to see something you are less than excited about (I’m not sure how many times I checked my phone during Deadpool 2...but it was a lot) or taking in a screening of, say, Jaws at the local independent movie house, I believe that we should never allow moviegoing to become an antiquated curiosity for a niche audience. As I sit here writing, the list of summer 2020 movie releases is blank. Theaters across the country and all over the world have been shuttered for months due to the ongoing global pandemic. It remains to be seen when, if ever, people will be allowed to sit in an air conditioned room, pay $10 for a cherry coke, and scream in terror at A Quiet Place 2. At this point I would give just about anything to see something...ANYTHING...on the big screen. I’d even see one of those Star Wars deals! It’s my life’s blood and I continue to be devastated without it.
Last year I talked about the summer of 1989, which I still believe to be the greatest movie summer on record (Batman, Indiana Jones, Parenthood, Do the Right Thing, Uncle Buck...shit...Vampire’s Kiss with Nicholas Cage!). The summer that I frequently mine for material, though, is the summer of ’91. This was the year that I made a pact with myself that I was going to try to see every single film that opened in Worcester’s four multiplexes (most of them only had 3 screens...so isn’t that a tri-plex?) I was 12 years-old and (kind of) old enough to go to the flicks alone. I also had a mildly willing co-conspirator in my dear 81 year-old Great-Grandfather Fred. I made him take me to EVERY film that was released on Memorial Day weekend...the true gateway to the summer movie season. Between Friday and Monday we saw Backdraft, Thelma & Louise, Hudson Hawk, and Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken. Two of those films are incredible and I’ll let you guess which ones. Old Fred was a super good sport...even when he was aggressively opposed to my choice of film. I don’t know how many other “white 7th grader and his octogenarian great-grandad” combos were at the opening day matinee of Boyz n the Hood...but I’m gonna say the number was one. Fred might’ve said he hated Boyz afterwards but he was totally crying when Ricky got smoked too. We all were!
The summer of 1991 came with a pre-programmed apex. That film is, of course, Terminator 2: Judgement Day...or T2 if yer hip. I was so riled up about that movie I would slip into a dissociative state during family dinners and start mumbling in a mangled Austrian accent. It didn’t help that I spent all day every day watching MTV, which showed Guns N’ Roses’ “You Could Be Mine” video, starring the T-80 himself, every hour on the hour. It was the #1 video all summer long. I kinda started to feel bad for Skid Row, destined to reach no higher than the #2 spot with their “Monkey Business.” I saw T2...and it was predictably awesome. I bought a Schwarzenegger poster for my wall and a box of T2 trading cards. From there, though, things started to go shithouse awfully quick. I continue to ride hard for Michael J Fox’s Doc Hollywood and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. But then there was Pure Luck...and Body Parts...and Mobsters...and the unbelievably depressing Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor “comedy” Another You. What a lousy way to go out, dudes.
But there was also Point Break...and Point Break is one of the greatest films ever made. Of any stripe! I mean...its reputation precedes it at this point. It’s a true cult phenomenon. I really had no desire to see it when it came out. I saw it ‘cuz I was in the business of seeing all the movies. And I fucking flipped my shit over it. It gave me all of the feels. It made me want not one but TWO meatball sandwiches. What did the poster say? 100% Pure Adrenaline?? That’s how I felt! I saw it again...and again...and again and again (I think that’s 5 times total, right?) I didn’t want to admit it...DIDN’T admit it...but I liked it WAY more that T2. I mean T2 is still the shit...but it was supposed to be. The Point Break VHS box has a pull quote from Roger Ebert that reads “people will have a hard time finding a more entertaining thriller.” And you know what? He was right. I have spent the last 29 years of my life having a hard time finding a thriller that is more entertaining than Point Break. It’s like...I walk into the local AMC and say “excuse me...are you showing something more entertaining than Point Break?” and they say “we have only Fast and the Furious Part 9 and it is 4 hours long” and I say “nothing for me, thanks.”
This is typically the point where I would spend another 3000 words explaining the plot of the movie and try to tell a few jokes. There’s no reason to do that; you’ve all seen Point Break...and it is NOTHING TO LAUGH AT!! I know there was a remake that came out in 2015 but I absolutely refuse to acknowledge that it exists. If you mention the words “Point Break” and “Gerard Butler” in the same sentence in my home you will be asked to leave. What I’m thinking, though, is that the 30th anniversary is next year. What better time for a proper sequel!? And I know how they can pull it off too! Because there’s a scarcely identified fulcrum on which the entire film rests. And that fulcrum is Anthony Kiedis’ character!! (Note: did you know the character’s name is TONE?? As in Loc? Oh brother...just when I thought I knew it all!) If we’re talking Red Hot Chili Peppers it was Flea who got all the primo acting gigs. Every other hipster indie flick from the late 80’s/early 90’s had an appearance by Flea: Dudes...My Own Private Idaho...The Big Lebowski. But it’s Mr shama lama ding da ding de dong dong CALIFORNIA who just kills it in Point Break. He has just three lines and they ALL eminently quotable. “Oh shit shit we’re FUCKED!!!” So check it out: it’s 30 years later and Kiedis and his gang of cats who “only live to get radical” are about to be released from prison. Kiedis hooks up with surviving gang member Lupton Pittman, aka Warchild, and they decide that robbing banks looked hella fun...so they start a gang called the Ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers Guitarists! There could be up to five (and yes John Frusciante counts as he has quit and returned twice). I can just hear that 911 call “help...I’m being robbed by a man in a...umm...Josh Klinghoffer mask??” No one can figure these dudes out until the FBI notices that the gang leader (Kiedis...wearing a Dave Navarro mask) is missing his right foot and ends every sentence with “skee bee don don Cali-forn-I-A!” Meanwhile in Bells Beach, Australia Johnny Utah is still hanging around doing fuck all. Life is good for him...except every time he looks in the mirror he sees Gary Busey’s reflection and not his own (if Busey dies before production simply replace him with Jake Busey). The ex-Chili’s decide to come after Johnny ‘cuz Kiedis is still sore about the loss of his foot and Warchild is still butthurt that Gary Busey called him “squid brain.” Johnny Utah doesn’t want to get involved...but he’s JACKED from making all of those John Wick movies. First he has to go down to the beach and see if he can find that badge that he tossed in the water back in ’91. While he’s walking up and down the beach with his metal detector he sees Bodhi emerge from the surf. He’s like “Duuude...what the fuck, brah??” and Bodhi is all “Yeaahhh...remember when I said ‘what do you think i’m gonna do? Paddle to New Zealand??’ I totally paddled to New Zealand.” Johnny Utah and Bodhi agree to let sleeping dogs lie and become partners in the fighting of crime. I realize that Patrick Swayze has been dead for...like...a wicked long time...but have you seen what they can do with holograms these days??
I would TOTALLY watch this movie. Totally...
It will probably come as little surprise to hear that Stephen King sits way, way atop the list of living authors with the most book-to-film adaptations. And that’s not even counting the seemingly endless deluge of Stephen King-related product that has started to show up on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu over the last few years. 46 years after the release of his debut novel King has been adapted so many times that he is now starting to be re-adapted. It, originally a 1990 ABC miniseries, came to the big screen in 2017 and, in a case of the world’s most appropriate (or inappropriate) timing, a reboot of the adaptation of his novel about a worldwide killer pandemic (The Stand) is scheduled to drop in the middle of an actual worldwide killer pandemic. Me, I personally can’t wait for Sleepwalkers 2: Sleepwalk Harder...but I’m a man who really enjoys watching killer cats feast on incestuous mother/son vampire duos. That’s just my jam! King has been actively involved in the production of a fair amount of these adaptations (not Kubrick’s Shining though...don’t even go there) yet he has just one directing credit on his CV: the 1986 film Maximum Overdrive. According to his 2001 memoir On Writing, by the mid 80's, Stevie was whacking up a couple of grams of cocaine every day and then slugging down a case of Miller Lite tallboys to calm his nerves. And I’m inclined to believe the man because if there was ever a movie that feels like it was directed by someone zoomed out on the devil’s dandruff it’s Maximum Overdrive! Just look at the friggin’ trailer! Instead of featuring scenes from the movie they decided to have a heavily bearded King pitch his flick by talking directly into the camera. Dude is so jacked up he has gone cockeyed. That said, I think Maximum Overdrive is incredible. It’s about a killer truck and it’s based on a King short story called, umm, Trucks. Actually, what happens is that the earth passes by some malignant comet that causes all of the world’s machines to go berserker and murder all of the humans. People get eaten by their cars and lawnmowers and immersion blenders...all while the AC/DC BANGER “Who Made Who” plays in the background. The survivors of the appliance-ocalypse, Emilio Estavez and the voice of Lisa Simpson (Yeardley Smith) and Donald Trump’s second wife Marla Maples (appropriately cast here as “2nd woman”), take refuge in a truck stop and prepare to do battle with a fleet of nefarious circling 18-wheelers led by a truck with a scary green goblin face. True story: I waited tables with the son of the guy who painted that goblin truck...which makes us...absolutely nothing (the truck and I).
I could sit here all day and crack wise about Maximum Overdrive but, as luck (or lack thereof) would have it, I do not own a VHS copy of said film. So instead of a truck that kills people y’all are gonna hear about a car that kills people. That’s what Stephen King is all about: things that kill people. You know--cars and trucks, giant rats, big dogs, vampires, corrupt prison wardens, poop aliens, Kathy Bates, coronaviruses and so on. The flick is called John Carpenter’s Christine...and it’s crazy that John Carpenter was still getting above title credits in 1983, especially on a Stephen King adaptation. Hey, I say the man who made Halloween (and later, Big Trouble in Little China) can put his name wherever he damn well pleases!
What happens is this: we open at a Detroit automotive assembly plant in 1957. Although it’s 1957 we hear “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood & The Destroyers on the soundtrack. I’m not sure how many times that song has been licensed but it has to be in the hundreds. GT probably made enough money from that tune to retire at 40...but here he is...70 years-old and still coming to the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom in New Hampshire every summer so the townies can get tanked up and try to triple fist during “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.” I have a buddy who went to see him a few years ago and I asked if he was still doing the “B-B-B-B-Bad” thing. He said yes, but only half assedly. Anyway, a red Plymouth Fury rolls down the assembly line and a dude pops the hood to get a look at the works. The hood falls on his hand, which prolly hurt like a bastard. One of his co-workers hops in the front seat and then just drops dead. No further information is available as to why this gentleman expired. I guess these back-to-back incidents are supposed to establish that this particular vehicle is bad...possibly all the way to the bone.
We jump ahead to September 2, 1978 where we meet a high school senior by the name of Arnie Cunningham, played by the kid who was too chickenshit to try the Triple Lindy in Back to School so Rodney Dangerfield had to do it for him (Keith Gordon). Arnie is a nerd. We know this because he wears ill-fitting Buddy Holly glasses and knocks over some trash cans on the way out of his house. His best bud Dennis, though, is a full-on letter jacket-wearing football hero jock. This all seems like boilerplate 80’s teen horror movie territory...until these dudes start talking. They are mad offensive, even for an 80’s flick. Dennis tells Arnie he should go after a girl at school because she’s a “walking sperm bank” but Arnie says that he doesn’t even have enough to make a deposit and will just continue to jerk off. GARROSS! When they arrive at school they are alerted to the presence of a new female student who “looks smart but has the body of a SLUT!” The young lady’s name is Leigh and she looks like a librarian or a pre-indictment Lori Laughlin and not at all like a slut. One of the guys mention that she has nevertheless given him a boner. Dennis and Arnie move on to shop class, which is teeming with 40 year-old bullies. The mutton chopped ringleader, Buddy Repperton, looks like Animals-era Roger Waters and carries a switchblade. He calls Arnie “cuntingham”, steps on his glasses, and stabs the shit out of his homemade yogurt lunch while his follow classmates yell “stick him!...stick him!” The shop teacher finally rushes in to break things up. Buddy waves the knife at the teacher and calls him a “cunt fuck” so he is sent to the principal’s office. Shit man--I got detention for an entire week for throwing Drakkar Noir on a kid who stole my San Jose Sharks Starter Jacket. What the hell kind of high school do THESE kids go to??
Dennis and Arnie are on their way home from school, feeling lowdown about the beatdown, when Arnie spies a busted up ’57 Plymouth Fury for sale in some Old Timer’s yard. The Old Timer offers to sell it to him for $250 smackers. Arnie figures he can buy it and fix it up and drag race the bad guys or whatever. So it’s gonna be like Better Off Dead but without any jokes. I’m in! Then the Old Timer starts to ramble on about how the original owner, his brother, was super obsessed with the car and wound up dying in it and left his aura in there or whatever. The car’s name is Christine...which you probably already know, as it is the title of the movie. Unless you thought the movie was gonna be about Christine Lahti, in which case, I’m sorry for your luck. Arnie buys the Plymouth and all of the weird juju that comes with it. I wonder if someone is out there buying my 2001 Saturn from a trash heap right now. I’m pretty positive I didn’t leave any weird energy in that particular car...but I just KNOW that there’s a 30mg time-release Adderall under the carpet somewhere.
Arnie brings Christine home and his parents are, like, unreasonably furious (about the Fury). Like, his mom cries and wails and beats her chest. Jesus lady...it ain’t like the kid came home with a pregnant teenage bride! He is forbidden from keeping the car at home so he takes it to a local junkyard that rents out garage space. The junkyard owner, played by veteran character actor and Gremlins 2 star Robert Prosky, tells Arnie that he “can’t run that mechanical asshole without an exhaust hose.” It’s at this point that I realize that the reason my cousin Nick used to call me a Mechanical Asshole when we were children is because he heard it in this movie. Mind: blown. Even though Arnie is paying for the space Prosky cusses him up and down and tells him to shut his goddamn pie hole. Man, everyone in this movie is a fuckin’ asshole! Even though he has no automotive know-how Arnie is confident he can trick out this ride. Dennis asks him why he’s so obsessed with this janky ass old car. “I finally found something uglier than me,” Arnie says, his voice quaking with sadness. “You aren’t ugly...just queer” Dennis replies. Ha...ha...ha...
Arnie gets the car into fighting shape in no time at all. He even impresses old Bob Prosky, who offers the kid a job changing toilet paper rolls in the shitter in exchange for access to the junkyard. One Afternoon in the school library Dennis asks Leigh out on a date but she turns him down. Then she chews on a pencil eraser and some kid in the library says he wishes the pencil was his dick. Man, you want someone to chew on your DICK!? So it’s about 40 minutes into the movie and I’m still waiting for the car to start chopping people up. What gives, y’all? There’s also NO score whatsoever...which is strange given that John Carpenter is probably the world’s foremost scorer of horror flicks. The only tunes we hear are 1950’s chestnuts that automatically play on Christine’s stereo system. Actually, one of the first songs she plays is “Keep-A-Knocking” by Little Richard...and he just died...so I guess that’s one victim.
One afternoon Dennis is doing his football hero routine when he sees Arnie roll up in Christine with Leigh in tow. They hop out and sit on the hood and start sucking face and HUH!?? These two characters have not yet interacted in the film...not once! And now they’re playing tonsil hockey!? I’m not the only one shocked by this turn of events. Dennis is so distracted he runs head-on into another player’s head and is diagnosed with instant CTE. In the hospital, Dennis tells Arnie that his football career is over. Arnie responds by telling Dennis that “this new chick is hot for my bod” He then asks Dennis “has it ever occurred to you that part of being a parent is trying to kill your kids?” Before Dennis can answer Arnie is out the door, letting that question just hang in the air like a cloud of hospital farts.
Arnie and Leigh head out to the drive-in in a pissing rain storm. They kiss a little and then Arnie heads straight for 3rd base (and when you’re famous they let you do it--The President). Leigh is like not so fast, ya rapey prick! She accuses Arnie of being more interested in Christine than he is in her...which is pretty on the money. Arnie gets out to fix a busted windshield wiper and the car starts to choke Leigh. I mean not literally....it’s not like the shift column comes to life and wraps around her neck. She’s just...you know...sitting there choking on nothing in particular...and it looks dumb as shit. Luckily a passerby pulls her out before she loses consciousness. Drive-in experience ruined, Arnie offers to give Leigh a ride home. I’d be like fuuuuck you dude, I’m calling a Lyft. She relents and even gives homeboy a chance to make things right on her doorstep. He tells her she’s just sexually frustrated. This does not go over well. At all.
Later that night the gang of bad guys from an hour earlier in the movie break into the garage and pound Christine into smithereens! They smash out the headlights and taillights, tear the seats apart with a switchblade, and take a shit on the dashboard! At this point I like the bullies more than anyone else in the movie so I don’t really have a problem with any of this. Arnie is predictably apoplectic when he finds out. His folks pull a 180 and offer to buy Arnie a brand new car. He responds to this by calling his dad a motherfucker and then trying to choke him to death. Not very polite, bro, Arnie returns to the garage and stares at Christine with the sex eyes. “Ok...show me!” he whispers. Christine proceeds to put herself back together...which was some nifty shit for 1983. OH! And now there’s a score all of a sudden! It’s mostly the Halloween score recycled with a couple of “Pyum! Pyum!” noises thrown in. John Carpenter still does these tours with his son where they perform scores to his movies live. I bet he doesn’t get a lot of requests for Christine.
Once Xtine is all healed up she goes out looking for the members of the bully gang. She finds the chubby one. He pulls a knife on the car, which ain’t gonna do much. Car beats knife every time. Christine chases the kid down an alley and crushes him to death...but we don’t get to see anything! This movie is completely bloodless! They couldn’t have had the kids guts spray all over the windshield?? Or at least had an eyeball pop out! This is the 80’s, man. Come on! This murder business earns Arnie a visit from the local law enforcer, who is totally Harry Dean Stanton! The year after Christine came out is the year Harry Dean had both Paris Texas and Repo Man in theaters, which means he had the best 1984 out of any entertainer except Prince. HDS is suspicious ‘cuz he had heard Christine was totaled and she now appears untotaled. Arnie has no explanation ‘cuz he DGAF! The car is making him EVIL. We know this because his hair starts to grow out and he buys a black leather jacket. He calls Leigh and tries to patch things up after the choke-a-thon. When she demurs he screams “fuck you, bitch!” into the phone. She is unimpressed.
Later that night Christine chases down Buddy and his surviving henchman. She/it/the car follows Buddy to a gas station and then crashes into it, blowing it and everyone inside of it the fuck up. Buddy manages to escape but Christine chases after him...fully engulfed in flames! I’m not sure what’s scarier; being chased by a car or being chased by a car that is ON FIRE. I’m thinkin’ the latter. Christine catches up to Buddy...‘cuz it’s tough to outrun a flaming car. His fully torched body is spat from the rear tires. He dies. Christine returns to the junkyard still horny for murder and decides to choke old man Prosky to death for shits and giggles. Ok, so now there are very few cast members left alive. Leigh calls Dennis out of genuine concern for Arnie’s well being, even though he called her a fucking bitch. Dennis says he thinks the car is evil...kind of like the house in Poltergeist but on wheels. He plans to hang out with Arnie on New Year’s Eve and try to talk some sense into him. Arnie is shitfaced when he picks Dennis up and takes him out on the highway where he drives 100mph and says super alarming stuff like “let’s toast! Death to the shitters of the world!?” Shitters as in toilets?? What are you even talking about, kid? So the friend intervention is a no go. Arnie just starts talking gibberish and making derogatory comments about women and you know what song they should’ve used in this movie? “I’m in Love with my Car” by Queen. That tune rules.
Right...so eventually Dennis and Leigh decide they are gonna lure Arnie to the junkyard and kill Christine with a bulldozer...even though this car can regenerate itself from any and all types of damage. They are gonna have to chain that sumbitch to the bottom of Crystal Lake or something! Arnie comes screwing into the garage in Christine, crashes into the office, and is thrown through the window. When Leigh finds him he’s got a giant shard of glass sticking into his guts. At long last...some blood! Arnie pulls out the glass and promptly drops dead. See you never, Arnie. Dennis and Leigh spend ten minutes trying to crush the evil car with the bulldozer...which is about as exciting as spending ten minutes watching an evil car being crushed by a bulldozer. They manage to, you know, kill it. Cut to: the next afternoon. Dennis and Leigh are hanging outside of the junkyard with Harry Dean, who calls them heroes. Christine has been cubed. Extreme close up on the cube, which starts to move ever so slightly. ROLL CREDITS! Big time set-up for a sequel that never arrived. Why didn’t they make Christine 2: The Bitch is Back!? And Christine 3-D? And Christine 4 on the Floor? And Christine 5 Alive!? I think the answer is that Christine sucks and no one wants to make, or see, those movies. I mean...I guess they still could, right? The end.
In the 1996 sci-fi summer blockbuster Independence Day a fleet of spaceships from a non-specific hostile planet destroy the majority of civilized earth, thus ruining a shit ton of people’s plans to get drunk in their backyards and shoot off fireworks. The remains of the US Government, led by man who I wish was the actual president right now Bill Pullman, launch an all-out assault on the enemy craft, only to find that it comes equipped with an invisible, bomb-resistant shield. No matter what kind of artillery they hammer the space ships with, it either bounces off or explodes. I mention this because my own brain has a similarly impenetrable shield when it comes to the plot lines of science fiction movies. It is something that I was born with and it appears to be inoperable. The gene that allows one to watch an entire episode of Star Trek without peppering the person next to them with hundreds of annoying questions never arrived at the Tebo household (I also have a profound phobia of tying knots and wore velcro shoes for way longer than socially acceptable...but that’s a conversation for another time). This is why I skipped Star Wars and gravitated toward more real life-type movies as a kid. The Griswolds encounter hella problems on their way to Wally World. Del Griffith and Neil Page try to get home for Thanksgiving utilizing planes, trains, and automobiles. Easy Peasy! That I can understand! Once you introduce less earthen concerns my brain literally shuts off (and yes...I know what ‘literally’ means). A few months back I watched The Dark Crystal for VHS of the Week and my poor girlfriend had to hold my hand the entire time...like I was burning through a stack of Tolkien novels and not watching a children’s Muppet movie. “Who are these guys!? Where are they going again!? Why do the Skeksis hate the Gelflings!?” I’m like John Heard in the movie Big: “I don’t get it!....I don’t get it!!”
Given what I just told you, you might not unreasonably assume that I would be the WRONG person to try to explain the plot of David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. And oh my sweet christ on a cross would you be correct! While I have never read Herbert’s novel (and really, how could I?) I also didn’t just show up to Dune completely unawares. I checked out the 2013 documentary Jodorowsky Dune, which details controversial Chilean surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed attempt to bring Dune to the big screen in the 1970’s. His version of Dune was set to star Salvador Dali and Orson Wells (who was just gonna to pound Paul Masson chardonnay and sit on a throne whistling like a walrus) and feature a soundtrack from Pink Floyd. It was also going to be 14 hours long. Shoulda just called Netflix, bro. The movie obviously never happened but the screenplay, as well as a book of illustrations and storyboards, became a sought after bootleg item in Hollywood. And, according to Jodorowsky, his aborted vision influenced every subsequent science fiction movie. Like....every single one of them: Star Wars, Alien, The Terminator, ET...I don’t know...friggin’ Tron. I felt kind of bad for the dude...until the end of the documentary...where he says the following: “When you make a picture, you must not respect the novel. It’s like getting married ... if you respect the woman, you will never have child. You need to open the costume and to rape the bride – and then you will have your picture. I was raping Frank Herbert ... but with love!” OK THEN! I mentioned this quote to my friend who recommended the documentary. His response: “Classic Jodo, man! I love that guy...he’s a NUT!” (Takes out pen...crosses El Topo off of “movies to watch” list).
David Lynch, with his blissed out vibes and his “okey dokey” speech pattern, does not come across as the type of person who would willingly watch a David Lynch film, let alone make one. In interviews there’s nary a whiff of evidence that this is the same cat responsible for some of the most disturbing cinematic images of the last 40 years. He’s more polite, non-threatening uncle than inscrutable provocateur. He won’t explain the ending of Mulholland Drive to you but he also won’t take offense to your question. Dude meditates like a bastard so there’s not much one can do to raise his ire. Unless, of course, you ask him about Dune (or tell him he can’t smoke cigarettes in a hotel elevator). David Lynch does not and will not talk about Dune. David Lynch passed up the chance to direct Return of the Jedi to make Dune...which is a goddamn shame because the former film definitely needed more scenes where Ewoks stare at their own paws in silence for 20 minutes before screaming directly into the camera. Dune came out in 1984 and people thought it sucked and Lynch, who didn’t have final cut, continues to disavow it to this day. Anyone who thinks 36 years should be a sufficient amount of time to heal this Dune-shaped bruise need look not further than this exchange from a Hollywood Reporter interview from April of 2020:
HR: This week they released a few photos from the new big-screen adaptation of Dune by Denis Villeneuve. Have you seen them?
David Lynch: I have zero interest in Dune.
HR: Why’s that?
DL: Because it was a heartache for me. It was a failure and I didn’t have final cut. I’ve told this story a billion times. It’s not the film I wanted to make. I like certain parts of it very much — but it was a total failure for me.
HR: You would never see someone else’s adaptation of Dune?
DL: I said I’ve got zero interest!
DANG! Someone woke up on the wrong side of that yoga mat that morning! Knowing everything that I know I still decided to try to watch Dune anyway. Being locked inside of your house for months on end makes you attempt things you are destined to not succeed at...like learning how to play Van Halen’s “Eruption” on the guitar or deciphering the plot of Dune.
What happens is this. I mean...I really have NO IDEA what happens but I’ll do my best. The film opens with a shot of outer space that is scored by David Lynch’s trademark whirring white noise. I immediately recognized the familiar territory and was flooded with all of the good/stomach curdling feels. The good feels lasted for about, oh, ten seconds. That’s when the disembodied head of Candyman victim Virginia Madsen appeared and started to explain the plot of the movie to us. Like...if they wrote this shit out and put it on a Star Wars-like opening crawl it would go on for longer than the actual 2.5 hour movie. As best as I can tell: it’s the year 10191 and the most important thing in the universe is a spice melange called, umm, The Spice. He who controls the Spice can travel to any part of the universe without moving. Most of the Spice is on a planet called Arrakis but they have a serious worm problem up in there, kind of like Guam but wicked cold and with worms instead of snakes. There’s lots of talk of warring factions and families and, honestly, ain’t nobody got time to learn all of that shit. There’s the House Atredies and the Fremen and the Harkonnens and I couldn’t tell you who is who if you held me at gunpoint. I kept trying to keep myself calm by telling myself that there was a simple hero’s journey underneath all of this gobbledegook. A kid’s gonna come along and try to get control of the Spice Say, . do any of y’all Central Mass readers remember when the Pay-Per-View Playboy Channel changed its name to Spice in the late 80’s? That was a big deal. I’d go to school and kids would yell “you’re a creep...I bet you stay up all night watching SPICE!” And I would say “We don’t even HAVE Spice...so there’s no way I’d stay up unto 4 AM watching scrambled Spice and waiting for that glorious moment when it would unscramble for about 3 seconds and I’d see half a boob! What do you think I am, a pervert!?”
Right...anyway...the first 30 minutes of Dune consist almost entirely of actors standing around trying to explain the plot of the movie...not just with their dialogue but also with these bizarre voice over thought bubble narrations that usually happen right after a character has finished speaking. Why not just have them look directly into the camera like in The Office or whatever? Early on, this alien who looks like the alien from Meatballs 2 but with vaginas for mouths shows up to warn...someone or other...that Duke Jared Leto Atreides has a son named Paul who can see the future and will most likely piss off to Arrakis to try to control the Spice. The alien then says “but you didn’t hear this from me!” and beats a hasty retreat, which made me laugh for the one and only time I would laugh for the next two hours. Paul is played by Kyle MacLachlan, who would go on to play Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, which is awesome, and who would also go on to play an unsmiling Ray Manzarek in Oliver Stone’s The Doors and have the world’s most unrealistic swimming pool ninja sex with Jessie Spano in Showgirls, which is less awesome. If you are wondering if I will ever write a review of a movie starring Kyle MacLachlan and not mention that Showgirls sex scene the answer in NO.
Patrick Stewart (‘sup Captain Pic!?) shows up to help Paul train for his...what have you...which involves the two of them learning how to speak in scary monster voices and transforming themselves into Tetris blocks and fighting. The special effects here make Superman IV look like Avatar. They also stick Paul’s hand into a flesh burning box and tell him he’ll die if he pulls it out. He manages to withstand the pain ‘cuz he’s a tough motherfucker, this Paul. When he pulls his hand out it isn’t burned off after all. It was just a gnarly mind trick! Speaking of gnarly--the action moves to the plant of Giedi Prime, where we meet the bad guys; Baron Harkonnen and his nephew Feyd, who looks an awful lot like former Police frontman Sting because he is former Police frontman Sting. Dude, this is what you did after Synchronicity instead of making another Police album?? The guy who provided the voice of Chucky in those Chucky movies (Brad Dourif) is also here but I have no idea what he’s all about. Only in these Makonnen scenes does Dune feel vaguely David Lynch-y. The hideously acne scarred Baron looks like a severely jaundiced Pillsbury Doughboy. One of the Baron’s henchmen slices a oozing boil from the Baron’s face, squeezes it into a jar, and then drinks it. Later, the Baron levitates above the room, spraying RC Cola onto everyone below (his toenails are also painted pink...because why not). Later he rapes a kid who looks like a young David Bowie to death while Sting looks on and smiles. Here I’d like to mention that Dune had merchandise tie-ins. Someone somewhere watched this movie and thought that children would want to purchase Dune toys! Man, I wish all David Lynch movies came with toys. I’ll trade you a Frank Booth (with nitrous mask) and a Eraserhead eraser head for a One-Eyed Jack’s play set with Renault Brothers action figures.
Paul heads out to look for the Spice with Patrick Stewart and a baby PUG...who is shown in one scene and then never spoken of again (the pug...not Patrick Stewart). And then...and then...I really have no fucking idea, folks. Legendary character actors float in and out; Dean Stockwell from Quantum Leap! The Exorcist from The Exorcist, Little Linda Hunt from Richard Grieco’s If Looks Could Kill! I have no idea who any of them are or what purpose their characters serve (although I think Stockwell is a double crosser or something). I decide to leave the movie running and spend ten minutes folding laundry in another room, hoping that I’ll be able to follow along better when I return. This, unsurprisingly, is not successful. Lord Jared Leto is given a poison tooth and he uses it to try to assassinate Harkonnen but he fucks it up and ends up killing only himself. Paul escapes to the desert planet where he takes on a name that sounds like Mobb Deep. The desert planet is, of course, full of nasty worms and HOLY SHIT do they look exactly like the creatures from Tremors! I mean...both movies were made by Universal. Maybe they had some of these things laying around in a warehouse and thought “well, we sure as shit aren’t making a Dune sequel...maybe Kevin Bacon can throw some snakes in this big bastard’s mouth and make some magic out of it.” And that’s what he did. He made magic. Speaking of thoughts: you know what would be awesome? Tremors...IN SPACE!!! Oh but wait...wouldn’t people just hop in their spaceship to get away from the Tremors monsters? Maybe the snakes are on the spaceship! Is that too close to Snakes on a Plane? Let me spitball this and get back to y’all.
So what else? Mobb Deep hangs around the dry planet and fights some battles with his mom. He falls in love with the actress Sean Young, who is also a brunette like his mom and I could not tell them apart at all. I wasn’t even aware there was a new non-mother character until she and Mobb Deep started sucking face. People’s eyes turn blue and they grow mustaches that extend out of their noses and into their right ears. Actually that might be a breathing tube the more that I think about it. Harkonnen continues to fly around the set on barely concealed ropes. He poisons a guy and tells him that he will have to milk a cat for the antidote (“You never told me about your cat milking days in Motown”--Meet the Parents). Sting appears in a space thong looking like he’s ready to have 12 hours worth of Tantric sex any time you’d like, luv. Mobb Deep spends a nice two-year montage training the troops for...something or other. The Reverend Mother Ramallo warns that Mobb Deep must be stopped or people will live the rest of their lives in a Pain Amplifier. I feel like I’m already living in said Pain Amplifier, having spent the last two hours watching Dune.
Eventually there’s a big battle sequence but it’s unclear who is fighting whom...and why. The Baron is cut from his levitation ropes and he floats off into the mouth of a worm (he dies). Mobb Deep is hailed as the hand of god and the freer of the people. Before we can all go the hell home though, Mobb Deep has to do a little one-on-one battle with Sting because, even though he only has like four lines, he is the most famous person in the movie. It shouldn’t be much of a contest at all since Sting is cut to SHREDS and Kyle MacLachlan looks like he wandered in from the set of a Whit Stillman movie. They tussle it up for a sec but Mobb Deep throws Sting onto the ground and stabs the dude in the THROAT! Mobb Deep looks down at Sting’s body and quips “told you not to stand so close to me.” I mean...not really...but I wish! It starts to rain and everyone is super stoked, living in a desert and whatnot. The movie ends with picture credits...and if there’s one thing I love in this world it’s picture credits! Did I mention that the score of this movie was performed by Toto? Pink Floyd was pretty well broken up by this point so they went out and got Toto. Rosanna Toto. I bless the rains down in Africa Toto (I bless the rains down in Arrakis!? It could totally work!). ANYWAY....better luck with Dune 2020 Timmy Chalamet. The end.
Time for Music VHS of the Weekend
I’m short on time this weekend...but I promise a full dissertation of my Makin’ Fuckin’ Videos Boxed set chronicling the Don’t Cry/November Rain/Estranged trilogy will come at a later date. I haven’t seen it in years but I mostly remember it being featuring an extremely gacked out Duff sitting in the back of a limo trying to explain the symbolism of Axl Rose swimming with dolphins...while Axl acts all Howard Hughes-y and refuses to speak to anyone. Anyway...I was kind of wondering why I even bought this particular tape since every Gn’R video played on MTV around the clock from 1988 up until about 1995. And then I remembered the story behind it..which is not a good story at all but I’ll tell it anyway: Back in 2001 I was working at a restaurant called The Good Life. It was a Friday and I had a 4-top of good tippin’ regulars in my section. They told me they had a few more friends coming and asked if they could pull up an extra table. Unfortunately the only other table belonged to a co-worker who we’ll call Lisa because that was her name. This was a strict no pooling...everyone out to knife each other in the back-type place. I really didn’t want to lose the tab though so I asked if she’d give up her table and I’d trade her my next available. She agreed...but the “couple of friends” turned out to be like 25 people. No shit. Like a $600 tab. Totally took over her section and the tables I had were never re-sat. She was PISSSSSED...and rightfully so. Total dick move on my part...but how was I to know that 25 motherfuckers would be showing up?? Anyway...I remembered Lisa was a huge Gn’ R fan...which was sort of an anomaly in 2001. So on my next day off I went to Tower Records and picked up this here tape as a peace offering. VHS tapes were still $30 at the time so I figured this was even steven. The next time we worked together I approached her with the tape. She looked at the tape...looked at me...said “You know...I have never liked you. Go FUCK YOURSELF!”...and then promptly quit. That’s maybe a little dramatic...I think she actually quit the next day or something...but we never spoke another word! So yeah...I got this tape with all of the Gn’R videos....EXCEPT “You Could Be Mine”...which is bull fucking shit cuz that’s one of their best. With all of those Terminator 2 scenes?? Shiiiit. It was cool to see the Dead Horse video again though. That’s an underrated tune. Dead Horse. That will be all.
Here’s a quick story called “How to Not Get Ahead in Hollywood.” In the fall of 1999 I decided to take advantage of Emerson College’s Los Angeles program. All students in the program were required to hustle themselves up an entertainment industry internship for school credit. I won’t name the joint where I worked...but needless to say I chose terribly unwisely. Most of my days were spent getting screamed at for getting the bosses’ cream to coffee ratio wrong...getting screamed at for forgetting to open the bosses’ copy of Daily Variety to page 2 (why he could not just open it himself we do not know), and just getting screamed at in general. Once in a blue moon they would haul us interns (unpaid...all) into the boardroom and solicit our opinions on certain screenplays that had been submitted for consideration. Almost every script was a hard pass. In fact, out of the hundreds of screenplays that came through the office that fall only one of them eventually made it to the big screen. Anyway, one afternoon we were all handed a script called Silver Metal Lover and told to take it home, read it, and to prepare a list of potential actors and actresses we thought should be cast in the film. Silver Metal Lover was written by Randal Kleiser, who directed Grease...which was a big ass hit in 1978. I’m not sure how much clout Randy Kleiser still had in 1999 but I would say it was low to none. Low clout warning. I read the script and this is what it was about: A 16 year-old girl who runs away from home with a robot (made out of silver metal, natch). She teaches him what it’s like to be human. He, in turn, teaches her what it’s like to BALL!! He’s a fuckbot and she’s a child: from the director of Honey, I Blew Up the Kids! Man. I just about spat out my Koo Koo Roo when I read that shit. I went into the meeting the following day and offered suggestions similar to Michael Corleone’s offer to that corrupt Senator: nothing. None. No actors/actresses. The boss was furious. “Why didn’t you complete the assignment!?” I told him that the script was terrible and that the film would never get made. “But we have optioned the script!” he fumed, “It IS getting made! You aren’t allowed to say it’s terrible!!” I told him...you know...that’s fine...but I couldn’t imagine there was anyone anywhere that would want to act in a movie about underage robot sex (If I recall correctly they really wanted Tom Everett Scott for the robot). They told me my behavior was outrageous and that I was banned from all future script meetings. I told them that was fine too. Then I walked out of the office and straight into a 20 year stint waiting tables. Would you like fries or chips with that? Silver Metal Lover remains unmade.
Alright, we’re actually gathered here today to talk about the profoundly disturbing 1986 Disney sci-fi flick Flight of the Navigator, which was also directed by Randal Kleiser (kind of ties together with that last story, no? No?) Of all of the movies I watched that year; Halloween 2, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Friday the 13th 2, and lots of other terrible 2’s...Flight of the Navigator is the one flick that left me with permanent psychological scars. What happens is this: we open at the 1978 South Florida Dog Championship, which is basically ultimate frisbee but with dogs. I absolutely believe that this is an event that actually happens because Florida. The dogs are shown gracefully twisting through the air in slow motion much like the divers in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film Olympia. This is perhaps the only Disney movie to open with an homage to the Third Reich’s resident propaganda filmmaker (note: none of these dogs are Nazis...at least not to my knowledge). One of the dogs belongs to a 12 year-old named David Freeman, who is played by Joey Cramer, a disgraced former child actor who is one letter away from sharing a name with the exceptionally average Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer. David’s dog loses the frisbee match. His 8 year-old brother Jeff calls him a retard...because that sort of talk was not frowned upon in the 1980’s. After the what-have-you, Jeff heads to see his buddies and David heads home with his folks (with the GREASE soundtrack blasting in the car. Self-reverence will get you nowhere, Randal). Pop Freeman is veteran character Cliff DeYoung and Mom Freeman is Veronica Cartwright, who has been acting for 60 years but will always be known as the lady who barfed up a shit ton of cherries in Witches of Eastwick. They’ve got a swell mini mansion right on the water and a boat and a telescope and all that fancy white people stuff. Life is good.
But wait--before the family can boat out to celebrate the 4th of July they send David to retrieve his little bro. “Just go through the woods behind the house, ford the swamp, and cross the train tracks.” At NIGHT?? In Florida!? Do you have any idea what could be lurking in those woods?? Gators and The Gainesville Ripper and toothless meth addicts in cargo shirts with tribal tattoos and Carol Baskin’s murdered husband’s bones! David walks out by his lonesome and he’s a brave little toaster until jerk off Jeff jumps out of a bush and scares the shit out of him. Jeff runs off and David falls into a ravine and knocks himself out for like 20 seconds. He wakes up and shakes it off and figures he hasn’t been out for too long and that there’s still time to shoot off a couple of roman candles, right? WRONG!
When David arrives back at his house the door is answered by a Bea Arthur cosplayer, who has totally Golden Girls’d the place out; silver and gold wallpaper, pink flamingos, etc. David runs up to his bedroom where he finds his belongings have been replaced by an elderly man in an easy chair, sipping anisette and listening to Tito Puente albums on vinyl. What the what the WHAT!?? “Where are my mom and dad!?” the kid screams “why hath my home been turned into a geriatrics ward in just 5 movie minutes!?” He’s crying...the old folks are crying....I’M CRYING! David is brought to the police station where he tells his side of the story. The cops punch his name into their Tandy TRS-80 and immediately come down with a serious case of the “OH SHIT’S!” “This kid was declared legally dead years ago” says one of the cops. The year is now 1986! They ask David who the President is and says Jimmy Carter. More “oh shit” looks. Hey kid--at least you didn’t wake up in 2020 and find out that Donald Trump is the president and it is illegal to go outdoors.
The cops bring David to see his parents, who have moved to a shittier house. I guess they have fallen on hard times because of the house, yes, and also because their hair is often unkempt. When David sees that his little brother is no longer 8 but, in fact, 16 he passes the fuck out. Let’s pump the brakes here a sec: if the police found a boy who had been missing for eight years randomly showed up having NOT AGED A DAY would they really just bring him straight back to his parents? Without even calling to warn them first!? Shouldn’t they contact, like, a scientist or something? At least take the kid’s blood pressure and temperature for chrissakes. This stuff was WAY too heavy for my little brain to comprehend when I was 7 year-old. The idea of being lost for 8 years yet feeling like no time had passed at all kept me up nights. More than watching a Michael Myers squeeze a man’s head until his brain popped out? Absolutely. Parents: please keep your children away from Flight of the Navigator!
While mom and pop Freeman are getting reacquainted with their forever child, local authorities are called to investigate a clamshell-shaped UFO that has crashed into some power lines. Looks kinda like a travel soap container that I used to bring to summer camp back into the 80’s, this UFO does. As I sit here writing in May of 2020 the government has recently confirmed the sighting of an actual UFO, as predicted by the former lead singer of the band Blink-182, and NO ONE cared! The head NASA guy is played by Dr Johnny Fever himself, Mr Howard Hesseman, wearing a hideous pair of bifocals and an expression of “get me the FUCK out of here” at all times. Dude probably had some lag time between WKRP in Cincinnati and Head of the Class and needed some extra dough. Man’s gotta eat. NASA is psyched to have a real live spaceship but the frickin’ thing won’t open...which is a total buzzkill. I wonder if maybe the local kid who just arrived home after 8 years without aging has some answers?
David’s folks bring him to the hospital to run some tests because GAH! I’d be like get this changeling demon away from me! Or...I don’t know...can you get refunded for a funeral if the person is discovered to be no longer dead? Anyway, they hook tiny wads of tissue paper up to David’s noggin and his brain starts to transmit all kinds of coo coo stuff like binary code and images of that soap dish UFO. I wonder what you’d see if you hooked my brain up to that computer. Probably a crushed up PBR tallboy inside an empty bag of Doritos. Howie Hesseman convinces the Freeman’s to let David come live at NASA so they can run more tests. They give dude his own dorm room that comes tricked out with remote control cars and ColecoVision and shit. He’s even got his own 80’s movie buddy robot named Ralf to help fetch him Big Macs! Let’s play a quick round of Marry/Eff/Kill--Ralf...Johnny 5...or Jinx from Space Camp?
Speaking of killing...Ralf’s minder is none other than eventual Sex and the City superstar Sarah Jessica Parker. The Onion AV Club has this incredible series called Random Roles where they call up an actor and take a deep dive into their resumes, good, bad, and ugly. Everyone who has participated has been a good sport about it...even Nick Nolte! Everyone, that is, except SJP. The interviewer asked her about Flight of the Navigator and this was her asshole response:
“ What drew me to Flight Of The… Are you seriously asking me what drew me to Flight Of The Navigator? It was a part. Like, literally, I just got a part. I went and did it. That’s what I did for most of my career. Nothing drew me to it. I can’t—it was a job. That’s exactly a paycheck. That’s exactly what drew me to it. I can’t even tell you what it was about or who I played. You know, all you want is a job. You’re auditioning, you want to have as much experience as possible. You know, it was great.”
So there you have it--Sarah Jessica Parker is a goddamn jerk. In her (minimal) defense her character is completely useless. It’s never really explained what she does at NASA or why she has access to the kid. I thought she might be a love interest since the kid looks 12 but is actually 20...but that’d be a bit weird (like a robot having sex with a 16 year-old). She comes to hang out with David and he’s all “What happened to Starsky and Hutch? Who is this Mr Belvedere?” She asks David if he likes Twisted Sister. He says that he’s never heard of her. He asks her for coke. She asks if he'd like New, Cherry, or caffeine free. And so on...
When the NASA people hook David’s brain up to their computers they freak out. “His head is full! He’s showing us things that haven’t even happened yet!” You know...like Twitter and YouTube and YouPorn and Milli Vanilli. They figure that David was on the spaceship traveling at the speed of light...which is why he only felt like he was gone for a hot minute. David remains completely bemused during all of this. He mostly just sits in a chair and yells “HUH??” and “WHAT?” and asks for more fast food. At this point I look at my watch and realize that there’s only 20 minutes worth of movie left and that no one has flown anywhere! Zero flights. Kind of false advertising with that title, eh Disney? Maybe they should’ve called it “David Takes a Powder”...or simply “Florida Kid.”
Eventually David gets fed up with the poking and prodding and hops inside of Ralf, who gives him a lift to the UFO, which promptly opens up upon his arrival. The interior of the UFO looks like they stuffed the set of a Debbie Gibson video into one of those spinny Gravitron carnival rides from the 80’s (barf). David straps himself in and meets the alien robot ship commander--a mechanical eye named Max. Really? After all that we don’t even get to see any creatures? They couldn’t have taken a friggin’ Fraggle and spray painted it and glued some M&M’s onto it or something (note: there are some tiny alien critters on the ship but they are superfluous...like Sarah Jessica Parker...the person). The UFO takes off like a bastard. The flight scenes definitely have an “Epcot Center simulation ride in 1986” sort of charm to them. Max explains that humans only use 10% of their brains so the aliens are using David’s available storage as storage. This explains literally EVERYTHING! Back on the ground the NASA peeps are scrambling to track down the spaceship. SJP runs to warn David’s parents but the NASA guys follow her and tell the Freeman’s that they are gonna have to remain quarantined. Welcome to the club, bitches.
David and Max fly up to the Golden Gate Bridge and then down to the bottom of the ocean...continuing their existential jibber jabber along the way. David tells Max that he/it is too serious and that he should laugh more. Max starts to laugh and OH MY GOD it’s Pee Wee Herman doing the voice!! I had no idea! Payoff: complete. Now Max is super wacky and all “I know you are but what am I?” So...great....there’s five minutes left: shit or get off the pot, guys. Max agrees to bring David home but they somehow don’t have GPS on this spaceship. They’re lost. It’s cool though ‘cuz David’s big little bro is gonna set off fireworks so they can find the house. David says that he would much rather go back to 1978 instead of 1986 for extremely obvious reasons. “Those people are my family but it ain’t my home” David explains. Max says that he can bring David back to 1978 but that there’s a chance he’ll be vaporized in the trip. Shit man--I’d risk vaporization to get the hell out of 2020 and back to 1978! I’d go see Halloween in the theater...check out the The Sex Pistols final gig...maybe head to Worcester to witness my own birth.
David decides to roll the dice. When the UFO is finally over Fort Lauderdale lightning crashes (a new mother cries) and David finds himself back in the ditch. It’s 1978 and Jimmy Carter is still president and Randal Kleiser is still riding high off the success of Grease. He tears ass back to his house and finds his family young and rich and happy with kempt haircuts. When they hop on the family boat to watch the fireworks it’s revealed that David smuggled one of the tiny alien creatures off of the ship. Dude, don’t you know what happens when that happens!? That thing is going to grow 20 feet in like three days and KILL YOU ALL!!! The alien from Alien was cute when it was a baby too...just ask Veronica Cartwright! So that’s it. The end.
When I hear the words “Forever Young” a lot of things immediately jump to mind and none of them are the 1992 Mel Gibson weeper of the same name. “Forever Young” is a song from the 1974 Bob Dylan not-a-classic album Planet Waves. Old Bobby Z must’ve been really feeling that tune because he put it on the album twice. Like...in a row! Back to back, you dig? In 1988 Rod Stewart released a song called “Forever Young” that sounds absolutely nothing like Dylan’s to my tinnitus-ravaged ears. Dylan must’ve heard otherwise ‘cuz he made Rod the Bod give him a songwriting credit and a cut of the royalties. That song was a big ass hit that stayed on the charts for like 10 years so we ain’t talking chump change here. A crotchety, litigious motherfucker for life, that Dylan. Still dropping willfully obtuse 17-minute jams about the Kennedy assassination on us as he rolling thunders his way towards his 80th birthday. But hold up a hot second! Years before Rod’s tune we had the “Forever Young” by the 1980’s German New Wave band Alphaville (I’m surprised Dylan didn’t ask for a whiff of that one too). In fact, if you type “Forever Young” into Google the first thing that comes up is the Alphaville version. I’m thinking this might be due in part to the fact that Jay-Z re-recorded this song slash copied it outright and rebranded it “Young Forever” on his 2010 album The Blueprint Part 3, the second best of all of the Blueprint albums. If your head is spinning that’s cool ‘cuz mine is too. Hold tight, gentle reader, as there’s one last “Forever Young” we need to deep dive into!
In 1990 a young fella by the name of Jeff Jacobs Abrams (better known as JJ to y’all Star WarsTrekLost heads) sold the Forever Young screenplay to Warner Bros. for $2 million smackers. This relatively obscene amount set a record for the most dough ever thrown down for a screenplay until Joe Eszterhas’s profoundly obscene Basic Instinct screenplay came along a couple of years later. This makes sense--Forever Young is practically the same movie as Basic Instinct but with no exposed pubis and no mid-coitus ice pick murder. I decided to go ahead and check out the flick again, not because I want to, but because there’s a global pandemic haunting the land and VHS stores have been deemed non-essential businesses. Tsk Tsk. I figured I could at least make a drinking game out of trying to guess which versions of the song “Forever Young'' would be used in this film. Example: Bob Dylan is notoriously expensive to license for movies so the chances they’d use his tune are slim. If it does appear...take 3 shots. The Rod Stewart version is schmaltzy as shit so that’s the obvious choice. In fact, a reviewer for the Washington Post referred to this flick as “a pablum of schmaltz” which is totally the phrase I want engraved on my tombstone. So for Rod Stewart: take one shot. If you happen to hear the Jay-Z song while watching the movie, call 911 immediately and ask for the mental health department because that song was still 18 years away from being released! Also--maybe drink the entire bottle of whatever you’re drinking when you get off the phone.
What happens is this: we open at a California airfield in 1939. A crowd has gathered to watch People Magazine’s original Sexiest Man Alive and raging anti-semite Mel Gibson do loop de loops in his B-25 bomber. Mel accidentally puts the plane into a death spiral and has to try like a bastard to pull himself out of it so as not to deprive the universe of The Passion of the Christ. Luckily (for him) he does...and when Mel lands he’s applauded like an all-American war hero by the people on the ground...except there’s no war (for us) yet and he’s Australian. Mel is greeted by his best friend Harry, played by man who will never not be known as Norm from Cheers, Norm from Cheers. Norm is all “I figured out my thing! You know, my cycle?” Says he froze a chicken and brought it back to life. Mel says his girlfriend has a pot roast waiting at home and that he will have to hear about his zombie chicken another time. At home, Mel and his ladyfriend Helen (played by the considerably less famous Isabel Glasser) sit around and smooch and listen to Billie Holiday’s “The Very Thought of You'' (no shots). This song is just south of three minutes long yet it plays over the next ten minutes of the movie. Must be a club remix or something.
The next day they all head to a cookout, where Norm keeps laying out the details of his top secret cryogenics project and Mel keeps yammering on about how he wants to propose to his lady but is too (frozen)chickenshit to do it. Dude, turning people into popsicles is far more interesting than your relationship problems. Maybe be a pal and lend Normmy an ear, ya selfish prick. Mel decides he’s gonna pop the question over a slice of pie at their favorite diner...but when the pie arrives he just stares at his plate like Eeyore and Helen is all “look bro..I got tons of shit in my Netflix queue...I gotta motor.” She walks outside and is immediately struck by an orange (the fruit) truck, much like Don Corleone in the first Godfather. Ok maybe I’m remembering that wrong...but I know that the appearance of oranges were always a sign that something terrible was about to go down. Anyway, in the immortal words of Mr White, she’s not dying...but she’s hurt real fuckin’ bad. If only Mel had popped the question they’d be off doing the Electric Slide! Instead she’s laid up in a coma and he’s laid up in his apartment ripping filterless Lucky Strike’s by the carton, getting twisted on Bud Heavy. Norm comes around to give him a “time to get back on Tinder and find a new GF” pep talk but Mel ain’t hearing it. Then he just casually lets slide the fact that he’s graduated from freezing chickens to freezing human people. He also mentions that the guy he was supposed to put in the cooler is unusable because he gets too “sozzled,” which is defined by Webster’s as “drunk.” (I guess alcohol DOES take longer to freeze). Speaking of sozzled: have you ever heard the recordings of Mel Gibson going apeshit on his ex-girlfriend and demanding many hot tub blow jobs? Fucking....yikes, people.
Mel perks right up and tells Norm that he wants to volunteer for the freezing program. He says to wake him up in after a year so he won’t have to go through the trauma of watching Helen die. OR...just my two cents here...you could sack up and keep a vigil by her hospital bed and confront grief head on like EVERYONE ELSE in the world who has ever lost a loved one. I mean, how is that gonna play with her friends and family at the funeral?? “Hey...what’s happened to Helen’s boyfriend Mel Gibson? Ahh...didn’t you hear? Dude is FROZEN! Yeah...I guess he REALLY hates funerals.” This is completely unrelated to what we’re talking about but remember when legendary Red Sox slugger Ted Williams died and his asshole son had him frozen...and then said son turned around and died of an extremely rare form of cancer at age 35, karma being, in this case, an actual bitch. There’s an unsubstantiated rumor that someone at the cryo lab accidentally dropped Ted Williams’ head and shattered it! Maybe you should’ve tipped your cap to the crowd after hitting a home run during your final at bat, eh Teddy Ballgame?? ANYWAY, Norm shoves Mel into some weird chrome locomotive from a Neil Young album cover and says sayonara, Riggs. Maybe you’ll sleep until 2016 and the world will have magically forgotten all of the crazy racist shit you said and you’ll get nominated for an Oscar again.
Cut to: the year 1992...where we meet The Good Son star and kid who I met twice at SXSW in 2006 Elijah Wood. Wood plays a 10 year-old only child living with his single mom who needs no introduction because she is Jamie Lee CURTIS! True Story: one day I was walking up Arizona Ave in Santa Monica and I walked by Jamie Lee Curtis and the guy next to me yelled “holy shit! It’s Demi Moore!” Cracked...me...UP! This means I have met two cast members from the film Forever Young! What do I win? Nothing? Ok...well Elijah Wood is just a kid minding his own...doing 10 year-old stuff with his best friend Felix, who looks like an Elijah Wood stand-in but with a longer mullet. One afternoon Felix’s older brother decides to take the kids on an errand to the local military base. While the older brother is busy doing whatever whatever the kids get bored and decide to break into the Movie Storage Warehouse Where Nothing Good Can Happen, where security non-existent. Eventually they come across Mel Gibson’s chrome dreams capsule, caked in dust and shunted to a dark corner of the warehouse and forgotten for the last 53 years. I mean, wouldn’t they have had to at least left it plugged in or something? The kids hop on the capsule and start twisting the knobs and levers and going vroom vroom like a couple of stupid ass kids. BAM! The friggin’ thing pops open and there lies Mel Gibson like we love to remember him: 36 years old...dead handsome...not yet publicly racist. The kids screw but Mel wakes up and fumbles his way out of the cooler butt ass naked. We get to see his tuchus. I wonder who showed more ass onscreen: Mel Gibson or Donny Sutherland? Certainly worth a google.
Mel isn’t about to let a half century in the ice box slow his roll. No muscle atrophy or bed sores for this Aussie! He heads straight to the nearest payphone and tries to dial up his pal Norm to try to figure out what the what. Failing that, he returns to the military base and tells a still unfamous Walton Goggins that he’s a frozen pilot from the year 1939. They’re all like “this way to your padded room, Air America.” He busts ass out of there and somehow manages to track down Elijah Wood and Not Elijah Wood. He demands to know what, if anything, he missed over the last 53 years. The kids give each other an “oh shit!” look, pour him a Zima, and then force him to listen to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” over and over. Seriously though--they bring him to the library and show him a bunch of newsreels on mircofiche. He’s thoroughly dejected. “I can’t believe Midnight Oil survived the 80’s and Men at Work didn’t!” he cries.
While Mel is watching his brain leak out of his nose after listening to every Beatles record for the first time in one sitting, Elijah Wood wanders off into a subplot wherein he develops an impossible crush on one of his classmates. That’s all well and good except they are 10 year-old CHILDREN! What’s he gonna do, take her to Spago? Elijah Wood agrees to take Mel home and let him live in his treehouse on the sly like an 80’s buddy alien (but with severe anger management problems). It doesn’t take but a minute until Mel spies Jamie Lee being roughed up by some asshole ex-boyfriend. Mel rushes into the house and tunes the dude up with his 30’s style boxing moves. Jamie Lee calls the police and has both of them PC’d. Just Kidding! She lets this complete stranger who busted into her kitchen and beat the shit out of a dude stay on her sleeper sofa! No questions asked!
Back at the military base the military dudes find the empty capsule and realize they done messed up bad and put an APB out on Mel Gibson, last seen sporting a mullet (and showing his ass) in the 1990 action comedy Bird on a Wire. Mel mostly wanders around town desperately trying to get in touch with Norm using 1992-type methods; writing letters, cold calling people out of the phone book, trying to make things materialize by thinking hard about them. I’m thinking this Norm cat had to be about 40 years old 325 pounds in 1939. Has he never stopped to consider that the dude is probably/most definitely DEAD!? Although I’m happy to report that real life Norm (George Wendt) is very much alive as of this writing. It’s cool though ‘cuz Jaime Lee is in no rush to turn this dude out onto the streets ‘cuz look at those baby blues!! Swoon! Mel makes breakfast and plays Jamie Lee that same goddamn Billie Holiday song from earlier in the movie. My shot glass remains empty. Mel even helps Elijah Wood with his relationship problems...by telling him that he’s way too friggin’ young. Still, the dumb ass kid crawls up into a tree outside of the girl’s house (I’m not sure this character even has a name) and sings “You are My Sunshine” to her. Her dad chases him off. Maybe just try to Skype her next time, bro.
Mel starts to come down with some sort of illness that involves him grasping his arm and moaning. I’m really hoping he’ll turn into a cyborg and kick this shit up a notch. But no--instead we are treated to a scene where Mel teaches Elijah Wood how to fly a bomber. Not in an actual airplane, mind you, but in the family garage...where there are no airplane-related materials of any kind. “OK now yer comin’ in for landing! Decrease speed and put the flaps down!” he shouts to the kid as the camera tilts from side to side and the dramatic orchestral music swells in the background. It’s just like being on an actual plane except not at all. If you don’t think this kid learning how to fly is going to come up again later in the movie then you have never seen a movie.
One afternoon Mel just straight up collapses and they rush him to the hospital. The doctors tell him he’s aging faster than Joe Pesci in The Irishman and that the aging, like most aging, is irreversible (unlike Joe Pesci in The Irishman). Dude’s got a half century coming at him with the quickness! The FBI finally have a bead on him too. They’ve dispatched Joe Morton directly from the set of Terminator 2 to help capture this aging wonder. BUT WAIT! They finally have an address for Norm!! Jamie Lee breaks Mel out of the hospital and they head to Norm’s crib and of course he’s dead! They meet Norm’s daughter...who explains that Norm died in a chemical explosion back in ’39 and the military simply misplaced Mel’s ice capsule. Dudes, we aren’t talking about a goddamn motherfuckin’ set of car keys! This is a giant machine with a living man in it! Be more careful next time, military people! Norm’s daughter also tells Mel that Helen eventually woke up from her coma and is STILL ALIVE!! Who feels like a dickhead now, dickhead? Mel is excited...and I’m excited too because this means the movie is almost over.
Jamie Lee races Mel to the airfield so he can fly his bomber to Helen’s sick oceanfront pad. The police and the FBI give chase and pull them over but Mel calls the cop “Sugar Tits” and they let him go. At the airfield Joe Morton introduces himself as the new freezing people guru. They give him Norm’s notes from the 30’s and he all like “WOW! Norm knew more in the 30’s then we have learned in the 50 years since!” Friggin’ dummies. They decide to just let Mel go do his thing. Once he’s up in the air he discovers that Elijah Wood has stowed himself away on the plane. Like..whyyyy would he do that!? They got no more business together! Oh right--Mel is gonna shit his depends and Elijah Wood is gonna have to fly the plane....because he learned how to fly a plane...in the garage. Right. Mel starts aging fast as shit. Suddenly he’s Lethal Weapon 4 Mel...then he’s mugshot Mel...then failed comeback The Beaver Mel. Then he winds up looking kind of like Joe Biden. In other words: old. As balls.
The kid lands the plane at Helen’s place and, sure enough, she’s out back picking flowers. Mel is all “sorry...lol...thought you were gonna die..couldn’t deal so I froze myself...sooo can I get a Mulligan or what?” She’s like “wow...an 89 year old man just the shirt on his back?? Sign me up!” They smooch. The movie ends. And then....AND THEN....NO FOREVER YOUNG!!! The credits roll and it’s just that same Billie Holiday song for the THIRD time!! They only licensed one song for this entire movie and it was not “Forever Young”. Nothing but tears in my empty shot glass. The end.
If you asked me what I think of Julia Roberts I would tell you that I don’t. The number of minutes I spend thinking about Julia Roberts on a given day is almost always zero (unless Mystic Pizza is on. I love that flick!). She has been the most famous actress in the world for about 100 years now...which is impressive given that she is, as of this writing, only 52. Her position on the A-list is etched in stone at this point. With the exception of that one Hard Copy video of her getting wasted with an even more wasted Kiefer Sutherland from 30 years ago, she has managed to live a remarkably scandal-free existence for someone rarely out of the spotlight. No paparazzi pictures of her stumbling out of Limelight at 6 AM with icicles of the booger sugar hanging from her nose. No Ambien and Riesling-fueled racist tirades. She does have a brother who’s a total reefer addict but they are estranged so it’s cool. The lady keeps her house in order. While she’s pulling down $10 mil a pic in 2020 she’s nowhere near as popular as she was in the 1990’s. Few people will ever be as famous as Julia Roberts was in the 1990’s. We’re talking The Beatles on Ed Sullivan popular. Prince circa-Purple Rain. Cheap Trick Live at Budokan! Pretty Woman came out in March of 1990 and Julia Roberts was promptly handed the keys to the decade. She became “America’s Sweetheart” and the rest is the rest.
Here’s the thing, though: I looked at her filmography and couldn’t help but notice that the next, say, NINE movies she made after Pretty Woman are shit terrible. When is the last time you found yourself reaching for Dying Young? Or Mary Reilly? Or I love Trouble!? Most of these flicks pulled in some dough anyway ‘cuz Julia Roberts. She started to choose better-ish material toward the end of the decade and, in early 2001, won the Best Actress Oscar for Erin Brockovich. Last year I featured the Pretty Woman not-a-sequel Runaway Bride on VHS of the Week and said that it made Pretty Woman look like The Graduate. This week I decided to check out the 1997 Julia Roberts “comedy” My Best Friend’s Wedding, which makes Runaway Bride look like Casablanca. By sheer coincidence I somehow chose to watch a movie that was released on the VERY SAME DAY as last week’s pick for VHSOTW, Batman & Robin...which means that June 20th, 1997 was a day when not one but TWO of the worst films ever made slithered out of their fetid wombs and into multiplexes everywhere.
Unlike Batman & Robin, however, My Best Friend’s Wedding was well received. Both thumbs were discovered in the “up” position. On the back of the VHS box, mustachioed goblin Gene Shalit gushed that MBFW was “an enchanting romantic comedy! The entire cast is smashing!” Well, I just sat through all 105 minutes of it and the only smashing going on involved me smashing my head into my stone fireplace to try to concuss the memory of this movie out of my brain. MBFW is earth shatteringly bad. I spent every second of this movie in a state of boiling, red hot rage. I was Jesus throwing tables in the temple! I was Nora Ephron after getting too much cantaloupe in her fruit bowl at Union Square Cafe!
