Superchick (1973)

This is probably my favorite kind of picture, the kind where hot seventies broads frolic around naked. Sometimes these things bother with plot, sometimes not. I'll take them either way. Anyway, this picture called Superchick is one of the ones that tried to tell a story and I have to tell you it was pretty fucking funny. What they did here was riff on the Superman mythos and instead of a guy with super powers created by exposure to our yellow sun or however the hell that worked, we are treated to a woman, a stewardess with incomparable sexual powers. By day, she is just an ordinary, demure, shy flight attendent with brown hair up in a bun. By night, she is a blonde sex goddess in hot pants and also usually no pants at all. The broad even goes into a phone booth at the start of her layover and comes out all dolled up. This is the kind of picture I can get behind.

Joyce Jillson was some kind of famous hollywood astrologer at one point but she pretty much had her big break with Superchick. I'm not sure, but I think this was the only time she took off her clothes for a film so therfore, this is a picture that must be treasured. She stars as the stewardess named Tara B. True and flies between New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. In each city, she has a different man. Her New York man is some rich doctor type, a surgeon who is desperately in love with her. Unfortunately, he's a germophobe so they spend their evenings sharing a bath because he apparently doesn't know about the organisms that love nothing more than to swim around in a tepid pool of filth. They also play naked black jack in bed which would be a pretty good time I would think. The next day, his limo drops her off at the airport where his proposal of marriage is rebuffed. No way can she settle down with just one man. She's got far too much love to give. He tells her he'll be thinking of her while performing surgery that afternoon. Good for her. Not so good for the patient.

Next stop, sunny Miami where she meets up with buff Johnny (Tony Young) , a good looking guy with a gambling problem. Johnny's in pretty deep to the local mafia boss who is kind enough to wipe away all his debts for a roll in the sack with Ms. True. Johnny's not a complete scum bag though so he'll think about it. Meanwhile, he and Tara enjoy hours of water skiing (she loses her bottoms!), night clubbing, and other stuff. Johnny, like most degenerates, doesn't have the energy to keep up with his starlett. When the bartender tells him "look pal, we're closing in ten minutes", Johnny replies "can you make it sooner?"

Her beau in Los Angeles is none other than the hot, new, suddenly over the hill at 21, rock star Davey Charles (Timothy Wayne Brown). He's in love with Joyce for the part of her that has a great body, the kind of body that can help him keep ahead of the constantly evolving music scene. By that, I mean they have sex on the piano and record the sounds it makes. This gets old for Tara pretty fast. Her further adventures in L.A. involve a karate class, a typical hollywood pot party, a hollywood pot party bust, and a near gang bang at the hands of a ruthless biker gang ("listen guys..uh...let's dispense with the biker movie lingo and just gang bang her."). John Carradine portrays a John Carradine like actor (except for the vast mansion) who lives alone with his memorabilia placing ads for young women to come and tie him up, listen to his mother, maybe be killed, etc. His scene kinda comes out of nowhere, but even he is no match for superchick (Tara: Wow, someone must have dropped acid in his geritol).

I guess the main story involves the mafia based out of miami. They use Johnny to try to smuggle guns on board one of Tara's flights ("they never check the stewardess' bags") so they can hijack it and rob one of the rich passengers. This seems like an awful lot to go through just to come out with $500 K (estimated loot), but I guess this is one of those pre 9-11 movies where a hijacking could possibly be amusing.

Shit, I forgot about the solider ("I'm a marine") on the flight out of miami. He confesses to Tara that he's got limited experience with women and she becomes even more turned on when she realizes he was stationed on Guantanomo with 50,000 cubans yelling "american go home." She quickly turns into superchick and tells the young soldier ("um, marine") to meet her in the bathroom and cough three times where they will try to deal with the turbulance and likely make some of their own. Yeah, this picture is almost a porno.

I love the ideals behind the thing though. She loves all three of her men, but why should she settle down with them and why should they settle down with her? Her job allows her to bring her brand of love all over the world. I guess that later she will be promoted and moved beyond domestic flights or something. Not only is she, apparently, great in the sack but she's also pretty good at the ass kicking; biker gang, japanese karate champion, hijackers, etc...she defeats them all. Superman was not very great in the sack from what I've heard...or at least none of his conquests lived to talk about it. Superboy from Superman Returns was a product of artificial insemination. Anyway, if you love a good seventies movie full of seventies styles, seventies nudity, and seventies theme music then you can't really go wrong with this picture. Note: Tara says "Last one in bed, get's no head!"

Coach (1978)

Over the Christmas holiday, while perusing the only Best Buy in Vermont, I picked up a ten disc, ten double features, twenty picture “Welcome to the Grindhouse” collection for a mere twenty bucks that may be one of the best things I’ve purchased in my life. I’ve never seen this particular collection in any best buy (or on Amazon for that matter) since. I’ve encountered the separate single disc double features for ten bucks. They’re all over the fucking place. So basically, that’s a savings of eighty bucks for an incredible collection you’ll apparently never find anywhere else. Black Candles alone made the whole god damned thing worth it. In addition, we’ve got Don’t Answer the Phone, Trip With Teacher, Sister Street Fighter, Malibu High, etc, loads of trailers, nudity, gore, etc. Solid buy is all I’m saying.

Also included is a little film from 1978 called Coach. Cathy Lee Crosby (“That’s Incredible”) stars as Randy Rawlings, a beautiful Olympic running champion who becomes the coach of a lousy high school boy’s basketball team and leads them to victory while simultaneously leading the starting point guard right into her bed. Yeah, it’s that kind of picture.

