Okay folks, we’re back with the final installment of TGMITHOTHR before it goes on summer vacation.  Thanks for all the positive feedback on this column and rest assured that it (like James Bond) Will Return this fall.  This week’s movie is…

DEADFALL  (1993)  ****

There are three faces to Nicolas Cage:  The Chick Flick Face, The Action Hero Face, and the Oh My God Get That Boy Some Ritalin Face.  In my opinion, Cage should just really lay off the Chick Flicks.  The Family Man?  NO!  Guarding Tess?  Egads!  Moonstruck?  The horror!  His fast-paced, high body count action flicks like The Rock, Con-Air, and Face/Off make up for his forays into female-friendly films, but it’s his out-there performances in films like Raising Arizona, Kiss of Death, and Vampire’s Kiss that I appreciate most.  Vampire’s Kiss is probably the most infamous of these films due to the fact that Cage ate a real life cock-a-roach on screen.  For my money though, his best all time Oh-No-He-Didn’t performance came in this flick, Deadfall.

Now Deadfall was directed by Cage’s brother, Christopher Coppola (and nephew of Francis), who obviously A) fell asleep B) lost a bet or C) didn’t care what the heck Nic did while filming his scenes. 

Cage’s gonzo performance aside, Deadfall is just another one of those early 90 film noir wannabes like The Grifters, Red Rock West (which also starred Cage), and The Last Seduction.  The plot... fuck it… who gives a good goddamn about the plot.  If you’ve already seen those previously mentioned movies, you know the gist of things:  Somebody is conning somebody else and you’d don’t know who’s getting conned until the very end.  That shit doesn’t matter though. 

With Cage acting this crazy, who NEEDS a plot?

Cage is completely unhinged and acts totally deranged in this flick.  That is to say, he’s fucking brilliant!  Cage wears a funny wig, oversized sunglasses, and sports a hideous tan.  He also hyperventilates, says his lines like he’s high on ecstasy, and throws temper tantrums like a two year old.  He also gets some of the best lines in Video Vacuum history.  Here’s just a few examples:

• When Michael Biehn (the hero) doesn’t answer a question in a timely manner, Cage pulls his gun out and screams, “What’s the matter, cat got your fuckin’ tongue?”

• While preparing to pull a con he says, “What do you say we have some fun time family fun?”

• When he can’t get his car started he hollers, “Fucker, fucker… FUCK!”

• Cage will also randomly speak in a Mexican accent for no reason whatsoever and says shit like, “Choo got it bebe!”

• How about the scene where he kills a dude and screams, “Let’s fuck!”

• Or the scene where Cage goes on a coke binge and says, “What am I?  A fucking retard, man!  A fucking retard?  HUH?... Well VIVA LA FUCKING FRANCE, MAN!”

• Or how about the scene where Cage pulls a gun on someone and yells, “It’s a crazy fucking world we live in… CAPTAIN JACK!... Filthy-double-crosser-filthy-double-crossing-filthy-goddamn-fucking-filthy-little-brat!”

• Then there’s the part where he says “Bull…shit, bull…shit” in a helium voice for no discernable reason.

• Then there’s the scene where Cage starts downing shots in a strip club and screeches “Mommy…mommy… HERE’S TO SAM PECKINPAH!  Mommy… I’ll be damned… ALL SUMMER LONG!!

• The best line though comes when a random extra bumps into Cage and he karate chops the fuck out of the guy while screaming, “HI-FUCKING-YA!”  Yes folks; that’s probably the all time greatest movie line of all time.  (Although “You mean we talkin’ ‘bout some damn shark’s mother?” from Jaws 3-D is right up there too.)

Sadly Cage gets killed off about halfway through the movie when Biehn sticks his face in a deep fryer.  Even though he’s only in half the movie, that shouldn’t stop you from checking this flick out.  Cage acts crazy enough for FIVE movies!  His performance IS the movie.