I’m not even sure where to begin...so I’ll start at the beginning: we open in the kitchen of a bustling fine dining Chicago restaurant. A chef who looks an awful lot like the late Charlie Trotter because he is the late Charlie Trotter is fussing over a plate of mid rare duck that is clearly about to be served to a VIP. A waiter whisks the plate into the dining room as the entire back of house staff gathers at the kitchen door to watch the intended diner’s reaction. Umm, dudes...there’s like 90 tickets on the line. Maybe start plating up some scallops! The duck is placed in front of Julia Roberts. She takes a bite and tells the server that she will write that the duck is “inventive and confident.” Ok so she’s a food critic, then? Ok well I have worked in restaurants for 20 years and I can tell you with confidence that most food critics prefer to remain incognito. And the ones who don’t sure as hell aren’t gonna offer a sneak preview of their review after one bite of duck! We’re two minutes in and I’m already calling bullshit on this movie! Julia Roberts is a food critic named Julianne but imma keep calling her Julia because it’s basically the same name. She’s out to dinner with her gay British best friend George, played by real life British gay man Rupert Everett, who is the best thing in this movie by a country mile. We know he is gay because Julia Roberts tells us that he is, apropos of nothing. Before they can move on to Trotter’s famous roasted figs with goats’ cheese ice cream Julia receives a voicemail from some cat named Michael on her Tickle Me Elmo-sized cell phone. George is all “whozzat?” Julia launches into this dissertation about how Michael is her best friend but they used to ball and he’s the best thing that ever happened to her but he’s a sports writer and always on the road (“For fucks sake..SHOW DON’T TELL”--my college screenwriting professor). She also mentions that they are both 27 years-old and have made a pact to marry if they haven’t each found someone else by age 28. Dude...TWENTY EIGHT!? What is this? 1945? Sounds like the clock is ticking, dummies.
Julia returns to her baller hotel suite (how much do they think 27 year-old food writers make??) and decides to drunk dial Michael. He tells her that he’s in town to profile Frank Thomas of the Chicago White Sox. “You know...The Big Hurt? he asks. She does not know. Speaking of big hurts--he also mentions that he has some other White Sox-related business to attend to. Specifically, marrying the team owner’s 20 year-old daughter. Oh, and the wedding is in FOUR DAYS...which is the perfect amount of time for a movie that runs an hour and forty-five minutes. For everyone else, though: GAH! Ever heard of a Save the Date, ya dick?? Julia is so stunned she falls off the goddamn bed, thus displaying her mastery of slapsticky physical comedy. Neat. When she gets up off her ass she proudly proclaims that she has “four days to break up a wedding!” I immediately start to read the instructions on the barf bag.
The next day we meet this Michael chump, who is played by a man who is not Dylan McDermott, Dermot Mulroney. Right away these two ding dongs are just all over each other like shit on rice. They head out to O’Hare to pick up Michael’s college student fiancee Kim, who materializes in the form of Cameron Diaz. She’s tall, pretty, and blonde (and also 25 years old...not 20. Mulroney is also 33 and not 27 but who’s here to break balls? ME! That’s who). She wants to make Julia her maid of honor just to be a pal to Michael’s pal. They hop into Kim’s BMW and head straight to the South Side of Chicago, home of Comiskey Park. There’s this subplot where her family is trying to use their billions to help stop gun violence in the more dangerous parts of....BAH I’m just fuckin’ with you! To quote Taye Diggs...if this movie were any whiter it would be clear.
Michael brings the ladies to the bridal shop to get fitted for dresses. There, he walks in on Julia in her bra and undies and tells her that she looks great without clothes on. Julia is all “ohh yeah...I got this shit in the BAG!” She also wears sunglasses indoors...just in case you already didn’t think she is the worst person alive. I mean...SERIOUSLY!? We’ve barely scratched the surface and this Juliette character is already rocketing up the list of the most loathsome big screen villains of all time. She’s like a cross between Hans Gruber and Jar Jar Binks...but with no sense of humor. Did they think that she would still be likable just because she is Julia Roberts?? On the way back to their hotel Julia and Kim compare notes about Michael: “ohh...does he still snore like a banshee? Yes! But I made him stop smoking cigars in bed! Swoon!” Nowhere anywhere in real life is this something that happens! I can just imagine a fleet of my ex-girlfriends talking shop about me over margaritas. “Does he still leave Dorito cheese fingerprints all over the pillows? No, I make him wet nap his hands before bed! Cheers!”
On the way back to their hotel suites Kim stops the elevator between floors to confront Julia. “I’ll never live up! He’s got you on a pedestal...but he has me in his arms!” I’m thinking Kim is gonna put a blade in Julia’s side and we can call it a day and go home but noooo. Julia says that she can trust her and Kim just steps in it like a pile of horseshit. Here I should mention that, while I’m not one to shame someone based on their appearance, I have to say that Julia Roberts’ hair looks TERRIBLE in this movie! It’s like she told her stylist to make her look like Jon Bon Jovi circa the New Jersey album and they did exactly that. Later they all go out to a karaoke bar where they must not be too strict about checking ID’s. Either that or Kim is simply too wealthy and white for state liquor laws. True story: one time I waited on former Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks and he insisted I serve his 15 year-old son a bottle of Barolo because “that’s just what we’re used to.” Then he left me a 10% tip, the rotten motherfucker. Anyway, Julia and Michael continue to eye rape each other all night long. Every story they tell goes something like “remember when we went to Mexico...and BANGED ALL NIGHT!?” Julia then forces Kim to sing some Burt Bacharach song (the one The White Stripes did on Elephant) even though it is 1997 and the only songs sung by anyone that year were by Puff Daddy. She sings like a Muppet with a severe head cold and Julia is all “ha ha got you bitch” but the crowd goes wild for Kim anyway ‘cuz this is a stupid fucking movie.
Julia and Michael send Kim away from the movie for the next 45 minutes so they can make sex faces at each other. Michael explains that daddy White Sox wants to give him a front office job and a phat salary but he’s hesitant. Says he’s cool making $30k a year...having to fly off to Atlanta to interview John Rocker at the drop of a hat. Julia tells Kim that Michael really wants the job with the Sox...which is a damn dirty lie...so she tries to hook him up. When Michael hears about the new job offer he explodes and screams at Kim and makes her cry. “What, I’m not good enough for you!?” You know what? These two assholes are both assholes and deserve each other. I hope Cameron Diaz dumps this clown and marries the lead singer of Good Charlotte or something. What’s that? They are? Oh...cool...
Just as I’m just about to set my VCR on fire Rupert Everett parachutes back into the movie...and not a moment too soon! Julia tells Michael that George is her fiancee! The entire cast goes out for a rehearsal lobster dinner (Chicago being so famous for its lobster and all) where Michael acts like a sullen prick. George takes the temperature of the room and decides that what this movie really needs is a scene where an entire restaurant full of people breaks into song. So that’s exactly what happens. George starts singing “I Say a Little Prayer” and the busboy jumps on the piano and all of the other diners join in and the waiters start swaying side to side with, like, lobster claw oven mitts on their hands and COME ONNNN!!! If this happened in my joint their check would be dropped before they got to the first chorus. She’s got Michael all good and jealous but then George leaves the movie again (don’t goooo!!!) and Julia immediately tells George that they aren’t really engaged. So what did we just watch then??
The next day Michael and Julia take a boat cruise down the Chicago River and talk about how crazy in love they are with each other. “We never even got to have our own song” she tells him. He hears this and starts to gently croon “The Way You Look Tonight” which is fine except that it is the MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON! They start to slow dance and almost kiss. They like...put their lips together but don’t move them...not unlike the Mormon practice of Soaking (look it up). Now Julia is super horned out for villainy! She sneaks into Kim’s dad’s office and writes a phony email from Kim’s dad to Michael’s boss asking if he can buy him out or something stupid. Unfortunately it’s 1997 and email is some tricky shit so she hits “save draft” instead of delete. When she realizes her mistake she enlists Michael to try to break into the building...of the president of an MLB team...under the guise of having to fax some important paperwork into her nonspecific office. Dude...I’m pretty sure there’s at least three Kinko’s on Wabash. The email gets sent anyway and Michael’s boss calls to warn him that the White Sox want to buy him and he’s furious and decides to call the wedding off because he’s a crazy animal! Just take the job, STUPID--the Sox are gonna win the World Series in like 7 years! Julia realizes she done effed up bad so she goes out in the hall to rip butts and make smalltalk with a bellhop played by future Emmy winner Paul Giamatti. He tells her that his grandma used to say “this too shall pass?” Oh ho! Was your grandma’s name Abraham Lincoln??
So the wedding is supposedly off but when Julia wakes up the following morning she finds that the wedding brunch is very much ON...‘cuz if there’s one thing white people love it’s fuckin’ brunch. She rolls up cannons blasting, wearing a long-sleeved V-neck belly shirt and dungarees with a pair of sunglasses on her head and another pair tucked into her cleavage. What the second pair of shades is for is never explained. It’s perhaps the biggest cinematic mystery this side of “what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction”...except not at all. She’s all “I thought you said you were calling it off?? What’s with the mimosas and Lox??” He’s like “oh yeah...I am...why don’t you go tell her while I finish my eggs benny?” Julia takes Kim asides and instead starts speaking in nonsensical food analogies: She says that Kim is creme brulee and that she’s just Jello. Seriously, you’re a food writer and that’s all you could come up with!? Kim tells Julia to tell Michael that she loves him...so now we’ve got a 7th grade game of relationship telephone...but at a billion dollar mansion with a string quartet. Julia ignores this and tells Michael that SHE loves him! Julia Roberts loves Michael. They start sucking face but OH NO!!!...Kim totally sees them necking! She jumps in her Beamer and takes off and Michael takes off after her and Julia steals a bread truck and takes off after the two of ‘em! Dude, you can’t just steal a bread truck! It’s bad enough some poor motherfucker has to schlep bread to some bougie wedding for $7 bucks an hour. Now he’s probably out of a job on account of the stolen truck!
Julia chases the peeps to the train station where I guess Kim boards a train to somewhere...like there’s any chance this billionaire’s daughter has ever taken public transportation! Julia confesses all of her abject shittiness to Michael, who proceeds to call her “the puss in the mucus that feeds on pond scum.” So we’re finally on the same page, Michael and I. Julia hears this and slinks back to NYC to lunch aggressively at the Russian Tea Room. JUST KIDDING! She pulls 180 and decides that Michael MUST marry Kim because HUH!?? Of all of the dumb shit I’ve heard in life this one takes the (wedding) cake! Julia tracks Kim down at Comiskey Park and they have a confrontation in the ladies’ crapper. Kim calls Julia a bitch and a two-faced, big-haired food critic (See! I’m not the only one who thinks her ‘do is jacked up!). Ten seconds later they are hugging it out and all I can think about it is the fuckin’ bread truck!? Like...did she just valet it at the ballpark?? Is it getting ticketed and towed??
In defiance of all that is logical and reasonable in the world the wedding goes forward as planned. Julia is still the maid of honor which means she gets to give a speech. She says that she didn’t have a chance to buy them a wedding present...probably because she just spent the last four days trying to sabotage said wedding. Instead, she offers them the gift of song...and it’s the SAME SONG she and Michael slow danced to on the friggin’ boat two days earlier!!! Enjoy your sloppy seconds, bitch. Jesus Herbert Christ on a cross! Like my dad used to say every time we walked by a Brookstone at the mall: That’s some unbelievable shit! Kim and Michael are ferried away in a white Rolls Royce. Julia receives a surprise phone call from George...who has actually been at the wedding all along! (with no invitation? RUDE!). They slow dance and I totally expected him to announce that he’s no longer gay and also in love with her...because this is a stupid fucking movie. I would’ve spit out my chamomile tea! Yeah, I forgot to buy alcohol before this two year quarantine started. Do you have any idea what it’s like to try to watch a movie like this sober!? If you’ve just read the last 3000 words then you probably do. The end.
Here’s a true story: It’s the summer of 1997 and I’m standing in line at the recently built Showcase North, the city of Worcester’s first multiplex. Me? I’m a real pompous A-hole film student at the time so I was probably queued up to see Gummo or some other outre arthouse flick (who am I kidding? I was seeing Con Air. You think they played Gummo in Worcester!?). As I’m waiting for my theater to be seated another screening starts to let out. A door swings open and out walks this rotund kid with an unironic mullet, bottle cap glasses, and a MST3K T-shirt. His hands are balled into fists and his face is beet red. He starts to pace back and forth, huffing and puffing. “I HATE Joel Schumacher,” he shouts, “I just HATE HIM!” His girlfriend quickly rushes after him, gently rubbing his shoulders and whispering “I know you do. It’s Ok, baby...” I hear this and I’m thinking “he best not be talking about the same cat who directed Flatliners! Man, I oughta tune him up for that talk!” Or at least dump a couple of nonpareils on his Tevas. I’m also thinking that Joel Schumacher isn’t exactly a household name...so why is Comic-Con here in such a twist? I glance up to see that the movie he has just watched is Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin...and he ain’t the only one coming out of the theater looking butthurt. I have myself a good laugh at all of this because I was born with near-complete immunity to the charms of comic book superhero movies. You remember when Freddie Mercury said that Jaws was never his scene and that he didn’t like Star Wars? So it goes with this writer and your Avengers and Supermen and Guardians of the Galaxy (although I did think Black Panther was pretty tight). I’m not callous, though. I’m not without sympathy for people who love an author/band/director/film series that continually disappoints them. Do you know how many times I have purchased a Weezer album over the last 20 years and screamed “god I HATE Rivers Cuomo!” Eight times out of the last ten albums. Yet I continue to buy them anyway! Whomever this kid was, I hope the Chris Nolan movies brought him some degree of solace.
While I’m known to throw a Scorsese-sized tantrum about superhero movies from time to time, I gotta cop to the fact that I was a pretty massive fan of Tim Burton’s Batman flicks. I mean...I was 10 when the first one came out. A summer tentpole blockbuster like that is like crack to a ten year-old. I had to have the toys and the ball cap and the trading cards and the weird soundtrack where Prince recorded himself having sex with Kim Basinger for 15 minutes....and I had to have them NOW! Batman Returns? Showed up at 6 AM so I could be the first to buy tickets for the very first local showing, which turned out to be unnecessary as it never even sold out. Batman Forever didn’t hit until ’95, which is post Tarantino. Which means that if a movie didn’t feature loads of graphic violence, a satchel of stolen diamonds, and a bunch of scenes where dudes sat around discussing the hidden meanings behind Boz Scaggs’ “Lido” then I was probably not interested. I saw Batman Forever in the theater and forgot about it before I hopped into my Dodge Shadow to drive home. The only thing I remember about Batman Forever is the soundtrack and how my pal Ritchie Rovezzi lost his virginity to Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” after the prom that year. Actually, I’m scanning the track list now: Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Flaming Lips, AND Sunny Day Real Estate!? That’s a murder’s row right there!
What little desire I might’ve had to watch Batman & Robin was quickly extinguished by that one kid’s anti Joel Schumacher shit fit. It also won a bunch of awards and by “awards'' I mean Golden Raspberries. Since I’m currently quarantined for the next 1 to 24 months with a dwindling stack of VHS tapes I figured I would go ahead and check out Batman & Robin to see what all of the fuss was about. Mention Batman & Robin to anyone over the last 23 years and they are likely to have only remembered one thing: the fact that Batman’s costume has nipples. That sounds a little weird...no doubt...but I could never really understand why that would be such a big deal. That is, until I pressed play and a close-up of Batman’s nipples is literally the THIRD SHOT of the movie! I believe it goes; helmet, gloves, nipples, ass, and then codpiece. No, it’s really friggin’ weird, y’all....like if Larry Clark had directed a Batman movie. So the movie opens and Batman and Robin are chilling in the Batcave, shooting the breeze with their long suffering butler Alfred, who looks like he’s dying. Dying to not act in any more shitty Batman movies, amirite?? Don’t worry, homie--they got Mikey Caine waiting in the wings. I figured the actor who played Alfred (Michael Gough) was on his way out too but it turns out he still had another 14 years worth of life to live...so good on him. Commissioner Gordon buzzes in on the radio and announces that there’s a new villain in Gotham City so why don’t you stop washing your tights and go gettum?? I mean, why bother with character development when you can just have a character appear on screen and explain everything to us in the first two minutes of the movie??
This Mr Freeze guy is played by California’s 38th Governor and Jingle all the Way star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was paid $25 million dollars for 25 days of work on this flick. That’s right...a million bones a day. I’m not sure what governing pays but it sure as shit ain’t that. When I say he “worked” on this movie I mean he sat in a makeup chair for like 10 hours, screamed one-liners for two hours, showered, and then went out somewhere to cheat on Bobby Kennedy’s niece. His “acting” here makes his performance in Kindergarten Cop look like Daniel Day-Lewis in (name any Daniel Day-Lewis movie) by comparison. Batman and Robin rush to the Natural History Museum to confront Mr Freeze and his army of evil Ice Capades castoffs. “The Iceman cometh!” he bellows! “You’re not sending me to the cooler!” I think...I guess...Mr Freeze is there to steal diamonds because his ice suit is diamond-powered. He covers the entire museum and ice so they can all have themselves a skate off. Luckily Batman and Robin had the good foresight to wear boots with built-in retractable ice skate blades. There’s some stunts and people play hockey with diamonds and WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING!? To quote Blazing Saddles “I don’t know....but I hate it!” You can’t start a movie with a long ass action sequence when we don’t even know what the stakes are?? Who is doing what and why? We don’t even know that the dude in the Batman costume isn’t Val Kilmer yet! Eventually Mr Freeze hops into his spaceship and blasts the eff out of there with Batman and Robin giving chase. “Can you feel de icy cold of space!?” Freeze yells. (“Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids/In fact it’s cold as hell”--Elton John). He freezes Robin to death but Batman decides to be a pal and lets Freeze get away so he can defrost Robin. He lives.
The action then moves to some leftover Zamunda sets from Coming to America. There, we find Uma Thurman working as some sort of botanist under the tutelage of the evil Dr Woodrue. She’s trying to use plants to save the world but the evil doctor wants to use them for evil, being an evil doctor and all. At least I think that’s what’s happening. I start to check to see how much movie is still left to watch. Answer: a lot. Evil Doctor injects a bunch of poison into a dude with an average build, turning him into a musclebound monster. This is Bane...who I think is a big deal character in the more recent Batman flicks. Again, I wouldn’t be the one to ask. The Evil Doctor kills Uma Thurman by covering her with poisonous plants and snakes and shit but she immediately comes back to life as an evil seductress named Poison Ivy who can kill a man (or lady) with a simple kiss. Nowhere, at any point in this movie, does anyone mention that poison ivy is ITCHY AS SHIT!! Nothing sexy about a case of poison ivy...no sir/ma’am. Poison Ivy and Bane decide to head to Gotham city to fulfill some sort of HR clause that stipulates that there be both male and female villains. Seems reasonable.
Back at the Bathouse, Batman and Robin have changed into their civvies and the man who overplayed Jim Morrison to death is nowhere in sight! That’s right--Val Kilmer was well on his way to becoming the George Lazenby of the Batman franchise until 17 time People’s Sexiest Man Alive winner George Clooney parachuted into the series. And look...I love the Cloondog. He’s had an interesting career and he’s aged better than any man/woman/child/animal on the entire planet. He’s also a good do gooder offscreen, not to mention dead fookin’ sexy! He was 35 years old when he shot Batman & Robin and still mostly known for ER...so this had to be a huge pull for him. Well, you’d never know by watching him ‘cuz he looks like he DGAF!!! Like, he looks actively unhappy to be in this movie...sort of like Chevy Chase in every movie starring Chevy Chase. Chris O’Donnell, here playing Robin for the second time, also has negative charisma. Throw the two of them together and sparks DO NOT fly (must be all that ice). I have seen funeral parlor workers with snappier banter.
ANYWAY...we finally get Mr Freeze’s origin story: turns out he was actually a doctor named Victor Frieze who had his wife cryogenically frozen because she was suffering from a scarcely explained condition called MacGregor’s disease (as in Ewan?). I guess he biffed it up and froze himself and became an evil iceman...which is wicked convenient as his last name already sounds like FREEZE! If he was Dr Belcher then what--would his superpower be belching? I don’t know about y’all but I really hope they make a Mr Freeze origin story flick! I’d watch Joaquin Phoenix run around the Bronx trying to rub ice cubes on people’s nipples...begging people to give him a shit ton of Oscars. Mr Freeze wants to ice all of Gotham City and steal billions worth of diamonds and get his wife fixed up. Fair doss, mate. Poison Ivy wants to end the world and to start over from scratch. I mean...that’s more or less what’s actually happening as I sit here typing but it unfortunately has nothing to do with Uma Thurman (that I know of).
Batman and Robin are visited by Aerosmith CryinAmazinCrazy video star Alicia Silverstone, who claims to be Alfred’s niece from London. Homegirl must’ve left her accent on the aeroplane, eh? Robin is immediately smitten. Clooney hangs out in the background wearing a turtleneck, looking as bored as the people watching this movie. Later he steps out as Bruce Wayne to donate some sort of gigantor telescope to the city of Gotham. He’s accompanied by his longtime girlfriend Julie, who is basically an extra but who is also supermodel Elle Macpherson. I think she has six lines, one of which is “will you marry me” the answer to which is a resounding NO. Cloondog is a bachelor-4-life! Bruce Wayne has invited the entire city up to his pad for a Diamond Ball, which is kind of like a Diamond Jubilee but with no Queen. Wait, do people know that Bruce Wayne is Batman in this movie?? Does anyone care?? Hello??
So they have this party and it’s friggin’ bonkers. It looks like Studio 54...right down to the roller skating midgets with cocaine-packed mirrors on their heads. Poison Ivy shows up and blows pheromone dust all over everyone and the dudes are all in PLATOW, particularly Robin. Mr Freeze busts in and yells “alright everyone...CHILL!” A 45 minute long chase scene follows. I grow profoundly bored so I look up Joel Schumacher on the interwebs and learn that he claims to have slept with over 20,000 men! So he’s 80 years old now. Let’s say he’s been sexually active since he was 15. That’s like 383 dudes a year for 65 years! Like 1.1 dudes a day! I mean...I guess he did direct The Lost Boys...so you gotta give the guy a hand(job).
Like the late Mr Brown once said: what the fuck was I just talking about? Oh right...there’s a chase and Mr Freeze is captured and sent to Alan Arkham Asylum. Batman and Robin start to beef because Robin feels inferior. He feels like Batman treats him like a baby. He’s all “when am I gonna get my own motherfuckin’ symbol in the motherfuckin’ sky, huh?....HUH!?” I mean...dude...you’re a total Garfunkel. Pipe down and be happy you get to live in a bomb mansion rent free, Fredo. Alicia Silverstone resurfaces, having taken the middle part of the movie off, and steals a motorcycle and heads out into the city. The streets of Gotham, which we really haven’t gotten a good peep at yet, look like some sort of Terry Gilliam hellscape that he created after ingesting bad Molly. There’s people in Skeletor masks and Clockwork Orange cosplayers and the entire cast of Warriors and COOLIO! Actual Coolio! Alicia Silverstone is competing in some sort of motorcycle race so she can win money to buy Alfred out of servitude and bring him home to England to die. He apparently has the Ewen MacGregor too (symptoms include incredible mastery of accents and frequently showing your penis in movies). Alfred says he’s cool to stay there and buttle so...there’s that.
Are y’all having a hard time handling all of this non-existent suspense? I know I am! So Poison Ivy breaks Freeze out of the Asylum but then someone tells Freeze that Batman killed his wife and dude starts to melt and also meltdown. He says that if he has to suffer he will freeze the world and everyone will suffer. Dude, wasn’t that your plan all along though? Says he’s gonna rip out Batman’s heart and watch it freeze in his hand. Frozen bat heart? That’s how we got this goddamn Coronavirus!! Poison Ivy tries to seduce Robin. Tells her that she’s slippery when wet...which is the name of an album that a lot of people like...but that I do not. She gives him the poison kiss but OPE! Robin had the good sense to put rubber lips on! Her kiss is NOT on his list! Back in the Batcave Alicia Silverstone finds some superhero-making app on the computer and turns herself into Batgirl with like 5 minutes left in the goddamn movie (close up: ass...boobs...butt...check).
Batman and Robin race to kill Freeze and Ivy. Batman says “I want to kill Ivy and Freeze so bad I can taste it” with the conviction of a TV repairman in a porno flick. So...I don’t know...Freeze freezes the city but Batman uses his laser to unfreeze it. There’s a completely incomprehensible chase/battle sequence and all I can think about is what a massive missed opportunity the fact that they didn’t use Madonna’s “Frozen” in this movie is. I mean...Ray of Light came out in 1997 too! So Batman, Robin, and Batgirl save the day. They tell Freeze that his wife isn’t dead and that he can continue his research from the insane asylum, where he will have to bunk with Uma Thurman. There are worse fates. Back at the bat hacienda the crew arrives home to find Alfred has kicked MacGregor and is back to washing tights. Batgirl asks the fellas if she can join their non-dynamic, charmless chess club and they say that she can. Alfred says “we’re gonna need a bigger cave” which is, of course, a reference to Jaws...which cost $151 million less than Batman & Robin and is about 10 zillion times as entertaining. Oooof...finally...the credits roll! Wait...how did I miss Nicky Katt in this?? The “I’m the one smoking marijuana motherfucker” guy from Dazed & Confused!? I love that guy! Oh well.
*posted january 4, 2019*
Ok Folks...time for VHS of the Week:
As most of you know my Dad passed away 9 years ago next month. However, he’s very much alive in these VHS posts as we seemed to go to the movies together every weekend from as early as I can remember up until our final trip to the cinema in 2001 (to see The Royal Tenenbaums, strangely enough). And then there’s my mother....who has taken me to the movies exactly 5 times in 40 years. I can name every one of them....you ready?
The Smurfs and the Magic Flute
Footloose
Home Alone
Wayne’s World
Courage Under Fire....in 1996....just before she shipped me off to film school. That means that we haven’t seen a movie together in 23 years!! Maybe she just doesn’t like movies? She certainly ferried my ass to and from the video store until I was old enough to take myself there (Ahhh you kiddin’ me, honey---another fuckin’ Steve Maaaaahtin movie??).
Anyway...where am I going with all of this? Oh yeah! So one night my Dad took me to see Twins. I remember digging it at the time. I just checked it out again and you know...it holds up fairly well. I mean...what’s not to like? Some screenwriter probably walked into Universal and said “here’s the pitch: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito and TWINS!!!” and they immediately pulled out the confetti cannons and threw that motherfucker a parade. The main gist of the story is this: back in the day some scientists got together to try to create the perfect man (why’s he gotta be a MAN? Sexisss). They got a bunch of genius dudes together and collected their DNA in a plastic sandwich bag and then found a host mother to deliver the baby. The baby turned out to be Arnold Schwarzenegger....a pretty solid pull if you are into dudes with muscles. I might question why a US government-funded experiment would yield a “perfect man” who only speaks English with a super mangled Austrian accent....but maybe that’s just me. Anyway...apparently there was some sort of, ehh, seepage. Some trimmings leftover if you will and those trimmings turned into Danny DeVito. I’m not a medical doctor but I feel like this is not something that could actually happen. The muscle brother somehow becomes the governor of California and accidentally paves the way for other non-politician type entertainers to get elected to jobs that they shouldn’t have (coughTRUMPcough) while the other one goes on a morning talk show shitfaced and accidentally paves the way for having his own line of Limoncello. Ok right but back to Twins: the Schwarzenegger brother is an uber-genius but homeboy grew up on the rural side of Guam or some shit so he doesn’t know anything about the real world. He’s also a virgin. DeVito, meanwhile, is a total grifter loser who steals cars with a pre-NYPD Blue David Caruso and is always in trouble with the police/mob etc. Schwarzenegger comes to LA to find his long lost twin and action/comedy ensues. So...I could take you through the rest of the plot but what I really want to talk about is this one scene that occurs halfway through the movie. The brothers have hit the road to try to find their long lost mother and they have DeVito’s girlfriend in tow...along with her sister Marnie...played by Charlie Sheen gunshot victim Kelly Preston. DeVito is pretty certain that Marnie is game to deflower his hulking 36 year-old twin brother so...as the fellas are getting ready for a night out on the town in Santa Fe...Danny DeVito starts singing this completely made up song called “Tonight is Your Night, Bro”....the lyrics of which consist of the phrase “Tonight is your night, bro” repeated over and over....gingerly. Now...back at Showcase Cinema in June of 1988 my Dad and I see this scene and look at each other and just lose our shit laughing. I mean...it’s not really funny at all....but it is also the funniest thing that happens in this movie, you dig? Like...where did this come from?? Did the director just tell Danny DeVito to act excited that his brother was about to get laid and he decided to ad lib this song?? I mean...I don’t have any siblings so I don’t know: is this something that you do for your brother when he’s about to have a good night for some reason? You start singing “Tonight is Your Night, Bro!‘ to him?? I DO know what happened next in my life: for the next few years this song became a staple of the Tebo household. Like...no one knew what the fuck we were talking about...and were even less amused if we told them. It’d be like Me: Hey dad...I’m going to get a pizza. Dad: Tonight is your night, bro! Any stupid old thing...for years. He’d always catch me unaware on the phone too. Dad: Hey bud...guess what tonight is? Me: Oh! Are we going to the Japanese Steakhouse!? Dad: Nope...tonight is your night, bro!!!! Me: Ahhh man!!! If you are reading this right now....man, woman, or animal...wherever you are...I hope tonight is your night....bro. And maybe check out Twins again if you got nothin‘ else going on…
Regular VHS of the Week readers know that I repeatedly identify Risky Business as the first film that I ever watched. My mom loves to pour cold water on this claim, citing the fact that she attended a screening of the 1978 film adaptation of Grease while I was in the womb, even though it is not possible to watch a film while in utero, at least to my knowledge. My first words WERE “I got chills...they’re multiplyin’!”, however, so the lady’s got a bit of evidence to back up her argument with. I also spent my first half dozen years harboring an unnatural obsession with Grease star and legendary mangler of Idina Menzel’s name John Travolta. I thought he was just the coolest thing since the Rubik’s Cube. Cooler than The Fonz! Cooler than Billy Dee Williams in Lady Sings the Blues! Hey man...we didn’t have the internet back then. How could I have known that he was a raving lunatic scientologist!? And look--I’m hardly the only one. Scores of people bought tickets to watch Travolta ride a mechanical bull in Urban Cowboy...despite the fact that it is a film about mechanical bull riding called Urban Cowboy. By the early 90’s, though, Travolta couldn’t even get himself shot...unlike his wife Kelly Preston...who actually WAS shot by her former boyfriend Charlie Sheen (just a flesh wound..it’s cool), which doesn’t even place on a Top 10 list of “Terrible Things that Charlie Sheen has Done.” Sure, he was in the Look Who’s Talking movies and they brought in a ton of coin at the box office...but they are also the Look Who’s Talking movies. Anyone remember Shout? Or The Experts?? Speaking of The Experts, I wonder what Arye Gross is up to right now? I bet he’s at some fancy wine and cheese party.
We all know how this story middles: Quentin Tarantino cast Travolta in Pulp Fiction and suddenly dude was hotter n’ Georgia asphalt. It was a full on Travoltidalwave! (Travoltacular? I’m struggling here). He was so popular that MTV started airing a commercial for a John Travolta’s Greatest Hits album ad infinitum (I wasn’t aware he’d had any hits...but whatever). You couldn’t turn on the tube without seeing JT with his enormous head and his Vinnie Barbarino hairdo softly crooning “gonna let her in...MMM mmm.” Dude went on an absolute tear over the next six years, staring in a string of blockbusters. It was the sort of unstoppable hot streak that should have been able to continue for decades so long as Travolta didn’t try something completely irrational...like...say...spend $70 million dollars on an incomprehensible Scientology action movie that even Scientologists would be afraid to watch. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what he did. The film in question is called Battlefield Earth and it’s about the year 3000 battle between humans and a race of humanoid aliens called The Psychlos, who are kind of like Juggalos but without all of the Faygo and the crystal meth. I know this because I read it on Wikipedia. I’m not gonna watch friggin’ Battlefield Earth! I realize the average Rotten Tomatoes score for all of my combined VHSOTW entries is probably around 15%...but I gotta draw the line somewhere! For the last 20 years Travolta has seemed like a man on a mission. That mission: making people question why they ever liked him in the first place. He got into some legal trouble for perving out on his male masseuses...which was bad...and he made a Xmas album with Olivia Newton-John...which was worse. Occasionally he’ll still throw us a bone. He was brilliant as Robert Shapiro in that OJ Simpson mini-series. He then followed that one up with a John Gotti biopic that didn’t make enough dough on its opening weekend to cover lunch at Le Bernardin.
Given his shoddy track record as a human being over the last whenever whenever, I found myself wondering if those Travolta 90‘s renaissance films were actually any good. In the case of Get Shorty or, say, Face/Off I would say definitely totally. But what to make of his 1996 mega-ish hit Phenomenon? I didn’t see it when it came out because I was about to leave home for film school...which means I spent most of my time holed up in my mom’s basement watching Rainer Werner Fassbinder films and pretending that I liked/understood them. I decided to go ahead and check it out for the first time and here’s what I found out: Travolta plays a small town farmer named George Malley who is just one dumb motherfucker. The first 10 minutes of the movie are dedicated to establishing George’s inability to comprehend any and all complex subject matter(s): he can’t figure out how to keep rabbits from eating his garden, he can’t learn foreign languages, he doesn’t know how to play chess. But, I mean, the dude seems to have a pretty solid life overall. He lives in this Norman Rockwell small town/studio backlot where he has steady work as a mechanic and is well liked by his fellow townsfolk. He’s got a sweet spread and his bff is Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker. So maybe he’s not walking around quoting Proust or whatever. Maybe cut the guy some slack, ya pretentious filmmaker dicks.
George’s 37th birthday party is coming up and he’d like nothing more than to bring the town’s resident attractive chair-making divorcee Lace as his date (seriously...that’s really the character’s name. Lace). Lace is played by lady who has been married to Kevin Bacon for an exceptionally long time Kyra Sedgwick. She is not interested in George. Like...at all. Tough luck, homes. Instead he rolls up with Forest Whitaker, who seems to spend all of his time trying to contact Diana Ross on some sort of antiquated ham radio. I really don’t know, dudes--maybe they got some sort of deep discount to plug a shit ton of Supremes tunes into this movie. The whole dang town comes out the fete George at the town’s bar/restaurant/only business, including the local old timey, bow-tie wearing doctor played by man who won more Academy Awards than Forest Whitaker, Robert Duvall. The doc wants to play chess with George but George can’t play chess ‘cuz he’s dumb, remember? They all get good and shitfaced and have themselves a time anyway. Later, when George is loading Forest Whitaker into his car so he can drive home drunk, he’s distracted by a light in the sky that looks like a special effect from an early 80’s Moody Blues video. Whatever it is, this light, it knocks George flat on his ass. Could also be the 16 Keystone Lights he just crushed that knocked him on his ass too. Just sayin’. George rushes inside all like “YO! Did any of y’all just see that crazy light in the sky!?” and they are like “how could we see something in the sky from the inside of a windowless bar, ya friggin’ dumbbell!?”
When George wakes up the following morning he’s sharper than a set of freshly sharpened steak knives. He knows how to install solar panels on his roof and he can speak Spanish fluently and he can make material objects movie with his mind and DOESN’T ANYONE THINK THIS IS WEIRD!?? He tells everyone that he’s currently reading at least 3 books a day. Real smart alecky stuff too. He blows through Infinite Jest in an afternoon, which is crazy to someone like me, who is still on page 50 after 24 years (note: I made this up. The first part, anyway). He suddenly has the touch to build things...which we learn in a montage set to a Peter Gabriel song called “I Have the Touch.” It’s like the music supervisor just watched the movie and decided to license songs with lyrics that describe exactly what is happening in the scene it is scoring. Later we’ll hear Sheryl Crow’s “Everyday is a Winding Road” in a scene where a car is driving down...wait for it...a WINDING ROAD! This music supervisor deserves a serious arse kicking.
George tries to explain his condition to Forest Whitaker. “I’m so smart I can’t stand it! Even crossword puzzles aren’t challenging enough for me!” Ok...so we’re in Good Will Hunting but without any Boston accents or Elliott Smith songs. Forest tells him to go see Doc. He asks Bobby Duvall if he wants to split an uber up to Boston to shoot A Civil Action when filming wraps and he says that he does. Then he moves a pencil with his mind and the Doc is all DAH FUQ!?? “That’s telekinesis!” he shouts. And then....and then it’s the next scene. What is he supposed to take for his Telekinesis, Doc?? Claritin? Vicodin?? Help a brother out, sawbones! Dude is clearly NOT RIGHT...but he just goes about his business. He finds Lace hanging around town and asks her to try some of the apples that he grew and then asks her how she likes them. Literally....how do you like them apples? She likes the apples just fine but still likes him not even a little bit. Undeterred, he kidnaps her two young children and drives them to her farmhouse. Before she can call the sheriff George is all “Ohhh...I think I smell an EARTHQUAKE coming on!” She’s like “whatever you say, kookaburra...you’d better stay for dinner then.” How this makes sense we do not know. While they’re eating dinner an earthquake does, in fact, occur and George says “TOLD YOU, fuckers... may I please get laid, now?” What’s that? This is a PG movie? Well I guess that ain’t happening. She tells him that she doesn’t like complications or surprises and dude’s who can suddenly speak 20 different languages overnight definitely checks both of those boxes. I mean, better than a coke habit though, right?
George keeps on doing his crazy smart people shit...decoding military cyphers and growing cucumbers the size of a brontosaurus pecker. One afternoon there’s some trouble in town: an old Portuguese man has accidentally poisoned himself and his grandson and the grandson is missing! At least I think that’s what happens. Problem is...no one in this town speaks a lick of Portuguese! I mean, can’t they just Rosetta Stone that shit?? They call up George, who learns how to speak Portuguese in like three minutes. He shoots the breeze with the old man...who says the kid is lost in a field or whatever...but George can FEEL that he’s actually someplace else. Dude’s a human Lo Jack receiver now too, apparently. He leads the entire cast of the movie to some dilapidated treehouse in the woods, which he blows apart with his mind, revealing the sick Portuguese kid on the treehouse roof. The kid is saved and everyone should be psyched but they aren’t because PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO MOVE THINGS WITH THEIR MINDS!!! The townspeople start fucking with George: hey George...cure my cancer. Hey George...what are the Powerball numbers. Hey George...get me a beer...with your MIND! Some dude from the seismological institute of seismology wants George to fly to Berkeley to do earthquake stuff. He asks Lace to come with, even though she is still mostly not interested in him. Before he can head to Berkeley he is arrested by the FBI because of that whole military cypher thing I mentioned earlier in this paragraph. They think he’s a spy or an asset or whatever. They make him answer a bunch of Final Jeopardy questions and show them his mind tricks...but then they just let him go.
Back at home things really start to go shithouse for poor George. He shows up at Lace’s window in the middle of the night and asks if he can crawl inside. She says “no Saturday Night Fever for you, lasheroo.” He mostly spends his afternoons wired up like David Bowie on the Dick Cavett show....ranting and raving about how he has so many ideas in his head he can’t stand it! He shows up at the bar with slightly unkempt hair and five o’clock shadow...which is enough to scare the shit out of the townsfolk. He also breaks the mirror behind the bar with his mind...which is even scarier than the uncombed hair. Luckily Lace comes to see him and gives him a G-rated wash and shave that goes on longer than any actual wash and shave I’ve had in my 30 years of washing and shaving. George says that if he can just show up at the upcoming library book sale and explain everything he knows about everything then maybe people won’t be afraid of him. Snorrrrreee! Just what everyone wants to hear--some chowderhead who can’t keep his trap shut! Hard pass. He shows up to the library but people just treat George like a freakshow attraction. They just want to hear about the UFO and see him do his mind tricks. Did I mention that some people think that the light George saw in the sky was a UFO and that aliens made him smart? Well, they do. Sorry...that’s kind of a big part of the movie. I was dicking around with my phone a lot while I was watching this. George is so overwhelmed by the crush of the crowd that he passes out.
So folks--here’s the thing: I just mentioned that business about the UFO. At this point there’s about 30 minutes left in the movie. If George woke up on a spaceship and had to cut some sort of deal with the aliens...you know...go live on a spaceship and stay smart or go back to being simple George...that would be a totally reasonable way to end the movie. I wouldn’t think it was weird...and neither would you. Or maybe he’d wake up to find that his face had been swapped out with Nicholas Cage’s and Nic Cage acted out the rest of the movie...kind of like how Bill Pullman becomes Balthazar Getty in Lost Highway with zero explanation. Also reasonable! What actually happens is this: George wakes up in the hospital and is told that he has a brain tumor. Not just any brain tumor, mind you; a super octopus brain tumor that has crawled into all of the nooks and crannies in his upstairs area and turned his brain function up to 11....TRILLION! He has the most active brain in the history of brains! Dude, sign me up! I still want to read Gravity’s Rainbow and learn how to tie a Sailor’s Knot. Of course the brain tumor is inoperable...so dude is absolutely positively gonna croak. So that’s the big payoff--30 more minutes of sniffly medical melodrama. Awesome.
George is visited by a world renowned brain surgeon played by an actor who looks like Frank Langella but isn’t Frank Langella as Frank Langella was not yet old enough to play this part in 1996. I’m sure he was disappointed. Brain Doc tells George he wants to pop open his dome and observe his brain in it’s pre-death state. Basically he wants to kill him, ok? Me...I’m fine with whatever happens so long as the movie ends. George, on the other hand, is less interested. The brain doc says “do it for science, man! I’ll make you famous!” George says it’s about the human spirit...not science. He also says he needs to clear his brain of engrams so he can meet Xenu after he dies but no one knows what the fuck he’s talking about. The state has George ruled incompetent so they can drill his cabeza open without permission. George escapes to Lace’s farmhouse to live out the rest of his days. He’s pretty sick at this point but, you know, staying alive (sorry...I had to). George brings Lace out into the yard to show her this makeshift bed he’s made. “Are you hoping to get lucky?” she asks. He tells her yes. They finally ball...but we don’t even see them take their jackets off! Shit, after two hours you’d think we’d at least get a peek at a bare shoulder or two. Afterwards they are lying around in a state of post-coital bliss. She says she enjoyed the balling. He says he did too. Then he says he's going to die. And she’s like “wait, you mean RIGHT NOW??” but he cannot hear her as he’s already dead. She cries her eyes out...as do her still fatherless children. If this isn’t a shit sandwich of an ending then I don’t know what is!
Oh wait...there’s a denouement. A year later all of the townspeople have gathered to celebrate George’s 38th birthday as George cannot celebrate it himself...being dead and all. It’s really just an excuse to play the Eric Clapton/Babyface tune “Change the World” which was a big ass hit in the summer of ’96. That and the Macarena. People raise their glasses to their departed simpleton-turned-genius friend George. Forest Whitaker goes outside for a smoke and is knocked on his ass by a blinding light from the sky. The words “Phenomenon 2: Smart Harder...Coming: Summer ’97” flash on the screen. I mean...I wish. The end.
“Mannequin was filmed at Woolworth’s...Boyz II Men still keepin’ up the beat”. I mean...don’t take my word for it. That’s divisive New Hope, PA legends Ween singing on their dead-on Philly blue-eyed soul pastiche “Freedom of ’76.” And maybe don’t take their word for it either as Mannequin was filmed at a department store called Wanamaker’s, not Woolworth’s. Boyz II Men, despite losing that dude who doesn’t so much sing as just talk real low, appear to still be keeping up the beat...at least of this writing. I don’t really have much of a personal connection to Mannequin other than having, you know, watched it when it came out in 1987. I remember thinking “well, that’s just fine.” I would say I haven’t really thought about it much since but that would be a lie because A--I’m a massive Ween fan and B--The Mannequin Soundtrack features the #1 Starship monster ballad “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” a tune that people are still crushing at karaoke on the regular in the year 2020. The only people who remember that this tune came from an 80’s comedy are probably either wolfy luddite VHS hoarders like myself or people who watched the Starship video, heavy with scenes from the flick, on YouTube (actually...it says that the video has 131 MILLION views...so maybe more people know Mannequin than I think?).
Someone recently suggested to me that Mannequin was far more terrifying than any 80’s horror flick...so I decided to go ahead and check it again and...you know...the kid makes a fair point. What happens is this: we open in Egypt “a long time ago...just before lunch” (dumb). Sex in the City fornication enthusiast Kim Cattrall is about to join hands in an arranged marriage. And you and I...we both know that Samantha Jones don’t play that shit. She’s like “god...friggin’....get me outta here” so that’s what he does. He causes an earthquake that somehow leads to KC just up and disappearing (note: best not to ask questions during this movie....of any kind). He’s a righteous dude, that god. Cue credit sequence where the plot of the forthcoming movie plays out in animated form. I know I’ve said it many times before but I’ll say it again: it does not bode well when a movie with a running time of less than 90 minutes has a super long opening animated credits sequence. Actually I have said it once before and the movie was Madonna’s Who’s That Girl...which also came out in 1987. I don’t know...maybe there was an animation studio offering a coupon for mad cheap animated credits sequences that year.
Since you’ve already seen pretty much everything that will happen in the movie in this tidy little animation you could really just hit “eject” now and save yourself an hour and change. Should you decide to bravely soldier forth, however, this is what you’ll see: the action resumes in mid 80’s Philadelphia, where we find comparatively milquetoast Brat Pack member Andrew McCarthy working as a mannequin designer. Dude’s name is Jonathan and he fancies himself an artiste but doesn’t appear to be very good at anything. He designs a mannequin that looks exactly like Kim Cattrall...which is cool...but I guess it took him wicked long to design it so he gets fired...which is less cool. He tries his hand at a bunch of other jobs but he just totally sucks at absolutely everything. Like, there’s an entire “Jonathan getting fired from a shit ton of jobs” montage. His unemployability is particularly disappointing to his high falutin girlfriend Roxy, who promptly dumps his doe eyed no job havin’ ass. Roxy is played by an actress by the name of Carole Davis, whom I was unfamiliar with...but I went ahead and plugged her name into a search engine only to find out that she co-wrote the song “Slow Love” off of the Prince album Sign O the Times...which means she co-wrote a song off of Prince’s 2nd best album (out of 39 albums)...which means this Carole Davis is cool in my book!
Jonathan mopes around Philly in the rain like a sad sack...crying into his cheesesteak and what have you. His one-man pity parade comes to a screeching halt when he spots that one mannequin that he designed in a window display at Not Woolworth’s. Dude has a total “eureka” moment! He’s gonna apply for the job at the department store and turn his life/this movie around! So that’s what he does. First thing the following morning he heads down to the store (Prince & Company), where he has the good fortune to arrive just in time to save the department store owner from being impaled by a falling sign. He peels the store owner up off of the sidewalk and HOLY SHIT! It’s Golden Girls star Estelle Getty!! Stepping out for a little non-GG side hustle, eh ‘Stell? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was 7 years-old when Golden Girls premiered...but Estelle Getty playing Bea Arthur’s mother when she was only one year her senior literally tied my head in knots (and yes...I know what “literally” means). She was actually younger than Betty White, who is STILL ALIVE!!! Shit, when Mannequin was filmed she was still paying full boat at the buffet. No AARP card for homegirl for at least another year, you dig?
Sophia Petrillo hires Jonathan on the spot but since he’s useless he has to start in the mail room, like every other enterprising young 80’s comedy white boy. He immediately starts some static with the James Spader-ish department store GM...played by none other than James Spader. Bah hah hah what did Spader and McCarthy split an Uber from the set of Pretty in Pink?? I was a little surprised to see Jimmy Spader as his name does not appear in the credits on the VHS box. I don’t know...maybe he’s leaving this flick off of his CV? Jonathan settles himself in and quickly befriends Hollywood Montrose, the store's “flamboyant window dresser”. Hollywood is played by the late actor Meshach Taylor...who is described as the “flamboyant window dresser” from Mannequin on at least three different Wikipedia pages. He was also a mainstay on the show Designing Women...and if there’s a Mount Rushmore of dearly departed 80’s sitcom stars Estelle Getty and Meshach Taylor would definitely be on it. I’m not sure what the fact that they are both in this movie together means! Probably nothing. Old Mesh absolutely crushes it as Hollywood though. He even reprised the role in Mannequin 2: On the Move, a film I have not...and will not...see. However, Andy McCarthy was replaced by Fright Night Star Billy Ragsdale and Kim Cattrall was replaced by replaced Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Kristy Swanson. Remember when Kristy Swanson was in that movie The Chase with Charlie Sheen and...like...Flea and Anthony Keidis? Neither do I, really.
Hollywood decides to take Jonathan under his wing and let the kid help out with the flamboyant window dressing. This immediately draws the ire of the store’s lone security guard Captain Felix Maxwell, played by the guy who played Captain Harris in Police Academy parts 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 (but not parts 2 and 3). At first I was psyched to see a familiar face from my Police Academy watching days. Then he calls Hollywood a “Mary” and my excitement quickly dissipated. Jonathan, to his credit, calls Maxwell a bigoted jerk. Not too often you see homophobia called out in flicks like this. Right so Hollywood and Jonathan are creeping around the store at night doing their thing. Hollywood says he needs to step out to find some jelly donuts. As he exits the friggin’ Kim Cattrall mannequin COMES TO LIFE! That’s all there is to it; one minute she’s a mannequin...the next she’s a sentient being. She isn’t struck by lightning like Johnny 5 in the Short Circuits. No one brings her to life with some voodoo incantation like Shelley Long in that one flick where she chokes to death on a chicken ball. She’s just ALIVE. She’s like...”sup brah...my name is Emmy and I’m from 25 B.C., FUCKERS!” She explains that she has tried out several time periods throughout history but she figures 1987 must be the best. I mean...wouldn’t she look...like...wicked old? I know, I know...don’t ask questions! Hey...I would kill to be in 1987 right about now. I’d immediately go buy a copy of Appetite for Destruction with the original murder robot cover on vinyl! Emmy gets right down to business helping Jonathan set up the window display. She also explains that he is the only one she will appear alive to...because I guess he made her? Wait...then what the hell was she before she was a mannequin?? Gah, again with the questions!
Meanwhile across town Roxy is waiting to go on a pity date with Jonathan, who never does arrive. Instead her co-worker Armand rolls up in his Trans Am and says “Roxy! You look so foxy! Can I ride you!?” He is the worst character in any movie ever. His sole purpose here is to sexually harass the shit out of Roxy. I’d like to say this situation ends well...but...read on. It turns out Roxy and Armand work at the far more illustrious department store across the way called...umm...Illustra. They have their designs on a hostile takeover of Prince and Company ‘cuz that joint’s business is in the crapper. They even have Jimmy Spader working as a double agent trying to make the deal happen...because he’s a slippery fucker like that. Got to keep an eye on James Spader at ALL TIMES always. But hold the phone, Illustrans! Turns out Emmy’s window is a HUGE hit and people start flocking to the store like HUH!? Is it possible for a window display to be a huge hit? I went and looked at the Bergdorf window in NYC at Christmas and thought “cool”...but I didn’t buy anything.
Spader is rip shit about the sudden bump in popularity and wants to fire Jonathan immediately. This seems reasonable as the kid is way overstepping his boundaries. Luckily, Golden Grandma has his back! Not only is he not getting fired, the old lady says the store ain’t for sale! Emmy and Jonathan celebrate by taking part in a super intense “running around the store at night dressing up in costumes to a Z-grade Madonna knockoff tune called ‘Do You Dream About Me?” Emmy comes up with another bomb ass window and Jonathan keeps getting/taking all of the credit. I mean...what’s the mannequin gonna say? She’s a mannequin. The Illustra crew figures they can just hire Jonathan away from Prince and Company. They dispatch Roxy...who pretends to be sweet on Jonathan again and offers him $40k a year, which wasn’t all that much coin even back in ’87. The kid says he’s all set.
Undeterred, Roxy and Armand break into Prince and Company in the middle of the night to spy on Jonathan. As they are crawling through the woman’s department Armand says “Can I show you something in your size” and then starts to pull out his dick. I barf all over myself. They find Jonathan and Emmy just minding their own...canoodling in a beachy window display. Of course, to them, it looks like he’s cuddling a mannequin. I guess this is supposed to be funny? I mean...they used to keep this movie in the comedy section, not horror, so. Captain Felix steps to Jonathan and is all “the fuck is going on here, dude?”mNot unreasonable, right? But then Felix beats the living shit out of Jonathan...which is way uncalled for. Tells him he’s gonna knock him into the middle of next week. Emmy saves the day by soaring through the department store on a hand glider and getting the drop on the bad guys. Now that shit looks FUN! Maybe Macy’s would survive if they let you hand glide through their stores.
When Estelle Getty finds out about what went down with the beatdown she’s rip shit. She fires Captain Felix and Jim Spader and promotes Jonathan to VP of the company! Just like that! Started from the bottom now we here! Everyone is super upset...none more so than the people still watching this movie. Roxy tries to appeal to Jonathan once again while he’s loading Emmy onto the back of his motorcycle for a little late night cruise around Philly but dude says he’s all set. Shithead Armand materializes and says that what Roxy really needs is sex...specifically with him. She says that yes she will have intercourse with him. The #metoo movement dies a trillion deaths. Luckily Armand can’t get it up. He says it’s Roxy’s fault because she’s ice cold. I kick my living room table over, sending copies of Premiere Magazine from the 1990’s scattering everywhere. While Jonathan and Emmy are out looking at the Liberty Bell or whatever Captain Felix and Spader show up to give chase. They figure if they can’t have Jonathan they might as well steal the mannequin. What follows is the most low rent car chase ever filmed. It’s like the one in Beverly Hills Cop but on a budget of whatever cash the producers happened to have in their pockets at the time.
Back at the store Emmy and Jonathan finally ball in a hammock. She tells him that it was “breathtaking” (the balling). I continue to have a lot of questions. He tells her that he has big plans for the future: he doesn’t want to just design windows...he want to design...wait for it...an entire city!!! Bro, you aren’t even designing the windows! Maybe pump the brakes a little there Frank Lloyd Wright! Jonathan passes out in a haze of post coital bliss. When he is finally roused from his slumber the store is already open and full of customers and dude is lying naked on the floor (cold and shamed, presumably). Instead of calling the police, the customers? They start clapping. Jonathan discovers that the Illustra people have stolen Emmy in the night! The horror! In the next scene Hollywood comes rolling up in his baller pink Cadillac and unfurls a polkadot car cover with his name on it. This scene really has nothing to do with anything...but it’s probably the best part of the movie. Just sayin’.
Jonathan runs over to Illustra guns a blazin’ (not real guns, fortunately. Or unfortunately?). He busts into the boardroom all “gimme back my mannequin sex doll” and they up their offer to $50k per year. He declines. There’s a fight, and during the melee, Roxy decides, you know, fahhhhk this nonsense! She’s gonna take Emmy and put her through a wood chipper, which is conveniently located in the loading dock of Illustra. Do all department stores have wood chippers at the ready? She throws the mannequin on the conveyor belt and hits “puree”. Jonathan is trying to come to the rescue but he has 50 cops and the entire cast of the movie chasing after him. Luckily, Hollywood turns a fire hose on the cops to keep them at bay. I thought that shit was HYSTERICAL when I was a kid. Now? Not so much. Jonathan crawls up on the conveyor belt just as Emmy is about to get ground up like that one guy in Fargo. Just before her foot is about to hit the blades BOOM! she comes to life! Actual life! The wood chipper operator sees what’s going on and shuts the machine down. Jonathan and Emmy start necking like crazy. The wood chipper dude sees this and figures all mannequins come to life if you make out with them so he reaches into a pile of trash and digs out Roxy and tries to have sex with her while she yells “No!”...and “Stop!” It is the worst.
ANYWAY...the whole crew comes crashing into the loading dock and are genuinely puzzled by the fact that Emmy is no longer a mannequin but, if fact, alive. And really WHY WOULDN’T THEY BE!!!? The Illustra people are all “arrest Jonathan!” and Jonathan is all “arrest the Illustra people...they kidnapped my girlfriend!!” Estelle Getty says that there are cameras in the store and the footage will prove that the bad guys are bad guys. Jonathan asks “Umm..grams...did you see everything on those cameras??” She gives him a little wink. Ew! So Estelle Getty watched them fucking?? Pervy! So Emmy is permanently alive and HOW DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE!?? Why couldn’t she be seen by everyone before?? How is he going to explain her presence? How is she gonna get a Social Security number?? Filmmakers...EXPLAIN YOUR WORK! I say...a better ending would’ve had Jonathan become a mannequin too...like how Tom Hanks became a fish at the end of Splash. That shit would’ve tested through the roof. Stand in stone forever...just like the song says. Nope...instead they get married in the window display. Cue Starship tune...which was actually co-written by Albert Hammond Jr of The Strokes’ssssss dad Albert Hammond Sr. The end.
A couple of years back we here at VHS of the Week took a deep-ish dive into Graffiti Bridge, the fleetingly watchable and largely forgotten sequel to Prince’s Purple Rain. Graffiti Bridge came out at a time when my man Prince’s career was on the wane. The accompanying soundtrack, “Thieves in the Temple” aside, suffered from a bizarre overabundance of Tevin Campbell songs. We don’t pick up a Prince album to hear a shit ton of Tevin Campbell...not then, not ever! (ok...I’m looking at the track list now and only 3 of the 17 songs are by Campbell. That’s still three too many!). Prince rebounded nicely the following year with Diamonds and Pearls...but that’s his last truly essential album. The following 25 years of his career are a brackish river bottom with only the occasional pearl worth digging out.
What, then, to make of Prince’s severely forgotten 1986 black & white European film noir Under the Cherry Moon? Unlike Graffiti Bridge, UTCM went into production when Prince was at the very peak of his powers. I know that I repeat this ad nauseam but if you weren’t around in 1984 you cannot possibly fathom the impact Purple Rain had on popular culture. It was the #1 album in the country for 19 weeks! Almost every song on that motherfucker is a stone cold classic “still playing it at weddings in the year 2020” monster hit. It even had a vaguely/totally autobiographical feature film accompaniment...and THAT was a huge hit too! Dude could shred, dance, sing, and almost act. He was five feet and one inch of pure dynamite! Elvis Presley in platform heels. I’m sure the higher ups at Warner Bros film division took a look at receipts for Purple Rain and saw their franchise star for the next decade. Lethal Weapon? Riggs and Prince! Christmas Vacation? Prince W. Griswold! Of course, all of these ideas went to dust the second the rough cut of Under the Cherry Moon screened out in Burbank.
So what exactly was Prince thinking when he headed to south of France in ’85 to shoot his big screen follow-up to Purple Rain? What exactly was Prince ever thinking about ANYTHING!? He was one elusive motherfucker, man, until the day he died. For one, this time he had a rock solid soundtrack album in the can. It’s called Parade and it’s in my personal Top 5 of all of Prince’s albums...and that’s sayin’ something ‘cuz the guy put out 39 albums. Although over the years the fact that the album is supposed to be a soundtrack to UTCM is often concealed because the movie tanked so hard. Kind of like when Billy Idol’s “Cradle of Love” was the theme to Andrew Dice Clay’s Ford Fairlane until that movie shit the bed at the box office and then the association was played down....know what I’m talking about? No? Whatever. Anyway, he also brought some top shelf talent down to Nice with him. The production designer Dick Sylbert worked on Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby and the cinematographer Michael Ballhaus lensed a couple of flicks y’all might have heard of like Goodfellas and What About Bob? This wasn’t no low budget Rob Zombie torture porn flick. This here was a prestige project.
Under the Cherry moon takes place in Nice, France in the 1940’s (note: WHEN in the 1940’s?? This kind of matters). The film opens with narration that explains that Prince is a bad boy named Christopher Tracy who only cares about money. The narrator then disappears from the movie...never to be heard from again. Man, I hate that shit! Like we couldn’t have figured this out on our own?? Prince plays Christopher ...who is really just Prince with a ton of particularly outlandish (even for Prince) costumes. His look is this movie is a cross between Cheech Marin and Liberace. When we meet Chris/Prince he’s playing the piano for a bunch of swooning socialites who throw napkins with come hither messages on them at his piano en masse. Although Prince is clearly just playing the piano we also hear strings and horns and all sorts of lush orchestration. Where’s the string section at, bro? Also working the room is Prince’s right hand man Tricky, played by the dude who is best known as the the dude who holds up the mirror for Morris Day in Morris Day and the Time, Jerome Benton. Morris Day was apparently too busy filming his cameo in Richard Pryor’s Moving to act in this flick. I totally just made that up...but it is certainly a possibility. Prince and Tricky and hustlers. Gigolos, if you will. They charm wealthy aristocrats and live off of the gifts and money they receive from them. I mean..at least Prince is PRINCE and can play a tune. No idea why anyone would want to mess with Tricky. He doesn’t even have his mirror! And that, my friends, is the ENTIRE MOVIE! That’s all there is to it....mostly.
But we haven’t even gotten to the opening credits yet! The credit sequence is all sweeping helicopter shots of the French Riviera set to Parade opening track “Christopher Tracy’s Parade”...which begs the question: why is a movie set in the 1940’s full of music that is clearly from 1986?? That don’t make any kind of sense! At one point the helicopter camera zooms in on an ivory white grand piano perched on a cliff high about the sea and I just KNOW that’s going to come up again later in the flick (Note: I’m wrong. It is literally never seen again! Did they just fly it up there for that one shot?? Do you know how hard it is to move a piano??). Prince and Tricky return from their night out hustling and decide to take a bubble bath. I mean Prince is in the bath and Tricky just hangs out on the crapper...as you do with your scammin’ buddies. Prince says he’s tired of hustling these penny-antes and wants to go for “big macaroni”. Maybe try Italy instead of France then? They get word that there’s some heiress who is about to inherit 50 million clams on her 21st birthday. They figure...you know...that’ll do. Then they almost kiss...so there’s that.
Prince and Tricky head off to the bday soiree where the heiress arrives in her suit of the occasion. Her name is Mary and she is played by a lady who is now known as DAME Kristen Scott Thomas. Mary is all “let's get this party rockin’” and proceeds to jump behind the drum kit and bash out a tune. And you know...she’s a perfectly serviceable drummer. Not technically proficient...but a good feel...like Ringo Starr or whatever. Later on Prince catches her eye by giving her THE LOOK! You know, the PRINCE LOOK!? His acting here almost always resembles Dave Chapelle’s Prince impersonation...which is a real mind bender. Unlike Purple Rain, where he didn’t really say much of anything (he didn’t NEED to...his guitar did that talkin’!) here he’s either goofing around goofily or being all come hither. He succeeds at neither. Perhaps a skilled director could’ve coaxed something out of him...but Prince IS the director...having fired original director Mary Lambert a week into filming. She went on to direct Pet Sematary...which is cool...and also Pet Sematary 2...which is less cool.
Prince and Mary meet and they don’t hit it off at all! She asks him what he does and he says he does nothing professionally. Regular friggin’ Johnny Rockefeller, this guy. She says she has a boyfriend anyway...so there’s that. Prince tells her she’ll breathe better if she loosens her chastity belt. UTCM is less sexist than Purple Rain but only because no women were thrown into a dumpsters during the making of this film. In every other way it is horrifically sexist! Prince’s flirtations with Mary all basically involve him, and sometimes Tricky, insulting her, calling her “party poop” and “brat” and “cabbage head” and mocking her virginity. Still, she takes him out on a shopping spree and buys him a Porsche because this movie sucks like that.
What happens next you ask? I mean, really not much of anything. This is a flick where very little happens yet it is still often impossible to follow. It’s like they just shot a bunch of scenes and let the chips fall where they fell. Like...I think Prince hooks up with Mary’s mom but I’m not entirely sure. At one point he shows up outside of the family’s mansion drunk and yells “fill up her ass...she likes that!” and then just drives away. No context...no nothing! We do get to meet Mary’s dad in the form of the actor who played Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop (is this the gentleman who wrecked the buffet at the Herrod Club??). Maitland is NOT a fan of Prince’s (not even Little Red Corvette, bro? Ice cold). Prince shows up at another party and jumps up on the piano and does a split and plays “Girls and Boys” (not to be confused with the Blur song “Boys and Girls”). I use the word “play” cautiously as Prince is not actually playing the piano and there are no other musicians present. WHERE is the music coming from, dudes!? Victor Maitland shuts the party down and takes Mary home and tells Prince to stay away or he’ll, you know, kill him. Later that night Prince climbs through Mary’s window and tries to ball her but he's actually in her mother's bedroom. My arms remain folded. Face: expressionless. The next day during lunch Prince mentions he’s afraid of bats. A bat promptly swoops down from the ceiling. Prince screams. Ha?