Only it isn’t, really. This is like if Lifetime had decided to make a movie about a teacher (or coach) bedding her student only they decided this was a perfectly acceptable thing. Well, that starting point guard is none other than Michael Biehn (Aliens, The Terminator, Navy Seals) and I suppose it helps matters that he and Crosby exhibit a wonderful chemistry. Yes, she looks to be about 10 years his senior but what the fuck do I care when he looks 25? The 1970s were a simple time, a time when if a young student could bang his teacher then good for him. Today, the teacher goes to prison and someone usually ends up dead. Also, where the fuck were these teachers when I was in high school? I call bullshit.

Keenan Wynn (Once Upon a Time in the West) is Granger, some sort of principal-superintendant-rich son of a bitch hybrid. He’s old school in his beliefs; i.e. woman are good for making dinner and making babies. He wants his basketball team (“the stallions”) to win, sure, but at what price? I’m sure you’re wondering why he hired Rawlings in the first place? After a particularly humiliating loss, and the forced resignation of the former coach, the school desperately sent out applications around the country. Somehow, one ended up on Rawlings desk. She was immediately offered the job (being a former Olympian and all) so it comes down to a lousy screening process on Wynn’s case. Olympian or not, she’s still a god damned female, am I right gents?

Well, I’ve got no idea where I’m going with this review at this point. Uninspired basketball team. Woman trying to make it in a “man’s world” (see I put it in quotes so I’m not being sexist), etc.

I love a good sports picture. I love a good picture with exploitative elements. Why not combine the two? Unfortunately, this is just a sports picture with some loose morals. The only ass we see are the players as they hit the showers. We get some side-al breast action from Rawlings but it’s all too brief. Her passionate sex scene with Biehn is interrupted by a fade to black and then, later, her passionate shower sex scene with Biehn is interrupted by the janitor. I couldn’t get away from the idea that these two never got caught. Their relationship is perfectly fine. I kept thinking the horny teacher that liked Rawlings would find out or maybe Keenan Wynn would find out and use it to try to get her canned. It never happened. At one point, Biehn sees Rawlings kissing that horny teacher. Predictably, he becomes upset, showing up late to a game, ignoring her, etc. Then he learns that she kissed the guy because he was going to bring a college scout to the game. Perfectly reasonable, Biehn. Fogive the broad already. He does.

I loved the camaraderie between the teammates. They pulled for each other. There was the guy set up to be the asshole (Wynn’s grandson) but he ended up being a pretty nice guy and even stood up to his bigoted family at one point. Ned was, by far, my favorite “stallion”. He's a terrible student, bit of an airhead, threatened with removal from the team. The stallions desperately need his size on the court if they are going to compete for the championship. Instead of helping the guy study, they realize his situation is borderline hopeless. So, they hypnotize him into remembering the formulas for the big exam (as soon as they say the code word “jabberwocky” he becomes a math machine). Hilariously, all that time spent hypnotizing Ned (he get’s an A+) doesn’t really help Biehn much (D). Later, they hypnotize Ned into thinking he’s Sydney Wick (NBA legend who also guest stars) cause apparently he's not very good at basketball either.

Shit man, if you like Hoosiers you’ll probably disapprove of this one unless you wanted to see Dale and Chitwood going at it in the showers. I love a good basketball picture though and this one gets my seal of approval. I even learned a few things about the game. Elbows out, ball high when rebounding. Splitting the post I guess isn’t very good when it’s being done against you. If I were to hypnotize myself into believing I was Lebron James then I’d be a pretty good player. If I hypnotized myself into believing I was Sydney Wick I might start “talking black” and slapping five a lot. Also, dunking.

The game footage in this one was pretty solid. I swear they showed us the entire first quarter of the championship; every missed hoop, every Biehn turnover (he was distracted), every Ned hookshot from halfcourt…it was all in there. Of course, I loved when Coach Rawlings said "fuck ethics" when she found her team down twenty points. As soon as she screams out “jabberwocky” Ned starts teen wolfing his way up and down the court, swatting shots, stuffing home balls, probably causing irreversible brain damage. Win at all costs I guess. The final montage of game action is completely indecipherable….I’ve never seen so many misses in the final two minutes in my life. Finally, there’s Biehn…no time left, on the foul line…tie game. Will he choke? Who gives a shit? He gets to go home and bang the coach.

Where the hell have I been, etc

What a way to start the year. My computer went down earlier this month with a multitude of viruses. I still hope to have it back, wiped clean, sometime soon. In the meantime, I’m writing this thing at work (after hours, I may have a crappy work ethic but it’s not that crappy). Anyway, I promised you guys a list of my five worst films of 2008 so here it is with minimal, if any, commentary.

5-1. Diary of the Dead – suck it.

Fuck man, it feels like that came out in 2005. I also sorta hated, but mostly just felt too indifferent about to include on any “worst of” list; The Happening, The Spirit, The X-Files, The Mummy: Tomb of the Forbidden Kingdom, and Indiana Jones.

My scheduled sword and sorcery-sploitation month has been blown to hell thanks to the sorta viruses one might catch at porno sites. I’ve seen several pictures in the past month though. Thanks to alcohol I can only remember the ones I saw this weekend. I’m winging these after a long day of work and I’m mostly of the “get me the fuck out of here” attitude so these will be brief. Also, I just wanted to let you guys know that I’m still alive and have yet to be murdered by a jealous husband.

Piranha 2: The Spawning (1983)

James Cameron has a thing for sequels, especially if he didn’t direct the first one. Aliens is pretty good. The first one, aptly titled Alien, is about one alien with several large teeth. While one alien probably wouldn’t stand a chance against a platoon of space marines it’s more than tough enough for a rag tag crew of space janitors or whatever it was they were doing out there. Which is why Cameron wrote more than one alien into the sequel. Also, a big fucking queen alien. He knew that one alien versus a crew of space marines would be a pretty short, uneventful movie. The genius even called the thing Aliens.

