The Aristocrats is a joke that is told by stand-up comedians to stand-up comedians.  The opening line (“A guy walks into a talent agency…”) and the punchline (“What do you call the act?”  “The Aristocrats!”) is always the same.  The middle portion of the joke is up to the comic’s imagination.  Anything goes as long as he (or she) keeps these things consistent:  The guy, his wife, son, and daughter have sex with each other.  Urination, defecation, and vomiting aren’t required but it helps.  Points are earned if the comic can come up with the sickest shit imaginable.

The joke itself isn’t funny but the execution of the middle section can be depending on who is telling it.  This is where the comedian can completely let go and say virtually anything and get a laugh.  This documentary from director Paul (Comics Only) Provenza is essentially just interviews with a 100 comedians who tell us their encounters with the joke.  Some of them even tell their version.

It’s here where the movie sorta fumbles.  I honestly believe if the whole movie was 100 comedians telling the joke, it would’ve been great.  As it is, Provenza often cuts away to other interviewees while someone is in the midst of telling the joke.  Telling jokes is an art form that requires intricate timing.  By cutting away from the comedian in mid-joke, it ruins the flow of their version.

Some people actually get to tell their version of the joke with minimal to no interruption and it’s hysterical.  George Carlin, Bob Saget, and Sarah Silverman are among them and each one of them had me in stitches.  Drew Carey gets a special mention for doing a little hand motion at the end to accentuate the punchline as does Kevin Pollack who performs it while impersonating Christopher Walken.  Martin Mull tells a clever variation on it that is very funny as well.

The Aristocrats (the movie not the joke) loses points thanks to the sloppy editing.  Still it’s funny and fast moving enough for me to recommend it.  It’s definitely a treat just seeing all these great comedians (Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Don Rickles, etc.) in the same movie.

The Alamo was John Wayne’s dream directing project, a sprawling big budget epic about Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie’s heroic last stand.  The fact that he had no experience behind the camera didn’t stop him from making the film.  Even the studios were unsure about the massive undertaking and wouldn’t allow him a sufficient budget, so The Duke had to reach into his own pockets and finance part of the film.  He needn’t had bothered.  This Alamo isn’t worth remembering. 

Colonel Travis (Laurence Harvey) gets orders from General Houston (Richard Boone) to defend the Alamo at all costs from the Mexican army.  Living legends Davy Crockett (John Wayne) and Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark) volunteer their services and turn the rundown mission into a fortress.  Severely outnumbered (185 to 7000), they nevertheless put up a gallant fight that lasts for thirteen days before they reach their inevitable demise.

Wayne’s overwhelming need to make this an epic ultimately works against the movie.  Wayne seems to be under the impression that Epic Length = Epic Movie, but that’s not always necessarily the case.  At 203 minutes, it’s one tough slog.  Bloated and overlong, The Alamo’s biggest crime is that it takes forever to get going.  I mean Davy Crockett doesn’t even show up until a half an hour into the movie and he’s the main character for Pete’s sake. 

Things may have went a whole lot smoother if the running time been a bit more reasonable; say two hours.  However, Wayne tosses in so many superfluous scenes of inconsequential supporting characters spouting incessant verbal diarrhea that it ruins the flow of the whole movie.  If Wayne had forgotten about the dozen or so bit players and concentrated more on the interaction between Crockett, Bowie, and Travis; it would’ve resulted in a much tighter film.

Wayne’s inexperience behind the camera further hamstrings things.  His directing style basically consists of him sitting the camera down and letting his actors recite their dialogue flatly.  In front of the camera, The Duke doesn’t fare much better.  I can’t exactly say he gives a “bad” performance but when John F’ing Wayne is playing Davy F’ing Crockett, you expect better.  Although Widmark puts in a solid turn as the hotheaded Jim Bowie, it’s Harvey that gives the best performance in the film.  At one point, Bowie calls him a “prissy jackass” and while that’s pretty accurate, Travis also has another prideful side to him that makes him interesting.  He’s the only three-dimensional character in the whole flick.

The final siege is quite exciting and features lots of mofo’s getting bayoneted, stabbed, and shot.  This 40 minute sequence shows that The Duke (or his second unit director at least) could film action.  After about 163 minutes of talk, talk, talk though; it’s the very definition of too little too late.  The stirring score by Dimitri Tiomkin helps but not much.

Wayne’s next film as director was The Green Berets. 

<Can’t get enough Horror Franchise Movie Reviews?  Here’s another one!>

Anacondas:  Trail of Blood is almost exactly like the previous Anaconda film, Anaconda 3.  The difference is that there is no David Hasselhoff.  That means it’s not very good.

As in Part 3, scientists are still out in the jungle fucking around with the Blood Orchid trying to make some Anti-Cancer serum.  Since John Rhys-Davies only has a week to live, he wants that shit bad.  But first, he must send out an army of slimy European hitmen into the jungle to kill the chick who knows all about the Blood Orchids (Crystal Allen).  And of course, where there are Blood Orchids, there are giant ass anacondas.

Director Don E. FauntLeRoy favors the usual Direct-to-DVD style action (shootouts and such) over the anaconda attacks, which is particularly disheartening for a die hard Anaconda fan like myself.  I do compliment him for his limited use of the snakes’ POV shots (or as I like to call it, “Anaconda-Vision”) though.  Once the anacondas finally do get to strut their stuff, FauntLeRoy does let the red stuff flow pretty freely. 

Sadly, Anacondas:  Trail of Blood is a big fat bore most of the time.  The main reason for this is that there are way too many useless subplots that get in the way of the Anaconda action.  (The tedious scenes involving the scientist chick getting bit by a mosquito is a prime example.) 

There is one scene in this movie that is positively genius.  This European hitman is about to get swallowed up by the anaconda.  He realizes his own mortality and figures he’ll take the anaconda out with him.  The guy grabs two grenades from his belt, pulls the pins, closes his eyes, and lets out a mighty battle cry just as the snake is bearing down on him.  About five seconds go by and the dude opens his eyes again, only to see the snake slithering away.  He looks down at the grenades and goes “Oh…” before blowing up into a hundred pieces. 

That shit had me rolling on the couch in laughter.  This scene is right up there with the Lance Henriksen “Whoops!” scene from Hard Target.  It’s that good.  If Anacondas:  Trail of Blood had about two or three more scenes of high class hilarity like that; it may have been worthy of the Anaconda name.   

Rhys-Davies gets the best line when he says, “He has appeared… to have disappeared!”

Special Note:  For whatever reason, the odd-numbered Anaconda movies are called “Anaconda” and the even-numbered Anaconda movies are called “Anacondas”. 

Ash (Bruce Campbell) gets whisked away to medieval times where he is immediately enslaved and sentenced to die in a pit fight with some Deadites.  He easily kicks loads of ass and pretty soon everyone is calling him “The Promised One”.  In order to stop the Evil Dead from haunting the King’s castle, Ash has to go on a quest to retrieve the Necronomicon.  Whilst removing the book from it’s unholy cradle, Ash fucks up the magic words (“Klaatu… Barata… Cough… Cough… Cough!) and it doesn’t take long before the dreaded Deadites are trying to break down the castle walls.  Luckily, with a little 20^th century know-how Ash is able to fend off the Army of Darkness and return to his own time.  (If he can ever get those words right.)

Army of Darkness is the best film in The Evil Dead trilogy.  This is not a popular opinion.  I know I am in the minority on this one, but for me this is the most balls out fun movie in the series.  Not only is it the best of the Evil Deads; it’s also one of the greatest movies ever made.  (It’s Number 4 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of All Time List in between Fight Club and Halloween.)  This movie rocks and it rocks HARD.  It’s ten times funnier than most comedies and features enough movie in-jokes to make your head spin.  (Everything from The Three Stooges to Jason and the Argonauts to Gulliver’s Travels to The Manster to The Day the Earth Stood Still is referenced.) 

In addition to the wide range of film references, director Sam Raimi mashes up a whole bunch of genres and hits the PUREE button.  There’s horror, sword and sorcery, comedy, and even a little romance too.  Army also features more action than you can shake a stick at.  Throughout the movie Ash battles monsters in the pit (the part where he leaps in the air and his chainsaw lands on his stump is priceless), gets attacked by miniature versions of himself, fights his evil double, gets sucked into a vortex, gets assaulted by an evil book, and goes to war against an army of skeletons.  Raimi films all of this with his usual manic energy and the results are one Hell of a breathtaking, non-stop, hilarious, good time.

