“I don’t need a seat belt. I have my own built in air bags.”

Before there was the king of late night b-movies, Joe Bob Briggs, there was the hostess with the mostess, the queen of scream, the mistress of the dark, Elvira. Her sarcastic wit and b-movie knowledge was only overshadowed by her huge kuzungas (not sure about the spelling on this one!). Being the Joe Bob fanboy that I am, I still must admit that Elvira is much easier on the eyes than a Texan good ol’ boy in a bolo tie, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Elvira had her own self-titled comedy back in the late 80’s. She certainly had the best double features in film history, so it only made sense to bring them to the silver screen in “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.”

Cassandra Peterson plays the Mistress of the Dark, and if you passed Cassandra on the street, you’d never know it was Elvira’s alter-ego, as they’ve caked on so much Goth makeup it wouldn’t surprise me if Marilyn Manson was actually an impish database programmer from Milwaukee. Elvira is fired from her TV show one day when her Texan good ol’ boy boss tries to “manage her assets.” Elvira’s response is to clock him one. Soon after she learns that a long-lost aunt has died and left her an inheritance. Elvira sees dollar signs and hopes she can use the inheritance and make a new start in Vegas as a sleazy showgirl. Not exactly movin’ on up but every girl has got a dream. She heads across the country in her black “vampmobile” to Massachusetts–apparently where all the rich aunts go to die–but is considered a freak by most of the local townsfolk… Well, except every man and teenage boy within the city limits (even the ones flying over in planes are gawking).

The inheritance turns out to be an old run-down mansion that the Munsters would have proudly called their summer vacation home, so Elvira enlists the help of  some peeping-tom teens to help fix it up Bob Villa-style (only with more cleavage), and hopes to sell it to some poor schmuk  with poor eyesight. Elvira’s surviving uncle, Vincent, turns out to be a rookie warlock whose intent is to steal an ancient recipe book that’s been hidden there, so he can rule the world (or in his case, become even more British…either way it’s concentrated evil). How does a recipe book gives you evil powers, anyway?  Can a properly seasoned meatloaf control the fate of humanity? That might explain Betty Crocker’s rise to power.

To pass the time waiting for a buyer, Elvira puts on a b-movie/flash dance show at the local theater that ends with her getting tarred and feathered. She also laces a casserole for the town picnic with an aphrodisiac potion, and makes a dinner that nearly eats her new boyfriend, Flint McThickneck. He’s a big, burly fellow in plaid, straight from the Brawny paper towel ads, and has about the same amount of acting ability. But he does seem able to stumble through his lines well enough while staring at Elvira’s chest, so I give him points for that skill.

The townsfolk decide they’ve had enough of Elvira’s shenanigans at that Point, so they tie her to a stake in the Town Square for a good old community witch roasting–minus the potato salad. Using her super power decoder ring given to her as a baby, Elvira narrowly escapes under the cover of rain to do battle with the evil warlock, Vincent, and to retrieve the recipe book and make some delicious oatmeal cookies…of EVIL!!!!!! EVIL!!!!! Will Elvira’s huge knockers save humanity? Will her French poodle ever live-down the humiliation of having a haircut like Billy Idol? Will the British ever stop sounding pompous? Find out for yourself in “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.” Retroman says check it out, but watch out for spinning tassels, and always wear eye protection.

Keep an eye out for...

- Exploding gas stations
- Baby Avon callings
- Punk rockin’ poodles and mice, oh my
- Exxon sponsored flash dancing
- Demon spiced stew
- Cooking-obsessed warlocks
- Moral Club picnic orgies
- Casserole Viagra
- Community witch roasts
- Rambo-vira (she’s bringing out the big guns)

“Giddy Up Oom Poppa Omm Poppa Mow Mow, Elvira” - Alabama

rated 8.3 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

“These late night cosmic bowling parties have gotten way out of hand. Frank’s use of a severed head for league play was proof of that even if it did improve his score average.”

Thirty-four years old and I still hate going to the doctor’s office. First there’s the endless wait in the “waiting room”, but then they call you back to a smaller room that’s yet another waiting room…like it’s some sort of bad horror movie “Waiting Room 2.The Day the Doctor Never Came.” Sure, they say he’ll be in momentarily, but doctor time is on the canine time scale where minutes equal hours. “Soon” actually means “whenever he gets back from lunch.” There are only so many times I can read through the fascinating articles in Golf Digest and Home Pottery Magazine before I resort to the ever-popular games of “Ceiling Tile Counting” or seeing how long I can sleep while sitting up. So finally the doctor magically teleports in and runs through a series of questions the nurse had asked just hours before. “Do you have body aches?” “Yes.”  “Do you have a stuffy head?” “Yes.  Congrats, doc–you’ve just diagnosed that I am not feeling well. Then the prescription is for some over-the-counter medicine that he scribbles on a scrap of paper in cryptic ancient Celtic symbols, along with the advice of, “Get some rest and drink plenty of fluids.” I get charged $30 for the doctor’s visit; my insurance gets charged $3,000; and I go home and crawl back into bed. I should have gone to medical school instead of learning how to paint baskets of fruit.