One night about 7 hours into this movie Prince rolls up to a drag strip rocking out to his own tune “Life Can Be So Nice.” I’d rock out to it too because that song FUCKS! Speaking of...Prince and Mary drag race, after which he throws her to the ground and prepares to ravage her. And he’s...like...wearing this weird belly shirt (shirts Vs. blouses) and he...like...rubs his own dick a little (this is PG-13 so just a little. The rubbing...not the dick. Or...I don’t really know...). They start to make out like banshees and it’s just...OFF! I don’t know how else to explain it...but it looks kind of like Prince has never kissed anyone before (which, if true, would change literally everything...in the entire world). He...like...puffs up his cheeks like a blowfish and puckers his lips and rocks his head from side to side violently. It’s about as sexy as watching Don Rickles read the phone book. After they finish Prince says “I wish your father could see us when we kiss.” First; WHAT!? Second: her response--”not really...you BIT me!” Prince is feeling himself so hard he decides to find a phone booth, which is conveniently right next to the spot on the field where they balled, and call up Victor Maitland and tell him off. They decide to go for a little victory lap ball sesh in the phone booth...which is just like the Christian Slater/Patricia Arquette scene in True Romance minus any and all carnality.
Prince seems to have this Mary business locked down. She takes him ona boat ride around Cote d’Azur and they say hey to Mick and Keith and then they go ball in a cave that is somehow full of candles (they must’ve hit a Yankee Candle on the way). Somewhere, on a cliff nearby, sits a perfectly good grand piano...unplayed. Back in town, though, Tricky decides to rain on (Christopher Tracy’s) parade by telling Mary she’s being played by Prince and that he’s owed 30% of whatever money she gives him. Tricky also says “I’m a werewolf, bitch”...but I have no reason to believe this to be true. Tricky and Prince fight. They call each other “drunk” and “stupid”. Shiver. Mary decides to board the first private plane to NYC but Prince comes rolling up on the tarmac like the end of Casablanca or whatever (I haven’t seen it since college...there’s definitely a sad airport scene, right?). She jumps in the coupe with Prince and they drive off somewhere to hash things out. He immediately crawls in the back seat and puts his shades on ‘cuz Prince gonna be Prince. She calls him a whore. He whispers Prince-isms like “define love”. He tells her he wants to marry her and all that. I guess she agrees because they immediately set out for the sex cave. They decided to eschew dialogue in favor of simply letting the song “Kiss” play out...which is understandable. That tune is a big ass hit from back then.
Unfortunately Victor Maitland is still full of murder rage and sends his goons to kidnap Tricky. Tricky fights them off and rushes to warn Prince at the sex cave (How’d he know about the cave, huh?). Prince is like “oh shit...thanks for the heads up...just let me go rescue Mary fir...BANG!....the bad guys shoot Prince! He fucking DIES! Before he fades to black he manages to say “we sure had fun, didn’t we?” which is what I hope actual Prince was thinking as he was dying foolishly in that elevator. Man, I’m getting all choked up writing this now. I loved Prince...I really did. The song “Sometimes it Snows in April” starts to play out...and I’ll tell you...I put that one next to “Purple Rain” any day. It’s got loads of unintended poignancy now...Prince having died in April and all. Remember when D’Angelo tried to play that song on late night TV the week Prince died and broke down crying. FML, man.
Anyway...the big boo hoo ending kind of elevates everything that came before it, right? WRONG! Some time passes and, one afternoon, Tricky returns to his apartment with his girlfriend Katy to find a letter from Mary. She tells him that she misses Prince/Christopher terribly...and that she’s decided to give Tricky some dough and an apartment building. She says to give Katie a hug. Instead, Tricky says he’s Katy’s landlord now...and that bitch better have his money. She starts to back away from him and he’s all “where you going...I’m gonna put your ass out on the streets!” And then the movie just ENDS! That’s it! Good lord in heaven...and I do mean Prince Rogers Nelson. The end.
**repost from june 15, 2018**
Alright folks....VHS of the week has been a little slow on the go because: life. But I thought I would give a shout out to this extremely underrated flick...one that I think easily makes the Top 5 list of Francis Ford Coppola’s movies (and that dude made some serious flix, you know what I’m sayin’?). Rumble Fish was shot at the same time as The Outsiders....and I can talk Outsiders all day...so let's? I think our entire 8th grade class had to read The Outsiders and it was bigger than boners. It pretty much defined the entire year: that, Wayne’s World, and the Kris Kross album (uh huh....uh huh). One weekend a bunch of dudes slept over my house and we made up a chart where we considered whether each and every one of our fellow classmates was either a Soc or a Greaser. There was even an elaborate yet ultimately ill-fated attempt to stage an actual rumble. Here’s the transcript of a phone call I had with a friend of mine (we’ll call him Slash) at the time....reprinted verbatim:
Me: Hello?
Slash: It’s Slash...we need to know how many dudes you can take at the rumble?
Me: Huh??
Slash: Axl is taking 4 dudes....Izzy is taking 6....I’m taking 10 dudes.
Me: I don’t know, man...I don’t think I can take any dudes. Maybe one?
Slash: No way man...you gotta take at least two dudes to be in the rumble!
Me: How are we even getting this rumble?
Slash: Popcorn’s mom is giving us a ride
Me: To a rumble?? Ok...put me down for two dudes.
And we did it for JOHNNY, man!
Anyway....yeah...so Rumble Fish is a far superior film....presented in gorgeous black and white....which you would never know from this VHS box featuring all color photos that makes it look like some bullshit rom com. “Biff Wilcox is looking for you, Rusty James. He says he’s gonna kill you.”....”Well I ain’t hiding!” What an opener! You got a young, not-yet-mangled Mickey Rourke...a young Matty Dillon...the lovely Diane Lane... a still very much drunk and high on cocaine Dennis Hopper....not to mention Mr. Tom Waits! And perhaps one of the great film scores of all time by Stewart Copeland...which is the only thing of any artistic merit to come from a member of the band The Police. Yeah...I said it. If you haven’t seen this movie...you need to. Stay gold, y’all.
Ok...I realize the film featured here is not on VHS...but I’m writing to you from Day #5 of a quarantine that could last up to 18 months...and it could be a small eternity before I get to shop for tapes again. I went ahead and threw my copy of A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors in the pic just to keep things copacetic...so maybe don’t break balls! I also realized that VHS of the Week is really about tearing movies apart. Busting chops. Cracking wise. And I don’t really feel like I have any of that in me right now, today. I always try to include some sort of personal story in these reviews because...as terrible as most of these movies are...they mean everything in the world to me. They are the fabric I use to stitch together my formative years. My happiest years. I want to talk about the night two friends (we’ll call them Slash and Duff) and I went to see Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare in September of 1991.
First, let’s talk about this Nightmare on Elm Street Collection...which was released in 1999 and retailed for about $150...which is about $150 in 1999 money. It features all Part’s 1 through 6, the uber meta Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, a booklet, a documentary, AND a pair of 3D glasses which can only be utilized for about 8 minutes toward the end of Freddy’s Dead. It’s one handsome package! And also--completely wallet destroying for a marginally employed chump like myself. I couldn’t look in her eyes...she was out of my league, you dig? I can’t tell you how many times I walked into Tower Records or, later, Virgin Megastore and cradled this box in my arms and thought “what if I just RUN OFF INTO THE NIGHT WITH IT!?” But I can’t run for shit...and stealing ain’t baller...so I had to settle for a lot of Wayne Campbell: “She will be mine. Oh yes...she will be mine!” I always kept my eye on the prize, though. “One day...when I get some real money...” That day finally came in 2007, when I was working at this hotshot oyster bar in the North End of Boston. I was bringing in some decent coin on the regular...but that spring we had this severe staff shortage and I ended up working like 38 days in a row or something ridiculous. When all was said and done I had enough cash in my pocket to buy an ’85 Chevy Chevette (seriously, I was so busy I stopped counting at a certain point). When Day Off ’07 finally rolled around people were like “what are you gonna do with all that scratch, Tebo??” You KNOW what! I’m gonna drive straight to the motherfucking mall and buy myself the Nightmare boxed set...so that’s what I did (do you accept CASH!?? Ka-ching!). I also went to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls...which is weird because I had never done that before and have not done so since. I guess maybe it was a nice day?
So this boxed set and I have been thick as thieves ever since. I have lugged it around with me from apartment to apartment over the last 13 years. In fact, if the joint went up in smoke I would probably rescue Freddy Krueger first (note: this is probably not true. I mean...I could just stream the movies. Plus, we have cats). When I moved in with my pal Sean in 2012 he invited his mom and stepdad over to watch football one Sunday afternoon. While they watched the game I busied myself setting up my DVD collection. When I pulled out the Freddy box Sean’s stepdad, Boston accent thicker than 10 SNL Dunkin’ Donuts sketches, grabbed it out of my hands, gazed it lovingly and shouted “holy shit, guy--fuckin’ Freddy Kroo-gah!? I raised my kids on this shit!” In that moment this man became my hero for life. That’s some seriously ace parenting there. It made me think about how I raised MYSELF on these flicks...over the extreme objections of both of my parents. But hey...they didn’t exactly stop me from watching them either. It became a rite of passage...finally being old enough to catch a Nightmare flick in the theater. And by “old enough” I mean nine years old...which is exactly how old I was when I conned my extremely unsuspecting great-grandparents into taking me to see Part 4 in the theater. I reasoned that the central character of the film’s name was Fred...same as my great-grandfather...so he was guaranteed to enjoy it. Nine year olds--they know all! I haven’t missed a Freddy on the big screen since (except for the reboot...which I refuse to acknowledge the existence of). Part 5? Caught that at a drive-in double feature with the Hulk Hogan flick No Holds Barred. Not a bad way to close out the summer of ’89.
Freddy’s Dead marked the first time that I was allowed to see one of these flicks without an adult present...mostly because all of the adults I know flatly refused to watch it. They used to have an unofficial system in place where your moms could buy you and your pals a ticket to see an R-rated movie unaccompanied as long as she wrote her home phone number on the back of the ticket stub. You want to send little Danny into Angel Heart? As long as the usher has your digits! I was never quite sure what they were gonna even do with these phone numbers. Calls the house: “Yeah Gail...this is Bill down at Lincoln Plaza. Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet are going at it...and your kid...he’s INTO IT!!!” Anyway, September 20th 1991 my mom dropped Slash, Duff, and I off to catch the 7:30 showing of Freddy’s Dead at Showcase Cinemas in downtown Worcester. We watched it. We loved it. But then again...we loved anything and everything we saw on the big screen at this point. I have a journal from this era where I declare Joe Pesci’s The Super and Necessary Roughness to be two of the greatest comedies of all time. This is typically the part where I would re-watch the flick and give y’all the play by play...but I don’t want to...because Freddy’s Dead is ass terrible. It’s the worst film in the series (and yes...I have seen Part 2). I did try to watch it again about a decade ago and couldn’t even get through it. It’s just...the tone is way different from the earlier films...kind of like how the Friday the 13th films were never the same after Paramount sold the franchise. I don’t know...it stars Billy Zane’sssssss sister Lisa and has cameos from a coked up as shit Tom and Roseanne Arnold and a probably drunk as shit Johnny Depp (wino forever, bro). I think there’s a scene where a dude falls out of an airplane and lands on a bed of nails...which has got to hurt like a son of a bitch. I liked it so much at the time that I dragged my dad...who HATED horror movies...to see it the following weekend. I reasoned that he might actually enjoy this one as it featured the Iron Butterfly song “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida”...and he was tight with that tune. I also noted the score was by Brian May and we were both massive Queen fans. In his angry diatribe following the movie my dad mentioned a suspicious dearth of layered guitarmonies. Turns out there are/were two Brian May’s. Hey, it’s not like I could’ve googled this shit at the time!
Anyway...after the movie was over the three of us went outside and were mugged. I mean...that’s the story we told our entire 8th grade class when we got back to school the following Monday. What actually happened was this: usually my mom would be dutifully waiting for us out front as soon as the flicks ended. For some reason, on this night, we decided to delay calling her and take a stroll into the center of downtown Worcester, which was pretty well de-crap-itated at the time. The Galleria mall was abandoned as were most of the storefronts. I think there was a Strawberries Records and a porno theater. In other words...the days of charcuterie boards full of house made kimchi and ultra rare Vermont IPA’s were far off at this point. Like...26 years off. I’m not sure what we were looking for by walking further into the city. Maybe we were 12 years-old and feeling ourselves and wanted to sample some of that Woo nightlife. As soon as we got past City Hall a group of young ruffians surrounded us and started to ask, not unreasonably, what we were doing out on the streets. Were we actually in danger? Probably not. We were in a well lighted area with dozens of people around. As I frantically scanned around for a payphone, Slash started digging into the breast pocket of his jean jacket. “What are you looking for?” asked one of the older kids. “I’m getting 36 cents to give to you, homeboy!” Slash replied. Well, homeboy didn’t like this and threw a shoulder into Slash. That was enough action for us. I grabbed Slash and Duff and we darted out into traffic and sprinted into the lobby of that huge glass Shawmut Bank tower. The kids gave chase but thankfully there was a security guard in the lobby who came out and told the kids to piss off. He gave us a thorough dressing down for being out on the streets and agreed to call my mom...who was apoplectic and grounded me for life (I’m still inside).
When we got back to school the story we told went something like this: we were on our way to to porno theater when we were surrounded by kids with switchblades. Slash roundhouse kicked the knives out of all of their hands. Duff put one of the kids in a sleeper hold while I worked his midsection...but then another dude got me in a full nelson. Luckily Slash had his nunchucks and was able to get the kid off of me. We ran across the street as fast as we could...jumping over cars and causing 10 fender benders. We had to really book it too ‘cuz the bad guys started flinging Chinese throwing stars at us! When we banged on the doors to the Shawmut tower the security guard came out brandishing an Uzi and said “not today, PUNKS!” The bad guys retreated.
What really happened after the “mugging” was this: Slash and Duff spent the night at my place...despite the lifetime grounding. We sat on my waterbed (shut up...a lot of people had them) and waited for Headbanger’s Ball to come on. When Slash flipped on the channel there was this weird, Sepia-toned video playing that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before in my life. I instantly got butterflies in my stomach. Something about those hooks! Slash immediately switched the station. “Dude!” I said...”go back! What WAS that?!” “Stupid Nirvana,” he said. “They’ve been playing it all the time and it isn’t even METAL!” So there...I saw Freddy’s Dead...got “mugged”...and heard Nirvana for the first time...all in one Friday night. Three big life boxes...checked off. The end.
Saint Stephen’s Elementary School--Spring 1984. A group of 30 or so future lapsed catholics, myself included, return from April vacation. Sister Louise asks us to congregate at the front of the classroom. There, she goes around the group and asks every one of us if we had seen any movies over spring break....which is slightly unusual. I mean, we typically only ever talked about Jesus and other Jesusy-type things. What happened next was even more curious: almost every single kid said that they had seen the movie Splash (except Joey Garagiola...who said he had watched Hardcastle and McCormick...which is, of course, a television program. Sorry bro.) It was like the entire class had gone to see Splash together but didn’t invite me (or Joey G). “And what about you, Sarah? Did you see any movies last week?” Yes Sister...I saw Splash!” “Ohhh...how lovely!” Once she got to, like, the 18th kid I started to smell bullshit. “And how about you Matthew? Did you see any movies?” I’m thinkin’...if this kid says Splash I’m gonna hork up my PB&J! And he totally says Splash! And I’m like...yo sis...you already seem to know the answer...why not just ask if there’s anyone in the room who hasn’t seen Splash and let’s back to the stations of the cross or whatever. I mean...that’s what I said in my head, anyway. When she finally came to me I brought out the big guns. “And what about you, Danny Tebo?” “Oh...just a little film called Risky BUSINESS!!” (gasps...pearl clutching). “WELL!” said the nun, “don’t know if I like the sound of that!” Oh you don’t, do you!? She threatened to call my parents...which wouldn’t have moved the needle much as they were the ones who rented it for me. It’s funny to talk about now (I mean...is it?) but I was fairly upset at the time. No one likes to be the one kid left sitting on the bench. So I decided to take my anger out, not on my classmates, but on the film Splash. I did this by refusing to watch it. Take THAT, Splash!
This week I finally lifted my 36 year Splash embargo and I discovered that Splash is way, way dirtier than Risky Business! I realize this statement is probably false as Risky Business is rated R and is full of prostitutes and subway balling. But it is also completely free of bestiality...something that cannot be said of Splash. What happens is this: Splash opens with a flashback to an incident that occurred back in the 60’s in the waters off the coast of Cape Cod. Two young boys and their parents are on some sort of day cruise listening to some 5th rate J Geils Band knockoff play “Wooly Bully”. You know what song kindof rules? “Wooly Bully”. The older boy throws coins onto the ground so he can look up girl’s skirts. This type of shtick was totally PG and acceptable in 1984. Gah! The younger boy spends his time staring blankly into the water. And then...out of nowhere...he friggin’ jumps ship! Hey man...the band ain’t THAT bad! Underwater, he sees a mermaid...‘bout the same age as he is. Jumping into the water suddenly looks like a pretty solid idea! Unfortunately he’s a human person and cannot live more than a minute....minute and a half without oxygen. Someone pulls the kid to safety before he croaks. The mermaid is mad bummed. She cries.
Flash forward to the early 1980’s. Mr Overboard has grown up to be unserious-era Tom Hanks. Some of y’all younger readers might have a tough time believing this but there was a time when Tommy Hanks was just some schmo comedian that folks didn’t think too much of. I mean...he was FINE...but he wasn’t TOM HANKS, you dig? Now he’s the goodwill ambassador to the universe. He’s like Oprah but white and a dude. Splash was directed by Ron Howard, who would later team up with Hanks for Apollo 13...which is just like Splash but in outer space and with no mermaids. They also did Da Vinci Code together...which would have benefited by the inclusion of a couple dozen mermaids.
Anyway, this Hanks cat has done pretty well for himself. He’s got a thriving importing business in NYC, a BMW, and a phat spread in the upper west. His upskirting brother has grown into man who I cannot even look at without bursting into tears of joy, John Candy. Unfortunately, Candy drives an Iroc-Z (with T-tops) and writes for Penthouse and is still a total pervy creep. He’s a total lout, this brother. Early on the bros head to a wedding but Hanks has to go stag ‘cuz his girlfriend breaks up with him. I try to feel bad for the dude but the girlfriend is not an actual character in the movie sooo. Hanksy gets himself good and wedding drunk and pisses and moans to his brother about how he’s unlucky in love and how he’s gonna die alone and DUDE...you are like 26 years-old. Maybe pump the brakes on that dying alone shit. Candy doesn’t want to hear it either. He’s all “quitcha cryin’, Tommy! Let’s keep boozin’ and head to Rio!” Hanks says he wants to go to the Cape instead...so he does. He takes a taxi to a part of Cape Cod that is totally Montauk. He arrives on the beach to find some suspicious scientist played by Eugene Levy. Well hey Jim’s Dad! Whaddup Johnny Rose! Who doesn’t love the Lev? No one I want to know! I feel like this scientist character is up to no good...but we won’t find out for another five minutes or so. Hanks hires some local dude to bring him out to the island in his janky ass rowboat. The boat shits the bed and the local dude swims back to shore...which is a real pisser for our man Hanks as he never learned how to swim. So what does he do? Grows his beard mad long and befriends a volleyball, naturally. Seriously though, he falls into the water and is knocked unconscious. He wakes up on the beach completely not dead. I call bullshit on this. Before he can get his bearings a naked goddess with crimped blonde hair jumps out of the bushes and makes out with him...but also steals his wallet. Here I’d like to note that I woke up ferociously hungover on a beach in Wellfleet once and the EXACT same thing happened to me. Actually, what really happened was I woke up to the sight of a strange Australian dude taking a piss. He tuned around and asked if I had any weed, mate. It was 6 AM. I did not have any weed.
The blonde is, of course, a mermaid...and I’d bet my every last dollar that she’s the same mermaid that the kid saw at the beginning of the movie. What are the odds there are TWO mermaids off the coast of Cape Cod. Also--what are the odds that the mermaid grows up to look like DARYL HANNAH!? What if she grew up to look like, I don’t know, Anne Ramsey? We’d have a totally different flick right here. You know--Daryl Hannah is currently married to Neil Young and also once dated Jackson Browne. Her Tinder profile says “looking for a man who can write songs. I mean...like...REALLY good songs. Like...the best songs ever written-type songs.” So the mermaid takes the wallet to her underground crib, which is pretty decked out (maps on the walls...a table...free WiFi). She figures this Hanks fella must live in NYC based on his driver’s license and whatnot...so she swims up to the Statue of Liberty (give me your tired, your poor. your most attractive mermaids). She hops out on Ellis Island bareass naked (did I mention that her mermaid fin goes away when she’s dry and she grows land legs? Well...she does). You get to see some bum and a little side boob and YOU really thought this movie was appropriate for first graders, Sister Louise!? I’d ask her myself but she was 76 in 1984...which would make her 112 now. I’m gonna go with “there was never a VCR in the convent during her lifetime.”
The mermaid is promptly arrested for indecent exposure. She can’t really tell the police all that much because she is NOT HUMAN. This is a fish-out-of-water comedy in the most literal sense possible. So she can’t understand words or anything else but she has Tom Hanks’ wallet so, instead of sending her up to Bellevue for a psych evaluation, they give dude a call. Hanksy rushes down to the precinct and he’s super jazzed that they’ve got this naked blonde lady waiting for him, natch. And he should be jazzed ‘cuz this gal is D...T...F!!!! They don’t even make it up to his apartment without stopping to ball in the elevator first. I know that lady and the mutant fish monster in The Shape of Water did some serious fucking...but I think Hanks and Hannah might have them beat. These two...they have some SESSIONS! “Oh my god!” Hanks gasps, “you’re gonna put me in the hospital!” From sex. The Shape of Water won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Splash was nominated for Best Original Screenplay (no shit). Those Academy members--they love to peep humans copulating with fish. Tom Hanks does not appear to be at all concerned that this woman is A--a complete stranger and B--cannot speak words.
Eventually Hanks has to go back to the office and make a living. The mermaid slips out of his apartment and heads straight to Bloomingdale’s because it’s the 1980’s and people be shoppin’! She charges a grillion dollars to TH’s Diner’s Club card and then learns how to speak English by watching three hours of Richard Simmons on TV or some such bullshit. When Hanks finally tracks her down she explains in her new English words that she can only stay with him until the next full moon. Then she must leave...never to return! She also tells him her name is Madison because she saw it on a street sign. Hanks is down to roll with the punches and get to what’s real...but later that night Madison draws herself a bath and her mermaid bottom comes back like PATOW! Hanks tries to force his way into the bathroom like a real asshole jerk and Madison is all like “humina humina don’t come it I got my period!” Luckily there’s a hair dryer nearby and apparently, if you blow dry your mermaid fin, it turns back into normal human legs. Knowing=half the battle.
So these two are in love and as happy as a couple of clams (or a man and a fish). They hit the town for a sweet early 80’s NYC montage; they watch Don Mattingly crack a few at Yankee Stadium, they check out The Clash at Bond’s, they dodge bullets from Bernie Goetz on the subway, they dine at Windows on the World where Madison consumes an entire lobster...shell and all. Hanks plays racquetball with John Candy, who smokes cigarettes and drinks beer the entire time. Hanks tells him that he’s in love and wants to marry Madison. Candy feigns a heart attack...which might be funny if he didn’t actually die of a heart attack at age 43. Goddamn I miss that guy.
Madison agrees to marry Hanks but...remember how I told you that Eugene Levy was in this movie and that he’d come up again? He totally does. Turns out he’s a fledgling scientist trying to make a name for himself by capturing an actual mermaid. So he’s the bad guy...but he isn’t really all that bad...bad guy-wise. The second half of the movie is draggy as shit. Levy follows the happy couple all around NYC trying to spray water on Madison so she’ll turn back into a fish. There’s this running gag where he keeps spraying water on the wrong couple that’s like a 3 out of 10 on the chuckle scale. Eventually everyone attends a gala where the President of the United States is supposed to give a speech (and it’s just some nameless rando dude and not Ronnie Reagan). Levy gets his shot and Madison goes full mermaid and Hanks just stands there staring like Whoooo Teeee Fahhhh??? The government kidnap Madison and talk about filleting her so they can study mermaid anatomy or whatever whatever. Levy does and about-face and decides to help Hanks steal Madison back from the government....because Johnny Rose is a solid ass dude like that!
Hanks takes Madison on a car chase through the Meatpacking District and shit is looking grim. They’ve got helicopters and swat teams and the army/navy game and Shriners and the Guardian Angels looking for these motherfuckers. They finally reach a dock above the Hudson and Madison tells him that he’s welcome to come with, right, but he won’t be able to return. She also reveals that she is the mermaid that she saw when she was a child...which is the most shocking reveal since that lady had a dick at the end of The Crying Game. She jumps in the drink and he chews it over for like 13 seconds and then belly flops into the water after her. See, but he’s a human person so he promptly dies...but Madison kisses him on the mouth and he comes back to life and they beat the shit out of like 20 police divers. They swim off together and immediately find an enchanted world full of wonderful, colorful schools of fish and coral and aren’t they in the HUDSON RIVER!? Shouldn’t they be swimming through fields of garbage and stolenDatsuns and putrid remains of Gambino crime family victims? The credits start to roll and they swim on and on and Tom Hanks does not sprout a fish tail...which is a giant friggin’ gyp if you ask me. You should watch all of the credits, though, because they eventually end up at some crazy North Pole looking village (would it be the South Pole since it’s on the ocean floor?) That’s the end....or is it!? There’s long been talk of a reboot. Or maybe a hybrid movie where Tom Hanks crashes his plane into the Hudson and gets ninja fucked by mermaids called Sully’s Splash? I don’t know about all that....but I do know that if you are trying to decide whether to show your first grader Splash or Risky Business I would still recommend the latter. The end.
If you weren’t there you might not believe it but I’m here to tell you that in the mid 1980’s, Stop or my Mom Will Shoot star and Botox victim Sylvester Stallone was more popular than Walkman (the cassette listening device...not the mid-level famous indie band from the early 00’s). More popular than a package of Series 1 Garbage Pail Kids! The Italian Stallion (ick) put out EIGHT movies between 1985 and 1990 including two Rambo sequels, two Rocky sequels, and an entire flick about motherfucking arm wrestling. Dude was mad prolific. He was like the Prince of action movies but about a foot taller, white, and with no discernible musical talent of any kind. People were all to happy to buy tickets to see whatever bullshit Sly put up on the screen.
Today we’re gonna talk about Stallone’s 1986 flick Cobra, which my older cousin forced me to watch repeatedly, not because he thought it was a particularly good film, but because Stallone’s character drives, in his Masshole parlance, “a mint fahkin’ cahhh, kid!”. I went ahead and checked it out for the first time in a cool three decades and what happens is this: The film opens with a narration that tells us that, in America, there’s “a robbery every 11 seconds...a violent crime every 25 seconds...an instance of mopery every millisecond.” (ok, I totally made that last one up). The narrator then promptly disappears from the movie. They just hired a guy to tell us that, in life, there is crime. I mean...in case you didn’t already know. There’s also a ton of frenetically edited shots of a bunch of dudes in leather vests on the set of Stone Temple Pilots “Sex-Type Thing” video (barrel fires...hanging chains...loads of inexplicably slick surfaces) banging axes together high above their heads. These gentlemen are members of a violent society called The New Order, which is like Joy Division but poppier and with no Ian Curtis. They are hellbent for leather...and also for arbitrarily murdering the ever-loving shit out of people. I know this because I read about it on the back of the VHS box...which was helpful because it is NOT MENTIONED in the actual movie! Apparently Cobra originally had a running time of two and a half hours...which some folks thought was way too long for a movie like Cobra. Stallone’s solution was to go back and surgically remove about 85% of the plot...figuring that 87 minutes of shots of his character chewing up some scenery (and a shitload of toothpicks) and killing an butt ton of bad guys while rocking aviator shades and nut hugging dungarees would prolly make for a decent enough flick. If it often feels like half of the movie is missing it’s because half of the movie is actually missing. I mean...you can apparently watch a bootleg of the original 140 minute cut on YouTube...but ain’t nobody got time for that!
Right, so after the credits roll we see some C-list Danny Trejo impersonator roll into a supermarket parking lot on his motorcycle. He parks his bike in a handicapped spot like a real dick so we can immediately he is either A--Up to no good...or B--Unconcerned about parking tickets. Answer: both A & B. The dude walks into the produce section, pulls out a shotgun, and starts murdering shoppers willy nilly. The police surround the supermarket and speculate on the shooter’s motives. “Just another asshole who woke up hating the world,” one of them says. Deep, deep sigh, dudes. He tells one of the hostages he’s free to escape but then shoots him in the back as he tries to exit the store...which is a real dick move. One of the cops outside shouts “Call in the Cobra!” and I’m about to shut this flick off ‘cuz I got the herpetophobia like you read about. But no...as boss as it would be (for certain viewers) to watch a poisonous reptile swallow this murderous murderer...it turns out Cobra is the name of Sylvester Stallone’s character. Like, his momma named him Cobra?? Oh...I guess his last name is Cobretti...so ‘Cobra” to his pals. Or “Cobe” if you nasty.
Dude rolls up in his tricked out 1950 Mercury Monterey Coupe (note: I had to look this up...I know fuck all about cars) and he’s cool as a cucumber. He’s got the jeans and the shades, like I mentioned, and also a toothpick in his mouth. Like...at all times. Like...for the ENTIRE MOVIE! Although sometimes it looks like it might be a match...but dude doesn’t smoke...so that doesn’t really make sense. Or maybe he’s a former smoker and having an unlit match in his mouth helps satisfy an oral fixation? Maybe they go into his smoking cessation in the two hour version? Or, I don’t know--maybe dude just chows mad corn on the cob and always has shit stuck in his choppers. Maybe a toothpick company helped produce this film? The possibilities are endless...or...certainly plentiful enough to warrant an entire paragraph on Cobra’s ever-present toothpick...which is what you have just finished reading.
So Cobra enters the supermarket to try to help diffuse the hostage situation. He finds a Coors Banquet display and immediately crushes a brewski ‘cuz hostage negotiations are much less stressful with a bit of a buzz on. Cobra gets on the loudspeaker and tells the killer that he’s a lousy shot and that he’s gonna waste him...which...I mean...I guess is one way to try to talk someone off the ledge. The killer says he has a bomb and is gonna blow the place up. “I don’t shop here,” Cobra replies. Fair enough....fair enough. Despite the fact that it’s dark as balls in the market and Cobra refuses to take off his sunglasses, he finally locates the killer. Cobra tells him to drop his weapon but then just goes right ahead and shoots the dude seven times. “You’re a disease...and I’m the cure,” he quips. Aaaaand we have us a ballgame!
Outside of the supermarket Cobra is surrounded by reporters, who ask him if this shooting has anything to do with The Night Slasher murders. So...the dude in the market was the Night Slasher? What about all of those axe play guys?? I’m so confused! One of the reporters suggests that maybe he didn’t have to shoot the dude seven times. Cobra roughs him up before driving home to his bachelor pad in Hermosa Beach. This scene is set to a tune with a chorus that goes something like “working too hard/trying to make a living”...which makes sense as Cobra is clearly both working too hard AND trying to make a living. I pine for the days when movies were full of songs with lyrics that explained exactly what we are seeing on screen. At home, Cobra eats a days-old slice of pizza and plays with his guns and watches TV. The man on the news says that the Night Slasher has indiscriminately slaughtered everyone from nurses to an 11 year-old sexual assault victim (note: whhhhaaat????). His signature move is entering people’s houses and bludgeoning with a claw hammer while they sleep. I mean...god...DAMN, dudes!! This guy makes Ritchie Ramirez look like Bob Hope! Don’t just take it from the guy on the news: in the very next scene a waitress is leaving work when a man reaches into her carand murders the shit out of her with some sort of hand scycle. That’s some scary shit!
The next night old Slash is at it again...chopping up some lady under a bridge downtown (It’s where he drew some blood!). This time, though, he has an entire crew with him. So he is both a lone wolf serial killer and the leader of a killing gang? Man, that don’t make any kind of sense! Before Slasher and his crew can call it a murder night they are spotted by Danish model and lady who drunkenly cavorted with recently deposed Public Enemy MC Flava Flav on reality television Brigitte Nielsen. The Brig races away from the scene but a lady gang member jots down her license plate and promises to run it through the computer because she is a dirty police officer!! Ohh fuhhhh....
Back at police headquarters a small group of crusty old white police caricatures have arrived from central casting to meet with Cobra and his severely underdeveloped partner. We know the partner’s name is Gonzales and that he eats too much sugar and that’s literally all we ever learn. The brass suggest that it’s time to bring Cobra up from The Zombie Squad to help put an end to the...what have you. Let’s hit the pause button for a second: what in the WHAT is a ZOMBIE SQUAD!?? Like...a bunch of cops who hit the karaoke bar after work and nail the harmonies of “Time of the Season”? Or wait...is Stallone’s character fucking DEAD!? Is this some sort of Sixth Sense bullshit (Sorry if I just ruined The Sixth Sense for you...but also not sorry. I mean...it has been 21 years). Turns out it’s nothing fun like that. Zombie is just slang for “tough cop who plays by his own rules”. Yawn. Cobra accepts the assignment and promises to shake down sicko in the city. What follows is a montage of a Cobra shaking down every sicko in the city. I’m not sure how many montages there are in this movie (two?) but it’s way too many for a flick that’s only 87 minutes long.
Eventually the shakedown montage starts to blend into a “Brigitte Nielsen” being photographed with a bunch of Short Circuit reject robots” montage. I guess she’s some sort of model or something. And also--completely unconcerned about the axe murder she witnessed the previous evening?? She was like “hey...my name is Paul and this axe murder is between y’all!” After her shoot her photographer friend is walking her to a subterranean parking garage (and sexually harassing the shit out of her) when the Night Slasher gang comes a whompin’ and a whoopin’. They kill the photographer...who probably had it coming. The parking lot security guard tries to help out but the killers smoosh him to death with their cargo van. Then there’s a cutaway shot to some random dude in a business suit who just happens upon the scene and is promptly hacked to pieces! PIECES!
Brigitte manages to escape (I confess...I don’t really remember how and I didn’t write it in my notes. Sorry doodz). Cobra and Gonzalez interview her in the hospital and assure her that she’s safe there. When they leave Gonzalez asks Cobra if he noticed how hot the victim is...which breaks every last written rule in the police office/victim relationship handbook. Cobra says that he did not notice that she was hot...no. We know that he is lying because he will wind up marrying her before this film hits the theaters (in real life, I mean. There are no nuptials in Cobra).
Brigitte should be safe and sound in the hospital but...OH RIGHT....there’s a dirty ladycop on the murder squad! She tips off her pal Slash-O, who comes to Cedars-Sinai with his uber knife and slaughters a good half dozen hospital workers on his way to Brigitte’s room. Luckily our boy Cobra rushes to the scene and HEY!! HIS TOOTHPICK IS GONE!!! What, did he run out?? Don’t worry...it comes back like three scenes later...only to disappear intermittently for the rest of the film. Might be a fun drinking game though: take a shot every time Cobra appears without his toothpick. I’m confident you could get yourself reasonably shitfaced. Anyway, Cobra rescues Brigitte and loads her into his ride for a sick ass car chase. Having seen a lot of modern day, Fast and the Furious-style chases where cars somehow manage to jump from skyscraper to skyscraper, I can’t really criticize the one in Cobra because it looks like it is actually happening. Who is chasing whom and to where, though, is completely unclear. It’s all over the map! Literally. One second they are on the 101...and then they are in Reseda...and then they turn the corner to Chinatown...then they are in Venice Beach. I just know tons of cars crash and explode and it is awesome for the 8 year-old viewer. There’s also this moment where Cobra hits this special button on his dashboard labeled “Nitro” (as in nitrous oxide?) that makes his car go WICKED FAST! I always vowed that I would have this button installed in my car when I grew up. I guess I could still talk to the dealer that sold me my Rav 4.
Cobra wins the car chase but his higher-ups are all “this thing is so far out of control I don’t know where to start!”, which could easily be the tagline for this movie. He explains that the Night Slasher isn’t just one dude...but, in fact, an entire army of slashers...which should be GLARINGLY OBVIOUS to anyone who just watched that massive car chase. They decide that the best plan of attack is to take Brigitte out of the city and hide her somewhere. They also assign a lady cop to travel with Cobra and his partner (HR protocol) and of course it’s the friggin’ dirty cop! I mean...COME ON! They head out to a foundry town north of Barstow or wherever and check into a motel and right away...dirty cop is on the pay phone to New Order revealing their location. Cobra and Brigitte decide to share a room because of course they do. He tells her she should get some rest but she explains that she is too distracted by the sounds of him polishing up his machine guns and hand grenades. She makes some attempts at small talk--Her: what do you do to relax? Him: Look for trouble. When that fails she simply calls him over to the bed. Cue Peabo Bryson ballad. They ball.
The next morning the New Order-ers come a rolling DEEP! Like 175 dudes on motorcycles. They arrive in the foundry town and immediately start murdering every citizen in sight. Like...the town’s police force? Mutilated to death. Here I’d like to point out that the plot of this movie...as much as there is one...involves this gang trying to murder Brigitte Nielsen so she cannot identify them to the police. If they are so concerned about remaining anonymous they whyyyy would you destroy half of Los Angeles in a car chase and then assassinate a small town?? People tend to notice those things, amirite? Cobra and his partner quickly realize that the lady cop double crossed them. “I never liked that bitch,” says Gonzales. Real nice, dude.
Anyway, Brig hops into a pickup and Cobra rides in the back with his arsenal. They tear ass down the highway and the motorcycle ninjas give chase but Cobra kills a good five dozen of them...give or take. They eventually end up at the foundry ‘cuz it looks like a good enough place for a big climax...with all of its rivers of burning molten steel and whatnot. First Cobra has to square off against the #2 in command evil henchman...who usually dies the second worst death. This might a bit more suspenseful if Henchman #2 had any lines of dialogue or even a name. Cobra douses him with gasoline and tells him he has the right to remain silent. He then sets him on fire and of course the guy does not remain silent but, in fact, screams because being burned alive hurts like a bastard. Now it’s time for Cobra and The Night Slasher to come face to face. Slash asks Cobra if he wants to find hell with him (and that he can show him what it’s like). He tells Cobra that nothing can stop New Order. I believe this to be true. I mean, they even survived Peter Hook leaving the band. Slash begs Cobra to simply arrest him and let the legal system do its thing. Instead, Cobra impales Slashy on a giant hanging hook and swings his body into the molten metal like Terminators T-101 and T-1000 before (after?) him. He dies.
So New Order is defunct and Sly Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen still have at least six more months until they divorce. One of the bigwig cops backhandedly compliments Cobra on a job well done. Cobra, who does not suffer backhanded compliments gladly, punches the cop in the face. Cobe and Brig hop on one of the dead guy’s motorcycles and ride off into the sunset to a tune with lots of twinkling piano and saxophone and lyrics about “fighting in the jungles and racing in the streets” that sounds like The Boss but isn’t The Boss which can only mean one thing: It’s JOHN CAFFERTY AND THE BEAVER BROWN BAND!!!! God l love that band and their unabashed plagiarism. The end.
*originally posted july 12, 2019
OK folks...time for VHS of the Week:
Ok so I totally slacked ass on my VHS duties because I was busy vacationing my face off these last few weeks. What can I say: maybe if Cape Cod vacation rentals still included VCR’s among their amenities I woulda been more productive. Seriously...it’s always like 6 people trying to figure out what the WiFi password is...and me in the corner trying to figure out what even is WiFi. Can’t we all just put our phones away and pop Bloodsport into the VCR? If only! So anyway...it’s summer...and when it’s summer I always get severe 80’s horror movie urges. Maybe you are a regular reader and already know this...but I’m probably the most nostalgic person alive. If they gave out a trophy for “Most Nostalgic Person Alive” they would give it to me. About 10 years ago I seriously considered opening a restaurant called the Nostalgia Factory...where it was always 1995 (sample cocktail list item: Bloody Glove--a Bloody Mary served in a ripped Isotoner glove!!). Anyway...when I was growing up it was a requirement that a summer’s day end with a movie...usually watched on a gold corduroy couch in a wood paneled basement with pictures of Ronnie James Dio and Rob Halford that had been torn out of issues of Hit Parader and tacked onto the walls. Said viewing would be preceded by a trip to the video store, of course, where some crazy older cousin or crazy aunt or crazy aunt’s crazy boyfriend would take me to the horror movie section and force me to pick out the VHS with the gnarliest looking cover. I think I done seen ‘em all: Phantasm, Chopping Mall, Prom Night’s 1 though 3, Sleepaway Camp. There is one flick, though, that scared me in ways that no other film of that era did...and it’s this one: Stephen King’s Silver Bullet. Like...pants shitting, hiding under the bed screaming scared. A little history: in 1987 my great-grandparents brought me to Richland, Washington for the summer (south WA tri-cities area=summer paradise). At some point some crazy older third cousin brought home Silver Bullet for me to watch and it literally fucked me up (and yes I know what literally means). So they showed me this werewolf flick and got me in a state. Then they brought me up to this middle of nowhere logging town called Mossy Rock that looks JUST like the town in Silver Bullet. I was so terrified I would guzzle Jolt Cola all night so I could stay up and watch out for the werewolves that I was positive were coming to kill me. I refused to even look at the VHS jacket of this movie for years after that fateful summer. In my early 20’s, confident that there were no werewolves on the loose in Roslindale (just the 2-legged Miller High Life guzzling werewolf who lived on South street from 2001 to 2006 (that’s me! awwwooooo!!!)) I finally went out and rented Silver Bullet again. I was still afraid to watch it but my buddy Chris watched it while I was at work one night. Our conversation went something like this:
Chris: Did you say this is the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?
Me: YES!!!
Chris: Were you fucked up when you watched it?
Me: No...I was 8 years-old
Chris: Oh. Well...it sucks..and is not scary.
I mean...he wasn’t entirely wrong. I watched it last fall for VHSOTW but I fell asleep/drank too much wine/cat ate my notes so I never got around to writing it up. It’s boilerplate Stephen King: small town in Maine...monster on the loose...etc etc. It’s the summer of whenever whenever and a werewolf starts chowing face on the residents of Tarker’s Mills. The movie is initially narrated by the teenaged Jane...who is not the main character of the movie and only in about 1/3 of the scenes. Even though the movie takes place in the present day Jane sounds like she’s about 95 in her narrations...which means she’s speaking to us from the year 2045 for reasons that are unclear. The main character is a kid named Marty, played by Lucas star and Corey who died (Haim). Marty is in a wheelchair, so that sucks, but he has this crazy motherfucker of an uncle played by a playing himself Gary Busey who is always coming around to do things that you probably shouldn’t do for children in wheelchairs...like feeding them beer and buying them fireworks and supercharging their wheelchairs with the engine from a Porsche 944. So yeah...like I was saying...one by one the townspeople start getting themselves tore up by this werewolf and whatnot. Marty kind of rolls with the punches until the werewolf eats his best friend. The best friend’s dad finds his body in a gazebo and starts howling about how the kid has been torn to pieces. That still moved the needle on my scare-o-meter a little...not gonna lie. Marty decides that he’s gotta find out who this prick bastard friend-killing werewolf is. Sure as shit...it’s the local reverend...who is totally Big Ed from Twin Peaks! Now you know dude is gonna come for Marty when the next full moon rolls around...but that’s cool ‘cuz Uncle Gary Busey hooked the kid up with a silver bullet. And you know werewolves got that terrible silver allergy! Apparently there was some behind the scenes controversy on this flick because Stephen King wanted the werewolf to stay in the shadows until the very end (like the shark in Jaws!) but the filmmakers wanted to go buy an Alf costume, shave it, cover it with fake blood, and let that fucker rip. Stephen King lost. The wolf isn’t very scary. So the kid kills the wolf and everyone lives happily ever after. Well...not Corey Haim. And I guess him being dead and all means that a sequel probably isn’t going to happen. Although, despite doing more drugs than both Corey’s combined and crashing his motorcycle and being friends with Donald Trump, Gary Busey is somehow STILL ALIVE! So I guess anything’s possible. It’s a goddamn crazy mixed up world we live in.
I was only six years old when The Karate Kid hit the screens in 1984...but I was old enough to know that it was bigger than Bigfoot (the monster truck...not the dude from Harry and the Hendersons). I don’t have any sort of official facts and figures in front of me but I’m gonna go ahead and say that a lot of karate studio owners across the US probably retired off of the Karate Kid-based cash windfall they saw in the mid to late 80’s. I can tell you that this reviewer personally signed up at three different Worcester-based karate studios in 1986. Dude got himself a Gi and a white belt and ended his karate career with that very same white belt about a month later. I was an unbearable little shit, man. I remember the instructor trying to teach us something called the “thrust punch” on day one and I was all like “eff that noise...when we gonna learn that sick ass crane move..HiYAH!...YAH!...YAH!” When the instructor explained that this isn’t how real karate works I got all pissed off and bought a bunch of Very Fine grape juice from the vending machine in the lobby and hid in the mop closet until my mom came to get me. Poor lady...dropping all of her hard earned cash to pick up a kid with a purple mouth, a white belt, and no karate skills whatsoever.
The Karate Kid Part II followed in 1986. I saw it on the last day of the 2nd grade and proceeded to come down with a severe, summer-destroying case of the chickenpox about halfway through said flick. I tell this story a lot...even though it doesn’t really have anything to go with anything. I’m just still sore about 34 years later is all! Part II is a decent enough film that gets kicked up a notch or two by the inclusion of the Peter Cetera tune “Glory of Love”...possibly the greatest song to have even been featured in a motion picture...ever. The Karate Kid Part III finally dropped in June of 1989...in the middle of one of the fiercest summer movie line-ups in the history of summer movies (Batman...Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...Parenthood...Uncle Buck...shit, Do the Right Thing!). I went to see it with my dad and we both absolutely fucking hated it. Like, the one positive thing I could say was that I made it to the closing credits without a chickenpox outbreak. I hated it so much that I have vehemently avoided any and all Karate Kid-related releases over the last 31 years. I mean...I DID audition to be an extra in the the sequel where 6-time Oscar winner Hillary Swank plays the karate kid...but they passed me over...so hell if I’m gonna watch THAT shit (unlike the film School Ties...where I AM featured as an extra...and which I still watch repeatedly). The reboot with Will Smith’s kid? Hard pass. The new YouTube series Cobra Kai with most of the original cast? Maybe if they release it on VHS I might be inclined to take a peek. The sour taste of Part III never really faded from memory. Remember when you heard Weezer’s “Beverly Hills” and thought “I guess I don’t need to ever listen to another Weezer album?” So it was with Karate Kid III and me.
Someone suggested I revisit KK III for VHS of the Week so that’s exactly what I did. I can tell you right off the top that the first 10 minutes are easily the best part of the film as the first 10 minutes are a montage of scenes from the first Karate Kid. I mean...I understand that a little refresher course might be necessary once in a while...but The Karate Kid ain’t exactly Mulholland Drive The kid fights...he wins. Wash, rinse, and repeat. In case you somehow have no idea what I’m talking about I’ll provide my own 30 second recap: The kid Danny LaRusso (Ralphie Macchio) and his moms move from New Jersey to LA, where the kid immediately runs afoul a gang of local karate kids and their Evil Sensei (Kreese), who operate out of the Cobra Kai, the most fearsome dojo in all of Sherman Oaks. Daniel gets tuned up a bunch ‘cuz he’s kind of a chump. As luck would have it, though, his building super is a mystical Japanese WWII veteran named Mr Miyagi (Pat Morita) who just so happens to know everything there is to know about karate (and bonsai trees...and butterfly-collared shirts. More on those later). Mr Miyagi is both an extremely important, groundbreaking Japanese American film character...and also a walking fortune cookie. He teaches Daniel the karate and suddenly the kid is the best around...and nothing’s ever gonna bring him down. He defeats all of the Cobra Kai’s at the big All-Valley Karate Tournament and gets to date the babysitter from Adventures in Babysitting. So that’s all well and good. For Part II the brass at Columbia took all that coin they made on the original and sent the cast and crew to Okinawa to act out the exact same story but with a different backdrop (actually, turns out they filmed in Oahu, Hawaii...but who am I to break balls?). Daniel meets a local girl named Kumiko and promises to be the man who will fight for her honor. He’ll be the hero she’s been dreaming of, you dig? The local Okinawan bad guys present a far bigger challenge than the platinum blonde gringos back in the valley...but they prove to be no match for our boy Daniel-San! He wins the climactic showdown yet again. He even has the chance to land a death blow to his opponent but decides to tweak his nose and yell “honk!” instead. I thought this was lame as fucking shit...even when I was 8.
Should you unwisely decide to continue watching Karate Kid III after the first 10 minutes here’s what you’ll see: After the superfluous montage we are reintroduced to the Evil Sensei from Part I. He’s still evil and a Sensei but he’s down on his luck...and it’s tough (ohh so tough). Apparently after the Cobra Kai were embarrassed by Daniel LaRusso at the All-Valley Tournament however many years ago all of his students proceeded to jump ship and his dojo went tits up. He has spent the last few years on skid row, drinking nips of Cutty Sark from the local bodega, telling ‘nam stories to his fellow disgraced evil sensei’s around a barrel fire (note: I may have made all of this up). The Sensei decides he’s sick and tired of being sick and tired so he heads up to a mega mansion in the hills to see his pal “Scary” Terry. This Terry cat is a ponytailed billionaire who smokes cigars in the sauna and practices martial arts to classical music. How/why he has all of this money is never explained. I guess Terry supposedly fought alongside the Evil Sensei in Vietnam...even though the actor who plays him, Thomas Ian Griffith, was born in 1962. That math does NOT check out, dudes. Evil Sensei complains that Daniel LaRusso single handedly destroyed Cobra Kai. Terry promises to single handedly destroy Daniel LaRusso. “I’ll make him suffer!....and suffer!....AND SUFFER SOME MORE!!!” This Griffith guy is like Steven Seagal but with less acting chops. He also offers to send the Evil Sensei on a prostitute-guided tour of Tahiti (seriously) so he won’t have to bear the indignity of acting in Karate Kid Part III.
The Evil Sensei departs from LAX at the very moment Daniel and Mr Miyagi arrive back home from not-Okinawa. Daniel figures he’s gonna move back into his mom’s piece and sign up for college or whatever but they quickly learn that their apartment complex was sold and is in the process of being demolished. They couldn’t have at least texted Miyagi to give him a heads up!? Dude was the SUPER! Mrs. LaRusso has already moved back to NJ to take care of their Uncle Louie, who has come down with a severe case of emphysema. We know he has emphysema because he is onscreen for two minutes and coughs the ENTIRE TIME. I don’t know who the actor who plays Uncle Louis is but...dude...way to spin solid gold out of your two minutes of screen time! Daniel is homeless for about ten seconds but then Miyagi offers to let him move into his dope spot so they can continue to paint fences and eat freshly caught snapper and catch flies with chopsticks.
Daniel might not have much going in the way of plans...but Scary Terry sure has plans for Daniel (mwuh huh huh!!). Terry summons “Karate’s Badboy”...the nefariously named Mike Barnes (shudder)...to a meeting in his bathtub. Seriously, this dude conducts most of his business from the bubble bath...the bubbles obscuring his unmentionables and whatnot. After barking orders like “dump all of our toxic sludge in a river in Borneo! Bribe the DA!” to his secretary he meets with Barnes and his pals Snake and Other Dude Whose Name I Forgot. He tells Barnes he’ll pay him a shit ton of money to beat Daniel at the All-Valley Tournament. Not just beat him, mind you: “make him feel pain and fear and bleed until he howls!” (Note: that quote may not be in exact order). Terry is also going to go undercover as a karate instructor and attempt to create tension between Daniel and Mr Miyagi. If this plot doesn’t make sense to you it’s probably because it is utterly nonsensical. Why would some random billionaire expend so much effort just to seek revenge on a 19 year-old kid?? I mean...why not just have him killed or whatever?? We can blame, say, Caddyshack 2 on the fact that few of the original writers/producers/stars were involved. Karate Kid III was written and directed by the same dudes who made the first two flicks. What the fahhhh, y’all?
Meanwhile back at the Miyagi compound the Mister mentions that he wouldn’t mind opening up a bonsai tree shop but that he doesn’t have the dough. So Daniel, the silly son of a bitch, goes out and spends his entire college tuition to rent the old man a janky ass building near the train tracks in some bumfuck part of pre-gentrification Echo Park. “I already got a name picked out: Mister Miyagi’s Little Trees!” Miyagi is less than pleased but he agrees to bring Daniel on as a partner...mostly because he is the only other person he ever seems to interact with in the entire world. With zero foot traffic and the internet still a decade away? I will give that store two weeks! One morning Daniel and Miyagi are doing their Thai Chi on the cliffs high above the ocean when Miyagi explains that they aren’t selling real deal bonsai trees. That true bonsai trees are extremely rare and that the only known legit bonsai in California is growing on a completely inaccessible cliff in an oceanside ravine called Devil’s Cauldron. He knows this because he’s the one who planted it there. He says it’s worth $80k and TOO BAD NO ONE CAN EVER CLIMB DOWN THERE AND GET IT (WINK).
While the fellas are setting up shop Daniel notices that there’s a pottery store across the street. Hey, throw in a fair-trade coffee shop and you’ve got a hipster enclave. Maybe I was wrong about this neighborhood. Daniel runs over to say hey and immediately sees sparks a flyin’ with Jessica, the store’s proprietor. Within the first one minute of their conversation the fact that Jessica is an expert mountain climber somehow comes up. Do we think this is going to end up having some connection to that expensive bonsai tree on the cliff!??? Lazy fuckin’ screenwriting. Jessica agrees to go on a date with Daniel that very evening...which is cool...but when he shows up to pick her up she tells him she has a boyfriend and just wants to be friends...which is less cool. I initially thought maybe he’s gotta win her over or whatever...but nope...they never even hold hands. I’m thinking...why would they give the hero of the story a love interest that isn’t interested in love?? I mean...it’s a MOVIE! If I want to watch a dude hang around with a girl who has a boyfriend and who just wants to be friends I’ll just watch my own personal memories from high school and college in my own head. I did a little research on this and it turns out Jessica was supposed to be a love interest...but they cast an actress who was only 16...and Ralph Macchio was already TWENTY SEVEN!! Why not just cast someone age appropriate?? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the actress who played Jessica is Blake Lively’s cousin. What’s that? Blake Lively was only 20 months old when this movie came out? Ok so...I don’t know then.
Daniel and Jessica head out on their not-a-date, which is quickly and rudely interrupted by Mike Barnes and his evil henchmen, who are looking to serve up some ice cold chops of the karate variety! They want Daniel to sign a contract agreeing to fight Barnes in the upcoming All-Valley Tourney but Daniel ain’t having it. Mr Miyagi already done told him that they are finished with karate (did I forget to mention that? Ahh...who cares). “Karate in here,” Mr Miyagi says, pointing to his heart, “not HERE” he says, pointing to nowhere in particular. The next day Terry shows up claiming to be the Evil Sensei’s long lost Vietnam buddy. He explains that the Evil Sensei died of a heart attack but that “really, he died of a broken heart”...which is not an actual medical condition. Mr Miyagi is super apologetic because he’s a solid ass dude like that.
Since Mr Miyagi’s Tiny Trees never has a single paying customer Daniel decides he’s gonna do the old man a solid and go rescue that tree at the bottom of Devil’s Cauldron. As luck would have it, his new not-a-girlfriend just so happens to be an expert climber because OF COURSE SHE IS!!! While they are walking along the cliffs Daniel explains that he wants to give the tree to Miyagi because it’s worth $10k and he thinks that’s enough dough to make the old man comfortable for the rest of his life. First off--didn’t you JUST say the tree was worth $80k like five scenes ago? And I don’t know how much ten thousand dollars was in 1989 money but I’m pretty sure it was not very much. Maybe enough to buy a used VW Cabriolet with a busted tranny and not much else. Anyway, they get to the cliffs and start to climb down and Daniel almost falls to his death because he pretty much sucks at everything except for that one crane move from Part I. His not-a-gal-pal straightens him out and they find the tree and Daniel gushes “It’s perfect! It’s like the tree on my Gi!” They yank it out of the ground and immediately drop it into the ocean below...which is no bueno because I guess salt water is wicked bad for bonsai trees? Hell if I know, dude--everything I know about bonsai trees comes from these first three Karate Kid movies. I mean...if y’all say so. They climb to the bottom and rescue the tree but...OH SHIT...Mike Barnes and his bros materialize at the top of the Cauldron and yank up their climbing ropes! They holler down and tell Daniel that if he doesn’t sign the contract agreeing to fight in the tournament they are going to leave him to drown at the bottom of the ravine. You know...I’m not the best judge of distance but I’m gonna go ahead and say that it’s at least a half a mile from the top of the ravine to the bottom. The chances that Daniel would be able to carry on a conversation with dudes at the top of the Devil’s Cauldron? Less than zero chances. They lower down the contract (and, conveniently enough, a pen) and Daniel signs it and the bad guys lower the ropes and save Daniel and Jessica from certain death. They still make fun of him a ton though (“You’re pretty heavy for a WIMP!”) and they make a couple of cracks about raping Jessica...which is totally no biggie for a PG-rated flick in 1989. GAH! When they reach the top of the hill Mike Barnes takes the real deal bonsai tree and snaps it in half...‘cuz he’s 100% that dick. Ten to eighty thousand dollars...up in smoke!
Daniel rushes the busted-ass tree home to Miyagi, who is predictably unenthused that Daniel let a bunch of karate hooligans snap his prized tree in half. He takes it stride though, ‘cuz nothing rattles that old motherfucker. Miyagi says he’ll deal with the tree but he still won’t help Daniel train for the tournament. Daniel is all “C’mahhhn Mister Miyagi! I wanna sweep the leg! I want to put ‘em in a body bag!” Miyagi is all “that “wax on wax off” shit is soooo 1984!” Daniel is left with no choice but to enter the lion’s den and train with Terry at the former Cobra Kai headquarters. Of course, Terry is a double agent...so right off the bat he’s got Daniel doing some stupid shit. Terry makes Daniel kick a wooden beam until his foot swells up like a bulls bollocks while he hides around the corner and laughs maniacally. Daniel arrives home all busted up and sore and Miyagi is all “boy, you better put that foot in some Epsom Salt!” Daniel tells Miyagi off and makes him cry and you know what?? Why am I, or anyone else, rooting for Daniel LaRusso? I mean, he’s kind of a punk...and he’s mean! And he looks like he’s been hanging out at the Tunnel with Leo and Tobey and the P-word Posse. He doesn’t look like he could beat a parking ticket...let alone “Karate’s Bad Boy”.
Daniel starts to get super aggro...probably as a result of being forced to punch walls all day long. He takes Jessica out to a juice club for her last night in town but Terry slips some dude a finner to hit on her and Daniel promptly breaks the dude’s nose. If she wasn’t interested in dating him before she is REALLY not interested in dating him now. He apologizes...but she leaves the movie anyway. Forever. 86 Jessica. Daniel has a moment of clarity or whatever and realizes that he’s becoming a bigger asshole than he already is. He decides he’s gonna tell Terry he can’t train with him anymore...but when he arrives at the Cobra Kai Dojo Terry reveals his true self (ohhhhh!!!!). He tells Daniel he has to fight or he’s gonna...you know...kill him or something. Daniel starts to run out of the dojo and JUST as he’s about to run by a cardboard cutout of the Evil Sensei the ACTUAL Evil Sensei pops out from behind the cardboard cutout...of himself. Dude is back from his Tahitian hooker bender and is ready to smoke ass! Daniel is pretty well hemmed up but then Mister Miyagi busts up in the joint and beats the shit out of everyone in sight. Like...no one even lands a single punch on the dude! Not one! And I know Pat Morita was only 57 when they filmed this flick...but he looks about 77. If he’s so invincible why doesn’t HE sign up for the tournament, aye? Speaking of the tournament, Miyagi is now fully back on team Daniel-San. He’s all “more like wax off, wax ON, motherfucker!!”
So Miyagi decides to help Daniel train. There’s a training montage but it’s only like three minutes long...prolly because this movie is already like FIVE HOURS long! They practice all of their signature moves. They also scale their way back down into the Devil’s Cauldron to return the rehabbed bonsai tree to that inaccessible cliff for reasons that are unclear. Don’t they want between ten to eighty grand?? So tournament day finally rolls around and the Cobra Kai crew are JACKED UP! They are yelling shit like “when we finish with him his own mother won’t recognize him!!” God...DAMN...dudes! In the earlier films there was some sort of build up to the final fight. Here, they don’t even bother. The entire climax lasts about three minutes and the suspense-o-meter stays pinned at zero. We skip right ahead to the fight between Daniel and Mike Barnes....and it’s a dirty one! Mike Barnes punches Daniel in the face/head/neck/crotch area. The referee keeps threatening to disqualify him but does not do so. Terry and the Evil Sensei want Mike Barnes to keep the score at 0-0 and the defeat Daniel with a death blow in sudden death overtime. And if you understand how the scoring works at these karate events the you know more than I know. Daniel is getting beaten like a rented donkey and he’s writhing in pain on the floor...crying. The ref calls time and Miyagi rushes out to chat with him...butterfly collar a-blazin’. “I don’t want to fight this guy, Mr Miyagi! I’m afraid of him!” Miyagi reminds him that he can’t lose because, once again, “karate in here...not out there!” So why not hop on the bad foot and do the good thing then? Daniel peels himself off the floor for overtime. Mike Barnes comes charging after him but Daniel flips him to the floor in the saddest, sorryest, anti-climatic climactic move of all time. I guess the point is there are no points so, in scoring one point, Daniel has all of the points and wins the tournament. Again. And like Part’s I &II before Part III ends immediately with an abrupt freeze frame. And so does this review. The end
**march 29, 2019**
OK folks....time for VHS of the week:
A clown lies passed out next to a toilet. A young boy enters the bathroom to relieve his bladder. The clown awakens violently and is immediately blasted by a ferocious hangover. Also, the boy is pissing on his head. The clown leans over and retches into the toilet while the boy continues to simultaneously piss on his head. “Get the fuck out of here!” the clown roars at the young boy. He then crawls onto the vomit-soaked toilet and shits. In the living room the clown finds his barely-remembered conquest from the previous evening in the form of Carol Brady. Like...seriously....it is the actress Florence Henderson. She asks if she will see him again. He tells her that she should not count on it...as he is Shakes the Clown. AND this is probably as good a place as any to end this review! I’m thinking this is probably where most people stopped watching this movie...if “people who have seen Shakes the Clown'' is a group of people that actually exists. I know I shut it off after the first few minutes back in ’92...but I decided to check it out again...for reasons that are not clear to me. In many ways this film is the fabric that ties the universe together. I mean...not really...but read on:
Written and directed by my main man Bobcat Goldthwait, Shakes the Clown was released in 1992 and famously used a pull quote from a Boston Globe review that calls the film “The Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies.” This, of course, was not intended as a compliment as there are no other alcoholic clown movies. I had always assumed that Bobcat just saw the drunk clown scene from Uncle Buck and thought to himself “I wonder what became of that clown!? I should make a movie about it!” What DID happen to that clown? “What are you, Mother Cabrini?? You never touch the stuff?” I mean...pitch “drunk clown goes to kids birthday party” and it’s pretty much turn on the confetti cannons and pop a bottle of Asti Spumante and watch the bux come rolling in. Those sort of scenes only make up about 3 minutes of this flick’s 87 minute running time. The other 84 minutes is pretty much some famous and some not yet famous comedians sitting around dressed as clowns ad libbing. There isn’t really much of a plot to speak of. Bobcat is a clown named Shakes and he is an alcoholic. He lives in a town called Palookaville that is 100% really just a shitty part of North Hollywood. At the top of the flick he goes to a kid’s birthday party wasted and threatens to twist the kid’s dad into “a fuckin’ balloon animal”. The kid’s dad is Tim Kazurinsky...who has appeared in 3 out of the last 4 VHSOTW. Timmy K...wherever you are...you control the world! Later, Shakes goes to a bar called The Twisted Balloon where drunk clowns sit around and talk shit. Like one of those Fernet-slinging service industry after work hangouts...but with clowns, you dig? Despite being an extremely disgusting philandering drunk clown, Shakes has a girlfriend..and she’s played by MTV personality Julie Brown. Now....pump the breaks here a second: if y’all grew up watching MTV in the 1980‘s you might remember that they had not one but TWO Julie Browns! But see the one who isn’t in this movie was black...so they called her DOWNTOWN Julie Brown so folks wouldn’t get confused. I mean...doesn’t that seem a little bit racist? Unless she gave that name to herself. Then...I don’t know. ANYWAY....Julie Brown’s friend is perennially grouchy comedian and permanent resident of Donald Trump’s shit list Kathy Griffin. She thinks Brown should break up with Shakes because “a bad clown will fuck you up.” I laugh. It’s at this point I notice that one of the clowns is totally a young Adam Sandler. So there’s that. Basically all of the clowns want to get on this public access TV show and are all super bummed when the gig goes to a clown named Binky. Binky is an asshole. He’s also Spongebob Squarepants! (see...universe control!). There’s some suggestion that Shakes should stop drinking and his clown friends try to sober him up but he has serious DT’s and starts to vomit and isn’t this supposed to be a comedy?? You gotta go to the hospital to sober up when you are a cirrhotic clown! It doesn’t really matter cuz dude can’t stop pounding booze. He gets to another kiddie gig and guzzles a bottle of brown stuff and attacks the children and destroys the house. I do not laugh. Back at the Twisted Balloon Binky is trying to buy cocaine from a gang of rodeo clowns. He’s also complaining that nobody likes him. “They might as well call me Binky the Doormat!” he says. I just about leap out of my seat because “Binky the Doormat '' is the name of a song from R.E.M. seriously underrated 1996 album New Adventures in Hi-Fi. I check the interwebs to see if this song takes its name from Shakes the Clown....and it friggin’ totally does! Head: explodes. So I don’t know...the coke deal goes bad and Binky ends up killing the clown boss and dad who forgot Molly Ringwald’s bday in Sixteen Candles. They frame Shakes for the murder...so he has to hide out in a mime community run by academy award winner and sadly departed comedy giant Robin Williams. This mime scene goes on for like 1/3rd of the movie. Like...they had Robin for one afternoon and just turned on the cameras and hoped magic would happen. It does not. Binky kidnaps Julie Brown and there’s a chase scene and a big showdown in the public access studio and...honestly...I had a tough time staying awake until the very end. My notes just say “Thirsty...rehab.” I think Shakes kicks the hooch and lives happily ever after. Some folks say this flick ruined Bobcat’s career but the year after it came out he opened for Nirvana. The band. With Kurt Cobain. Those dudes. So there’s that.