Most reviews I’ve read of this film always whine that there isn’t as much blood as the previous films.  Umm… HELLO didn’t you see that great big geyser of blood when that one guy got pushed into the pit?  That scene alone featured three times the amount of blood than the first two movies combined.  This scene also gives us a pretty good severed head and a disembodied hand, so I don’t want to even hear these petty gripes about the lack of gore. 

What makes Army of Darkness standout from the other films in the series (besides the bigger budget that is) is that Ash actually has a character arc in this one.  He just isn’t being repeatedly assaulted by the undead (well he is, but still).  He goes from being a loudmouth, to being a coward, to finally, a hero.  Bruce plays all of these facets of his character extremely well; particularly in the scenes where he acts like a complete jackass to people. 

This movie also has the most quotable dialogue than any film ever conceived by the human mind.  If you don’t quote the following lines aloud in casual everyday conversations, then there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with you:

“Well HELLO Mr. Fancy Pants!  I got news for you pal; you ain’t leading but two things right now, Jack and Shit.  And Jack left town!”

“All right, you primitive screwheads listen up!  You see this?  This is my BOOMSTICK!”

“Now I swear… the next one of you primates, even touches me…”

“First you wanna kill me… now you want to kiss me… BLOW!”  (This is particularly effective on first dates.)

“Yo She-Bitch!  Let’s go!”  (Again, great to use on a first date.)

“Gimme some sugar baby!”  (Likewise, a golden statement for a first date.)

“Good… bad… I’m the guy with the gun.”  (Good for a night in Compton.)

“That’s just what we call pillow talk, baby!”  (In fact, nearly everything Ash says in this movie could be said on a first date.)

“Say hello to the 21^st century!”  (Which is fitting since we’re actually in the 21^st century now.) 

And of course the immortal, “Hail to the king baby!”

You can tell that Raimi was particularly proud of his dialogue because during the closing credits, his (along with his brother Ivan) screenwriting credit appears before his directing credit.  I’d be proud of that shit too.  Raimi went on to direct the Spider-Man trilogy.  They were great and all, but none of those movies captured the sheer awesomeness of this flick.  It’s truly one of the greatest movies in the history of the human race.

Army of Darkness is Numero Uno on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year 1993.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Psycho (1960)>

David Bradley returns in this totally unrelated sequel in the American Ninja franchise.  He plays an American who happens to be a Ninja; other than that he’s a completely different character.  You can tell because he doesn’t have a mullet in this one.

Bradley is stuck babysitting a little punk (Lee Reyes) at the behest of his sensei (Mr. Miyagi himself, Pat Morita).  When his girlfriend gets kidnapped and is carted off to Venezuela, Bradley and the kid follow in hot pursuit.  Turns out, a nefarious villain wants the chick’s scientist papa to make a chemical weapon for an irate dictator and he’ll kill the dame if the doctor doesn’t cooperate.  Bradley and the little pipsqueak have to team up to Kung Fu a lot of color-coordinated Ninjas in order to save the day.

American Ninja 5 isn’t a bad movie per se, it’s just kinda flat and uninspired; especially when compared to the other films in the series.  The biggest problem I had is with the Ninja kid.  He gets annoying pretty quickly and the constant cutesy comic relief (Sample line of dialogue:  “All right dude… I mean… Master!”) makes this the Cop and a Half of Ninja movies.

The action sequences are slightly better than average and make up for a lot of the juvenile shenanigans.  Even though this flick isn’t really part of the American Ninja series (it was originally filmed under the title American Dragons), it still has all the arrow-catching, Ninja starring, nunchucking, and smoke bombing you’d come to expect from the franchise.  Bradley gives a competent performance and it’s always fun seeing Morita. 

AKA:  American Dragons.

Anvil:  The Story of Anvil is just like This is Spinal Tap… except it’s a real documentary… and it isn’t very good.

Basically, Anvil was this heavy metal band that went on tour with Bon Jovi ONCE and thought they had a career.  For the next thirty years, they’ve been playing club dates to 14 people in skuzzy bars while eeking out a meager living in Canada.  Although a promising Eastern European tour goes nowhere (at one point they play in Transylvania), they remain optimistic.  After a lot of in-fighting, they cut a new album and eventually play a triumphant gig in Japan to a sold out crowd.

I thought this movie was a joke but apparently Anvil is a real band.  It’s hard to tell though when the director keeps making all these stupid Spinal Tap references.  Throughout the movie, Anvil visit Stonehenge, have a clueless female manager with a bad accent, and have speakers that go up to 11.  The drummer’s name is even Robb Reiner for Christ’s sake!

The big reason why I thought this was a mockumentary was that it’s called Anvil:  The Story of Anvil.  I guess the filmmakers were actually being serious when they named their movie that though.  Honestly, who calls their movie, Anvil:  The Story of Anvil?  That’s like Oliver Stone making JFK:  The Story of JFK.  Or watching a Kung Fu movie called Ricky:  The Story of Ricky.  It’s redundant as fuck. 

I think all of this may have been entertaining but none of the band members are really endearing.  While I admire their never-say-die spirit, they’re all just your average Canuck-leheads with bad hair, worse teeth and zero charisma.  Think of a heavy metal version of those dweebs from American Movie and that gives you a good idea of what to expect.  Lots of REAL rock stars like Slash and Scott Ian are seen talking about Anvil in the film’s early going and they’re quite interesting to listen to.  Maybe if the whole movie was about them TALKING about Anvil, it would’ve been good.

Save yourself 80 minutes and just watch Spinal Tap again.

My wife is nine months pregnant so she thought that renting this serio-comedy about a pair of clueless parents-to-be (John Kraskinski and Maya Rudolph) would be a good idea.  I thought the movie looked like total ass from the previews but being the dutiful husband I am, I agreed to watch it with her.  My gut instinct was right.  If there are any women reading this, you should know that my wife hated it too.

The premise of the movie is that the couple jet off to various cities to see which place would be best to raise their embryonic girl.  They run into their bizarre ass weirdo friends who are themselves parents that spout out crazy shit about their kids while the couple just kinda nods politely.  Eventually they learn that home is where the heart is… gag.

Just about everyone in this flick from Krasinski’s parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) to his whacked out breastfeeding cousin (Maggie Gyllenhaal), says the most random, idiotic verbal diarrhea you’ve ever heard in your entire life.  It’s as if the screenwriters were all hopped up on Salvia-D when they wrote this moronic gibberish.  What pissed me off about this movie was that most of the harsh language was said in front of (or sometimes directed to) little kids.  For example, one woman constantly calls her overweight daughter a “dyke” and tells her to make a “butch face”.  How come someone didn’t get on the phone to Social Services ASAP?  Who talks like this in front of their kids?  Seriously? 

Director Sam Mendes used to make good movies like American Beauty and Road to Perdition.  I think it’s best for the civilized world if we never let Sam within a hundred yards of a movie camera ever again.  I will admit that the film gets better as it goes along (the further away the couple got from their family, the better it got) and the ending almost worked.  If only the first 75 minutes hadn’t been so grating, Away We Go may have had a chance. 

I was kinda excited to see American Ninja 4:  The Annihilation (or as excited as one can be to see a movie called American Ninja 4:  The Annihilation) because it promised the on screen pairing of the original American Ninja, Michael Dudikoff and his replacement from Part 3, David Bradley.  The problem is; it takes 45 minutes for Dudikoff to show up.  What’s worse is that he and Bradley don’t appear on screen together until about the 80 minute mark.

The plot has a bunch of Red Ninjas kidnapping a team of Delta Forcers on an island owned by an evil British colonel and a demented sheik.  American Ninja Sean (Bradley) gets sent in to rescue them but he too gets captured.  Then it’s up to American Ninja Joe (Dudikoff) to get off his ass (he’s been spending his days in the Peace Corps) and rescue the guys who were sent in to rescue the guys. 

American Ninja 4 has all the obligatory fight scenes you’d come to expect from the series, just on a smaller scale and budget.  There is plenty of Ninja-starring, karate chopping, and the ever popular arrow catching.  (A one point, Dudikoff even catches one with his teeth!)  This one also incorporates some new stuff like bullet dodging (long before Neo made it chic), but it doesn’t stray too far from the beaten path.  We also get to see such sights as commandos in combat fatigues going up against an army of Ninjas and a pretty good bar fight in which a tubby guy gets kicked onto a pool table that collapses.  My favorite part had to be the funny Ninja training sequence in which a Ninja falls gonads first onto a beam lined with broken glass.