Doctor Carl Hill in the cult classic “Re-animator” doesn’t really help me with my fear of doctors. He’s the “head” neurosurgeon at the Miskatonic Medical School, where he enjoys peeling cadavers’ heads like oranges in his neurosurgery class, and practices suggestive hypnosis at his dinner parties in the evenings. Our hero Dan Cain, played by Bruce Abbott, is a student there, along with his girlfriend, Megan (Barbara Crampton), and are having some nookie while playing hooky off school grounds. All is happy until Herbert West suddenly appears from a stint in Sweden and insists of being Dan’s new roommate but apparently didn’t read the fine print of no deposit returns in case of blood stains in the apartment lease. West wants to use the basement to perform his continuing studies on re-animating dead flesh, create the ultimate glo-stick, and defy God’s will–typical medical school stuff. Instead of picking the obvious test subjects of a Larry King or John McCain, he uses a dead pet cat, causing the feline to turn into a raging, vicious hell-beast that tries to rip them apart. In other words, your average cat.

Learning from his continuing failures, Herbert is ready to test his re-animation serum on some real stiffs in the morgue. Could this be the ultimate energy drink? He and Dr. Hill sneak in past another dimwitted, made-for-film security guard and inject the serum into a recent accident victim, resulting in a spastic reaction similar to the cat. Then the Dean of the school stumbles in on them, so they shoot him up with some of dead juice, too. Is there a help group for people like this?  Perhaps some sort of DRA (Dead Revivers Anonymous)?

Doc Hill arrives at Herbert’s basement un-announced and plans to take the secrets of the serum and claim it as his own invention. Herbert hits him upside the head with a shovel, and proceeds to remove the doc’s head from his body and re-animate it. Now, that’s how you solve a copyright (an intellectual property?) dispute! But the headless doc outsmarts Herbert, kidnaps Megan, and sneaks into the morgue to perform some group lobotomies. Being decapitated really improves one’s productivity.

Dan and Herbert soon confront the doctor, who is trying to get busy with Megan on an examination table (Can we say, “Sexual harassment lawsuit?”), and then they have to take on a legion of walking dead, exploding chests, and frisky intestine tentacles. Actually med school doesn’t sound very appealing now.

This film is on my Amazon’s Listmania as one of the essential must see cult/b-movies from the 1980’s. It redefines the genre of zombie/mad scientist/dark gore comedies. Well It’s actually the only one in that genre, but it does redefine it. Stuart Gordon directed this classic based loosely on a H.P. Lovercraft short story, as well as another great film, “The Beyond.” Though it did spawn several lackluster sequels, this one is definitely the crown jewel. Also we need to give an honorable mention for Jeffery Combs for creating one of the best horror movie characters in cinematic history, Herbert West. He makes over-acting a work of art. He’s in the same league as Bruce Campbell as Ash for his pure awesome-ness. So check it out, but don’t let your doctor give you that shot of the glowing green stuff,even if he says it’s just to clear your sinuses.

Keep an eye out for…

- Jiffy-Pop eyeballs
- head peeling
- zombie cats
- finger snacks
- labatonomy parties
- skater rink glo-stick overdose
- intestine wranglin’
- padded rooms with a view
- zombie boobies
- horny disembodied heads (is that even possible?)
- the ultimate tribute to the band Talking Heads

rated 9.4 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Re-animator

“Mr. Johnson’s gallstone sculptures not only frightened away customers but so did his permanent look of surprise from passing them.“

In the early 80’s there started a trend of what I’ve termed the meat by-product movies. First there was Porky’s, Porky’s Revenge, Meatballs, then Hotdog and finally cam along Kentucky Fried Movie to deep fry it all together in it’s original recipe of seven herbs and spices. It was a cholesterol carousel of titles whose movie focus was crude humor, fart jokes, and adolescent guys trying to see boobies. Pretty much what I sum up as most of my high school experience… well and most of college.

So on my quest to find movies in the same genre I came across this little gem. At first when I saw this title I thought it said “The Last American Virginian” which I figured to be a History channel special about the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. To my surprise Woodrow Wilson turned out to be a Ralph Machio lookin’ bandanna wearin’ Italian kid in the 1980’s who catches a bad case of the crabs. The obsessive crotch grabbin’ made sense.

The Last American Virgin is the story of Gary (Lawrence Monoson) and his cohorts, Rick “gotta adjust my collar” and glandular-overactive David, affectionately named the “Big Apple” though I found him to be more of a pear shape myself then a round red apple. Gary’s blandness is only surpassed by his lack of personality while the rest of the guys are focused on trying to get laid or deliver some pink boxes of pizzas to housewives with bad Spanish accents. The first half of the movie is a series of lame joke setups for the pizza gigolos and opportunities to blare out some classic 80’s tunes. The plot writers must have been busy getting sleeping in that week.