Although the last thirty or so minutes of Deadfall is Cage-free, you still may enjoy sticking around until the end.  I mean you get to see a goateed Charlie Sheen as a pool hustler, Angus (The Tall Man from Phantasm) Scrimm sporting a robotic claw arm, Talia Shire as a bartender, Rene Estevez, Peter Fonda, and Mickey Fucking Dolenz!  Three Coppolas, two Sheens, one Fonda, and a Monkee?  How can you not love this fucking movie?  Do yourself a favor and run out and check this flick out.  You’re guaranteed to have some “fun time family fun!”

Deadfall ranks a solid Number 9 spot on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films for the Year of 1993; sandwiched in between The Bride with White Hair and Freaked.

Well folks, that’s gonna be it for The Greatest Movies in the History of the Human Race series for now, but it’ll be back in the fall to tell you about all the great movies you’ve may have missed and need to see.  See you soon Vacuumers…

Welcome back Vacuumers.  As you know, every Wednesday I’m going to try to tell you about some of the greatest movies in the history of the human race.  To do so, I’ve created a segment called The Greatest Movies in the History of the Human Race.  Today’s movie is a little something called:

TERMINAL VELOCITY  (1994)  ****

People (not many, but people nonetheless) who know about this movie will attest to its logic-shredding bravura action set pieces.  If you’ve never heard of the mind-numbing insanity that is Terminal Velocity, shame on you.  If you are one of those poor unfortunates, consider this Terminal Velocity 101.  Time to go to school.

Terminal Velocity or TV as I like to call it; could’ve been a horrible movie.  It’s got clichéd characters, inane plotting, and a general lack of human emotion.  Since it’s got Charlie Sheen in it though, it’s a must see.  You may scoff, but TV is without a doubt the best Charlie-Sheen-Jumping-Out-of-an-Airplane Movie since Navy Seals.

Besides starring the pride of the Estevez family tree, this flick also stars Natassja (“My dad was a nutjob”) Kinski, James (“Before I was Tony Soprano”) Gandolfini, and Christopher (“Before I was Shooter McGavin”) McDonald.  TV was also written by David Twohy, the man who blessed the world with stunning awesomitity of The Chronicles of Riddick and directed by Deran Sarafin, the dude who directed Gunmen, the best Christopher Lambert/Mario Van Peebles movie ever made.  Aren’t you just dying to see it now?  Well if you don’t have two hours, here’s the skinny:

Charlie Sheen plays a skydiving instructor named Ditch Brodie.  You know the rule in the Video Vacuum Movie Rulebook that states, “Any movie that features a main character named Ditch is a good movie?”  Well, that rule came about because of Terminal Velocity.

Anyway, Ditch is so reckless that he’s had 12 safety violations in the past month.  One of those comes when he parachutes into the middle of the city in ass-less chaps with the words “Kiss” and “This” painted on his derriere.  Too bad Ditch thought he was crashing a bachelorette party and not an 8-year old kid’s birthday party.

Despite his reputation, he gets a new client named Chris (Kinski) who hires him to take her out skydiving.  What makes TV such a heartwarming movie is the poetic dialogue.  Before they jump out of the airplane, Chris says, “I’d be stupid to trust my life to a walking penis”, to which Ditch retorts, “I’m much more than a walking penis… I’m a flying penis!”  And tell me again WHY this movie wasn’t nominated for Best Screenplay?

When Chris jumps out of the airplane before Ditch gives her the go-ahead, she ends up plummeting to her death.  There’s an FAA investigation and a greasy agent named Pinkwater (Gandolfini) starts asking Ditch a lot of questions like, “You think she misrepresented her ability?  Naturally Ditch gives hilarious answers like, “I think she did for bullshit what Stonehenge did for rocks!”

Ditch does some snooping and discovers Chris is actually alive.  He asks her, “How come you’re still vertical?”  After a lot of hemming and hawing (and by hemming and hawing I mean that Ditch and Chris get into several shootouts and rocket sled chases with the bad guys), Chris finally reveals that she’s a KGB agent.  Ditch is dumbfounded, “It’s the K-G-Used-to-Be!”