Piranha 2 is Cameron’s first movie and let me tell you it’s no Aliens. I don’t remember if I saw the first Piranha or not. I’m guessing I did since I ate this kinda shit for breakfast as a kid. Is that the one where Richard Pryor tries to cross the river and the piranhas eat off his pants? That shit was hilarious. Anyway, Piranha was directed by genre stalwart Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling, The Burbs) and also written by John Sayles (Aligator, Brother From Another Planet) so I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that it is pretty good. Well, James Cameron is arguably a better filmmaker than Dante but I would argue that Piranha 2 is not a better film than Piranha (which I arguably have not seen so that's some argument).

One thing I did like about this picture however was the pre-title sequence. Fantastic. We see a young couple out in their boat. The woman says something like “let’s do what we came out here for”. Then we see them scuba diving towards a shipwreck. Yes, they are investigating a shipwreck, maybe searching for lost gold or some shit. Now we can begin to understand why Cameron has such a hard on for the Titanic. Anyway, suddenly the broad has removed her bathing suit and she bears down on the man. He seems stunned. She removes the knife from his ankle sheath. Is she going to murder him and take the treasure for herself? Why is she naked? (One should learn never to ask such questions). Wait, she’s just cutting off his speedo so they can do it underwater. I’ve heard women can’t get pregnant underwater. It's a scientific fact. Then we are treated to the point of view of some, at first, unseen entitie(s). Unfortunately, Cameron shows all his cards way too early as those little underwater flying fuckers start eating and the ocean turns red as the title comes up. Suspense flushed down the shitter.

The picture stars Lance Henriksen (every movie made after 1980) as a sheriff in some small Caribbean town. In support of Henriksen are a bunch of other people I'm not familiar with, several of whom get naked. I guess the difference between this picture and the first one is that these piranhas have been genetically altered so they can fly. Some sort of military experiment I guess. Basically, we have the sheriff, the asshole resort owner who refuses to postpone the annual fish fry, the ex wife/scuba instructor, the son who gets in over his head, and the native that fishes with dynamite. The flying fish effects are bad. Cameron is lost without a budget. There are a couple of incredibly mean spirited bimbos (who thankfully get naked) who try to steal food from a mentally challenged man and then invite him on a leisure cruise only to dock their boat just far enough from the pier that the poor bastard can’t get onboard. The poor horny son of a bitch tries to jump on, but misses wildly and gets called an asshole by the two teasing broads for his troubles. Their comeuppance is coming.

The picture’s best effect was, strangely enough, ripped off from the original Alien when a piranha that had burrowed itself into a dead guy bursts out of his chest during the autopsy. Henriksen is pretty solid but not really given much to do except pine for his ex-wife and look for his son. Upon finding the kid, who by the way is at one point shown making love to a young lady in a waterfall (that son of a bitch is barely fifteen!), he makes the curious decision to put his helicopter in neutral and ditch the thing into the ocean. Henriksen’s ex-wife looks like Adrienne Barbeau which is the best thing I can say about her. Cameron liked her enough to cast her as “woman” in The Titanic. The fish fry is pretty fun, but one can only watch so many flying fish before he catches himself looking for the string (not very hard to find). Cameron would eventually redeem himself before disappearing for a decade but this is not a very promising beginning.

The Fortress (1993)

This one was surprisingly not terrible. Starring Christopher Lambert and the incredibly cute Loryn Locklin as a married couple living in one of those futuristic dystopias that everyone loves to make movies about. In this one, families are only allowed to have one child in an effort to curb overpopulation. Failure to adhere to this law leads to imprisonment. If you’re unlucky, you’ll be sent to “the fortress”, a futuristic, privatized establishment run by a cyborgish Kurtwood Smith (Robocop). That's exactly where Locklin and Lambert get placed when they try to cover up a second pregnancy after their first child died in infancy. Due to budgetary reasons, this prison is built underground so we never really get an idea of its scope. Each prisoner has an “intestinator” inserted in their stomach which will a) give them cramps or b) explode if they don’t follow protocol. Smith holes up in his office like some sort of robotic Howard Hughes leering over the sex dreams of his prisoners before his female companion (a fem-puter) commands him to turn on the prisoner's intestinator. No wet dreams in this prison I guess. No wonder the homoeroticism runs rampant. Alliances are made and broken, babies are extracted for a special kind of bonding with machines, breasts are left unbared, etc. Since this one’s directed by Stuart Gordon (Re-animator) one can expect some pretty impressive gore and one would not be disappointed. Impressively, the movie asks many questions about humanity and "progress". Less impressively, it doesn’t even begin to answer them. The Fortress may be “run” by Smith, but it’s his female-ish robots and synthetic guards that truly police things. Jeffrey Combs shows up as the computer geek who uploads a computer virus in order to help Lambert and his wife escape. This was years before Independence Day. Tom Towles (Henry) and Vernon Wells (The Road Warrior) appear somewhat briefly. I’ve always thought Lambert a terrible actor but I was mildly impressed with his work here (once you get past the accent). The Fortress is better than Beowulf 1999.

Shit man, I guess that’s it. I was going to briefly write about No Escape (loved it) and Repo: The Genetic Opera (the poster child for overrated “cult” films) but I’ve fucking had it for today. Save some shit for next time I guess (which I guarantee will be sooner than a month from now). If I have to stay late at work once or twice a week to post an entry, so fucking-be it I guess.

The Top Ten Films of 2008!