I’m proud to say that Dudikoff has come a long way from the first American Ninja movie.  In that film, he was totally unconvincing in his fight scenes, but here he is quite good.  His roadside Ninja swordfight is done relatively stuntman free and he actually looks like he knows how to use a katana for once.  He also gets a good fight scene where he battles several Road Warrior rejects in a gravel pit.  Dudikoff even manages to play a never-before-seen humorous side to his character during the part where he disguises himself as a priest to gain entrance into the villain’s secret lair.  I also dug the end scene where he casually tossed a grenade on his fallen enemy, effectively turning him into yesterday’s lasagna.

American Ninja 4 is not great by any stretch of the imagination but it’s competently done and immensely watchable.  Although it loses major points for not having Dudikoff show up until the second half and giving Bradley very little to do (he’s tied up for most the movie) it’s much better than the previous installment.  Had the filmmakers chose to really make Dudikoff and Bradley a team instead of having them only say ten words to each other throughout the whole movie; American Ninja 4 could’ve easily been the best film of the series.  If you’re in desperate need of a 99 minute low budget Ninja fix, you can certainly do a lot worse.

The villain gets all the best lines of the movie.  Just before he executes somebody he says, “Tell my friend the Devil, I’m not ready to come home yet!”  His funniest line is when he gets in Bradley’s face and yells, “You American fuck!  I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget for the rest of your life; which I’m happy to say won’t be very long!”

A nuclear physicist works at Los Alamos perfecting formulas that lead to the creation of the atomic bomb.  When the Russkies hear about his top secret work, they kidnap his son and demand that he hand over all of his notes as ransom.  The Feds intervene and work together with the good doctor to get his son back and stop the scheming spies.

The Atomic City is a competently made, yet thoroughly unmemorable and unspectacular Cold War thriller.  Yeah, this movie might have worked in the midst of Cold War paranoia but I was left unmoved by the whole thing.  I mean I watched this damned movie because I thought it was going to be about an “Atomic City”.  Unfortunately that just happens to be the town’s nickname because of all of the atomic testing and whatnot.  The bitter actuality is that the flick is just a stuffy and sometimes dull kidnapping melodrama. 

On the plus side, Gene (War of the Worlds) Barry delivers a fine performance as the physicist father trying to get his boy back from the spy ring.  There was a pretty cool opening showing us the inner workings of Los Alamos as well.  If low budget B Movies about the Red Scare are your cup of tea, you’ll dig it, I’m sure.  I still say it would’ve been a lot better if an A-Bomb got dropped on somebody or if a spider ran through the atomic test site and grew to enormous proportions but that’s just me I guess.

Sean (David Bradley) saw his dad killed at a martial arts tournament when he was a little boy.  After his father’s death, his manager takes Sean in and moves to Japan where he trains him to be a Ninja.  When his sensei gets kidnapped by a terrorist named Cobra (Mausoleum’s Marjoe Gortner); Sean teams up with his pal Jackson (series regular Steve James) to save him.  While infiltrating Cobra’s hideout, Sean gets injected with a deadly poison by his arch-nemesis.  He then must use his Ninja powers of mediation to purify his body of the toxin so he can Kung Fu the Hell out of Cobra.

You know, while I was writing this plot summary, something occurred to me:  Sean never rescues his sensei in the end!  He just roundhouses the villain to the face and then walks off into the sunset with Jackson.  I’ll just assume that he saved his sensei for the time being because what kind of American Ninja would he be if he didn’t.

American Ninja 3:  Blood Hunt doesn’t feel like a real American Ninja movie because of the conspicuous lack of Michael Dudikoff.  Steve James does return to remind you that it’s tenuously connected to the previous films.  That’s like making Indiana Jones 3 without Harrison Ford and calling it Short Round and the Last Crusade though. 

David Bradley is an OK substitute for Michael Dudikoff I suppose.  At all times he looks like he has an ice cream headache and doesn’t have much in the way of screen charisma.  He’s not bad in the fighting department though so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.  In fact I actually kind of missed Bradley a little bit when he was knocked out of commission by the deadly toxin.  I mean he’s not great or anything but when a good chunk of the flick was just James, the dumbass blonde karate chopper, and the female Ninja trying to rescue him, the movie really falters and begins circling the drain.

On the action front, I will say there are a lot of Kung Fu fight scenes in this movie.  They aren’t really well choreographed or anything but there is a lot of them, so that’s good.  I mean there’s an underwater Ninja fight scene, which is something you don’t see everyday.

The action that doesn’t revolve around dudes in black pajamas is thoroughly inexcusable.  The inane motorized hang gliding scene has to be one of the sorriest action “sequences” ever devised.  The people flying the mechanized gliders are clearly stunt doubles and no attempt is made to make them look like the actors as they wear helmets and masks that cover their face.  Their dialogue is also horribly dubbed in, which is a further tip-off.  The editing in this scene is particularly atrocious.  The scene concludes when the glider lands in the back of the truck but we never see it actually land.  All we get is one lousy shot of its wheel landing on the bed and that’s it!  I hope the makers of those stupid hang gliders paid a pretty penny for their gratuitous product placement.

As dumb as much of American Ninja 3:  Blood Hunt is, I can’t bring myself to completely hate any movie in which it’s main character cures himself of a deadly disease solely through the power of meditation while being surrounded by a beam of white angelic light.  That shit had me in fucking stitches.  And wait until you hear the song, “The Cobra Strikes” that plays over the end credits.

Bradley returned the next year for American Ninja 4:  The Annihilation.

The original American Ninja movie had moments of WTF nuttiness sprinkled throughout your standard-issue Ninja flick.  Despite having flashes of cinematic craziness, it still desperately tried to pass itself off as a “real” movie and not a ridiculous Cannon action cheesefest.  American Ninja 2:  The Confrontation thankfully does away with any pretension and just gives us a balls-to-the-wall bat shit insane Ninja movie.

This time out, American Ninja Joe (Michael Dudikoff) and his buddy Jackson (Steve James) get a job guarding an Embassy on a remote tropical island.  It seems that a lot of guards have been mysteriously disappearing, so the duo investigates.  They learn that a drug dealer has blackmailed a scientist searching for a cure for cancer into using his genetic research to turn the missing soldiers into an army of biologically engineering super ninjas.

I’m all for utter zaniness and reckless abandon whenever you’re writing a Ninja movie but someone should’ve stopped screenwriter Gary Conway when he got to the “biologically engineered super ninjas” part.  Once they are introduced, the movie breaks the Goofy Meter and becomes so fucking mind-numbingly idiotic that I honestly think I lost some IQ points just from watching it.  I mean the doctor’s lab features cryogenically frozen Ninjas stuffed in oversized test tubes for Pete’s sakes!  You don’t even see that kind of wacky shit in Ninja Turtles cartoons!

Even though the movie gets increasingly sillier as it goes along, I still thoroughly enjoyed myself.  The opening scenes were particularly great with Dudikoff hanging around the oceanfront base with a bunch of highly effeminate beach bums/Marines.  The first fifteen minutes are mostly spent on Dudikoff fighting Ninjas on the beach; which made me think the movie should’ve been called American Ninja 2:  Ninjas in Paradise.  The plot eventually dropped the travelogue aspect of the story and concentrated on the more Sci-Fi-ish type stuff.

The flick starts getting pretty stupid pretty fast near the end.  I mean there is one completely moronic scene where the bad guy shows some potential investors how great his new biologically engineered super-ninjas (BESN’s) are by giving them a demonstration of their skills.  Afterwards, he sends his right-hand man into the arena and he promptly kills like a dozen of the BESN’s.  Wouldn’t the fact that your personal bodyguard can easily kill your multi-million dollar BESN’s make your investors a bit worried?

There are also way too many comic relief moments involving James.  I know he’s the sidekick and everything but he really shouldn’t have to have so many stupid one-liners while kicking somebody’s ass.  The part where he knocks down a bunch of people at the same time and you hear the sound of bowling pins on the soundtrack is the comedic low point of the film.

As many flaws as American Ninja 2 has; I can’t help but like it.  As in the first movie, this one features some head-scratching logic that made me laugh out loud on numerous occasions.  Like how all of Dudikoff’s Marine cronies dressed “undercover” as Hawaiian shirt-wearing surfer dudes.  They looked especially idiotic because they still sported their military buzz cuts and never bothered to cover up their blatantly obvious Special Forces tattoos.  And how about the opening scene in which a bunch of drunks roll some unsuspecting soldiers in a bar.  It’s kinda odd when you think about it because it’s usually the other way around.  There were lots of little moments of cinematic hilarity like this that made the flick so much fun. 