Gary is in love with the curly haired girl from “Better of Dead”, Diane Franlin, except she’s in love with Gary’s best friend Rick. Diane’s character, Karin, doesn’t have a French accent this time and there’s no John Cussack asking her to fix his camaro, so this film is already more bearable. She shows little to no interest in Gary’s blandness most likely due to his alcoholism or inability to form coherent sentences . Gary wants to loose his virginity as soon as possible as if that would some how make him even more appealing to Karin, so he and his friends go find a hooker way past her expiration date that gives them all a bad case of crabs. Nothing says “will you be mine?” more than a VD. Then as if the director suddenly went on a sabbatical and a highschool drama teacher was flown in to take over, the movie takes a drastic bi-polar mood swing. From upbeat goofy teen comedy to soap drama in less than a second it’ll make your head spin. Karin suddenly gets pregnant from Rick at which point Rick breaks up with her not wanting anything to do with his new prego-girlfriend. Then Gary swoops in like a vampire from a rafter so that weepy eye Karin will have giant shoulder pad to cry on and he can put some of his bland moves on her. In order to help Karin he relocates her into his now dead grandmothers home and they play pretend family (uh….creepy!) He then sells his enormous wood grain stereo at a local pawn shop to help pay for her quickie drive-thru abortion, makes her breakfast, and buy her a pine tree a with a bag of oranges. Take note, 2 gifts not to bring to someone in the hospital. I really don’t want to give away the ending to this but WOW! A total downer and a big cold blast of reality for us viewers. But hey I admire a director with the steel cahonias to not sugar coat the consequences of teen sex and to not give us the stereotypical ending. No wonder this movie bombed in the box office. Their target demographic, horny guys, will laugh at the crude jokes, enjoy the boobies then after the ending go out and steer their car into a tree. Parents, you’ll want to lock your teens in the basement after you see this but I’d recommend giving it a view. Just be sure to wear protection.

Keep an eye out for….

-pink brady bunch station wagons
- sausage measuring assembly lines
- bike vandalism
- extreme devo
- sugar snorting diabetics
- nympho old Spanish housewives
- library rumbles
- illegal use of 80’s pop-up collars
- denim mania
- interpretive Spanish lessons
- emergency brake failure
- after glow upchucking

“When a VD comes along you must itch it…now itch it…itch it good.” - sung to the tune of Devo’s Whip it.

rated 6.5 out of 10 for the movie (I will give the last 20 minutes or so a 8.4)

Watch the trailer for “The Last American Virgin”

“I’m about to open a fortune cookie of Whoop Ass.“

When you think Kung-fu masters you think names like Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Jet li, sometimes Chuck Norris if a drinking game is involved…uh maybe Daniel Larusso but only the one in Karate Kid II…oh and that chef at the Japanese Steak house. The way he spins those knifes and cut shrimp in the air you just know on the weekends he’s fighting evil. But now there enters a new 80’s Kung-fu hero, Leroy Green, a student of the martial arts seeking his own hi-pro glow, the apparent sign of achieving perfect kung-fu or being radioactive, whichever comes first. He also has an unhealthy obsession with Bruce Lee and smells a bit like pizza. Leroy’s family owns a Daddy Green’s pizzeria shop in Harlem while he teaches a pacifist karate class for kids, a sort of Shy-Goy-Dies branch of the Martial Arts. Where’s Mr. Miyagi when you need him? That old man could teach you karate and get a house painted, car waxed, and catch flies with chop sticks all in the same day.

Leroy thwarts an attempted kidnapping of a local celebrity, Laura, who hosts a dance show/space-camp party show called “7th Heaven” minus Jessica Biel of course. The only perquisite to get on the show is sufficient leg warmer coverage or a minimum frizzy hair size…actual dancers need not apply. Laura is played by Vanity, a spaced-out Janet Jackson wanna-be from the early 80’s who sang like she was doped up on Goofballs and was also Prince’s main squeeze. She’s being pursued by a balding local arcade owner, Eddie Arkadian, who wants to get his middle aged high-pitched girlfriend auditioned on Laura’s show. You know it’s the 80’s if an arcade owner is still a rich business tycoon. Today you’d be lucky to find them begging for Xbox Live points or peddling old crane games on a street corner.

Leroy is constantly being harassed by who is arguably the tallest black man with bed hair in harlem “Sho’nuff” dressed as a fashion blind samurai/goalie who desperately wants to fight Leroy for the title of baddest mofo in Harlem. But Leroy would rather spout Chinese proverbs and whine how he hasn’t found the true master while he watches old kung-fu movies.

