GOJIRA!!!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Gojira ~ 1954, Ishiro Honda – Japan

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As a Westerner, by the time I had finally seen the original Japanese Gojira, I had already seen the Perry Masonified American version dozens of times. I had long been aware that the Japanese version was considered much better, but I was unprepared for just how much better it really was. I finally saw the original, Raymond Burr-less version about seven years ago, and while Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a sturdy, enjoyable monster classic on the level of Dracula or The Wolf Man, Gojira is a masterpiece, better compared to German Expressionist horror like Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This shit’s off the chain.

The plot centers around mysterious phenomena occurring in and around Japan, the results of which leave many dead, and have Japan’s top minds speculating without much to go on. The film lingers in tense ambiguity for a lot longer than it’s American twin, and when Godzilla is finally revealed to be the cause of these strange occurrences, it remains some time until everybody is on the same page regarding not only his existence, but also what to do about it. Plus, when he first shows up, Godzilla looks a lot like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

010-godzillafest-godzilla-1954-01 “Hey, Japan- your country looks really great!… FOR ME TO POOP ON!”

There are also multiple human characters we actually care about in this movie, including Emiko and Ogata, two young lovers who face considerable challenges in pursuing a relationship with one another. Firstly, Emiko is already engaged via an arranged marriage to a brilliant, but reclusive scientist named Dr. Serizawa. Emiko does not want to marry Serizawa, but we definitely do not get the impression that he is at all a bad man. Additionally, Emiko’s father, Dr. Yamane, is at odds with Ogata, who feels that Godzilla should be destroyed. Yamane believes the monster to be far too valuable to science, and this disagreement between the two puts further strain on Emiko and Ogata’s relationship. Their romance is actually the heart of the picture, but in the American version it is minimized to such a severe degree that the film loses it’s emotional anchor completely. Presumably, the addition of Raymond Burr in the American cut was done in an attempt to give Western audiences someone to relate to, but it creates an enormous amount of separation from the film’s drama, and I think this is a mortal wound to the picture which downgrades it from an artfully crafted allegory to an easily dismissed B-movie. Burr feels far too safe, even when he’s crawling out of rubble, and he has no investment in the lives of the people around him, so neither do we. Like looking through a window at a storm, the American version has taken all of the bite out of the picture, where the Japanese version feels much more like being the person locked out in the wind and the rain, we feel the misery and the fear much more effectively.

Throughout Gojira, Godzilla’s status as a metaphor for atomic warfare and the ramifications thereof are well solidified, and the film takes this topic seriously. It adds a great deal of weight to the film, this is a tense, gloomy picture that is lightyears from the goofy, fun-time monster slugfests we’d see out of Godzilla in the 60’s and 70’s. By 1954 standards, this shit is actually kinda scary. The photography is very high contrast, we see Godzilla’s fury in thick, jet blacks and flat whites, like the cover of a Darkthrone album, it exudes gloom and discomfort, and the movie really goes the distance in exposing the viewer to human casualties. In watching Gojira, it’s hard to disassociate the film’s proceedings with the historical events that they are meant to represent, so these civilian deaths are not easily shrugged off. This truly is no fun monster romp, Gojira feels like a movie about the horror of atomic war that just happens to use a monster to tell its story, which is exactly what it is, and because of how well this is done, and because of how direct this metaphor is, I think there is a strong case to be made for Godzilla being the single greatest Fictional monster created since Dracula. The book… Not the movie.

The multifaceted discussion on the topic of atomic war in the film feels very stark, but not preachy. Gojira doesn’t so much as all out demonize atomic war, as much as it just sort of lays it out there and says “This is what happens, and what happens is terrible.” And that’s the major question of our age, the term “mutually assured destruction” is now a part of our lexicon. It’s now very plausible that all life on the Earth could be snuffed out due to the actions of mankind. In the battle of Man VS Nature, we’ve finally got Earth in Checkmate. So, what does that mean, philosophically? Gojira digs into that. Is Gojira the most valid cinematic exploration of these ideas? I don’t know, but I know one thing, on that topic, this is Japan’s two cents, and they know a thing or two about nuclear war. It’s my belief that in the same way Frankenstein’s Monster was a means of exploring hubris in an age when mankind overstepping his bounds was hot in the zeitgeist, Gojira digs into a seminal cold war issue in a way no other horror film can lay claim to, and in so doing has earned a poignancy quickly abandoned by it’s sequels, but still very much worthy of appreciation. This makes Gojira an important movie.

On top of that, it’s also completely enjoyable as an out of context, classic monster flick, so I think it’s reasonable to expect this film to still pack a punch for younger generations upon whom the historical allegory is lost… As a horror film, a science fiction film, and a monster movie, Gojira belongs seated comfortably in a place reserved for the very best.

A+

Mr. Vampire!!

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Mr. Vampire – 1985, Ricky Lau – Hong Kong

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We Westerners love our horror comedies. We’re into all the classic, spook-a-minute chuckle-fests, be they Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, An American Werewolf in London, Or Sexsquatch: Legend of Blood Stool Creek, those films are our jam, and thanks to a lifelong cultural indoctrination, we proud people have all come to know that violence is funny, and that the gruesome and the hilarious go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

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What would you say, however, if I were to tell you that Asia had done us one better, and that they had taken this winning formula and added a third element? That’s right! Prepare yourself, for Hong Kong’s Mr. Vampire, because this film is an open portal to a whole new world, to the realm of the MARTIAL ARTS/HORROR/COMEDY, and friend, those three things go together like chocolate, peanut butter, and wicked sweet karate chops.

MrVampirePoster

The best films of this type came out of the Hong Kong genre film boom of the 1980’s, and while Mr. Vampire isn’t the first movie to meld these three wonderful ingredients together, it’s absolutely my favorite. Americans don’t seem to know about Mr. Vampire yet, but it’s honestly not out of line to call this one of the greatest horror comedies ever made. We need to get familiar with it.

THE PLOT- When a prominent citizen seeks to dig up and then rebury his father for good luck (Apparently that’s allowed in Hong Kong? Even encouraged?!) he seeks out the help of a cunning priest and his two bumbling assistants to make sure this grave desecration is all done by the book, but lo and behold, something is amiss, and when the grave is exhumed, it’s occupant is found to be a damn vampire. This sets off a freaky Asian vampire chain reaction, and the hijinks which follow are of a most wacky variety indeed.

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First thing I need to clarify- These are not the typical “white guy in a cape” style European variety vampires that most Americans are familiar with. The blood suckers in this movie are the famed Chinese “hopping vampires,” a breed of ghoul which literally hops around in order to move, due to a debilitating stiffness of the body, brought on by rigor mortis. Additionally, these creatures are thought to be blind, and thus must seek out their victims by listening for the sound of a beating heart- meaning that holding your breath and standing still can make you “invisible” to them, at least, until you have to breathe again. Of course, there are one or two vampires in this film who seem to be exceptions to those rules, but I don’t know how the whole Chinese vampire thing works, dude. All I know is that most of these guys hop around, and I love it.

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Conga line- OF THE DAMMED! (Those are all vampires following that dude.)