Most of these goofy scenes revolve around the villains.  For example, the main bad guy was called “The Lion” but his real name was “Leo”.  That was so dumb that I had to laugh.  I also liked the Bond movie scene where the hero disguised himself and took a tour of the villain’s secret multi-million dollar facility where he told him all about his operation too.  Then where was the bad guys’ great dialogue that conveniently allows them to say the title of the movie; like when the right-hand man says, “That damn American Ninja, he fights like a tiger!”  The funniest moment though is when The Lion meets Joe for the first time and says, “American Ninja… I presume.”

Director Sam Firstenberg does a much better job on the action side of things than in the previous film.  This was his fourth Ninja Movie (after Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja 3:  The Domination, and American Ninja), so he pretty much knew how to film all the spears shoved through the ribcages, face slashing, ninja stars to the forehead, blow-darts to the face, ninjas being set on fire, and knives to the neck this sort of thing requires.  The action sequences are a lot more competently staged this time around and are filmed with a lot more energy.  Really, it’s just one big Ninja free for all as it’s basically Michael Dudikoff beating the bejabbers out of dudes in black pajamas for 90 minutes.

Speaking of Dudikoff; he’s a lot more credible in his action scenes too, although he still relies on an obvious stunt double occasionally.  He seems to have gotten used to the whole “acting” thing as well and carries himself much better in this outing.  For whatever reason, he declined to return for 89’s American Ninja 3 but came back to the series for Part 4.

Thirty years earlier, screenwriter Gary Conway made his acting debut as the monster in the immortal I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.  Luckily, he writes as good as he acts.  I think my favorite line of dialogue had to be when Dudikoff’s superior got mad and yelled, “This is really beginning to get on my tits!”

Zoe Bell’s enthusiastic performance was one of the best things about Grindhouse.  She had a genuine charisma that made her really stand out from the pack of foxy females in the cast.  Since there hasn’t been a worthy straight-to-DVD female action heroine since Cynthia Rothrock hung up her black belt, Bell seemed like a natural to pick up the mantle.  Her first foray into the straight-to-DVD market, Angel of Death has it’s moments but is an ill-suited vehicle for the stuntwoman-turned-action heroine.

Bell plays a ruthless assassin who takes the assignment of offing some rich scumbag.  The job goes wrong and Bell ends up getting a knife stuck in her head.  She doesn’t really mind though and completes her assignment anyway.  After her fidgety doctor (Doug Jones from Pan’s Labyrinth) removes the knife from her skull, Bell begins having visions of her past victims who toment her into murdering her employer so they can have their revenge.

What made Bell’s performance in Grindhouse so great was that she was more or less playing herself and it looked like she was having a ball.  In Angel of Death, her character is bitter, morose and not very likable.  Since her personality doesn’t exactly fit her character, it’s hard to really root for her.

A big part of the movie’s problem is Ed Brubaker’s script.  He’s a big name in the comics field but he still has a thing or two to learn when it comes to writing a real movie.  The plotting is clunky, the dialogue is flat, and the characters are paper thin.  That’s okay in a comic book I guess but this is a movie we’re talking about here.  (Sure, it’s a straight-to-DVD movie but still.)  The director (some hack) even throws in some cheesy looking comic bookish paneling every now and then to emphasize the fact that the flick is more or less just some half-assed wannabe comic book.  The result is pretty weak.

I don’t think all that hokum would’ve been so bad had the movie had a bunch of action.  Sadly, Bell gets precious few opportunities to show off her Kung Fu prowess.  To add insult to injury, most of the gun battles have Made-for-TV written all over them.  Also, the whole subplot where Zoe sees dead people doesn’t really work.  I mean what the Hell is this, The Sixth Sense Meets Bloodfist 6?  Another thing that really seals the movie’s fate is the pacing, which is all over the place.  Although it runs just a scant 78 minutes, it feels a lot longer than that.

Angel of Death does have a few brief glimpses of fun though.  In addition to the knife-in-the-head thing, there is a great scene where a gangster holds his father’s wake at a strip club.  Had the movie contained a few more moments of inspiration like that, it could’ve been worthwhile.

Lucy Lawless, who Bell stunt doubled for on Xena:  Warrior Princess also shows up in a small role.

Director William Girdler has made some good movies like Three on a Meathook, Sheba Baby, and Grizzly.  He’s also made some not-so good movies like Abby, Day of the Animals, and The Manitou.  Asylum of Satan is his all time worst.  It should’ve been called Asylum of Shit.

Lucina (Carla Borelli) has a breakdown and is put into the care of the mysterious Dr. Specter (Charles Kissinger).  She doesn’t know why she’s in his rundown old asylum or why everyone in the cafeteria wears white Satanist gowns.  Lucina’s fiancée tries to get the cops to search the place but they naturally don’t believe anything’s gone wrong.  After a couple of patients end up being sacrificed to Satan, Lucina finally starts to realize that she’s in line to be the doctor’s ultimate offering to The Dark One.

Asylum of Satan is one big long snoozer of a horror flick that features terrible performances, atrocious cinematography, and predictable plot twists.  It also contains the most obvious man-in-drag in the history of cinema.  The only thing the flick has going for it is the murder sequences.  One paraplegic chick gets attacked by spiders, a mute gets burned to death, and a blind gal gets attacked by snakes while swimming.  (Does this movie hate the disabled or what?)  If you do make it through to the end without falling asleep, you’ll be sure to get a chuckle out of the ridiculous looking Satan that looks like it was cobbled together with Play-Doh.

Michael Dudikoff stars as a GI named Joe who rescues his colonel’s daughter (Judie Aronson from Friday the 13^th Part 4) from some kidnappers using his lightning fast Kung Fu skills.  Joe suffers from amnesia so he doesn’t know why he’s so good at the ninja arts but at least he can dodge bullets by somersaulting and turn everyday household objects like tire irons and garden hoses into deadly weapons. 

Most of the time though he’s content to just let his stunt double do all the hard stuff (like clumsily jumping through some lattice work).

Eventually Joe finds out that the colonel is in cahoots with the bad guys so he teams up with his buddy (Steve James from The Exterminator) to Kung Fu a bunch of motherfuckers.  Then a Japanese landscaper clues Joe in on his forgotten past (he taught him to be ninja when he was a kid).  Now that Joe knows he’s a ninja, he dons some black pajamas and proceeds to kick the shit out of some more motherfuckers.

American Ninja is one heck of a lamebrained action movie but it goes down pretty smooth.  It also suffers from a severe bout of schizophrenia.  Often times, director Sam (Breakin’ 2:  Electric Bugaloo) Firstenberg plays things seriously.  For the first hour or so, the film is very laid back and the plot slowly builds in a coherent manner.  There are brief glimpses of random nuttiness (Dudikoff puts a bucket on his head at one point; sort of like the scene in Star Wars where Luke practices against the target droid with his blast shield down), although nothing too out of the ordinary. 

Then about 75 minutes in, American Ninja really cuts loose and starts to fire on all cylinders.  Once Joe trades in his Army fatigues for black ninja pajamas, the movie cooks in crazy-as-an-outhouse-rat fashion.  Let me clue you in on just how nutty things get:  Before Joe fights the evil “Black Star Ninja”; he must compete side by side with him in a ninja obstacle course.  If that wasn’t crazy enough, the Black Star Ninja also has the power to shoot flames from his wrists and can fire laser beams out of his knuckles!

Firstenberg treats this with no explanation whatsoever.  He merely filmed it and said “Cut” afterwards.  Almost as if we, the audience were SUPPOSED to already know that laser beams were standard issue ninja equipment nowadays. 

If that wasn’t loony enough, I’m pretty sure there was a scene where a ninja disappeared for no apparent reason.  And I don’t mean “disappeared” as in he dropped his little smoke bombs and ran away as the smoke cleared either.  I mean this motherfucker disappeared Obi-Wan Kenobi style.  Slow-Mo fade fashion.  Am I crazy?  Did I dream that part?  

If Firstenberg kept this level of I Don’t Believe My Eyes level of WTF-ness going throughout the entire movie, I honestly believe American Ninja would’ve been a classic.  Unfortunately the rest of the film isn’t quite goofy enough to be considered bat shit insane, nor is it exactly competent enough to be called quality action.  A lot of the early action sequences are flat and suffer from a claustrophobic setting (they mostly take place on or around the same Army base) and/or are just inferior rip-offs (like the scene involving an Army truck that blatantly steals from Raiders of the Lost Ark).

I’m torn because I want to really like American Ninja but its tone was just way too out of whack.  For every well done fight scene (the scene where Dudikoff fights off some ninjas in a warehouse ain’t too shabby), there is a scene of utter stupidity that makes you doubt your sanity (like when the bad guy’s Jeep runs off the road and barely nudges a tree then blows up).  I think a big part as to why the film falls just short of becoming a classic is Michael Dudikoff.  The man is clearly not a karate expert and he isn’t much of an actor either.  He also has the screen presence of a cantaloupe to boot.  If the film had a star that was either a legit fighter (like Bloodsport era Van Damme) OR who could do all this silly stuff in a tongue-in-cheek manner (like Brandon Lee in Showdown in Little Tokyo), it might’ve worked.  