Laura is yet again kidnapped by Eddie’s gang of misfit thugs. This girl just can’t stop getting kidnapped (possibly mistaken for nasty Ms. Jackson?) but this time a bunch of paid assassins and trained fighters are waiting for Bruce Leroy to rescue her including a particular jolly old elf with a mohawk. I didn’t realize Santa liked to rumble. Really not much plot to really get into here. There’s a big fight between Leroy and Sho’nuff that has strong hints of the light sabre dual between Luke and Darth. There’s some escapees from the Jackson Five along with some rappin’ Chinese gangsters dudes and a senile old Kung-fu trainer who wants to retire to Florida. Add 2 parts break dancing, 1 annoying MTV video and several old Bruce Lee film clips and you’ve got yourself good campy kung-fu that won’t leave you gasy. I say give it a whirl in the DVD player if only for some of these great one-liners…

“You just get that sucker to the designated place at the designated time, and I will gladly designate his ass… for dismemberment!”

“Kiss my Converse”

“Now, when I say, “Who’s da mastah?” you say, “Sho’nuff!”

“Just direct-a your feets-a to Daddy Green’s Pizza!”

Keep an eye out for…

- gratuitous use of an MTV video
- boombox crushing
- popstar cheesy mustaches
- extreme latticework
- middle aged Madonna wanna-be’s
- pet piranhas
- hi-beam headlights
- extreme shoulder padding
- true Master glow - now with more cleaning power
- arrow catching
- bullet flossing
- Santas with mohawks
- Chinese Bubbonics
- dysfunctional fortune cookies
- belt buckle medallions

Here’s what I’d like on my tombstone “Here lies the baddest mofo low down around this town. Sho’nuff!”

rated 8.9 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for the The Last Dragon

“Psychotic hockey player or grizzly bear robot? You be the judge.”

In the early golden years of cable there used to be some great channels and not just re-runs of CSI and Monk. Remember the constant running of John Hughes films on TNT? There was also the Sci-fi Channel with it’s 50/50 split of horror and sci-fi where you got some great slasher movie marathons late at night and of course those great Saturday nights with Joe Bob Brigg’s Monstervision (Joe Bob you are missed.) Sure they were watered down and broken up with commercials for hair care products but you still had the great commentary by my favorite Texas b-movie connaisseur and a good way to spend a Saturday night. Of course I wouldn’t know this because I had such a busy social schedule with all the ladies and late night rave club dancing. What I do remember on those less “socially active nights” is the Friday the 13th marathons. A TV blood bonanza though less blood on cable thanks to big brother watching over my fine sensibilities. You’d think since I’m watching a horror movie they’d figure that I’d actually like to see where that pick axe lands. For all I could tell Jason suddenly appeared, the teenager screams a giant *bleep* and then trips and lands on the axe with his head. Don’t get me wrong, even for all the broadcast editing they were still very entertaining. Jason was like Jaws, a huge unstoppable killing machine with no dialog. You couldn’t reason with him, appeal to his nurturing side, and you couldn’t negotiate a payment schedule. He was going to find you and impale on the nearest sharp object he could grab so you just better run to gain a few more minutes of breathing. And you could pretty much forget it if you were a bitchy teenage girl who smoked pot and enjoyed premarital sex. That just means you’re first in line for the wood axe to the noggin. That’s a lesson they should really add to the sex-ed curriculum. “Chapter 5: If you have premarital sex Jason will hunt you down and impale you on meat hook. Class dismissed.”

By my count Jason racked up something like 250 kills in his movie career. No wonder frats and sororities are begging for more pledges, Jason cleaned house. Yet parents keep sending their kids to Crystal Lake. Perhaps when I have teenagers of my own I might better understand their motivation a bit better.

In Jason X (Friday the 13th part 10) the ticked off goalie returns but this time he’s been couped up in a underground research facility near his stomping grounds while the military figures out how to harvest his regenerative power (I think it’s called box-office draw). While attempting to be transferred to a new facility he of course escapes, kills a bunch of people, and then is cleverly trapped in a cryogenic freezer. That’s a tough way to chill out and develop a major case of freezer burn and is especially bad for a hockey player that doesn’t like ice or any water. Flash forward 4 centuries and a research crew discovers the now abandoned facility while exploring a now un-inhabitable planet Earth. They stumble upon Jason in an oversized Whirlpool appliance and by his side is a frozen government agent/super bimbo who had tried to escape from Jason the night of the big freeze but ended up impaled just as they both became frozen fish sticks. Back on the ship she gets thawed out and patched up just in time to warn the crew not to thaw out Jason…who of course was already defrosted and just smashed a researchers face into a thousands pieces. I think some people just wake up grumpy.

Fortunately the ship has it’s own built in crew of goofy armored marines for such occasions and they’re all sent into the cargo hold to track him down like Osama Bin-Vorhees. Semper-die is Jason’s motto and he kills them all off in his typical creative physco killer ways. Round 2, the ship’s onboard robo-babe gets an weapons upgrade and has a high-tech shoot out with Jason shooting of his arm and leg and eventually puts him down via a head shot. But you just can’t keep a good killer down and Jason also gets an upgrade thanks to accidental nanotechnology turning him into super-Cyborg Killer. Round #3 goes to the goalie. Which annoying teenager will survive? Will Jason’s new Vista Operating System crash? Why do we still use bullets 4 centuries into the future? Many of these questions are answered and more.