Mr. Vampire is really, really great. As mentioned above, it’s a martial arts/horror/comedy, but the movie clearly aims for laughs above all else, and in fact, all of the horror and kung fu stuff is done in the service of humor, so even at it’s scariest, or in the heat of it’s most strenuously choreographed fight scene, Mr. Vampire never wants you to be too far away from a smile. The narrative seems to be closely modeled after what you might see in an old-fashioned stage play, it’s all simple, character driven, misunderstanding based comedic routines which largely take place in small, single room spaces, and which are broken down into individual, self-contained chunks. Mr. Vampire could work equally well in a live theater format as it does on the big screen, and this old fashioned style of narrative has a certain specialness built into it which is a woefully absent from movies today. Another factor which helps give Mr. Vampire a classic feel is it’s relatively clean subject matter. It’s not exactly G rated, there are a few suggestive jabs here and there which will raise eyebrows amongst those with more puritanical sensibilities, but Mr. Vampire is more cheeky than it is smutty. It’s a film with an inherent, lighthearted innocence, and even for a deranged and diseased mind like mine, that’s nice once in a while.

The Kung Fu sequences in this picture are all great, too, and they don’t overstay their welcome, we have just enough of them that when one comes around, it’s exciting, and never boring. Part of Mr. Vampire’s recipe for kung-fu success is that even these fight scenes are meant to be humorous, they don’t feel violent so much as wacky, so it’s really easy to have fun watching them even if you don’t have any interest in Kung Fu whatsoever.

There are very few flaws worth mentioning in Mr. Vampire, it has a few hokey special effects, but they’re hokey due to vintage, not laziness or ineptitude, so they end up feeling more charming than embarrassing. There is also a subplot in here about one of the bumbling assistants being seduced by a female ghost which probably would have been written out if this were shot in the west, because it doesn’t really drive the plot forward in any direct way. I don’t count this subplot as a mark against Mr. Vampire, however, because it further contributes to the old fashioned feel of the film, and also results in some really fun sequences I wouldn’t want to lose, regardless of the structural “imperfections.” Let’s not be script Nazis, Mr. Vampire can have its ghost subplot if it wants to.

Maybe the biggest flaw that people tend to point out about Mr. Vampire is that it ISN’T Spooky Encounters, another excellent martial arts horror comedy which preceded this film by five years. Aledgley, this movie is a bit of a retread, which I guess is true… Mr. Vampire probably wouldn’t exist if Spooky Encounters hadn’t been made first, but in my mind, this is the superior movie. I’d call Mr. Vampire ‘The Formula Perfected’ before I called it a rehashing, and to date I’ve never seen a better Martial Arts/Horror/Comedy, and brother, I have certainly tried.

Thematically, there is some stuff in here about Modernization versus tradition; the film takes place in Hong Kong during an era where the British have brought in European customs with modern forms of government and policing, yet by and large, the people of China prefer to operate as they have for generations, and this sets up an interesting conflict for our main characters. As traditional Taoists priests, they find themselves compelled to work toward the good of the people by using traditional methods, exclusively based upon spiritualism, while the newly modernized police force regards their practices, and even the threat of vampirism itself as total mumbo jumbo. As a result, these police function more as an impediment to our characters than anything else, and this is a major source of conflict early on in Mr. Vampire. Later in the film, however, after things have passed the point of no return, vampire style, the police finally accept their inability to deal with the now all-too-obvious ghoul epidemic, and the film switches gears ever so slightly. Suddenly, and for the first time, the vampire threat starts to look a little bit more like a biological plague, as if only now, with things at their worst, does the movie start to consider the notion that perhaps our Priests don’t know what they’re doing, and perhaps spiritualism really has become obsolete in serving the needs of a modernized society? At this point, when even the police have put their faith in religion to save the day, we begin to see our stalwart Taoist in a position of weakness and doubt, and he seems to feel unsure about his ability to combat this threat after all. This short sequence is Mr. Vampire at it’s most introspective, but it’s quite subtle. Still, if you had to point out any specific centerpiece for the film’s chief metaphor, it would be the scene I’m talking about here.

The movie does a good job with these ideas, and we end up with an interesting back and forth that investigates the grey area you get when a culture with deep roots in tradition tries to jump ahead a few centuries overnight, with some areas taking longer to catch up than others. It’s well done, but these sombre and contemplative moments are fairly brief. I know that it may not seem like it after I’ve highlighted them in this way, but these themes are actually explored so casually that they could almost be in here by accident. Mr Vampire, is about those ideas, yes, but it really is about comedy first and foremost. Even at it’s darkest, Mr. Vampire is far from a heavy experience, it stays lighthearted, fun, and is periodically, legitimately hilarious.

This truly is a fantastic example of the mighty martial arts/horror/comedy sub-genre, and damn, it’s super deserving of some long overdue praise from we Western audiences. It would also make an excellent double feature alongside Roman Polanksi’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, but I would suggest you do anything you need to do to see Mr. Vampire asap, because it’s a freakin’ masterpiece.

A+

Rock N’ Roll Nightmare!!!

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Rock N’ Roll Nightmare – 1987, John Fasano

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Rock N’ Roll Nightmare promotes itself as being a cool, Canadian made horror film filled with gruesome monsters, hot babes, and a fantastic heavy metal soundtrack. In reality, the only one of those things that it actually manages to be is Canadian. This film is successfully Canadian.

Written by and starring Z-Grade hair metal singer Jon Mikl Thor, it follows a supposedly popular heavy metal band called Triton as they bed down in an isolated Canadian farmhouse turned studio for a month in hopes of recording new material. Don’t let the rural setting fool you, this is a hard rockin’, chart toppin’ juggernaut of a heavy metal band, so expect to see these rowdy rock stars on their worst behavior! Oh, yeah, you’re gonna see a whole lot of:

Being Polite
Reading Quietly before bed
Staying positive
And doing the dishes, as seen here:

Whoo- Rock and roll!

Seriously- I thought these guys were a heavy metal band!!! In the 80’s!!!! Do you have any idea how often people do the dishes in this movie? It’s absolutely ridiculous, it happens over and over again- In 90 minutes they do they dishes more often than I do in a week. Motley Crüe didn’t do the dishes, they probably didn’t even have dishes! What the hell is going on here?!?!

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THESE are your ROCK STARS?!?!

Well… They are Canadian… And anyway, I guess it’s not really fair to call them total prudes- they do pack in kind of a lot of sex scenes into this movie.

ugly horrible people

Including one where these two get it on. I bet you’re all real excited for that.

So, considering that Triton is a band which would probably look more at home slinging religion door to door than touring with Def Leppard, you might assume then that their secluded recording session in the Canadian countryside would be a pleasant, productive affair, but friend, that’s where you’d be wrong; dead wrong!

You see, while working on their new material, all of which is just terrible, by the way, Triton is plagued by two dark, wretched entities. Firstly; there is an enigmatic, creeping force of pure evil, sent straight from Hell, which haunts this farm house and slowly kills each member of Triton, one by one. Secondly, and probably worst of all: they must tolerate Stig, their drummer, who is a massive hunk of bullshit shaped into a human.

This is Stig, the biggest piece of shit in the whole fucking world.

Stig sucks like crazy. The actor playing Stig also sucks. He’s walking, talking proof that the universe is a fundamentally miserable and stupid place without purpose or justice, and part of what makes him suck the way he does is his stupid accent; this character has the lousiest, phoniest sounding Australian accent of all time, it’s cringe inducing. It makes Tarantino’s accent in Django Unchained sound like some serious pro-level shit. It’s as if the closest thing to dialogue coaching this guy got was to be shown a photograph of a Koala bear and to be told that Australians “Sorta sounded like people from England, only slower. Okay, action!” Later on in the film Stig is murdered (thank you) and replaced by a demon replicant with an American accent, but nobody in the band seems to mind the change given that this new Stig is a better drummer and is also less obnoxious.