I guess it's about time I joined everyone and their grandmothers and submitted my own top ten list for 2008. Let's just skip the lengthy introduction and get down to the nitty gritty. First of all, you won't find many oscar contenders listed here. The reason being that I didn't see any. Several films are obviously not included on this list for that reason; Doubt, Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, uh....etc. I actually wanted to see Doubt because of my Amy Adams fetish, but then there is the part of me that's not into pediphilia so I decided to wait for the DVD. The best movie I saw this year will also not be featured on this list. It's a spanish masterpiece called Black Candles. Unfortunately for you it was made in 1982. So, you will just have to wait for my review of a picture that has a scene where a lovely young woman has sex with an evil goat. Anyway, here's the list. I'll have some sort of worst of thing done by the end of the weekend.

10. Rogue

It's criminal that this picture did not receive an official theatrical release in this country. It's a terrific oversized crocodile movie featuring moving picture trash favorite Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black) and also some guy that was in "Alias". Basically, a bunch of tourists go on a river tour and get stranded on an little river island that, unfortunately for these poor bastards, happens to be on a tidal river (which means the island is sinking or the river is rising, i guess it's a matter of perspective). Oh, and there is a wonderfully rendered crocodile waiting to pick them off one by one or three at a time or whatever. And a little pooch that may or may not be used for bait at one point. The photography in this thing is amazing, the action is tense, and the performances are fun. It's no wonder since this was directed by Greg McClean who also helmed the underrated Wolf Creek. It's now available on DVD so what are you waiting for?

9. The Ruins

Scott Smith's terrifying bestseller with the incredibly silly premise is turned into a terrifying film (and the premise is still silly). The isolation as well as the performances from the young (mostly unknown) actors enhance this thing beyond the usual standard fare. The scariest moment involves the reveal of the source of the hidden cell phone. There's plenty of gore in this thing as well. The tension created via an impenetrable language barrier is what kept me on edge. I don't know, I had a good time with this one. Just wish those clingy vines had done a better job shredding Amy and Stacy's tee-shirts. Oh well, still good.

8. Transsiberian

Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Session 9) definitely has a masterpiece in him and I'm not sure but this might be it. Woody Harrelson (at his most likeable) and Emily Mortimer star as Roy and Jessie, a couple of Americans who decide to take the Transsiberian railroad on their way from China to Moscow. On board, they meet Abby and Carlos who may or may not be drug smugglers and then after a brief stop one of the four goes missing and then, even later, another one disappears as the first one to go missing is found again. Ben Kingsley shows up and may or may not be a russian narcotics officer partnered with the stoically vile Thomas Kretchsmann. The movie belongs to Mortimer as a young do gooder who just gets in deeper and deeper while the viewer cringes and starts yelling obscenities at the screen. I hate describing things with the word I am about to use but it's the best thing I can think of. It's positively hitchcockian.

7. The Dark Knight

I want to call this one a flawed masterpiece but I just realized how absurd that term is. Can a masterpiece really be flawed? I love so much about this film (and I won't even get into Heath Ledger's over described performance) that I can, for the most part, overlook its flaws. Surely, the film deserves an oscar nomination. Everything about it feels so god damned epic. The fight scenes are a mixed bag for sure (Nolan hasn't improved much in that department) but the flaws aren't that noticeable. I just wasn't crazy about certain elements of the picture (the joker's party crashing, gordon "deceiving" the joker, the run time, etc). Still, the picture floored me. All of the performances are terrific, especially the not mentioned enough Aaron Eckhert. It may not be the masterpiece everyone claims it to be but it's still pretty great. Nothing wrong with that.

6. Cloverfield

I had a blast seeing this one in the theatre. You know what, it's pretty great on the small screen too. Let's see, I love Godzilla. I was a fan of The Blair Witch. Why not merge the two and even have the arachnids from the greatest picture of all time (Starship Troopers) cameo as some sort of weird spider lice or whatever. This picture worked for me. Shaky cam rarely makes me nauseous so that element didn't bother me. I cared about the characters even though they weren't really developed (and for christ sakes, how do you develop characters in a found footage movie anyway??). The monster effects were spectacular. The ending was jarring. I loved it.

5. The Foot Fist Way

Comedies usually aren't my bag. I like to laugh, I just don't like to laugh when I'm supposed to laugh if that makes sense. This year produced a few good comedies (Hamlet 2, Tropic Thunder, and The Pineapple Express) and this was the best one. It's all of the uncomfortable oh my god he just knocked out that old lady variety and I guess that's the reason it made my list. I guess I find pain funny. If you're a fan of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's work ("The Office" or "Extras") then you will dig this one. Danny McBride (who incidentally stole his scenes in Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express) stars as the Tae Kwon Doe instructor from hell named Fred Simmons. He delivers so many off the cusp remarks that ones jaw pretty much doesn't leave the floor (example "I'm so hungry I could eat a grown man's ass"). What if Mr. Miyagi told Daniel "if you were in prison, you'd be raped because of your feminine qualities." Would that be funny to you? Not everyone's cup of tea but it's definitely mine.

4. Punisher: War Zone

What the fuck is this piece of shit doing here? Oh wait, it's was all kinds of mother fucking amazing. Yeah, this was a better comic book picture than The Dark Knight and fuck off if you disagree. While Nolan is taking comic movies into new levels of seriousness (read pretentiousness) and some shit leave it to some hot kickboxing broad from the UK (Lexi Alexander) to bring them back into the blood and shit soaked gutter where they belong. Hyper violent and hyper fun. Ray Stevenson is Frank Castle. Dominic West gives a rioutous performance as jigsaw, the joker-like villain without the sense of humor. Doug Hutchinson (Tooms from "X-files") steals the show as Loony Bin Jim, jigsaw's violently insane brother, who, in a not so subtle nod to his X-files character, rips out a man's liver with his bare hands and eats it. You shit birds will eat this up as well.