Alright y’all...some quick business to take care of before we begin. First: I should probably issue a Spoiler Alert but I’m not sure that it’s actually possible for one to spoil a David Lynch film...where up is sideways and the sound of hoofbeats in the distance means zebras, not horses. How can you spoil something when something is often nothing? Second: Over the years I have generally found that Twin Peaks either means everything to you or it doesn’t mean anything at all. People who are into Twin Peaks are INTO Twin Peaks. While I would describe my own personal level of fandom as “once took a two hour detour on my way to Seattle to look at Snoqualmie Falls and eat a stale slice of cherry pie at the Double R Diner even though I do not like cherry pie” I still probably don’t have all of my facts and figures straight...which is bound the rankle some of the more hardcore TP fans. Please forgive me if I can't recall the names of Jacques Renault’s two brothers at the drop of a hat (note: It’s Jean and Bernard Renault).
Here’s what happened: in the spring of 1990 David Lynch, the same cat who directed Eraserhead and Blue Velvet, somehow ended up convincing ABC to unleash a TV program he created with Mark Frost called Twin Peaks on folks who typically spent their Thursday evenings watching Cheers. If you are too young to remember 1990 this probably doesn’t sound like much to you...but I can assure you the premiere of this show was a seismic event. Obviously, there was no internet, no Netflix to stream, no original HBO series to watch. We just had the programming offered by the major networks...and they did NOT offer up shows like Twin Peaks. And yet...here was this bizarro cultural juggernaut that 11 year-old Danny Tebo and his 80 year-old great-grandparents sat enraptured in front of once a week. The show was featured on the cover of publications like New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and TV Guide. “Who Killed Laura Palmer” became the hottest whodunnit since “Who Shot J.R.” ten years earlier.
What me, my great granny, and all of the other unsuspecting moms and pops in middle America didn’t know at the time is that David Lynch is one dark, dark motherfucker. The answer to “who killed Laura Palmer?’ was nothing anyone wanted to know (shudder). Lynch went off to direct Wild at Heart and the show evaporated at the sort of breakneck speed that was entirely uncommon for that day and age. The show’s final episode aired just 14 months after the pilot’s premiere. Lynch, perhaps realizing that he’d accidentally let his golden goose go to pot, called back his cast and shot a feature-length prequel for a French arthouse production company who gave Lynch free reign to plumb the deepest, darkest recesses at the rotten core of his avant-garde soap opera. The prequel is called Fire Walk With Me and I saw it in a theater with about 5 other people (3 of whom walked out) in August of 1992 (I know I repeat this ad nauseam but JE-SUS CHRIST the shit my parents allowed me to watch!). In his review for the New York Times, Vincent Canby said “It’s not the worst film ever made; it just seems to be.” And you know...I couldn’t possibly put it any better so I’m not even going to try (note: this is not entirely true. I mean...I’m about to “review” the entire movie).
So Twin Peaks hipped this young fella to David Lynch and I have stayed hipped ever since. He’s one of my favorite filmmakers even though I would describe most of his movies as “unwatchably exhilarating.” Across the decades he has been omnipresent yet unprolific...open-hearted yet obtuse...a brilliant artist and a bullshit artist. He is currently 74 years-old and still maintains that chain-smoking cigarettes is good for the soul. I have followed his every twist and turn. I bought the book he wrote about meditation and proceeded to not meditate. I bought the album he made called Crazy Clown Time” and proceeded to not listen to it. Along the way I learned to stop trying to answer the questions I have about his work because I learned the questions are unanswerable. David Lynch is just MAKING SHIT UP! He can’t decipher the puzzle for you because the puzzle isn’t really a puzzle. the pieces are not meant to fit together. Whatever you think happens at the end of Mulholland Drive is exactly what happens...even if it’s not what happens. Stop wasting your time trying to figure it out and go to sleep and have nightmares about Ronald Reagan being fellated by a Gremlin.
Twin Peaks will always remain David Lynch’s easiest entry point...which is probably why it has maintained its mythic status and fiercely devoted band of Trekkie-like followers (weird, pervy, fecal fetish-type Trekkies though). Hell, when eBay first hit the ‘net my very first purchase was a copy of the Laura Palmer’s Diary tie-in book (which I have also never read). People have been shouting their desires for a proper 3rd season of Twin Peaks from the rooftops from the minute the show’s final episode aired in 1991. When it was announced that Showtime was actually going to let David Lynch write and direct 18 new episodes of Twin Peaks I figured it would either A--pick up where the ABC show left off or B--make Lost Highway look like Runaway Bride. The answer: B. As a follow-up to the original TV series it’s a letdown. As an 18-hour free-form David Lynch feature film, though, it’s an unparalleled masterpiece. If ten minute-long scenes of dudes spray painting shovels is your David Lynch then Twin Peaks: The Return is your jam. Who else but Lynch would have the stones to take one of the most iconic TV characters of all time, Special Agent Dale Cooper, put him in the show, but basically prevent him from acting like himself until the final episode? Showtime released the first 4 episodes of Season 3 on the same night and my girlfriend and I accidentally watched them out of sequence and, once we realized our mistake, we also realized that it DID NOT MATTER AT ALL. Because what is anything? Also--got a light???
ANYWAY--I recently decided to go ahead and check out Fire Walk With Me for the second time because...well...whatever. And you know...it is only about half as unwatchable as I remembered! Huzzah! I already had my VHS in hand but I also picked up the Criterion Collection DVD because it contains Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces, a 90 minute compilation of deleted scenes that Lynch edited together in 2014. You could watch either film and have a pretty identical experience. And if you haven’t watched a single episode of Twin Peaks you should not watch either because you’ll be lost like a lost boy. What happens is this; at the top of the film a pair of FBI agents are dispatched to Deer Meadow, WA to investigate the murder of a teenaged prostitute by the name of Teresa Banks. Right off the bat we notice that neither of these G-Men are Special Agent Dale Cooper. Apparently Kyle McLachlan didn’t want to reprise his signature role for fear of being typecast (and what? having bizarre, violently hilarious pool sex with Jessie Spano in Showgirls was more to your liking, K Mac? Bad career moves, homie). He’s here, but on light duty. More on him in a bit. The new FBI agents are played by Kiefer Sutherland (speaking of Lost Boys) and the singer Chris Issak. Seriously. Chris Issak is a decent enough actor. He’ll always have props for life in my book for “Wicked Game”. That’s an ace tune! That black and white video directed by Herbie Ritts?? Hott with two T’s!! Our man Keef, on the other hand, wears an unfortunate bowtie and looks like he’d rather be off getting shitfaced somewhere. I think that’s what probably happens as his character just disappears about 20 minutes in and is never spoken of again.
So Issak and Sutherland go poking around Deer Meadow and get tons of resistance from a local cop played by the guy who played the guy who killed Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing. Man, fuck that guy for LIFE! It all seems pretty Twin Peaks-y until they go see Teresa Banks’ body and tear her off her fingernail (there’s some piece of paper under there or something....I don’t know). And we’re off! They head to the trailer park to check out Teresa’s trailer and the dude running the joint is Harry Dean Stanton! HARRY DEAN! Now that guy lived a life! He shows them around the park...but then..like...the power lines start to snap and crackle and shit. You know...this totally comes up again in The Return...and I still have no idea what it means! While they’re chatting with HDS this terrifying one-eyed hobo lady appears from out of nowhere, apropos of nothing. I initially thought it was Mama Fratelli from The Goonies and then I realized she was long dead when this movie was made and then I realized David Lynch might’ve cast her anyway. This scene is quintessential David Lynch. It’s like...people are sitting in a normal room having a normal conversation but then we pan to the corner where we see a kitten shitting into a clown’s mouth. We simply nod accept that we are David Lynch’s world and continue watching.
Right, so Issak continues investigating and eventually finds a ring under Teresa’s trailer. When he reaches out to grab it he disappears from the movie. So there’s that. Cut to: FBI headquarters in Philadelphia. Our boy Dale Cooper finally shows up and runs in to tell his boss (who is totally the same David Lynch that we’ve been talking about nonstop) that he had a dream that some crazy shit was gonna go down at 10:10. It’s kind of like 11:11 but you don’t get a wish. There’s some mumbo jumbo about this mysterious missing Agent called Phil Jeffries and then Jeffries shows up and OH MY GOD IT’S DAVID BOWIE!!!! Actual David Bowie! The Thin White Duke! He’s all out of breath and he’s wearing a Hawaiian-ish shirt with a plunging neckline and he has a Southern-ish accent and if David Bowie’s acting were a David Bowie album it would be Never Let Me Down. I can’t tell if Bowie is an apparition or whatever but there’s lots of screaming and then another scene starts to bleed into this one but the other scene looks like a CK 1 commercial but with a mini David Lynch in an Eyes Wide Shut orgy costume and Killer Bob and the tiny “your favorite gum is back in style” guy and they are eating some kind of porridge and what the actual fuck is going on??? I don’t know! I know this, though: David Bowie was going to reprise his role in The Return but he passed away before he could film his scenes...so they replaced him with...wait for it...wait for it...A FURNACE!! A talking furnace!
Ahhh...moving on! Cooper is sent to the Pacific Northwest to investigate the...the...what have you. Finally, we cut to Twin Peaks in the year of 1990 (cue the Badalamenti theme song, fuckers!). Laura Palmer is alive like Johnny Five...just a regular old high school senior blasting lines of cocaine in the shitter before class. I can’t think of anything that would be worse to do on cocaine than be in high school but then again...I never combined the two! So Laura’s alive but her bestie Donna suddenly looks like the toe pick girl from The Cutting Edge because that's exactly who she is. I guess Lara Flynn Boyle was too busy filming The Temp or some such bullshit so they went out and got disappeared West Wing star and Lara Flynn Boyle cosplayer Moira Kelly. Could be worse, amirite? Laura’s got mad dudes on speed dial. She’s dating scumbag Bobby but has a secret thing with James Hurley. We know this because she meets him in a mop closet in the high school wearing nothing but a towel and they ball. Can we take a moment and talk about the amazingness of the James Hurley original tune “Just You?” There...we just did.
After school Laura tries to do her Meal on Wheels gig but she’s confronted by an old lady and a small faceless boy who want to sell her artwork. Always say no, girl--I bought a dude’s rap CD-R on the subway once and that shit was BLANK! They tell her that the “man behind the mask” is in her bedroom. I’m thinking...you know...Jason Voorhees..but she runs home to find Killer Bob! She screams...he screams and Lynch zooms all the way in on his uvula. It’s mad gross. She runs outside and hides in the bushes but it ain’t Killer Bob who emerges through the front door...it’s her pops! Leland Palmer! I had a friend once who said he used to make a cocktail called the Leland Palmer. I feel like it was vodka mixed cherry heering and coffee brandy served in a cocaine-rimmed glass...but that’s probably incorrect. Later, Laura sits down for dinner with her family and Leland yells at her about washing her hands and asks her uncomfortable relationship questions and pinches her face and HE DID IT!!! HE killed Laura Palmer!! He’s been sexually assaulting his own daughter! Gah, no wonder my great-grandparents suggested we immediately switch back to Cheers after that big reveal. If you’ve seen the show you already know this going into Fire Walk With Me...so the suspense comes from what exactly? We do no not know..
So what else happens? Sweet Christ...what DOESN’T happen?? Laura dreams (how she sleeps at all when she’s chuffing so much chach is beyond me) about the Black Lodge. You know...that cool ass place with the red curtains and the stripey floor? Agent Cooper is in there with the Man from Another Place. They offer her a Teresa’s ring but when Laura wakes up she finds Heather Graham’s superfluous character Annie from Season 2 in bed next to her covered in blood. She tells Laura that the “good” Dale is stuck in the Black Lodge. Stuck with a serve case of dontwannaactinfirewalkwithme is more like it! I don’t know what all of this means but I DO know that I wouldn’t kick Heather Graham out of bed for bleeding everywhere and telling me Agent Cooper is stuck in the Black Lodge. Nothing creepy...I was just a HUGE License to Drive fan when I was 10 years-old!
Laura and Donna go to the Bang Bang Bar where they take in some tunes by Julee Cruise. They also run into the Log Lady. Two big Twin Peaks boxes: checked off. We also meet Season 1 coma patient Ronette Pulaski. You know would be a sweet band name? The Ronette Pulaski’s. They track down Jacque Renault who says a bunch of disgusting sex things to them and then offers to take them to One-Eyed Jack’s to party. This entire sequence...which feels like it goes on for about half of the movie...is BUH-NANAS! It’s scored by this David Lynch original tune called The Pink Room that’s a fucking BANGER! The music is so loud that the dialogue is intentionally obscured (don’t worry...they use subtitles. Or maybe do worry?). They stand around and take a ton of drugs and take off their shirts. Jacques Renault promises everyone that there is no tomorrow. He also says that he is as blank as a fart. I'm not sure which statement is more worrisome. Laura and Ronette get diddled under the table but then she sees Donna making out with a dude and freaks out and makes everyone go home like a real buzz killington.
Things don’t get much sunnier from this point on so I won’t try to explain the rest...if the rest is even explainable...which it really isn’t. The morning after the club Laura and Leland are driving when they are confronted by a screaming one-armed man. Leland flashes back to his affair with Teresa Banks...so...looks like he killed her too. Laura realizes Killer Bob doesn’t exist and that her own father has been raping her. She decides to deal with this by doing a shit ton of blow. Like I said...dark, dark, dark DARK shit. She tells Bobby she needs more drugs or she’ll lose whatever she has left of her shit. He breaks up with her. She also ditches James to go party into the woods and party with Ronette, Jacques, and Leo (remember him!?). Leland follows her there and...I guess...he kills her. It’s hard to tell exactly what happens as this entire sequence is lit by strobey flashlights...kind of like Metallica’s Enter Sandman video but with no 18-wheeler. The One-Armed Man is there too but I’m still not sure what function he serves. I mean...I’m not sure about ANYTHING at this point...particularly whether writing this article was a good idea (I’m thinking no?).
Leland enters the Black Lodge where he finds the Man from Another Place and The One-Armed Man. They tell him they want Garmonbozia. I went ahead and Googled this word and it turns out Garmonbozia refers to the porridge we saw earlier on. So...you’re welcome? I also see that I wrote the word “monkey” in my notes so maybe there’s a monkey in this scene? That makes sense. Was he preparing beef bulgogi for everyone? That would make sense too. Agent “half day of work” Cooper finds Laura and comforts her. My girlfriend tries to explain that, even though this is a prequel to the first season, the movie ends at the end of the second season. Or...as The Black Lodge is actually purgatory...time does not exist there...so where and when the movie ends is irrelevant. I immediately walk into my bathroom and scream into the mirror and stare at my uvula. Then I watch the Twin Peaks: Missing Pieces and find where they’ve been hiding Big Ed and Nadine...and Dr Jacoby...and Andy, Lucy, and Hawke...and Jocelyn Packard and Eraserhead...and Harry Truman and Zooey Deschanel’s mom. They’re all in there. And you know what else would make a sweet ass band name: Garmonbozia. The end.
*originally posted july 20, 2018
OK folks....time for VHS of the week:
Ok so this flick is one of only a handful of movies that the late film critic Roger Ebert “awarded” a rating of Zero Stars. I mean...I saw it in the theater when it came out and thought it was alright...but I decided to check it out again and...ho lee shit...zero stars is being generous. What we have here is a completely laugh-free “comedy” about a single dad who will stop at nothing to prevent his 15 year-old daughter from losing her virginity. The dad in question is played by Tony Danza. He’s a radio station program director with an office featuring panoramic views of downtown LA and gold records on the walls and lots of glass-top tables for bands to do drugs on. He also drives the same car as Cameron’s dad in Ferris Bueller (they must have fixed it). I mean...I went to WBCN a few times back in the day and it looked like the reception area of a car insurance office....but maybe there was more dough in the radio business back in the 1980’s. He’s raising two teenage daughters on his own but he’s also dating the mom from the first Child’s Play movie...and they have zero onscreen chemistry. In fact...I want to say this lady had better chemistry with Chucky than she does with Tony Danza. Right so Tony Danza has to go outta town so Child’s Play mom decides to give the oldest daughter Katie a makeover for her 15th birthday. Katie is played by Amy Dolenz, daughter of Monkees drummer Mickey Dolenz, who was actually 20 at the time they made this piece of shit. Why they had her play a 15 year-old instead of an age that’s a bit more, you know, legal, in a sex movie we do not know. She looks pretty much exactly the same after the makeover except she no longer has the braces that she has removed even though the orthodontist tells her they aren’t ready to come out for several more years. It’s like...hey I had your daughter’s braces prematurely torn out...hope you enjoy the tens of thousands of dollars worth of unnecessary dentist bills you’ll have now! So Tony Danza gets home from his trip and mad dudes are calling and showing up to his house to try to boink his braces-less 15 year-old daughter. He’s like...I’m not gonna let this happen...because I’m THE BOSS! But then he takes Katie to the beach and realizes a bunch of 12 year-old boys are ogling her so he attacks them in a scene that I guess is played for laughs but is actually terrifying. Danza’s girlfriend forces him to go to therapy and this is where things really turn shithouse. The therapist is played by the legendary Harvard-educated playwright and author of My Dinner with Andre and star of Princess Bride, Wallace Shawn. Instead of calming pops down he makes him go batshit crazy; convincing him to basically start stalking his own daughter. For her part...the daughter is like “you know...I’m not doing anything wrong...I’m just enjoying this new attention!” She is literally NOT OUT OF CONTROL AT ALL!!! I mean...did the people who made this movie sit back after a day’s shooting and think “ahhh...we are doing the lord’s work here!” I planned to put this question to director Stan Dragotti but he got wind that I was featuring this movie on my VHS series and promptly dropped dead. (Note: this isn’t exactly true. I wasn’t going to contact him...but he did die last week). So what else happens? She starts dating Bobby Brooks from Twin Peaks....which is awesome!....but then she dumps him for Matthew Perry....which is less awesome. They go to the prom together and of course her creeper father follows them there disguised as a Mexican waiter (why’s he gotta be, Mexican, bro? why so racist, guys?) Matthew Perry tries to take Katie’s virginity and she’s all “not so fast, Chandler Bing, I’m 15, homie.” He’s all “you’re a filthy tease...no one says no to me!” Dad busts in the room and kicks his ass...so maybe it's a good thing he’s been stalking his daughter? I just don’t know. The daughter is still pissed and Danza is pissed at Wallace Shawn for making him crazy and I’m pissed I decided to watch this movie. Everyone is pissed! Danza goes to confront Wallace Shawn at his radio station. They fight and Danza is thrown from a 20 story building....but only suffers sprained neck? Oh this loathsome movie. So in the end Katie heads off to Europe for the summer where she does lose her virginity to a guy named Alejandro in a druggy Barcelona nightclub at 6AM. Danza gets his own short-lived TV talk show where he makes his Z-list guests play an embarrassing game called Extrava-Danza. Ok...only the latter is true. Whatever. The end.
*originally posted july 20, 2017*
Alright folks....it's time for VHS of the week:
I’m gonna go right ahead and assume that the people who put this movie together were in the grips of some sort of cocaine-induced psychosis at the time. A sequel to the 1979 Bill Murray comedy in name only, Meatballs Part II somehow manages to offend native americans, gays, jews, hare krishna’s, extra terrestrials, Italian’s, pugilists, the French, and the handicapped...all in its tidy 87 minute running time! I’m gonna explain it in bullet points because, much like the thoughts of someone who has just done a shit ton of blow, it’s all over the map.
--The movie takes place over the course of a week at Camp Sasquatch, where some tough guy delinquent guinea named Flash has been sent to work off the remainder of his prison sentence by taking care of children (ed note: Huh???). No shit...he actually gets dropped off to camp in a police car! Flash looks like he’s about 30 and the reason for this is the actor playing him was 30 at the time the movie was filmed. Flash immediately draws the attention of the camp director, Giddy (played by Richard Mulligan, a notorious ladies man in his pre-death years). You see Giddy is locked in a heated battle with the military camp across the lake that is set to culminate in a “champ of the lake” boxing match at the end of the summer. I mean...I spent 8 years at summer camp and I know we shot shotguns and bows and arrows and shit...but boxing?? Giddy thinks Flash would be a hot hand in the boxing ring. Meanwhile the teenaged ladies of the camp think Flash will be a hot hand at other adult-type stuff. He catches the eye of Cheryl who catches his eye right back which should be game on BUT Cheryl is an innocent who has never even seen a pinky. I know...you are all like “what are you talking about, Tebo??” Early on in the film the ladies of cabin whatevertheshit are sitting around looking at Playgirl Magazine (of course!) when it comes out that Cheryl has never seen a live penis before. Except they don’t call it a penis...they call it a “pinky”. Now I have owned said equipment for 38 of my 38 years and I have only ever heard the word pinky used to describe male genitalia in Meatballs 2. ANYWAY...the ladies decided that this will not stand and make a vow that Cheryl will see a pinky before summer’s end. (ed note: GAH!!)
--Ok so there’s all that. But then there is also a friggin’ ALIEN! That’s right...there’s a side plot about the younger boy campers, one of which is totally the jerk older brother from Wonder Years, who find an alien in the shitter. His name is Meathead (the alien) and he has a Brooklyn accent and can walk through walls and levitate but is generally a pretty normal dude. He even smokes a joint with Flash at one point just to show how chill he is. This subplot kind of dies out halfway through...leading be to believe there’s a 4 hour super cut of this movie somewhere in the Tri-Star vault.
--There’s a running gag about the camp chef, an alcoholic Frenchman who wants to serve the children haute cuisine instead of the usual burgers and dogs. He eventually saws up a dead horse and feeds the meat to the campers. No joke.
--Paul Reubens is in the movie although his role is completely undefined. He drives the camp bus...DJ’s the camp dance...and is always sort of lingering in the background. Maybe the filmmaker’s knew he had a little something called Pee Wee’s Big Adventure coming out late in the year and wanted to get him in the movie as much as possible. Big year for P Dub....
--This went completely over my head when I watched this as a child...but there’s a running joke about how the assistant director of the military camp, played by 5 time Emmy winner John Larroquette, is gay. It’s wicked offensive. I guess this was before Night Court and all. They must’ve just called him up and asked if he still had his costume from Stripes.
--ANYWAY...climax of the movie...the military camp guys don’t want Flash to win the big boxing match so they motherfucking KIDNAP him! And not in a cartoony comedy way. They beat the shit out of him with brass knuckles and strip him naked and leave him to die back at the military camp. Luckily he comes to right before the boxing match and shows up to fight wearing one of Johnny Larroquette’s secret gay dresses. So the fight is on but the military guys are pissed so they try to blow up the boxing match with a GRENADE!! Grenade+blown up children=comedy gold! The alien uses his alien powers to disarm the grenade...Flash wins the match but loses his dress...which is a win for Cheryl as she has now seen a Pinky. Everyone goes home happy. 7 year-old Danny Tebo goes home and asks his mom about pinky’s. Scene.
A few years back I decided to take a deep dive into the 1984 summer camp comedy Meatballs Part II. I think I might have described it as “the work of someone in the late stages of cocaine-induced psychosis”...but don’t quote me on my own quote. The stuff that goes down in this flick is absolutely bananas: 15 year-old girls make a pact to try to see a penis before summer’s end...Pee Wee Herman is allowed to supervise children...a horse is slaughtered and fed to the campers...a ganja-smoking alien is discovered in the shit house...all over the course of a tidy 88 minutes. Still...I was super tight with this flick and probably watched it a good 150 times back in the day. But when folks would ask what I thought was the superior film in the Meatballs series was (note: no one has ever actually asked me this) I would automatically claim it was the original...even though I only done seen it once or twice. The reason for this is obvious; it stars Bill Murray...the filet of all acting persons alive or dead. It’s also written by Harold Ramis and directed by Ivan Reitman. Throw those three together and you’ve got the holy trinity of 80’s comedy. You’ve got the braintrust behind Ghostbusters! BUT you’ve also got the braintrust behind Ghostbusters 2. The holy trinity, it turns out, is far from infallible. Since it’s currently the dead middle of the bitter winter I decided to go ahead and check out the original Meatballs again and...honestly folks...it makes Meatballs Part II look like The Graduate. It’s at this point in the review where I usually say “what happens is this” and then start cracking wise about the movie plot point by plot point. Problem here is that NOTHING happens in Meatballs. Despite the fact that there are four...FOUR!...people credited as writers on this film there is no plot to speak of. It’s as if they brought some cameras to a summer camp with a bunch of actors with ages ranging from 6 to about 57 and filmed them doing summer camp-y stuff and then edited those scenes together with scenes of Bill Murray doing his Bill Murray ad libbing schtick. And look...I have two words for anyone who doesn’t think Bill Murray is the greatest ad libber of all time. And those words are “gunga...galunga. No wait...gunga...gunga lagunga”. But Meatballs was his first time on the big screen...and it isn’t so much that his chops weren’t there yet...it’s that everything he says is, like, profoundly inappropriate. What (kind of) happens is this: Billy Murray plays Tripper, the head counsellor of the elite Camp North Star. (The movie opens with a song called “Are You Ready for the Summer” by the Camp North Star Kids that deserves an entire article of its own). The campers and C.I.T’s (counsellor’s in training) board busses to camp and here we learn that North Star is so exclusive that there’s a two year waitlist. It also costs $1000 per week...which is like $150k in 2020 money. The reasons for this astronomical fee are never explained. The place looks just like any other shitty old summer camp. Early on, Murray mentions that a guest appearance by Henry Kissinger is built into the admission fee. I’ll confess that I had some alcohol while watching this movie...but I’m fairly positive that the former Secretary of State does not appear. When the kids arrive at camp we are introduced to a who’s who of teen comedy stereotypes. There’s the funny-ish fat dude who looks like he could totally win a hot dog eating contest if that sort of thing happens to come up later in the movie (it does). There’s a dude called Spazz who we have to assume is a spazz ‘cuz he wears a pocket protector and taped up eyeglasses (but looks completely normal otherwise. Handsome even!). There’s a super sad 15 year-old loner kid named Rudy...who is not to be confused with that other kid Rudy from the movie Rudy...even though their story arcs are more or less exactly the same. And for strong female characters we have BAH HAH HAH YEAH RIGHT! Actually, there’s the head girls counsellor Roxanne who seems like she’s going to be a pretty strong character until Bill Murray sexually assaults her (more on that in a sec). Otherwise, a scene in the girl’s bunk in the first 30 minutes maps out this film’s attitude toward women in graphic detail. Basically the ladies sit around in their undies and talk about their periods and ask their counsellors if you can get pregnant without having actual intercourse. I mean...most of the movies I watched growing up in the early 80’s taught me that when girls are left alone they remove their bras and have pillow fights. Nice to have a different perspective, I guess. Thank you, Meatballs. So I don’t know...a bunch of scenes pass by willy nilly: people swim and fool around and talk about going on panty raids. Rudy decides he’s had enough of this noise so he escapes to the local bus station to catch the first ‘Pan back to anywhere but here. Bill Murray tracks him down and buys him french fries and convinces him to give camp another try. Murray promises Rudy that, if anyone messes with him, he will simply stab them in the neck with a swiss army knife. Man, the shit you could get away with in a PG-rated flick in 1979! So now there’s half a plot--depresso Rudy and supercool Tripper? They pals!
Back at camp Bill Murray and Roxanne are hanging out in the camp office when he mentions that he can see down her shirt. She tells him to piss off. He proceeds to pick her up and drag her to the couch where he then flips her over and bites her on the ass while she screams for help. OK!!....YEAH!!!....so obviously there’s a word for that...and that word rhymes with rape. I like to try to keep things light here at VHSOTW...and I might be willing to give this scene a pass...but then VHS jacket for this movie specifically mentions this scene as if it’s a motherfucking SELLING POINT! I quoth--” The wildest summer Camp North Star ever had begins with.....Tripper’s amorous attack on a female counselor.” Amorous attack!??? Sweet christ in heaven and all 12 of the apostles! They can’t even mention the lady character’s name!? Anyway...we will watch the rest of the movie not because it is easy...but because it is hard* (*JFK). Bill Murray and Rudy start going for super long early morning runs together...which I’m sure is going to come up again later on (note: it does). Meanwhile there’s a consistently unfunny gag that involves the counsellors kidnapping the long-suffering camp director Morty and launching him out into the middle of the lake while still asleep in his bunk bed. This is particularly problematic as it happens in the middle of Parent’s Week! DOH! And hey listen...I spent every summer from age 8 to 15 at summer camp. I’m pretty sure my parents...like most parents...sent me off to camp so they could have sweaty, uninterrupted kitchen floor sex all day and night. Summer ain’t but 6 weeks long. My parents wouldn’t have come to visit me if I was caught in a bear trap. I call bullshit on these scenes.
Even though, by my count, we’re only about 4 days into the summer...they tell us that summer is almost over. We nod. All of the camp counsellors board canoes for a night out on the lake. There’s a tender scene between a couple who seal their 3rd anniversary with a kiss and WHOOOO the fuck are these characters again?? Seriously...I thought The Godfather Part 2 was tough to follow! They all head out to an island or whatever and pound booze. Bill Murray and his rape victim dance tenderly and suck face and oh I just give up. I really do. OH! Bill Murray also tells this scary ass story about a couple being murdered by a deranged psychopath with a rusty hook for a hand. If this movie was just this one scene it would have been the scariest movies of the 70’s...and yes I have seen Halloween and The Exorcist Maybe there’s 5-minute director’s cut in the works? Who’s to say...
The counsellors all row back to the camp after their night on the island (who was watching the campers while all of this was going on? we do not know). There’s a sweet song that plays over this scene that I coulda swore was Randy Newman ‘cuz it’s all “dee boo daah boo..dee bee dee doo” but it’s actually Terry Black...or David Naughton...or ahh who gives a shit? When they arrive back at camp they must have figured...well...shit..we need to end this movie some which way! How does an epic battle royale with the vaguely racistly named rival Camp Mohawk sound?? It sounds ridiculous! Remember the scene in Wet Hot American Summer where Coop is trying to get his campers riled up for a baseball game against the l camp Tiger Claw and his campers tell him that they don’t want to play because it’s a total cliche...and “well worn territory”? They are 100% referring to the last 30 minutes of Meatballs.
The dudes from Camp Mohawk arrive at Camp North Star for a competition that involves everything from potato sack racing to hot dog eating (told you) and pugilism. It’s tough to know who to root for as there zero actual characters from the Camp Mohawk side. There’s also no mention as to what’s at stake in this competition. I mean...winner gets what? A set of steak knives? Also--it seems that only the counsellors get to take part in the competition. It’s as if the campers have disappeared from the film entirely. But that’s cool I guess. Funny Fat Kid wins the hot dog eating contest. Spazz wins the stacked teacup contest (huh?). Bill Murray keeps running around in the background saying shit like “I run to keep my mind off of sex” and “I’m pacing like an expectant father with the clap.” Mmm Hmm. Halfway through the competition North Star is trailing by like a grillion points. This is par for the course as Mohawk has won 12 out of the last 12 competition. The entire camp gathers for a late night fireside pep rally where Bill Murray says that Mohawk always wins because their kids have “all the money”. Umm...excuse me but isn’t this the camp that costs ONE LARGE per week in 1979 dollars?? Could there really be another camp that costs more?? You know what? It just doesn’t matter. Those aren’t my words...that’s Billy Murray telling his trailing-in-the-standings summer camp that they needn’t worry about winning the faceless nameless competition. The entire cast get onboard chanting up a storm: “IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER!!” I mean...why would it matter?? No one even knows what you win if you win this stupid fucking shit! But yeah...turns out it does matter. Camp North Star can win it all (whatever “all” is) if they win the big cross country race. And who better to run the race than poor sad Rudy. I’m sure winning that shit would turn his frown right the fuck upside down. So...yeah...that’s exactly what happens. Rudy runs the race and wins by a nut hair. He is hailed as a hero and vows to return to camp the following summer to crush as much ass as possible (I’m not just being crass...this is the actual plot of the R-rated Meatballs 3 starring none other than PATRICK DEMPSEY as Rudy!) Bill Murray and his assault victim agree to get an apartment together...so there’s that. The movie ends with the entire cast gathered around the campfire singing a song about CIT life that includes the lyrics “we smoke and drink and fool around...we’re CIT’s...so pity us.” I immediately eject the VHS tape and throw it in the trash. But then I remember that I still own Meatballs Part II. So I got that going for me....which is nice....
*originally posted may 12, 2017 - aka THE FIRST EVER*
Ok folks...new Friday feature: VHS of the week. This week we take a look at the 1985 film D.A.R.Y.L.
Here’s what happens: a stoic young boy in an Easter suit (think mini-Jared Kushner) is abandoned on a mountainside by a dude who then drives off the side of said mountain to elude capture by a scary helicopter-flying bad guys. Daryl goes to a group home where his case worker immediately sends him to live with Nigel Tufnel from Spinal Tap. Did all adoptions take mere hours in the 1980’s or was that only in the movies? Anyway, Daryl settles in with Tufnel and his wife and makes fast friends with a kid across the street named Turtle whose mom is totally the maid from Clue. No one seems to question the fact that Daryl is hella good at literally everything. Pole Position? Top score. Advanced mathematics? What else you got, teach? Little League? Move over Wade Boggs. Daryl plays insane amounts of little league. In fact, most of this movie is one long little league montage. Eventually Daryl’s “real” parents come shut the party down and bring the kid to some a non-specific military bunker. The Tufnel’s smell bullshit and follow the scent to the bunker where they learn that their boy wonder is not Daryl...but D.A.R.Y.L...a Data Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform! Buzunga! Worse still...the kid has been keeping it TOO real...so they are gonna power him down FOREVS!!! Real Dad grows a conscience and steals Daryl before he can shut him off. There is a car chase and Real Dad is shot and killed. It is sad. Daryl then steals a fighter jet ‘cuz there’s no better way to close out flick than with a fighter jet chase. Daryl parachutes into the water and dies because he is a computer and can’t get wet. Just like your iPhone, you dig? Luckily Fake Mom shoves the kid’s body into a bag of rice and several hours later he is right as rain. The Tufnel’s are stoked...Turtle is stoked...everyone is stoked! Cue Teddy Pendergrass song. The End.
Here’s the deal: the whole point of VHS of the Week (as much as there is a “point” to this pointlessness) is to bust on movies that aren’t any good...or movies that are supposed to be good...but are not. That’s what I do: I bust. And all this bustin’? It makes me feel good. Still, I get lots of requests to write about movies that don’t really meet that criteria for VHSOTW because they’re beyond reproach. Like, what the frig am I gonna say about Goodfellas!? It’s good--The End. There’s your review. (Also--I’m not sure how many times I have used the word “good” in this article so far but it’s probably way too many. I gotta knock that shit off pronto). I have had a handful of requests (actual number of requests: one) for the 1985 comedy Real Genius so I decided to check it out again...even though it is...as I suspected...a pretty goddamn solid flick. Back when it came out I must’ve watched it a million trillion times but I probably hadn’t seen it in about 30 years. I popped said flick it into the old VCR and was immediately struck by the fact that I had completely misremembered almost everything about this entire movie. I know this is a pretty common occurrence when revisiting your favorite films from childhood. Like...I know I was too young to comprehend anything that went on in Risky Business when I saw it as a child...but I knew I LIKED it! Because of Tangerine Dream’s score, of course. With Real Genius, though, literally everything about this movie went way over my little cowlicked head. Seriously, if you had asked me to describe the plot of this movie to you before I just rewatched it I would have had a one word answer. And that word is “popcorn.” It probably doesn’t help that the movie has a science-y plot line and I continue to respond to any and all science-related material with the same stunned, open-mouth gaze you might find on a five year-old who has just walked in on his parents having sex. But I continued to watch Real Genius over and over again anyway. Probably because of the popcorn. More on that later though.
What happens is this: The film opens with a clandestine meeting between some rouge CIA ghouls who are trying to develop a high-powered laser that can vaporize enemies from outer space. There’s some grumbling and mumbling: Isn’t this illegal? Shouldn’t we tell the president? One man says he can’t be involved in these unethical shenanigans and intends to resign and promptly leaves the room. The remaining men say they will simply have that man...who is black...killed. There will now only be white people in this film from here on out! In order to build said murder laser the CIA have chosen the route that will yield maximum comedic results: they have decided to outsource to gig to a corrupt college professor and his merry band of misfit genius engineering students! That professor, Jerry Hathaway, is played by Billy Atherton, a man who will live in infamy for portraying smug prick EPA investigator Walter Peck in Ghostbusters as well as smug prick TV Reporter Richard Thornburg in Die Hard’s 1 and 2. His character here is basically those two characters combined under a different name. According to the interwebs Atherton has enjoyed a 5 decade career on both stage and screen...but it’s also true that...yes...this man has no dick. Every time I see this dude I just want Bonnie Bedelia to materialize and smash him right in the grill.
Professor Hathaway has got to get this death ray put together with the quickness so he goes trolling on the high school science fair circuit where he meets a 15 year-old uber genius named Mitch. Mitch is played by Gabe Jarret, an actor who went on to front The Unknown, a band that Wikipedia describes as having found “little success”. (“The shitty Beatles? Any good? They Suck! Then it’s not just a clever name!”--Wayne’s World). I’m not sure how real life protocols work and whatnot but in the world of this film the Prof offers to skip Mitch right into college on the SPOT. Like, pack ya shit and hop in my truck. His folks are down...he’s down...so we have us a ballgame!
Mitch arrives at the California Technical Institute of Whatever Whatever and learns that he’s going to be paired up with resident smart ass senior Chris Knight, played with overbearing overbearingness by method actor extraordinaire and world’s third worst Batman Val Kilmer. And look...I hate to dunk on a guy who has had some serious health setbacks...but Val Kilmer can be insufferable. He apparently took what they wrote for his character and dialed in up to eleven...billion! It’s like...maybe switch to Sanka, bro. He also looks like he’s at least 26 years-old...and the reason for this is that Val Kilmer was 26 when he made this movie. Here I should note that Val Kilmer once described his longtime residence of Taos, New Mexico as “the land where God created oxygen.” I visited Taos in 2009 and asked every local I met if they had A--Ever met Val Kilmer and B--Realized they were living in the town where god created oxygen. No one would answer either of my questions...but I did get to try green chile beer for the first time...which was just ok.
ANYWAY...so Mitch is in college and he’s getting bullied ‘cuz he’s 15 and kinda funny lookin’. He’s also got a dude living in his closet who looks like the comedian Steven Wright but who is totally NOT the comedian Steven Wright. Professor Hathaway, though, has full confidence in Mitch and puts him in charge of the laser project, which earns him an enemy in this gangly, braces-wearing grad student named Kent. Kent is played by an actor named Robert Prescott, who has little else on his acting resume but who totally kills here (actually, he was in Michael Clayton and Burn After Reading...so hooray for him!). Mitch has it pretty good otherwise. This being a science college for science geniuses, people are always pulling neat-o tricks....like covering the common areas of the dormitory in ice. Now that shit looks FUN! Someone covered my dorm in circus peanuts one night but it was kinda ho hum. He also meets a student named Jordan, played by poor ladies Phoebe Cates Michelle Meyrink, who seems sweet on him. I think she is, anyway. It’s hard to tell because she is completely SPUN on adderall...or whatever cheap trucker’s speed the college kids were doing back in the 80’s.
The CIA bad guys are growing impatient with Professor Hathaway and tell him he has like 5 days to complete his death laser OR ELSE! The Prof calls Val Kilmer to his new mini mansion and tells him he’d better complete the death laser in 5 days...OR ELSE! It is also established in this scene that the professor has a particular aversion to popcorn. It might just be me....but I feel like this is going to come up again later on in the movie. Val Kilmer listens to what the professor has to say and proceeds to do the exact opposite. He convinces Mitch to abandon his studies and head to something called “Tanning Invitational”. Basically, they have built a makeshift waterpark inside of one of the classrooms and have invited the ladies from the local beauty school to dance to Bryan Adams in their bikinis. Had I known they taught you how to build indoor waterslides in science college I would’ve never pursued that useless liberal arts degree! Kent, that evil douche, runs to Hathaway to tattle. Dude comes down to bust up the party and gives Mitch a thorough dressing down in front of all of his fellow students. Like...he’s only mad at Mitch!?? What about the fact that there are waterslides where there is supposed to be higher learning!?
Mitch is wicked upset and calls his folks to tell them he wants to come home. That’s reasonable...the kid is 15. A child! But that Kent, the rat fuck, records the phone call and plays it over the loudspeaker in the cafeteria the next day. Even though there’s thousands of kids at the school they all know it’s Mitch and point and laugh. Now the kid REALLY wants to go the hell home. Val Kilmer, stabilizing force that he is, tries to talk Mitch down. They crawl into the closet to find closet man, who lives in a fully tricked out bunker complete with his own mini roller coaster! It’s like the crawlspace from The Breakfast Club but the size of an Ikea and with rides. Kilmer explains that the dude in the bunker is Lazlo, the hot shit student whiz from the 70’s who cracked under pressure and went “underground”. How the administrators at this college...an engineering college no less...do not know that there’s a massive subterranean living space in the dormitory walls is beyond me. Kilmer tells Mitch that if he takes his studies too seriously he’s gonna end up in the walls like Lazlo. That’s all well and good but there’s that secret military deadline encroaching. Hathaway is feeling the heat something awful so he decides to cut Kilmer loose since he can’t stop cracking wise. Kilmer explains that he can still graduate without making the laser. Hathaway says he’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. Man, dictatorial rouge professors are the absolute worst!
Instead of packing up shop Kilmer just keeps showing up to class like nothing ever went down. There’s a “making the laser” montage...and Mitch gets revenge on Kent by disassembling his car and reassembling it inside of his dorm room. I’m not sure how many 80’s comedies the “car in the dorm room” trick happens in...but I’m gonna say at LEAST 3. One night Mitch returns to his room and there’s a woman inside who introduces herself as Sherry Nugil and explains that she’s been waiting to have sex with Mitch and would like to do so now as he is “old enough”. Ok...first off...the kid is 15. Second off....WHOOOO is this person???? You can’t just drop a new character into the third quarter of a movie. Like...HUH?? Mitch says he’s not interested as he realizes that he is probably in love with the speed freak Jordan. He finds her and tells her as much and they ball. So there’s that.
Anyway...Val Kilmer discovers that he can make this death laser happen by introducing liquid nitrogen (I think?). They shoot a beam that cuts through everything within a 10 mile radius. They head to a bar called Purgatory to celebrate but here comes buzz killington Lazlo out of the basement to tell everyone that the laser is probably going to be used to murder people from outer space. Why none of these geniuses thought of this before we do not know...but heads are super bummed. They head back to school to find that Professor Hathaway has already turned the death ray over to the CIA. In order to track down the professor Mitch and Co pump noxious gas into Kent’s dorm room and then implant a tiny speaker into his braces. When Kent wakes up, Mitch distorts his voice and tells him he’s Jesus...and Kent...dumb motherfucker that he is...believes him. He asks Kent to lead them to the professor...which he does. They also tell Kent that he should stop playing with himself. 7 year-old me, watching at home, totally cracks up at this...and also...has questions.
Right...Mitch and Val Kilmer sneak onto the military base where the laser is being prepared for its maiden test run. They fudge it up somehow and the head off to Professor Hathaway’s house, where they are met by the president of the college and some rando senator who has totally new to the movie. In the last 5 minutes?? Come on, people! Kent is lead into the professor’s house by fake Jesus...where he finds the world’s most gigantic container of Jiffy Pop. You know, that shit that you have to literally burn your house down to make? Literally! The professor is up in a plane with the military people but, when they fire the laser, it goes off target and cuts right through the professor’s living room and lights that pot of Jiffy Pop...the fuck...UP!!! The house EXPLODES with popcorn. Real ass popcorn. According to the ‘net the filmmakers spent 3 months popping popcorn and storing it in a warehouse for the big climax. THREE MONTHS! If they ever re-make this movie I am totally applying for that job. I make a mean ass bowl of pop! The neighborhood children run and frolic in the popcorn and it looks fun as shit and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears starts playing. Probably my two favorite things in the world right there: popcorn and Tears for Fears. I mean...not really...but if there’s a better 80’s album than Songs from the Big Chair I ain’t heard it. So...I guess that’s it. The movie just kind of ends. Professor Hathaway comes home to find his house looking like a stepped on bag of microwave Orville Redenbacher and is none too pleased. But isn’t he also...like...in a SHIT TON of trouble for forcing his students to make weapons of mass destruction and then selling them to the CIA?? I think we just have to assume that he is. Bonnie Bedelia jumps out of the popcorn and smashes Professor Hathaway in the kisser. I mean...not really though. But that would’ve been awesome. The end.
*originally posted august 31, 2017
Ok folks...it's time for VHS of the week:
You know how The Clash’s London Calling was the last album released in the 1970’s? Well turns out Tango and Cash was the last film released in the 1980’s! What these two things have to do with each other I do not know. T&C had a notoriously difficult production due to Sylvester Stallone’s general assholery and the producer’s decision to replace director Andrei Russianlastname with Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli mid shoot. That’s right...this flick was partially directed by the guy who made Purple Rain...and it’s just like Purple Rain but without Prince and music. Seriously though...this movie reeks of bullshit from the opening sequence where renegade police officer Tango (Stallone) manages to outrun an out of control gas tanker in a convertible Chrysler LeBaron. His chief is all “who the hell you think you are, Rambo?? (WINK!!)”. He then fires a pistol into the gas tanker and everyone freaks out but then cocaine comes pouring out of the trunk. Tango is a genius. Meanwhile across town officer Cash, played by Kurt Russell in all of his mulleted glory, is being chased down by 80’s movie asian bad guy #674. Not to worry though: he catches the dude and then tries to choke him to death in an interrogation room in a scene that is played for laughs. We quickly learn that Tango & Cash are the hottest of hot shot police officers in all of LA county whose respective exploits are on the front page of the newspaper every day (note: really?). They are also rivals for reasons that are scarcely explained. Soon, though, they’ll be getting to know each other real well because evil henchman Jack Palance has an evil plan to frame T&C for murder and get them off the streets and out of his evil bidness. We know he is evil because he has two mice that he has named Tango and Cash and he spends the entire film whispering evil things to the baby mice. Dude is THAT mean. Right so T&C get found guilty for murder or something and get sent to prison together. Casual homophobia and rape jokes abound. Jack Palance tries to have them murdered in prison but they escape in a rainy, night time prison break scene that goes on for about 45 minutes. Most of the movie is just this one sequence. Dudes must have got mad colds filming in all that fake rain. On the outside they go their separate ways and try to clear their names. Kurt Russell hooks up with a stripper played by Terri Hatcher...who totally turns out to be Stallone’s sister (OH MAN!). Eventually they get some help from a police lab whiz (a profession that I’m guessing only exists in movies) played by ace character actor Michael J Pollard, who sets them up with this super mondo assault vehicle tank SUV thing. They hit the road ready to take on and and all evil doers. And it was at this point that the 4-pack Lawson’s Sip of Sunshine I drank crept up on me and I passed out before the end of the movie. I don’t really feel like rewinding and watching the rest...but I’m guessing it is awesome. The end.
*originally posted august 3, 2018
Alright folks...time for VHS of the week:
Now here’s a flick starring a bona fide legend....my man Griffin Dunne! Did you know that his sister was in Poltergeist and was murdered by her totally real, non-ghost boyfriend? Did you know that he lost his virginity to Carrie Fisher...and she to him? Did you know that his aunt is Joan Didion!? Oh yeah...Madonna is in it too. I guess she’s a bit more legendary...but most folks’ metric...but not necessarily mine. So this movie came out in 1987 and Madonna was still top of the tops for pretty much everyone except Mr Blue from Reservoir Dogs...who tuned out when she got into her “Papa Don’t Preach” phase. When people would slag on old Madge for her crap acting I would always defend her...pointing out that Who’s That Girl is a solid film. The reason for this, I’m realizing after watching it today, is that I probably hadn’t seen it since 1987. It’s REAL friggin’ bad, kids. Holy smokes! What even happens in this movie? I’m not even really sure. The flick opens with an impossible-to-follow animated sequence that explains how Madonna’s character ends up in the slammer. I thought it might just be the gauze from my old VHS so I adjusted to tracking and shit but...no...the animation was possibly rendered on a dirty cocktail napkin. Here’s a true fact: the working title of this movie was Slammer....which is a way better name. Like...hey dude...wanna go see SLAMMER!? Anyway...Madonna has been in prison in 4 years for killing a guy and stuffing him in the trunk of her car (I think). Meanwhile up in the rich white people part of 1980’s NYC my man Griffin Dunne is getting ready to marry the daughter of some fuck-you wealthy business tycoon. The day before the wedding Papa (Don’t Preach) in-law sends Griffin Dunne on two errands: homeboy has to take the family Rolls Royce and pick some rare-breed tiger from the loading dock...and them he’s gotta pick up Madonna from prison and make sure she gets on a bus to Philadelphia. How any of this makes any sense at all is not explained for an agonizingly long time. So here comes Madonna...acting up a storm. I’m pleased to report that she’s not doing her whole fake British accent kabbalah thing yet. She IS, however, doing a terrible impersonation of Marisa Tomei’s character from My Cousin Vinny...which is a mad cool trick since that movie wouldn’t be out until 1992. Her character is a complete menace! She’s out of jail for all of 10 minutes when she punches a police officer in the face. She steals a bunch of tapes from the Sam Goody (awww)...and then steals dude’s Rolls and tries drag race a freight train. It’s all unbelievably stupid. Madonna wants to clear her name and expose the bad guys who put her in the slammer. They go to Harlem where she buys a gun and the black folks vandalize the Rolls (80’s movie=endless bad racial stereotypes). There’s a bunch of stupid ass chases scene where Madonna and Griffin Dunne always end up on the winning end cuz they have that tiger with them...who just eats whomever is chasing after them. There’s also a running joke where different random cab drivers keep telling Griffin Dunne that they are fucking his fiancee...and that’s where I said to myself “this movie has a dark heart, man.” Then there’s a bit where all of the bridesmaids are kidnapped by some killer pimps or something...but are then rescued by hunky policemen and a muscle bound UPS driver who is dumb as balls. The ladies swoon. Feminism dies a million deaths. Anyway...Madge and G-Dun return the tiger to some upper west side eccentric who has a rooftop sanctuary full of endangered species. The tiger meets a lady tiger and they ball. Madge and G-Dun are feeling the sexy tiger vibes so they ball too. The next morning he’s all “thanks for the yuks but I’m still gonna marry the rich girl”. She boards a bus to Philly...crushed...but then she realizes...in the biggest no shit reveal of all time...that the soon to be father in law in the bad guy! She crashes the wedding...chaos ensues...Griffin Dunne and the not gonna be a father-in-law after all have a fencing match...which G-Dun wins by kicking old pops in the balls. I don’t know much about fencing but I’m pretty sure that’s an illegal move. Madonna and Griffin Dunne ride off into the sunset together...and people’s careers don’t seem to take too much of a hit from this flick. The director James Foley goes on to make Glengarry Glen Ross...which is awesome...and also the 50 Shades of Grey movies...which is less awesome. Anyway, I wonder what Joan Didion thought of this movie…
*originally posted july 26, 2018*
Alright folks....time for VHS of the week:
A few weeks back I mentioned that...after spending ages 4-8 on a steady diet of Risky Business...and walking around the halls of my catholic elementary school reciting Clark Griswold’s “I think you’re all fucked in the head” speech verbatim (I can still do this, btw)...my parents made a half-hearted attempt to wean me off of R-rated movies. So instead I watched shit like the PG-13-rated Loverboy...which is about a pizza delivery guy who “turns takeout into make out” when he starts balling wealthy middle-aged housewives to raise try to raise enough dough to return to college to be with his girlfriend. The pizza guy is played by Patrick Dempsey...who went from totally geek to totally chic in the late 80’s. Dude was like Chris Pratt and Channing Tatum...and Dustin Hoffman...all rolled into one irresistible package (heyyyo!). So as I JUST MENTIONED...dude flunks out of college and has to start working at the nonsensically named, vaguely racist Senor Pizza. He starts getting orders for pizzas with extra anchovies...which signals that there’s a middle-aged lady out there who wants to ball. Before you know it he’s delivering the goods (oh ho!) to everyone from Kirstie Alley to Princess Leia...and they are throwing mad cash at him...which is good cuz I delivered pizza for a summer and made fuck all in tips. No one tried to seduce me...but a 95 year old black lady named Ella poured me a tumbler of bourbon after I helped her use to bathroom after delivering her order of Papa Gino’s breadsticks. That was the shit. Anyway...so yeah...Patrick Dempsey is a prostitute. And this flick is full of the usual wall-to-wall racism and casual homophobia that’s typical of the 80’s comedies. For example...there’s an 80’s movie robot that speaks in a voice best described as “white person making fun of Chinese Take-out worker (“sowwy...we have no-uh robster today). Yikes! Oh and there’s this subplot where Dempsey’s parents have this theory that he’s gay...which falls apart when he shows up to ball his own mother! (they are relived because what....hetero male gigolo is better than gay? Eesh). Eventually his girlfriend finds out what’s what and is super duper pissed but Dempsey is all “I banged all these ladies for you” (his words...not mine). She’s like OK fine...hope you got a little left in the tank for me! ANYWAY....about 4 years ago I had an idea that I wanted to write for The Onion so I wrote this fake article about a family returning a decades-overdue copy of Loverboy to a video store. The Onion was like “you are not funny...never contact us again” so I posted it here and a lot of people thought it was real. It is not real....but I’ll include it here again for your enjoyment. Cheers.
It was the event Donald and Marjorie Cutler had been looking forward to all year. When the Cutler’s put their South Grafton home on the market last January they held out hope that their three grown children, Donald Sr., 45, of South Grafton, Melissa, 43, of Tampa, Florida, and Kevin, 41, of Austin, Texas, would be able to clear up their busy schedules and return home for one last weekend together in the house they all grew up in. Now, a seemingly innocuous discovery during a weekend full of fond remembrances and laughter has led to some serious legal headaches for the youngest of the three Cutler children.
“Kev was digging though a box of souvenirs and photos from his high school days when he came across the tape,” says Mrs. Cutler, speaking from the kitchen of her new home in Clearwater, Fla. The tape in question: a VHS copy of the 1989 Patrick Dempsey comedy “Loverboy”. “Kev said ‘Ma! Look at this! I must’ve forgot to return it!” What happened next has been the source of a great deal of regret for Mrs. Cutler. “I feel like such a dumbbell for this next part…but when I saw that the tape was in a Video Tunnel case I said ‘Kev! They’re still in business!’”
The following morning after a family brunch outing, Kevin Cutler decided to return the video cassette some 9,155 days after its original due date of July 29th, 1989 because, according to Mrs. Cutler, “he thought it would be funny”.
However, Video Tunnel owner Ray Thibodeaux, 64, failed to find the humor in the return of the severely overdue tape and promptly presented Cutler with a bill for $27,475 in late fees. Kevin Cutler has referred to the rather significant late fee as “far more hilarious than anything that happens in the movie “Loverboy” and has refused to pay any part of it. That’ll be for a Worcester County judge to decide when the matter heads to court early next week.
Mr. Thibodoux agreed to speak about the matter over coffee at Earth Shine Café, located on the first floor of the Mechanics Building is downtown Worcester, where Mr. Thibodeoux has operated Video Tunnel out of the basement since 1984. Save for some faded lettering on a mailbox in the building’s foyer, there’s little evidence of the 30 year-old video store’s existence. Although head barista Raylee Swartz, 22, has worked at Earth Shine since 2011 she claimed to be completely unaware that Video Tunnel was still in business. “I saw the name on the mailbox but I assumed someone just forgot to scrape the letters off,” Swartz said. When asked if she would consider renting movies from Video Tunnel, Swartz said that she “didn’t think so”.
“I got news for little Kevin Cutler: you owe me 27 large,” Mr. Thibodeoux said. “The kid really screwed the pooch on this one: he’s got a new release out for 25 years! And throw in an extra fifty cents too because, after all that time, he couldn’t remember to rewind the tape. A nice little cherry on top!”
In the film “Loverboy” Mr. Dempsey plays Randy, a down-on-his luck pizza delivery boy who spends his summer moonlighting as a male gigolo in order to raise money to return to college, where he’ll be reunited with his girlfriend. The film’s tagline of “He deliver more than pizza” did little to entice audiences in a summer chock full of blockbusters from Batman to Lethal Weapon 2. The film pulled in just four million dollars at the box office and was quickly forgotten.
Despite the film’s box office failure, Mr. Thiboduaux claims that “Loverboy” is still a sought after title. “The thing with that kid Dempsey,” Mr, Thibodeux says, “is that his career tanked in the early 90’s. But once you started to see him on Grey’s Anatomy, slowly but surely, people started asking for stuff like “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Mobsters” again. Asked what Mr. Thibodeaux would tell customers looking to rent “Loverboy”, he said he would “tell them the truth: that it’s still checked out.”
Should the judge rule in favor of Video Tunnel, Mr. Thibodeaux says he already knows what he’s going to do with his cash windfall. “I’m gonna go out and get drunker than a monkey’s ass,” Thibodeaux says, “and then see where that leads me.”
The Cutlers hope this matter will be resolved quickly so that they can begin to enjoy their retirement and their son Kevin can return to his job as a yoga instructor in Texas. “What an awful thing!” Mrs. Cutler says. “I always told all of my kids: return the tapes on time!” Reached by phone at her home in Tampa, Melissa Cutler said she had little interest in discussing her younger brother’s legal battles, but offered that she thought the videotape fiasco was “Typical Kev”. “He’s always been the flake of the family,” she added.
Kevin Cutler declined to discuss the ongoing case with Worcester Magazine, but said that he expected to be fully exonerated. When asked what his most recent favorite films were Cutler said that he doesn’t even have a television in his Austin apartment. If he wants to watch a movie these days, he said he simply streams it on Netflix “like everyone else”.
A couple of years back my buddy Phil Wilcox turned to me and said “did you ever think that, if Bruce Springsteen didn’t exist, John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band would be the biggest band in the world?” My answer was that I had not thought about this. In fact, I would put the amount of time I have spent thinking about John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown band in my life at around zero minutes. I have always known their hit song “On The Dark Side” because everyone who has listened to an FM radio station at any point in the last 36 years knows that song. It is still played on what’s left of classic rock radio literally every single day (and yes...I know what literally means). So far and wide is this song’s reach that none other than Arcade Fire lightly plagiarized it for their 2007 tune “Keep the Car Running”. I know this because I asked their ginger guitar player about it once and he ignored my question and walked away. I was vaguely aware that said hit song came from the 1983 flick Eddie and the Cruisers...a film about a fictional band called, umm, Eddie and the Cruisers. What I didn’t know until I googled it just now is that John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band are from Rhode Island...which is crazytown because no bands are ever from Rhode Island. And don’t go giving me that “but the Talking Heads met at RISD” shit. Doesn’t count! Even though they were formed the year before Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, JC&BBB’s are probably remembered exclusively for sounding exactly like Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. They provided original songs for Eddie and the Cruisers and its 1989 sequel (as well as “Hearts on Fire” from the Rocky IV...a boss ass tune that sounds nothing like The Boss) and have done fuck all since. They still play a handful of gigs every year at baller venues like the Windjammer at Misquamicuit Beach...when they aren’t hosting karaoke or trivia. Maybe they still make enough Dark Side loot every year that they can just hang around RI...fuckin’...crushing Narragansett beer and coffee milk...eating quahogs and not worrying about much. So that’s those dudeses deal. I figured since I spent a good 2 minutes reading the JC&BBB wikipedia page I might as well go ahead and check out Eddie and the Cruisers. What happens is this: Eddie and the Cruisers just completely sucks. Like, it doesn’t even make crazy sense! It takes a fairly interesting concept and proceeds to balls it up in every way possible. So...right away...we open with a clip of Eddie and the Cruisers playing “On the Dark Side” at a gig in 1963. This is all well and good except this song sounds NOTHING like anything that came out in 1963. We are talking pre-Beatles invasion here, y’all. I have no idea what the members of JC&BBB look like and am way too lazy to find out...but these Eddie and the Cruisers sons of bitches are a carbon copy of the E Street band. They got a tall black dude blowing sax and everything! Even the drummer uses the same grip as Max Weinberg! So now we jump ahead 20 years to a TV studio in the year 1983...where the nakedest actress pre-Julianne Moore Ellen Barkin explains the entire plot of the movie to us in one tidy scene. You see--Eddie and the Cruisers were set to hit it big but then Eddie drove his car off of a bridge and their lost masterpiece of a final album, A Season in Hell, disappeared along with Eddie. She thinks Eddie is still alive ‘cuz he named the album after a Rimbaud poem or some shit. Totally checks out. She figures if she can track down the surviving Cruisers then she can find out the truth about Eddie and maybe shake this lost album loose. I don’t know how you went about all of that without the internet and Facebook but it must’ve been hella hard. It’s at this point that I realize that I didn’t see Ellen Barkin’s name in the credits. When asked about this flick she said “I hated making that film. I think people were all fucked up on drugs.” Sick burn, girl! She decides to start with the band’s pianist, played by man who played Cleveland Indians catcher Jake Taylor in Major League Tommy Berenger. “He was the guy who wrote all of the lyrics...the band called him the ‘word man’” one of the TV producers says. And he, in turn, called them the unoriginal nickname men. We flash back to 1962. I mean...I guess we do. There are never any subtitles of any kind. They also didn’t bother aging or de-aging the characters as we jump back and forth between the decades. Like, they couldn't have at least given Berenger some salt and pepper in his temples or something?? Maybe Netflix will pick up this movie and give it the Irishmen CGI treatment and older Berenger will look like Joe Pesci’s balls. Probably not though. Anyway...so it’s 1962 and Eddie and the Cruisers show up at a bar on the Jersey Shore...because OF COURSE they are on the Jersey Shore. The bar is closed but the late night cleaner (Berenger) lets them in and they set up and start playing...for reasons that are totally unclear. Their manager shows up in the form of dismembered Sopranos’ star Joe Pantoliano. He’s all “wuss a matter with you fellas?? Where’s the FIRE!?” This Eddie cat is all “I ain’t feelin’ the music...I’m just sayin’ words!” (“Me and the boys are playing...and we just can’t find the sound”--KISS). It turns out that, even though the band is named after him, this Eddie can’t write any tunes! Not unlike how J Geils didn’t write any music in the J Geils Band, you dig? As luck would have it this late night floor mopper is a regular goddamn friggin’ Randy Newman and is quickly drafted into the band to give it that E Street swing. We jump back to ’83 where Berenger is now working as a high school English teacher. Barkin goes to see him but he ain’t interested in talking about the old days. When he gets home from work he finds that his janky ass trailer has been ransacked. As luck would have it Joey Pantses house has been trashed as well. They speculate that the culprit is someone looking for the lost Cruisers album. Joey Pants suggests that there’s no time like the present to reform the Cruisers and cash in on this renewed interest in the band that I guess is happening because they say it is. Unfortunately...or fortunately...there’s already a scab version of the Cruisers fronted by their bass player Sal doing time on the dinner theater circuit. They go check them out and they sound like ass. Kind of reminds me of the time I went to see Blind Melon with some chump stepping in for the dead guy. It’s a fairly common practice; almost everyone from the band Badfinger is long dead but you can still go see a band called Badfinger featuring the band’s third drummer. It’s a crazy mixed up world we live in. We flash back yet again to the day Tom Berenger writes “On the Dark Side” for the band. All of the other members are puzzled because it is 1963 and this must sound like alien music...but Eddie is digging the shit out of it! “C’mon man...put some swing into it! It’s as easy as gettin’ laid!” Mmm hmm. Back in the present day Berenger and Sal and crush a couple of PBR’s and lament the fact that Eddie is no longer alive. “If that cat was still around we might have a shot at the bigs!” There’s also a bit about how the original sax player OD’d in a hotel room...and I guess we are supposed to feel bad for a character who they didn’t even bother to write any dialogue for. Let me just pump the brakes right here because I feel like we’ve all had enough already. Sure...this Eddie kid had some really nice biceps and whatnot...but he didn’t write any of the songs! So Tom Berenger...who DID write all of the hit songs...never bothered to write any new songs?? For ANYONE!?? Like, the best he could do in life was to teach English and live in a trailer park?? And people keep going on about this lost album. Wouldn’t the guy who wrote the tunes know what the tunes sounded like??? Couldn’t he just re-record the songs...or at least hum them out for a motherfucker?? You know who doesn’t know what the songs from the lost album sound like? US!! The AUDIENCE!!! Because they never bother playing any. There’s a scene where the band has just finished recording “A Season in Hell” and we hear a few seconds of a tune that sounds just like the rest of them. But then the suits come in and are all “this stuff is garbage! You want to be a poet...go to Greenwich Village! They want Dark Side...you’re givin’ them opera!” Eddie and the Cruisers playing opera!? I’d love to hear what that sounds like. Unfortunately they didn’t think it was necessary to record fake songs for the fake lost album. Sorry doodz. There’s another super long flashback to a frat house gig where some class warfare erupts and Eddie and Berenger get into a fight because Berenger starts making moves on Eddie’s girl Joann. Have I mentioned her yet? Ahh, who cares. Berenger seeks her out in the present day and she takes him to this magical trash alter right out of Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King and WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING!!?? Oh...right...this is where Eddie stashed the tapes for his lost album the night he drove his car into the drink. She gives up the tapes but says that Eddie is prolly gonna come looking for them later back at her crib. This is rather curious since Eddie is supposed to be dead. A strange man shows up in a ’57 Chevy and there’s like 5 seconds worth of suspense...but...AHHH...it’s just Joey Pants! They give him the tapes and then go inside to ball I guess. Ellen Barkin’s documentary on the Cruisers is finally shown on the TV...and who do we spy watching it from the window of a store with TV’s in the window?? Motherfucking EDDIE!!! The dude is ALIVE! And the impact of this big reveal is totally blunted by the existence of a sequel called “Eddie Lives!” So that’s the end of that. I’m gonna go listen to The River and try to forget everything I just told you. The end.