American Ninja has plenty of action and isn’t boring, so that’s a plus.  Although it’s no classic, it’s still a better than your average Cannon flick that’s for damn sure.  Four sequels followed.

I was way too young to attend the infamous New York swinger's nightclub, Plato’s Retreat during it's heyday in the late 70's, but this documentary made the place look like a lot of fun.  Basically this guy Larry Levenson opened it up so lots of horny New Yorkers could fuck their brains out.  That is to say the man is brilliant.  Why hasn’t New York named a street after this guy?

Anyway, this doc chronicles the rise (disco, porn stars, and cocaine) and fall (the AIDS scare, prostitution, and cocaine) of the club from the 70’s to the 80’s.  After going to jail, Levenson ended up overweight, living in a basement, and driving a cab before dying of a heart attack at age 62.  That’s no way for a legend to go.

Even though a lot of porn stars (Jamie Gillis, Ron Jeremy, Fred Lincoln) and celebs (Buck Henry, Melvin Van Peebles, Ed Koch) are interviewed, it’s the real people that frequented Plato’s who have the best stories.  Old TV ads for Plato’s Retreat and (semi-hot) archived footage of people fucking in the club also add to the fun.  If the movie has a weakness, it’s that the filmmakers couldn’t decide whether to focus their attention on the club or on Levenson.  They try to cover both and as a result, the flick goes back and forth a little too much.  It’s not really a bad thing since the guy is pretty entertaining (especially when he’s interviewed by Phil Donahue).  It’s just that I think he was so interesting that he deserved his own documentary.

Best line:  “Levenson was riding a runaway tiger… of sex!”

The last Steven Seagal flick I saw was Half Past Dead, which as you will all remember, was his last theatrically distributed film.  Ever since, the man has been toiling in the direct-to-DVD market, churning out films that (to me at least) looked more or less interchangeable.  Until now.  Against the Dark marks the first time that Seagal has gone up against the supernatural, which was more than enough reason for me to officially lift my seven year embargo on the man’s films. 

The plot is basically a mishmash of I Am Legend and Blade.  After a virus turns everybody into vampires… well, wait… they’re actually more like zombies since they eat guts, but… uh, never mind.  Where was I, oh yeah the vamp… err… zombies… wait, one character calls them “mutants” so maybe that’s a better description for them.  So anyway, these mutants have pretty much taken over the world, leaving only a few remaining survivors who are trapped in an abandoned hospital.  While they desperately try to escape the city before an impending military air strike that will “sanitize’ the area, a group of “Hunters” led by Tao (Seagal) go around the city wielding samurai swords chopping up zombies… err… mutants and saving lives.

Look, since the monsters in this movie aren’t exactly vampires and they aren’t exactly mutants and they aren’t exactly zombies, I’m just going to refer to them as VMZ’s for now on.

The bizarre thing about this movie is that Seagal is barely even in it.  I’d say that out of the 93 minute running time, he’s in less than 20 minutes of actual footage.  (And that’s not counting his obvious stunt double.)  Most of the action concerns the group of survivors endlessly wandering around the hospital with Seagal only popping up occasionally to save somebody’s bacon and to slash the shit out of a VMZ.  What’s even funnier is that Seagal usually only says about two or three lines in any given scene before exiting and even then, his dialogue is mostly dubbed in after the fact.

Man I knew Steve got fat in recent years but he is downright huge in this one.  We’re talking Brando big here.  In all of his scenes Seagal wears a black leather trench coat.  At first I thought that he was just mimicking Wesley Snipes’ wardrobe from Blade, but actually he’s only wearing it so you can’t tell how much weight he’s put on.  To further hide his enormity, Seagal also keeps his hands around his midsection throughout most of his brief screen time.  In a lot of scenes, his face is hidden in shadows to disguise his bloated (and bored) appearance.  Director Richard Crudo (who was the director of photography for Seagal’s Out of Reach and Pistol Whipped) also has to edit all of Seagal’s action scenes to mere snippets to hide the fact that at 58, the man just can’t cut it as an action hero anymore.  

Against the Dark may not work as a classic example of how to make a Steven Seagal picture, but it’s a decent enough straight-to-DVD horror flick I guess.  The gore is plentiful as there is an abundance of gut ripping and arterial spray on display, and we even get a decapitated head or two as well.  When he’s not butchering the action scenes, Crudo does get to throw in a few memorable horrific bits.  There’s a nasty scene in which a girl files her teeth into fangs that would give any dentist nightmares as well as a semi-interesting subplot about a non-infected guy who feeds humans to his VMZ daughter.

If Seagal had been in his prime fighting vampires Blade 2 style, Against the Dark may have been a worthy entry in the star’s oeuvre.  As it is, it’s just an uneven, lukewarm mess with intermittent moments of inspiration.  Of Seagal’s limited dialogue, the line, “I’m the motherfucker who’s going to do to you what you did to them!” was my favorite.

A wealthy black doctor and his family move in to an all white community and face racism from their neighbors who picket their house, throw trash on their lawn and eviscerate the family cat.  The good doctor refuses to relocate and continues to work in his basement laboratory to perfect his new serum that makes rabbits indestructible!  A badass black militant with no eyebrows named Abar (Tobar Mayo) offers to act as a bodyguard to the family and beats up a lot of white thugs who loiter around the house.  When the hateful honkies kill the doctor’s young son, he uses the serum on Abar, and in addition to making him indestructible, it also gives him ESP powers.  Abar first uses his power to make a difference in the ghetto.  He causes racist white cops to fight each other, turns winos’ booze into milk, and gives hookers Kung Fu powers to beat up their abusive pimps.  In the end, he returns to the doctor’s house to get revenge on the white neighbors by infesting their houses with snakes, rats, and worms; forcing them to learn an invaluable lesson:  Racism is BAD.

Abar:  The Black Superman is kinda like Petey Wheatstraw:  The Devil’s Son in Law and Soul Vengeance in that it’s one of the most bizarre blaxploitation movies I’ve ever seen.  It’s not nearly as mind-bogglingly bat shit insane as those flicks, but they are definitely kindred spirits.  (The scene where Abar walks around the ghetto using his powers for good is almost exactly like the one in Petey Wheatstraw.)

What sets Abar apart from most of the blaxploitation flicks is its positive message of non-violence.  There are also a lot more messages hidden not so subtly (like wealthy blacks should give back to the ghetto) in there too.  The problem is that there is way too much heavy handed preaching during the first part of the movie and not enough of Abar using his psychic powers for revenge.  I mean he doesn’t even drink the serum until 70 minutes into the film!  Luckily, the last half hour of the flick features enough cheesy goodness to make it worth a look.

AKA:  Abar:  The First Black Superman.  AKA:  In Your Face.

A college grad (Jesse Eisenberg) who is desperately strapped for cash gets a summer job at the titular amusement park.  Over the summer, he befriends most of the motley crew of misfits and oddballs who work at the park and eventually falls in love with a doe-eyed, moon-faced chick with a chin the size of North Dakota (the doe-eyed, moon-faced chick with a chin the size of North Dakota from that Twilight garbage).  Of course, the heartless little bitch is screwing an older married guy (Ryan Reynolds) and breaks the poor dude's heart.

OK, this review is coming from someone who spent ages 14-22 working on the boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland so I can attest the scary accuracy of how director Greg Mottola depicts the highs and lows that come from working a dead end summer job.  Unlike Mottola's previous film, Superbad; Adventureland is not a comedy.  At least not to me anyways.  To me, this was a brutal, uncompromising documentary of what it's like to work a dead end summer job.  Seriously, I knew every single one of the supporting characters in some way shape or form.  I lived through everything that Eisenberg's character did.  I worked, partied, listened to The New York Dolls, worked, drank (although I didn't smoke pot), listened to The Rolling Stones, fell in love with a moon-faced chick, worked, drank some more, listened to Lou Reed, made out with said moon-faced chick, partied, got my heart stomped on by the moon-faced chick, drank on the job, didn't go to school because I had to buy a new car, partied and worked some more. 

To me there was nothing remotely funny about any of this.  Folks, I go to the movies to escape, not to dredge up the past.  Why should I watch this movie when I already lived it? 