3. Doomsday

I had a hard time deciding between this or Punisher as my favorite film going experience this year. I went with Doomsday because we're coming up on a year since I've seen it and I still love the fucker. Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) crafts a brilliant mishmash of all my favorite pictures...Aliens, Escape From New York, Excalibur, Lord of the Rings, The Road Warrior, etc...into the most original rip off I've seen yet. Critics cried for Marshall to up the ante after The Descent. I guess they want him to shoot for an oscar or something. I'm happy if he keeps making "crap" like this. What the fuck do we go to the movies for anyway?? I don't know about you but I go to see Rhona Mitra's leather clad ass on the big screen. Word of advice Marshall. Next time, lose the leather.

2. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Guillermo Del Toro can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. Hellboy 2 is superior, by far, to Hellboy 1. Del Toro's visual style is currently unrivaled. Ron Perlman is perfect as the titular character. Doug Jones, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor and even that fucking "Family Guy" guy give wonderful performances. The troll market, that weird giant elemental creature that blossoms into a stunningly beautiful garden after hellboy kills it, the golden army themselves (an army of orb like indestructable robots that Prince Nuada (long story) seeks to gain control of so he can take back the earth from humankind). Is Nuada evil? Not really, just a bit misguided. This movie isn't about good and evil. It's much more interested in things like love. Also, spectacular visuals and some amazing fights don't hurt. This is the best comic book picture of 2008. It would have been the best picture period if not for...

1. Let the Right One In

Stop comparing this movie to Twilight. That's a huge fucking disservice to Let the Right One In. LTROI is a painfully honest picture about adolescence and, in particular, the blossoming relationship between a young boy and a young girl (who happens to be a vampire). The picture is beautifully spare in its portrayal of a destitute Stockholm suburb. The performances from the two leads are wonderful and no ending has simultaneously moved and horrified me like this one. When Eli pulls Oskar out of that pool and smiles at him I think I may have shed a tear ( can't really remember, it was a while ago). It's a shame that this picture has already been eliminated from the Foreign Language category since only one submission is allowed per country and Sweden already submitted something that no one will see. Fuck it, if there's any justice in the world this would take home "Best Picture". Yeah, it's that good.

Here are a few honorable mentions that I can recommend:

Teeth, Rambo, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day (yep, Amy Adams), Iron Man, Redbelt, The Strangers, Stuck, The Midnight Meat Train, The Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Death Race, Hamlet 2, Burn After Reading, Valkyrie.

Back later with a few pieces of shit.

Jungleground (1995)

I've been a fan of Roddy Piper ever since I saw him in They Live. If there's a former wrestler out there that has the goods to be a legitimate action star than he is probably the one. He's got a great physical presence along with some adequate charisma and the ability to deliver a good line or two. Unfortunately, hollywood never really saw it the way I do and so he's been forced to work on the outskirts trudging through some pretty awful shit that I am too lazy to look up on imdb and name for you. I did see him in Hell Comes to Frog Town which was a pretty fun post apocalyptic story about the last fertile man on earth or some shit like that. I recommend that one. And, now, I've seen his low budget actioner called Jungleground which takes elements from a picture like Surving The Game (or, The Most Dangerous Game for all you film snobs) and fuses it with the urban gangland aspects of Judgement Night and then surgically removes the entire budget. Anyway, wanted to knock off a quick review or two before I go home for the holidays so here you are. My long anticipated write up for a Roddy Piper picture that no one has heard of and that wasn't even made in the 80s even though it feels like it was.

Jungleground is the kind of picture set in an urban wasteland and likely filmed in Canada somewhere to capture an authentic look and feel of that type of society. There are basically two locations; the east side of a bridge and the west side of that same bridge. I can't remember which side "jungleground" was on but it was probably the bad side. The picture opens with a cocky little pizza delivery boy who doubles as a drug runner for his boss who I guess is named Poppa being sent deep into jungleground to make a delivery. It's his first time so Poppa sends along a hired gun but the poor boy sets off an explosion after ringing the doorbell of a broken down tenement and the hired gun is dispatched by a boy armed with an uzi on roller skates who is named gameshow and thinks he's being clever when he says "the price is your life" (I guess he is referencing "the price is right".) The explosion looked pretty cool anyway.

Roddy Piper plays a police lieutenant named Jake Cornell and he lives on the good side of the river with his artist girlfriend in their spacious loft. He spends most of his time working undercover in jungleground and his scars and traumas from everyday life are what fuels his girlfriend's art which appear to be badly rendered metal sculptures of various nightmarish things indicative of life in the jungleground or so we are told. She's pretty good at what she does though because on this night she is hosting a gala celebrating her art and also some dealer tells her so but later recants and claims it's all shit because she won't sleep with him. This dealer tries to cause a rift between the artist and Piper with a slew of umemorable insults but Piper just responds by saying "I just figure you're like a kid that hasn't been toilet trained yet. He doesn't mean to offend with the load of shit he's been saddled with." That shut the guy up real quick. His artist girlfriend is a real character though because she doesn't accuse Jake of sabotaging her career like most women would in such a picture. She loves him for standing up to the asshole and paraphrases Rachel Ticotin during a nice rooftop scene "grab me now or lose me forever."

Later, some cop named Wilson shows up at the party and it's all downhill from there. Some bad shit is going down at a jungleground bus station and Cornell is needed to oversee a deal, make sure things don't get too fucked up. His job is just to stand by and look inconspicuous (he fails miserably) while a couple of other undercovers broker the deal. I don't know man, this is fucking jungleground. A few white guys (and a lady) pretending to read the paper in the world's most dangerous bus terminal is probably going to stand out. Still, these are not the world's smartest drug dealers so things go okay until one of them decides to pinch the undercover female cop's ass and she unloads a clip into his chest. I think she was new because a seasoned undercover would probably just have laughed off such a gesture, maybe even flashed a little breast with a wink but this cop was into women's lib and shit. Her pride got them all killed except, of course, for Piper who is captured by the gang and given a chance to live. All he has to do is survive the night in jungleground long enough to make it to the other side of the river.