I found this probably the funniest Friday the 13th and highly entertaining due to it’s sheer out of this world storyline and barrage of one-liners. I have hopes we’ll see a “Jason goes Scuba diving” or “Jason gets a job in a Insurance company” in the theaters soon. He’d be a great auditor.

Keep an eye out for…

- Extreme Jason freezer burn
- Nipple clamping
- Jason pillow fights
- Extreme impalements
- Strained space teens
- Face smashing
- Neck snapping
- Back breaking
- iJason Nano’s
- Shredded space cowboys

The Red Wings should draft Jason…no opponent would get near him in the goalie net.

rated 8.5 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Jason X

“I said I wanted my steak medium rare…not undead.”

Have you ever been to a barbaric little restaurant called Fuddruckers? Sure the name sounds obscene and makes old ladies blush but not nearly as bad as the bakery inside called “Mother Fuddruckers.” I kid you not, that really is name of their bakery! Fuddruckers is noted for it’s delicious and enormous hamburgers. It also has the unique charm of having an actual butcher shop window right as you walk in. Nothing better than seeing those cows getting strung up, diced and sliced before your very own eyes or seeing the looks of horror on little kids faces. Sort of like picking out the lobster at your local seafood restaurant. Except they don’t parade the sad-eyed cow in front of you before they take them in back and to get Fuddrucked. Maybe it’s just my mad cow disease speaking but the burger’s do taste delicious even if I do get a tinge of guilt seeing their surprised friends hanging there in the window. I do have a tender spot in my heart for a tender ribeye.

In the zombie cop-buddy movie “Dead Heat” there’s at least one raging undead bovine who gets it’s revenge. Treat Williams plays Roger “I ain’t dead yet” Mortis…a mundane straight laced cop with some straight laced ties and straight laced hair, the man could double as a leveler. He and his partner Doug played by the always greasy Joe Piscopo cruise around in a old convertible waiting for a crime to occur but only on sunny days. A routine bank robbery takes place around the corner and they’re called in to deliver some much needed Piscopo one-liners and a steady shower of machine gun bullets. It looks like most of the LA police force has shown up for this event driving Krispy Kreme’s stock even lower. The robbers who look like rejects from a local S&M triathlons don’t go down without a fight..in fact they simply don’t drop. Bullets keep riveting their bodies and they keep on firing back that is until Roger has the idea to run them over with a hunk of 80’s Detroit metal. Treat Williams is judge, juror, and executioner. It would have been even better if he said something like “Trick or Treat suckas!”

Later an autopsy reveals that the robbers had been to the morgue before. Morgues don’t often get returning customers..they should get a discount punch card for that or something. Rodger and Doug trace the criminals back to a research facility where they infiltrate a high security door via a credit card lock pick and discover a giant waffle maker that also happens to bring the dead back to life, the ultimate breakfast machine. While attempting to escape they also encounter a giant two faced hell’s angel zombie with a generally mean disposition and super human strength. Mutant two face bikers always make the best security guards since they can see both directions down a hallway. Rodger gets trapped in an industrial strength vacuum sealer which is normally used to euphanise puppies (or old people.)

Rodger gasps his last breath while Doug helplessly bangs on the glass yelling “Nooooooo!!!”…sure he can sneak into a high security facility but can’t open this door? Doug’s brain cells finally begin to fire and he gets the brilliant idea of putting Roger on the waffle-maker to bring him back from the dead. Roger through a series of electro-therapy shock treatments becomes the undead. He seems to be pretty happy, feeling good, and has a great outlook on life…until he learns he will decompose into a pile of goo in less than 48hrs. Way to bring a guy down. So the crime fighting duo decide to try to find out the leaders of this crime ring of the undead and end up at a Chinese butcher shop where it’s all you can eat or all you can run away from screaming. It’s an army of duck heads, flapping fish and sides of beef reanimated as an undead buffet. Where’s the food safety inspectors when you need them? Zombie’s with machine guns also show up for an impromptu zombie pool party later on at a beach house with plenty of snacks and impaling…and since when did zombie’s learn to operate firearms? Oh did I mention everyone in this movie either dies or is already dead? You just don’t see that enough if buddy cop movies. Anyways you know things aren’t going to end well for Roger as he’s decomposing all over the place but is saving up just enough strength to kill Vincent price and the dad from “A Christmas Story.”

This was a fun little 80’s horror/comedy…more emphasis on the comedy side with Pepsico’s constant running one-liners. Somebody please stop pulling his string and put him back in his box. Definitely worth a rental but I’d suggest only eating a light salad though when viewing. And you won’t eat at Chinese buffet for a week.