After a couple more run-ins with the bad guys, Chris and Ditch take a breather and over a bottle of tequila, Chris tells Ditch all about her life in Russia and her three-legged dog named Tripod.  After she swallows the worm, she asks Ditch what she just swallowed.  When Ditch tells her, she says, “I was trained to swallow all sorts of things.”  Ditch quips, “Careful, I just might have to marry you!” 

Chris then gets Ditch to help her search an abandoned airplane and when he worries about running into some “nuclear shit”, she gives him a coffee pot lid to cover his crotch because “External genitalia is more susceptible to radiation!”  When Chris finds what she’s looking for (a cache of KGB gold), Ditch sneaks up on her and startles her.  She gets pissed that he finds the gold and chides, “I told you to wait!”  To which, Ditch utters the greatest line in the movie (and possibly any Charlie Sheen movie for that matter), “Don’t worry; I’ve got my Coffeetron Dick Defender!”   

Again, tell me how this wasn’t nominated for Best Screenplay?

Chris tells Ditch that Pinkwater is actually a Russian agent who is looking for the gold so he can stage a coup and start up a “Second Cold War”.  She pleads with Ditch to help her and even goes so far to tell him about her poor starving Russian family.  Ditch mutters, “Pack the bags, we’re going on a guilt trip!” 

Ditch initially refuses to help but when Chris is kidnapped by the bad guys, he rushes into action.  And by action I mean one of the greatest stunts ever filmed.  Seriously folks, Moonraker ain’t got nothing on this baby. 

Chris is locked in the trunk of a car that’s loaded into a cargo plane.  Ditch sneaks into the plane to save her but the bad guys see him.  He hops into the car and floors it, pinning the villainous Russian to the wall, before jamming it in reverse and sending the car out of the plane and into the air.  While the car is plummeting towards the ground, Ditch works his way to the back of the car and opens the trunk (after fumbling with the keys to add to the suspense), freeing Chris before opening his parachute just in the nick of time. 

This scene was filmed before directors started CGI-ing up their action sequences.  When you see the car falling out of the plane, it’s a REAL car and REAL stuntmen, not a bunch of 1’s and 0’s.  Bravo Deran for your stellar work behind the camera.

But of course, the movie ain’t over yet.  Once safely on the ground, Ditch and Chris’ romantic bliss is interrupted by Pinkwater who parachutes down on top of Ditch and promptly puts him in a Russian bear hug.  Luckily, Ditch is a quick thinker and pulls Pinkwater’s utility chute which causes him to fly right through some nearby windmills and turns the dude into lasagna. 

In the end, Ditch goes to Russia and is given a medal (the ceremony is almost exactly like the one in Star Wars) and gets to meet Chris’ three-legged dog.  I don’t know about you but any movie that ends with a freeze-frame of a three-legged dog is all right by me.

Terminal Velocity is criminally underrated.  As an action movie, it’s filled with non-stop shootouts and over-the-top action sequences.  As a comedy, it features more hilarious one-liners than any of Sheen’s Hot Shots movies.  (“What do I look like, a brain donor?”)  The reason it all works as well as it does is because of Sheen.  This movie has more Sheenage than just about any movie ever made.

What’s Sheenage you ask?  Well, it’s a technical term created by The Video Vacuum Cinema Laboratories.  Sheenage calculates a film’s merit based solely on the presence of Charlie Sheen.  It takes into account 1) the amount of Sheen screen time 2) the amount of patented “Sheenian” moments (i.e. jumping out of airplanes, riding motorcycles, getting drunk, doing drugs, banging broads, etc.) 3) the amount of times the viewer says aloud, “Damn that’s vintage Sheen!”  A film that contains all three of these is considered to have “Quality Sheenage”.