The movie has an interesting view on gangs. The gang is led by a scenery chewing JR Bourne as Odin. His war chief is played by Peter Williams and is named Dragon. Fuck, these guys all have names from some sort of mythology or other; Well, ok, I guess Thor was the only other one. Some other names were Posey, Diesel, and Ferret. So, there is a good old fashioned power struggle taking place between Odin and Dragon. Dragon's mission is to rid jungleground of pushers and to clean up the neighborhood. Odin says that's his mission but he rarely backs it up with action. He has a point. If these guys want to be a self respecting gang they need to bring in the money somehow. In a part of the city even the cops are afraid to enter drugs seems like the logical choice. Things get a bit skewed when Dragon's young brother (the rollerskating gameshow) is accidentaly killed when, while pursuing Piper, he skates up a ramp and into a hanging car engine that knocks him to the ground and then falls on him. Will Dragon blindly seek vengeance on Piper even though he knows it wasn't really his fault and that Piper may be the best remaining chance to clean up jungleground?

I'm trying hard to defend this one but it was really hard to get past the miniscule budget. I mean, Piper is great in this thing but no one else distinguishes themselves and quite a few should be embarrassed by their performances. I think my favorite scene involved a set of gangland twins dispatched by Odin to go to Piper's girlfriends apartment and hold her hostage until dawn at which point they will kill her I guess (or worse). These scenes contain the film's most disturbing sequences as the twins duct taped her mouth and then would torture her by duct taping her nose shut and then only ripping the tape off right before she passed out. This girl, her name was Sam, was a bit resourceful though and devised a semi-brilliant escape plan.

I forgot to mention the picture's biggest set piece involving the trial of Roddy Piper in a scene that reminded me of barter town from that Mad Max Thunderdome picture. Also, Piper is dressed in a toga and Odin addressed the masses from a balcony. It's probably the only time the picture achieved any kind of worthy atmosphere and it didn't even bother me too much that it was ripped off. Fuck, I am going back and forth on this one. This picture does some things pretty well I guess. They take the old tired "hooker with a heart of gold" cliche and, while they don't do much with it, have her take a bullet in the gut while helping Piper. She doesn't die (at least not onscreen) but Piper still leaves the poor, possibly mortally wounded, girl in the company of a bunch of construction workers and apparently these are not the ogling type but i still wonder what happened to the broad. Scene could have turned into one of those disturbing type of gang bang pornos they used to make in the 70s but luckily the director had more class than that I guess.

Also, one of the gang members is a black cowboy that brandishes a pair of six shooters. I like it when movies twist some stereotypes around like that. Unfortunately, his inclusion leads to one of Piper's worst lines when he says "hi ho silver" after dispatching him. Well fuck it, some of this picture is shit and some of it entertained. How much shit can you tolerate I guess is the question of the moment. I can tolerate a lot so there you go. The movie is full of exploding cars, gun battles, and some hand to hand combat type scenes where Piper finally gets to display the moves that originally made him famous. Piper is a brawler in this one. He gets his ass kicked at times but keeps coming back. Please, for the love of god, someone put this guy in a decent picture.

The Punisher (1989)

After seeing Punisher War Zone I decided to go back and visit the one that started it all but then I learned that these films aren't really connected, there's no trilogy...each one is what they like to call in Hollywood a "reboot". I guess that's become popular these days since Hollywood is constantly fucking up our comic book movies and needing to re-do them. I've never heard the term used for any other genre. Why can't they "reboot" the Star Wars prequels or The Happening or The Hills Have Eyes sequel to the remake? Anyway, it turned out I had never seen this one which surprised me a little. I always felt the punisher was one of the more interesting comic book heroes (I think I was the only one). His is the rare case where his alter ego, Frank Castle (or is punisher the alter ego? I forget how this works), is actually dead, not in the literal sense. The moment his family was wiped out Castle ceased to exist and he became the punisher. There's no going back to Castle. His is not really a story of redemption so much as a story of vengeance that can only end when he dies. Like many heroes, the punisher works mostly at night because, I guess, that's when most criminals go to work. During the day he lurks in his subterranean lair (it's a sewer) and prays in the nude to a god that will not listen. He's not asking for forgiveness or answers or anything like that. He knows he's going to hell. I think he's just lonely.

Anyway, this punisher guy is played by Dolph Lundgren in this one, the first one. He definitely looks the part except I can't, for the life of me, figure out why they didn't give him the skull t-shirt. That was a mistake I think since it's sort of his identifiable mark. I could see a thirteen year old today coming across this picture on TBS and quickly changing the channel when he so called realizes this is one of those crummy 80s pictures that Dad likes to watch and not a comic book movie that all thirteen year old boys are required to watch. That kid would be wrong and would probably grow up to be at least a fraction worse for it. This is a much much better picture than it has any right to be.

The opening credits are usually a good place to start and these are some good ones. We're treated to comic book drawings of villains being shot off the screen as an honest to god real orchestral pulse pounding score serenades us into euphoria. The movie begins much like the 2nd reboot began; with an asshole mafioso being acquitted. He stops to talk to the press and says a line we actually believe he believes that goes like "if a man is innocent, justice prevails" and then he has this to say about the so called punisher "if he ever shows up within a thousand yards of me, he'll find out what the word punished really means." Like most mafioso douchebags, this guy is not really a man of his word and he will soon find out what the word retribution means in spectacularly brutal fashion. Of course, this is the 1980s so the violence isn't quite as over the top as War Zone but it's certainly still to be appreciated. We don't need to see organs flying out of bodies or whatever to understand the consequences of the punisher's actions.