Keep an eye out for…

- biker mutant zombie freaks
- vacuum sealed Treats
- zombie pool parties
- the Vince Price is Right show
- old rich people club meetings
- liver attack
- zombie duck attack
- zombie beef attack
- giant waffle makers
- extreme Piscopo
- Chinese chandelier Laser Light shows
- melting blondies
- bobbing for gold fish
- zombie NRA members

If I had only 48 hours to live I’d certainly wouldn’t spend it with Joe Pepsico.

rated 7.6 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Dead Heat

“Her date with a midget Mexican Hitler impersonator didn’t really turn out like she hoped.“

Well It’s a brand new year. So I say goodbye to 2007 and all of your “don’t taser me bros” and “Britney Spears head shaving shenanigans” and hello to a year of renewed excitement and new direction and a lot of TV political ads. Ok 2007, sorry I said those bad things before…I’m not really ready for 2008 and all it’s Diane Sawyers and Huckabee Fins. I didn’t mean it so please come back. I did however watch the newly refitted strobe of death light ball drop in Times Square last night and I must say that ball was about as bright as a small red sun this year. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see party goers running in terror as the light burned their retinas from it’s new Eco-friendly LED (Light emitting death) bulbs. But instead viewers got to endure live performances of Hannah Montana and see Ryan Seacrest babble on about his hair. Hmmm…. I think I would have preferred to be blinded.

With a new year comes a new crop of b-movies and I kicked off the year with a film that puts the “b” back in b-movie. It even smacks it upside the head and calls it names and makes it sit in the corner sucking its thumb. It’s sort of a less plot, more blood, more breasts, and well at least one beast…(if you don’t count the lesbian gym teacher)…and one beard, oh and several references to the term “beaver.” But mostly it’s a story about simple minded highschool girls that badly play volleyball, shower together, and shop for groceries…so it’s already better than Spiderman 3 in my book. The girls become the target of a phyco French chef who has been killing girls wandering the nearby forest. I only think he was French based on his angry disposition and hatred for Americans…though he sort of reminded me of a cross between the chef from the Muppets and the lead singer from ZZ-Top.

The surviving group of the girls decide to throw a party that night even with the knowledge there’s a killer on the loose. So after a marathon long grocery shopping session and extensive party preparations that would make Martha Stewart jealous, they finally get the tunes jamming and snacks snacking. Hot tub dipping and extended dressing and undressing scenes pad the film like a Larry Flint with ADD is directing but that’s to just to keep us paying attention.

A few of the local highschool guys crash the bikini hot tub party after narrowly escaping a creepy football jockfest game of twister down the street. Popcorn and Strawberry daiquiri’s are served….and served..and served again. Because nothing helps your senses and survival skills like dousing your brain in alcohol. The chef slices and dices through most of these drunk cattle like a fast food Japanese sushi meal ( but with bad special effects) until a final bikini standoff in the dad’s garage next to a tanning booth ala Hell’s Kitchen. Chef Gordon Ramsay would have been a better choice for the killer and he would have recommended a fine red wine to go with those party snacks. The soundtrack is hilarious with spoofs on Friday the 13th, Footloose, and Flash Dance along with some 80 style metal rock from the band “White Ligger.” (Don’t accept any substitutes like White Tiger or White Lion..there is only one Ligger.) The film is shot in a “we’re almost porn” budget style, but it’s still entertaining and good enough for a beer night… minus the creepy football player party, so I say check it out and bring your swim trunks.

Keep an eye out for…

- olympic volleyball rejects
- cheeseburger obsessed homeless
- gratuitous use of bedroom flamingos
- grocery shopping marathons
- telephone nun-chucks
- Flash dancing rednecks
- hot White Ligger lovin’
- pre-death daikires
- severed leg hugging
- facist taco stands

“White Liggers don’t take showers…they take bloodbaths.”

rated 7.9 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Bikini Bloodbath

“If I ever wore a tux like that I’d kick my own ass…..yeah totally… fer shure!”

In Valley Girl, Nicholas Cage plays Randy, a rebel/punk rocker poser who falls in love with your typical spoiled rich shopping queen Julie Richman played like totally awesome by Deborah Foreman. Her gummy smile and feathered hair melts Randy’s heart so he goes on a crusade to win her over and get her out of the valley life. We know he’s from the wrong side of the tracks because he has streaked bed head hair and wears black like everyday’s a funeral. Apparently in the valley you’re required to wear bright pastels to mask your inner shame but Randy chooses to wear his shame proudly. He and his best friend Fred, a skunk haired weasely guy crash a party in the valley to find the girls of their dreams and mooch some party snacks. So they basically kidnap a couple girls for a cruise down the Hollywood strip apparently to show them the better side of Hollywood. That is if they don’t accidentally run over any hookers and crack dealers.