Like Waiting (which also featured Reynolds), this movie is eerily accurate in just about every way.  Whereas Waiting had more comic relief and exaggerated several things, Adventureland contains very few laughs and pulls no punches when it comes to stark realism of what it's like to work at a dead end summer job.  This is a movie about the pain and misery of growing up and getting your heart broken while working alongside druggies, weirdoes, and dickheads.  I will say that Mottola tries to lighten things up by throwing in a "happy" ending at the last minute, but it rings false in light of the realistic tone of the previous 100 minutes or so.

Nearly all of the supporting performances are great.  Bill Hader shines in every scene he's in as the over-enthusiastic boss.  Too bad he's not in more of the movie.  Hader really needs to stop popping up in these small roles and get himself his own starring vehicle PDQ.  Martin Starr is equally amusing as Eisenberg's morose co-worker and Matt Bush is great as the kid who always hits people in the nuts.  On the downside, the leads are awful.  Eisenberg goes overboard trying to act like Michael Cera that it gets downright annoying after awhile.  Honestly, if you couldn't get Michael Cera for your movie, then just deal with it.  Don't make this guy try to imitate him.  Also, that doe-eyed, moon-faced chick with a chin the size of North Dakota was thoroughly grating as the love interest.  I might be biased because she bears more than a passing resemblance to my ex, but this chick got on my damn nerves.  (Although to be fair, I had more problems with her character more than with her, but still.)

As a comedy, Adventureland is an utter misfire.  I think I laughed maybe once throughout the entire movie.  (The running joke about the constant Falco music.)  No Stars in that department.  But as a documentary, it excels as an uncompromising, hellacious vision of how summer jobs suck and how doe-eyed, moon-faced chicks with chins the size of North Dakota can cheat on you and piss on your heart; so Four Stars for that.  Splitting the difference, I give it a Two Star rating. 

Adventureland is not a Feel Good Movie.  It is a Feel Real Movie.  You really feel everything the character feels.  The problem with that is it just feels too real to be called "entertaining".

This is one of those movies like Deliverance where you watch it once and once is enough because it's so harrowing, traumatic, and stomach-churning. 

I missed out on the whole local television market Horror Movie Host craze but I always had a blast watching cable TV’s Joe Bob Briggs’ Drive-In Theater, Commander USA’s Groovy Movies, and Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Luckily, there are a lot of people who do remember the good old days of local horror movie hosts and they were kind enough to give their two cents worth on the phenomenon for this documentary.  You get to see interviews from such hosts like Vampira (the late Maila Nurmi, who was also in Plan 9 from Outer Space), Zacherle (who had a cameo in Frankenhooker), “Chilly” Billy Cardille (who had a small role in Night of the Living Dead), Count Gore De Vol, and many more.  The most time is spent on the reigning king of Cleveland horror hosts, Ghoulardi (Ernie Anderson, father of director Paul Thomas Anderson).

Most of the interviews and old footage is great to see but I was a little disappointed by the film’s structure.  There is no strong narrative and a lot of the interviews ramble on too long.  I was particularly grieved to see that no time was spent on either Commander USA or Joe Bob (who are both interviewed at least), although I understand because they were nationally syndicated.  MST3K is also discussed (for about a minute that is) and die hard Misties will be glad to know that series creator Joel Hodgson is interviewed as well. 

While it may not be the final word on Horror Movie Hosts, American Scary sure is a lot of fun that makes for a brisk walk down memory lane to a simpler time where late night TV meant fun; not infomercials.

Porn Queen Supreme Marilyn Chambers stars in this godawful and excruciatingly unfunny softcore James Bond spoof.  Marilyn plays Angel, an undercover (a-hem) agent who works for a secret organization whose mission is to stop a mad genius from trying to take over the world using sound waves.  Along the way she falls in love with her nerdy partner and fucks a bunch of androids until they short circuit.  In the end, the bad guy gets away, which sets things up for a sequel that (THANK GOD) never happened.  

This movie blows its wad (no pun intended) during the first five minutes.  We get a pretty awesome James Bond style opening credit sequence where Marilyn practices Kung Fu completely naked.  Marilyn also gets naked a few more times throughout the film as does her co-star Mary (Rock n’ Roll High School) Woronov, who plays a bisexual agent that gets into a mud wrestling match and falls in love with a female android. 

While both ladies look great naked, the rest of the movie is totally worthless.  All of the comedy is cringe-inducing and mostly revolve around unfunny in-jokes about Marilyn’s past.  (She even sings “Green Door” at one point.)  The tepid sex scenes are nowhere near as good as Insatiable but then again, what do you expect when Marilyn doesn’t put out on camera?

The biggest crime the movie commits is that it’s boring as all get out.  It’s about as much fun as watching your dog take a shit.  (Actually, I can honestly say that watching your dog take a shit is infinitely more fun than watching this flick because my dog took a shit in the snow today and it was kinda fascinating watching it steam up and slowly sink into the snow.)

Look fast for porn star Randy West in a small stupid role.

AKA:  Angel from H.E.A.T.  AKA:  The Protectors, Book 1.

Perennial tough guy Michael (Reservoir Dogs) Madsen made his film debut in this unintentionally uproarious Pro-Christianity movie about the dangers of alcoholism.  Now I’m a sucker for flicks that feature my favorite movie stars in roles before they were famous and in that respect, Against All Hope is a blast.  It also works as a hilariously over-earnest melodramatic way too; much like a cheesy After School Special.  I think this flick was made by and for recovering alcoholics who accepted Christ into their lives and for all I know, this may have even been shown during AA meetings too.  All I can say is don’t have a few stiff drinks before checking this flick out or you’ll be on the floor rolling with laughter.

The film centers on the life of Cecil Moe (Madsen), a drunk who yells at his wife and neglects his kids.  One night Cecil feels extremely suicidal and picks a priest out of the phone book (!), calls him up, and drags him out of bed so he can relate his life story.  Flashbacks reveal that a teenaged Cecil was grief stricken when his mother died.  To make matters worse, the bitchy nurse, who was hired to look after his invalid mother, ended up marrying his father and reveled in making his life a living Hell.  Cecil ended up running away to join the Navy and after his father died, Cecil took up drinking and never stopped.

Filmed in 1982 (it looks more like 1962), Against All Hope is a laugh riot from start to finish.  I’m sure that’s not exactly what the filmmakers intended, but even though their intentions were in the right place, their overly melodramatic handling of the material sends the flick straight off the Goofy Meter.  Try not to laugh during the following moments:

• The funny Reefer Madness style scene where Madsen wigs out from the D.T.’s. 

• The slow motion shots of a happy teenage Madsen riding his horse, whose name is “Peanuts”.  Yes, PEANUTS!

• The bitchy nurse who becomes a wicked stepmother and has a tendency of throwing people down stairs.  I thought it was a bit much when she threw Cecil down a flight of stairs, but I just about peed myself when she threw HIS FATHER down the stairs too.  (Seriously, WHO DOES THAT!?!)

• The wicked stepmother thing was hard to swallow, but on top of that, she’s given dialogue like, “What do you expect from a boy whose best friend is his horse?”

• And speaking of hysterical dialogue, get a load of the scene where Cecil’s nagging wife pours his booze down the sink and he laments, “You just threw my best friend down the drain!”  My brain still hasn’t quite recovered from that one.

• Or the contrived way Cecil falls off the wagon.  (He walks into the bar to pay his bar tab, but the patrons won’t let him leave until he takes a drink.)

• Or the hilarious scene where Cecil goes to a doctor for help and he tells Cecil his diagnosis while lighting up a cigarette!

• And wait until you see the scene where Cecil sells his wife’s brand new car for $150 to buy booze.

• If you think that’s funny though, check out the part when Cecil hocks the toaster to buy cough medicine for his sick kid, but ends up buying booze instead!

• Or Cecil’s breakdown in front of a bathroom mirror:  “I hate you!  Why did God bring you into this world anyway?”

• But nothing and I mean nothing will prepare you for the side-splitting final shot of the movie in which Cecil successfully walks past a bar without going inside and triumphantly leaps in the air and the screen freezes just like Rocky!  Unbelievable.   

So yeah, the flick doesn’t work at all like it’s supposed to.  What was originally conceived as a harrowing tale of alcoholism and redemption through Christ, actually contains more laughs that your average Jim Carrey movie.  The overdramatic music really sells each schmaltzy moment and adds to the fun. 

Is the flick any good?  No way Jose.  The narrative is choppy as all get out and the script is hopelessly contrived.  Still, I laughed more at this movie than most comedies I’ve seen this year, so that’s at least worth something in my book.

The real Cecil Moe also co-wrote the script and co-stars as the priest.  I hope the shittiness of the film didn’t drive him to drink.

AKA:  One for the Road.