So here’s the deal: the original Home Alone was released in November of 1990. I was 12 years-old at the time but I already considered myself somewhat of a cinephile. I recently found a list that I made back in the day of my Top 10 films of 1990 and in the #1 slot sat David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. Shame on whomever let me watch that movie at age 12! And also--thank you! I was into more mature-type fare and not interested in seeing Home Alone. Like...at all. In fact...Home Alone came out on the same day as Rocky V and I was BENT on seeing the latter film on opening night. Well...as luck would have it Rocky V was sold out so...while 500 people watched the film that would put the Rocky series on ice for the next decade and a half...I went to see Home Alone...and that shit had me TWISTED! It immediately appealed to the 12 year-old inside of me. And...you know...the one outside of me. This was back when uber popular movies stayed in theaters for months on end...and I don’t know how many times I saw Home Alone in the theater by the time spring had sprung...but it was 6 times (note: exact figure. I saved the ticket stubs!). I just loved the ever-loving shit out of that movie. Like, I wrote Macauley Culkin a fan letter where I asked him to come have a sleepover at my apartment in Worcester and listen to my Faster Pussycat cassettes (although he was probably more of a Velvet (pizza) Underground kind of dude). Home Alone 2 came out in 1992. I saw it once and promptly forgot about it. It is now almost 30 years later and these two films are shown on an endless loop between Thanksgiving and Christmas without fail and I watch a minute or two every year. The original still gives me all of the feels. “I wouldn’t let you stay in my room if you were growing on my ASS!” Now that shit is funny! And Home Alone 2 is a perfect movie to have on in the background when you are doing other stuff and intentionally avoiding watching Home Alone 2. I was passingly aware that there were two further sequels in the Home Alone franchise but never even considered watching one of them. Part 4 starred French Stewart and went straight to video. That’s an easy out...up there with Staying Alive and Mannequin 2: On the Move. However, 1997's Home Alone 3 was actually written and produced by one Mr. John Hughes. In fact...it was the final film he actively brought to the big screen before dropping dead on a Manhattan sidewalk in the summer of 2009. I’ve talked about John Hughes at length here at VHSOTW. About how every third comedy released between 1982 and 1993 was either written or produced by John Hughes. His track record speaks for itself. 8 of the 9 films he directed are stone cold classics. The 9th one is Curly Sue. While his screenwriting credits occasionally left a bit to be desired (paging Career Opportunities....Dutch, party of two!)...his retirement left the film industry with a crater-sized void. Home Alone 3 was actually kind of successful. It cleared $79 mil at the box office and none other than Roger Ebert declared it to be “better than the first two!”...which leads me to believe that Roger Ebert was only pretend sober in the 1990’s. I figured I had to finally check out HA3 ‘cuz even the very worst of John Hughes has some SOMETHING going for it (yes, even those Beethoven movies). What I found out was this: First off...this movie is not a Christmas movie. It takes place in January. Why not have the flick take place during the summer? Why subject your cast and crew to a harsh Chicago winter for a non-seasonal plot line? Second: there isn’t a single returning cast member from either of the first two films. Not only are the headliners missing, they didn’t even re-sign any of the bit players. Where’s Buzz? Where’s Uncle Frank?? Where’s the 45th President of the United States Donald J Trump??? Third: everyone in this movie was, and is, profoundly unfamous*. You may have noticed that asterisk right there. That’s because this mostly unknown cast somehow includes the lady who currently holds the title for “Highest Paid Actress in the World”...one Scarlett Johannson. So...she’s in this movie...and there’s that. And finally....the protagonist of the film...an 8 year-old Kevin McCallister also-ran named Alex is not actually HOME ALONE! (I mean...his folks occasionally be at work and shit...but they aren’t in PARIS or wherever). What happens in this movie is this: A terrorist foursome working for current president and Home Alone 2 extra Donald Trump’s BFF’s North Korea steal a $10 million dollar computer chip and attempt to smuggle it into the United States. The computer chip is wicked important as it has the power to launch missiles or some such bullshit. The terrorists get the chip to San Francisco and stash it a remote control car. Seems like a foolproof plan until a luggage mix-up occurs and the remote control car ends up in the possession of a lady named Mrs Hess...headed due east to Chicago. Mrs Hess arrives back in her tony suburban enclave...which is populated exclusively by Tudor mansions. Her across the street neighbors, the Pruitt’s, are the d-grade McCallister’s. There’s only 5 of ‘em...the youngest being 8 year-old Alex...played by disappeared child star Alex D Linz. When the Mrs Hess arrives home little Alex offers to shovel out her driveway...even though the kid lives in a bomb ass tudor and clearly doesn't need the coin. She offers him her ill gotten remote control car as a token of her appreciation. While they are trading gifts/pleasantries Alex starts scratching BALLS and the old lady is like “boy, you better get that shit looked at!”. Alex heads home where his Catherine O’Hara cosplayer mom immediately diagnoses the kid with chicken pox! Man, on my last day of 2nd grade I went to see Karate Kid 2 and started scratching ass around the time they arrived in Okinawa. I went home and was immediately diagnosed with chicken pox by my not-a-medical-doctor mom. I was quarantined from the last day of school until the first day of third grade. And you know what? I’m still pissed about it! This kid’s chicken pox look like they were drawn on with a sharpie. Seriously, Hughes Films couldn’t have hired Tom Savini or some shit?? So Alex is poxed up and his older brother and sister and busting on him something fierce. His older sister is Scarlett Johannsson. The older brother is a poor man’s Billy from that movie Big. They call him “scar butt”...which is the sickest of sick burns. Meanwhile the four anonymous-looking terrorists are hot on the trail of the missing missile chip. There are three dudes and one ladydude. It’s like Joe Pesci was busy filming 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag and Daniel Stern was busy doing whatever Daniel Stern was doing so the filmmakers decided to compensate for their absence by adding two extra crooks. Except these cats aren’t the relatively innocuous Wet Bandits. They are international terrorists...armed with actual guns! They are totally gonna waste this kid when they get ahold of him. Truth be told...I’m not sure exactly what the Wet Bandits had in store for little Kevin McCallister had they caught him. There’s some genuine darkness coursing through these Home Alone flicks. Anyway...kid is stuck home all day hanging out with his annoying ass parrot and his pet ferret...occasionally alone...occasionally not alone. He spies the crooks snooping around the hood so he calls 5-0. They don’t find nothin’ so the kid arms his remote control car with a video camera and.sends it out to record the terrorists doing terror things. But ahh...they steal the tape...and the cops pay another fruitless visit to the hood. This time they are mad pissed...as are his folks. They call him buttface and tell him he has brought shame upon the family. You can just feel John Hughes trying to throw witty verbal punches like he used to...and failing to land a single blow. It’s at this point...with another 45 minutes to go...that someone probably threw up their hands and said “you know...we should probably just skip to the part where the kid booby traps his house and inflicts severe bodily harm on the bad guys (and gal).” So that’s what happens. Mom goes out for an hour and the kid somehow sets up like 75 super elaborate booby traps. Here I should mention that most of this movie takes place during daylight hours and looks like absolute dogshit. Like...they filmed almost entirely on grim, overcast days in a neighborhood covered in dirty snow. They must’ve hired a real amateur as Production Designer on this one! What’s that? It was Henry Bumstead? And he won Oscars for To Kill a Mockingbird and The Sting?? Well....I don’t know then! Anyway, Pesci and Stern got tore up pretty bad in the first Home Alone. But a hot iron to the face? A fall down icy stairs? A mild blowtorch to the skull? Nothing you couldn’t shake off and walk away from! In this flick almost every booby trap is designed to produce a fatality. Steamer trunks and free weights are dropped on skulls from on high. Lawnmowers are thrown at faces. Asses are lit on fire (“It’s not funny my ass is on fire”--Mr Bungle). Testicles are punched violently and often. Why this Alex fucker does not simply CALL THE POLICE we do not know. In fact...his mother calls home to check on him and tells her EVERYTHING IS FINE!!! Dude...you could’ve just ended this movie and put us all out of our misery with one easy phone call. But no...there’s at least another 20 minutes worth of unsurvivable gags. Eventually the kid escapes to rescue his neighbor old Mrs. Hess. She’s tied up in the garage. Did I forget to mention that? Oh, who cares!? He offers to make her soup and she realizes he’s not such a bad kid after all. It’s the exact same plot device used with shoveling old man in the first flick and bird lady in the second one...except Alex and Mrs Hess have barely interacted AT ALL in this movie. We get it: old people and little kids can be pals! Eventually the FBI and the police get wind that the terrorists are in Mudville, Chicago and they come in hot guns a’ blazin’ and save the day. They tell the Pruitt family...whose house is TORE...UP....that they have been after these terrorists for 7 years and that Alex is a hero and they are going to pay him a SIX FIGURE SUM. Dude...these people are shit rich already. What’s that kid gonna do with a hundred large?? The terrorists go to terrorist jail and we learn from their mug shots that they all got the chicken pox. There’s your big payoff. Hooray. Everyone lives happily ever after. I mean...not really though. Really only Scarlett Johannson does. No one else in this film was ever seen or heard from again. Merry Christmas, everyone.
originally posted: november 30, 2018
Ok folks...time for VHS of the week:
Ok...so here’s the deal: the reason I grabbed this tape off of the shelf is because I thought It was this Z-grade horror movie also from the late 90’s ALSO called Jack Frost (tag line: “he’s chillin’....and killin’!!). I quickly saw that it was some family Xmas “comedy”...but then I saw that it had Michael Keaton in it...and that guy is the balls...so I decided to watch it anyway. And like...holy shitting shit Batman...this thing is far more terrifying than the Jack Frost about the murderous snowman. What happens is this: Michael Keaton plays a struggling musician called Jack Frost who fronts...uhh...the Jack Frost Band. His band is a bunch of 40-plus guys/gals...totally dad rock, hotel lobby band bullshit...who appear to only play cracker white “sould” versions of Xmas songs. At the beginning of the flick they are shown playing a gig in front of way more people than would ever pay money to watch a band like this play music. But wait! In the audience some long-haired choad A&R guy who looks like Dweezil Zappa is shouting “this is the Jack Frost Band...we gotta sign these guys asap!!” into his cell phone. (What’s that? It IS Dweezil Zappa? Ok...weird). And look...the chances of a band that didn’t sound like Limp Bizkit getting record deal in 1998? Less than no chance. Never mind a band with the guy who wrote Yes’s Owner of a Lonely Heart on guitar and a dude out front who looks like Dave Matthews after a 5 day meth bender out front (not Keaton’s best look, folks). Back home his 12 year-old son Charlie is mad bummed that his old man is on the road so much. Apparently this Jack Frost character never got the memo that the road ain’t no place to start a family, amirite? Kid is also getting bullied at school and totally sucks at hockey...much to the dismay of his coach...who is totally former Black Flag frontman and legendary spoken word performer Henry Rollins (double weird!). His mom...Mrs Frost...is played by Kelly Preston...and if I ever met Kelly Preston I would ask her what she hated most: being shot by Charlie Sheen, marrying lunatic Scientologist John Travolta, or acting in Jack Frost. I mean...who knows!? Papa Frost comes home for almost-Xmas and gives his kid a magic harmonica. Tells little Charlie that if he plays the harmonica he’ll be able to hear him whenever he is. If he’s like me and most musicians I know he has tinnitus like a bitch and can’t hear anything...but...whatever. Jack Frost also tells Kelly Preston that once his band hits it big he’s gonna buy her a sweet ass house. Here I’d like to point out that they already live in pretty goddamn nice house: 4 bedroom ranch, quiet cul-de-sac, butcher block kitchen. Not bad seeing as Kelly Preston doesn’t even friggin’ work. Anyway—The Jack Frost Band gets offered a make-or-break gig on Xmas day...much to the dismay of the rest of the Frosts’s. Halfway to the gig JF decideds to bail on the gig and head back to spend Xmas with his family. Problem is he’s driving some janky ass old car through the mountains of Colorado and it starts to snow and...I mean...I guess he dies in a crash...because it is suddenly a year later and he is dead. His wife and kid are mad bummed...natch...but the chubby British keyboard player from the Jack Frost Band has moved in with the Frosts in a totally non-threatening, non-sexual way. Could happen. One night the kid decides to build a snowman and dress it up with his dead father’s hat, scarf, and shades while Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” plays in the background. He then goes inside to play his magic harmonica and BAM! the fuckin’ snowman comes to LIFE! It’s Jack Frost...back from the dead! He heard the harmonica and turned into a snowman! Now...let’s talk about this snowman: It looks super duper fucked up. It’s animated but it also looks like dirty white bedsheets thrown over a pile of shit. And his FACE!? Think Marlon Brando in Island of Doctor Moreau crossed with Van Morrison. You’ve seen Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice? Michael Keaton as an animatronic snowman makes Beetlejuice look like Babar. It is terrifying. The snowman tries to get into the house and the kid screams like any kid would upon being greeted by a snowman with the voice of a dead parent. Eventually the kid comes around to the snowman because he figures “a snow dad is better than no dad.” (Direct quote). Let me just interject here to say that my own father is deceased and at no point have I ever thought it might be cool if he came back as a snowman. In fact...if he DID come back as a snowman I’d probably tell him to screw. Michael Keaton had zero reaction to being resurrected as a snowman. He’s like “guess I gotta make lemonade outta these lemons.” Or at least some Italian Ice for chrissakes. He basically just hangs out with little Charlie and helps him beat the bullies at snowball fights and teaches him some sick hockey moves and WHY DID THEY MAKE THIS MOVIE AND WHEN WILL IT END!? This movie cost $85 million...making it one of the most expensive movies EVER MADE when it came out in 1998...and the snowboard chase scene looks so shitty and fake I can only guess that the budget was so high because the snowman was made out of cocaine. So eventually the snowman runs into trouble because he’s made of snow, see, and he starts to melt. He also gets run over by a plow driven by a dude who looks like Ahmet Zappa (what’s that? It IS Ahmet Zappa?? Buy why!?). Charlie kidnaps the snowman and takes him to the top of a mountain where they apparently have year-round snow. He’s like “we can stay here forever, dad!” and Jack Frost is all “great idea! But I have abruptly decided to go back to being a dead person!” Kelly Preston comes to rescue the kid and sees that her ex-husband is now a talking snowman and has no reaction whatsoever. Like...why did you come back to life and decide to have snowball fights with the kid and not try to contact your wife at all?? This question remains unanswered. The snowman briefly turns back into Michael Keaton...much like now real-life ghost Patrick Swayze at the end of Ghost. Tells the kid to play the harmonica if he ever needs anything and then peaces the eff out. I smell a sequel. The end.
“Dude...we saw Jean-Claude Van Damme last night...and he was WASTED!!!” So went the too-often heard refrain from my semester spent in Los Angeles in the Fall of 1999. The Muscles from Brussels’s career was in a precipitous free fall by the end of the 1990’s. Passed out in a booth at Mel’s Diner on Sunset at 2 AM was long ways down from the dizzying heights afforded him by the film Timecop just three years earlier (we’ll get to that one soon enough...don’t you even worry). I never saw the man myself (although I did see drunk Eddie Furlong get kicked out of a screening of Dogma...so that kind of counts, no?)...but word on the street was that he was in rough shape. Years later he would admit that around the era when I missed him crashing into the valet stand at the Cat and Fiddle by minutes he was doing up to 10 grams of cocaine....A DAY!! That’s a lot of booger sugar, y’all. Luckily dude managed to clean himself up and even went on to star in a self-reverential art house flick called “JCVD” where he poked fun at his own status as a washed up former action movie star. He even tried to parlay that same shtick into last year’s Amazon series “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” but it was cancelled after one season. So what if the guy is pushing 60 and can’t find steady work. At least he can drift off to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that he is not Steven Seagal. Of all of the skull crackers to come along in late 80‘s, Van Damme always seemed to pick the most interesting and diverse projects. I mean...most of his movies are not, you know, good (except Bloodsport...which I seem to recall as being a legitimately ace action flick...although I haven’t seen it since I was 12 so...)...and he certainly can’t act...but he always seemed to have a good sense of humor...whereas Seagal almost always tops the list of “Worst Saturday Night Live Hosts of All Time”. And that’s 45 years worth of hosts...including one-man laugh factory Donald J Trump. Anyway...I decided to go back and check out JCVD’s 1991 flick “Lionheart”...because I hadn’t seen it since 1991. What happens is this: We open under a bridge downtown Los Angeles, where some French dude has come to draw some blood...and to buy some cocaine from a gang of like of like 30 gangsters. Also, there’s an abandoned car nearby that is totally on fire. Seems like the worst possible environment to purchase drugs in! French dude gets his bag of blow and gives himself a face full. “Ahh...zis is SU-GARE!” he protests, not unreasonably. “Yup” the gang leader replies, “and this is gasoline!” The Frenchman is then doused with said gasoline and lit ablaze. I’ve heard plenty of stories about being burned by drug dealers over the years but not, like, literally! By the time he gets to the hospital the poor bastard is French TOAST! (I’m sorry...I had to). His wife and young daughter rush to his side but the doctors are all like “yeaaah...even if he lives he ain’t gonna be much to look at, notgonnalie”. Then they ask her if the family has health insurance and she says that they do not. The doctor says “bah hah hah shoulda voted for Bernie Sanders, huh?” The wife has no idea who that is because it is 1991. Meanwhile French Toast keep screaming “Leon!” over and over again. The doctors don’t know what he’s talking about. I do...but only because I watched the rest of the movie. Leon (it’s actually spelled ‘Lyon’...like the town in France...which is super bougie, I think) is his brother...who is totally Jean-Claude Van Damme. Dude is a beret-wearing member of the Foreign French Legion and he’s stationed in the desert way out in the middle of the Universal Studios backlot. When he gets word that his brother has been torched by drug dealers he wants to rush to his side...which is a totally normal reaction to have upon learning your brother has been torched by drug dealers. Unfortunately his superiors are a bunch of hard-ons. “Zis is ze French Legion...not Club Med...war could break out at any moment (note: huh?). Your bruzzah is not my problem!” Van Damme ain’t hearing it. He rips off his stripes and says he quits the war or whatever. They tell him that not only can he NOT leave...they will now put him in a sweat box for six months. He does not take this news well. He kicks the entire army’s asses, steals a jeep, and takes off into the dessert. “Don’t worry...the dessert will kill him” says the head army guy. They obviously don’t know that “Van Damme” translates to “I eat sand for breakfast”. JCVD somehow makes it to the ocean where he boards a freighter headed for the US of A. The non-specific boat people offer to give dude a lift if he works in the boiler room and endures a shit ton of verbal abuse. They also hook him up with a nice jersey and a pair of super complimentary, form-fitting dungarees. Guy is a SPECIMEN! And also--kinda weird lookin’. He has a one-foot torso and the rest is all legs. Good for the kicking of asses I guess. While he’s on the boat shoveling coal and showing off his finely etched biceps the head of the French Foreign Legion is STEAMING! Says he’s gonna make it his one personal goal in life to bring this Lyon cat to justice and dispatches some officially sanctioned henchman to capture him and bring him to justice. Seems like a pretty intense reaction for just one solo army deserter...but what do I know of Legionnaire politics? JCVD isn’t allowed allowed to come above deck...but when he does he sees that he’s on the wrong coast. “I said my bruzzah was in Los Angeles...and yet here is Liberty Statue??” They tell him this ain’t no pleasure cruise and that he better get back to shoveling or else p (“But it’s been no ned of roses...no pleasure cruise”--Freddie Mercury). He kicks a handful of asses and then jumps ship...backstroking across the Hudson and into lower Manhattan. There, he walks the streets with just the (wet) shirt on his back and nary a dollar in his pockets. I mean...he’s already on Wall Street. Why doesn’t he just follow the plot of every third eighties comedy and try to scam his way up the corporate ladder like Michael J Fox in Secret of My Success or something?? Oh...‘cuz of his burned up brother! That’s right! So he’s wandering around not doing much of anything when he comes across a street fight. You know know; the kind of thing you see in movies and nowhere else--bunch of dudes in a circle hootin’ and hollarin’ and betting huge wads of cash money. This cat Joshua immediately sees that JCVD is built like a brick shithouse and asks if he might like to beat a little ass. He demurs at first because...like he keeps repeating...he just wants to see his bruzzah. But he figures a quick fight beats (ha) delivering GrubHub orders on a 12-speed...so he whoops a guy’s ass and collects some cash and peaces out. Joshua is immediately on him like white on rice. Van Damme asks if he’ll help him get to LA (dude...just hop on a friggin’ Peter Pan already). Joshua says he wants to exploit his fighting skills just a wee bit longer. This character Joshua’s lines seems to be lifted wholesale from Dolomite (“Rat soup eatin’ jive turkey motherfucker!”) so I looked at the box to see who wrote the screenplay for this flick and....holy sweet goddamn...It was Jean-Claude Van Damme!!! He’s a regular friggin’ Billy Goldman, this guy! Joshua brings JCVD to some swanky high rise and asks to speak to a a lady who goes by The Lady (Actual name: the far less exotic-sounding Cynthia). This lady The Lady runs a special secret underground fighting ring for the high-falutin Park Ave one percenters. Like...people drive their limos and Porsche 911’s into an underground garage and sip champagne and fondle their jewelry while dudes beat each other half to death. I mean..I’m not saying shit like this does not happen...but I’m saying that shit like this probably does not happen. When they arrive there’s a fight already already in progress...during which the blood of one of the fighters is sprayed all over one of the lady spectator’s fur coat. The woman simply dips her finger in the blood and then puts it into her mouth. Dude...EWWWWW!!!! Van Damme agrees to fight the next dude...who comes out and says the following: “You’re kinda pretty. I don’t know if I want to fight you...or FUCK you!” I’m thinking if he decided to go ahead and fuck him we would’ve had a very different (possibly better?) movie on our hands. Alas, JCVD takes him down with one punch to the balls. Super duper lame...like that time in the late 80’s my Dad threw this huge party to watch a pay-per-view Tyson fight that lasted like 30 seconds. JCVD made himself $5k for his ball punch...and also earned himself a new nickname: Lionheart...which, not coincidentally, is also the name of the movie we are watching! Joshua sees a golden goose in Lionheart and tries to convince him not to go to LA. “You want go to LA, man?? Buncha weird ass motherfuckers runnin’ around out there!” It’s true...I’ve been! But you know...there’s the bruzzah. JCVD finally arrives at the hospital in LA and the doctors are all “bro...you are mad late: your brother has been dead longer than christ himself.” Ice cold. You’d think they could’ve sent him a text at least. He asks the doctors if the police caught the guys who torched his brother and they are all “humina humina I’m needed in the brain surgery theater stat!” JCVD rushes to see his brother’s widow and daughter but they pull up the welcome mat with the quickness. He offers to help with his dead brother’s million dollar hospital bills...‘cuz he has all that fighting coin...but she won’t even accept that. He’s like “umm...I had to jump through a hoop or two to get here...maybe cut me some slack.” But no...she has no interest in free money. Right. So JCVD is bummed...which is understandable. He’s got no family...he’s an army deserter...and he still had nothing but the SAME SHIRT on his back. Seriously, he couldn’t have bought himself a duffel bag or a I Love LA T-shirt? He and Joshua hit Musso and Frank’s and get themselves good and blackout drunk. When he comes to he’s in a baller ass suite at the Beverly Wilshire or some shit. Also: naked. The Lady is there doing aerobics or whatever. He asks what happened to his clothes. She tells him he needs new clothes. I fully concur on this point. He’s like fine but first I will walk around bareassed so people can check out his bare ass. According to wikipedia this scene made Van Damme very popular with “gay guys”. Right on...right on. The Lady takes him out in Beverly Hills for a super intense shopping montage. They really put on the friggin’ ritz. They end up at Spago sipping Dom and watching Wolfgang Puck making his famous chinois chicken salad table side (note: this last thing does not actually happen). The Lady says she wants Lionheart to be her personal #1 fighter. She would also like to ball him but he is not interested in the slightest. “I’m not your toy” he tells her. Why so glum, chum!? He agrees to do the fighting but he insists he must “live like a fighter”...which means moving out of his baller ass suite and moving into a janky ass duplex with Joshua in pre-gentrification Echo Park. He only wants to fight so he can support brother’s widow...who refuses to even speak to him. Seems like a lose/lose if you ask me. You don’t want to end up with Mickey Rourke face! But he goes on ahead and starts kickboxing the shit out of everyon...throwing dudes through the windshields of cars and whatnot. He fights a dude who looks like Gary Cherone from that band Extreme in a swimming pool. That’s pretty tight. Joshua starts funneling the money back to the widow under the guise of a phony insurance policy. Like...is this lady The Lady extremely wealthy just from staging illegal street fights?? How does she list this income on her tax returns?? Eventually the French Army dudes spot JCVD creeping around the widow’s apartment and try to take him in. He manages to escape....but with a broken rib! Sacre Bleu! I feel like this rib sitch is gonna come up again. JCVD fesses up to the widow and tells her she’s in danger and that she has to move into his duplex. She’s still not interested. I mean...dead coke dealer or wealthy army deserting undefeated street fighter?? Seems like an easy choice to me but also I am not a widow raising a child. Meanwhile...for no reason whatsoever...The Lady has decided to turn on Lionheart. Her golden goose!! She gets word that there’s this cat Atilla who doesn’t just beat on dudes...he KILLS THEM! It’s at this point I realize that no one has died in this movie (I mean...except for the brother of course). That’s kind of sweet, innit it? It’d probably have been a PG-13 if Joshua hadn’t gone around motherfuckering everything in sight. So The Lady gets some rich fat cat who looks like Terrence Stamp but who is not Terrence Stamp to set up a fight at his mansion where she will presumably/definitely bet all of her money on Atilla. Speaking of Atilla...this bad hombre rolls into town on his own private...JET! And he’s got his friggin’ kitten with him too! Man, this guy makes so much coin illegal street fighting that he can afford his own jet?? Maybe I need to change careers! I mean...I’ve never been in an actual fight...but Tony Rovezzi totally threw me down the stairs in the 7th grade...so that kind of counts. So the fight is set at a big tent at the rich dude’s mansion. It’s a real sweet spread; waiters passing around flutes of prosecco and scallops wrapped in bacon and whatnot. JCVD’s plan is to have Joshua bet all of their money on his own self...win the fight...and then get the eff outta dodge. Joshua is all “man this motherfucker has killed eight dudes! You can’t beat him! Even though you sure got a lot of heart, Lionheart!” The French Army guys show up to arrest the Lion and bring him back to French Belgium or wherever but The Lady hooks them up with front row tix to the fight...so they agree to chill and sample some tuna sashimi crostini. Ok so Van Damme and Atilla start fighting and...right off the bat...everyone can tell my main man has a broken rib. So naturally Atilla punches him in said broken rib about a grillion times. Guy is getting his ass tore UP. They’re all yelling “stay down, Lionheart!!!” He should totally listen because they said the same thing to Apollo Creed and look what the Russian did to him!! Joshua also tells him that it’s cool if he loses as he bet all of their money on the OTHER DUDE!! Lionheart takes a long pause...looks at Joshua...and says “wrong bet!” Such a cool ass thing to say. And also: the original title of the movie we are watching. The crowd slow claps Lionheart back to his feet (seriously) and then he is suddenly ready to do some VAN DAMAGE (you know I had to work that in at some point). Lionheart beats Atilla and everyone loses all of their money cuz they all bet on Atilla! Man, that SUCKS. Friggin’ Joshua. He rushes to say goodbye to the widow and her daughter...‘cuz he has one-way ticket to a lifetime of French Army-type torture waiting for him. He says his goodbye’s and the Legionnaires lead him away. They don’t get but three blocks away before they decide to just let JCVD skate! This motherfucker has charmed everyone...even the dudes sent to capture him! They let him go and he sprints back to widow...even though he now has like 35 broken ribs and a severe concussion and a burgeoning cocaine habit. He embraces the widow and they...like...kinda kiss?? Then he tells her that he’s flat broke and she’s like “see you never, you broke ass bum!” Just kidding. We don’t know what happens as the movie just ends. People must’ve dug Van Damme’s work here well enough because his next movie featured not one but TWO Jean-Claude Van Damme’s! The end. P.S.--While editing this review I realized that Lionheart initially said he was going to find the men who torched his brother and bring them to justice....but then just completely fucking forgot about it! Like...it is never mentioned again! That’s some bullshit right there....
I’m gonna go ahead and say that the only reason people remember Mermaids, if in fact they remember it at all, is because Cher’s cover of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” was featured on that film’s soundtrack. Maybe it only hit #33 on the Billboard Hot 100 (It spent 5 weeks at #1 in the U.K....where people have taste?) but I’m here to tell some of y’all younger readers that this song was omnipresent during the 1990 holiday season. We couldn’t make it through Thanksgiving dinner without, like, 5 Shoops and 3 Cherry Pie’s (The Warrant song...not the dessert). Did you know that the original version of “The Shoop Shoop Song” was sung by Merry Clayton, aka the “rape...murder!” lady from The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter??” Neither did I! I mean...I know it now because I just googled it. Anyway--production on Mermaids began in late 1989...and by that point in her career Cher was CHER, know what I’m sayin’? I mean, she had already been famous for like 50 years at that point because of some cheesy variety shows she hosted with her good-at-politics-but-bad-at-skiing ex-husband back into the 1920’s or whenever. By the late 80’s, though, the Cheraissance was in full swing: She won an Oscar for Moonstruck, sucked face with Dennis Quaid in Suspect, and danced around the USS Missouri with her butterfly ass tat a-blazin’ in the “If I Could Turn Back Time” video. She arrived on the set of Mermaids as arguably the biggest star on the planet and proceeded to act as such. She promptly fired the actress they’d cast as her eldest daughter (Emily Lloyd) because she didn’t like her FACE! The first director Lasse Hallstrom? She fired his ass. Then they hired Frank Oz and she fired his ass too...which is no way to treat the man who directed Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and who voiced Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear. Man, you mess with Miss Piggy then you mess with ME! They finally settled on “Saturday the 14th” star and man who promised to sign my copy of “My Stepmother is an Alien” (but did not do so) Richard Benjamin. Despite all of this behind the scenes turmoil they somehow managed to get a movie made...and it goes something like this: Cher plays Mrs. Flax, a lady of ill repute raising two daughters born out of wedlock in the fall of 1963. Right from the jump I’m thinking the movie is taking place in the fall of 1963 so they can squeeze in a scene where a bunch of people learn about the Kennedy assassination by gathering in front of a television in the window of a department store note: i am correct). Mrs Flax’s M.O. is to a roll town to town with her 15 year-old daughter Charlotte (Winona Ryder) and her 9 year-old daughter Kate (Christina Ricci) in tow and hunting for man. When her latest relationship goes bust (and they always do, y’all) she simply uproots her daughters and moves to a different town. At the opening of the flick the Flax family decides to head to the notoriously puritanical North Shore of the state of Massachusetts (Salem...witches...the Salem Witch Trials, etc) to see what they have going on up there stud-wise. It’s almost identical to the plot of Elvira: Mistress of the Dark but with less cleavage and zero special effects. They arrive in Ipswich and the locals are all like “Yo Cher--weren’t you just here filming Witches of Eastwick?? Oh and please...don’t let anyone barf up any cherries this time!” Even though Mrs Flax appears to be scarcely employed at best the family immediately settles into a handsome Victorian right...near...da beach! Shit, I can barely afford my annual summer clam roll up in Ipswich...never mind an oceanfront rental! The house is also next to a nunnery, which is appealing to Charlotte, as she wants to become a nun. We know this because Charlotte is narrating the movie and tells us so herself (which is helpful). Within two movie minutes of moving to town they meet Joe Paretti, the local heartthrob who does double duty as the nunnery groundskeeper and town school bus driver. He also lives in the belfry of the local church...which is not something that anyone actually does (unless your name is Quasimodo or whatever). Joe is only 26 but Mom Flax immediately wants to ball him anyway. Charlotte also starts to have impure thoughts about Joe...even though she JUST told us she wanted to be a nun like 5 seconds ago. Joe is played by the actor who stars in Sixteen Candles and looks exactly like Matt Dillon but who is not Matt Dillon...Michael Schoeffling. I mean...maybe I’m the only one...but I was on my 10th viewing of Sixteen Candles before I realized that Matt Dillon was not in the film. I was also like 8 years-old so maybe cut dude some slack. Charlotte goes to school where her fellow classmates rip a ton of cigarettes and talk of performing oral sex by railroad trestles. Mrs Flax heads into town where she gets chatty with a local shoe store owner played by Who Framed Roger Rabbit star Bobby Hoskins. I mean...he’s not an unhandsome man or anything....but Mrs Flax would clearly prefer a more devilish man with a crooked penis and a name like Daryl Van Horn (I just love Witches of Eastwick...what of it??). Even though Charlotte is only 15 Mrs Flax offers her full-throated support of her burgeoning crush on the 26 year-old Joe. Charlotte and Joe make plans to go fishing together and Mrs Flax says “don’t do anything I wouldn’t do...or anything that I would!” Bah hah hah statutory rape. There’s also this razor-thin subplot about how the youngest daughter wants to be an Olympic swimmer. That daughter, again, is Christina Ricci and this is her first movie...which means that she has officially been famous longer than she has been alive. At one point she runs around with a pumpkin on her head. At a later point in the year 2002 she stars in a movie called Pumpkin. What these two things have to do with each other I do not know. Anyway...even though Cher and Bob Hoskins have no chemistry to speak of she balls him anyway. Afterwards she’s all “you’re pretty good at that for an older fella!” I immediately barf cherries all over myself. Hoskins starts hanging out at the Flax house on the regular and the kids dig him all that happy horseshit. October turns into November and JFK is assassinated in Dallas and everyone gathers outside of the local department store to watch the news on the town’s only television set (fuckin’ TOLD YOU!!). Charlotte keeps hanging around with Joe...who seems to have little interest in, well, anything at all. Did they just forget to write dialogue for this dude?? Charlotte asks him if the nuns shower in their underwear and he just stares off into the distance (note: truth be told...if someone asked me this question I probably wouldn’t answer either...especially if I was in a position to actually know the answer). Charlotte goes to visit him in his belfry/apartment and they suck face for like 3 seconds, after which Charlotte becomes convinced that she is pregnant because her sex-obsessed mother never told her how sex works. She makes an appointment at the local OBGYN under the name Joan Arc (ha?). Since it’s the 1960’s the doctor is a super old groady white man who can tell she’s a virgin just by touching her. I immediately grab the nearest pillow I can find and primal scream into it. Don’t worry...it gets worse! One afternoon Cher heads to Boston to do whatever it is someone like Cher does in Boston. She arrives back home to find that Bob Hoskins has painted Kate’s room to resemble the bottom of the sea and made an entire turkey dinner from scratch...sides and all! This pisses her off something fierce. She’s all “you don’t own me! You don’t own my kids!” Hoskins says he wants to punch her in the face (but he doesn’t actually do it...so I guess it’s ok? I don’t know about this flick, folks). They patch things up in time to head to a New Year’s Eve costume party where Mrs Flax arrives dressed as a mermaid...which I guess is reason enough to name the entire movie we are watching Mermaids. At the stroke of midnight (natch) Hoskins proposes and Cher is all “look at my ex-husband Gregg Allman and look at yourself and there’s your answer.” I mean...this movie is only three months long so far...what’s the hurry?? It’s ’64 and you know that means The Beatles are coming! But yeah...no...she does not want to marry Bob Hoskins. Instead she gets a ride home from Joe and they totally make out in front of Charlotte. Charlotte is rip shit...as any gal would be when the dude you are Netflix and chilling with hooks up with your MOM! According to my notes Charlotte calls her mother “poopy face” but I have no idea if that actually happened or it’s just my wine buzz talking. I’m certainly not gonna rewind the tape to find out! Charlotte vows revenge. Her little sister tells her “act your age not your shoe size!” (I take out my wallet...remove a photo of Prince...stare at it longingly...kiss it...place it back in my wallet...and sigh deeply). Instead of following this sage advice Charlotte gets tarted up like her Ma and forces her 9 year-old sister to join her in the chugging of jug wine. Then she takes her shitfaced 9 year-old sister out looking for Joe at his belfry/apartment...but leaves her next to a pond that she most definitely will not fall into and drown. Charlotte finds Joe minding his own...thinking about ringing the bell of whatever. She pulls him to the ground and they have SEX!!! And it’s...like...graphic! And this movie is rated PG-13...while Planes Trains and Automobiles is rated R because of that once scene. Steve Martin cusses a blue streak at the assistant principal from Ferris Bueller. Also--SHE IS 15 AND HE IS 26!! (Note: Not Matt Dillon was actually 30 when they shot this and Winona Ryder was 18...soooo....yeah...still...GAHHH!!!). Remember a second ago when I said the little sister wouldn’t fall into the pond and drown? I was just joshin’ ya...she totally does! The nuns pull her out and she’s all dead and whatnot but they save her. Needless to say this whole drowning sitch totally harshes Charlotte’s post-coital vibe. She rushes to the hospital to find Kate in the NICU all hooked up to machines. Bob Hoskins rushes in all “what can I do to help!?” Man, I’d be like “fuuuck you and your janky daughters, lady: I’m out like trout.” But that Bobby Hoskins...he’s a good guy. Mrs Flax is less than pleased about any of these developments...what with one daughter deflowered and the other one living in a plastic hospital tent. She says they are moving to a new town post haste. Charlotte says she doesn’t want to go. Mrs. Flax tunes her UP! Open palm slap right in the kisser! The scream it out and somehow decide to stay in town for one more year because WHAT!? How is that a reasonable solution to anything?? In the outro we learn that Cher and Hoskins are still hanging out but it’s totally open ended. Like...he still loves her but she is Cher and he’s Bob Hoskins and Cher gonna be Cher. The little girl survives but with serious inner ear problems that will most likely/definitely derail her swimming career. Charlotte returns to school where she enjoys an elevated social status for having had relations with a man 10 years her senior. In her narration she explains that she has put dating (and nunnery) on the back burner and is now only interested in Greek Mythology. She mentions that Joe fucked off to California in the middle of the night but that he still sends her postcards. Is the return address for those postcards Folsom Prison? Cuz that motherfucker is a KaaaaReeep!!! Mrs Flax and her daughters dance around the dinner table...signifying that everything is fine and it’s time for the movie to end and WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE IS THIS MOVIE TRYING TO SEND??? That teenagers should seek out and fornicate with much, much older belfry dwellers?? It’s ok though...everyone lives happily ever after. Well...I mean...not Bob Hoskins. He’s dead. But Winona Ryder starts dating the singer of the band Soul Asylum and I get to watch her watch their entire set from the side of the stage in the summer of 1995. Cher invents autotune in the late 1990’s and becomes super MechaCher. The Beatles, alas, never come. The end.
And here we are again! I don't have much to say about this flick that I haven't said already. I have probably watched it around 200 times and it continues to surprise me with each viewing. It's a master class in acting and screenwriting. It's 92 minutes long and it feels like it goes on for 3 hours...in the best way possible. Legend has it they shot almost FOUR hours worth of footage...but said extra footage melted in the Paramount vaults or whatever. While I'd weep at the chance to see some more witty Martin/Candy banter I don’t think there’s any way to improve on perfection. Just because Abbey Road has bonus tracks doesn’t mean you should stick them on the album and jack up the flow, you dig? I’m also pleased to report that I located my long lost VHS copy and can finally watch the film as the Lord intended: with that extra layer of gauze and the trailer for U2’s Rattle and Hum beforehand. This movie is what you need in your life this...and every...Thanksgiving. If that final shot of John Candy doesn't make you shed a tear you are no one I want to know…
*originally posted january 25, 2019
Alright y’all...time for VHS(‘s) of the week:
You know...I’m thinking it’s high time for a reboot of this series...to be called...wait for it...OLD GUNS!!! And I don’t think they should round up the original cast...‘cuz most of those dudes are only in their early 50’s. I say they get the oldest actors still currently working...like maybe say Clint Eastwood, James Earl Jones, asshole Jon Voight, and 102 year-old Kirk Douglas. The entire movie will just be one long shot of these old bastards trying to mount a horse...as directed by Lars Von Trier or Gus Van Sant or some other anti-narrative director with a 3-name name. Anyway...so here’s the deal: I was a pretty big fan of Young Guns when it came out...but I refused to watch Young Guns 2...even though it has that sick Jon Bon Jovi tune in it (first cassette single I ever purchased!). The reason for this is that I incorrectly remembered the entire cast of the first Young Guns being shot to death at the conclusion of said film. Naturally I was confused about why they would turn around and make a sequel with the same cast. Instead of watching Part 2 to help clear up any confusion I simply went on with the rest of my goddamn life and haven’t thought much about Young Guns over the last 30 years. This week I decided to sit down and watch both films back-to-back to see what was what (3.5 hours of Young Guns, y’all). OK...so part 1 opens in the old west back in 18 whatever whatever long ass time ago. A group of degenerate dudes played by Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Casey Siemasko, intentional HIV transmitter Charlie Sheen, and man who is not Dylan McDermott, Dermot Mulroney, all live in some weird charm school ranch run by too-good-for-a-movie-of-this-stripe Terrence Stamp. The fellas take in a wayward stray with played by Paula Abdul’s ex-husband Emilio Estevez. This cat, Billy the Kid, is known to kill a man a man or two...but that don’t impress the rest of the fellas much. They call him pig fucker and make him shovel shit outta the barn. Billy’s all like “why do you call yourselves Regulators!” and then, to my complete shock, Casey Siemasko delivers the speech that is sampled at the beginning of Nate Dogg and Warren G’s 1994 mega jam “Regulators!” Like...I had ZERO idea this song that I have heard a billion times and performed at karaoke (the Nate Dogg part) contained a sample from Young Guns!! MInd: blown. So now Terrance Stamp has 6 dudes so all he needs to do now is teach these motherfuckers the pop n’ lock and he can field a boy band. Unfortunately Stamp has some sort of scarcely explained issue with a fellow landowner played by a pre-one-armed-push-ups-at-the-Oscars Jack Palance. I feel like this is gonna be a big problem down the road. Until then...Stamp takes his crew into town for a drunken barn dance. There, Kiefer takes a liking to a geisha girl who is owned by Palance because of course she is. Her name is Yen Sun but everyone calls her China Girl (oh baby...just you shut your MOUTH). Here I’d also like to point out that every female character...in BOTH films....is a prostitute. Once again: the 80’s=terrible. The next morning the Regulators are creeping home at sun up and they are hungover as all get out so they don’t notice when Palance’s crew ambushes them. Stamp is killed. The dudes are sad. They head back into town where the sheriff deputizes them and asks them to round up the men who killed Stamp. Kiefer also tries to get the China Girl to come with them. He does this by screaming into her face and acting like a total psycho. She says she’s all set. The fellas ride out into the desert a whompin’ and a whoopin’. When they come across some of the men who had a hand in Stamp’s death, instead of arresting him like they’re supposed to, Billy just murders them all to death. Turns out dude is CRAZY. He’s like Mr Blonde in Reservoir Dogs: Bam....Bam...Bam...Bam. Now the Regulators are the ones being hunted by the law. They have no idea what to do next but then they turn around and LDP has got his face all painted up because he’s native american and those dudes always roll with non-grease face paint. He’s like “i’ve got some peyote...maybe that’ll help us figure shit out.” Charlie Sheen is all “I didn’t know you were holidin’! Lay it down, clown!!” That guy loves drugs. So they all trip balls in what has to be the most low-rent movie hallucination scene of all time. They clearly couldn’t afford any visual effects...not even a naked indian like in the Doors...so the entire sequence consists of the dudes stumbling around talking to themselves in these weird, distorted voices. That’s all well and good except they gave all six guys the SAME distorted voice. Not much is accomplished by the drugging except real-life brothers Estevez and Sheen decide they now hate each other..which isn’t a huge problem as Sheen is killed in the very next scene (good riddance). The fellas head to a brothel where Siemasko marries a hooker. We can be fairly certain that he will die next. Meanwhile Kiefer heads into town to see China Girl. He sneaks into her room and covers her mouth with a black glove and screams into her face some more and demands she run away with him. Says he wants to get hell bent for leather...which is totally the name of a Judas Priest song. Once again...she says she’s all set. Eventually the remaining 5 dudes go see their pal who is totally the guy who played the Stepfather in those scary Stepfather movies! While there, the house is suddenly surrounded by like 300 dudes with shotguns. Billy’s all “no sweat, y’all.” They hole up overnight and in the manana the angry mob lights the house on fire. Luckily it somehow burns slow enough for the guys to have a good ten minute shootout. Siemasko is killed first (told you)...Dermot Mulroney is killed...The Stepfather is killed...LDP and Kiefer are shot up but survive. Billy gets away clean and manages to put a bullet in old Jack Palance. The movie ends with a voice-over about how LDP escaped to Mexico, Kiefer and China Girl moved to NYC and got married and lived happily ever after (Huh!?) and Billy the Kid was killed by sheriff Pat Garrett. Ok...so when I’m wrong I’m wrong! Not everyone dies at the end. I will now watch Young Guns 2:
Alright so this one opens on a New Mexico in 1950’s...where Bradley Whitford (Josh from the West Wing...not the Aerosmith guitarist) has pulled to the side of the road to meet with some old timer named Bushy Bill...who turns out to be Emilio Estevez buried in so much old man makeup he looks like a cross between Jon Voight and Pizza the Hut from Spaceballs (in other words...just like present day Jon Voight). He claims to be Billy the Kid and offers to tell his story...which means that this film will be narrated by Emilio Estevez impersonating a late-stage emphysema patient. Great. So we head back to the old west where a newly mulleted Billy the Kid is still killin’ up a storm. He’s got a whole new crew that includes #metoo movement avoider and biter of police officers Christian Slater as well as the legendary Pat Garrett, played by the guy who plays Reese Witherspoon’s dad in the movie where she gets fingerblasted by Marky Mark on a roller coaster. If you took the cast of both Young Guns films and added up their respective arrests for DUI and felony A&B the number would be in the dozens. Just sayin’. ANYWAY! Billy is arrested and Kiefer Sutherland and LDP are hustled back from the set of the 1989 buddy cop flick Renegades. The trio are meant to stand trial for the shit they pulled back in Part 1 but they escape and light out for old Mexico. Billy says he knows a secret trail called Mexican Blackbird and the rest of the dudes are like “cool”. Pat Garrett decides to sit this one out and instead they get friggin’ Cameron for Ferris Bueller to take his place! Every time he speaks all I can hear is “A nice stretch job with a TV and a BAR!”. On the way to Mexico they stop at a ranch owned by Jimmy Coburn and kill all of his Mexican ranch hands for reasons that are entirely unclear. What we do know is that Coburn is BULLSHIT about the killing of said Mexicans and decides to put together a posse to bring down Billy and his gang. The posse is to be led by none other than Billy’s one-time friend Pat Garrett (dayyyum!). Also in this posse in a bit part is future acting legend Viggo Mortensen...who has the look of “I can act circles around these nasty bastards” on his face at all times. What else happens? Not much, really. It’s basically a retread of the first movie with a bigger budget and half the screenplay. They go to a brothel (again) where Balthazar Getty loses his virginity. Did I mention he’s in this? Well, he is. He’s the first to die. Garrett is hot on the trail and burns down the brothel. Billy admits that Mexican Blackbird is a whore he once new down in Texas. The secret trail to old Mexico doesn’t exist! Kiefer and LDP are next to get shot to death, Christian Slater fucks off to Mexico alone...which totally seems like something jerk ass Christian Slater would do. That leaves Billy the Kid alone with friggin’ Cameron. Eventually it’s confrontation time between Garrett and Billy. Garrett says “hasta la vista you son of a bitch” and fires his gun but...but...there’s no money shot!! Did he kill him or not!? Is this old codger narrating the movie really Billy the Kid!? We’ll never know. Cue Jon Bon Jovi song: run credits. Before we go I’d like to point out that I do actually think “Blaze of Glory” is an awesome song. What happened was: Emilio Estevez asked JBJ if he could use “Wanted: Dead or Alive” for YG2 and JBJ was like “no but I’ll write you a spankin’ new tune”...and Estevez was like “ummm...ok...I guess.” He not only turned in that single but an ENTIRE ALBUM full of songs “inspired by Young Guns 2” The other 12 songs should not be listened to for any reason whatsoever. If you can make it all the way through “Billy Get Your Gun” without horking you are a stronger person than I. The end.
*originally posted december 7, 2018
OK folks...time for VHS of the week:
Ok...so now let’s talk about this Xmas not-a-classic. This movie came out when I was seven years-old so my excitement level upon seeing it in the theater could be best described as brain-melting euphoria. Like...I was so excited I entered a fugue state and couldn’t remember my own name for a week. I was probably at the pinnacle of my believing-in-Santa-ness. I made both my parents and grandparents take me to see it multiple times. I even got my GREAT grandparents to take me by lying and telling them that Santa was played by Art Carney (they loved that guy for some reason). I decided to check it out again for the first time in a good 30 years and...you know...it’s a friggin’ bizarre movie. It handles the subject matter (you know...Santa...Xmas...toys) with stone faced seriousness. I suppose it’s a comedy but there aren’t really any...you know...jokes and shit. Throw in a steadicam shot or two and I might believe Stanley Kubrick directed this thing. The film opens in ancient times. When you ask? I don’t know, dudes--just a long ass time ago and somewhere cold as balls. It’s Xmas Eve and the children of some village where everyone has a British accent even though Great Britain does not yet exist are waiting for the local toymaker and his wife to deliver presents in their sled that’s being pulled by two reindeer made out of glued together loofah sponges. On their way back home they get caught up in a blizzard and freeze to death--Santa, Mrs. Santa, reindeer, all. It’s disturbing as shit. Suddenly the snow clears and a Xmas tree hologram appears and shits out like 500 elves. Santa wakes up from his death and is all “am I dead??” and the elves are all “nope..you are at the North Pole! We have mad toys and you’ll deliver them to every child in the world!” He’s like “thanks but no thanks” and the elves are all “this is not really up for discussion, capisce? For your troubles we’ll grant you eternal life. You AND your ladyfriend.” So they move into the north pole where they meet Patch...the head of the department of elf innovation. Dude is like the Elon Musk of the North Pole. He’s played by legendary comedian Dudley Moore...who has this look of “wasn’t I just nominated for an Oscar for Arthur like 5 years ago? Why am I playing an elf in this shitty movie!? on his face for the film’s entire running time. Santa settles in and there’s a bunch of jolly singing and dancing elf montages. They also make Santa an official Santa suit that really does dude no favors. He looks like a diabetic pimp with undiagnosed atherosclerosis. It’s at this point in the film that I realize that the guy playing Santa is The Big Lebowski!! I mean...not the dude, mind you...the real Mr Jeffrey Lebowski. Every time he opens his mouth all I can hear is “nothing is fucked?? The plane has crashed into the goddamn mountain!!” Anyway...Xmas rolls around and it’s showtime for the big SC but first Mickey from Rocky’s 1 through 3 shows up to tell Santa that he needn’t worry about having enough time to deliver all of the toys because “time travels with you!” Whatever you say, gramps. He then slinks away and picks up a check for $50k for 4 minutes of screen time. Patch explains to Santa that he’s made some sort of sparkly hay that, if ingested by the reindeer, will make them fly. No explanation as to what’s in this shit. They just power it down and start shaking like a fleet of crackheads but alas....they can now fly (only six of ‘em though. whoever owned the rights to Rudolph wanted nothing to do with this flick). So Santa delivers toys through the ages no fuss no muss. We know time is passing because there’s a ton of cutaway shots to an hourglass marking...um...the passage of time. There’s also really weird creepy ass music playing under these scenes. Apparently Freddie Mercury was supposed to do the soundtrack but I’m guessing what happened was is that he actually watched the movie (I mean...they decided to do the music for Highlander instead so...there’s that). Not much happens over the centuries. Santa tried to go gluten free to lose weight and fails....he creates the naughty and nice lists, etc. Before long we’re in 1980’s Manhattan...where we meet Joe...a homeless 10 year old who spends his nights gazing longingly through the windows of various local MacDonald’s (hello product placement!)...when he isn’t trying to scam food scraps from Cornelia, a fellow 10 year-old girl who is uber wealthy and who lives in a house that looks like a leftover set from Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon...even though it’s supposed to be 1985. First off: a homeless 10 year old!? Didn’t they have some sort of DSS back in the 80’s? Santa comes cruising up the block and discovers Joe and is super bummed that he’s homeless so he offers him a ride in his sleigh (in the world of this film Joe appears to be the only homeless person alive). Joe apparently didn’t get the message about not getting into flying sleighs with strange old men openly engaging in festive cosplay so...away they go! They try to make the reindeer complete a move called the “super duper looper” but one of the reindeer has acrophobia (I shit you not) so they just fly directly into the south tower of the World Trade Center but stop short of hitting it. It’s eerie. Santa promises Joe he’ll come chill with him again the following Xmas. Meanwhile back at the NP Patch has created an assembly line machine that can make the toys faster...putting a shit ton of elves out of work. I’m sayin’...it’s the 80’s: unless the machine can whack up a bunch of Ataris and Walkman then they best not darken the Tebo chimney! Turns out the assembly line toys are janky as shit and start falling apart and no one likes Santa anymore. Riddled with guilt, Patch decides to fuck off to NYC where he spends his nights doing drugs at the Tunnel with Madonna and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It’s at this point in the film...more than 3/4 of the way through...that we meet an evil cigar-chomping american toy maker played by John Lithgow. It’s like a completely different, even shittier movie all of a sudden! Patch comes to see Lithgow and offers up his stash of weird sparkly reindeer cocaine hay. They make lollipops out of the hay and put them under every tree in the world and now EVERYONE can fly. No idea how high or for how long. This entire segment goes on for about 2 minutes. The lollipops are mad popular, natch, so they decide, in order to capitalize on the craze...they’ll just go ahead and create a SECOND CHRISTMAS! To be called...drum roll...Christmas 2!...and it’ll take place on March 25th. I mean....that’s fine with me. I never have shit to do in March anyway. They decide to make an even stronger batch of flying candy canes...but these shits are dangerous and explode when they get too hot. Apparently the FDA had no jurisdiction over flying candy in the 1980’s. Little Joe tries to warn Santa that Patch is peddling exploding candy down in NYC but Lithgow kidnaps him and locks him in a burner. So it’s up to Cornelia to warn Santa (she is also Lithgow’s niece. Did I mention that? Oh it really doesn’t matter). Patch rescues Joe and takes him on his delivery route in his stolen-outright-from-Willy Wonka flying candy car but their trunk is full of those exploding candy canes. Meanwhile the cops are closing in on Lithgow...hoping to charge him with 700 million counts of kidnapping and child endangerment...so he stuffs his chaw full of flying reindeer hay and floats off into outer space never to be seen again. Seriously....that’s his entire character arc. Cornelia and Santa find Patch and Joe just before their shit is about to explode. The reindeer does the super duper looper and everyone is rescued. Huzzah! Back at the North Pole Santa tells Joe and Cornelia that they can live with him permanently...which...I mean...maybe laws like “illegally transporting minors across state lines” don’t apply if you are taking them to a place that doesn’t really exist. So the kids are cool...and no one is pissed at Patch for selling everyone and creating global chaos with his gravity-defying lollipops. They all sing and dance and the movie ends. Merry Christmas, everyone....
*originally posted march 21, 2019
OK folks...time for VHS of the Week:
Check THIS out: back in 2017 Caitlin was working as the GM at the restaurant Ten Tables in Jamaica Plain. One day she texted me to say that Richard Benjamin was coming in for dinner and to ask if I knew who he was. Do I ever! He’s only the legendary star of the not-quite-legendary film Saturday the 14th! Dude has got a 50-year resume that includes directing credits for The Money Pit, Mermaids, and My Stepmother is an Alien. I immediately said something like “I’m gonna have you bring my VHS copy of Stepmother to the restaurant for Benjamin to sign!” I then proceeded to not give Caitlin my copy of Stepmother for Benjamin to sign. Now...If I recall correctly they came to the restaurant in big group with a contact person. Caitlin told the contact person that I wanted my copy of Stepmother signed...and he told Richard Benjamin...who wrote an email back saying he’d be happy to lend me his autograph on his next visit. Shit...you...NOT! Of course, Caitlin quit Ten Tables like 2 weeks later and, as you can see, this here VHS tape remains unsigned. What happened next, though, is that I actually watched My Stepmother is an Alien for the first time in almost 30 years....and it just completely sucks. I know it’s a real risk we encounter when we excavate these movies from our childhood. Some hold up...some don’t: them’s the grapes. I probably should’ve shut it off during the opening credit sequence, which is set to Tom Jones’ cover of Prince’s “Kiss”. Ain’t nobody want to hear that shit. Like Prince used to say “no one can play me. You try to play me...you play yourself.” You hear that Mr What’s New, Pussycat? What happens is this: vodka huckster and 4th coolest ghostbuster Danny Aykroyd is a widower scientist who is trying to shoot a laser beam called the klystron into a faraway galaxy for reasons that are scarcely explained. He can only achieve this with the aid of a lightning storm that happens once every 9 weeks or something (note: can you really predict lightning storms in advance? Cuz I have something on July 19th 2020 and I need it dry). Dudes...Back to the Future just called; they want their plot point back. Aykroyd is frantically running around the lab trying set up his laser beam while his crusty old bosses are all “grumble grumble don’t mess this up, Venkman!” While this is happening Aykroyd’s brother and worst character in a movie ever is running alongside him trying to convince him to go to a party where they will sexually harass tipsy secretaries. This swingin’ dick horndog brother is played by....wait for it....Jon Lovitz. Like...the guy from Saturday Night Live. Master Thespian. That dude. Cast here as the killingist of ladykillers. Whatever you say, folks. Aykroyd manages to shoot his beam all the way to the distant galaxy...but he breaks a machine or something so they fire him. He goes home to his 13 year-old daughter...who is totally Alyson Hannigan...star of every other TV show/movie released in the last 30 years. Seriously, she’s like five years away from a lifetime achievement Oscar. Aykroyd is super bummed about being fired but his daughter is like “don’t sweat it...but maybe stop being a terrible single parent and feeding me pop tarts for dinner. Also I am now 13 and have boobs.” Aykroyd is all “humina humina let’s talk about it another time!” Cut to: a spaceship hauling ass towards earth and an extremely uncomfortable extreme close-up of Kim Basinger’s leg. Aykroyd’s laser beam reached a planet called Cosine N to the 8th (the fuck that means) and they are sending an alien who looks like and is Kim Basinger to earth to see what’s what. Stepping back for a moment: back in 1989 10 year-old Danny Tebo is watching this movie for this first time with his aunt. When Kim Basinger appears onscreen my aunt turns to me and says “did you hear Kim Basinger is banging Prince?” And this is somehow the first time I have ever heard someone use the term “bang” as in “to fornicate” (thanks Auntie Lorie!). I tell her I don’t...but that I’ll look into it. That must’ve been quite a scene when she broke up with Prince and started dating Alec Baldwin. He couldn’t have taken that well...and by “him” I mean Alec Baldwin. I can just hear the rage-filled phone calls in the middle of the night. “He Prince....hey short guy. You’re short. Short ass. Kim’s with me now. Shorty.” ANYWAY...alien Kim Basinger lands her spaceship outside of Lovitz’ beach mansion and future Entourage set...where there’s a party in progress. She’s not alone though; she has a personal concierge in the form a one-eyed talking cyclops...snake...thing...that lives inside of her purse. The talking eye teaches her everything she needs to know about earth in 5 minutes and serves as her go-to when she needs information about stuff...like whether or not to ball Dan Aykroyd. Apparently the purse was supposed to have been voiced by Joan Rivers...but they ended up going with Richard Benjamin’s wife Paula Prentiss’ssssss sister Ann. They even gave this talking snake purse a name: The Bag. Sometimes simple is better. Right so Basinger goes into the party looking for Aykroyd but she’s an alien, see, and she doesn’t know how to act at parties so she does a shit ton of backflips and tries to smoke a carrot and just shouts lines from 80’s TV commercials like “this Bud’s for you!” She finds Aykroyd...who is all BUZUNGAH! She demands to be driven to his lab where she asks if he can shoot his laser beam back in to outer space or whatever. He says they have to wait until the next big lightning bolt. They make out a little. It is gross. He takes her home and asks if she would like to have sex. She has to go into the bathroom and ask the talking bag what sex is. Bag produces several films from the porno “Debbie Does...” series to show Basinger what sex is. I mean, that’s how we all learned, right? She decides she will have intercourse with Dan Aykroyd....even though he is Dan Aykroyd. She goes into the bedroom and there’s, like, this 10 minute slow motion sequence where she walks across the bedroom in a see-through nighty set to the song “Pump Up the Volume” by M.A.R.R.S. Two things: 1. I now have a slightly better idea of why I liked this movie so much when I was 10...and 2. Pump Up the Volume is such a boss ass tune. I always thought it was bullshit that they didn’t use it in the movie, umm. Pump Up the Volume. So they ball...and the next morning she’s all “I gotta go...see you never.” Aykroyd isn’t about to let this alien goddess slip away so he asks her to marry him. She says yes and now they are having a wedding at his house and it is the SAME DAY! It’s just about the dumbest shit ever. They couldn’t have sprung for a “getting to know you” montage? Like...they got a caterer and a band and a cake and dresses all in a couple of hours?? Before Basinger can walk down the aisle, though, Alyson Hannigan catches her eating D batteries because I guess aliens eat batteries (“I want D, muthafucka, D!--Radio Raheem). She tries to warn her dad that his bride-to-be is a battery head but he’s all “you’re just upset cuz you miss your dead mother.” Things get unbearably stupid from here on out and my attention starts to wander. Like...remember when Kim Basinger had so much money she bought an entire TOWN!? It’s called Braselton, Georgia...look it up! Anyway...Alyson Hannigan goes on a date with a kid who is totally Seth Green. His character is here and gone and means absolutely nothing. Basinger keeps chowing face on batteries. The Bag turns evil and tries to kill the family dog. Aykroyd refuses to believe his new wife is an alien...until the kid almost gets hit by a car and Basinger uses her alien powers to make the kid transparent. Aykroyd is pissed and gets cocked on scotch and force-feeds Basinger a sandwich. She’s all “mmm...mmm...human food is good! I could be more human!” It’s creepy as shit. Basically he needs to shoot his laser back to her planet or the planet will die. So they go and do that...and it’s whatever. The bag tries to murder them but they blow it up. At least I think they do...it isn’t actually shown on screen...like that goddamn shark in Jaws: The Revenge. Eventually these three old white dudes appear in the sky. I guess they are the leader’s of Basinger’s planet...even though they totally have British accents. They say that they are gonna have to blow up earth and I, for one, hope to shit they do if it will end this movie. Aykroyd is all “You can’t blow up earth...we have wonderful things...like Jimmy Durante! (Ed. Note: Durante was long dead when this movie was made). Aykroyd and Baisnger proceed to reenact a Jimmy Durante song-and-dance number that is so disgustingly corny that I have to hit the fast forward (my VCR doesn’t have a remote...I actually have to GET UP...this is a big deal). They are nonplussed but then one of them there old fuckers in the sky sneezes and decides sneezing feels good and they will no longer destroy earth. Seriously I think they were just making shit up day-of-shoot at this point. They have to take one human back to the faraway galaxy so they lure Jon Lovitz in with a fleet of girls from those Robert Palmer videos. Everyone lives happily ever after....except for the people who watched My Stepmother is an Alien. The end.