If it is wrong to kick a man when it’s down, then it is, frankly, unethical to apply any form of criticism to Rock N’ Roll Nightmare whatsoever, but I am going to go ahead and confirm what you probably already suspect; this is a low budget, lame, badly made film with little in the way of talent, on, or off screen. That’s really about all that can be said, except for, that is, a detailed, photographic essay on the film’s climax, which is what I’m about to show you now. Ordinarily I would shy away from revealing the end of a film in one of my reviews, but this time I’m bending that rule to hell and back, because, A) the ending is the only part of this movie worth talking about in the first place, and B) absolutely no one cares. That being said, if you fear spoilers, turn away now, cuz they are comin’ atchya, fast and furious. Turned away yet, have you? Okay, off we go, to the film’s hilarious climax:

So… What happens is that after everyone has been dead and demon replicated except for Thor, Satan shows up and confronts him in the barn while he’s working on one of his shitty little songs. Having caught his prey seemingly offguard, this hideous demon-king reveals his evil plans and big, fake looking puppet body, but is surprised to find that Thor is actually already aware of the ongoing demonic situation, and doesn’t really seem to care about it. “That’s kinda weird,” Satan thinks to himself. Well, apparently the reason for all that is simple; as Thor explains, he ain’t human, he’s actually an Archangel called Triton The Intercessor; and he’s here on Earth incognito for some sort of top secret Angel-stakeout, and so he knew what these demon guys were up to all along. He doesn’t really LOOK like what you imagine an Angel to look like, he mostly looks like a Post-Op sex change Michelle Pfeiffer, but whatever, he’s totally an angel, you guys, and that’s not all; apparently none of the people in this entire movie were even real. This gaggle of dorks were all mere illusions Angel-Thor crafted using his magical powers to give Satan a false sense of normalcy, thereby creating the perfect Devil trap. Yep! That’s the Shyamalan twist at the end of Rock N’ Roll Nightmare; it was all an elaborate ruse to bust some Demons and send them to Heaven Jail. How blown is your mind right now?

What comes after Thor’s big reveal is… Well…. It’s SUPPOSED to be a fight scene… I think… I mean… I’m pretty sure…. You know what, here, I’m going to go ahead and just show you some images from the climax of the film; you look them over and then you tell ME what you see.

Here…:

satan am i seeing boobs

on his chest Did anybody else just see gay porn?!?!?!?!

My Bloody Valentine (1981)!!!

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

My Bloody Valentine– 1981, George Mihalka

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As of 2015 there have been a generous handful Valentine’s Day themed horror flicks made, and this one here is the best of the bunch, by far. I really expected that, by now, somebody would have made a horror film about a big fat guy in a diaper with tiny wings who shoots people with a bow and makes hilarious jokes, but if that movie exists, I can’t seem to find it. The closest we’ve come so far is the 2001 horror film Valentine, and dammit, that is a far cry from the glorious killer Cupid flick that I have imagined. Fortunately, My Bloody Valentine is a total classic, even if it doesn’t quench my thirst for absurdity, and it remains one of the best Holiday Themed slashers out there, even after thirty years. If you’re at all a slasher fan, you should track it down pronto, Tonto.

THE PLOT ~ A rural Canadian mining town finds it’s annual Valentine’s Day celebration disrupted by a string of gruesome murders, reminiscent of an infamous killing spree committed twenty years ago by a psychologically unhinged miner called Harry Warden. Believing Harry to be back in action, but not wanting to stir the townsfolk into a panic, local law enforcement does what it can to keep the news of the killings suppressed, while canceling all Valentine’s Day celebrations in accordance with the killer’s demands. The local youth aren’t into that shit, though. They want to party, and are fully willing to fight for their right to do so, regardless of the fact that License To Ill wouldn’t be released for five more years. Since they have literally no idea that people are being murdered in awesome ways all over town, these care-free future pickaxe victims conclude that the best course of action is to ignore the ban on Valentine’s Day celebrations, and to have a secret party anyway, no grown-ups allowed. But where would be best place for a secret Valentin’e Day party? Well, clearly, deep within the very mine where Harry Warden once cannibalized his peers, of course! Yes, he ate people toward the end of his mining career. So, that’s what they do- and guess how well that works out for them? Not real good.

There’s also a love triangle thing in here- which is actually the focal point of the plot, but that’s not very much fun to write about, and probably even worse for readers, so I’m mostly just going to hit you with the murder stuff. I really do think it’s best this way.

So, My Bloody Valentine is very much what you would expect it to be if you’re familiar with American/Canadian slashers of the early eighties, but if that’s the case, then you should also have seen this movie by now, because it’s a damn essential. It’s a close relative to Black Christmas, The Prowler, and the original Friday the 13^th, and also owes a lot of influence to earlier Italian giallo films like Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood. Like those films, this is essentially a murder mystery, but with a much greater emphasis on sensationalized violence, and a focus on the role of the hapless victim, instead of seeing the story through the eyes of some bozo trying to solve the crime, as would be the case with most traditional murder mysteries. It’s distinct from the slashers that would follow it later in the 1980’s by being markedly less poppy, and by giving us characters who are much more realized and complex. We weren’t quite at the point where the audience just wanted to watch our killer tromp around and slice folks in half yet, so it was still important for the film to establish a somewhat believable world. My Bloody Valentine does that.

As a slasher, My Bloody Valentine has the title of “best Valentine’s Day horror film” on lock petty much for eternity. It’s a solid movie, and a damn fine horror film to boot. Our killer is both scary, and acceptably iconic, and the many red herrings doled out as the plot unravels keep the picture feeling interesting and surprising. This may even be the best horror film ever set in a mine, except for maybe Rodan, so suck it, The Stragneness.

Another fun fact that earns My Bloody Valentine mucho street cred amongst horror fanatics, It’s fairly violent. The picture is widely believed to have had nearly ten minutes of gore and violent content edited out of the picture before it was released, to appease the puritanical demands of the MPAA, and to date there is still no real uncut version of the film available. Subsequent versions have included additional unseen footage, but rumor has it there is still more sitting in a canister somewhere that we have yet to enjoy, so hopefully someone get’s that shit cut back together in the future. As it is, the theatrical cut leaves something to be desired if you’re coming into My Bloody Valentine after a gore-fest on par with Evil Dead, any of the Euro slashers, or even the aforementioned The Prowler, but it remains much stronger than, say, Halloween. I think My Bloody Valentine can hold it’s own against comparable slashers of the era in this respect, and it’s certainly good enough to warrant a viewing either way.

Before we wrap up, I want to briefly address my favorite part of the film; the character of Hollis. Hollis is a supporting character- but dammit if he isn’t a bad ass. He kinda looks like what you would get if Garfield the cat was a real human being- and also a little like the product of a cloning experiment involving John Candy and Teddy Roosevelt. As far as I’m concerned, this guy is the film’s main draw. End of paragraph.

A+

The Last Dragon!!!

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

The Last Dragon – 1985, Michael Schultz

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The Last Dragon is a slice of 1980’s zeitgeist so pure, potent, and unspoiled by new millennium angst that your immune system may not actually be prepared for it. It’s too bright eyed, too uninhibited, and most of you will likely find your health adversely effected as a result of viewing this motion picture. Full disclosure; I was born in the 80’s, and yet even I, an 80’s native, was not exempt from these maladies; at 45 minutes into the picture I began to develop nausea, headaches, vomiting, and an innovative, fresh, new breakdancing routine which is certain to win me fly honeys and mad street cred when I deploy it in the Bay Area next spring. This is your final warning, turn back, or suffer the consequences the 1980’s hath wrought.