Susan Sarandon plays this down-on-her-luck waitress who works in an oyster bar who has big dreams of being a blackjack dealer.  Her life soon starts to spin out of control when her ex-husband (Robert Joy, from Death Wish 5) shows up with her sister, who he knocked up.  Susan stupidly lets them stay the night, but he’s got some shady ideas like selling a bunch of coke that he ripped off from some hoods from Philadelphia.  He turns to Susan’s next door neighbor (Burt Lancaster) who runs the numbers in the ghetto to help him sell the drugs, mostly because he thinks he’s a gangster from “The Old Days”. The truth of the matter is that Burt never was much of a hoodlum (although he tells everybody he was) and when the opportunity arises to do some gangster shit FOR REAL, he jumps on it   From there, things get messy.  The dudes from Philly show up and stab Joy to death and Burt uses that opportunity to get into Susan’s pants and do some more wannabe gangster stuff like popping caps in people, Old School style.

Director Louis Malle’s pacing shuffles along at its own leisure, but that’s okay because that allows you to savor the fine performances.  The strength of the movie really comes from the rich characters and how their lives intertwine with each other.  Lancaster is especially winning as the old timer who gets a special twinkle in his eyes once he finally gets to gun some people down, and Joy is appropriately sleazy as the fuck-up brother.  Sarandon is also very good and the scene where she rubs her titties with lemons is quite memorable. 

The actual city of Atlantic City is a character in its own right and the decay and destitution of the once great city perfectly mirrors Lancaster’s character’s past.  Even though the film takes its sweet old time to get going, and has probably one or two unnecessary passages, I still liked it.  Besides, any movie that contains a random ass appearance by Robert Goulet is OK by me.

I like the Anaconda movies almost as much as I like movies with the number 3 in it, so I was game for this Direct-to-Sci-Fi Channel sequel.  Now I know that I am breaking my self imposed moratorium on Sci-Fi Channel Originals by watching this flick, but goddamn it, any movie that features a hungry Anaconda, the number 3, AND David Muthafuckin’ Hasselhoff is worthy of my time.  The first Anaconda had a reliable hodgepodge of veteran actors and up-and-coming stars, the second flick had… Morris Chestnut.  In Part 3, we got the Hoff and that’s all we really need.

The plot has John Rhys-Davies using extracts from Blood Orchid to create a cure for cancer in an underground lab.   He shoots up a giant anaconda with the serum with the hopes that its offspring will hold the secrets to the cure.  Predictably the snake gets loose and John’s got to send the Hoff out into the woods to find it.

The reviews I read about this movie were all pretty scathing and had me prepared for the worst.  I don’t know if it was the lowered expectations or what, but I kinda dug Anaconda 3.  It wasn’t Mega Snake or anything but it got the job done.  Honestly, what were all the reviewers expecting from a direct-to-Sci-Fi Channel sequel to Anaconda?  It’s not like its Chinatown or anything.

What really bothered me was that reviewers said that this flick “had no connection to the first two movies”.  HELLO… in the second scene of the movie, the weasly scientist guy tells Rhys-Davies about the Blood Orchid!  You remember the Blood Orchid, don’t you?  You know, the one from Anacondas:  Hunt for the BLOOD ORCHID!  Really folks, are you all smoking crack or something?  How could you forget about the fucking Blood Orchid?  And you call yourselves movie critics…

The flick suffers from being filmed on the cheap and has some pretty shoddy CGI, but I enjoyed myself more often than not on this one.  The thing that irritated me the most was the abundance of false scares.  Seriously, every five minutes somebody would whip around, the music would swell, and… it would be a goat or something instead of a bloodthirsty anaconda.  Also, the movie kinda petered out near the end when it should’ve been heating up.  I must commend director Don E. (Today You Die) FauntLeRoy for not overdoing it on the Snake Cam POV shots though.

The best thing that can be said about Anaconda 3 is that it tops it’s predecessors in the gore department.  It’s actually one of the goriest Sci-Fi flicks I think I’ve ever seen.  The giant snake bites heads off, impales people with its tail, rips off their faces, wraps itself around its victims and crushes them to death, swallows them whole and regurgitates their undigested bodies (a staple of the series). 

What really makes the movie though is the Hoff.  He’s great in this.  I particularly liked his barroom brawl scene.  He also gets all the best lines like: “Always know the animal before the hunt!”, “If you follow my lead, I’ll lead you right up the snake’s ass!”, and “I intend on getting a nice new pair of Anaconda snakeskin boots!”

AKA:  Anaconda 3:  Offspring.

Mickey Rourke crashes his motorcycle and becomes paralyzed from the neck down.  He gets emotionally distraught and pleads with his brother Ron Howard to end his misery.  Ronnie says OK and the next night he comes into the hospital with a sawed off shotgun and blows Mickey’s brains out.  Naturally, Ronnie gets arrested and there’s a big trial and lawyer Robert (Prophecy) Foxworth has to try to get him off so he can go back to painting houses.

You know what?  The first half an hour of this made-for-TV movie is pretty damn good.  Howard and Rourke have some genuine chemistry together and Mickey’s hospital scenes are quite moving.  Unfortunately, things slow way the fuck down once the trial begins.  

I didn’t mind the more maudlin aspects of the flick because the two leading performances really sold it.  Howard was coasting on his “Aw shucks” persona, but added a little bit more depth than usual.  Rourke is really the reason to watch it though.  Even at a young age, Rourke’s talent was evident and he’d soon go on to bigger and better things.  (Like boxing.)  Once Mickey’s head gets blown off though, things are pretty rough going.  Still, if you ever wanted to see Opie brandishing a sawed off shotgun and blowing away Mickey Rourke, here’s your chance.

Look fast for a young David (Married with Children) Faustino making his screen debut as Mickey’s young son.

A dude takes his best gal to the Drive-In to propose to her and they get into a big fight.  She ends up getting kidnapped by a greaser gang who try to rape her.  The chick’s boyfriend ends up in the hospital so he can’t protect her, so it’s up to her to defend her own snatch.  While the Drive-In audience looks on, she holds her attackers at gunpoint and forces them to beat the crap out of each other. 

This flick started out pretty good with some funny scenes of people making out (the tit count was fairly high) and a bumbling politician trying to bust a pot ring.  Once the whole street gang tried to rape the chick, the movie kinda went off the rails.  These scenes just didn’t work and felt like they belonged in another movie.

The Drive-In is a part of Americana that deserves its own movie.  Unfortunately, American Drive-In just doesn’t do the good old Drive-In justice.  The reason flick is mostly a failure is because it was written and directed by Krishna Shah, a dude from India who probably didn’t know dick about the Drive-In to begin with.  I did some looking online and could only find ONE damn Drive-In in all of India.  I’m sure that potential rapists that look like refugees from Sha-Na-Na are a dime a dozen at that Drive-In in India, but here in America, we don’t put up with that shit.  If he had called it Indian Drive-In and put in a bunch of those Bollywood style musical numbers, it might have worked.  As it is, the film is just not archetypical enough of the pure AMERICAN Drive-In experience to qualify it as a good flick.

The main chick gets the best line of the movie when she tells the gang leader, “You want to get into my pants?  Sorry, I already have one asshole in here!”

Dave Walker (Bruno VeSota) is a fat cuckold shopkeeper who hates the fact that his hot wife (Yvette Vickers) is cheating on him.  Since there are a bunch of overgrown leeches lurking around the swamp draining trappers of their blood, he decides to pull a shotgun on the lovers and force them to go swimming.  After the leeches attack their prey, they bring them back to their underwater cavern so the giant bloodsuckers can get nourishment whenever they want.  After a couple more deaths, the bland game warden (the bland Ken Clark) finally decides to dynamite the leeches back to the Stone Age.

Attack of the Giant Leeches was a no-frills cheapie produced by Roger Corman that appeared on a double feature with A Bucket of Blood.  Usually flicks produced by Corman have their merits, but this one is pretty bad.  It’s definitely good for some unintentional laughs though.

The first half of the movie which primarily focuses on Vicker’s philandering is a dull slice of southern fried melodrama.  Things don’t necessarily improve once the giant leeches themselves show up.  The leeches are hilarious as they are nothing more than dudes wearing garbage bags.  The attack scenes are equally ridiculous.  Most of the time, their victims are required to throw themselves out of their boats and into the water in order for the giant leeches to attack them.  It’s pathetic.

Although most of the acting is horrid, Vickers is fun to watch as the tantalizing trailer trash temptress and VeSota has some good moments as her vengeful hubby.  Their efforts are wasted as the movie moves like it’s stuck in swamp muck.  Even if you catch this on Mystery Science Theater 3000, it’s still something of a chore to get through; wisecracking robots or not. 