A film’s Sheenage is vital to its entertainment value.  The films themselves can be lousy but as long as they have a high amount of Sheenage, they can be well worth watching.  (SEE:  Three for the Road.)  Movies like Loaded Weapon 1, Deadfall (soon to appear on the list of TGMITHOTHR), and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off feature Sheen in small cameos but are worth checking out for the excessive amounts of quality Sheenage.  In fact, I’m convinced that one of the reasons that Being John Malkovich was a critical success was due to Sheen’s hilarious cameo.  Even though he only appeared in a few scenes, Being John Malkovich has excessive amounts of Sheenage, which is always a good thing.  In fact, Roger Ebert called Being John Malkovich “The Best Film of the Year”.  Oh yeah, he knows about the Sheenage all right.

Movies with dumb characters, childish scripting and no socially redeeming value help to escalate the Sheenage.  Dramatically sound movies like Platoon, Eight Men Out, Wall Street, and Lucas are OK and everything but films like The Wraith, Beyond the Law, The Chase, and Navy Seals have much more Sheenage.  The reason is that these movies solely rely on Sheen to carry the film and because of that, they just marinate in 100% pure Sheenage.

Terminal Velocity’s Sheenage is off the fucking charts.

Basically Charlie Sheen is the new Elvis of acting.  Not only do both dudes have the sideburns, the hair, and the uncanny ability to always portray themselves in every movie they appear in; they make a movie worth watching just because they appear in it.  Chuck and Elvis kick ass in any genre, whether it be westerns (Young Guns or Charro), war films (Platoon or G.I. Blues) or extravagant costume dramas (The Three Musketeers or The Trouble with Girls).  Hopefully someday the two personalities will collide and Sheen will star in 3000 Miles to Graceland 2:  Taking Care of Business.  As the King himself once said, “If I Can Dream…”

Lately though, Charlie Sheen has taken a break from the big screen and has been starring on the hit TV show, Two and a Half Men.  While he seemingly has left his big screen career behind (not to mention the cocaine and hookers), we his fans can still enjoy his past films and anxiously await a renaissance of old school Sheenage.  Come back to us Charlie, we miss you.

Terminal Velocity ranks Number 10 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films for the Year 1994, just under Shawshank Redemption.

See you next week Vacuumers with our next movie.  I’ll give you a hint; it features one of the all-time coolest character names of all time:  “Cole Trickle”.  Still stumped?  Does the line, “Rubbing is racing” ring any bells?  That’s right folks; we’re talking about one of the greatest Tom Cruise VEHICLES of all time… Days of Thunder.  Fasten your seatbelts boys n’ girls…

Most of the same talent behind and in front of the camera returned for this sequel to the hit spoof, Hot Shots.  Part Deux is in every way the equal to the first movie.  The laughs are frequent, the movie parodies are hilarious (this one mainly spoofs the Rambo films), and Charlie Sheen delivers yet another great performance as Topper Harley.  

Lloyd Bridges is now the president and he sends Richard Crenna (parodying his Rambo role to a tee) to convince Topper to rescue a bunch of kidnapped soldiers over in Iraq.  Since Topper is busy living the peaceful life in a Buddhist monastery, he declines.  When Crenna is also kidnapped, Topper finally agrees to “go get the men who went to get the men who went to get the men.”

The Bloodsport parody where Sheen dips his fists in caramel and gummy bears is pretty great but the best gag is the on-screen body count that pops up during the film’s biggest shootout.  There are also some pretty funny sight gags and visual references to Lady and the Tramp, Basic Instinct, No Way Out and Terminator 2; as well as an awesome cameo by Martin Sheen.  Sure there are a couple gags that don’t quite work, but there are definitely plenty of inspired moments (my favorite being the lightsaber battle between Bridges and Saddam Hussein). 

Again Bridges gets all the biggest laughs, but it’s Sheen who gets the best line of the movie:  “I left my heart in my other pants.”

Bridges and director Jim Abrahams later teamed up for the vastly underappreciated gangster spoof, Mafia. 