I'm not sure why all the internet fanboys weren't up in arms when this thing came out. The 1st Punisher reboot caught a lot of flak for being set in Miami and not New York City which is apparently the only place these stories can take place. Well this fucking thing was filmed in Sydney Australia ya bunch of fuckos and I have to think that's a step below Miami. The city itself is never named but how the fuck can Punisher not even be in America? It's an abysmally awful choice by the director Mark Goldblatt and his studio New World Australia. This is such a slap in the face to all of us fucking Americans. How would you douchebags like it if we took an Australian treasure like Crocodile Dundee or something, put him in a movie and set the god damned thing in New York or Los Angeles? Christ.

Anyway, the cast in this picture is pretty impressive. I mentioned Dolph Lundgren but haven't even gotten to the real casting coup yet; Oscar winning actor Lou Mother fucking Gossett jr. Yeah, he's in this. He's Frank's old partner and current Sydney detective Jake Berkowitz. If it sounds like a white guy's name that's because it is. They replaced the white actor that was originally in the picture with a vacationing Lou Gossett who decided he needed some time away from the wife. Can't pass up a chance to grab an oscar winner, right? The name was already in the script so they kept it. He filmed his part in about ten minutes and is pretty much useless until the end and even then he's pretty fucking useless always showing up a few minutes after punisher leaves. He has one fantastic emotional scene with Punisher after Punisher has just been arrested for rescuing a bunch of mafia kids from the Yakuza (long story) where he addresses Punisher as Frank and tells him he's sick because of what he's done and what the fuck does he call 125 murders in five years to which Punisher responds "a work in progress."

I really enjoyed the performance of Jeroen Krabbe who played the mafia don as a somewhat sympathetic character who loves his son almost as much as he loves the family business. Kim Myori played the Yakuza crime boss named Lady Tanaka and was the kind of cold hearted bitch that would feed her brother a nice meal and slit his throat as soon as he was finished and, in fact, she did. Some hot blonde broad played her lieutenant the white blonde ninja or at least she did until punisher broke her neck. Punisher took a beating in this picture and I guess that makes sense because it's the first movie and he's still learning the ropes. At one point he's overwhelmed by a bunch of ninjas at an amusement park and placed on a torture device commonly referred to as the rack. We learn how far this guy is willing to go when he sees his only friend named Shakes the bum on an adjacent rack. Torture has no effect on a guy like the punisher, a guy with an incredibly high threshold for pain coupled with an absolute willingness to die. What about the torture of a close friend, a drunken bum that claims himself to be an actor, a guy that punisher plys with booze in exchange for information? Will that have an effect on the guy? Nope.

The only people that can get through to the guy are the children. Yes, punisher used to have two children of his own until they were blown up by the mob. He even has the picture and the dental records to prove it. Often he sees them reflected in the eyes of the mafia kids and then he becomes, for a brief moment anyway, a big softie. Wow, forgot a plot description so here is s a brief one for you: In five years time punisher has decimated the local mob to the point that the Yakuza can waltz in and take over. Yakuza make fun of Italian mafia and steal their children to sell into slavery. Italians try to make a deal and show up at a fancy restaurant but it's actually an ambush since apparently all the other diners (including a little old white lady) are working for Yakuza and shoot the place up which is hilarious since Lady Tanaka waltzes in and tells the few survivors about the poison they just drank. Anyway, Punisher rescues all the children except for one, you guessed it, the son of the boss. The boss and Punisher team up to rescue the boy with Punisher telling the boss "when this is over, you're dead." Can either of these two loveable outcasts be redeemed? Is punisher a man of his word? Why am I an hour and fifteen minutes into this thing with nary a naked breast in sight? I can answer the last one. Punisher has no use for women, no, just vengeance. Vengeance and children.

The Punisher Origins is an entertaining movie, a near forgotten gem from a time that time forgot, the time just before 1990. Lundgren is, like I mentioned earlier, good in the role except for his voice which at times seemed to be trying a little too hard to be menacing. English is not really his first language so maybe the guy was just trying to enunciate correctly. I tried to keep a count of dead guys but it didn't take long for me to throw up my arms and just give up. You'll probably be a bit surprised to learn that this picture is also a bit funny at times. I liked when the mob guys were on the pier waiting for a shipment to come in and one of them radioed a lookout named "red 2" and asked "what have you got" to which red 2 responded "bad kidneys...gotta take a leak." Lots of throwaway lines like that which enhanced the overall flavor of the picture and also the racist line where the one italian guy scoffs at the Yakuza 75-25 proposal and says "I'm not gonna be a salary boy to a bunch of nips". I didn't actually find that part funny at all. Racism is never funny. Well, wrapping up...what he have here is a pretty good action picture the likes of which the world has seen many times over but one that I can whole heartedly recommend. I just wish they had wrapped it up with a better fight. It's a pretty tired cliche where two guys wrestle for control of a gun, the gun goes off, and then one guy stands up and we think the guy on the ground must have been the one that was shot but no, we've been tricked, the guy that stood up was the one shot all along. Then again, I don't know if I've seen that cliche before 1989 or, more likely, I just don't remember. If this is the origin of that particular god awful cliche then I dub this the Casablanca of action pictures.