*originally posted september 21, 2018
Last week someone asked me why I don’t feature more movies that aren’t, you know, completely unwatchable. As luck would have it...last weekend I worked an estate sale at a $4 million dollar mansion...and they had a copy of the 1985 film Explorers on VHS (they had Space Camp too but some mother effer bought it). The movie about the kids who fly a tilt-a-whirl into outer space? Must be as sick as it was when I was 7 years-old, right? Well...yeah...i mean…kind of. I read up on the production of Explorers and what happened is this: the movie was directed by Joe Dante...who was hot off of Gremlins. Halfway through production the powers that be said “we need to put this movie out right now...so stop shooting and just give us what you got.” So the movie totally feels like it’s missing..something? They opened it on the same weekend as Live Aid and people stayed home in droves to watch Freddie Mercury rule ass...and Explorers flopped hard. Too bad too; it could have been as good as E.T....or the aforementioned Space Camp (I friggin’ love Space Camp). So here’s the deal: Ethan Hawke is this dorkus malorkus kid who has mad dreams about flying through space. It’s all he can think about. When he’s in math class and they ask him what the square root of 49 is he’s all “ummm....Mars?” At the beginning of the movie he gets his ass kicked by a school yard bully who looks at least 38...but he gets rescued by kid-from-a-broken-home Darren...played by a long retired child actor named Jason Presson. Ethan Hawke has a nerdy friend named Wolfgang played by River Phoenix who has a full on 80’s movie laboratory in his basement. His dad is also the old man farmer from the movie Babe. That’ll do, pig. River Phoenix tells the other kids that he’s engineered some sort of bubble that can fly and crash through walls and shit. He’s all “don’t you guys realize what this means??” and then does not explain what it means. Unfamous kid suggests they can put themselves in the bubble and creep on girls....so they do that. Ethan Hawke flies the bubble up to a window to peep on the girl from Can’t Buy Me Love while she eats Boston Cream pie and listens to the Thompson Twins. Racy stuff. Hawke tells the other kids he thinks they can fly that bubble into outer space ‘cuz of something he saw in a dream...so they steal an abandoned tilt-a-whirl cart from a junkyard and fashion it into a spaceship. In other news: I totally horked after riding the tilt-a-whirl at the Auburn Mall carnival in 1988. Or maybe it was the Gravitron? The one that spins. I hate spinny rides. Anyway! Their spaceship is good to go so they put that bitch in the bubble and take off screaming through the air...where they just kind of hover above local neighborhoods like 3 little non-gift bearing Santas. They get bored with that so they fly over to the drive in where River Phoenix accidentally crashes into the concession stand. Unfamous kid says “smooth move, Ex-Lax!” I laugh. Now the government is after them...in particular the “goddamn foreign cars” guy from Gremlins. The kids are mad scared so they finally fly the tilt-a-whirl into outer space...where they are captured by a spaceship that looks suspiciously like a cock and balls (maybe this is the reason for the PG-13 rating?). Onboard the spaceship they encounter a brother/sister alien duo named Wak and Neek. Wak speaks entirely in soundbites from American TV shows and Neek has a crush on River Phoenix...who is 12 years old. This entire sequence goes on for an interminable amount of time. It’s like...1/3 of the movie: this googly alien doing Johnny Carson routines while the kids watch. The kids ask the aliens why they don’t come hang out on earth and they tell them they are afraid they will be attacked and persecuted for being different. Hey aliens: just you wait till Donald Trump gets his Space Force up and running you intergalactic immigrants #MAGA!!!! Anyway...the kids fly back to earth and crash their spaceship into what looks like a giant puddle behind a strip mall. They all go back to their normal lives and live happily ever after. Well...not River Phoenix. Or the girl from Can’t Buy Me Love. Don’t do drugs, kids…
Halloween 2019
I don’t really feel like I have much to add to the conversation when it comes to Stephen King. Whether you love him or hate him you have to at least concede the man is prolific. I’m not sure how long it would take one to read every last bit of material King has published over the last 45 years...but my guess is probably around 45 years. He’s the Robert Pollard of the publishing world (and if you understand that reference, please give yourself a high-five). His work has been translated to the big screen by everyone from Stanley Kubrick and David Cronenberg to Ralph Singleton and Michael Gornick. In other words...for every one prestige picture with an Oscar nominated Director attached there’s at least 3 Z-grade splatter flicks...not to mention all of those unfortunate early 90’s made-for-TV mini-series’ (Tommyknockers, I’m looking in your direction). On paper, an anthology film of Stephen King's short stories sounds like a fantastic idea. Shawshank Redemption was based on a short story...as was Stand by Me. However, not all of King’s short stories were created equally. By the early 1980’s the man’s writing routine involved slugging a case of Bud Light tallboys and then whacking up an ounce of blow and seeing what spilled onto the page. In his incredible memoir On Writing, King confesses to having little recollection of writing a lot of the material that was published during this era. While I don’t have any firsthand information of any kind I’m gonna go ahead and assume that the three stories that were adapted for Creepshow 2 were written in a compromised state of mind. Creepshow 2 is the sequel to, umm...Creepshow 1. Part 1 is a solid enough flick. It came out in 1981 and was directed by Night of the Living Dead’s George A Romero. Part 2 was released in 1987 and was clearly produced by people who were eating cocaine for breakfast. They filmed three of King’s short stories for Creepshow 2...all of which are introduced by an animated ghoul called “The Creep” who looks like Gargamel from The Smurfs...if Gragamel had testicles for a chin. He is introduced during the opening credits, which are scored with some woozy keyboard trills that sound like they were played by Rick Wakeman from the band Yes....probably due to the fact that they were played by Rick Wakeman from the band Yes. It was at this point that I realized that I had mistakenly thought that Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt were the same thing. Sucks to be me, eh?? So we’ve got the not-the-Crypt-Keeper-narrator as well as a bunch of framing scenes involving this little boy named Billy who keeps trying to outrun the local bullies around the mean streets of Bangor, Maine. We’re not gonna get into all of that, though. We’re gonna focus exclusively on the middle story (“The Raft”) because it’s the only one I have actually read...and because it’s suuuuuper fucked up. A quick run down of the other two stories goes something like this: Story #1 is called “Old Chief Wood’nhead” and it stars George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour as an elderly couple who run a general store in the middle of bumfuck Arizona that features a giant wooden Indian on its front porch. For those of y’all not in the know--George Kennedy won an Oscar for his performance in Cool Hand Luke and had a late career resurgence when he starred as Leslie Nielsen’s partner in The Naked Gun films. Dorothy Lamour appeared in a butt ton of those “Road To..” movies with Bing Crosby throughout the 40’s and 50’s. Creepshow 2 was her final film credit. I’m sure she died proud. Anyway...the old folks’ general store is about to go tits up...but a non-wooden Indian chief shows up and gives them an amulet or whatever and tells them that all of their debts will be paid off in two autumn’s time. Easy Peasy Jap-o-nese, right?? In theory...yes. However, when the old folks return to the store they are beaten and robbed by the Indian chief’s bare-chested asshole nephew and his gringo henchmen...who call the old couple “wide eye” and threaten to shove dicks in their mouths. He actually does the old couple one worse than that: he murders both of them. He’s a good looking kid, this asshole no shirt nephew, and he’s planning on taking his ill gotten gains and moving to Hollywood to be a movie star. Instead of lighting out for the hinterlands with the quickness, the nephew and his pals decide to head to their respective homes to pack their bags and make turkey sandwiches for the road and whatnot. This decision was made with complete ignorance of the fact that the giant wooden Indian statue in front of the general store is somehow ALIVE and feeling pretty..pretty...pretty bummed out about his murdered general store owner buddies. The wooden Indian hunts down the nephew and his fellow goons and kills all of them...and horribly. The uncle returns to the store and converts it into a high stakes bingo parlor. So that’s the end of that. The third story is called The Hitch-Hiker (spelling theirs) which unfortunately has nothing to do with the C. Thomas Howell/Rutger Hauer film of the not-quite-the-same name. In this one we meet Mrs Annie Lansing...played by the lady who played Dr Holly Goodhead in the 24th best James Bond movie Moonraker. Annie is a married middle aged lady who has slipped out in the evening to rendezvous with a male prostitute because the 80’s are dumb and this movie was made by men high on loads of booger sugar. The male prostitute says he charges by the orgasm...and that she owes him for a 6-pack. Dayyum! She heads home in her Mercedes and rips a ton of cigarettes and talks to herself a bunch. While she’s in the process of doing those things I just mentioned she plows intro a pedestrian. She decides to take off because this wouldn’t be much of a vignette if she stopped to call 911, you dig? Mrs Lansing duddn’t get but 10 miles up the road before the zombie ghost of the run over hitchhiker starts pounding on her hood and yelling “thanks for the ride, lady!” over...and over...and over again. Kind of reminded me of the “got a light??” guy from the new season of Twin Peaks...but also not really at all. So he keeps repeating his catchphrase...and she keeps running him over and shooting him and chopping him up. This is all well and good ‘cept she’s white and he’s the black and I’m not saying it’s racist....but it also looks really, really racist. That’s cool, though--The Hitchhiker eventually follows Mrs Lansing to her garage and eats her to death. So there’s that. And now we come to “The Raft.” I read this short story at age 12 and it made me extremely uncomfortable. Then I watched the Creepshow 2 version at age 40 and it made me PROFOUNDLY uncomfortable. So then I went back and re-read the short story and GAHHHH what the fuck was wrong with early 80’s Stephen King?? (besides drugs). The movie left me disturbed so I turned to the text looking for answers only to find that what was on the page was FAR more fucked up than what ended up on screen. What happens in this: four college students decide to break up the monotony of their midterm exams by driving out to a secluded lake and taking one last swim out to a raft...even though it is late October and, thus, way too cold to be swimming out to a raft. The guilty parties are Deke--the all-American, blonde-mulleted jock....his straight-laced pre-med student pal Randy...and the the ladies...the vaguely trampy LaVerne who has a crush on Deke...and Rachel...who has no character arc to speak of. In the short story the foursome drive up to the lake in the middle of the night...blasting Thin Lizzy on the stereo of Deke’s Pontiac Firebird all the way there. In the film they head to the lake in the middle of the afternoon...blasting a Thin Lizzy sound-alike prolly ‘cuz they couldn’t afford actual Thin Lizzy (Instead of “Dun...Dun...DunNuh”...It’s “Din...Din...DinNin”). They’re all screwin’ up to the lake...ripping ganja and talking to each other in vaguely racist garbled Spanish. At one point Deke says “I feel the need for WEED”...which is surely a reference to Top Gun...which came out when this movie was in production. They arrive at the lake...which looks more like a puddle in the Universal Studios backlot. But with a raft, of course. They all swim out to the raft and complain that the water is as cold as balls. I did a little research and found that the reason for this is that the water was, in fact, as cold as balls. The actor who played Deke (and who’s last name is Beer. Heh) got hypothermia and nearly DIED. Hope it was worth it, brah. They reach the raft and everyone is psyched...even though Deke is wearing a gold speedo. It’s all good though--apparently he tucked his weed under his taint and it survived the swim so everyone can smoke up on the raft. Deke and LaVerne are all over each other and Randy is pissed because he like...likes her or something. Nothing wrong with some sideways glances. Far more innocuous than what happens in the story...which is that he randomly...and without provocation...starts beating the SHIT out of LaVerne! A lady. He just starts fantasizing about hitting her...and then he does it!! Hey man...the coke ain’t that bad! What in the name of Christ and all of the apostles?? Oh wait...did I mention the “thing”? Right so they are on the raft doing whatever and they notice there’s this big ominous spot on the lake moving towards them. In the story it is described as a hypnotizing mass full of swirling colors. In the movie it looks like they just threw a ton of trash bags into a lake and tied them together. Seriously...it looks like slightly menacing floating cabbage. The trash bag cabbage floats under the raft and yanks Rachel into the water. She keeps resurfacing...each time more bloodied and with less body parts. It’s gross and terrible and all...but honestly...her character wasn’t really developed...so it’s hard to feel much about it. Randy tried to jump in and save her but Deke is all “dude, forget it....she’s DEAD!” Kid has a good point right there. Randy proceeds to puke everywhere. It is mad gross. They discuss their next move. LaVerne wants to swim for the shore. The dudes tell her they are gonna “smoke her” if she doesn’t shut her mouth. I proceed to puke everywhere. It is mad gross. All ‘a sudden the trash bag alien comes through the raft and starts to chow on Deke...nut hugger briefs and all. So he’s all dead now...which leaves Randy and LaVerne. They gotta stand very, very still on a plank otherwise the trash bag cabbage will eat them up. They stand stock still though the night (why they do not just text someone to come rescue them I do not know). They eventually lie down to sleep. Well...LaVerne does, anyway. Randy stays awake and pulls LaVerne’s shirt off and starts licking her breasts. I’m watching this and thinking, you know, sexual assault and such...but in the story they actually have intercourse...and she’s way into it...even though he BEAT HER UP! Whatever..the thing eats her through the raft. Randy the raping lady beater swims for the shore and manages to outrun the cabbage bag. He’s sitting on the beach yelling “I beat you!” and then a crabbage tidal wave crests over his head devouring his entire body. Who’s the asshole now, asshole?? I’m glad Stephen King got sober. The end.
*originally posted june 29, 2018
When people ask me what the first movie I remember seeing is I always tell them that it’s Risky Business. This is maybe not entirely true--I definitely saw something called The Smurfs and the Magic Flute (at least that’s what I think it was called. I’m way too lazy to look it up right now) in the theater when I was about four years old. Risky Business, then, was most definitely the second movie I saw. Very different films, these two. At least I think they are. I haven’t seen the Smurf one since 1982 but I’m guessing there aren’t any prostitutes in it. My parents, who were only in their early 20’s at the time, probably figured that I was so young that I wouldn’t have any idea what was going on in said film. And I didn’t. But I knew that I LIKED it! (And imagine my reaction, years later, when I realized what was actually going on: “wait a minute...these girls are HOOKERS!?)I still think it’s a beautiful, dream-like film...mostly due to Tangerine Dream’s haunting score. It definitely stands far apart from the other teen sex comedies of the era (sorry Porky’s). The plot is simple. Tom Cruise plays the Joel Goodson....a, um, good son whose rich white parents leave him alone in his rich white people house for the week. He dances around in his skivvies to one of the worst songs ever written and rumors about his sexuality begin in earnest. He quickly decides that this won’t do the trick so he lets his buddies Balky Bartokomous and Booger from Revenge of the Nerds talk him into ordering a prostitute. He does. It is Rebecca DeMornay. They ball. It is awesome. Things quickly take a turn for the less awesome when she steals his mom’s fancy faberge egg. He also dumps his dad’s silver Porsche into Lake Michigan. Years later I would also crash my dad’s silver Porsche...possibly a result of having watched this movie too many times growing up...although no hookers were involved in my crash. The only way he can afford to fix the car and get his mom’s shit back from DeMornay’s overbearing pimp and dude who killed Tony Soprano’s horse is to turn his house into a brothel. This plan works like a charm...so Cruise and DeMornay go ball on the L train while Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” plays in the background. It is super awesome. In the end Joel Goodson gets into Princeton but later becomes a scientologist and loses his ever loving shit on a talk show and the hooker runs off with the singer Leonard Cohen. There are a few more memories associated with this film I’d like to share:
-It’s definitely where I learned how to swear. The day after I saw it I went out to recess at my catholic school....put on a pair of Ray Bans...and said “sometimes you gotta say ‘what the fuck’. Some little prick immediately went and told the nuns and I lost recess privileges for a week.
-My grandfather came over to babysit for me and told him I wanted to watch Risky Business. We got about 5 minutes in....where Tom Cruise is dreaming about showering with a naked woman. My grandfather got up....shut the TV off...called my mother at work....exchanged harsh words...and I was made to watch one of those Herbie the Love Bug movies.
-I got a Pound Puppy for Xmas that year and it came with a name I didn’t like. My Grandmother told me I could pick my own name. I said “how about Guido the Killer Pimp?” She said I should pick something shorter.
-One day our first grade teacher went around the classroom and asked every student what the latest movie we had seen was. Literally every single kid said Splash. It was like the entire first grade got together to watch Splash and didn’t invite me. When my turn came, I said Risky Business. The nun scoffed and said “well, I don’t think Jesus would appreciate you watching that kind of movie.” I said “And what? Jesus WOULD appreciate a movie where Tom Hanks has sex with a FISH?” Actually I didn’t say that at all...but I totally should have…
So here’s the deal: at some point in 1990 I badgered my parents into purchasing me a subscription to this long-defunct monthly movie magazine called Premiere. The day the latest seasonal movie preview issue arrived in our mailbox would get me so excited I would piss my pants and forget who I was for an hour. I would tear that sucker open and make charts and graphs detailing the upcoming releases and how/when I would get to see them...because I was a sick nerd like that. The Fall 1990 movie preview had this feature where they discussed whether the upcoming film was likely to win any Oscars. They did this for every single release that year. Like...is Funny About Love with Gene Wilder gonna take home any gold statues? Or Death Warrant with Jean-Claude Van Damme? Not likely, folks...not likely. When I reached the December section of fall preview I saw that there was a movie due out on Christmas Day called Valkenvania starring Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Demi Moore, and John Candy. Oscar chances: without a doubt! (note: I don’t remember if that’s exactly what they said. I’m sure I could look this up somehow...but I’m way too lazy, OK?). To a kid like this kid those actors represented the Mount Rushmore of comedy (ok...but in this scenario you’d have to swap out Demi Moore for Steve Martin. Sorry gurl...you know I loved your work in One Crazy Summer!). I didn’t dig on Star Wars like all the other kids. My galaxy far, far away was the backseat of the wagon queen family truckster...headed due west to Roy Wally World. My scene was Vacation...Ghostbusters...The Great Outdoors...Funny Farm. You know, the real good ones. So the idea of all of these actors in the same movie that a magazine was tellin’ me could win Oscars?? I hadn’t been so excited since they traded out the Roepers for Mr Furley on Three’s Company (anybody who don’t like Don Knotts is no one I want to know). Knowing what I know now I’m going to go ahead and say that Premiere Magazine was totally taking the piss when they said Valkenvania was going to win Oscars. But..see...this was 1990. I couldn’t watch the trailer on youtube. All I had to go on/get me through my 7th grade bully beatdowns was a tiny blurb and a photo of Chevy Chase next to John Candy (in drag). When Christmas finally arrived that year and Santa brought me a Sega Genesis but NO VALKENVANIA!!! Like...the movie just didn’t come out! How could they do that to me?? And why?? As I would learn later in life...when a movie is a particular type of terrible it is typically shunted to a time of year where fewer people go to the movies...presumably to save everyone involved from a whole lot of embarrassment. I soon learned that the movie was retitled Nothing But Trouble and that it was now set to drop in February of ’91. Well...I went to see it on opening weekend on a double feature with the John Goodman comedy King Ralph...and...well...it made King Ralph look like Peter Sellers' Being There. It was bad. Like...profoundly bad...and not funny. Like...at all. Completely laugh free. I found myself deeply and personally offended...like they’d made this movie shittily just to piss me off. 12 year-old Danny Tebo from Worcester, MA. But here was my curious reaction: instead of just shaking it off and going home and playing Sonic the Hedgehog on my waterbed and moving on with my life...I went to see Nothing But Trouble AGAIN. And again. And when it came out on VHS I dubbed a copy and I watched it over and over. And I would invite my friends over and make them watch it. It was like I was trying to will this movie to be good. I needed it to be good. I couldn’t see all of these talented people and Demi Moore go up in flames like that! I hadn’t sat down with it in a good long while so I decided to check it out again to see how it holds up almost 30 years later. And you know...it’s kind of amazing. Amazing that this movie was allowed to exist in the first place. I mean...I understand that few people had a better track record than Danny Aykroyd by the end of the 1980’s. Dude was original SNL...dude wrote Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters...dude was in Spies Like Us! But there were clouds on the horizon in the shape of My Stepmother is an Alien...not to mention his cameo in Caddyshack 2...possibly the worst performance ever given by an actor in a movie...ever. Aykroyd wrote the screenplay for Nothing But Trouble...presented it to the suits at Warner Bros. and they rolled over and gave dude $40 million bux! Not only that...they let him DIRECT it! In 1989 Warner Bros produced the Nicholson/Keaton Batman on a budget of $40 million clams and it went on to bring in a butt ton of money at the box office. That’s a tentpole summer blockbuster with Burger King tie-ins and shit. That means that someone, for reasons only known to god in heaven, must have thought that Nothing But Trouble was gonna do Batman business! This is the point where I usually give the play-by-play but I’ll try to keep it brief here because you really just need to see this one for yourselves. It’s only 93 minutes long...which was a complete shock to me as it feels longer than that one Fanny and Alexander flick by Ingmar Bergman. What happens is this: at the opening of the film we are introduced to Chevy Chase’s character, a rich white, cigar-chomping financial adviser-type who lives in a rich white people NYC penthouse. When he arrives home to his penthouse he has a chance encounter with his fellow yuppie neighbor played by a post-Ghost haircut Demi Moore. We know she’s a yuppie because she’s carrying an espresso maker and there was no greater symbol of wealth in 1990 than being able to make a shit ton of lattes in the privacy of your own home. Moore is upset because she just got word that her boss (that she’s schtupping) is about to double cross her on a land deal at a big seminar that’s taking place in Atlantic City...or whatever whatever. She needs to get to AC Asap so she heads up to Chevy’s spot to ask is she can borrow his car...even though he’s a complete stranger and there’s a multitude of ways one can get oneself from NYC to Atlantic City. Shit, I made that trip on a Peter Pan once and we stopped at Rob Roy and it was just delightful. Take your bougie ass to the Port Authority, miss thing! But no...the Chev agrees to give her a ride because he like...likes her or something. The next morning they are supposed to head outta town but Chevy is mad hungover and pissed off and doesn’t want to go. This is important because this is exactly how Chevy Chase will play the remainder of the movie: hungover and pissed off. I’m guessing the reason for this is that Chevy Chase was actually hungover and pissed off for the duration of the time he spent on the set of this film. He looks like he’s being forced to act in this movie at gunpoint. He’s, like, seething with barely hidden contempt. He’s unfortunately that kind of guy, Chevy Chase is. Type “Chevy Chase meltdown” into google and I’ll see you in 5 hours when you emerge from your YouTube hole. ANYWAY...Chevy duddn’t want to go...but then Demi shows up in this weird white low-cut shorts/dress combo thing and now dude is game. They hop into his ultra tricked out BMW (this movie also functions as a 90 minute commercial for BMW) and head out of town but first they gotta pick up Chase’s not entirely welcome “Brazillionaire” neighbors, one of whom is played by the vastly underrated and sadly deceased comedian Taylor Negron. The foursome make their way down the Jersey Turnpike but Negron keeps complaining about how he wants to have a picnic...even though Chevy is surly and grouchy. “Dude, you could be a better host, man” he tells Chev. Demi Moore looks up an alternate route through the countryside...because even though it is 1990...this BMW totally has GPS!! Maybe Nothing But Trouble is where GPS was invented?? I’m gonna have to look into this. So they pull off the road but they end up in some burned out mining town called Valkenvania...which is also the real title of the movie we are talking about. Chevy rolls through a stop sign and now has the local law on his tail. Taylor Negron suggests that he try to outrun the police...which...ok...sure. Chevy agrees and there’s a big stupid car (non Chevy) chase and they get caught by the local deputy...who is totally John Candy! Man, I’ve said this before but just the sight of that guy gives me the warm and fuzzies. I miss him a lot...I really do. Candy tells them that they are being arrested and will have to plead their case for the Shire Reeve...which is what they call the justice of the peace in this flick. AND here’s where things start to go shithouse. The foursome follow Candy to the JP’s decrapitated mansion...which sits on a landfill populated by discarded set pieces from Beetlejuice, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and other late 80’s Warner Bros. films. So they go meet the judge Alvin Valkenheiser...who turns out to be Danny Aykroyd...except he’s supposed to be 110 so he’s wearing pounds of make-up. He looks like a jaundiced potato with a cock for a nose. That last part is real; his nose looks like the head of a penis. That’s the big joke. Maybe they would’ve fared better if they could’ve sold Judge Valkenheiser dicknoses as a tie-in toy. Everyone loves a dicknose! Anyway...the judge is evil and speaks in complete nonsense (I still do not know what “look who has the front seats to the Mexican hat dance now!” means....but it can’t be good). He refused to release Chevy and Co...but instead drops them through a trap door where they land in a vat of balloons (or something). So they’re trapped...and Demi punches old Chev in the face...because he’s a smug prick, that guy. Meanwhile back out on the highway a car containing the #4 most talented Baldwin brother Danny Baldwin is tearing ass down the backroads. The occupants of the car are slugging booze and sniffing coke and smoking crack. In other words...not much “acting” required on the part of Daniel Baldwin in this scene. I was gonna say that this is far and away his finest performance but then I googled the dude and saw that he has something like 129 film credits...126 of which I haven’t seen. I guess I know what I’m doing from now until Christmas. “Vegas Vampires” here I come! Anyway, Baldwin and his pals are brought before the judge...who immediately sentences them to death. The floor turns into a conveyor belt, carrying the guilty parties into a roller coaster called the Bone Stripper! It even has a song that plays along with it called, umm, The Bone Stripper that is played by one-off not-that-supergroup Damn Yankees. You know what song rules, though? “High Enough” by Damn Yankees. Anyway...they take a ride on the roller coaster and at the end they are put through a meat grinder that tears all of the flesh away from their bodies and shoots the freshly stripped bones into a bone landfill. Aaaaand if you haven’t already walked out of the movie this is the point where you’d gather your jackets and leave. The Judge invites Chevy and his crew to dinner where he explains that he hates bankers and that bankers screwed his grandpa over after the revolutionary war or whatever. So there’s some...like...underlying deeper themes at work here, maaaan. Then his nose turns into a dick again. We also meet the judge’s granddaughter...who is totally just John Candy in drag. And also: mute....which is a goddamn shame. You don’t take one of the greatest comedic actors of all time and make him mute! They gave Candy absolutely nothing of interest to do in this movie. He’s completely wasted...yet he looks totally down to just roll with the punches...unlike the Chev. Such a great guy, that John Candy. Taylor Negron and his sister decide they’ve had enough so they jump through the window and make a run for it. John Candy catches them but, instead of machine gunning them to death, he decides to help them escape. He’s had enough of being in this friggin’ movie too. Chev and Demi are locked in a bedroom for the night and they instantly start necking...which makes zero sense as there is less than zero chemistry between them. It’s way gross and probably sucked for Demi Moore...maybe even worse than being married to Ashton Kutcher. They go snooping around and find a room full of missing person’s press clippings and stolen ID cards. I guess the judge has been murdering people for years...Jimmy Hoffa even...and SSNORRRREEEE. Chev and Demi fall through a trap door and go sliding down separate slides that are kind of like the slides in Goonies but with no water and no mad cool pirate ship at the end. Chevy ends up watching the judge remove his leg and nose as he gets ready for bed. Also--he farts...because when you are strapped for laughs always rip some ass. Demi ends up outside in the junkyard maze, where she is taken in by two morbidly obese diaper-wearing mutant babies who talk baby talk and are both played by Dan Aykroyd. And if you didn’t already walk out of the theater you would definitely leave NOW! This is the point where the movie goes from “meh, this kinda sucks” to “did Dan Aykroyd REALLY write Ghostbusters??” Was there never a point where an executive arrived on set, saw Aykroyd in his fat suit, and said “this is what the fuck you are doing with our 40 mil!?” But wait...it gets crazier! Cuz we are about to get a visit from The Digital Underground! You know... “The Humpty Dance” dudes? They are in this movie! They are also arrested and brought before the judge. Shock-G explains that he’s really funny lookin’...but that’s alright ‘cuz he gets things cookin’. The judge asks him to play him a tune...and they oblige. They play something called “Same Song” that has a hook that goes “all around the world same song” that is sung by a dude in a Yankees jersey who looks an awful lot like Tupac Shakur. The reason for this is that the dude in the Yankees shirt IS Tupac Shakur...which means Tupac Shakur is in Nothing But Trouble. The world is a crazy goddamn mixed up world. Ugh...what else? The judge tells Chevy he’ll let him live if me marries mute lady John Candy and he agrees. Digital Underground plays a wedding song that goes “tie the knot...tie tie the knot!” I’m totally gonna have that song at my wedding...and hopefully Digital Underground as well. Chevy flakes out and tries to escape and the judge makes him ride the Bone Stripper but that shit konks out so none of his bones are stripped. He rescues Demi Moore and they hop a train back to NYC where they alert the authorities to the murderous dicknosed judge. Said authorities are led by Brian-Doyle Murray...standing in for his little brother Billy...who had the good sense to steer clear of this shitpit. They stage a raid on the Valkenheiser compound...but then I guess all of the cops already know about the judge and are in cahoots. So that’s trouble for Chevy but then there’s an earthquake/underground mine explosion and Chev and Demi escape a second time. Meanwhile, Taylor Negron and his sister have escaped to Rio with the non-lady John Candy...where they all live happily ever after. Well...I mean...not really. Those guys are all dead now. Chevy makes it back to his penthouse but one afternoon he’s watching the news and he sees that the judge has survived the mine explosion. He screams and does a Bugs Bunny through the wall and that’s how the fucking movie ends!!! Like...nothing says “we give zero shits” more than ending your movie with a Bugs Bunny through the wall. Ok...sorry...that wasn't brief at all! But mercifully, that’s all folks.
October 18, 2019
With their recent acquisition of Twentieth Century Fox, the Walt Disney Corporation pretty much owns what is left of “cinema” as we know it. Star Wars belongs to Disney. The Muppets are Disney. Hell, even Pulp Fiction is technically a Disney flick. The fact that Disney pumps out all manner of adult-ish films under their various umbrellas is no longer shocking to anyone. Back in the late 1970’s, though, Disney started to produce their first PG-rated live action films...and people freaked the fuck out. This might have had something to do with the fact that some of these PG-rated movies took the hardest of hard left turns from the type of family-friendly fare typically associated with Disney (There must have been some seriously strong narcotics being passed around the Mouse House circa-’79). The type of shit that would make old Walt roll over in his grave...or at least melt out a drop or two. They have this one flick called Watcher in the Woods that threw folks into such a tizzy that it had to be pulled from theaters and retooled in post-production (more on that in like 5000 words). checked out Watcher in the Woods for the first time this week and, I gotta say, it got me TWISTED...even at age 40. Had I watched it originally came out I would’ve shat my britches, man. (Note: I was two years-old when it came out...so I probably had shitty britches anyway). What happens is this: an American couple travel to the English countryside with their two daughters in search of a short-term rental. Their real estate agent brings them to the mansion from Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia and they’re all like “bah hah hah this place is hella huge and we could never afford it.” The agent lady explains that it’s actually mad cheap because it comes with a guest house that contains a deeply disturbed landlady named Mrs Aylwood (pronounced “ale would”), played by Hollywood legend and subject of the 1981 Kim Carnes tune “Bette Davis Eyes” Bette Davis. Did you know that song was the best selling single of 1981? Well now you do. Good luck getting it unstuck from inside of your head before the year 2030. The younger daughter Ellie is played by the actress Kyle Richards...who played one of the kids in the original Halloween...which is awesome...and who is now a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills mainstay and aunt to Paris Hilton...which is less awesome. The older daughter Jan is played by pro figure skater and Ice Castles star Lynn-Holly Johnson, who looks about 22...probably because Johnson was 22 when she made this movie. Too old to be loafing around her family’s crib for sure. Mrs. Aylwood takes a shine to Jan from the jump. She asks “what kind of person are you? Average? Adventurous? Do you see things?” Jan is instantly spooked...because 1980 Bette Davis is mad spooky (it’s totally those eyes. You know...from the song). She also sees weird flashes of light from the woods and is all “this place is no bueno...let’s vamanos back to London and hit the Savoy for some Earl Grey!” Before she splits, the real estate agent mentions that the old lady’s young daughter disappeared tragically on the property. Jan heads upstairs, looks into the mirror, and immediately sees not her own reflection...but the image of a blindfolded young girl staring back at her. Then the mirror breaks. The family get right the hell into their car and move to a less haunted mansion. Just kidding...they totally move right in! Jan puts some posters of Paul Weller up on her wall and tries to make lemonade out of these spooky lemons. Her first night’s sleep is interrupted by some more flashing lights from the woods. Also--a shit ton of fog. Seriously, I don’t have any concrete figures in front of me but I’m gonna go ahead and say the majority of this movie’s budget was spent on fog juice. The next morning, Jan brings Ellie puppy shopping at the puppy farm. There, she meets the handsome local bloke with blonde curly locks (Mike) who looks like the kid who played Danny Noonan in Caddyshack...but who is totally NOT that kid. Mike and Jan are making flirt faces at each other...which is all well and good...but then Ellie squats down and starts writing the word “Karen” backwards on the glass...which is less good. I know...you’re thinking “redrum,” right!? That’s what I’m thinking too! And that must be what Jan is thinking because she’s all “da fuqqq are you doing, crazy kid??” Ellie explains that she heard “someone” say Karen and that’s what she wants to name the new puppy. Not Karen, mind you, but NERAK...which is, of course, Karen spelled backwards. Also--not a real name. Jan is freaked the frig out. Mike says “I’m not sure what’s going on...and it might not be my business...but do you want to talk about it!?” I laugh my ass off because that is some silly screenwriting right there. Mike’s mom also inexplicably freaks out when she sees Jan. I feel this reaction is going to mean something at some point in this movie (spoiler: I’m totally right). Jan and Ellie take their new disastrously named puppy for a stroll in the foggy woods slash discarded sets from Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. There they run into a man in a trench coat....and I scream...‘cuz there ain’t nothing. scarier than a man in the woods in a GD trench coat! They run to the pond or swamp or what have you but then WHOA! the friggin’ thing with explodes with circles of ice blue lightning (yes...circular lightening. could happen). Jan falls into the water...so that’s bad...and then Mrs Aylwood appears from out of nowhere and starts beating Jan with a stick while she’s underwater...which is even worse! But...but...but...the Jan wakes up back in Aylwood’s cottage and she’s wrapped and blankets and sipping tea and Aylwood is all “good thing I was there to save you!” Shit man...I know my lifeguard certification test was way back in 1989...and the 80’s were loosey goosey...but I’m pretty sure “beat someone with a stick” was not among the ways you are supposed to try to save someone from drowning! Mrs Aylwood decides to explain the plot of the movie/story of her missing daughter to Jan and Ellie. Turns out back in the day there was a lunar eclipse (of the heart) and her daughter KAREN was out playing in an abandoned church with her friends. Apparently they pulled some prank on her and lightning struck and Karen disappeared. It’s kind of like the plot of the Jamie Lee Curtis film Prom Night...but with no prom and 100% more English people. Mrs Aylwood was doomed to wander the woods for decades screaming “Karen”...trying to break Ray Liotta’s record for the number of times someone screams the name “Karen” in a film. Mrs Aylwood is convinced Karen is still out there. I’m convinced she’s that blindfolded girl Jan keeps seeing in mirrors...because she totally is. The next day the entire family heads to the motor cross track to watch Mike ride in a dirt bike race (note: I’m always amazed at the ability of characters in these movies to just carry on with their daily business after some creepy shit goes down. I would be halfway to Mongolia at this point!). Jan finds a sweet spot to watch the race from...but Ellie’s puppy tells her Jan is in trouble so she runs to tell Jan to get out of the way...RIGHT before a flaming bike comes crashing down on that very spot!? GAH! Solid ass puppy, that Nerak. What now!?? Oh, they just go larking about on horseback, of course. Total normal reaction to near-dirt bike-death. Mike explains that his mom got super shifty when he asked about Karen. Mmm hmm. They try to ride their horses to the woods but the horses freak out and lead Jan to the burned out chapel from Mrs Aylwood’s story. Again, instead of running away screaming, Jan decides to go inside...where the wind machine is DIMED out and the circle lightening is popping off. And OH NO!! It's trench coat man again! Scarier than snakes, this dude! But wait...he explains that he’s a hermit named Tom Collie and that he duddn’t mean anyone no harm. Well ok then! He tells Jan that he was with Karen and two other friends on the night she disappeared (note: this event is supposed to be like 30 years in the past...when they were children...but this Collie dude looks at least 65). He tells her he can’t give her the whole story...that she’s gotta go talk to this other dude named Keller. I used to have a roommate named Keller. What that has to do with what we are discussing, I do not know. Most likely: nothing. Jan she goes to see Keller immediately. No wait! She goes to a carnival with Mike first! I guess night business can wait till nighttime. Mike brings her to the funhouse...where she stumbles into the hall of mirrors or whatever...and who does she see but KAREN in every mirror?? Jan heads off to see this Keller cat...who lives in the sex mansion from Eyes Wide Shut (and no...I never get tired of making this joke). She explains that she knows what went down on that one night back in the day...and that’s she’s been seeing Karen in mirrors in whatnot. This Keller is one mean motherfucker though and he doesn’t want to hear boo about it. Tells her to clear out. So there’s that. So now Jan goes back to the woods to find the artist formerly known as Trench Coat Man, who fondles her hair and tells her that she is the ghost of Karen come back to haunt them. I also wrote down that he makes her hold his crow...but I’m not sure what that’s all about. I think it might just be as innocuous as he has crow (the bird) and she held it. Honestly, I’m getting pretty sick of this movie/review! What she finds out is this; Karen’s pals (Keller, Collie, and Mikey’s moms) brought her out into the woods during the eclipse to initiate her into their non-specific secret society. Kind of like the Skulls but coed and for children. While the children were circling a blindfolded Karen, singing “Ring Around the Rosie”, lightning struck the church, causing a giant bell to fall on Karen. But her body was never found, see? Maybe she has spent the last 30 years running around London...walking through the turnstiles of the Tube like Patrick Swayze in Ghost. Jan and Ellie rush to Mrs Aylwood’s cottage to fill her in on the latest and the greatest but when they get there Ellie starts speaking in a “there is no Dana...only Zuul” voice...telling everyone they gotta help Karen (who is a long dead missing ghost, btw). Then Ellie proceeds to faint...just as their absentee mother comes busting into the cottage (their musician father has spent almost the entire movie offscreen paying cheese whiz jazz in the city with Dave Sanborn or whatever. He’e the real hero here if you ask me). Moms is finally like “enough of this happy horseshit” and loads her daughters into the car and shuttles them off to less haunted environs. Before they can get off the Pinewood Studios backlot, however, their car gets stuck on a bridge. The get escape from the car and are all like “well, that blows.” Then the bridge gets struck by unnatural Kool-Aid red alien lightening and the car falls into a ravine...and they are like “Balls! Guess we gotta try again tomorrow!” They are such good sports about all of this cuckoo shit! Shouldn’t they at least TRY to call AAA?? AYWAY! As luck would have it...and because they need to wrap up this movie and fast...there just so happens to be another lunar eclipse penciled on the calendar for the next day. Jan figures if she can lure Collie, Keller, and Mikey’s Mom to the burned-out church and get them to re-do their voodoo during the eclipse then Karen will somehow reappear. So...umm...that’s exactly what they do. Except this time Jan stands in the middle of the circle. Ellie comes down to reveal the mystery of what happened to Karen in her weird Gozer voice. I mean...I guess what happened was...there was this alien spaceship hovering about...and when the first eclipse happened back in the day Karen got beamed up into the spaceship and an alien called THE WATCHER got beamed down to the foggy backlot of Pinewood Studios....and WHAT!!??? So the aliens try to beam Jan up to the ship but that one kid Mike breaks the circle and Jan is saved and Karen reappears looking exactly like she did the day she disappeared 30 years ago. Bette Davis enters the church and sees her SUPERLONG lost daughter and they hug and everything is fine and the movie ends...and I try to imagine what kind of intensive therapy you would need after being held prisoner on a spaceship for 30 years and then also not aging. Right...so...you probably just read what I just wrote and are maybe thinking “I have no idea what this kid is talking about...I really wish he would try to not drink so much wine before he watches these movies (honestly, if you are still reading this review I owe you a tenner. Please send a SASE to my house and I’ll see what I can come up with). The end of this movie is completely bananas....and the reason is this: as I just explained, the Watcher in the Woods is supposed to be an alien, right? Well, when this movie originally premiered in 1980 the climax of the movie featured a “skeletal, insectoid alien”...possibly stolen from the set of actual Alien...which was filming nearby at the time. The audience at the initial premiere were so fucked up by this scary Disney alien they barfed and wept and screamed and the powers that be demanded they reshoot the ending. So the final version has no aliens...just an innocuous beam of light that returns Karen from wherever the fuck she has been. The amount of sense in makes in the absence of a tangible alien is none. So there IS a watcher who is in the woods but you don’t actually get to see it/him/her/them...kind of like when the shark blows up at the end of Jaws: The Revenge (and no...I never get tired of referencing that film either). The end.
*originally posted november 9, 2018
When The Cutting Edge came to Showcase Cinemas in downtown Worcester on as part of a sneak preview double feature in the spring of ’92 like half of my 8th grade class got tickets for the gig (actually I think it was just the 4 of us dudes...but...whatever. I’m prone to intense exaggeration). Now see...a bunch of us were hockey players even though one of us (me) should have probably gone into figure skating as I could skate really well and play hockey not at all. Of course we told everyone that we were only going to The Cutting Edge because we wanted to see the second movie....but I’m gonna go ahead and say we all really wanted The Cutting Edge...even if it prompted our gym teacher to ask “whaddya seein’ that for? Whaddya queeeeah???” Indeed sir. And I hope you are enjoying your special place in hell. WHOA that got dark! Anyway...the movie: We open at the ’88 Olympics, where Da Bomb Sweeney (that’s what the DB stands for, right?) is a stone cold stud who’s playing on the US hockey team. We know he’s a stud because he wakes up next to some gal he has just balled and he can’t even remember her NAME! Stone cold...more like ICE COLD! Speaking of ice...across town disappeared West Wing star Moira Kelly is about to skate for the US figure skating team...but she’s having some trouble with her routine because she is....in the words of her coaches and her own father...a bitch. I mean...damn dudes. So DB goes to play hockey and dude is pounding mad goals for his team but then he gets checked into the boards hard on a dirty hit. I mean...I think that’s what happens? You see...most of the hockey/figure skating scenes are filmed in with this effect that isn’t quite slow motion. It’s like this weird strobe effect that makes it hard to tell exactly what’s going on. It looks like something you might see in a Marky Mark or Salt-N-Peppa video from 1990. Terrible choice, whatever it is. So DB’s face is crushed and Moira Kelly’s routine goes shithouse. DB goes to a doctor...who tells him that he has lost his peripheral vision and can never play hockey again. He’s incredulous. He’s like “can’t I just go to Mexico and have some Mexican shoot shark piss up my nose?” The answer: no. We jump ahead two years...where we find DB living back home in Minnesota...working at his family’s bar. Except he doesn’t want to work at all. He tells his brother he’s a hockey player and tending bar is beneath him. As one who tends bar this scene really hit home with me. Like...would it kill you to pull a couple of pints, ya prick? It’s 1990...people aren’t ordering flips. His brother reminds him that every hockey team in the world has told DB to go piss up a rope. Meanwhile we head over to Moira Kelly’s humungo mansion to check in with her. Girl has got her own indoor hockey rink and entire fleet of ponies. She’s fuck you rich. This ain’t no Tonya Harding changing the oil on her Ford F-150 pickup on her own. She has everything EXCEPT someone to skate with in the ’92 Olympics. Because she’s a bitch...remember? Somehow her new Russian coach knows of DB Sweeney and thinks he’d be the perfect partner for her...even though he’s blind and has never tried on a pair of figure skates. They get together and of course they hate each other and start busting on each other something fierce. I’m thinking “damn, these are some serious snaps right here!” So I check the box and see that the movie was written by Tony Gilroy...who later wrote and directed the excellent George Clooney flick Michael Clayton as well as the latest Star Wars bullshit. Cutting Edge is his first writing credit and dude is trying to go full David Mamet...which is totally unnecessary for a movie of this stripe. Actually now that I think of it: The Cutting Edge would make a great stage play! You think they’d let me do it at the Footlight Club? Can we get some glice up in there? I digress! DB and Moira Kelly try to skate together but dude can’t stand upright on figure skates. He keeps eating shit and then she’ll skate over to him and shout “toe pick!” in his face. Mention this movie to anyone in 2018 and the first thing out of their mouth is likely to be “toe pick!” So then there’s a good 20 minute montage of them skating and working out together set to what could be a C+C Music Factory tune (I’m way too lazy to check). Somehow he quickly becomes an Olympian-level figure skater...even though he’s half blind. They never mention his eyesight again and it really friggin’ bothers me, OK!?? They also start to like each other...which is understandable as they are pretty much the only two people in the movie. Couldn’t they have at least sprung for some extras or a sassy friend or something? DB gets invited to a New Year’s Eve party at the Moira Kelly compound where he finds out that she has a snow white preppy fiancee named Hale Forrest (oh come onnn). DB is bummed but then, at midnight, they, like, almost kiss! So now they hate each other even more because they LIKE each other, you dig? They skate their way through a shit ton more montages and win a spot on the ’92 Olympic team. Their coaches think they need to do some crazy move in their routine to take home the gold called Plump Chanko or some bullshit and they are like “sorry...way too dangerous, comrade.” The night before the big gig Moira Kelly decides she wants to get drunk for the first time so they slam down 50 shots of tequila and dance to the Spin Doctors or some un-dance-to-able band. They go back to the hotel and she wants to ball and DB is all “not like this” and she’s all “HRUMPH...god’s gift to reckless abandon turns out to be a prude in wolves clothing!’ (See...overwritten as shit, this movie!). She kicks him out but some other skater comes a-knockin’ on his door so he balls her instead. Fair play, mate. Moira Kelly is wicked pissed when she finds out. She decides to retire from being an Olympian after their big skate and spend the rest of her life brushing her ponies. Before they take the ice for the big event DB tells her that he loves her and wants to try The Triple Lindy. She’s like “no...I hate you...but let's see how I feel after this 90 second routine.” They nail the Wang Dang Doodle and finish their routine by sucking face on the ice...and they are immediately disqualified because the Olympics strictly prohibit sucking face on the ice. Actually that’s a lie: the movie just ends with a freeze frame...so we have no idea what the fuck happens! Just a some schmaltzy Joe Cocker song written by Dianne Warren to play over the credits. Hasn’t this writer ever heard of a denouement? Jesus.
Here’s a thing that happened: in late 1985 my mother left me in the care of my aunt for the evening. This particular aunt, whom we’ll refer to as Lorie as that is her name, is only about 10 years older than me. And also--WAY into heavy metal and horror flicks. The first time she babysat for me she dressed me up like Dee Snider from Twisted Sister...which did not go over amazingly with anyone...particularly my bible-thumping grandparents. She was always trying to get me to watch Faces of Death or Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I was always like “dude, I am FIVE years old!” Anyway, on this particular evening we walked down to my local video store to rent some flicks. Lorie pulled a tape off the shelf and said “hey! you’re 7 now...I think you are ready for this!” The tape in question: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. On the cover: a hockey mask lying in a puddle of blood with a dagger sticking out of its left eyehole. I told my aunt that I was in no way, shape, or form ready for whatever unholy ghoulish shit she had in her hand. I decided to rent the comedy Moving Violations...starring Bill Murray’sssssss 4th most talented brother Johnny Murray....which was decent-ish. After said flick I went straight to bed...‘cuz I was 7 and 7 year-olds gotta go to bed. The layout of our apartment at the time was such that if you left my bedroom door open I had a direct view of our 20-inch Zenith in the living room. Before I could even get my sheep counted my aunt put Friday the 13th on...and I stayed up and watched the whole goddamn thing...wide-eyed and terrified. I saw so many things that no seven year-old should ever have to see: murder and mayhem...boobies….Crispin Glover dancing! From that night forward I was obsessed with all things Jason Voorhees. When a new Friday flick would hit the video store I would save up my dough so I could rent every movie in the series and watch them in order and scare myself legless. By the time I was in junior high my bedroom contained the following items: a stack of Friday-related Fangoria magazines, a collection of fake machetes and Jason hockey masks (including one that glowed in the dark!), a homemade poster with a timeline tracing the events of the Friday films, and a shoebox full of ears that I severed from random neighborhood cats and dogs (relax...that last thing is not true). When I was in my early 20’s I even wrote a novella about two 10 year-old boys trying to sneak into a screening of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan that my girlfriend at the time hated so much she suggested I move back in with my folks because “some people just don’t have “it.” Oof...yeah....so...anyway...today I’m here to talk about Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. This was always one of my favorite films in the series because it isn’t terribly scary...and as much as I love being scared...I also really, really fucking hate being scared! What happens is this: If you have made it this far in this review this review you are probably already familiar with the events of the first few Friday films...so I won’t rehash them here. The character of Tommy Jarvis is the fulcrum that Friday’s 4-6 rests on. He’s 12 years-old in Part 4 and he’s played by Goonies star and Michael Jackson slumber party pal Corey Feldman. In part 5...which was released just one year after 4..Tommy is a teenaged resident of a mental hospital. Totally jacks up the timeline of the entire series, Part 5 does! I get it; Corey Feldman was too busy powdering his nose and shooting The Lost Boys up in Santa Carla. Also: Jason isn’t really Jason in 5...but some bereaved ambulance driver. Total bullshit. So when Part 6 opens we meet Tommy Jarvis again...but this time he’s played by some Canadian tuxedo-wearing, Bryan Adams lookin’ cat by the name of Thom Matthews. He’s the third actor to portray Tommy Jarvis in as many years, for those of y’all keep score at home. He’s out of the mental hospital, which is great. He’s also speeding to the town of Crystal Lake (re-named Forrest Green here for tourism reasons and whatnot) to dig up Jason’s body and set it on fire...which is less great. Tommy heads to the cemetery with his buddy Allen...who is totally Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter! Tells Allen that he needs to see Jason’s corpse and destroy it and then he’ll finally be right as rain up in the cabeza. Tommy starts digging up the grave and Horshack is all “meh meh meh meh Mista Kottah...I don’t like this! I’m gonna have a heart attack!” 28 years later the actor who plays Horshack will die of a heart attack. These two events appear to be unrelated. So Tommy cracks open the coffin...and there’s Jason...and dude is MUSH! Tommy goes bananas and screams and cries and tears a giant metal rod from a nearby fence and starts stabbing the corpse. Whatever mental hospital this kid went to did a piss poor job, amirite? Tommy finally chills out and then tosses Jason’s signature hockey mask into the grave. Oh...yeah...he brought it with him! You know...in case lightning strikes Jason and he inexplicably comes back to life and needs the mask to cover up his gnarly face. And wouldn’t you friggin’ know it: that's exactly what happens!! So Jason’s alive again and he’s still a murderous psychopath. We know this because the very first thing he does post-resurrection is rip Horshack’s heart out (literally...not figuratively). He’s also...like...an actual zombie monster now. There was always a sense in the earlier films that, you know, sure that dude was chopped up and hung from the rafters or whatever....but his injuries might be survivable. Actually, didn’t he live at the bottom of the lake for 20 years? OK, totally disregard what I just said. Tommy manages to escape to the local police station to warn them about Jason but the sheriff is an asshole jerk who pulls his gun on Tommy and threatens to repaint the station with his brains. They clearly didn’t have body cams back in ’86. Meanwhile out in the sticks, a couple get lost on their way to Camp Crystal Lake and run smack into Jason. They offer him their Amex cards but Jason impales them anyway...‘cuz he’s ice cold like that. The male victim is none other than Tony Goldwyn, the man responsible for Patrick Swayze’s ghostlike state in Ghost...so...serves him right, I say! The next morning, the sheriff’s daughter Megan shows up at the station with the rest of the cast slash meat for the slaughter. There’s innocent girl (Paula)...token black (Sissy), and the poor man’s Patrick Dempsey (Cort). They’re all present and accounted for. Megan mentions that she and her friends are supposed to be headed to camp to do some camp counseling but that the camp directors have yet to show. Tommy hears this and starts wailing about Jason and whatnot...because in this movie the jail is conveniently located in the middle of the police station. Tommy’s all “sorry but your friends have most likely been dismembered”. Even though Tommy is in prison Megan immediately has eyes for him because of course she does. The sheriff is all “enough of this happy horseshit” and decides to escort Tommy to the edge of town...‘cuz that’ll show him. Tommy leads them to the graveyard where he hopes that the sight of Jason’s empty coffin will convince them they have a murderous maggot slush puppy on the loose. Unfortunately the whisky-slugging gravedigger has already closed the grave back up with Horshack’s body...so that plan goes shithouse. The gravedigger also looks into the camera at one point and says “some folks sure got a strange idea of entertainment” and then says “fart head.” Best character in this flick by a country mile, that gravedigger. Megan and her friends arrive at the summer camp with a few shopping bags full of lunchables and orange Gatorade and Deep Woods Off and try to figure out how they are gonna operate the summer camp without Tony Goldwyn. The four of them!? Look y’all...I spent about a dozen summers at summer camp. We had like 40 counsellors...a program director...a camp nurse, and a full kitchen staff. Hell, I even taught the camp drama course for a summer...which is what kids were forced to take when the archery classes were full. No way these four chumps gonna run an entire summer camp! But sure enough a buttload of children come rolling up on a school bus. While all of this is going on Jason is out in the woods killing a bunch of non-characters all willy nilly. It’s like the filmmakers realized they only had 60 minutes worth of movie and had to stage some kill scenes that have nothing to do with anything to pad things out. There’s a group of middle aged people on a corporate paintball retreat. They all get killed. There’s two random yuppies laying on a blanket sipping champagne. Deadsville. He also kills the gravedigger...which is a total prick move. Finally night has fallen and Jason goes to camp...just like Ernest...but mute and full of malice. He’s there to kill all of the counsellors who were too busy fornicating to save him from drowning as a child. Only problem is he already did that like 4 movies ago. Why you gotta keep messing with that camp, brah? Speaking of fornicating...there are now only 3 counsellors as Cort is offsite balling some random gal in the back of an RV. She’s like “I’m really enjoying this here balling...please try to hold out until the song is over.” Cort is all “umm...well...how much longer is the song?” Her answer: ten minutes. Note: I did some research and said song, “I’m No Animal” by the band Felony, is only 3:38. So there’s that. Luckily (or unluckily) Jason cuts the power to the RV and the dude does his thing. Selfish prick. Fortunately the RV has a generator so they hit the road with the quickness. Cort drives like a total asshole while blasting an Alice Cooper tune called “Teenage Frankenstein”...which is not to be confused with his song “Feed My Frankenstein” from Wayne’s World...even though it is totally confusing. Unfortunately their night ends shittily when Jason sneaks aboard and murders them both horribly and gruesomely. Sorry doodz. The cops find the crashed up RV with the slashed up bodies and immediately conclude that it’s Tommy Jarvis that done did the killing. Back at the camp Jason is creepin’ while the kiddos are sleepin’. He goes to Sissy’s cabin and twists her head around so it’s facing the wrong way. She dies (I mean...right?). Then he pays a visit to Paula and just kills the absolute living shit out of her. So now there’s just ONE camp counsellor left. And unfortunately that counsellor is Megan...and she has driven her bitchin’ Camaro into town to find Tommy Jarvis and flirt his face off. Our boy Tommy has spent the majority of the movie hanging out in the local independent bookstore...sipping lattes and reading a book called “The Dead are Alive”. Now he’s a man with a plan; he’s gotta return Jason to his original resting place at the bottom of the lake. Easy peasy, right? But remember the cops think Tommy’s a murderer so there’s a big car chase and they lock him up and blah blah blah don’t bore up get to the chorus! Megan breaks Tommy out of jail and they rush to the camp where Jason is killing his way through the police force...walking around with headless corpses....contemplating killing
himself some children...just to change things up. You know...for a goof! While Tommy prepares to lure Jason out into the lake in a janky motor boat full of heavy duty chains and cans of gasoline (that he got where??) Megan rounds up the children...telling them that they should not be afraid. Umm...all but one of the camp counsellors along with the entire police force have been slaughtered...I think it’s reasonable to be VERY fucking afraid! Jason catches up to Megan and tries to squeeze her head until it pops like a zit...but he’s distracted by Tommy shouting “C’mon chickenshit! Come and get me, maggot head!” from his boat. NO ONE like being called maggot head...particularly Jason Voorhees...whose head is made of actual maggots. Tommy lights the lake on fire (where do bad folks go when they dieee) and Jason swims out and capsizes the boat. Tommy manages to slip the chains around Jason but Jason holds Tommy underwater for, like, a long ass time. Like...dude has drowned for sure. Megan swims out to the boat and fires up the engine. The engine propellor just happens to be next to Jason’s face. It mashes his already mashed-up grill up something awful! So Jason is dead*. Megan drags Tommy to shore and does some half-assed CPR for like ten seconds and Tommy comes back to life and is fine and shows no signs of having been drowned and dead for the last ten minutes. Everyone is all “phew, Jason is most definitely finally really for sure totally dead.” The camera moves back underwater...where we see that Jason’s eyes are OPEN and dude is thinking he has at least five more sequels and one reboot left in him. The end....ish...
*originally posted june 15, 2017*
On the first day of my 5th grade year my buddy Luke told me that the best film he’d seen over the previous summer wasn’t Die Hard or Big but, in fact, Big Business, a comedy in which Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin each play dual roles. The reason, he explained, was that the film’s conclusion featured all four characters (2 Bette’s, 2 Lily’s) onscreen at the SAME TIME in a special effects bonanza that could rival Star Wars. “You have to see it! It...was...MINT!!!” he told me. So I checked it out again this week for the first time in about 30 years. What happens is this: a rich white couple from NYC are being driven through West Virginia by their black chauffeur (who is the only person of color in this entire flick, BTW. Not cool, dudes) when the rich white lady goes into labor. They find the only hospital within a bajillion miles but....dig this....it’s only open to employees of the town’s furniture factory! So Whitey McBigbux buys the whole GD factory and his wife has her twinsies while, across the hall, some local yokels are also shitting out a set of twins of their own. This members-only hospital operates with just a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a pair of hedge cutters, and one elderly nurse, who OF COURSE mixes up the babies in the hospital nursery. The NYC faction names their daughters Sadie and Rose and, hearing this, and also because people from the south apparently lack creativity and don’t discuss naming their children ahead of time, the yokels also name their daughters Sadie and Rose. Flash forward 40 years to 1988...where...in two separate locations ....someone who looks like Bette Midler has a twin sister who looks like Lily Tomlin...and NO ONE has questioned the fact that they don’t look anything alike! NYC Bette is a tyrannical, materialistic CEO of some non-specific mega company while her bookish sister, NYC Lily, yearns for the country life. Meanwhile back in Yokelsville, Country Bette is stuck singing honky tonk songs while milking a cow (an actual cow) at the County Fair slash parade of southern small town movie life cliches. Country Bette dreams of going to NYC and wearing press-on nails and shopping at Gucci. Hey ladies: you are in your forties: if you want to go to New York then maybe JUST GO? Anyway...the NYC twins’ company is about to strip mine the Country twins’ furniture company...so the Country Twinsies head to NYC to help save their company and OH MY GOD MAKE THIS MOVIE STOP!!! The country twins arrive in NYC where, in a city of 10 million people, they are immediately mistaken for the NYC twins (because all twins cannot be told apart? is this true, twins?). An hour’s worth of extremely mild mistaken identity comedy ensues. Something about a sleazy Italian businessman named Fabrizio Arrevaderci trying to hook up with NYC Bette even though she’s married and has a kid who is totally Seth Green. The Lily’s, meanwhile, are dating Fred Ward and Michael Gross respectively...which means they are dating half the cast of Tremors. Anyway, eventually the twins run into each other in the bathroom of the Plaza Hotel and we are treated to an orgy of special effectsthat makes Avatar look like Tron. And you know...they aren’t all that surprised. So what the fuck, right? The NYC faction lets the Country faction keep their company and they all swap male partners and dance out of the Plaza together while Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” plays on the soundtrack. Scene.