THE PLOT~ Leroy Green (Also known as “Bruce Leroy”- awesome) is a naïve, virtuous inner-city youth with a weasely, peach fuzz mustache and a mastery of Kung Fu that is ALMOST unrivaled throughout Harlem. Completely devoted to the martial arts as a way of life, Leroy is on a quest to become a Master and reach the highest level of Kung Fu Bad Assary; obtaining a mystical power called “The glow.” They never really explain “the glow,” but it’s kind of like The Force, I think. And it’s also really awesome, and Leroy needs it.

However, he is not without competition for Martial Arts supremacy, as a formidable rival soon appears in the form of Sho’Nuff, the Shogun of Harlem.

sho nuff

Sho’Nuff is a lanky, aggressive psychopath who leads your typical 1980’s Kung Fu street gang. They all wear costumes and have names like “Crunch” and “Cyclone,” so, you know, pretty standard stuff. Sho’Nuff is his own biggest fan, and he has a debilitating “Mirror mirror on the wall” type of narcissism that won’t allow him to rest until everybody knows he’s number one. Nuff makes it his mission to bully Leroy into a showdown that would determine just who is the top Kung Fu Fist in town, but Leroy won’t bite. He knows that fighting for the sake of ego isn’t gonna get anybody The Glow, so he has no interest in this proposed showdown. His refusal only serves to piss Sho off, and soon things escalate until Leroy has no choice in the matter. But first…!

still-of-christopher-murney-in-the-last-dragon-(1985)

…We have Eddie Arkadian, a manipulative gangster with aspirations of puppet-mastering Angela, a Cindi Lauper-esque popstar, into the limelight, so that he can vicariously soak up her glory, and enjoy the spoils of radio wave domination. His home made pop starlet isn’t really getting it done, however, so like any gangster worth his salt, Eddie decides to break some rules to make this shit happen. His plan? To Force local TV personality and youth culture Goddess Laura Charles (Played by Vanity!) to showcase his Client on her music variety show. However, when Laura refuses, Arkadian’s ire is provoked, gangster style, and he decides to play rough.

Through equal parts coincidence and shady machinations, all of our characters become increasingly entangled with one another until the movie hits critical mass in the third act, at which point fools get a full fledged 1980’s Kung Fu beat down dropped on their heads. Every American home should be stocked with a copy of this film at all times.

The Last Dragon is a Kung Fu movie, but it’s total entry level Kung Fu, a step down even from The Karate Kid. It definitely has it’s fight scenes, but the martial arts are probably the least important element in the equation if we really dig in and look at what makes this thing tick. Much more prominent here is the music; the soundtrack to The Last Dragon is a monster, there was clearly a lot of importance placed on keeping this thing grooving, start to finish, and they pulled it off. The jams are all traditional, stupid 80’s pop, and for many of us, that hits the “guilty Pleasure” region of our brains with Robin Hood like precision. Through the music of the era, the mindless optimism of the 80’s is at it’s most infectious, so get ready to smile against your will, you grumpy bastards. It’s also definitely a comedy, and The Last Dragon does not take itself very seriously.

It is, however, sometimes difficult to pinpoint where this movie crosses over from comedy into legitimate insanity. Some aspects of the film do feel at least marginally insane for real… My favorite scene falls into that grey area, it goes like this;

Following up on a tip from his previous Sensai, Leroy travels to a Fortune Cookie factory somewhere in the city to seek the tutelage of another Kung Fu Master, who he believes resides nearby. We arrive at the factory before Leroy does, and what we see is a screaming abomination steeped in ignorance and shame. Three Asian factory employees have engaged in the 1980’s tradition of dancing like mental patients on a side walk in full view of mankind and God alike, and in this instance; the song they are dancing to is one of the most unlistenably humiliating 80’s pop jams on the entire soundtrack, a song called Suki Yaki Hot Saki Sue, which, I learned from the credits, is performed by someone called Raw Dog…. Yikes, you guys.

dancin' men LOOK AT WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS PICTURE

These three ultra nerds are just pedal-to-the-medal grooving with such belligerent intensity, I would call this “dancing with extreme prejudice.” The most glorious thing about it is that they appear to be totally convinced that what they are doing is so, so very bad ass, when in truth, nothing could possibly be lamer. The experience is intense, like french kissing a hydrogen bomb an instant before detonation, and it only get’s worse once our guy arrives. Leroy, himself about the biggest square on the American East Coast, pleads for an audience with the Master, and in response he is heckled and belittled ruthlessly by the three people least qualified to make fun of anybody, ever. Their insults surpass “suck” in how poorly conceived and executed they are, and at one point, one of these guys appears to mock Leroy for being Asian. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but Leroy is black, so this exchange is more than a little confusing, and if anyone other than Leroy had been subjected to such bush-league ridicule, they would have gone off on these bozos with brutal, beast like ferocity. They would be right to do so. If I could give you one illustration to help explain what it feels like to watch this scene, it would be this; this conflict is like the Tour DeFrance, only in this case, every participant has had the part of their brain that tells them how to ride a bike completely removed, and in it’s place, they were given an extra helping of whatever part of your brain tells you “You’re doing a great job, keep it up!”. It’s a massive tangle of humiliating failure that can’t stop fist pumping with hysterical pride over how good of a job it’s doing. I think this scene changed my life.

With that having been said, even these geeks are somehow likable, and actually, if we look at the rather large cast of characters in The Last Dragon, there’s not a turd in the bunch. All of our actors do a great job playing their parts, as well, especially Faith Prince, who plays Angela, the would-be-pop star. While Angela probably isn’t going to be anyone’s favorite character in the movie, Prince really bats for the fences and plays this vulnerable, multi-dimensional role fantastically. You don’t usually see this much talent in a flick of this caliber, and in fact, if you keep your eyes peeled you’ll spot celebrated actors William H. Macy and Chazz Palminteri hiding in there as well. They must not have been famous yet.

Aside from the excellent cast, entertaining premise, and catchy, shame-drenched, 80’s soundtrack, the rest of the production also fares pretty well when scrutinized. I find myself getting carried away when I talk about how great The Last Dragon really is, but I don’t feel compelled to hold back, if I’m being honest. It’s just such a fun movie. There are a lot of great sequences throughout the film, like when Leroy’s little brother is kidnapped up by Arkadian’s thugs, and “dances” out of the ropes they tie him up with, or when Laura shows Leroy a music video about The Glow featuring Bruce Lee, even though she literally only just learned that The Glow even existed seconds earlier on the car ride to her studio. The final confrontation between Sho’Nuff and Leroy is also freaking rad, and over all, The Last Dragon is just a really good time.

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This is the sort that of movie that I, and so many of my peers, grew up with. If The Goonies was your jam when you were coming up, and if you were all about Short Circuit as a kid, then this movie could absolutely have held a spot in your regular VHS rotation. I’m legitimately saddened that I was already an adult the first time I saw it, and I vow to break this cycle of negligent parenting should I ever have children and/or decide to clone myself. Who knows how differently I could have turned out if I had seen this film before I got old and ruined my life! I think you should all watch this, if you can manage to suspend your cynicism for about ninety minutes, you could absolutely do worse.

Prayer of the Rollerboys!