Julie is torn between her life of consumerism and fitting in with her friends while Randy’s quirky semi bi-polar outbreaks keep luring her away to the shadowy Hollywood underbelly. A world where Math geeks play guitar in bars and spontaneous bathroom sex is barely noticed by the patrons. Her former boyfriend Tommy McBrain-Muscle eventually wins her back through constant whining and sleeping with her best friends and then manipulating them into convincing her he’s the better choice. It’s like a whitehouse intern meet and greet. Randy should have just moved to Arizona, lived in a stainless steel camper and watched Nascar. He would have been happier and his hair would have been more manageable in the dry heat. But His stupidity knows no bounds and he continues to harass and stalk Julie through a series of temporary job placements cameos. The director must have thought Randy is just going the distance for love but I viewed as creepy stalker guy who can’t keep a job and sleeps on people’s front lawns. Jessie’s hippie dope smoking parents barely notice their daughter’s dating a mad man and send her to prom with her previous boyfriend dressed to the hilt in a pink tuxedo. They give her advice like “honey just go with your heart.” “Gee Thanks hippie Dad! I should find my inner rainbow too!” Will Randy win back Julie? Will The highschool grocery boy score with the disgruntled house wife? Will Randy’s skull catch on fire as he drives away on a hell-bound motorcycle fighting the forces of evil…oh wait that’s another film.

This movie does reminded me a bit of “Pretty in Pink” except it’s the guys that are wearing pink, there’s no Molly Ringwald, and any resemblance of acting was overshadowed by large flipped up polo shirt collars or big puffy hairdo’s. It’s really sad when you get out-acted by your own hair. I’d say save yourself some time and sit down and listen to some 80’s music while repeatingly smashing your hand with a hammer. You’ll get about the same experience.

Keep an eye out for…

- The JcPenny big-collar valley gang
- Gratutious use of headbands and ankle warmers
- Extreme hair feathering
- Nicholas Cage’s 5 Easy Steps to being a better Stalker
- Illegal use of the term “gag me with a spoon”
- Student driver’s parade of lame
- Peanut butter orderves
- Prom night food fight
- “Crush that fly” battle cry

It’s a little known fact that this movie was believed to be one of the signs of the apocalypse for a small group of Nicholas Cage cult followers in the mid 1980’s.

rated 5.1 out of 10 for the movie (winner of 2007 Lost Highway’s drive of shame award)

Check out the trailer for Valley Girl

“She’s just a Nekromantic at heart.”

I come from a union family. My father worked the engine test line at a Michigan GM Assembly plant. I can still remember the picket lines and at that time never really understanding why employees would unionize and strike. Now that I’ve been in the corporate world for quite a while, I totally see the importance of a good union to protect employees rights, wages, and benefits so that corporations don’t steamroll over them. The union created the middle class and both have been slowly eroded leading to growing slave wage service industry and consumer based economy. Without a union backing you up, your boss can one day decide he doesn’t like that particular bad haircut you got and fire your butt. There that’s my soap box and I’m stepping off…I think Hoffa is buried under it anyways.

In Fido I’m once again reminded that behind a Union there’s is power to the people…even the undead should have employee rights. Welcome to the post zombie war era. Isolated towns now live in idealistic 1950’s communities fenced off from the unsavery deadlands where the zombies roam free. Instead in these corporate sponsored safe zones, zombies have been domesticated for the rich via a control collar that stops their urge to eat human flesh. They deliver milk and the paper, mow the lawns, walk people’s dog and generally moan about their work day. Things your teenager would do at a substantially reduced cost. Of course the side risk is that they tear your arm off and eat it but even with some teens you have to watch out for that possibility.

A local family wants to keep up with their upper class new neighbors so they purchase their first zombie servant played convincingly by Billy “I’m so Scottish I bleed kilts” Connolly. The young boy Timmy, treats him like a pet teaching him to fetch and catch a baseball (mostly in the face) but one day the collar accidentally loosens via a smack down with one mean grandma causing the zombie to chomp off the old ladies arm at the town’s park. Of course this causes a small zombie outbreak but it’s easily contained but the Corporate ZomCon hit squad who is called in for a round of zombie target practice. Little Timmy goes back to find the now zombified old lady and takes out some severe pre-teen anger to her head via a shovel then burying her in a flower bed to hide the evidence of Fido’s boo-boo.

Like a scene out of Lasie, minus the craving for human flesh, Fido and Timmy becomes best friends and spend their days playing in the woods, washing the car, and tossing obnoxious cubscouts. Soon even the mom played by Carrie Ann Moss has become smitten with their new pale friend. The dad is deathly afraid of zombies…in fact seems to be the only sane person in town who is and wants to get rid of Fido. Fido is blamed for all of the recent towns folks deaths and is sent off to work in the Zombcon factory near the borderlands. Where’s the a zombified Hoffa when you need one? Timmy and his mom drive to rescue him while their neighbor, a leader at Zomcon tries to stop them and as we all know in any good zombie movie, if you fence off zombies away from their food source, they eventually find a way in just like old people at a buffet.

I was hoping for a bit more carnage with a big zombie town outbreak but that never really panned out. Still all in all a fun little horror/comedy with a great social commentary. A sort of Leave it to Beaver meets Dawn of the Dead. Is it possible to make a family friendly zombie movie? Well this one almost is.