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october 4, 2019
I might just be totally making this up...but I believe there’s a quote somewhere written by someone that describes filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola as “a man who could have been great...but was not.” The line on FFC goes something like this: after closing out the 1970’s with four consecutive no shit “greatest films of all time” type films that won him a butt ton of Oscars and two Palm d’Or’s Coppola entered the 1980’s in a prime position to exert full creative control over more personal, “auteur”-type projects. Instead, he completely bankrupted himself on the incomprehensible One From the Heart and had to spend the next two decades working as a hired gun to get himself solvent. He eventually struck gold as a huckster of mid-to-low-level vino and spent most of the early 00’s holed up at his vineyard slugging cab franc. When he finally returned to the director’s chair, flush with enough wine money to fund those personal passion projects he’d been threatening since the early 1980’s, the result was 2008’s Youth Without Youth...which...well..the less said about that film the better. Now, I’m not suggesting all of the films FFC made during his wilderness years were bereft of artistic merit. I’d put 1982’s Rumble Fish on the Top 5 list just below The Godfather and the rest of the gang. There are other films, though, where the idea that you are watching something directed by the same person who made Apocalypse Now is almost impossible to believe. I mean, a lot of these 1970‘s auteurs fell from grace and had to take whatever work they could find to pay the bills. Was Robert Altman was forced to direct a Mighty Ducks sequel? Not exactly. But Francis Ford Coppola DID direct the 1996 Robin Williams “comedy” Jack....and it is balls terrible. I’m sure the pitch went something like “a 10 year-old is stuck in the body of Robin Williams” and the execs at Disney said “you had me at hello”, popped a bottle of Veuve, and just waited for the big bux to come raining down from the heavens. I actually hadn’t seen Jack until just this week...because it is Jack...but I found a copy at my local thrift store...and the VHS jacket blurbs describe it as both “very funny” and “extremely funny.” So which is it? Answer: neither. What happens is this: Academy Award nominee and woman born with a “stay attractive 4-life” card Diane Lane is mid-Halloween conga line when she starts having contractions. This is all well and good as she is pregnant...but also less good as she is only TWO MONTHS pregnant! Her husband rushes her to the hospital, where the doctor gets her legs in stirrups, looks down and says “oh CHRIST!” Dude, that cannot be good! Keep the patient calm, bro. Too late...the baby is coming! She gives birth to a perfectly healthy baby boy! Smiles and high fives all around and IS NO ONE CONCERNED THE KID IS 7 MONTHS PREMATURE??” The opening credits roll over a “baby being subjected to endless testing montage.” It is also set to a Bryan Adams tune called “Star”...which sounds like the poorest man’s “(Everything I Do) I Do it for You.” Sample lyric: “There’ll be times in your life when ya dancin’ and shit...but you ain’t gettin’ it...but don’t get disillusioned, no, don’t expect too much...‘Cause if what you have is all you can get just keep on tryin’ it.” Whatever you say you crazy Canuck. The doctors call mom and pop Jack (their characters are inexplicably not given actual names) into their office and introduce them to an Infant Disorder Doctor. He explains that Jack was born with an internal clock that beats mad quick. They say that he’s gonna age rapidly and will look 40 years old by the time he is 10. I totally failed my way through high school math but according to my calculations this means he will 160 years old by the time he is 40....which is way too old for a human person to be! He’s kind of like that one dude Benjamin Button...except not at all. The doctors say they have no idea what’s causing this rapid aging...but agree to send him to a lab in Switzerland where he can be studied by the most brilliant minds in the medical world. Just kidding! They totally just send him home and tell his folks “good luck with your janky, death-spiraling, dog-year living son!” The action jumps ahead 10 years into the future...where we find Jack and his family living in a baller ass 3-story Victorian in Presidio Heights...even though no one appears to be employed. Jack, who is now played by 45 year-old Robin Williams, is a recluse who spends most of his days inside playing laser tag with his mom. He’s the subject of much gossip between the neighborhood kids...who believe Jack to be some sort of freak...even though he just looks like regular old Robin Williams. I personally feel kinda gypped that we didn’t get to see him age through the cokey Mork & Mindy years...or the beardy Moscow on the Hudson years. How does he learn about life if he isn’t allowed outside, you ask? His folks somehow have enough coin to set dude up with a tutor who drops by every day...which is awesome. Unfortunately that tutor is played by current SCI Phoenix Inmate #NN7687 William Cosby Jr....which NOOOOO!!!! Cosby teaches Jack about geography. Then they fall to the ground and rassle and Jack tears Cosby’s drawers off. How’s it feel, asshole? I mean...can’t they digitally replace him with Christopher Plummer or something? Mom and Pop decide that it’s high time to send Jack to actual school...even though he’s not gonna live long enough to do anything with any of the information he learns there. They take him down to the 5th grade...where the teacher is totally friggin’ Jennifer Lopez. As in Jenny from the block. J. Lo. Her. She’s in this movie. The kids all recoil in horror when the see Jack...even though...as I have previously noted...he just looks like plain old Robin Williams. It’s not like he’s motherfucking Rocky Dennis from Mask! Did they not explain to the children that he has a rare, fictional disease?? Did they explain to them that he’s probably gonna look like Robin Williams circa-One Hour Photo by Christmas?? Nope...they just throw him into class and expect him to fit his 45 year-old, 5, 7” frame in a desk designed for a 10 year-old. The desk collapses. Everyone cracks the fuck up. I grab the remote control and throw it at the TV. At first he is shunned...because why wouldn’t he be...but then his dad teaches him how to play basketball and soon enough Jack is straight fire on court and the kids start to warm up to him. The missed opportunities fly by at warp speed. Seriously, there are so many places one could go with this premise. Instead, they park this shit in idle and hope that Robin Williams flopping around and falling over desks will suffice. Also--Like I just mentioned...dude was only 5, 7”. They couldn’t have found someone taller...like Alan Alda or Shaquille O’Neal? And I’m certainly not here to disrespect the dearly departed...but it’s just a true fact that Robin Williams could be unbearable...and often. His performance here is both weirdly restrained and completely over the top at the same time. It’s like he was trying to do something different and FFC kept saying “could you try that again...but this time more Robin Williams-y??” ANYWAY...eventually Jack befriends a fleet of child actors who never did much acting beyond childhood. Louis, the leader of the gang, is in hot water with the school principal...so he convinces Jack to impersonate the principal at a parent/teacher meet-up with his Marlboro chuffing mom, played by freaking Fran Drescher (ladies and gentlemen we’ve lost cabin pressure). Drescher immediately starts hitting on Jack. This should probably not gross me out as Elizabeth Perkins bedded a 12 year-old in the body of Tom Hanks in Big...but I still vomit in my mouth a little bit. The kids quickly figure out that Jack has access to things they do not...so they send him to the liquor store for a case of Zima and they all get alcohol poisoning and die. Not really, though. They DO send him to buy a stack of Penthouse mags (I’m not sure what’s worse....but probably the former). Jack brings his stroke mags to Louie’s treehouse and all of the kids sit around and talk about boners and take turns farting into a coffee can. If you are watching this scene and thinking “I bet this film was directed by the same man who directed The Godfather Part II” then you are the only person thinking that. Jack asks if he can bring a friend to the treehouse and Louis says “sure, literally anyone but convicted rapist Bill Cosby”...but Jack shows up with Bill Cosby anyway. They ask Cosby if he will fart in a can and he says “you kids don’t want that; some of my parts are rotten.” Don’t we fuckin’ know it, pal! The added weight of a convicted sex offender overwhelms the treehouse and it collapses to the ground. All of the children fall at least 5 stories. No one is hurt...except me...when I punch myself in the face after this stupid ass scene. Back at school J. Lo gives the kids a new assignment: write an essay about what you want to be when you grow up. Seems like piss poor theacher-ing for a teacher with a student who WILL NOT GROW UP! Jack decides to ask the teach to the dance...cuz...I mean...she’s J. Lo. She’s like, “sorry, I don’t mess around with no 5th graders.” He tries to kiss her. It is wicked sad. Does this kid not see a psychiatrist or anything?? My word! Jack is so upset about this teacher rejection that he has a friggin’ heart attack! The doctors explain that...well...yeah...he’s 40 and his arteries are clogged and it’s not that unusual. Plus he did all that blow with Belushi back at the Chateau Marmont. Dude’s just gotta take his Crestor and chill out. Instead he sneaks out to a local nightclub where he gets shitfaced with man who played Mr Green in Clue Michael McKean. Fran Drescher shows up and she makes out with Jack and says she’s gonna take him home to ball...but luckily Jack gets into a fistfight and arrested and GOD THIS MOVIE SUCKS!!! This night on the town only deepens Jack’s depression. He flips his shit and decides to drop out of school. He holes up in his room and grows the beard that will win him an Oscar in Good Will Hunting the following year. His dad tells his mom that he thinks they should have another baby. She asks him is he’s lost his goddamn motherfucking mind. The topic is not brought up again. His fellow classmates show up outside his window and howl for Jack to come out and play but dude just slips on an oxygen mask and passes out. It’s dark as shit. Two months go by or whatever and now Jack is at least Death to Smoochy-era Robin Williams. He suddenly decides that he wants to return to school for reasons that are completely unclear (they need to end the movie somehow?). When he walks into class the students are delivering their “what I want to be when I grow up” speeches (two months later?? That’s a lax-ass homework assignment). One kid says he wants to be the rapper Heavy D when he grows up. Louis says he wants to be Jack. Both of these kids have serious death wishes. Jack receives a hero’s welcome. He tries to sit in his tiny desk again...and it collapses...again...and I do not laugh...AGAIN!! Instead of putting this movie out of its misery we now flash forward 7 years to graduation day...where Jack is being lauded as valedictorian. He’s also, according to my rudimentary math, now 68 years old. This makes me super bummed because A). Robin Williams never lived to see 68...and B). I just watched all 113 minutes of the movie Jack. He gives a speech where he tells everyone to think of him every time they see a shooting star. Everyone claps/cries/vomits. The movie ends. I watch immediately watch The Godfather and think about how I would rather wake up with a severed horse’s head in my bed every day for the rest of my life than have to watch Jack again. The end.
*originally posted march 15, 2019*
Last week the family of late funnyman John Candy put together a YouTube video to mark the 25th anniversary of his still-devastating passing. They had clips from all of the usual suspects: Uncle Buck...Planes Trains....Stripes....shit, even Summer Rental made the cut. My first thought after watching this little memorial video was that I couldn’t believe they would fail to feature any clips from the movie where John Candy played a talking horse. My second thought was HOLY SHIT...did John Candy really play a talking horse in a movie!?? Indeed he did. Despite the fact that I probably watched Hot to Trot every other day in 1988 this flick somehow fell through my mind cracks. Of course I had a VHS copy in a box down in the basement so I decided to check it out again to see what was what. If you asked me to grade this film when I was 10 years-old I would’ve given it an A+. My 2019 grade: probably still an A+. The fact that someone conceived of this movie...actually went through with filming it...watched the finished product and thought “yes, people will probably want to pay cash money to watch this film” deserves some sort of award for chutzpah. Hot to Trot is 81 minutes long yet includes two ridiculously long credits sequences....meaning that it barely even qualifies as a feature-length film. See, I figured the filmmakers just did a shit ton of drugs and threw Bobcat Goldthwait in a room with a horse and told him act extra Bobcat Goldthwait-y. It looks like they maybe just shot it over a long weekend and pieced it together in the editing room. Well, I did a little research (meaning I googled “Hot to Trot” and just saw what I saw) and found out it took YEARS to bring this horsefaced masterpiece to the screen....I shit you not. When filming began the lead role was to be played Joan Rivers...and the horse was supposed to be voiced by original M.A.S.H. star and man who impregnated Barbara Streisand Elliott Gould. How they got from Joan Rivers to Bobcat Goldthwait we do not know. I mean...I guess they both talk funny? And they both have the letter “O” in their first names? I really can’t think of much else, dudes. Elliott Gould actually recorded all of his horse dialogue and the producers wanted John Candy to re-record it but he told them he thought it was balls unfunny and he was just gonna go in and make a bunch of shit up and they told him they were cool with that. So what happens is this; Idiot Bobcat inherits a 50% share of a fancypants 1980’s stock market moneymaking money place from his dead mother....much to the chagrin of his evil step-father Walter, played by man who I was surprised to learn not yet deceased Dabney Coleman. He also inherits a horse named Don, who talks like John Candy. The VHS box proudly sells this film as “The Greatest Talking Horse Movie Ever.” It’s also the ONLY talking horse movie ever (unless you count 1968’s The Horse in the Grey Flannel Suit...which I do not). Seriously....google “talking horse movies” 31 years later and Hot to Trot is still the first thing that comes up. So the horse can talk and Bobcat is weirded out...but not really. He tells Don he could go to Hollywood and become the next Mr Ed. Don explains that they made Mr Ed’s mouth move by shoving a carrot up his ass. This makes me start to really worry about how they got the horses mouthes to move in THIS movie!? I mean...this is way before CGI and all that shit. Bobcat brings Don back to live with his family (who are also talking horses, natch). Don somehow gets wind that Bobcat is having a tough time at the investment firm because he talks funny and therefore must be stupid. So he walks himself back to Los Angeles...where he overhears some secretary-schtupping executive talking about a stock that is about to make a killing in the stock market. Don calls Bobcat at work and tells him to buy the stock (yes...the horse can dial a phone). He does and is now a millionaire. He celebrates by rocking out to “Shooting Dirty Pool”, the 11th best song from The Replacements 11-song 1987 album Pleased to Meet Me. But hey...putting a ‘Mats song in your movie automatically kicks your grade up a notch in my book. So that’ll be A++ then. Bobcat takes his newfound fortune and moves into a super yuppified mega apartment...where his tight ass neighbor is Tim Kazurinsky, the actor who played Bobcat’s partner Sweetchuck in Police Academy’s 2 through 4. Don moves in with him because of course he does. Meanwhile Dabney Coleman is bullshit and wants to sabotage Bobcat and force him to sell him his half of the firm. He enlists future Academy Award nominee Virginia Madsen to go on a date with Bobcat so she can figure out where he gets his hot stock tips from. When she goes to his apartment she sees he’s living with a horse. Her: There’s a horse in your apartment! Him: Really!? If it ain’t cockroaches it’s palominos!” I laugh my friggin’ ass off. Bobcat totally carries this flick. There’s a dude who has had an interesting career. He wrote and directed the pitch black comedy World’s Greatest Dad starring Robin Williams...which most of you have probably seen. He also wrote and directed Sleeping Dogs Lie...a film about a woman who has to tell her fiancee that she got drunk one night in college and blew her dog...which I’m guessing most of you have not seen. ANYWAY! Don tells Bobcat to buy stock in a company called Indio Oats. The oats turn out to be poisonous and now Bobcat is ruined and loses his half of the company. And so now what!? I can just imagine the filmmakers sitting around trying to figure out how to pad out the rest of the movie. Wait a minute! They’ve got horses! HORSE RACE! Dabney Coleman has a bunch of horses running in a fictional horse race. Bobcat decides to enter Don in said race. If he wins Bobcat gets the company back. Don is a long-shot because he’s supposed to be shitty horse or something...but honestly they all look the same to me. If that’s some sort of equestrian racism then I apologize. Don knows he can’t win so his plan is to roll up next to the other horses....talk a bunch of shit to them...and get them to freak out and run in the opposite direction. It’s just about the dumbest shit ever. Also: amazing. The plan is a success and Don wins and Bobcat is stoked and Virginia Madsen falls in love with him because of course she does. As a reward for winning the race Bobcat agrees to bring Don to a dentist to get a gold tooth. The dentist...who is totally Gilbert Gottfried...freaks out when he hears Don speak and runs out of the room. Don looks into the camera, says “what’s up, doc?”, the Looney Tunes theme plays...freeze frame...the friggin’ movie ends. Here I’d like to point out that I didn’t use the F-word once in this review...so at least my mom will enjoy it. The end.
I know that I have probably mentioned the fact that my parents weren’t particularly adept at censoring the type of movies I brought home from the video store when I was a kid dozens of times. I had carte blanche to rent pretty much whatever I wanted from the local shops. It’s not like I was trying to bring home skin flicks or nothin’...but my tastes ran a little outre for a 12 year old. You know....I’d bring home Wild at Heart instead of Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken and tell my mom I made an honest mistake if she happened to walk in the room and see Crispin Glover filling his undies with cockroaches. Once in a while an overly concerned video store clerk would get all self righteous and call my mom to narc on me. “Yeah Gail...I got your kid here...and he wants to rent 9 1/2 Weeks! (pause) What’s it about!? (covers mouth and whispers into the phone about ice cubes and strawberries). My poor mom doesn’t know movies from Simon! So that flick went on the permanent “no fly” list. Well, the other night I was flipping through the HBO and one of those Fifty Shades movies was on and I watched some of it. Look, there are three of those movies and one of them is always on the TV! You think I’d watch that shit on purpose?? Ok, shut up about it! Anyway I was watching Donny Johnson’s daughter and Jamie Whatsisname do their what-have-you and it got me thinking that I might finally be old enough to watch 9 ½ Weeks without catching hell from my mom. Luckily my local thrift store had a copy for 50 cents American...so I brought it home and watched it...and what happens is this: We open with a montage (the first of about 100 montages in this movie) of Alec Baldwin marriage escapee Kim Basinger walking to work through the streets of A Very 80’s NYC (porno theaters all over Times Square, steam belching from subway grates, a meatpacking district that’s full of meat instead of $25 glasses of Cab Franc). Basinger plays Elizabeth, an art gallery worker in her early 30’s. She’s recently divorced but it doesn’t seem to bother her none. She makes decent coin and she gets to crush wine and do a shit ton of shopping with her cigarette rippin’ friend Molly...who is played by the lady who plays the villainous owner of the Cleveland Indians in that flick Major League. One afternoon, while Elizabeth is at the Asian specialty market looking for kimchee or whatever, this suave motherfucker sidles up next to her and shoots her bedroom stares before immediately disappearing in a cloud of smoke (note: in this film the smoke machine is turned up to 11 at all times). Mr Mysteriouso’s name is John (they couldn’t have named him something a little more 80’s slick...like Cade or Drago?). He’s played by the actor Mickey Rourke, who was breathtakingly handsome in the 1980’s (seriously...even I had to step outside for some fresh air when he appeared on screen...lordhavemercy!)...and who now looks like mangled horse shit. And look...I know he quit acting and took up boxing for a long stretch...and I don’t have his boxing stats in front of me...but he must’ve been a pretty lousy boxer because his grill is JACKED...UP! Like...if he gave you an ID with a picture from 1989 on it you’d be like “Sir, this is clearly not you...you may not board the plane.” But in this flick my man Mick is an ADONIS! And he knows it too. His entire acting style...if one can call it that...is to purse his lips, squint his eyes ever so slightly, and just STARE. And it works too because why wouldn’t it!? Elizabeth instantly wants to know this unknowable specimen! They run into each other again at an upscale outdoor flea market with a terrible reggae band. This time he invites her to an Italian restaurant where he speaks Italian gibberish and chews with his mouth open. “You ever try the linguini concozzi?....Ever had Camistrato Passolini?...Did you know Vitello Palopito got his brains blown out at this table?” I bet this was some weird method acting bullshit Mickey Rourke made up on the spot. Total Brando head, that guy. After dinner, John takes Elizabeth to a house boat and whips out some seduction vinyl. The artist is Billie Holiday...which is great. The song is “Strange Fruit”...which is not so great. “Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze.” I know I feel like ballin’! John gestures toward the bed. Elizabeth tells him he’s being awfully presumptuous. He tells her that no one can hear her scream from the house boat. She tells him she wants to leave, like, yesterday! Cut to: Elizabeth is at her desk at the art gallery and she receives a real smart arrangement of flowers and she’s all giggles and smiles. Next thing you know she and John are skipping around Coney Island carrying an inordinate amount of balloons and DID I MISS SOMETHING??? How did we go from rapey house boat to this?? Did they lose a couple of scenes to cut down the running time?? So they’re super happy all of a sudden. John puts Elizabeth on a ferris wheel and slips the guy running the thing a tenner to stop it once she’s at the top. While she screams in terror John laughs at her and invites the ferris wheel operator out to coffee. Dudes....I don’t like where this flick is headed at all! Elizabeth is rescued from the ferris wheel by the fire department, after which she locates John at the local cafe, drags him over to the espresso machine, jams the milk steaming wand into his ear and turns it all the way up! OK...so I totally just made that up. They just carry on like nothing happened at all. Later that afternoon they meet a kid who says he will fart the theme to Jaws if they pay him five dollars. They give him the cash but when the kid farts it just sounds like a fart and not like the theme to Jaws so they ask for a refund. I mention this because it makes ZERO sense and has nothing to do with anything...and is also the best part of the movie. So there’s that. Back at Elizabeth’s apartment John blindfolds her and tells her to get undressed. He then takes the ice out of his vodka soda and dribbles it all over her bare torso. She’s like “this is kinda neat...but can’t we do it...like...regular style?” And then....the scene ends and it’s the next day! Did they ball or not?? Who edited this friggin’ thing?? John brings her to his new grayscale 80’s movie penthouse where he shows off his new 5-disc CD player. Hottest scene in the movie, if you ask me. He also gives her a watch and tells her to look at the watch every day at 12 o’clock and imagine him touching her. He does not, however, specify if that 12 AM or PM! Dude...that sort of thing matters! Ope...it’s looking like 12 PM ‘cuz the next day Elizabeth locks herself in the slide projector/mop closet at work, cranks the Eurythmics, and has herself a good wank. Aaaaand now we’ve reached the infamous refrigerator scene! You know...the one they spoofed in the 1991 film Hot Shots starring intentional HIV transmitter Charlie Sheen? John blindfolds Elizabeth, makes her kneel in front of the fridge, and then makes her eat a bunch of random shit. It’s like the Blindfold Challenge from Top Chef but with 100% more sexual malice. At first he feeds her strawberries and strawberry jello and you’re like “ok...that’s sexy-ish”. Then he makes her eat a pepperoncini and a cold crab rangoon before pouring honey all over her. Have you ever had honey stuck on any part of your body? It’s about as sexy as an overflowed shithouse. Just watching this scene made my acid reflux act up. Gah! Man, I hope these assholes didn’t have roommates. “Umm...Liz....do you know what happened to my bottle of honey? And why is the floor all sticky?” The next night at dinner Elizabeth asks John is he’s like to accompany her to a party at her art gallery...and the dude starts banging his head on the table! I guess that’s a ‘no’, eh? He tells her he ain’t about all of that. He just wants to sexually humiliate her in private...not stand around some bougie gallery party eating bacon wrapped scallops and sipping prosecco. Cool. I wonder what Kim Basinger enjoyed less; acting in this movie or being married to Alec Baldwin. So John continues being a total piece of shit to her. There’s a super long montage set to Bryan Ferry’s “Slave to Love” where they shop a bunch more and he throws her fedora into the middle of Canal Street and they fuck in a clock tower somewhere. You know what song rules? “Slave to Love” by Bryan Ferry. One night Elizabeth tells John that she wants to know what it feels like to be a man. I’m thinking...alright...time for a pegging scene! Nope. Elizabeth dresses in a tuxedo with a top hat and gives herself a mustache with a sharpie. She even carries a cigar to give it a George Burns vibe. The chances of anyone mistaking her for a man? Less than zero chances. Oh...but some dudes DO mistake them for gay men and hurl homophobic insults. This leads to a chase scene where they all stumble onto the set of Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video where it is raining torrentially. They get into a rumble with the homophobes and Elizabeth fucking STABS one of the dudes! They immediately call 911 and bring the dude to the hospital. Just kidding! The wounded man crawls away to die and John and Elizabeth have ferocious intercourse against the wall. She tells John that she loves him mid-hump. He does not reply. So...I mean...where is this movie even headed?? This guy John...he likes weird sex stuff...and Elizabeth does too. Freaks gonna be freaks. How am I supposed to feel at this point...besides hungry for strawberry jello? Still...they carry on. They steal fancy jewelry because why not. Elizabeth does a striptease to Joe Cocker’s “You Can Keep Your Hat On” that is less sexy than that movie Striptease. I don’t know what all goes on in strip clubs these days...but the sound of Joe Cocker’s voice makes me want to put more clothes ON...not take them off. Finally, John commands Elizabeth to get on her hands and knees and crawl around eating $20 bills or some shit. She’s like “look, can’t we just Netflix and chill once in a while?” He says they cannot. He takes her to the Chelsea Hotel and tries to set up a 3fer with a hooker who purrs and growls (according to my notes her names is Gato but she is listed in the credits as “whore”. Real nice). Elizabeth beats the shit out of the hooker (so no 3fer then? bummer!). She shows up to the big gala at the art gallery solo and sits in the corner crying even though Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones is totally at the party! You can’t cry around Rockin’ Ronnie! Instead of, you know, going home...Elizabeth inexplicably sprints to a live sex show in Times Square where she kisses a complete stranger. This upsets John...who is somehow also at the very same live sex show. Of all the gin joints in the world!! The next morning Elizabeth tells John that’s she’s had enough with all of the Fifty Shades of Grey shenanigans. John does not get the reference as these books are still 25 years away from being published. He tells her that he can act like a normal human being...that he has a mom and dad and whatnot. We didn’t think you were raised by alpacas, bro. She says this shit has gone on long enough. 9 1/2 weeks to be exact! So it’s not just a clever title (actually it isn’t that either). Elizabeth leaves. John says he hopes she’ll be back by the time he counts to 50. Well guess what? That motherfucker is still counting because Kim Basinger keeps right on walking....all the way to the set of Fifty Shades Freed...where she had a cameo in 2018. The end.
When I was 9 years old I saved up several weeks worth of allowances so that this copy of the 1987 Shelly Long comedy Hello Again could be mine for eternity. After watching it again this week for the first time in about 30 years I’m thinking the guy who sold this tape to me must still be laughing about it. She-LO, who pretty much cornered the market on playing hyper-literate yuppie white ladies in the 1980’s, plays hyper-literate yuppie white lady Lucy Chadman, a filthy rich Greenwich housewife married to a plastic surgeon played by the guy who plays Roger Dorn in Major League. They live in a mansion and go to parties like the ones in Eyes Wide Shut, minus the public group sex. (Is Sydney Pollock in the upstairs bathroom standing over a passed out hooker?). Lucy seems to have everything going for her except, get this, she’s clumsy! That’s it. She’s always falling over and spilling shit on herself and just embarrassing the piss out of Roger Dorn at public functions. Oh yeah..then she chokes to death on a Korean chicken ball fed to her by psychic bookstore-owning sister Zelda. (Note: the VHS box refers to said chicken ball an “oriental ball”. Not cool, dudes). So she’s dead and there’s a “people going on with their lives” montage. About a year later Zelda decides to go to Lucy’s grave and recite some spiritual mumbo jumbo and, blammo, Lucy is alive again! Like...there are no special effects of any sort. She just appears at her grave showing no signs of having been dead for an entire year. At first she refuses to believe that she was dead cuz, I mean, why would you? But Zelda is like “go see for yourself, gurrl”, which is a shitty way to treat someone you have resurrected from the dead. She quickly finds out that Roger Dorn has married her best friend Kimmy and her son has blossomed from a cuisine curious high school student into a full-fledged restaurant chef/owner (in a year?? fuck me, man). After an initial round of WTF’s people seem only mildly unsettled by the fact that Lucy is no longer a dead person. So great...where’s this movie going again?? OH! Zelda casually mentions in passing that Lucy needs to find true love before the next full moon or she totally has to return to being dead. Enter Irish Irishman and Miller’s Crossing star Gabriel Byrne as the ER doctor who did a piss poor job of saving Lucy from a Korean chicken ball back at the beginning of the movie. He’s determined to get to the bottom of Lucy’s undead-ness slash introduce her to his lucky charms...but then Kimmy leaks Lucy’s story to the media, who go predictably apeshit. Suddenly, Lucy is a hero and Paulie Walnuts from The Sopranos wants help getting in touch with a dead bookie he has a score to settle with. Kimmy tells the media that Lucy never actually died in the first place. Lucy decides to prove Kimmy wrong by showing up at the dedication of Roger Dorn’s new plastic surgery wing and conjuring the ghost of Kimmy’s ex-husband. Basically She-LO impersonates an african-american man with a gravelly southern accent for about 10 minutes and it’s uncomfortable AF. Sooo...now everyone believes that Lucy did in fact die and Roger Dorn loves her again but Lucy instead lets Gabriel Byrne carry her off to the land of Tir Na Nog. (I mean....why didn’t anyone suggest...you know...DIGGING UP HER BODY??) Anyway....freeze frame...movie over...thumbs down…
*originally posted on June 2, 2017
September 20, 2019
The back of the VHS jacket for Marked for Death, which was released in October of 1990, confidently declares that the film’s star, sexual harassment yoda and current Russian envoy to the United States Steven Seagal to be the hottest action hero of the 1990’s. I don’t know about y’all but I think the first year of a decade might be a wee bit early for such bold predictions. Shit, in 1990 I would’ve bet my life on NELSON being the hottest band of the next ten years! But 1999 found a different world for our dude Seagal (and for Ricky Nelson’s fair haired, smiley twin sons). The last movie that Seagal put out in the 1990’s was called The Patriot and it didn’t even make enough dough at the box office to cover dinner for two at the French Laundry. One could write a novel about all of the weird shit he has done over the last 20 years: bizarre wine instructional video, bizarre faux law enforcement work, bizarre Russian citizenship. But...you know...the number of people who would purchase such a book is probably close to zero. I’ll concede that Seagal was indeed very popular for a good 5 year stretch back in the day...but I can’t begin to tell you why. Sure, he’s good with the martial arts and whatnot...but he has negative charisma and certainly no sense of humor. At least Jean-Claude Van Damme smiled a lot and looked like the sort of cat you wouldn’t mind having a beer with (or pound of cocaine. Poor JCVD...his taste for the booger sugar really did him in). Anyway, what happens in Marked for Death is this: Seagal plays undercover DEA agent and expert snapper of limbs John Hatcher. The opening of the flick finds Hatch and his partner Chico running around a part of Columbia that is totally just some leftover sets from Three Amigos at the 20th Century Fox backlot. I assume they are there to do your run-of-the-mill action movie-type stuff: take down a cartel or whatever whatever. It isn’t really explained. They immediately kidnap veteran character actor Danny Trejo and stuff him in the trunk of a car...which is no way to treat Danny Trejo. Dude has like 700 more movies to make over the next 30 years! The drug cartel ain’t fooled by Mr Mystical Ponytail and shit goes south with the quickness and mad dudes are shot and carved up with a sword. Hatch and Chico end up at a strip club (because: boobs) where a naked prostitute shoots Chico to death. Hatch, in turn, pumps the naked prostitute full of lead. If that sounds a bit gratuitous...it’s because it totally is. Hatcher DOES feel an iota of guilt so he takes his prostitute-killing ass to confession straightaway after landing back in the states. “Listen father, I’ve done some terrible things: I’ve fucked a ton of women, I’ve taken drugs, I’ve killed men and women...all to help bring down the bad guys.” (seriously...this is what he says! And I thought I had some uncomfortable confessions!). The priest says “hey, them’s the breaks” and gives him 15 Our Father’s and 10 Hail Mary’s. Then he tells Hatch to go spend time with his family and to “find the gentle self inside you.” Hey Padre--this is Stevie Seagal! Dude has no “gentle self” inside him! Hatch goes to tell his boss to find another pony tailed, black dungaree-wearing DEA agent. The boss is all “quit bein’ a broad...the president demands results!” but Hatch ain’t hearing it. He gets his ’73 Mustang out of storage and hauls ass back to his hometown in the suburbs of Chicago, where the streets are somehow lined with palm trees. He arrives at the Hatcher family home, where his sister is still holding down the fort with her 10 year-old daughter...who is totally played the actress who plays Michael Myers’ niece in Halloween’s 4 & 5! Which reminds me that this film was directed by the guy who directed Halloween 4! Which reminds me that I would much rather be watching Halloween 4! Anyway, they are happy-ish to see him. Hatch’s bedroom is still set up just like it was when he was in high school. It looks just like my old bedroom but with 100% more guns on the wall and no waterbed. The next day he heads over to his high school to check in with his old buddy and current school football coach Max, played by man who is waiting for James Earl Jones to die so he can have ALL of the voice-over work Keith David. Aaaaaaand that’s when the Jamaicans show up! Hatch notices them out of the corner of his eye. They are selling reefer to students out in the bleachers. Totally common sight in the lily white suburbs. But like 30 seconds later those same Jamaicans are trying to sell CRACK to the kids. “Ya mon...you ready to try crack!? Dis da real deal, boyeee. Make you want to make love all de time!” (Make love? Crack? Mmm...ok). This film movie is so insulting to Jamaicans that they had to rush Cool Runnings into production the following year so Americans wouldn’t think that all Jamaicans were bumbaclot crack hustling hoodoo men. Hatch turns a blind eye ‘cuz he’s retired, remember? There’s a couple of scenes that follow where various other gangsters discuss how the Jamaicans are moving in on their turf...but it is impossible to tell who’s who. It’s like they were determined to keep the movie’s running time to 90 minutes...coherent storytelling be damned. We do learn that the head Jamaican gangster’s name is Screwface. Kind of like Scarface....but screwed. One of the rival gangsters goes to a Latinx oracle with a picture of Screwface. She tells him Screwface is muy malo and offers to put a curse on him. This involves her doing the following: stripping butt ass naked, jumping into a bathtub full of floating orange peels, taking a swig off a bottle of Bacardi Silver, taking a puff off a of a stogie, and then killing a chicken. That sounds not all that different from my nightly post-work routine. Maybe I should start a side hustle putting curses on Jamaican drug lords, eh? Max and Hatch decide to hit the townie bar for a couple of brewskis. Max tells Hatch that they are surrounded by Jamaicans slinging coke to high school students...but Hatch says it’s none of his business. Dude just wants to sip some suds and show off his bomb ass silk jacket featuring a TIGER on each shoulder. If they had an infomercial hawking merch from this movie I would have totally bought that tiger jacket. Their little drinking sesh is interrupted when a gunfight breaks out between....exactly whom I’m not entirely sure. Hatch has to abandon his 7.4 ABV IPA and go crack some skulls. Post shootout Hatch is confronted outside the bar by the chief of police and actor who is Kevin Dunn...who tells Hatch to stay retired and mind his own beeswax. He also meets a lady Jamaican gang expert named Detective Leslie Something-or-Other. I assume this character only exists to satisfy Steven Seagal’s voracious sexual appetite...because these types of movies are gross like that...but I might be wrong (note: I am wrong). The Jamaicans are way cheesed off that Hatch has started poking around their business so they drive by his house and spray it with like 5000 bullets...one of which strikes the little girl from Halloween 4. Luckily she lives...but unluckily she winds up in the care of Linda Hamilton’s doctor from Terminator 2. What, was that actor just wandering around Hollywood in a doctor’s costume in 1990 looking for work?? Hatcher grabs the doctor by the scrubs and tells him to treat the little girl like the President of the United States. Shit...if I was a doctor and someone said that to me in 2019 I’d be like “ok then...lemme just unplug this here respirator and turn these machines off...” Anyway...now Hatcher is all “you fuck with my family...you fuck with me!” He goes to see another rival gangster named Jimmy Fingers, who is smoking crack in a hotel room with two prostitutes and a Jamaican dude. Kind of like former DC mayor Marion Barry....but with a bonus Jamaican dude. Hatcher tells Jimmy Fingers that he had better give up Screwface. Jimmy Fingers says he wouldn’t give Hatcher the sweat from his balls. I chuckle a little bit. Hatcher slaps him around. Jimmy Fingers says he’s a made man. Hatch says “only god made men” and then proceeds to shoot Jimmy Fingers in FRIGGIN’ HEAD! He asks the Jamaican where Screwface is. The Jamaican tells Hatcher “you’re on your own with that shit, homie” and then jumps out the window (they are, like, wicked high up. The man does not survive the fall). When Hatcher returns home from his exhausting night of murder/assisted suicide he finds a giant cow’s tongue nailed to his door and a bunch of voodoo mumbo jumbo written on his living room floor. He does what any reasonable man would do in this situation: he slow braises the beef tongue overnight and then stews some lentils. In the morning he slices the braised tongue really thin, mixes it with the lentils. He then poaches an egg and makes a quick salsa verde and VOILA! Now they gots breakfast! I mean...not really though. He takes some polaroids of the voodoo writings and brings them to Dr. Leslie. She tells him that the writing means “Marked for Death” in Jamaican...which is also the name of the movie that we are watching.He shoots her a look that says “sooo....you know....maybe?” but he’s Steven Seagal and cannot help himself...but that’s as far as it goes. She is not seen again. Unlike the ever-climbing body count, the love interest count will remain at zero. The next day Hatcher rolls up on some Jamaicans. They ask if he wants some blow. He tells them to go blow themselves. And now it’s time for a car chase! I know I mentioned earlier about how this movie is set in a suburb of Chicago that is full of palm trees. I mean...maybe they picked up some second unit shots in the Chicago area...but this flick was clearly filmed in California. When it comes to the car chase scene, though, they don’t even TRY to make it look like they are anywhere but downtown Los Angeles. It’s like “oh look....they just drove by the Capitol Records building! There’s Nakatomi Plaza! And now they’re headed down La Brea toward the 10 freeway!” It’s pretty fucking hilarious. Eventually they all crash into a jewelry store and Hatcher beats up like 15 dudes and throws this one dude through 20 different jewelry cases. So...that happens...but these Jamaicans are tenacious sumbitch’s. They come after Hatcher again and totally blow up his sweet ass ’73 Stang. They are contacted by a good Jamaica guy who might be a cop (note: was he already in this movie and I just wasn’t paying attention or are they introducing a new character with like 20 minutes left to go?? You know I hate that shit!). The good Jamaican tells Hatcher that Screwface has screwed back to Jamaica. He enlists Max to fly down there with him to kill Screwface but first there’s a weapons-making montage where the dudes are putting silencers on their machine guns and shit...all while wearing the proper protective eye goggles. Safety first when it comes to planning the assassination of spooky Jamaican drug lords! Hatcher heads to Jamaica....but he takes the time to see the sights first. Sample the true local flavor and see where the true Jamaicans live...like a regular goddamn Tony Bourdain. He heads to a club to check out some legit reggae...and holy shit! Friggin’ Jimmy Cliff is playing! “Many Rivers to Cross” Jimmy Cliff! That dude. Except here he’s playing a song lyrics that say “Screwface...your time has come!” Oh man! Jimmy Cliff must be watching the same movie that we’re watching! At the club someone introduces Hatcher to a woman who used to date Screwface. He asks her for advice on how to catch him. She tells him that Screwface has four eyes and two heads. Hatcher is all “that don’t even make crazy sense, devil woman. Thanks for nothin’!” Eventually Max and Hatcher locate Screwface’s compound (gotta be a compound...always) and go in there killing up a storm with their silent machine guns. I gotta say...I have mixed feelings about what happens to Screwface character. I mean...he’s the head bad guy and all...but he isn’t really SHOWN being bad all that much. He’s no Richie Lupo if you know what I’m saying (if you know your Seagal...you do know what I am saying. If you do not...you have probably stopped reading 1500 words ago). Anyway...what happens is Hatcher kills like 500 dudes to get to Screwface. When he finds him they have a sword fight and Hatcher cuts Screwface’s head off. The end. Oh wait! Suddenly we are back in Chicago (actual Chicago...there’s a shot of the L and everything). Hatcher, Max, and the good Jamaican bust in on the few members of Screwface’s posse who remain unkilled. Hatcher tells them that their posse is kaput and that Screwface is dead. They call shenanigans. Hatcher pulls Screwface’s severed head out of a duffel bag. I mean...I know the airlines were pretty lax pre-9/11 and all...but did he really just fly home from Jamaica with a severed head in his fucking carry on?? He isn’t even an actual law enforcement agent anymore...just some dude traveling with his high school buddy who coaches football! Also--wouldn’t that thing start to, you know, stink?? While he’s holding the head aloft for the Jamaicans to see Screwface suddenly appears behind the head with arms, legs, a torso AND alive! Wait...two heads and four eyes!? There are two Screwfaces!!! They are twins! It’s the most surprising twist ending since The Sixth Sense (which doesn’t come out for 9 more years) except not at all. So now there’s another super long fight scene and the good Jamaican in stabbed with a sword and Max is shot in the leg...so, you know, NDB (Max I mean...pretty sure the sword wound is fatal-ish). Hatcher and Screwface #2 fight like bastards...but he can’t cut THIS dude’s head off too...‘cuz been there done that, amirite? Instead he gouges ScrewTwo’s eyes out with his thumbs and then throws dude into an empty elevator shaft (note: an empty elevator shaft is always mere inches away in most action films, innit it?). Screwface Squared is impaled on...umm...whatever it is that one finds at the bottom of an elevator shaft (rusty pipe?). Hatcher looks down at his body and quips “I hope they weren’t triplets!” I do not laugh. The movie ends.
September 2, 2017
In addition to holding sixth-degree black belt in aikido, Steven Seagal also reveals another talent in Hard to Kill; combining the cutting-down of bad guys with cuttingly funny one-liners.” That’s not me talking (I would never use so much cutting in one sentence)...that’s how Warner Bros. decided to try to sell the second feature film from sexual harassment yoda and world’s most awkward runner Steven Seagal. It’s also completely inaccurate. It’s like the producers saw Die Hard and Total Recall and said “hey, maybe you should crack some jokes after snapping dudes necks instead of standing there like a total creep.” I think he maybe says “fuck you and die” after decapitating a guy with a pool cue at one point but that’s about it. Anyway...about this flick: Seagal plays a supercop who, at the outset of the movie, records a conversation where a crooked senator and dude who plays Death in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey hires a hitman to knock off a political rival. That should be mad props for Seagal, right, but you see all the other cops in this movie are dirtier than dirt. He heads home to unwind with his wife and son...but the filthy cops got other plans for him (womp womp). Seagal and his wife are about to ball and then a bunch of dudes with shotguns bust into the room....which is the worst possible time to be busted in on by dudes with shotguns! They are both pumped full of lead. They also kill the son...or do they!? Does Hard to Kill-ness run in the family?? Cut to the hospital where the one other good cop in this movie, Officer Koharski from Wayne’s World, gets word that Seagal is down for the big sleep. A few minutes later a nurse comes in and says “grah hah hah we are the worst hospital ever your pal is actually still alive.” Koharski can just tell the other piggies are all crooked so he tells the hospital they are going to tell everyone Seagal never came back from the dead. They are all “sure, we don’t have any sort of protocols in place at this hospital...have fun with your veggie pal.” Seven years go by and Seagal is still in a coma at some secret coma hospital. But I got a feeling he’ll be awake and OUT FOR JUSTICE real soon...and later still...UNDER SIEGE from a million sexual misconduct allegations. His nurse is Weird Science star Kelly LeBrock...which is cool. She checks his vitals and then lifts his blanket, looks at his prick, and says “GOD, I hope you wake up soon!”....which is NOT COOL (GAH!!!). Seagal hears this and thinks “maybe I should wake up now and marry this woman and make a weird wine video someday.” So that’s exactly what he does. He sees on the TV that George HW Bush is now president and is all “holy shit...what happened??” and I’m like “go sleep another 26 years and THEN see who is president, bro!” Kelly LeBrock is like “oh shit you are alive I better call the good guys to come get you” but of course she calls the bad guys by mistake and they come kill everyone in the hospital. Even though he’s been in a coma for 7 years Seagal is able to escape by pushing himself around with a broom in his hospital bed. I mean...I can barely lift a cup of coffee after a 7 hour sleep...but...whatever you say, dudes. Kelly LeBrock manages to hustle him into her mustang and drive him off to the secret dojo in Ojai that she just happens to be house sitting at. It’s like a Benihana but with free weights and a treadmill. Dude does a shit ton of acupuncture on himself and there’s the obligatory exercising/regaining strength montage...like the one in Rocky 4 but with less snow and a shittier soundtrack. He also hooks it up with Kelly LeBrock in a scene that goes exactly like this: Seagal is finishing the last rep of a strenuous workout...Lebrock enters holding a flower...”I brought you a flower” she says....they fuck. Seriously, that’s all you people could come up with?? So....Seagal is back in fighting shape and he heads back to the city to kill all the bad guys and all that happy horseshit. I get bored and my mind starts to wander and I start to think about all of the crazy shit Steven Seagal has done since this movie came out. Did you know that he put out an album that has a song called “Alligator Ass” on it? Did you also know that Stevie Wonder plays on said album? (yes...that Stevie Wonder...the Innervisions guy). ANYWAY...Seagal is reunited with his son (shocker) and Officer Koharski in turned into swiss cheese. Seagal kills like 25 bad guys but turns the crooked senator over to the police...who make tons of “raped in prison jokes” (why that...always?). Seagal puts his arm around his son and LeBrock and says “I think it’s time for a vacation!” and they are all like “you just killed 25 people...so maybe take a shower and set up an appointment with a therapist first, aye?” The end.
Here’s something that actually happened: July 3rd 1991 was the day that Terminator 2: Judgement Day arrived in theaters. I was looking forward to that shit like whoa...sitting at home all day watching the Gn’R “You Could Be Mine” on the MTV. You know...the one with all of the sick T2 clips? I was determined to catch the very first screening in all of Worcester County so I made my poor 81 year-old great-grandfather Fred drive me to Showcase Cinemas THREE HOURS early for the 12:30 PM showing. When we drove by the theater I was shocked to find that there was already around 300 people in line. “What...did these motherfuckers sleep here overnight, gramps!??” I shouted...jumping out of the moving car to run and get a place in line. After two hours of pacing and cursing under my breath the doors finally opened at 11:30. About 15 minutes later...just as we’re about to reach the ticket counter...an usher gets on the loudspeaker and says “sorry folks” ...the blood drains from my face...and then “the 12:15 showing of Problem Child 2 is sold out.” Holy friggin’ phew, right? I was super relieved...but also confused. People were actually lining up to see Problem Child 2?? As we recently discussed, the original Problem Child, with its jokes about rape, patricide, and nun murder, was a special kind of terrible. It was also a huge hit...so naturally the powers that be wanted to shit out a sequel before the kid who played Junior hit puberty and got all weird and hairy like poor Brendan Sexton III (remember that kid??). While doing research (googling) on the first film I learned that that screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski had written Problem Child as a pitch black drama about childhood trauma...only to see their screenplay pureed into cat vomit by the suits at Universal. They were supposedly so traumatized by the finished product they openly wept at the premiere. I really felt bad for these guys. Well, turns out dudes gotta eat ‘cuz these assholes got over their artistic scruples with the quickness and agreed to write the script for the sequel in the mold of the first film. They said they hoped they could come up with something that played like a Pasolini film for children. So...if you were wondering what 120 Days of Sodom remade as a children’s film might look like...keep wondering (you sick son of a bitch!). Problem Child 2 is somehow way shittier than the shitty original. It’s also 10 minutes longer...which seems like small potatoes on paper but feels like a whole lot of life that I will never get back in actuality. I have had 10 minute-long stays at malfunctioning traffic lights that were more enjoyable. What happens is this: after the events of the first film little Junior and a pre-death John Ritter have decided to move west for a fresh start in a new town. This “town” looks like it is directly across the street from the spot on the Universal backlot where they shot the first film....because that is exactly where it is. The filmmakers truly give zero shits. This flick opens with a Bryan Adams tune called “Only the Strong Survive”...which means our man Adams had TWO movie tie-in tunes going in the summer of ’91: this one and “(Everything I do) I Do it for You” from Robin Hood. I wonder which one he’s most proud of. Canadiens can be weird. Anyway...Ritter quickly learns that his new not-really-a-town is the divorcee capital of the world...which means that there are women lined up outside of his house just dying for a chance to ball him. Like...literally. There’s an actual line. And look...I have all of the love in the world for Johnny Ritter...but...seriously?? Ritter tries to make friends with his swingin’ cad neighbor but the guy makes fun of Junior so the kid turns the guy’s propane tanks on high. The neighbor tries to light the grill and it explodes...giving said neighbor 3rd degree burns over 90% of his body. And away we go! Junior goes to school...where the principal is Gilbert Gottfried. He knows this Junior is a sick fucker...having starred as the adoption agent in the first film. He decides to punish him by jumping him ahead to the 6th grade...where the teacher is totally the principal from the Back to the Future movies. How this is supposed to be funny or make any sort of sense at all we do not know. Most of the other kids in the sixth grade look way too young to be in the 6th grade...except for this overweight kid who looks like he’s at least 35 and is apparently stupid. Learning disabilities=comic gold. There’s this other little girl named Trixie who is supposed to be just as terrible as Junior (don’t take my word for it....”he’s bad...she’s worse” is the tagline for the friggin’ movie). We know she is bad because she throws Junior a beatdown the moment she lays eyes on him...sending his busted ass to the school nurse...who also happens to be Trxie’s mother. Now..the school nurse is played by Amy Yasbeck...who looks like the actress who played John Ritter’s wife/Junior’s mom in the first Problem Child. The reason for this is that Amy Yasbeck IS the actress who played Ritter’s wife/Junior’s mom in the first Problem Child. If this is confusing to you it is probably because it is confusing as fucking shit! Why would they cast the lead actress from one film as a completely different character in the sequel?? Maybe because Yasbeck was about to be the future Mrs John Ritter ‘sssssss widow and he wouldn’t act in this shitpit without her? I don’t know, dudes. Ritter and Yasbeck are clearly sweet on each other but there’s this super wealthy bank owner whatever whatever played by the 7th funniest member of the original SNL cast Laraine Newman. Ritter tries to go on dates with her as well as former MTV VJ Martha Quinn (!) but Junior always pulls some bullshit. Ritter hires a babysitter but Junior videotapes her fucking her boyfriend and somehow projects it onto the side of their house. The entire neighborhood pull up lawn chairs to watch. Good times. Acting legend and Academy Award nominee Jack Warden shows up to reprise his role as Ritter’s old man and collect an easy paycheck. Speaking of easy paychecks: George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” is used over and over again here just like it is in the original. I wonder if he considers his Problem Child’s 1&2 residual checks the darkest stain of blood money or if he doesn’t really give a shit either way. I’m guessing the latter. You know...now that I think of it…”Bad to the Bone” is in Terminator 2 as well! That means that you couldn’t see a movie at Showcase Cinemas on 7/3/91 without hearing that song! Anyway...you can probably guess what happens over the last half of this flick. Junior keeps doing insane shit like selling his own piss as lemonade and somehow getting away with it. He follows Trixie into the girl’s restroom and calls her a bitch and threatens to kill her. He shoves a stick of dynamite up his teacher’s asshole. The idea of euthanizing Junior is somehow not mentioned once. Ritter takes Junior to a carnival...which is fine...but he’s not tall enough to ride a ride called Crazy Dance...which is less fine. Junior breaks into the ride’s control panel and turns that shit up to 11..causing everyone on the ride to vomit all over the goddamn place. The people on the ride vomit...the people in the crowd vomit on each other...parents vomit on their children...an old lady vomits into her purse. Like...they must’ve used 50,000 gallons of fake hork. It’s a goddamn barftacular! This movie is 91 minutes long and I swear 50 minutes of it is this barfing scene. Somewhere back in Worcester young Danny Tebo is watching this movie for the first and only time (until now, of course) against the staunch objections of his good friend Brett Warwick...who wanted to rent The Rocketeer instead. Brett was so offended by this vomiting scene he left my house and refused to return until I shut the movie off. Dude...if you’re reading...I’m sorry! That seems like as good a place as any to end this review, right? But real quick: Ritter decides he wants to marry Laraine Newman. Junior tries to put a stop to this by putting cockroaches in her food and somehow giving her fucked up rhinoplasty. Ritter keeps courting Yasbeck on the sly. They take the kids out to a local pizzeria where they start a food fight that’s set to “Whammer Jammer” by J Geils Band. This makes me wish I still saw Peter Wolf on the regular because I would totally ask him about it. That guy HATES it when you ask him questions! Trixie and Junior decide their parents belong together and join forces to derail Ritter’s wedding to Newman. Jack Warden tries to stop them but they beat the shit out of him. It’s possibly the most sneakily fucked up scene in the entire movie: just two children punching the shit out of an elderly man...smiling and laughing all the way. Eventually they manage to sabotage the wedding by stealing some sort of giant boulder called the love rock that I haven’t mentioned because it’s too stupid to mention. Laraine Newman is crushed by the boulder and Ritter and Yasbeck get together and everyone lives happily ever after. Well...I mean...not John Ritter. And probably not his wife either. And the kid who played Junior got screwed because his showbiz mom tried to extort Universal for hundreds of thousands of dollars and no one ever hired him again. And then Gilbert Gottfried told a bunch of Japanese Tsunami jokes and lost his gig as the voice of the Aflac duck. And Jack Warden....he’s dead. So I guess Problem Child is kind of a millstone for its cast, eh? Now you’ll excuse me while I scrub my eyes out with steel wool and then go watch Terminator 2. Hasta la vista, baby…
*originally posted on June 14, 2019
Holy shit you guys. If I described what happens in this movie and didn’t tell you it’s a comedy (let alone a PG-rated “family” comedy) you might say “Oh, does Harmony Korine have a new one out?” Or maybe Lars Von Trier? This is a deeply, deeply fucked up movie...but right off the bat I noticed it was written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszweski...who went on to write Ed Wood, The People Vs. Larry Flynt, and that OJ Simpson mini-series from a few years back. So what the whaaa why what happened here?? I did some research and it turns out they wrote it as a pitch black drama about childhood trauma and mental illness. Universal bought the script and decided chop it up, throw in some yuks, and market it as a family comedy. The writers claim to have been so distraught when they saw the finished film they openly wept. It’s not tough to see why. This movie runs 81 minutes but it feels longer than Apocalypse Now....The Redux! With the French plantation scene! Basically what happens is this: there’s this kid Junior who was just born bad. He’s just a rotten fucking little ginger. The “film” opens with a montage of Junior (who narrates the film for reasons that are entirely unclear) being abandoned by a series of different parents and guardians after doing the following: pissing in a woman’s face, murdering a cat by feeding it dishwasher detergent, murdering a tank full of fish by vacuuming them up, and stealing a bulldozer and destroying a mobile home with the occupants inside. Junior is then brought to an orphanage run by nuns. There he repeatedly assaults the nuns and takes photos of the priest taking a shit. Meanwhile across town a pre-death John Ritter and his real life wife Amy Yasbeck are trying to conceive a child of their own because they reason that having a child will help elevate their social status. Turns out the lady is infertile so they go to an adoption agency run by Gilbert Gottfried...because you totally want THAT dude hooking you up with a little human. They take Junior home from the nunnery and shit meets fan immediately. The kid calls Jack Tripper a retard and sets his room on fire. Ritter’s old man, a hyper-republican department store owner played by two-time Academy Award nominee Jack Warden, shows up to meet the kid and can tell the little shit is bad news. “He could be a democrat!” the old man thunders! The kid steals his wallet. OH! I should probably mention there’s a subplot where the kid has been writing letters to his hero: a convicted mass murderer called the Bowtie Killer played by a pre-racist tirade Michael Richards. Ritter takes Junior on a camping trip where he pisses on the fire and lures a bear out of the woods to attack their fellow campers. Later they take Junior to a birthday party where he goes absolutely apeshit after being excluded from a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey: He throws all of the birthday presents in the swimming pool, loads the birthday cake with explosives, and drags a sprinkler into the house, causing thousands of dollars worth of damage. It’s at this point that the mom suggests that Ritter start beating Junior. Instead he lets Junior join the little league team he coaches. There, Junior beats the shit out of every member of the opposing team with a baseball bat. Why the police are not called we do not know. As the orphanage will not accept a return of Junior, Ritter decides that he will now smother him to death with a pillow. Before he can do that Kramer shows up posing as the kid’s uncle...having escaped from prison. They figure they can pawn the kid off on the serial killer. Before that can happen the Bowtie Killer decides that he will rape Amy Yasbeck on the kitchen floor. She’s like “wait...you say it’s 15 years since you’ve been with a woman?? Go ahead and do your thing then!” Let me say it again...this movie is rated PG. I pretty much tuned out after this scene cuz god...DAMN!. The kid and the mom get kidnapped and there’s a stupid ass car chase and Ritter catches the kid and decides he wants him after all. Amy Yasbeck is stuffed into a suitcase and thrown into the back of a truck that is hauling pigs. The last shot of the movie is of her peering out of the suitcase and looking directly into a pig’s sphincter patio. This is how the movie ends. Jesus wept.
*originally posted on August 31, 2018
Invasion of the Body Switching Comedies, Part 3:
September 13, 2019
Although it was’t a particularly common practice, back in the day you would occasionally bring a tape home from the video store on find an infomercial where the previews are supposed to go. It was almost always an infomercial pimping swag for a mega blockbuster with tons of merchandizing tie-ins. Think Batman or Indiana Jones or something Disney-ish. Almost always a movie that was coming off a super successful theatrical run. In other words...not a movie like this goddamn stupid 18 Again starring nonagenarian comedian George Burns. But alas...that’s exactly what we see on this here VHS tape! Someone over at the long-defunct New World Pictures thought that someone would A-actually enjoy watching this film...and B-enjoy it to the point where they would want to own a motherfucking polo shirt with the movie’s logo on it. And holy christ and all of the apostles...what an informercial it is! They went out and found a lady who sounds older than George Burns to narrate the ad...and she just GUSHES like she’s selling “cure for cancer” pills. “Ohhh my now this is NICE! An 18 Again sports shirt! Sid is always complaining that he doesn’t have enough sports shirts!!” Like...who the hell is Sid!? Sid Caesar?? And then there’s the piece de resistance: an 18 Again crew jacket that costs SIXTY...DOLLARS! Do you know how much sixty smackers is in 2019 money?? I don’t either...but probably like $5k. Anyway...so yeah...if you were alive during the late 1980’s you surely remember where you were during the great Invasion of the Body-Switching Comedies. This is something that has happened every now and then throughout the history of cinema: two movies about the same subject hit the screens around the same time. You know...like when we got two Truman Capote movies in the mid-aught’s. I get it...movie producers are a competitive lot. “You’re making a movie about Steve Prefontaine?? Well so are we...and our film is gonna eat yours for lunch!!” As if the moviegoers were just dying for a rash of movies about an obscure Olympic runner who died in 1975. (FYI: Those two Prefontaine movies made less than 2 million dollars...combined! I recommend the one with Billy Crudup). Between 1987 and 1989, though, we saw FIVE body-switching comedies unleashed on the public (all white- dude-to-white-dude, of course). There’s the Tom Hanks flick Big...which was nominated for a couple of Oscars and currently holds a score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. And then there’s the other 4 flicks...which are all various shades of terrible. 18 Again, though, is a truly special kind of awful. Seriously, it makes Vice Versa look like Tootsie. What happens is this: Poorest man’s Patrick Dempsey Charle Schlatter plays David Watson, a college freshman who is having a real tough go of things. His only friend is Pauly Shore...which is a legit problem...and he’s constantly being hazed by his fellow frat brothers...which I give less of a shit about. Russ, the 35 year-old frat leader is constantly making David do one-handed push-ups and write papers for the other brothers...even though the centerpiece of the frat house is a giant painting of David’s grandfather. Haven’t these clowns ever heard of nepotism?? David heads to history class, where he immediately falls in love with the Farrah Fawcett-haired Robin...who is, of course, dating the odious Russ. Speaking of odious; the history professor tells the students that they need only to study the life of President Harry S Truman. When Robin suggests that JFK was a more important prez the professor humiliates her and then tells her to stop by his office so he can give her a little (long pause) INPUT on Truman. So it’s gonna be that kind of movie, eh. Garrosss! After class David goes to work at his family’s super rich non-specific white people company. So let’s pull back a second: this David fucker is the scion of a billionaire family who already has a gig with the family company. And we’re supposed to, what, root for him as some sort of underdog? Why go to college at all? Why even make this movie?? Eject! Seriously though...we are now introduced to David’s CEO grandfather Jack (George Burns) who has a real soft spot for David...but completely disregards his own son Arne, played by Woody Allen mainstay Tony Roberts, who is also the president of the company or some bullshit. Jack’s all “how’s college, kid? you must be bangin’ tons of broads!” Literally everything that comes out of this old man’s mouth hole is something sexist and terrible. I might cut the old bastard a bit of slack since he was born in the NINETEENTH CENTURY when attitudes were, you know, different. But only a tiny bit. Jack invites David to his big birthday bonanza blowout. The old man is turning 81...which...I mean...who gives a shit? It should be noted that George Burns was actually 92 when they filmed this movie, which is much older than 81. They tried to cast an 81 year-old actor in the part but all of the 81 year-old actors at the time were dead (waka waka!). It should also be noted that I first saw Burns act in the film Oh God! when I was about 3 years old and thought that God and George Burns were the same person until the catholic school nuns beat that idea out of my head. So the old man is at his party and they ask him what he wants for his birthday and he launches into an old timey song called “I Wish I Was 18 Again”...which also happens to be the name of the movie we are watching. Jack’s favorite grandson David is 18 years old...and if you reverse the numbers in 81...you get 18! I have a feeling this is going to come up again in about 3 minutes. Instead of hanging with the 300 people who showed up to his inconsequential party Jack hops in his Rolls Royce and takes David to an all-night greasy spoon in Sherman Oaks or wherever. There, he offers the kid more precious nuggets about the meaning of life. “You’ll never have a wider selection of broads than you do now, kid! This Robin gal that you like...tell me she’s got money and I’ll book a church today!” He also makes lewd comments about the waitress. It is terrible. Typically, in these body-switching movies, bodies are switched as a result of some vaguely racist voodoo spell or potion or magic skull or what have you. The people who made this friggin’ flick literally couldn’t be bothered. Jack is driving David home from the diner when he loses control of his Rolls because 92 is way too old to be driving. They crash into the front of a drug store at, say, 25 mph. Like, the car isn’t even totaled! But because they were holding hands during the crash (huh?) they have now switched bodies. Could happen. Here’s the rub, though: the old man is in a coma...so any scenes of an 18 year-old discovering what it’s like to live in George Burns’ 92 year-old body will have to exist only in your imagination. Jack-as-David, though, is wicked jazzed to be 18 again (cough). He immediately checks himself out of the hospital and heads straight to the running track where he sprints and does 500 backflips and 1000 pole vaults and 5000 one-handed push-ups (you might want to check my math here). As if it isn’t enough to simply tell us that Jack is now living inside of David, the filmmakers decided to let George Burns narrate the rest of the movie from inside David’s head. It’s kind of like Look Who’s Talking but with no babies or Scientologists. So now Jack-as-David heads back to campus and starts rippin’ mad cigars and dressing like an asshole acting all haa cha cha cha chaaa! Unpredictably, even though he looks like a super drunk and high David Lee Roth, he’s suddenly popular. He goes to history class and that creepy professor is going on about how the “S” in Harry S Truman doesn’t stand for anything and David is all “pump the brakes, homie--the S stands for Sergei!” Turns out the grandpa Jack and Truman were thick as thieves. The professor doesn’t believe him...and neither do ! I mean...why doesn’t someone just google that shit? Since I live in 2019 I can go ahead and look it up on my phone...and it turns out the David is full of shit. David goes to Jack’s mansion to see what’s crackin’ and finds Jack’s ginger trophy wife Madeline in the middle of some swingers party. Madeline grabs the kid’s junk and tries to ball him. Says she ain’t gettin’ any action off of the old man. George Burns says he’s going to have her killed in his voice over. Jokes about murdering women: laff city. David offers to help Robin with her Harry Truman homework. He tells her that Truman was originally going to drop the H-bomb on Switzerland because he kept having trouble with his watch. Seriously, are we supposed to laugh? David tells the frat boys they should throw a toga party. “You know...really put on the ritz! I’m talking lots of beer and bathtub gin! Live music from the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies!” (OK...I totally made up that last part). The other frat boys EAT IT UP! It’s a zoot suit riot! Well...not that one dude Russ. He wants to pound David’s ass...and rightfully so, I say--David HAS been stepping out with his gal! David offers to settle it things with a bet--$1k says David can beat Russ at the upcoming track meet. But stop the presses! Before we can get into all of that word comes down that they are gonna pull the plug on the old man! That means that David-as-Jack will die...which means actual David will actually DIE! Hey...whatever it takes to get those end credits rolling...I’m all for it. David races to the hospital...but he’s too late! The plug has been pulled and George Burns and his lying-on-his-back-collecting-a-paycheck-for-nothing ass has been moved to the room where they just line up half-dead old people on stretchers. David punches an orderly in the grill and steals Jack’s body and goes tearing ass down the hallway of the hospital. He crashes the stretcher through the stained glass window that leads to the upper level of the hospital’s chapel. They both suffer a good 50 foot fall to the ground. What kind of sick son of a bitch would design a hospital like this anyway?? So now Jack is no longer dead and, also, Jack again. David is David...and I’m totally thinking about other things. Like...there’s an old codger in this flick named Red Buttons that I totally thought was Red Skelton. There’s a name you never hear anymore: Red. I’m gonna name my kid Red Tebo...boy or girl. ANYWAY...even though George Burns was lying is a coma for weeks and just fell through a church he is suddenly completely fine. He goes home and tells his butler to put his wife out with the trash. Gross Pt 2. Oh...and we still have to watch the goddamn race! David’s all “I can’t win a race...I’m unpopular and suck at everything!” Jack tells him that he is now popular and good at everything and gives him a pair of magical running cleats from 1928 to help him win the race. At first he sucks...because he does actually suck...but then Robin winks at him from the stands and he hauls ass and wins the race by doing a motherfucking cartwheel at the finish line. I know exactly zero things about running track but I’m pretty sure that sort of shit is not allowed. David wins the money and the girl and George Burns lives to be 100 years-old and blah blah blah nobody cares!! The movie ends...and after all that we just suffered through they think we’d still want to drop 60 clams on a commemorative jacket?? Hard pass.