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Prayer of the Rollerboys – 1990, Rick King

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The website IMDB.com credits Canadian born Corey Haim as having 48 known roles as an actor, and as having enjoyed a career which spanned more than two decades in both television, and film. For much of his youth, Haim was a big name, who grabbed tabloid headlines effortlessly and routinely scored leading roles in popular movies. If one were to collectively gather the sum total of his work and cut it all together into one massive montage, you would have days and days worth of footage, and there would be, throughout his acting career, in totality, fewer than three minutes total where Corey Haim’s mouth wasn’t sagging open like a damn trout. That was his look. “The Mouthbreather.” People seemed to be okay with it. Behold.

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“An open mouth is an open mind.” – Confusedcius

Coming in toward the “has-been” era of Haim’s acting career we have Prayer For The Rollerboys, surprisingly, it’s one of the more solid films featuring this young Proto-Bieber. While it’s not a great movie, it’s also not a terrible one, which is shocking to say the least, given that it’s about Corey Haim on Rollerblades. I was actually super disappointed, this movie ISN’T utter shit. What am I supposed to do now?!

THE PLOT~ Griffin and his little brother Miltie are orphans a hostile and economically devastated America of the Not-Too-Distant-Future. Here, basic human rights are jeopardized constantly, all businesses and institutions have relocated to foreign soil, and poverty is universal, save for an extravagantly wealthy few. It’s an America where the previous generations have governed things so poorly that any hope for prosperity or opportunity have been completely stamped out, and where the basic freedoms guaranteed you in the constitution of the United States of America are no longer protected. So, basically, it’s right now; this movie is an incredibly accurate prediction of the year 2015. It’s fucking creepy.

The only real difference between the world you see when you look out your window and the world you would see if you hit PLAY on Prayer of the Rollerboys, is that in the movie; the presence of organized gangs openly congregating is slightly more apparent. The most powerful gang in this film are the titular Rollerboys, a wealthy and powerful white supremacist crime syndicate who rollerskate around town wearing giant coats and who peddle a designer drug called Mist to everybody and they’s momma. The Rollerboys are a major problem for what remains of the police force, and truthfully, they’re poised to potentially make a power grab that would make them unstoppable if somebody doesn’t step up and do something about it very soon. Enter COREY HAIM:

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Through coincidence, Griffin (Haim) grew up with Gary Lee, the charismatic and brilliant leader of the Rollerboys, and Gary Lee seems to really cherish their childhood memories together. Although Griffin is in no way cool with racism, drugs, or the world according to the Roller-Fuhrer, this connection makes him an ideal candidate for a police led operation to infiltrate this dangerous gang and take them down, from the inside. Griffin is initially not interested, you see, he already rollerblades a lot- but when you leave your mouth hanging open constantly, like he does, rollerblading can be difficult because you swallow so many bugs. He’s unsure if he can commit to rollerblading even more often, which is what it would mean for him to infiltrate the Rollerboys, but he eventually agrees. Also, Patricia Arquette is in this movie, and she dresses like a damn crazy person. I dunno, maybe you’re into that.

So, it’s a quasi-post-apocalyptic, gang warfare/cop film staring Corey Haim that involves a hell of a lot of roller blading. Sounds utterly insane, right? Well, yeah, for sure it does, but then you watch it, and it just isn’t. So… what the hell is going on? Can we isolate why this movie isn’t really shitty? Let’s break it down:

THE ROLLERBLADING: This is yet another film which displays the commonly held, pre-1994 belief that the future would belong to people on roller skates. That, in-and-of-itself should guarantee this movie be at least 30% goofy- and I think we pretty much get the minimum rollerskate related WTFs possible out of it. They definitely rollerblade, constantly, when the bad guys get arrested they don’t even take their skates off, they just roll them over into the squad-cars, inlines intact- so that’s periodically pretty silly, but beyond everyone simply skating around all the time, there isn’t a lot of skate related content here. They don’t really do any tricks or jumps or anything, the movie opens with a brief sequence of Haim ripping it up at a skatepark, but that’s really the extent of it. They also don’t really harp on the skates being cool, they just kind of pass them off as a fact of life in the future, so with this, we see many, many missed opportunities for this film to have pissed me off. As a matter of fact, it actually wouldn’t be difficult to forget that you’re watching a movie where two thirds of the cast have wheels fastened to their feet at all times, and that’s completely insane. Given that I expected Prayer of the Rollerboys to glorify the skates in the same fashion that BMX Bandits fetishizes bikes, I was a little taken aback by how not stupid the rollerblading is here. They really left me hanging.

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THE FUTURE: So, this is a post-apocalyptic movie, right? Well, here’s how post-apocalyptic it is: It’s SO post-apocalyptic, that in this movie, the pizza delivery guys all carry machine guns, in case anyone gives them trouble… But it’s not so post-apocalyptic that we don’t have pizza delivery guys. They even have to wear lame little uniforms, like the people who work at Pizza Hut or something, so how post-apocalyptic can it possibly be if you can still pay for a human to drive a pizza to your door anytime you want?! Not post-apocalyptic at all, that’s how. I would imagine that restaurant-to-home pizza delivery would be one of the first services we would lose in the event of an apocalypse.

Actually, I’m only a little bit kidding when I say that the future depicted in this movie feels eerily in line with what we’ve seen happening in the United States just recently; I would say that this depiction of the future isn’t so much imaginative as it is speculative. Which is unbelievable. Fact: The wackiest thing about this movie is the juxtaposition of far fetched ideas, like rollerblading, teenaged gangsters, with markedly more reserved economic speculation and sociological predictions. It’s the weirdest bait and switch ever, it’s like someone sold us something with the promise that it was going to be just terrible, and then when we got it home we found out it actually didn’t suck. Are you kidding me? This movie is completely fine! Thanks for nothing!

THE QUALITY: Nobody even did a bad job! The dumbest things in this movie are Patricia Arquette’s wardrobe and Corey Haim’s face, but the technical crafstamnship is perfectly adequate! They didn’t even fall prey to old stand-bye pitfalls, like shitty soundtracks, or flavor of the month stylistic gimicks. I am horrified how well Prayer Of The Rollerboys holds up; in fact, due to the shift in economic realities we are now experiencing, this movie might be even BETTER now than when it came out. Damn it! Skunked again!

THE COREY: Let’s get one thing straight; I hate Corey Haim. I always have. I don’t even care that I’m mocking a dead man, I hate both the Coreys, and that has been my official stance on them since day one. Haim especially is heinous, because at least Feldman was Tommy Jarvis, Donatello and Mouth. When I popped this movie into my VCR, this kid was skating his dumb, open maw right into my trap, and it was my every intention to come down on him and his dumb ass rollerblade movie with the furious might of Thor… And yet… Dammit, he did a good job. This movie isn’t very shitty at all, but the problems that it does have cannot fairly be blamed on Haim. His performance is strong, even if his role is flimsy, and he’s barely even annoying. I don’t know what the hell happened, I really thought this one was in the bag, but apparently I’m living in topsy-turvy land, where up is down, left is right, and Corey Haim isn’t a bumbling jackass. I hate it.

Now; I’m not raving about this movie. It’s not a classic, it’s not a masterpiece, and it’s not a homerun…. But it is, no question, light-years less shitty than I ever dreamed it would be. Prayer of the Rollerboys is like a cunning conspiracy theory, you dismiss it outright, but the more you pay attention, the more it starts to make sense in your head. Whatever, Rollerboys. Just leave me alone.

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C+

NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE!!!

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE ~ 1986, Gil Bettman

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WELCOME TO HELL

Never Too Young Too Die came out in1986. It stars John Stamos, who plays Lance Stargrove, a college gymnast turned secret agent.