Corman also got director Bernard L. Kowalski to helm Night of the Blood Beast, which economically also features the same score as this movie.

AKA:  Attack of the Blood Leeches.  AKA:  Demons of the Swamp.  AKA:  She Demons of the Swamp.  AKA:  The Giant Leeches.

The title should have been a dead giveaway.  Just like the title, this movie is long.  Every fucking thing about the movie is long.  There are long scenes where nobody says anything.  Then when they do speak, there are long pauses in between their sentences.  There are long stretches where Jesse James just kinda stares off into space.  There are long scenes where Robert Ford ogles Jesse James.  There are long lengths of the film where nothing happens.  Man, this flick is just long.

The title pretty much gives you everything you need to know about the movie.  Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) is a coward who assassinates Jesse James (Brad Pitt).  End of story.

For those who want to know more, I’ll indulge you.  Robert Ford is a stalker.  Much like Mark David Chapman, he idolizes his hero, Jesse James to the point of creepy obsessive-compulsion.  He infiltrates Jesse’s gang and while everyone can see that the dude is clearly crazy, Jesse takes a liking to him.  (“I don’t care who comes with me and I never did.  That’s why they call me gregarious!”)

Ford slowly (and I do emphasize the word SLOWLY) learns that Jesse is not the man he read about in all of those dime novels and becomes disillusioned and pouts a lot.  After about two hours worth of moping around, Ford aims to kill his hero.  Jesse sort of intuitively figures out what Ford has in store for him and he accepts his fate willingly and calmly turns his back and waits for the inevitable.  

Since the movie is so damn long-winded, it should come as no surprise to you that Jesse presents his back to Ford over and over again and waits and waits and waits to be gunned down.  All Ford does is just sit there and you feel like standing up and yelling, “JUST SHOOT THE SON OF A BITCH ALREADY!”

What’s worse is that after the coward Robert Ford FINALLY assassinates Jesses James, the movie STILL isn’t over.  The movie flashes forward a few years with Ford starring in an off Broadway play about how he killed James.  After a lot more hemming and hawing, we eventually get to a scene where some other coward shoots Ford in the back, giving him his just desserts.

The early scenes of the film are quite good and hook you into the story, but there was no need for this thing to run almost three hours long.  While the repartee between James and Ford in the beginning of the film is involving, it gets tiresome after about the second hour of Ford’s constant spaz attacks and James’ erratic behavior.  Likewise, Pitt starts the movie off well although his performance gets more and more inconsistent as the film slogs on.  You never really get a read on his character and his performance like the film; gets tedious after awhile.  Affleck fares slightly better as the twitchy, uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin Ford.  He is believable when he’s in stalker mode (at one point he sniffs Jesse’s bed sheets), yet he’s not nearly as convincing at playing the post-assassination Ford.  It also doesn’t help that his “character development” during the latter scenes is mostly courtesy of the narrator’s incessant droning and not from his acting ability.

On the plus side, the movie resembles a western oil painting come to life and the cinematography would give Terrence Malick a hard-on.  While there ain’t too much gore to be had, there is a juicy head shot about halfway through the flick.  Sorry if this review seems a bit longer than it should, it’s just payback for me sitting through this long ass movie. 

Director Bert I. Gordon usually makes flicks about giants.  The Amazing Colossal Man was all about a giant Colossal Man.  The Beginning of the End was all about giant grasshoppers.  Earth vs. the Spider was all about a giant spider.  With Attack of the Puppet People, Gordon decided to go the other route and do a movie about small people.  And I’m not talking about Gary Coleman; I’m talking about REALLY small people. 

The plot has this kindly old doll maker who actually isn’t very kindly at all because he likes to shrink people down to doll size and keep them locked up in little tubes.  B Movie stalwart John (Revenge of the Creature) Agar and his fiancée are the doll maker’s latest victims and they try to convince the other half dozen or so puppet people to stop living in a doll house and try to get back to normal size.  They reluctantly agree (being the size of a Ken doll is more fun than you’d think) and they plan their escape during one of the old man’s puppet shows. 

Attack of the Puppet People isn’t nearly as much fun as Gordon’s other cult classics but there is enough cheesy goodness here to make it worthwhile for fans of 50’s junk.  See one of the doll women belt out a love song!  See the puppet people try to dial a rotary phone!  See the little folk chased by a giant rat!  See the infinitesimal Agar get cornered by a humongous dog! 

I got to hand it to Bert.  Even though the man makes movies of varying quality, he sure knows how to film a pint-sized chick taking a bubble bath in a coffee can.  Bert is also no slouch when it comes to shameless self promotion as he even threw in a few scenes from his classic Amazing Colossal Man during Agar’s drive-in date. 

In short, Attack of the Puppet People is no classic, but it’s a lot better than Honey I Shrunk the Kids. 

Random Note:  I didn’t know lingerie for dolls were so popular!

AKA:  Six Inches Tall.  AKA:  The Fantastic Puppet People.

Three hippie couples leave their 9 to 5 routine behind to drive their motorcycles out to the middle of nowhere and take a lot of acid.  Once completely wasted, there is topless swimming, nude body painting, girls sinking in quicksand, a topless knife fight, run-ins with Indian pimps, and sex on a pyramid.  Things begin to get weird though once the couples actually go inside the pyramid and the acid really starts to kick in.  Suddenly Buck (Gymkata) Kartalian turns into the Devil (complete with pointy goatee) and pokes people with a plastic pitchfork while they have sex and dance around topless.

The Acid Eaters is nothing more than an hour of plotless, drug-fueled, softcore nonsense courtesy of director Byron (The Bushwhacker) Mabe.  It’s obvious that the budget was nonexistent as the sets were crappy (the “pyramid” was just a bunch of cardboard boxes stacked really high and painted silver) and the costumes were pretty awful (the Devil outfit is nothing more than red pajamas with a hood).  One good thing to be said for the costumes is that most of the girls don’t stay in them for very long.  The flick only runs one hour long, which is a plus, but too much of the film is padded with pointless scenes of people riding around on motorcycles.

The ladies, who include Pat (Orgy of the Dead) Barrington, Bambi (Hell’s Bloody Devils) Allen and Sharon (A Smell of Honey, A Swallow of Brine) Carr, are gorgeous and look even better when cavorting around topless and gyrating to thoroughly wretched hippie music.  The presence of a real actor like Kartalian helps somewhat, but he isn’t really given a whole lot to do except be the comic relief and say shit like “What’s your pleasure, treasure?”

If you watch movies SOLELY for the purposes of seeing tripping topless chicks dancing aimlessly while out of work character actors go around mugging constantly for the camera, consider this your Citizen Kane.  For any other sane person, it’s got plenty of titties, but little else. 

AKA:  The Acid People.

Before the opening credits of Awake, we’re treated to a title card that informs us that 1 in every 300 people remain conscious under anesthesia during surgery.  That means that they can feel every little slice and dice of the doctor’s scalpel.  Not a pretty picture.  While the film doesn’t play up this angle enough to really make your skin crawl, it nevertheless is an enjoyable flick. 

Basically what we got here is Anakin Skywalker gets War Machine to perform a heart transplant on him while his girlfriend, The Invisible Woman anxiously paces in the waiting room.  BUT… during the surgery, Anakin uses the Force to remain fully aware of what’s going on around him; learning in the process that War Machine is trying to kill him and steal all of his Star Wars money. 

I’ll stop with the twists and turns there.  Even though I successfully predicted all the surprises this movie had in store for me, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to hold that against it because it was the WAY it sprung the surprises on me that counted.  Director Joby Harold spiced things up visually (like Anakin’s out of body experiences) and made waiting around in a hospital seem pretty dang suspenseful. 

Awake also had the benefit of some of the skeeviest operation scenes since Let Me Die a Woman.  I know you can see the same kind of stuff on the Discovery Channel, but when it’s happening to Anakin Skywalker, you can just FEEL his pain.  Harold also created mucho atmosphere during these scenes as you could almost smell that sickly ammonium hospital aroma throughout the course of the film. 

Actingwise, everybody hit their marks pretty good and helped moved the story along.  I was especially impressed with Lena (Romeo is Bleeding) Olin as Anakin’s MILF of a mother.  Invisible Girl also got to show off her fine ass body, except it was one of those “I’ll only show you my goodies through a wet T-Shirt” deals. 

So who really cares if I saw the story’s surprises coming from a mile away and the plot was thinner than Sy Sperling’s hairline?  I dug this flick.  I’d highly recommend it.  Just make sure you don’t see it before or after getting major surgery though.