Tango and Cash (1989)

One or two more of these pictures and then I swear I'm going to have to move on. Tango and Cash is a selection from the sub genre of action films known as the "buddy picture". While not quite at the level of 48 hours or Lethal Weapon this is a pretty fucking good movie, the kind that if made today would probably go DTV with a 1/4 of the budget. I recently saw Punisher: War Zone. It kicked all sorts of ass. And yet, after my viewing I couldn't help but wonder why the hollywood action picture is changing so drastically. They've always had elements of hyper-violence, but now that violence comes equipped with Saw-like gore. This absolutely is not a bad thing (unless, of course, that gore comes with Saw-like edits)....but, but, but....where have all the titties gone? They used to be a staple of this type of picture. You cannot have a scene in a titty bar (another staple of action pictures) without titties. You just can't. I think the problem is that actresses today don't have the balls that they had in the past. They want a legitimate acting career and fear showing their goods might hinder their progress. Of course, we know this to be bullshit. Tango and Cash almost fell victim to this "progress". Teri Hatcher plays an "erotic dancer" who doesn't take off her top. Thankfully, I guess they hired real strippers for the strip club scene and we got to see some of them backstage. Hatcher kept her clothes on in her dance scene though. I haven't been this appalled since Jessica Alba didn't take off her top in Sin City. Fuck man, I'd even settle for some CG titties. Anything! I guess Americans are more comfortable watching a wheelchair bound elderly mafioso having his head cut off (great moment in Punisher) then seeing something like a beautiful pair of tits. It doesn't make much sense to me. Murder and mayhem are good. Sex, the thing responsible for life and hard ons, is not. It's a bad trend and it needs to change. I think I should just add "titties" as a blog category and be done with it.

Tango and Cash is the story of two Los Angeles narcotics officers named Cash (Kurt Russell) and Tango (Sylvester Stallone). These guys couldn't be more different. Tango is the buttened down stock broker type, referred to as "Armani with a badge" while Cash is the slovenly blue jeans and a t-shirt type. He's the kind of guy that gets a tear in a shirt and laments "this shirt cost me nine bucks!" Also, they work in different precincts so it's not like these guys are even partners. What they have in common is they've been costing Jack Palance (he plays a drug lord) millions. Palance, playing a guy named Yyves Perret, is not your typical drug lord though. Instead of just having these two cops killed he concocts an elaborate scheme to have them framed for the murder of an undercover agent and sent to prison. While in prison, they'll be tortured and killed by a group of thugs led by none other than the "maniac cop" (Robert Z'Dar), he with the enormous chin. Of course, no prison can contain Stallone (see Lock Up) and Russell, we know, is pretty good at breaking in and out of them as well (Escape from New York and L.A.) so immediately we realize Palance's scheme is flawed.

This picture actually has a great line up of villains. Besides Palance and D'Zar, we've also got the likes of Brion James (Blade Runner) playing a cockneyed thug and James Hong (also Blade Runner) as, I guess, Palance's left hand man (he's not very good and as far as I could tell did nothing but suck down his camel 100s). Even Clint Howard (Blackwoods) shows up briefly as Tango's cellmate Slinky. He's named so because the guy wraps his slinky around his head while he sleeps and shoots spittle on the ceiling. We're not even going to stop here. A Frank Oz looking mother fucker shows up as a key witness against Tango and Cash, an audio expert who "authenticated" the pivotal evidence at their trial. He's played by Michael Jeter. Fuck, even Seinfeld's Mr. Lipman makes an appearence as Tango and Cash's lawyer. It's pretty much a cast for the fucking ages. Oh yeah, a non-topless Teri Hatcher (is she Stallone's girlfriend, daughter, or...gasp...sister??). And former real-life criminal turned actor playing a cop Edward Bunker is in this thing. It's a dream cast.

Back to the story, amazingly Cash and Tango were able to cut a deal of only eighteen months in a country club like prison for murdering an undercover agent. Also amazingly, Palance has enough pull (i.e. cash) to get these guys rerouted to a maximum security joint, one that he basically controls. I assumed this because on the first night in prison, Cash and Tango are dragged from their cells by their prison mates and into an underground lair where Palance happend to be waiting. Perhaps, the funniest scene (and the gayest!) of the picture, was when Tango and Cash were taking their first shower together and they couldn't help but look at each other's junk. Tango calls Cash "minnie mouse" while Cash refers to Tango as "tripod". I think I'd rather be tripod. Then Cash dropped his soap. I hope the prison systems have improved since this picture. This place is a dump. Fires everywhere, papers flying out of cells, big bucks yelling things like "Cash! I'm gonna put brown sugar in your ass." Somehow, Tango and Cash are able maintain a sense of humor despite the impending sodomy ("loved you in Conan".)

Hell, this whole picture is pretty damned amusing. When one fellow officer insults Tango by calling him "Rambo" he replies "Rambo...is a pussy." The action scenes are well shot as well....at least until the final brouhaha at Palance's armored fortress. That thing was a little too nuts. There's a car chase in a parking garage that I'm still amazed by how well they pulled it off. The prison escape is a thing of beauty although highly unrealistic but, then again, who wants realism in their action pictures? This prison is one of those corrupt kinda joints where the inmates (in this case Robert D'Zar) appear to be running the place. The guards are taking naps apparently or, more likely, paid to look the other way. I did like Cash's deduction during their daring flight..."we jump to those wires and swing to the other side"...these are power lines..."as long as you're touching one wire and not touching the ground you won't fry.......right??". Fuck it, just do it man.

Their escape leads to the most titillating scene of the movie when Cash receives a massage from Teri Hatcher (ok, she's Tango's sister) and Tango barges in on them...."ok, I think it's in...oh yes, it's in..it's in". Is she talking about his slipped disc or his member? I'll let you decide. Until you see the picture. The movie concludes with a scene filled with potential that just doesn't really live up to it. Tango and Cash are equipped with an "RV from hell" and have a demolition derby with an army of Palance's bucketloaders, big rigs, and what I'm pretty sure was Big Foot (the truck). It wrapped up too quickly for my money. I did like how Palance aped Howard Hughes and watched from his safe room filled with a vast array of televisions and piss bottles (I made that last part up). This is the last buddy cop picture worth watching in my opinion and it's a good one to go out with. Any movie that ends with a freeze frame of a high five which leads into a Bad English song is definitely worth your time.