…Interested?

The movie also stars Vanity, who plays a secret agent named Danja (Worst name I’ve ever heard), and Gene Simmons, who plays Ragnar, a super villain and would-be world conquerer who has both sets of genitalia, and yes, he does at one point sing a song about this. Yeah, as if anything could stir a reaction out of you after reading the words “Starring John Stamos.” After that, nothing is shocking.

Actually, I have no idea how this even exists. I had been led to believe that we had, in place, numerous failsafes to prevent John Stamos movies from ever seeing the light of day. Clearly, no amount of preventative measures could have suppressed this hideous beast of a movie from muscling it’s way out of Hell’s sphincter and into our reality. Never Too Young To Die. There was nothing we could do to stop this. Brace yourselves:

THE PLOT~ When decorated super spy Drew Stargrove is killed in the line of duty while trying to stop Ragnar, an evil hermaphrodie, from tainting the water supply with toxic waste, his son, Lance Stargrove, is unknowingly thrust into a world of espionage, danger, and alarmingly blatant hommoeroticism. Seriously, in this film, literally every single actor on screen looks like they are just TEETERING on the verge of their first gay encounter. It’s unreal.

Never Too Young To Die is pretty damn bonkers. I’m beginning to realize that I’ve been desensitized to nonsense, but this one remains a special find, the sort of stupid movie we’ve always speculated might exist, but could never prove. Theoretical physicists and movie nerds alike have debated for years the possibility that John Stamos could withstand the strain of adding a third persona to his repertoire of classic characters, and now we know that Uncle Jesse and Satisfied Shampoo User are not the only two iconic figures in his Rogues Gallery. Make way for Lance Stargrove, brooding, whiney college student who cheats on all his tests and excels at nothing beyond motorcycle riding and gymnastics. Actually, if we’re being fair, Stamos does a decent job in this movie, when you consider that he’s been saddled with the unfortunate burden of being John Stamos. Honestly, there are very few actors who could have pulled a better performance out of this script, which I assume was written in blood and found onboard the Event Horizon, so maybe it’s best we didn’t waste the role on someone who wasn’t destined to slide through his adult life on Full House residuals and alimony checks from Rebecca Romijn. For this man, the role of Uncle Jesse was peaking. May God have mercy on his soul.

Gene Simmons, on the other hand, is successful to a degree that cannot be debated, so we’re sort of forced to assume he was blackmailed into this. It’s a shame, Simmons has had his integrity as an artist challenged many, many times over the years, and rightly so, but nothing is more damaging to myth of Gene Simmons; Rock God, than Never Too Young To Die. Nothing ever could be. Honestly, coming from someone who rocks all ten tracks of Love Gun on the regular, this thing is straight up traumatic. Simply put, anybody who still thinks that Kiss Meets The Phantom of the Park is the greatest cinematic threat to the Kiss legacy hasn’t seen Never Too Young To Die. It would take millions of Detroit Rock Cities to undo the damage this celluloid shitshow hath dealt.

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And with that, the Kiss Army promptly disbanded.

I also want to briefly talk about Cliff; Lance’s college room mate, side kick, and gadget guru. Cliff is a bizarre character. Firstly, he displays unfaltering devotion to Lance, which runs the gamut from helping him cheat his way through college, building neat little gizmos for him all the time, and even suiting up in some sort of tactical nerd gear and running off to rescue Lance before he even has reason to believe there is anything to rescue Lance from. He just doesn’t see him for a couple of days, so he loads up his highly unstable Fire Blazer (that’s what he calls his little rocket launcher thing he built…) and heads out, just to make sure Lance is alright. He appears to receive no compensation for his efforts beyond the companionship of Lance Stargrove, so there’s this weird Peppermint Patty/Marcie dynamic that seems suspicious. Secondly, Cliff dresses really, really bizarre. When we first meet him, his clothes are so painfully 80’s that he actually appears to be deformed. The next major style we see is his aforementioned Tactical Nerd Gear, which is complete with shinny motorcycle helmet, suspenders and neckerchief. His final costume is the exact outfit worn by the Brawny Man, so it is perhaps most evident through Cliff that the head of the wardrobe department on Never Too Young To Die had a pretty bad drug problem.

We all need a guy like Cliff in our lives/nightmares

From a technical standpoint, Never Too Young to Die gets a passing grade, but just barely. This is not a well made movie. I’d call it C- film making, and that’s just in regards to the technical craft. They actually do try to make this movie special, they have car chases, explosions, reasonably dangerous stunts, lots of extras and various, sometimes interesting locations, but even with all of that effort, Never Too Young To Die falls far, far short of the goal by failing to be dynamic or exciting, ever. Everything is on the flimsy end of adequate, and you really have to be calibrated for low budget movies to tolerate Never Too Young To Die. If you’re not, you don’t have a prayer of making through this thing.

The sound track might deserve a special shout out here. It’s all uber-chintzy, cheap sounding casio-pop, which is film-poison, especially to any post 1989 audience. In addition to a horrible, horrible song performed by Gene Simmons about how awesome it is to have both male and female sex organs, we also have the stirring “Stargrove’s Theme,” which sounds like it was recorded by your Aunt and her $30 Wal*Mart keyboard. The music in Never Too Young To Die sounds so much more bleak and hellish to me than even the foulest, most godless Black Metal Norway has to offer, and right this moment, “Stargrove’s Theme” is totally stuck in my head, so I kind of want to die.

All told; Never Too Young To Die is much more effective as a means of shaming all parties involved than it is as a movie. It’s basically one step above a Japander.com commercial, it’s insane, yes, but it could be a lot crazier. It’s much more potent as a permanent reminder that no matter how he may try to bury it beneath mystique, Gene Simmons is but a mere mortal, who sometimes does real, real stupid stuff, and no matter how beautiful his ex-wife may be, John Stamos can never escape the fact that he is John Stamos. This movie is more like a court transcript, an FBI wrap-sheet, or Exhibit A in a particularly embarrassing trial… It’s sort of like that part at the end of 300, where the only victory that Leonidas can score is slightly scratch the bad guy and prove to everyone that he isn’t some untouchable god. No matter how rich and privileged Gene Simmons may become, and no matter how pittiful, destitute and beaten down you are, the mere whisper of the name “Stargrove” will reveal his true form and leave him powerless. It’s like when Nancy tells Freddy she’s not afraid of him anymore at the end of Nightmare On Elm Street, it’s his kryptonite, and it proves that no matter what, he’s not better than us. That’s what this movie is for. Of course, in the case of John Stamos, his true form is John Stamos, so for him, things really cannot get any worse… This is kinda just kicking him when he’s down. Still fun, though!

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P.S. I actually really love Kiss. This was hard for me.

Death Factory!

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Death Factory ~ 2002, Brad Sykes

On the off chance that any of you hate yourselves, or feel guilty, and want to cause yourselves some sort of anguish, I’ve got good news; there is a company called Brain Damage Films, they exist, they are a real thing, and they have got you covered, big time. One 90 minute Brain Damage movie is the mental and psychological equivalent to nine months in a P.O.W. camp, I promise, watch one, and you’ll have a terrible, terrible time. These movies are just the worst, and if you have some weird need to punish yourself, for really any reason at all, Death Factory is on par with an evening of beating yourself in the face. The difference is; with Death Factory, all your scars are inside, on your soul and brain. That’s going to be convenient when you go into work the next day and won’t have to explain to your boss what happened to all of your teeth.