Keep an eye out for…

- school yard rifle ranges
- zombie washing and detailing
- shovel-fu
- zombie love-slaves
- zombies with nicotine habits
- extreme zombie zapping
- samba of the undead
- unionized zombies
- head coffins
- Cubscout tossing

“In the brain and not the chest, head shots are the very best. ”

rated 9.4 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Fido

“Why would someone put the toilet in the middle of the living room?”

I’ve endured the pain of Gymkata, suffered the Nilbog torture of Troll 2, suffered the tons of farm manure shoveled out by Manos the Hands of Fate. But I could never wish the deep hurting that the movie Starcrash rained down on me. Like getting hit in the gut with a sledge hammer just before you’re pushed off a cliff into a pit of rusted Cadillacs, this movie will make you beg for the excitement of waiting in line at a bank or watching c-span after downing a bottle of Benadryl. I am still suffering post traumatic shock disorder from this movie. I close my eyes and still see the people swimming in space.

Stella Star is a space smuggler super model with a fetish for wearing black leather space bikini’s when fighting evil. Her Playboy profile would read something like “enjoys longs swims in outerspace, prefers men that are bulky robots, turns offs are evil minions, cavemen, PMS-ing giant robot women, and snow.”

I would try to summarize a plot to this film but as far as I could tell there really wasn’t one. It would have just gotten in the way anyways. Stella along with her faithful robot companion Akton, named after a failed diet plan, are fleeing the space police in their goofy looking space cruiser. Maybe they’re just out to replace the giant Christmas bulbs that makeup the background space scenes. Akton has the uncanny ability to make Pink Floyd light shows in his hand for his own amusement and can even see into the near future but most of the time it’s seemingly random irrelevant information. It would be like having the ability of predicting what’s for dinner or when the mail is coming. Not exactly hero worthy.

Stella ends up on a prison planet hauling giant glowing beach balls while working out in her favorite bikini. The beach balls are supposedly powering the prison though they should have just harvested the power of the various perms adorning the actors throughout the film. It’s a little known fact that perms were a major power source in the 1970’s. Each strain of hair is a elaborate network of solar cells creating a vast network of….oh wait I’m having another Starcrash flashback.

Stella escapes and with her other robot boy-toy Elle, who looks to have been hastily assembled with used pinball machine parts and a free-range oven. They decide to explore an ice planet together when their ship is sabotaged by a green Spock wanna-be so they end up frozen like cryogenic TV dinners. But Elle holds Stella’s hand and miraculously that keeps her all warm and fuzzy inside preserved like a galactic pop-tart.

The movie could end right there but unfortunately they are thawed later back on the ship with only a hint of freezer burn. On yet another planet they battle against a giant nippled girl robot who looks liked it was hastily put together by a 9 year old kid with a roll of tinfoil and duct tape. They’re also attacked by some wild woman of Womba who fall down easily via a standard karate chop to the neck. This just happens to be a the only defense move Stella has so they easily escape. Suddenly Christopher Plummer shows up as the galactic emperor and freezes time. What the heck is Christopher Plummer doing in this movie anyways? He must have had some mob debts to pay off.

They finally get the help of a prince played by David Hasselhoff before his Knight Ridder days and before he didn’t need to suck in his gut for Baywatch sand running. David helps fight off attacking cavemen with a mask that shoots powerful laser beams out it’s eye holes. David is relegated to the backup hero role while Akton fights off robots with a light saber or to be constantly out acted by his permed hair

There’s also an evil Count Zartan based loosely on Darth Vadar, if Darth Vadar was a small creepy bipolar Latino with greased pointy hair who can’t stop yelling “KILL THEM!!!” Count Zartan intends to take over the universe via a super secret weapon that drives people insane from giant lava lamps special effects. He accomplishes this all from his fortress of kung-fu grip which is shaped like a giant hand. I was almost expecting the fortress to flip me the finger but that probably would have blown the rest of the $6.00 budget.

There’s a big space battle royal with lots of looping film footage and firework explosions. In case you never seen a spaceship launch before, the director is more than happy to show it you a dozen or so times over and over again. Laser blasts a pletny, model kits on fire, light saber duals and poorly balanced robot guards round out the film. And just when you think you’ve seen it all you geet torpedoes packed with imperial soldiers launched at the evil count’s base ship! A failed military tactic if I ever saw one.

Really this movie has to be seen to be believed. Definitely entertaining and purely awful. A so bad it’s good experience like fizz candy and Coca -Cola mixed together. Sure you’ll get a sugar buzz out of it but your stomach might explode.

Keep an eye out for…
- attack by lava lamp
- space swimming
- giant radium gumballs
- Hasselhoff hair
- giant robot nipples
- torpedoes stuffed with soldiers (wtih a side of salsa)
- redneck robots built like a GE oven.
- Christmas tree lights based galaxies
- Spaceships made of old model kit parts and household utensils

“Please Don’t Hassel the Hoff!”

rated 8.0 out of 10 for the movie

Check out this clip from Starcrash