After co-writing and co-directing the classic Airplane and Top Secret, the comedy team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker broke up and went their separate ways.  While David went on to direct the awesome Naked Gun and Jerry directed the sappy chick flick Ghost; Abrahams directed this uneven but entertaining spoof of Top Gun.

The “story” is basically the same as Top Gun.  Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) is a Navy pilot with severe father issues.  His risk taking behavior gets him in hot water with his superiors and… Christ, who cares what the plot is.  The plot is just an excuse to hang a bunch of funny gags on. 

The reason Hot Shots works so well is because Abrahams is lampooning a movie that deserves to be spoofed.  Today, most spoofs are a hodgepodge parody of forgettable films that had only left the multiplexes a few months earlier.  The Hot Shots movies always had a knack for sending up gung ho Reagan Era action movies and although Abrahams’ brand of humor may be a bit scattershot, for the most part, Hot Shots is filled with a bunch of laughs.  Besides the obvious Top Gun references, the movie also finds time to parody such flicks as Dances With Wolves, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Rocky, Gone with the Wind, Superman, and in the film’s funniest send-up, 9 ½ Weeks. 

The performances help a lot.  Charlie Sheen plays things more or less straight but has a mischievous gleam in his eye and is clearly having fun sending up his bad boy image.  Cary Elwes also shows a flair for light comedy here and two years later, he’d go on to star in his own spoof movie, Robin Hood:  Men in Tights.  Jon Cryer (who would later co-star with Sheen in the hit series, Two and a Half Men) also gets some memorable moments as a pilot with wall-eyed vision.  But it’s the late, great Lloyd Bridges who steals the movie as the dim-witted captain with a laundry list of war wounds. 

While Bridges gets most of the movie’s laughs, it’s Sheen who gets the best line of the movie:  “If you keep this up, you’ll be carrying your face home in a doggy bag!”

Emilio Estevez stars as a wet behind the ears Billy the Kid in this empty headed but entertaining Brat Pack western.  He gets saved from a hanging by a generous rancher (Terence Stamp from Superman 2) who lets him work on his farm in exchange for food and shelter.  Billy makes an uneasy friendship with the other twentysomething cattle hands (played by Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, Dermont Mulroney, and Casey Siemaszko) and when an evil cattle baron (Jack Palance) murders Stamp and steals his cows, the boys saddle up and go out for revenge.

Director Christopher (The Principal) Cain directs the action in a pedestrian manner, but it’s the performances that make this flick worth watching.  Estevez is quite good as the maniacal Billy and his performance (along with his cackling) is pretty memorable.  It’s also fun to see him and his brother Sheen share the screen (they later would go on to make the immortal Men at Work together), even though Chuck gets gunned down about halfway through the flick.  Brian Keith also puts in a fine turn as a crusty bounty hunter who buys the farm in an outhouse.

I could’ve done without the slow-mo “Spirit World” trip sequence, but it’s not bad for the most part.  I mean brains get splattered out, knives get tossed into jugulars, and lots of people get gunned down for no good reason, so it’s pretty hard to hate.  Eagle eyed viewers will also have fun spotting Tom Cruise as a cowboy during the final shootout.     

I’ve always been a Young Guns 2 man myself, but this is a decent western for people who would prefer The Breakfast Club over The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. 

The cast is awesome, the locations are beautiful, and Sara Foster looks great in a bikini, but just don’t look for anything remotely resembling an interesting story or surprising plot twists.  Owen Wilson stars as an ex-ball player/small time con artist.  The sexy Foster tries to get him to go for the big score and rob her rich hubby, Gary Sinise.  Morgan Freeman is the town judge who may or may not be in on the scam.  You can’t blame the actors for being here.  I mean they get to go to Hawaii and chill out on the beach all day!  It just doesn’t make for a great movie.  But any movie that has Charlie Sheen AND Willie Nelson can’t be all bad.  Directed by George (Grosse Point Blank) Armitage.  It’s based on a novel by Elmore (Get Shorty) Leonard, which had already been filmed once before with Ryan O’Neil in 1971.