THE PLOT~ This movie opens, like every Brain Damage movie I have ever seen (All two of them), With some lame nerd guy trying to hype you up for this horrible, horrible movie that you’re about to watch. He’s like, the mascot of Brain Damage, I guess, he dresses like an old school punk and speaks at the very bottom of his register, it’s really pretty embarrassing. Anyway. He summarizes the movie in what he hopes is an exciting way. He’s sort of like a bargain basement Crypt Keeper, except that he’s totally unlikable, and he probably has to pay for sex (When we all know the Cryptkeeper can get anyone he pleases.) Anyway, he’s here. Then the movie proper begins…

Death Factory is the very definition of generic, straight to DVD horror, and it is as bland as dry toast. The only thing this movie has that it can hope will differentiate it from the unending sea of scratched up, second hand DVDs left in apartment closets after weirdos get evicted is that it sucks a little harder than average. The premise is as such: Over and over, people continually break into an abandoned chemical factory, only to be murdered by a “Monster,” which is really just a goth chick with metal leg braces and blades strapped onto her hands. Apparently, this “monster” is an ex-employee who was mutated by exposure to biological weapons. The movie really overplays just how “mutated” she is, because as I’ve said, she doesn’t look mutated in the least. Right now there are eleven kids that look exactly like her employed at your local Hot Topic.

The main group we follow into this paint-by-numbers horror movie scenario is made up of people visibly in their 30’s (or older) playing college kids, and the film ends with a twist ending so banal that not even well known “twist ending” fetishist M. Knight Shyamalan would find his fancy tickled. It’s bad, and I don’t think this movie was ever intended to be watched, actually. I present this theory; Death Factory was made with the express purpose of filling shelves at Hollywood Video, it’s filler; it’s background decoration. They never dreamed anyone would actually rent it… But they were wrong, because me and my friends totally did. What fools we were.

All of the characters in this Death Factory are horribly written, directed and acted. Often, their behavior makes no sense whatsoever. For instance, at the begining of the movie, a couple breaks into the “factory” so they can find somewhere exciting to fool around. It’s the girl’s idea, by the way, that’s important to know for later. So, while in the midst of gettin’ down to business, the male spots this horrifying “mutant” peeking in at them, so he reacts to what he sees, like anyone would. This just pisses the girl off something fierce, she cannot believe how out of line he is for reacting. His momentary fear and surprise caused by being startled in a weird, scary place where they aren’t even supposed to be is apparently more than she is able to tolerate, so she yells at him and storms off, utterly incensed by his behavior, and even refuses to let him accompany her. “I just need to be alone!” She yells. Right, so she’s totally insane. What human would act like that?!

And it isn’t really her fault, she is the way she is because she’s been written by dummies, and it doesn’t end there. All characters in Death Factory suck in their own, stupid way, whether it be the 40 year old white woman who plays a college aged Latina, the dirty metal-head who would never be caught dead hanging out with a bunch of squares in real life, or the black man who plays a humiliatingly stereotypical black man. His portrayal is actually embarrassing enough that at first I thought he should be ashamed to have represented African Americans in this way, before I realized that the white actors should be no less ashamed for portraying white people the way this movie required them to. Really, no one escapes involvement with Death Factory without taking on a sizable chunk of bad karma. If reincarnation is real, these people will cruise into the next life as some kind of parasite that lives inside of anuses.

Another awesome Death Factory fact: Holy shit, this is NOT a factory. At no point, ever, in this movie, does the setting appear factory like in the least. These are just dilapidated bedrooms connected by unfinished, plywood hallways. What, every room in this factory is fully furnished with at least one couch and multiple chairs? This factory had a very avant garde “no machinery/shit load of couches” philosophy in regards to factory design. Why even call this Death Factory? So many questions, Brain Damage…

Also, Ron Jeremy plays a small role in this film. His part? A Drunken, stumbling hobo who dies right away. Yes, with everything Ron Jeremy has on his resume, I wouldn’t really start to feel ashamed until Death Factory. Why did he take this job, actually? Had he fallen on hard times? how hard could times actually be? Did they even pay him? No, Ron Jeremy. This isn’t worth it. Couldn’t you just start banging ventriloquist dummies or something? I refuse to believe that there wasn’t less demeaning work available to him.

Brain Damage addresses their viewer (viewerS? Could there be more than one?) as “gorehounds’, so you would expect them to at least deliver on the gore with their crappy little videos, and more or less, they do. I mean, it’s no-budget gore, but it’s in there. In this case, that adds up to maybe a few Halloween store props and a ton of fake blood that can just be caked on top of woundless flesh, and nothing more extravagant than that. They for sure try to milk it for all it’s worth, though, these shots drag on and on, and Brain Damage is not stingy with that fake blood. They really splash that shit on there. Expect to linger on shots of people writhing in gross, red goo for what will seem like an eternity, but anything more complicated than that is simply outside the budgetary restrictions of Death Factory… Which doesn’t really matter. It sucks left right and center no matter what, and more, or less graphic violence was never going to be Death Factory’s salvation. The best thing this movie could do for humanity is to be forgotten and promptly excluded from all written records. Oh, shit, why did I review it?

The Hollywood Video joke I made before actually isn’t far off, actually. Little Direct To Video studios like Brain Damage, or The Asylum, were primarily dependent on Video Store traffic in the last decade. With no talent associated with the project to bring audiences in, and nothing of merit in the production to warrant a word of mouth reputation, 100% of the demand for this movie was just people browsing who saw it on a shelf of their local video store and thought “What the hell?” If they rented it, they might have watched it, but they don’t rent it twice. Just being on the shelf at all was an example of Brain Damage’s business model succeeding, but now, those shelves are gone, and these movies are fighting to remain relevant in an era of vending machines, streaming video, and even shorter attention spans. I’ve seen plenty of Brain Damage’s products offered up by Netflix Instant View with the stink of desperation upon them, so I think the plan is to hope for a similar phenomena on a digital shelf, but we’ll see if it works out for them.

I hope it doesn’t. What they do is not art.

Roller Blade

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Roller Blade ~ 1986, Donald Jackson

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Things have changed since the rock ‘em sock ‘em dog days of 1986. Let me set the scene for you, and give you some perspective (I was two years old); At that time, The Berlin Wall was still standing fully intact, a constant impediment to the freedoms of the East German people. The Soviet Union was still in operation, ideologically opposed to American values, and seemingly determined to squash out the spirit of democracy, by force, if necessary. The threat of Nuclear War loomed threateningly in the zeitgeist of the entire human race, and the future was very much a topic of much debate, as well as pessimistic speculation. In 1986, it really did seem like we might just be looking at an apocalyptic doomsday in our near future, at a world where barren, Radioactive wastelands would blanket the entire Earth, where mutants and bandits would pillage without compassion for the weak or the unfortunate, and where a militarized religious order of roller-skating babes would fight to protect what was left of human civilization. This really did seem like an unavoidable certainty, just waiting to happen. Honestly, I don’t know how we have avoided that reality for so long, and I’m forced to assumed we have only postponed it… For now.

THE PLOT ~ The evil Dr. Saticoy, who looks like a combination of a Canadian Mounty and a gimp, and who constantly carries a hand puppet, not unlike Mr. Hat, hatches an evil plan to steal a power crystal from the noble Bod Sisters, a chapter of roller skating nuns who have been charged with keeping order in an apocalyptic wasteland filled with adults who ride around on rollerskates. It’s very realistic. Soon, the Bod sister’s are infiltrated by one of Saticoy’s spies, the crystal is stolen, and a confrontation between vicious, uncivilized killers and attractive young women on rollerskates comes to a head. Movies like this exist. Go watch them.