Invasion of the Body Switching Comedies, Part 2:
A few weeks back while discussing Vice Versa a lot of y’all chimed in to say you felt that Like Father Like Son was the superior 1980’s body-switching comedy. So naturally I had to go out and find myself a VHS copy of said flick to see what was what. LFLS stars Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron..two actors with careers soon to be in precipitous decline...Moore’s due to ill health and the reaction to 1990’s Crazy People....Cameron’s due to his conversion to evangelical christian and his belief that homosexuality is an “unnatural plague”. Seriously, dude is the absolute worst. Moore plays Dr Jack Hammond, a fancy pants cardiologist who, at the top of the film, refuses to treat a patient in cardiac arrest because he doesn’t have health insurance. Dude is ice cold. Cameron plays his 16 year-old son Chris, who has a mullet and dresses like an asshole and is unpopular at school BUT drives a sick ass jeep and has unlimited access to his old man’s bank account. Right away I do not care what happens to either character. Oh that! Chris’ best buddy TRIGGER (80’s utility man and Sam Wise from Lord of the Rings Sean Astin) gets a Tabasco sauce bottle full of brain switching serum from his uncle and brings it over to the Hammond’s 1980’s coke mansion. Dr Jack comes home from work and makes himself a bloody mary (at night?? douchebag) and adds a couple drops of Tabasco expecting it to be Tabasco and not brain switching serum. So Dr Jack and Chris switch brains and Trigger looks directly into the camera and says “I don’t fucking believe it”...which really impressed me when I saw this flick and an 8 year old. I love the F-word. Much like in Vice Versa they sort of decide to make lemonade out of lemons and just roll with it. Chris-as-Dr. Jack hops into the old man’s Jaguar and heads out into the night to spend money on clothes. We know this because there is a montage of shots of ATM’s shitting out cash. He also visits a PG-13 strip club where no one is actually stripping. Meanwhile, left home alone, Dr Jack-as-Chris decides to dance around the house and play air guitar...as if that’s something actual Chris couldn’t just do on his own. Why Kirk Cameron does not pick up Dudley Moore’s British accent in the brain swap is never explained. Eventually Dr Jack-as-Chris heads off to high school and Chris-as-Dr Jack goes to work at the hospital. Results are medium funny. There are also paper thin subplots involving love interests whom neither character seem particularly interested in. Eventually they switch brains back but not before Chris-as-Dr Jack loses his old man an important promotion by voting to give care to people without health insurance. Real Chris...back in his natural body...races to the hospital (while Motley Crue’s “Wild Side” blasts on the soundtrack. siiick!) to explain to his dad’s repeal-and-replace bosses that his old man deserves the promotion anyway. They are unmoved. It’s literally a nothing climax. The movie ends. Before we go though I wanted to mention that this movie was directed by a guy named Rod Daniel...who just shot the shit out of it...source material be damned! Even though it’s a c-grade comedy it’s full of Kubrickian tracking shots...Hitchcockian crane swoops...frenetic editing. Dude was clearly trying to set himself up for a career as an auteur. Unfortunately that career involved Joe Pesci’s The Super and Home Alone 4 and, early last year, dying. RIP man…
*originally posted august 11, 2017
Invasion of the Body Switching Comedies, Part 1:
1988 found a Tebo household divided over what was the better body-switching comedy of the year. My mom was super tight with the Dudley Moore/Kirk Cameron film “Like Father Like Son” while I flew the flag hardcore for the (don’t) Judge (the) Reinhold/Fred Savage comedy “Vice Versa” (we apparently hadn’t seen the far superior “Big” at this point). I checked it out again last night for the first time in a good 30 years...and here’s what happens: the Judge plays a wealthy, divorced workaholic department store VP who has no time for his 12 year-old son Charlie even though Charlie is totally Kevin Arnold from the Wonder Years (Gasp!). We know Judge is wealthy because when he goes to fancy restaurants he demands a bottle of Grey Poupon be brought to the table. Seriously, there’s like five Grey Poupon references in this movie...leading me to believe it was bankrolled by mustard. Anyway, Judge goes on a trip to the Orient (seriously...they call it that) where he engages some rich cultural (re:vaguely racist) exchanges and comes home with some sort of voodoo Chinese restaurant circa 1975 tchotchke head made of gold that Lo Pan from “Big Trouble in Little China” stuck in his luggage. Back home, Kevin Arnold is forced to spend the weekend with Judge...which gets off to a rocky start cuz the Judge HATES KIDS. They start fighting and cussing each other out and wishing they had each other’s lives (naturally) and then the tchotchke head starts smoking and shooting laser beams and...blammo!...they switch bodies!! And you know...they just sort of roll with it! The kid goes to school and acts like a know-it-all prick. The old man goes to work and acts like a child yet somehow makes a series of genius business decisions. He also gets to do some mild necking with his old man’s girlfriend Sam...which is only mildly disturbing..unlike in “Big” where a 12 year-old has actual intercourse with Elizabeth Perkins through the body of Tom Hanks. Anyway...eventually some gangsters come looking for the magic gold tchotchke head and there’s a bunch of chase scenes and blah blah blah and they eventually switch back to normal and everyone lives happily ever after. Except Judge Reinhold...who hasn’t made a good movie in 30 years and was recently arrested at an airport after freaking the fuck out when they tried to search his luggage.
*originally posted july 14, 2017
So check this out: It’s June of 1990 and it’s the last day of 6th grade...which also means it’s my last ever day as a catholic schoolboy...which means instead of being beaten by nuns I’ll now just start getting beaten by my fellow classmates! To celebrate the end of the school year my grandparents bring me to a pool party...but first we stop by Applause Video...where I have a copy of the newly released flick The Wizard on reserve. Applause was one of those joints that let you take the entire VHS jacket home with the tape. So I’m at this pool party but...like...every 30 minutes I towel off, walk out to the car, and spend a few minutes staring at my copy of The Wizard. I’m so excited to watch this movie I can’t even make it through the friggin’ pool party. I’m like a drug addict who knows he’s got a bag of drugs waiting for him. I’m like “hey kids...guess who’s holdin’...THE WIZARD!?” I mean...just look at the box! Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years in a movie about video games!? 12 year-old boy’s wet dream, folks. But then something strange happens. I watch The Wizard...and I hate it. And at 12 I pretty much declared every movie I watched the greatest film ever made (somewhere in a basement box there’s an A+ review I wrote for the movie K-9). I couldn’t really remember what my gripe was...so my old pal Mike Pizzimenti mailed me a copy of The Wizard so I could see how I would feel about it 28 years later and HO-LEE-SMOKES I should’ve just chilled the eff out and enjoyed that pool party! What happens is this: Somewhere in Utah a single dad played by Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges’ssssssss brother Beau is struggling to raise his troubled sons on his own. His youngest son Jimmy has unexplained mental problems. His entire vocabulary consists of the word “California” and he runs away from home with his mysterious lunchbox on the daily. Papa Beau Bridges is too busy trying to prevent his oldest son Christian Slater from getting into Christian Slater-type trouble to deal with Jimmy so he pawns him off on his ex-wife and her A-hole new husband...who are all “we ain’t got time for a kid who ain’t playing with a full deck!” They decide to send Jimmy to an institution. What kid of institution you ask? I’m not really sure....it’s just a white building with a sign that says “institution” out front. Meanwhile middle brother Corey (every boss ass kid in the 80’s was named Corey, amirite?) played by TV megastar Freddie Savage, is none too pleased with his lil’ brah being shipped off to the nut house...so he decides to break Jimmy outta that joint...in broad daylight. He just waltzes in carrying a skateboard and grabs Jimmy and they jump into a Hostesses Cupcake truck parked out back and screw. This has gotta be the worst non-specific institution ever: no security AND they serve patients Hostess products? Shit. So now these kids are on the run and Fred Savage is all “what you wanna do, Jimmy?” and Jimmy says “California”...mostly because it is the only word he knows...but Fred Savage is like “word...we are ages 12 and 8...but let’s go check out Cali. I hear they got sushi there.” Back at the institution Beau Bridges and his ex wife are BULLSHIT that the kids got away, natch. But it’s cool...we are now introduced to the most questionable character in cinematic history: Mr Putnam, The Runaway Retriever! So this creepy David Cross in a bolo tie looking motherfucker is supposed to hunt the kids down for a reward (who is paying said reward isn’t really clear). He promises to bring back the “crippled boy” and warns Beau Bridges....the kid’s biological father...not to interfere...because HUH?? Back out of the road Fred Savage and Jimmy are movin’ right along...weaving through highways on a skateboard....sleeping in the wild by campfire at night. You are probably saying to yourself....what in the friggin’ hell does any of this have to do with video games!? That’s what I’m sayin’! It’s just starting to feel like that Jason Takes Manhattan movie where Jason is only in Manhattan for the last 5 minutes. BUT WAIT! The kids roll into a bus station/general store/arcade and try to buy a ticket to California and find themselves a couple hundo short. While Fred Savage is kicking around wondering what the frig to do next little Jimmy starts playing Double Dragon and just CRUSHES that shit. This immediately catches the attention of fellow 12 year old runaway grifter and former Rilo Kiley front woman Jenny Lewis. Apparently no one knew Jimmy could crush mad video games but Jenny Lewis suggests they can scam their way to CA by hustling people for dough at arcades and whatnot. Fred Savage is all “dude, I had no idea the kid had Rain Man disease! He’s a WIZARD!” So he’s autistic then? Got it. Jenny Lewis also points out that there’s (conveniently) a video game competition in CA with a top prize of $50k. They figure if he can win the competition he won’t have to live in an institution anymore. I mean...maybe that’s how the mental health system worked in the 80’s....but...I don’t know, dudes. So they keep on keepin’ on and Jimmy wins some scatch left and right...until they come across some asshole named Lucas who has the power glove. Jimmy is like “I ain’t fuckin’ with no power glove, y’all.” Meanwhile out on the road Beau Bridges keeps getting into goofy ass car chases with Evil David Cross...who again...does not want Beau Bridges to rescue his own son. There’s also a travel montage where Jimmy, Fred Savage, and Jenny Lewis ride in the back of a pick-up set to Real Life’s “Send Me an Angel”. You know what song rules? “Send Me an Angel”. I’m listening and thinking “why does this sound different??” Cuz it’s the ‘89 rerecording, y’all! It’s like the Danzig “Mother” of the 1980’s. One night while the runaway trio is bunking down little Jimmy’s lunchbox falls open and a bunch of family photos come spilling out. Jenny Lewis is all “what the do with these pix?” Fred Savage matter-of-factly explains that they used to have a little sister but she drowned in front of Jimmy...who couldn’t save her cuz the little dude can’t swim. I mean...what the WHAT!?? So Jimmy doesn’t have Rain Man’s disease after all?? He’s just a sad ass kid with severe PTSD who just happens to be good at video games?? Man...that doesn’t even make crazy sense! I hate this movie. So now the kids end up in Reno...where Jenny Lewis hooks up with her adult trucker buddy named Spanky...who wins the kids a ton of money shooting craps. We also learn that Jenny Lewis lives in a trailer and her invisible parents are deadbeat gamblers. Unrelated to anything we are talking about: you know what song rules? Rilo Kiley’s “Does He Love You?” Anyway...Jenny Lewis and Fred Savage smooch...even though..I mean...his brother is the one who crushes video games. Fred Savage is both the star of the movie and a completely inessential character. Evil David Cross locates the kids at their hotel (where 13 year olds can rent rooms no sweat) and he tries to kidnap Jimmy but Jenny Lewis screams “he grabbed my breast” and Evil David Cross is all “she doesn’t have breasts!’ and then a bunch of truckers beat the shit out of him....and I barf all over myself ‘cuz GAH! Eventually the entire cast of this interminable film ends up at this video game contest in LA and, wouldn’t you friggin’ know it, Jimmy makes it to the final round where he has to battle it out with power glove Lukas. The big twist is that they have to play Super Mario 3...which isn’t even available to the public yet, y’all! So now we are supposed to believe that people would fill a stadium to watch kids play Nintendo on these tiny ass TV’s. I mean...Super Mario took HOURS to play. Even if you remembered exactly how the game went there’s no way to gauge how the players are doing. It’s the most suspense-less climactic competition in film history. Right, so Jimmy wins...because of course he does...and everyone is psyched...except for Jimmy...who still has no emotional reaction to anything whatsoever. The family packs up to head home...but on the way back to Utah they pass those sweet ass dinosaurs from the Pee Wee Herman movie and Jimmy starts to tweak out and jumps out of the car. He runs inside and cracks open his lunchbox again and shows them the real reason why he wanted to go to California: It’s the last place his entire family was together and happy before his little sister drowned. But he’s like...that’s cool that you guys all came together to exploit my mental health problems to win some bullshit video game contest. Actually he doesn’t say this at all. He’s still wicked sad and doesn’t talk and that’s pretty much that. Much is left unanswered. Who got to keep the $50 large?? Do Jenny Lewis’ parents really not care that she moving in with Fred Savage at age 13? Was Paul from the Wonder Years really Marilyn Manson? I guess we’ll never know…
*originally posted november 16, 2018
Holy crapping crap, you guys--I don’t even know where to begin with this hour and forty minute infomercial on the importance of materialism and being a rich white person. Here’s what happened: Shelley Long was on Cheers....which was successful like whoa. She also made some decent flicks...like The Money Pit. That flick is aces. In 1987 she decided to quit Cheers and make more movies. She was offered Working Girl and Troop Beverly Hills. She chose the latter. Working Girl won a shit ton of Oscars. Troop Beverly Hills currently holds an 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. How bad is it? Ho man! I went into it thinking it was a movie where a Girl Scout troop gets lost in the woods and is stalked by a bear and has to be rescued by a team of Boy Scouts. I don’t know what the fuck movie THAT is but oh lord do I wish I was watching it instead of Troop Beverly Hills. Here’s what happens: Shelley Long plays a shit ass rich Beverly Hills housewife whose husband, played by Craig T Nelson (whaddup Coach!), is divorcing her because she is addicted to shopping. This is not a joke. He’s like “all you care about is shopping!” and she’s all “that’s not true!” Then she goes out and buys $50000 worth of shoes. She decides she’ll try to prove to her husband that she’s not just a vapid, bottomless well of shit. How will she do that? By becoming a den mother to her daughter’s girl scout troop. (Except in this movie they call it the Wilderness Girls because I’m sure the Girl Scout people read this script and told them to take the word Girl Scout right out they damn mouths). The daughter is played by none other than former Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis (And the talking leads to touching...and the touching leads to sexxxx...). She invites all of her little friends over to their mansion for a troop meet-up. They are all as white as freshly fallen cocaine...save for one black girl...who is introduced in a scene where her family is getting pulled over by the LAPD. Real nice, guys. Shelley Long tries to take the troop camping but they are all “the out of doors ain’t baller” so they leave the woods and check in to the Beverly Willshire and order sushi and caviar and guzzle cappuccino like a bunch of goddamn jerks. This ruffles the feathers of the president of the Wilderness Girls...played by Betty Thomas...director of the Howard Stern Private Parts movie. Betty Thomas wants these Beverly Hills bitches gonzo. Instead of eating a slice of humble pie...at every turn in this movie...when confronted with her own terribleness...Shelley Long just decides to ratchet up the awfulness. She enters the troop in a cookie drive and promises to outsell all of the other girls from normal-ish places like Culver City and Sherman Oaks. When the girls don’t have any luck going door to door they do what any reasonable girl scout troop would do: they erect a stage in front of the Cartier store on Rodeo Drive and play an impromptu concert like U2 did for that one song back when. They play an original song called “Cookie Time” that is sung by the little black girl in a Tina Turner wig. It is truly a special kind of terrible. Shelley Long also throws them a cookie party where the guest list includes Dr Joyce Brothers and Robin Leech...who explains “It’s time for cookie dreams!” Then he drops dead. (Ok...he just died last week...but I like to think this movie had something to do with it). OF COURSE they outsell all of the other girls. BUT...they still gotta compete in some sort of hiking obstacle course called the jamboree so they can win....a trophy? It’s never clear why shits are given about any of this. People be like “you can’t go into the woods, Shelley Long, you get lost in your own closet!” Betty Thomas tries to sabotage them every step of the way but then falls and breaks her leg. Will troop Beverly Hills help her or will they leave her out there with the “lonely, hungry mountain men” (direct quote. gross dudes). They rescue Betty Thomas and win the jamboree but Tori Spelling steals their trophy. So no trophy....but Coach is like “you walked through the woods for 10 minutes...I think you are a good person now....let’s get back together!” So that’s all well and good...but Betty Thomas gets fired from the Wilderness Girls and has to go work at K-Mart and we are supposed to laugh at this because having a real blue collar-type job is something to be mocked for. The end.
*originally posted september 14, 2018
September 6, 2019
So here’s the deal: I’m pretty tight with The Muppets. Everyone who knows me knows that about me. I say anyone who doesn’t like The Muppets is all fucked up. So there’s this new Dark Crystal TV show that just dropped on Netflix...and I have had lots of folks checking in to ask me what I think about it...big Muppethead that I am. What I tell them is the truth: I have never seen The Dark Crystal. I know...I know! In the Jim Henson universe I was too old for Fraggle Rock...down with Labyrinth...but too young for The Dark Crystal. “But dude...weren’t you watching Porky’s when you were 4” you ask? You know...point well taken. I also have this life-long affliction where I have a really hard time understanding the plots to sci-fi/fantasy films. Shit is like algebra to me. You do not want to watch a Lord of the Rings movie with me unless you want to be peppered with, like, 30 ridiculous questions per minute (“Wait...who are these guys again?? Where are they going?? WHY??”). I figured right now seemed like the right time to finally go back and check out the original Dark Crystal...so I did. I will now attempt to explain it to you: A bazillion years ago on the planet Thra a harsh wind blows (I think that’s what I wrote in my notes anyway. It also looks like I wrote “Wizard Willis”. I need to drink less wine when I watch these flicks). A narrator tells us that the planet is dying or something but that these evil creatures called the Skeksis (rhymes with ‘sexies’) are able to cheat death ‘cuz they control the crystal. Here I’d like to point out that the this dark crystal isn’t dark at all but, in fact, a sort of iridescent purple. It looks like something Prince might’ve used for a centerpiece on his dining room table. I guess it isn’t literally dark...just dark in what it represents, you dig? OK then. The film opens with a super long scene of these Skeksis sitting around their castle grunting and growling at each other and shooting laser beams out of their eye holes. It’s like the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey but with 100% more Muppets. These Skeksis are a bunch of nasty bastards. If you took Sam the Eagle, dipped him in tar, glued Gonzo’s nose to his face, and let rats chew on him for a while you might end up with a Skeksi. Meanwhile across town we meet this kid Jen who is just sitting by his lonesome playing some Jethro Tull deep cuts on his flute. I say “his” because he sounds like a man and looks like Journey’s Steve Perry in the “Separate Ways” video...but I grew up with like 50 Jens and none were dudes. I think gender is fluid in the world of this film...and I’m totally supportive of that. So Jen is a Gelfing who was taken in and raised by these kindly slow-moving land whales called The Mystics after his parents were murdered by The Skeksis. Jen is summoned to meet the master of The Mystics...who is laid up with a terrible case of jaundice or something. The master lays out the plot of the movie for him/us: The Dark Crystal is missing a shard. Jen needs to find said missing shard and “heal” the crystal before the three suns align or the Skeksis will rule forever. And maybe the world will end? Or both? I already can’t remember! The master says to stop by Aughra’s crib and grab the shard and save the Mystics. Jen is super overwhelmed. The master says “yeah, I probably shoulda told you this sooner.” Then he says “we will meet again in another life...but not again in this one” and then his sallow old ass just up and croaks! Things have also gone pear-shaped back at castle Skeksis. Their master also dies but it ain’t no pleasant, whispery bedside chat-type death. Dude’s FACE falls off...and it’s scary as shit! When people die in this flick their bodies just evaporate...which must’ve been really frustrating for the casket salespeople of the day. The Skeksis need to anoint a new emperor. To do so the competing parties will play a good old game of whack the stone. First person to break the stone is emperor. I’m thinking maybe we should do this in 2020 instead of holding an election, eh? It’s a duel between this gross crab-looking Skek and the local Chamberlain, who coos like Julia Child after tasting a delicious plate of beef bourguignon. The Chamberlain loses and is stripped naked and banished. The Skeksis take a peep at the crystal and the crystal tells them that they are about to be destroyed by a Gelfing (snap!). They immediately dispatch these bug creatures called the Garthim to capture Jen. What do the Garthim look like? Imagine if the alien from Alien mated with a cockroach; that’s a Garthim. Absolutely terrifying, y’all. It’s at this point in the movie that I really started to wish that David Bowie would show up and sing some tunes. I mean...I generally think that about most movies. The deeper I get into a movie without pining for a David Bowie appearance the better the movie. Like Goodfellas. Zero Bowie desires in that flick. 27 Dresses: I prayed for Bowie before the opening credits ended. I just think he would’ve lightened things up a bit here. So dark this Dark Crystal. Anyway...Jen shows up at Augrha’s pad...which is basically a retrofitted set from a Terry Gilliam movie. Jen is a little put off by Aughra at first...mostly because she looks like what would happen if Samuel L Jackson and Bette Midler’s character from Hocus Pocus gave birth to an elderly purple goblin with a retractable detachable eye. Aughra brings Jen to her planet, umm, planetarium room and lays some trip on him about the upcoming Great Conjunction Junction...which might be the end of the world. Or also the beginning? See...these children’s fantasy films are confusing as shit! Jen is like “that’s all cool and the gang...but I’m here about the shards.” Aughra has mad shards lying around...but which one belongs to the dark crystal?? Jen plays a few bars from Thick as a Brick on his flute and the proper shard comes alive like Frampton. So that’s all good...but then the Garthim show up with their scary asses and tear the joint apart and take Aughra prisoner...which is less good. Jen manages to escape and heads to the swamp to see if there might be a banjo-playing frog he can jam with. Instead he comes across another Gelfing (Kira) who looks EXACTLY like he does but is maybe a lady? I just assumed they were twins. They hit it off with the quickness and immediately figure out they can see each other’s dreams if they hold hands. Man, as if it isn’t bad enough listening to someone talk about their dreams. Imagine having to actually watch them?? Kira has this rad little body-less pet something-or-other called Fizzigig who seems super chill (picture Animal but with no body). Kira doesn’t have fuck all going on in the swamp so she decides to join Jen on his journey. They stop to spend the night with the Podlings, who all look like they were made to look like singer/songwriter David Crosby at various stages of his life. There’s the young, clear-eyed Crosby Podling, the crazy gun-toting, freebasing 1980’s Crosby Podling, the present day benevolent walrus grandad with a quintuple bypass Crosby Podling (this one would have required some amazing foresight on the part of the filmmakers...but isn’t what that all of those damn crystals are for??). These Podlings seem like seriously righteous dudes. They pound a ton of booze and cut a rug to some Irish folk music. It’s kind of like the steerage party scene in Titanic but with Muppets. Unfortunately the Garthim show up again like a bad case of herpes and tear the joint apart and kidnap all of the Podling. Bunch of buzz killington’s, these Garthim! Jen and Kira head back to the swamp, where Jen laments the fact that he has no idea what he’s supposed to do with his crystal shard and tries to throw that shit away. Kira rubs moss on him to help him feel better (note: huh??). Are they gonna, like, hook up?? Jen and Kira stumble upon an abandoned Gelfing city with a bunch of weird Gelfing hieroglyphics on the wall. Kira says she doesn’t understand what writing is. Jen says that writing is “words that stay”. I found that to be really profound and made a special note of it. Now I think it might’vejust been my CBD lozenge kicking in. The Chamberlain drops in on them and offers to help broker a peaceful deal with the Skeksis. Man, no one needs a crystal shard to see that this Chamberlain is a double-dealing motherfucker! Jen and Kira flee from him on these baller-ass land speed creatures called Landstriders that were totally stolen from the Skywalker Ranch (it’s cool...this flick shares a producer with the first Star Wars...so lawyer down!). Back at the Skeksis castle the new Emperor is mad thirsty for essence of Gelfing. Since there’s no Gelfings on hand, one of the other Skeksis ties an imprisoned Podling to a chair, forces him to stare into the crystal, and then watches while his body starts to melt. He captures the Podling’s melted runoff in a test tube. This process leaves the Podling looking like Eli Wallach’s balls. The Skeksis brings the Essence of Podling to the Emperor, who gulps it down heartily. This Emperor has an advanced palate and can tell he isn’t drinking the real shit. He call the Skeksis a “slave squeezer” and WHAT KIND OF KIDS’ MOVIE IS THIS??? Did you read what I just wrote?? Gah! Also--if you drained me of my essence and drank it I bet it would taste like flat Miller High Life that smacks of crab rangoon. ANYWAY... did I mention we learn that Kira can fly at some point? Well...we do. The Gelfing finally arrive at the Skeksis castle and all hell breaks loose. The Chamberlain kidnaps Kira and tries to drain her essence. She DID stab him in the wrist earlier on...so fair play I say. Augrha (remember her??) tells Kira to call the Podlings loose so that’s what she does. They kick some serious Skeskis ass and even take down a few names. But shit! It’s time for Grand Conjunction Railroad! The three suns are gonna align and the Skeksis will then be immortal...unless they get that shard back into the crystal (I mean...I THINK that’s what’s going on??). Kira throws the shard to Jen and is subsequently stabbed to death by a Skeksis. Bummer city: population 1 dead Gelfing. Jen is all “noooo....what do I do now!?” The suns are aligning...the Skeksis are there...The Mystics have dragged their old wrinkled asses into the room...shit could not be going down any harder. Just put the fucking thing in the thing already!!! He finally heals the crystal and the entire set falls away and the Mystics and the Skeksis fuse into super-beings called urSkeks, who look like the stairs ghost from Poltergeist but non-threatening. So everyone is granted eternal life and there’s no more beef between anyone but Jen is all “I’m glad y’all are happy but my ladyfriend is totally still dead. Maybe do a brother a solid since I saved all of creation?” So they do. They do Jen a solid and bring Kira back to life and everyone is happy and high. Phew. The end.
October 26, 2018
So...back in 2012 I went camping with a bunch of my co-workers. Before we left they said “hey daddy-o, can you score us some reefer for the trip..since you know a reefer man.” See me...I don’t smoke reefer...not since that time I got high and went to see the Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come and was thoroughly confused and ate too many Butterfingers and threw up next to the Ground Round in Cleveland Circle afterwards. Although my therapist DOES keeps telling me to try jazz cigarettes...so who knows? Anyway...I got the reefer...but I don’t know how to handle that stuff! So I found this plastic case for the 1989 horror film Cutting Class and put the ganja in there and off we went. The entire time we were camping I A) Kept expecting to be murdered by a masked madman and B) Kept thinking how confused the police would be to find a VHS copy of the 1989 film Cutting Class among our mutilated bodies. Anyway...the reefer got smoked and I brought the case back home and re-inserted the tape and put it on the shelf where I continued to not watch it....until today! I’m thinking the only reason why anyone remembers this movie (I mean...do they?) is because it stars Brad Pitt. The guy from the movie Seven. The Brad Pitt who married Angelina Jolie and adopted 17 kids. Him. He’s in this. So...typical bullshit movie here: the students at Anytown USA High are unnerved by the return of Brian, a kid who has spent the last six years locked up for murdering his father (Note: only six years?). Virgin Paula’s dad is the DA who put Brian away (and didn’t do a very good job, amirite?). He’s also actor Martin Mull..which means he’s also Colonel Mustard from Clue...which is awesome. Colonel Mustard decides that this is a good time to go hunting and leave Paula home alone for the weekend. Totally makes sense. Colonel Mustard goes hunting in a smoke machine-filled movie backlot swamp and is immediately shot to death by bow and arrow. Back home, Paula is trying to fend off the endless aggressive advances of her jerk ass jock boyfriend Dwight...played by that Pitt guy. He’s like “your dad is gone for the weekend....time to BALL, babe!” He also mentions that he likely has a bigger penis than her dad...apropos of nothing. She’s all “we can’t ball until you start getting better grades!” So she goes to school where she is asked to nude model for the art class and forced to try on a cheerleader outfit and bend over for the school principal, Roddy McDowall. It’s all super fucking icky. Oh, and then there’s Brian...fresh outta the nuthouse...who appears to have a crush on Paula...because he follows her around making serial killer faces at her. Brian is played by Donovan Leitch...who is the son of 60’s folk singer Donovan....and also the brother of Ione Skye. That means that Ione Skye is Donovan’s daughter!? I did not know that until now! Anyway...back to this stupid ass movie. People start getting killed left and right and it’s pretty clear that Brian is doing the killing. It’s all super low budget and poorly put together. Sometimes it’s hard to even tell what’s happening during the murder scenes...like when the gym teacher has an American flagpole jammed up his ass. There’s also a bunch of cutaways of Colonel Mustard....who is NOT DEAD....trying to run his way out of the backlot swamp...and onto the set of a better movie. Paula starts to suspect that maybe Brad Pitt is doing the killing...since he’s such a prick...and there’s also a red herring about the asshole janitor...who I liked when I thought he was being played by John Doe from X...only to find out that it was not John Doe from X. Brian gets expelled from school when he tells the principal he’d rather suck a donkey’s dick than study for his math test. I gotta admit...I chuckled a little at that line. So yeah....Brian is the killer after all. There’s a chase scene that goes on forever but Paula and Brad Pitt eventually saw Brian to pieces in shop class. Colonel Mustard finally makes his way back home after weeks with no food or water and an arrow in his chest and says “I hope you haven’t been Cutting Class!” Freeze Frame. Movie ends. Don’t do drugs.
October 19, 2018
Back in the late 80’s/early 90’s there used to be a place called Showbiz Video in the basement on the CVS on Grafton Street in Worcester. It’s completely walled off now...no sign of there ever having been a business in there...but back when I was growing up....when all the other kids were outside tossing the football around and doing normal-kid type stuff...I would park myself in front of the horror section at the windowless Showbiz trying to pick a movie to ruin sleep for me for yet another night. I would stay until the lady who ran the joint...and who would chain smoke Benson & Hedges all day everyday...would say “honey, whaddya movin’ in? Just pick somethin’ already!” Since I couldn’t Imdb shit in 1988 I just had to pick the VHS box that looked the scariest. But C.H.U.D.? I always thought C.H.U.D. looked way too scary! I mean...look at that shit!? I figured since I’m 40 now and all I might be able to handle C.H.U.D. so I checked it out last night. And you know...it’s not that scary. What happens is this: It’s 1984 and NYC is all groady and shit. Most of the action takes place on the same street where I drank a $25 glass of Chenin Blanc last year...but none of that stuff is going down in this flick. This is Bernie Goetz NYC. At the beginning of the flick a manhole opens up and spews blood and swallows up a woman and her dog. That used to happen when I worked in the North End all the time so again....not that scary. John Heard (aka Mr. McCallister from Home Alone) is a washed up fashion photographer who now photographs the homeless. He hears that mad street people are being swallowed up by underground creatures or some shit. He’s encouraged to get in touch with the owner of a soup kitchen, played by Danny Stern (aka Marv the Wet Bandit from Home Alone). Let’s pause for a second: Mr McAllister and Marv the Wet Bandit from Home Alone are the starts of C.H.U.D.!! Do you think they sat around that fancy house in John Hughesville, IL and looked at each other and said “DUDE....this beats the shit out of C.H.U.D., right??” Actually now that I think of it Mr. McCallister and Marv don’t have and scenes together. And Marv IS nearly murdered by Macaulay Culkin...who is almost as scary as a C.H.U.D. in his own little way. I also remember that John Heard got into some trouble for beating his girlfriend and then I’m surprised to find out that the girlfriend in question is Melissa Leo! She went on to win an Oscar. He died alone in a hotel room. There’s karma’s payment for you. ANYWAY...Stern and Heard catch the ear of a sympathetic cop named Bosch who vows to help get to the bottom of this underground what have you. 40 minutes in we still haven’t really seen any monsters but....OPE!...a C.H.U.D. finally eats this random kid’s grandpa out of a phone booth. It’s like a z-grade Jaws: don’t show the shark until halfway through the flick! I dig it. The kid goes to the police and is all “a monster ate my grandpa” so the police go see some EPA types who admit that they have been dumping toxic waste into the abandoned tunnels below the city and the waste has been turning the homeless people into Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers!!! They are like “really, we don’t see why this is a problem?” These dudes totally work for Trump now...I can just tell. Problem is the homeless population is decimated and C.H.U.D.’s gotta eat, right? So they decide to pump the tunnels full of gas and blow up all of the C.H.U.D’s and probably part of the city too. One of the politicians says “we can’t destroy the city!” and the other dude says “don’t worry...it’s just SOHO.” Umm...clearly you gentlemen haven’t ordered the grand shellfish platter at Balthazar. Anyway...Heard and Stern get trapped underground where they come across a room full of C.H.U.D’s who are just chilling. They are mad scary up close. Their eyes light up and their faces are made up of boogers. The C.H.U.D.’s also attack Heard’s girlfriend in the shower but she chops their heads off. It’s wicked gnarly. Eventually Bosch rescues Stern and Heard from the sewer but is then shot through the heart by the evil EPA guy (but somehow survives? I don’t know, dudes). The EPA guy accidentally blows himself up so the gas is turned off and the city is saved and everyone is all high fives and smiles. But dudes....am I the only one who is thinking....what about all of the fucking C.H.U.D. MONSTERS???? Cut to: a diner. Two policemen enter...one of which is a skinny and not yet famous John Goodman! They order coffee and make small talk...and then....BAM....50 friggin’ C.H.U.D’s come crashing through the windows and eat everyone in sight. I mean, DUH! The movie ends.
october 12, 2018
Fun Halloween drinking game alert! Watch Poltergeist III and every time someone shouts “Carol Anne” take a drink...and by the end of the movie YOU’LL be a Poltergeist ‘cuz they yell that shit like 5000 times in 90 minutes. So y’all know the original Poltergeist; the dude from Coach builds a bunch of houses on an Indian burial ground and the ghosts are none too pleased about it so they kidnap his daughter Carol Anne through the television...which is somehow a portal to “the other side”. Eventually this little over-emoting actress named Zelda Rubenstein shows up with some ghost hunters and they manage to pull Carol Ann back through the TV. The house implodes but the Freeling family manages to escape and live happily ever after. Except for the eldest Freeling daughter (Dominique Dunne) who is strangled to death by her boyfriend in real life. Then came 1986’s Poltergeist II....which found the Freeling family on the run from an insane ghost preacher named Kane. The family survives again....but the actor who plays Kane dies of cancer in real life (I’m starting to smell a trend here). At the open of Poltergeist III we find that Carol Anne has been shipped off to live with her aunt and uncle in the Hancock Tower in Chicago. Original ma and pa Freeling (Craig T Nelson and Jo Beth Williams) are dying.....to not be in any more Poltergeist movies! Heyyyo! No they just think their kid is bad juju so she now lives with Tommy Skerritt and Robocop sidekick Nancy Allen. Not a bad switcheroo if you ask me. They also have a teen daughter played by Lara Flynn Boyle who goes by the name of Donna...which is also Lara Flynn Boyle’s name in Twin Peaks...which also made me wish I was watching Twin Peaks instead. Anyway...there’s no set up or backstory whatsoever. From the jump Carol Anne starts seeing the evil preacher Kane in the building’s mirrors...of which there are many. Dude followed her out to Chi-Town! Uncle Tom Skerritt lives and works in the building and he also appears to, like, own the building? It’s not quite clear...but when the ghost shows up it gets really cold and he’s the dude who can grab a walkie talkie and bark at someone to check the HVAC sitch. True story: this is also the building where Chris Farley died and I kept thinking about how much more amusing it would be if that ghost was Chris Farley. Like every time Carol Anne looked in the mirror there was Farley yelling “Holy Schneikies!!!!” Alas...Farley still had a good 9 years to live...which is more than I can say for the girl who plays Carol Anne (womp...womp...wahhhhng). ANYWAY....Carol Anne attends a a special school for children who have been sucked into television sets. There she is repeatedly ridiculed by the other children and attends sessions with this dickhead therapist who says it’s his job to “intimidate her back to reality”. Good luck with that, bro. Back at the building Aunt and Uncle are headed downstairs for some rich white people gala so the leave Carol Anne with Lara Flynn Boyle...who leaves Carol Anne alone so she can break into the rooftop pool with her horny-ish friends and maybe ball this neighbor dude. Before they can get to the gettin’ though they see on the security cameras (don’t ask) that Carol Anne has escaped to the parking garage. They find her down there but before they can bring her back some monster hands emerge from a puddle and pull all three of them down....into the puddle. Gotta watch out for those puddles, man. Tom Skerritt shows up at the pool to find out what the eff is going on and finds it covered in ice. Seconds later to pool barfs up the dude from next door...who is fine but...you know...cold. He tells them that Kane has got the girls! Luckily Zelda Rubenstein shows up and fondles her necklace and yells “Carol Anne” 983 times and squeaks on and on about how the girls are on the other side and you need to bring them back from the other side...and thanks a lot for getting that terrible Red Hot Chili Peppers Song “The Other Side” stuck in my head! Dr. Dickhead from the school shows up to tell them this is all bullshit but then BAM!....Lara Flynn Boyle explodes out of Zelda Rubenstein’s mid section! I don’t know about y’all...but I figure having Lara Flynn Boyle explode out from inside of you MUST be a terrible way to die. At this point Nancy Allen is all let this bitch stay in the netherworld and let’s check into the Palmer House. I know she’s kin and all but.. Tom Skerritt isn’t having it so he pulls Nancy Allen into The Otherside....which is like the upsidedown from Stranger Things but mad cold. Also, LFB and the dude next door turn into demons and murder Dr. Dickhead. This isn’t really addressed again in the rest of the movie so...there’s that I guess. In the Otherside they find Zelda Rubenstein (who is not dead now??) who offers to sacrifice herself and show Kane the light so that Carol Anne can finally be un-haunted. There’s this big battle on a window washer crane although I’m not sure who is battling whom and for what! Tom Skeritt takes Kane’s head off with a shovel and I guess the squeaky lady shows him the light...whatever that means. Everyone lives happily ever after. Eeeeee....except for the actress who plays Carol Anne...who dies before this movie even hits theaters. A trend...definitely....
October 5, 2018
You ever wonder how your life would’ve turned out had you made a different decision at a critical juncture? (of course you do). I often wonder how my own life would’ve turned out had I gone to see Dr. Giggles instead of Candyman that fateful night back in October of 1992. So...my parents did not want me to watch scary movies...because of their scariness, you dig? I was always coming home with a stack of Chopping Mall or Return to Horror High or Prom Night 2: Hello Mary Lou and scaring the ever loving shit out of myself. I had horrible nightmares and couldn’t sleep without a light on until I was....well...I still need a goddamn nightlight. I would also try to leave my television on...which infuriated my mother to no end. (Here I’d like to point out that the television in my mother’s house now runs 24/7 for the dog’s enjoyment). Anyway...for my 14th birthday I was allowed to go see a horror movie at Showcase Downtown Worcester (now the Hanover Theater). It was an easy choice between Dr. Giggles and Candyman...because Dr. Giggles looked friggin’ terrible. But after we bought the tickets and went into the theater I started to have second thoughts. Dr. Giggles was sold out...the theater was packed and rowdy. There were only 3 solo dudes in the theater showing Candyman. I started to feel like we were missing out on something...but on we went to see Candyman. And you know....it scared the fucking SHIT out of me. Not only was I terrified of the movie...I also started to suspect that one of the other dudes in the theater was the actual Candyman. Now I couldn’t sleep for months. In fact...I’m STILL AWAKE!!! To this day every time I see bees I think “oh shit...the motherscratchin’ Candyman is coming!!!” So now...some 26 years later...I decided it was finally time to see what Dr. Giggles is all about. When I picked up the VHS box I saw that the score was performed by Brian May of Queen...which is awesome. I also saw that the back jacket describes the movie’s star Larry Drake as the “retarded page boy from LA Law”...which is less awesome. Dr. Giggles is about a doctor who giggles while he kills people. The reasons for this are not explained until about an hour into the movie’s 96 minute running time. I sat there the entire time confused as shit with so many questions. Why is this dude killing people? Did the person who wrote this movie take a screenwriting class? Why is he always giggling? Like...what’s so funny, motherfucker? As we learn near the END of the movie...there was this small town doctor who went on a murderous, heart-snatching rampage back in the 1950’s after losing his wife to a mysterious heart condition. The townspeople stone the doctor to death in the town square (I mean...that’s what they say, anyway. This isn’t shown on screen). Before he’s captured he takes his only son and sews him into the corpse of his dead wife. How he breathes in there we do not know. What I do know is that a traumatic event like that will fuck...you...UP! I thought I had some crazy stuff to tell my therapist! The kid escapes by slicing his way out of the body with a scalpel. It is way nasty. He’s sent to a mental hospital for kids who have been sewn into corpses but, years later, he murders his way out of there and returns to the town to seek revenge on the townspeople’s children, a la Fred Krueger. So we’re introduced to the town’s horny-ish teenagers...who all look at least 36 year old. They are done with school for the summer and ready to rage...except poor Jenny...who has mitral valve prolapse or some shit. Character development is non-existent. There’s the black couple. They are killed first. There’s the super horny couple. They don’t even get to ball before Dr. Giggles cuts the dude’s dick off (to be fair...he was about to pretend he was wearing a condom when he wasn’t...so fair play I say). It was at this point in the movie that I noticed a distinct lack of layered guitar solos in the score...so I pulled out my phone and learned that the Brian May who made the soundtrack is NOT THE ONE FROM QUEEN!! Man, what a gyp! Anyway...Dr. Giggles starts to come after Jenny because she has the same heart condition that killed his mother. He kills all of her friends and vacuums her step-mom’s innards out with a vacuum. Jenny tries to go to the cops but they are all “we sent that creep away years ago!” They are also murdered. Jenny goes into surgery for her heart problem but when she wakes up it’s Dr. Giggles doing the surgery! This happens...like...3 times. 3 surgery fake outs. There’s a bunch of chase scenes and blah blah blah. Jenny eventually defibrillates Dr. Giggles to death...but before he dies he looks directly into the camera and says “is there a doctor in the house?” Then boom...dead. Jenny lives happily ever after. I remain convinced that I made the right decision in going to see Candyman....Candyman....Candyman...AHH DON”T SAY IT 5 TIMES!!!!
August 30, 2019
When I’m digging around for material for a VHS of the Week there’s a particular well that never seems to go dry. And that well, my friends, is the summer of 1991. Almost every film released that summer was a stone cold classic....and by “stone cold” I am naturally referring to former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Brian “The Boz” Bosworth’s film debut Stone Cold. Seriously though...we’re talking Point Break...we’re talking Naked Gun 2 & 1/2...Terminator 2! Shit...even Pure Luck with Mary Short and Danny Glover came out in ’91. Different killer hit movie every week. Over on the FM radio, though, there was one tune that held down the #1 spot for the entire summer. As much as I’d like to tell you that #1 song was “Monkey Business” by Skid Row the truth of the matter is that anyone who went anywhere music was played in the summer of ’91 could not possibly avoid hearing (Everything I Do) I Do it For You by Bryan Adams. That shit was omnipresent...like...all the world over. It’s one of the most successful singles of ALL TIME! Of course, this tune was written for Kevin Costner’s highly-ish anticipated summer blockbuster Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves...and if you watch the movie and take a shot every time a character utters a line that is also lyric from the Bryan Adams song...you’ll wind up taking at LEAST three shots! I went to see Robin Hood the day it opened and immediately declared it to be the best movie ever made. I then exited the theater and completely forgot about it and did not watch it again for another 28 years...which usually means that my initial rave review was the result of my tender age and that the movie actually sucks. I decided to check it out again this week for the first time in a hot minute and here’s what happens: The movie opens in Jerusalem in 1184 A.D. I’m pretty terrible at math but that strikes me as a super duper long time ago. The opening text says we’re in the middle of the Crusades. Whenever “The Crusades” is the category for Final Jeopardy I simply shut the TV off and leave the room as I am positive that I will not know the answer (Unless it’s “what 1991 summer blockbuster opens during the Crusades”). I totally napped on that era of world history...but it looks like some gnarly business. The Jerusalem-ers have got dudes chained up in a cave and they are haphazardly chopping off hands and heads. We see our boy Costner is chained up as well...but at least he’s got a killer heavy metal long hair/beard combo going. I bet he had mad people coming up to him at the bar to ask if he was famed metal guitarist Zak Wyldd on days off from shooting. So shit’s about to go from bad to worse but, as luck would have it, one of Costner’s fellow prisoner’s is Academy Award winner and man whose sexual harassment accusations bounced right off of him Morgan Freeman (I don’t know, folks...I think people just really really really love The Shawshank Redemption). Freeman says he knows a way out: bust up the room and kill all the bad guys. Why no one thought of this before we do not know. Before they can vamanos Costner’s mortally wounded buddy asks him if he’ll carry his special amulet back to his sister Marian. Costner’s all “ahh...maybe. You got a picture?” I kid...I kid. Meanwhile back in the English countryside or wherever Pops Costner is sitting around in his baller castle wondering if his son is ever gonna come home from the Crusades. I mean...it’s 1184...you can’t just send a motherfucker a text (Dad: U stl n JRSLM???). You just had to not know! One of his servants comes to him and says “don’t go out tonight...there’s an evil moon.” Man, if anyone said that to me I would stay my ass home! He does not. He goes outside to find about 50 bad guys on horseback surrounding the castle...and it don’t look they came by to invite him out to watch Love Actually. Speaking of Love Actually...the ringleader of the bad guys is none other than sadly departed uber villain actor Alan Rickman. Hans Gruber, y’all (or Snape for you younger folks). Rickman is the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. I mean...I guess he’s evil. Rickman is almost always evil...and you don’t just bum rush a castle unless you got something nefarious on the brain. He tells Pops Costner to join him or die. Pops Costner politely declines and offers to fight all 50 men. He loses. Badly. Four months later we see Costner and Freeman finally come ashore along the white cliffs of Dover after a long ass journey in a tiny ass rowboat. I’ll tell you what, though--they must’ve rowed up to a Super Cuts at some point ‘cuz Costner is freshly shorn! Got himself a finely coiffed mullet along with a couple of Hermes scarfs and the leather jacket George Michael wore on the cover of that Wham! album. Freeman and Costner engage in some chit chat about their next move. I guess Freeman was looking for his princess or what have you but she’s gone so he’s basically gonna follow Costner. Costner’s like “that’s cool...my dad will have a charcuterie board waiting for us at his castle.” Here I need to take care of some business real quick: I know I’m not the first person to mention this...but Kevin Costner’s acting in this movie is fucking beyond terrible. Like...everyone else in the movie has an accent but this cat can’t even be bothered to try. This is particularly problematic as the dialogue was clearly written to be delivered by someone with an accent. And I’m not sayin’ the ‘Cos can’t act...because he can. In fact, he was possibly the most successful movie star on the planet in 1991. He went into Robin Hood having just won a grillion Oscars for Dances with Wolves the previous year. He also had Oliver Stone’s JFK due out in the later the year (where he acts up a storm, if you ask me). He was at that rare point in one’s career where he could pretty much do whatever the frig he wanted. I’m imagining a scenario where Robin Hood director Kevin Reynolds comes to Costner and asks him if he can maybe try to deliver his lines with a little more, you know, pizazz or something? (Costner removes Best Director Oscar from a satchel...calmly begins polishing it...asks the Reynolds to repeat himself...walks away before he can answer). So there’s that. Costner and Freeman light out for the Castle Costner but they’re intercepted by gravel-voiced Crow actor and Oliver Stone mainstay Michael Wincott. Costner tells Wincott and his evil henchmen that they are trespassing on his land. Wincott’s asks him to explain hisself. Costner says he’s Robin Hood! Wincott is all “bah hah hah where are your green tights then, homie?” He doesn’t ask that...but he probably should. Wincott, and others in the film, are constantly making reference to Robin Hood’s youth...which is also weird ‘cuz the ‘Cos is 36 years old and looks about 46. Wincott says he’s the Sheriff of Nottingham’s cousin but it don’t matter to the RH. He archers 12 of his men to death and heads the hell home....where he finds his castle burned and pillaged. He and Freeman come across and hanging, charred corpse and Robin Hood busts out crying. “Who is that” Freeman asks? Dude, come onnn! It’s clearly his old man! Robin Hood says he won’t rest until his father’s death is avenged. He even cuts himself and dribbles his own blood everywhere just to show how much business he means. Back at the evil Sheriff of Nottingham’s evil castle Snape heads down to the basement to speak to his live-in, locked-in basement dwelling soothsayer and lady who looks like the gross landlady from Kingpin...but who is not actually that lady. The Sheriff asks the soothsayer if Robin Hood and his painted friend (eee...yeah...lots of iffy talk in this flick) mean trouble. The soothsayer whips some snakes around the room, mumbles some mumbo jumbo, and tell his that yes, in fact, Robin Hood will probably end up killing him. I’d prolly board the Concorde to NYC with the quickness...but the evil Sheriff wants to stay and evil Sheriff it up. Before Robin Hood can embark on his Tour of Vengeance ’94 he’s gotta drop by Marian’s spot to see if she ain’t home so he can return that amulet thingy. Marian appears at the top of the stairs and she’s somehow like 55 years-old and rotund and Robin Hood is super bummed. He’s like “I’ll just leave the amulet in the mailbox then”...but before he can go he’s attacked by a fencer in a Darth Vader mask. They parry around and Robin Hood shoves Darth Vader’s hand in the fire and pulls off the mask and HOLY SMOKES it’s the real Maid Marian! And she’s young and pretty because of course she is. She’s played by the actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio...who would never have a career in the attention span challenged year of 2019 with a long ass name like that. She’d have to go by M Liz Tones or some shit. Marian tells RH that she’s been trying to stave off the evil Sheriff until King Whomever can return from Wherever and set shit straight. RH is all “that’s cool...wanna go grab a flagon of mead or something?” Marian says that he’s a spoiled rich dickhead who used to pull her hair when they were kids...so...she’s all set. No interest at all, capisce? RH slaps her on the ass and steals her horse and hoofs it out to Sherwood Forrest. There, he and Freeman encounter a band of merry forrest dwellers who all sound kinda like Liam Gallagher from Oasis. Except for noted muncher of police officers Christian Slater...who also cannot be bothered to attempt an accent. They tell Robin Hood that he can’t roll with their crew unless he battles their head honcho John Little on the river with sticks (not to be confused with the river of styx...which is something else entirely). Robin Hood gets kicked in the nuts and tossed off a 50 foot water fall...but he somehow crawls back up to deliver John Little an ass whupping. So now they are all best buds and whatnot. Except Slater...who is totally not digging the ‘Hood. Dude heads back to town to take in Sunday mass and to suss out just how much trouble he’s in. Turns out: 100 pieces of gold on his head. Big bux in ’94. While he’s chatting with the local priest he comes face to face with the Sheriff. RH pulls out a blade and gashes up Snape’s cheek something awful! He’s gotta do some serious swashbuckling to get out of that church alive. Luckily that’s what Robin Hood is known for: buckling swash. Back in the forrest he tells his fellow rabble rousers that they need to stop rousing rabble and learn how to fight so they can take down the Sheriff. They shout “but what are we gonna eat!?” Umm...I mean....haven’t they already been living in the forrest for a long ass time?? Slater wants to turn him in for that sick gold coin collection...but the other rousers won’t have it. They want to learn archery and whatnot. Cut to: entire village of village people become ace marksmen/women in a tidy 3 minute montage. The Sheriff is deeply vexed by this turn of events. We know this because he says so. He cancels merciful beheadings AND Christmas. He also stabs Michael Wincott to death. His own cousin! Ice cold, bro. Here’s an idea: they know these folks are living in the forrest. Why not just GO TO THE FORREST and kill them. Maybe these dudes saw Blair With Projects too many times and are afraid of the woods. I know I am! Marian heads out to Sherwood to try to convince Robin Hood to cool it with this rivalry business. She just so happens to arrive at the same time Robin Hood is taking a swim in the buff. She sees his bare ass and...like...almost fucking FAINTS! It’s almost too ridiculous for words. And look...it’s a well established fact that Costner’s got a finely etched rump...but seriously!? With this brief flash of bareassedness Marian is instantly turned into a drooling fangirl. He invites her to stay for dinner and they all party down together and she starts blowing in his ear and shit. Morgan Freeman disappears for a good chunk of the movie...probably to film his scenes for Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. Meanwhile the sheriff goes to see his basement soothsayer for some much needed 411. She spits blood into a hot cast iron (which is way gross, btw) and tells the Sheriff he needs to summon the Celts from the north and burn Sherwood Forrest to the ground. They all come riding down from the north blasting Thin Lizzy and shooting flaming arrows at Robin Hood’s little shantytown. That joint is TOAST! Marian and Slater are kidnapped...all of the village’s children are kidnapped...Robin Hood is presumed dead for about 2 minutes but totally comes back to life with nothing worse than a split lip. Slater offers to double cross Robin Hood...which seems like an extremely obvious turn of events to me. You know who else thinks that’s an obvious turn of events? The people in the movie. When he returns to Sherwood Forrest Little John immediately beats the living shit out of him. They’re prolly fixing to kill him because he’s a no good wife-beating cop-eating traitor...but then he pulls out the big guns! (Not actual guns, mind you: this is 1184). Slater tells Robin Hood that he’s his BROTHER (from another mother). How does this change their dynamic? Not much at all. They hug and kiss and that’s that. So now the bruised but unbowed gang has gotta gang up and storm the Sheriff’s castle and rescue their loved ones and OH MY GOD HOW LONG IS THIS MOVIE!???? Two and a half hours long is how long...and it feels longer than that goddamn Fanny and Alexander. The Sheriff orders all the children to be hung in the town square...and mad people show up ‘cuz everyone loves a good ‘angin. Robin Hood and his crew plan to rescue their loved ones because what kind of friggin’ movie would this be if they let those kiddos swing?? So there’s the obligatory climactic battle sequence and it goes on FOR...EVER!!! Once the Sheriff realizes he’s boxed in he decides he can save himself by procreating with Marian...so he has the priest marry them on the quick and then tries to rape her. It is a most unwelcome turn of events and disturbing as shit. I hope you’re enjoying your PG-13 summer popcorn flick, kids! It’s cool though...Robin Hood rescues her and kills the Sheriff. Actually all of the good guys live and all of the bad guys die. I mean....Morgan Freeman takes a sword through the midsection but they pour a ton of bactine on that shit and he’s right as rain. The movie (fFINALLY) ends with Robin and Marian’s wedding. They get a surprise visit from the returning king...who is totally SEAN CONNERY!!! I completely forgot about that! I smile for the first time in two and a half hours. The credits roll...and I’m surprised we didn’t get to here the Bryan Adams song an....WAIT...we fade back in to the ACTUAL VIDEO for “(Everything I Do) I Do it For You”! There’s our non-threatening Canadian balladeer buddy Bryan Adams and his band running through the tune in the middle of the forrest (with nary an amplifier in sight). I think maybe they were hoping people would be so jazzed after hearing the song and watching the video they’d forget how generally lousy the movie they just watched was. I know I did. Good luck getting that song out of your head before the year 2047. The end.
August 23, 2019
So here’s the deal: my dad really, really enjoyed watching dudes beat the shit out of other dudes. Me? I was always more of a Steve Martin man from the jump...but that’s not to suggest I was above stepping out for an action flick from time to time. Hell, my entire torso is tattooed with quotes from Point Break! (“You want the ultimate?...”). Of course...this is completely untrue...but maybe I could save some dough and get that pink surfboard tat I’ve always wanted. While my dad was happy to check out the latest Die Hard or Schwarzenegger offering or what have you...he mostly preferred a, shall we say, lower tier of action film. The ones with names like Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, or Steven Seagal on the marquee. I can’t tell you how many times he would bring home Bloodsport or Delta Force and sit there and howl with delight when some dude got his arm/leg/neck/chest snapped in half. “Oh ho ho! That’s one bad hombre!” he’d shout at our 14-inch Toshiba TV. I certainly wasn’t immune to the low-rent charms of these flicks. I learned early and hard that when you are a 12 year-old dude hanging out with other 12 year-old dudes you’ll get a much better reception if you show up with a copy of Cyborg than if you show up with a copy of, say, Roxanne. In an era that celebrated ultraviolence, misogyny, and casual racism there’s one film that’s so over the top (not to be confused the Stallone arm wrestling movie Over the Top...which we’ll talk about in due time) that it stands head and shoulders above the rest. It’s called Out for Justice. It stars sexual harassment yoda and current Russian ambassador to the US (seriously) Steven Seagal...and it is fucking BUH....NANAS!! I’m guessing what happened was this: at some point in the 1980’s someone wrote a Sidney Lumet-inspired screenplay wherein an Italian vigilante police officer hunts a former boyhood rival-turned out of control cop killing criminal during one long, blood-soaked day in pre-charcuterie bar Brooklyn. Think Dazed and Confused but with a super high body count and no tunes or (intentional) jokes. Steven Seagal then got ahold of said screenplay and thought it would be the perfect vehicle for him to do his pony tail swinging, nut-kicking thing. First, though, he watched the The Godfather, listened to one Frank Sinatra CD, and ate at The Olive Garden a shit ton so he could really FEEL what it’s like to be Italian. The finished product goes something like this: Out for Justice opens with a quote from legendary playwright Arthur Miller...so right away we know this is gonna be some highbrow shit, right? Right. Steven Seagal is detective Gino Fellino (bah hah hah what was Eddie Spaghetti too one the nose?). When we first meet Gino he’s working undercover with his partner Bobby Lupo in a neighborhood of Brooklyn that is clearly downtown Los Angeles. “Yo Bobby...whasssamatta? You got personal problems or sumthin’?” Gino asks. Bobby assures him that he does not and promises him that he will definitely not be murdered in the very next scene. The fellas are supposed to be watching a drug bust or whatever whatever but Gino spies a pimp about to go all “bitch better have my money” on a young lady. He decides to nuke the drug bust and go have words with the pimp. “Hey ace-hole...you like beatin’ on women? Why don’t you beat on me?” The pimp has a go at Gino but Gino knows Aikido or some shit so he snaps the pimp’s neck and then throws him through the front windshield of not one but TWO cars. Cue opening credits! Across town we meet Richie Madano, played by not-that-legendary growling, glowering character actor Bill Forsythe. Even though Richie looks kind of like Chris Farley in a Freddie Mercury costume, we assume he is the bad guy. We assume this because he has a safe full of guns and money and is smoking an uncomfortable amount of crack cocaine. He tells his crew of track suit-wearing future Soprano’s extras that if they stay by his side for the entire night they can help themselves to the contents of the safe (note: the majority of this film takes place during daylight hours...but who am I to break balls?). Cut to: somewhere in actual Brooklyn Bobby Lupo is out for an afternoon stroll with his aqua net wife and six children. Richie rolls up in a bitchin’ red Camaro and proceeds to shoot Bobby like 15 times in front of 300 people (please don’t quote me on these figures). The Camaro pulls over a few blocks away so Richie can smoke a little more crack. The lady in the car behind them starts honking the horn...which is a completely reasonable thing to do when there’s a crack smoke-emitting Camaro holding up traffic. Richie jumps out of the car, grabs the lady, and blows her head off! It is friggin’ bonkers! Gino gets called to the scene by the chief of police and man who shot his scenes on lunch break from Law & Order Jerry Orbach. Here I should note that Gino wears some sort of official police beret and a black vest with a plunging neckline throughout the entire film...which is fine I guess...it’s just that NO ONE ELSE on the force is dressed like that. Maybe all of the action takes place on some sort of “Hawaiian Shirt Friday”. Right so Bobby is dead...Richie done did it...and Gino tells J O-Bach that he’s the only one who can bring Richie down. “Oh! You know I’m da only one gonna catch dis fuckinguy! Just gimme an unmarked and a shotgun!” So he does. He gives him those things. Meanwhile over at the mafia mansion (tons of mahogany, men sipping espresso with the pinky finger in the air, “O Sole Mio” pumping on the soundtrack) Don Vincenzo or Don Vesuvius or Don Vittorio or something is none too pleased with Richie spilling blood on the streets all willy nilly. They arrange a sit down with Gino because he’s hella cool with everyone. Cops...crooks...it don’t matter to the Gino. They meet up for a beeg-a bowl of pasta fagioli and a Spumoni dessert and Gino promises to catch Richie and teach him “the price of our blood”. If that sounds like a snappy title for a movie it’s because it is the title of a movie. In particular: this movie. Well it was supposed to be called that but dickhead Seagal said he only acted in films with 3-word titles, shit you not! His next film: Under Siege. Madonna mi dis guy essa stugots! So Gino’s on the hunt but first there’s bizarre incident where some knucklehead throws a German Shepherd puppy out the window of a moving station wagon. Gino decides to keep the puppy and name him Corraio like the kid in the not-yet-released A Bronx Tale (or was that Collogero? Whatever.). The puppy remains forgotten in Gino’s car for the remainder of the film... almost quietly asphyxiating to death. There’s a super long “Gino searching for Richie” montage set to the 110th best Beastie Boys song “No Sleep Till Brooklyn”...where Gino drives around a Willamsburg waterfront that has tons of barrel fires and not a single Whole Foods. Gino spots Richie and they have a car chase that’s reminiscent of the one in The French Connection but directed shittily. Richie leads him to a butcher shop and instructs his evil henchmen to chop Gino into gabagool. Gino puts a hatchet through a dude’s arm and kicks like 20 dudes in the nuts. Gino-1, Bad Guys-Zero. Gino decides to pay a visit to to Richie’s pops...and holy pope on a rope!....it’s totally Uncle Junior from The Sopranos!! What’s up, Uncle Ju! What’s up is this: Uncle Junior has a totally bunk Italian accent that he thankfully did not bring with him to HBO. In a film full of every hideous Italian stereotype you can possibly name this scene somehow manages to stand out: dark apartment, Mario Lanza on the victrola, rotund Italian mamma with her head wrapped in black scarves...clutching rosary beads. “Oh Gino! My boy essa good-a boy! I feed him a nice-a bracciole...but he take-a-the-drugs-a!” Gino says he’s gonna kill Richie anyway...so there’s that. While Richie holes up with his former prostitute friend played by future 20 time Emmy winner Julianna Margulies, Gino pays Richie’s brother Vincent a visit at his forward-thinking underground barcade. “Anyone know why Richie did Bobby Lupo,” Gino queries to no one in particular. Vincent calls Gino a “big fuckin’ mamaluke” and offers his bar patrons, who are somehow all evil henchmen of various stripes, a thousand bucks if they can get Gino’s gun and badge from him. Gino proceeds to kick every man at the bar in the balls and snaps about a baker’s dozen worth of arms. He even does a pool cue battle with the resident asian martial expert (every action movie has a character like this). Everyone is getting antsy to get Richie off the streets...and I’m getting antsy for this flick to end. Did I forget to mention that Steven Seagal released an album called Mojo Priest that contains a song called “Talk to My Ass”....and that Rick Derringer called Seagal “the hottest white bluesman alive.” If the man who wrote “Rock n’ Roll Hootchie Coo” says it then it must be so. ANYWAY...Gino goes to shake down Richie’s sister, played the eternally badass Gina Gerson. Gino asks her how she’s doing and she replies “hey, I can still get it wet.” 12 year-old Danny Tebo turns to his dad and asks him what she means by that. His dad’s eyes widen as he stares at the floor and pretends to not hear my question. Not much comes of that so Gino breaks into Bobby Lupo’s desk, where he finds a gigantic bag of cocaine (like...you could fit a turkey in this bag) and polaroids of Bobby balling women who are not his wife and are definitely maybe also Richie’s girlfriends. So it all makes crazy sense now! Gino goes to visit his estranged wife and son (did I forget to mention them? Ahh shit). He tells some super boring ass story in Italian. “My poppa...he wass a poor man who deliver the vegetables. The neighborhood kids say vaffanculo Mr Felino. The show-a him a-no-respect-a” ZZZZ...don’t bore us, get to the chorus! Eight bad guys bust into his place mid-Italian tale of woe but Gino shotguns them all to death. It’s pretty grizzly. Meanwhile Richie is back at Julianna Marguiles’ joint furiously puffing down crack. He promises to call Willie the Pimp to send over his best broads so his non-dead henchmen can have a party. First--if that’s a Frank Zappa reference...awesome! Second--These evil henchmen have spent the last 6 hours fighting endlessly with both fist and gun. I’d probably just want to call it a night, know what I’m sayin’? No matter though ‘cuz Gino comes blasting into the joint, killing every last one of these jedrools. Gino takes a bullet in the stomach...but unlike former Red Sox slugger David Ortiz...who spent 2 months in the hospital after sustaining a similar injury...Gino just shakes it off like it’s a bruised funny bone. Eventually it’s time for the final showdown between Gino and Richie...which isn’t really much to look at...because my man Rich is fuuuuucked up! Besides being fat and out of shape dude has enough blow in him to give a blue whale a coronary. He’s super outmatched. Gino lets him take a few mercy swings before pinning him to the ground and stabbing him in the eye with one of those rabbit ear wine keys! He pumps a couple of bullets in him with one of the mafioso’s guns...just to be super duper sure he’s dead. Gino and his wife reconcile and take their new puppy to the Jersey Shore to celebrate the murder of like 45 men (no idea what happened to their kid). They run into the guy who threw the puppy out the window and, you’ll never believe it, but Gino kicks him in the balls! Never...gets....old!! The end. Oh wait....the credits roll over scenes from the movie that we have just finished watching. It’s there that I noticed that “kid in the alley” was played by John Leguizamo! Totally missed that! And one of the stuntmen was Kane Hodder...which mean that Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th’s 7 through 10 was in the flick!? Mind: blown.