So, there’s other stuff in there… Saticoy’s spy ends up redeeming herself, some ranger type dude gets his son kidnapped, and there’s this dude who talks just like David Lee Roth, but really, who gives a shit? All of those things are Roller Blade’s honest attempt at giving you a plot to care about, and, to be frank, it’s a failure you probably predicted going in.

It’s truly amazing that movies like this can happen; movies with a concept so riddled with madness that hearing it explained it is infinitely more entertaining than actually watching it play out. Far too often these movies fall into the same trap; no matter how nutso your idea is, you either have to be equally insane, or legitimately talented, and if you’re not one of those two things, your movie is going to suck. Again, when you’re making a ridiculous ass psychotronic film, the worst thing your movie can be is boring. Roller Blade is not worth 90 minutes of your time, and that’s the tragic truth. You’ve probably imagined a better movie just reading the description, so quit while you’re ahead.

The real reason Roller Blade is important, though, is that it is, doubtless, an uncompromisingly realistic portrayal of our inevitable future. Is there a chance that soon the human race will engage in an atomic war so furious that vast expanses of the Earth will be left total uninhabitable? Without question; yes. And when this happens, what is the only logical outcome of this scenario? Well, any intelligent person knows that within weeks what is left of humanity will form a limited government/police force/religious order of roller babes to skate around and kill mutants. That’s a given! The logic is airtight, so if you want any chance at survival, it’s time to bust out your skates and get real comfortable with zooming around in short shorts (and that’s addressed to both male and female readers.) Roller Blade may not be entertaining, but neither was Driver’s Ed; however, both are necessary forms of education without which, we would be woefully ill prepared. I’m not sure if the future really will include a hand puppet enthusiast mounty-gimp, though. Probably. Hell, somewhere in the world that’s probably already a thing.

Also worth noting; Donald Jackson did manage to pull off at least one pretty solid film, Hell Comes to Frog Town, released two years later. It’s a good old time, friends. Review forthcoming!

D-

ELVES!!!!

Posted on December 25, 2014 by Kristoph Johannes

Elves~ 1989, Jeffrey Mandel

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Will somebody put this out on Blu Ray!?! Elves hasn’t been available (that I know of) in region 1 home video since the age of VHS… And that’s ridiculous. Right now, we live in a world where you can buy a Blu ray collectors edition of The Amazing Spiderman 2 in this hideous Jamie Foxx statue, but you can’t buy Elves at all. That’s a world without logic. That’s a world where Isis has already won.

Elves is pretty much a shoddy, bargain basement imitation of Joe Dante’s Gremlins, a movie which spurred a wave of small, impish monster films (Troll, Hobgoblins, Ghoulies, Critters, etc…), but Elves goes that extra mile and keeps it festive by hanging on to the Christmas setting as well as the notion of the diminutive monster, which is a good move on their part. I like Elves a lot more than Gremlins, actually, and I think this movie is proof that bargain basement doesn’t always mean ‘bad.’ Sometimes you can find some pretty crazy shit in the basement, and crazy is interesting.

THE PLOT~ When Kirsten and her dim-witted friends swipe a Pagan Spellbook from her Grandfather’s library and boogie on down to the forest for an Anti-Christmas witches Sabbath (kid’s these days), they unknowingly summon an Elf, which in turn, begins to terrorize and murder various people in Kirsten’s life. The bodies begin to pile up, and as an elaborate, decades old conspiracy begins to unravel all around her, the burden falls on a hard drinkin’ ex-cop turned hobo/mall Santa to save the day, which will require him to battle both Neo-Nazis, and an elf, and then also to secretly sleep inside a department store, because he’s homeless, and it’s cold outside.

Oh, yeah, the Nazis… Apparently, unbeknownst to Kirsten, her damn Grandfather was once a full on member of The Third Reich, and even worse, he was one of those weird, black magic, occult Nazis you see in books and movies. Yes, gramps was into some crazy shit back in his goose-steppin’ days, and in fact, he and his SS homeboys once hatched a plan to very deliberately create the Antichrist, which I’m not sure why they wanted to do that, but they did, and this very plan remains in motion to this day, wether Gramps likes it or not. The reason being? Kirsten. She was actually strategically bred to be the ideal mate for a fucking elf, because apparently a half Aryan/half elf mix equals the antichrist. Apparently, that’s her destiny, to bang an elf and birth the antichrist. She got dealt a bad hand, no question about it. Only now Gramps regrets having created a child for the sole purpose of apocalyptic elf sex, so he fled to America and tried to escape his white-supremicist, black magic dabbling past. However, now the chickens have come home to roost, Elf style, and there’s no getting out of it. Unless, of course, our homeless gum-shoe mall Santa can put a stop to this pagan scheme once and for all! It’s worth noting that if there were actually any gum on this guys shoe, he might eat it, because he is homeless and drunk.

Production-wise, we’re not dealing with a masterpiece. The effects are cheap, the elf itself looks like garbage, the photography is bland and artless, and there isn’t any technical wizardry apparent in any aspect of this movie’s craftsmanship… Everything is just barely adequate, or worse, but that’s okay. Elves more than compensates for it’s technical shortcomings by being both entertaining, and borderline insane, a mix that constitutes 9/10’s of my DVD collection. I would say that this film has it goin’ on, and, when viewed alongside comparable films, like say, Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama, Elves is actually a head above.

I think my favorite thing about the film is that it’s actually pretty funny, and somehow, the comedy seems inadvertent, when it simply had to have been deliberate. That’s plain old magic, yo. The shabbiness of the production suggests to the viewer that anything nonsensical or absurd is probably included out of incompetence rather than for intentional comedic value, and thus Elves somehow makes you laugh with it, while duping you into thinking that you’re laughing at it, and thats such a satisfying experience. Some of the dialogue in this movie is just jaw dropping, the exchange between Kirsten and the original Mall Santa certainly comes to mind as being a true revelation in the art of cinema, but I’m not going to include it here… It’s better you experience that for yourself. I do have two short exchanges that I want to include, though:

Firstly, when Kirsten’s a-hole little brother Willie is woken up in the middle of the night and catches a glimpse of the titular elf. He screams, the elf peaces out, and when his mother arrives to investigate, she immediately wants to blame Willie’s elf sighting on the damn cat.

“Well there’s your answer, it was the cat!” Mom declares. Willie fires back with:
“It was a fucking real ninja troll!”

Well, maybe a child telling his mother that he had just seen a “fucking real ninja troll” doesn’t bring joy to your heart, but if that’s the case, you should probably just get the hell out of here right now. I have nothing for you.

Later in the film, a bunch of exposition is laid out, plot dump style, and Grampa is outted as being Hitler’s friggin’ Cabana Boy or whatever. Willie, who is unsure of how exactly the impending birth of the Antichrist is going to effect his Christmas morning, asks “What’s wrong?! Are we gonna be alright?” To which Kirsten responds; “No, Willie, Gramps is a Nazi.” That’s a pretty funny thing to drop on a kid on Christmas Eve. He’s gonna remember this Christmas forever.

There are a lot of Christmas themed horror films out there, and many of these are both much more available than Elves, and much shittier. Any list of festive, holiday themed horror films would be a little more diverse, and a whole lot more kick-ass with this flick tossed into the mix, and while it may not be a classic, it has all the qualifications to earn a cult following if it can manage to get a little more exposure. Recommended!

B+

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