Friday, December 1, 2017

Very late but worth the -- no, not really.







It was the evening of October 28th in this foul year of our Lord, 2017, and the weather in Santa Monica was finally feeling something resembling "autumnal". The marquee over the entrance to the Aero Theatre said that this was the 12th Annual Dusk Till Dawn Horrorthon and I thought Wow, I don't even know how many of these I've attended by this point -- which is really my loss, because the Horrorthon is always a good time.

Not that I always 100-percent felt that way. If you read my earlier blog entries on previous Horrorthons, you'll find that it took me a few years to get the stick out of my ass about the full freak flag flaunting at these fine festivities -- the screaming host, the audience members wearing costumes, the call-and-response gags between the screen and the audience during the on-screen interstitials, the on-stage theatrics featuring characters with names like Corn Gorn, Abraham LinkedIn, and Wizard Policeman -- but I can now assure you that a combination of age mellowing me out as well as an overwhelmingly apocalyptic sense of the outside world has taught me to enjoy myself whenever and wherever, making this particular exit cavity stick free.

Stick.


Once we were all inside and ready for the 12 or so hours of horror films both goofy and non-goofy -- intentional and unintentional -- the evening began with our host, Mr. Grant Moninger, running up on stage, mic in hand, welcoming us the same way he's welcomed us in past Horrorthons: with explosive energy expelled at the audience as if he had too much in him and had to make room for even more building up within him that also had to come out violently. Of course, it riled us all up and so we responded in kind with cheers and hoots and hollers -- maybe not at him but at something, that's for sure.

The marathon began with the now-traditional use of the 1980s television series T.J. Hooker, starring William Shatner, where we watched portions of an episode while fake credits featuring the names of  Horrorthon attendees popped up on-screen. Following that were the first round of interstitials that would play between films throughout the night, beginning with some of the old favorites such as the Corn Gorn prayer song, the "Alan" marmot, the Red Roof Inn commercial, both versions of Dennis Parker's song "Like an Eagle", the Energizer commercial, and Brent, among others. There were some new ones too, such as the takeoff/recreation of old advertisements for 1-900 or 976 numbers that featured the song "Library" from the album "Floral Shoppe" by Macintosh Plus; the music is from the Vaporwave genre, and I think they came up with the name "Vaporwave" because "White People Appropriating The 'Chopped & Screwed' Genre From Black People" was too long.

This year, Telly Savalas was introduced into the Horrorthon cast of characters; we watched on-stage as the Bride of Corn Gorn ran off with the bald-headed actor (portrayed by a volunteer wearing a Telly Savalas mask), and we also watched the real Mr. Savalas on the big screen in a couple of clips. The first was from some 70s television program -- which had a distinctly European feel to it -- where our man Telly stood before a black void, smoking a cigarette and wearing a black velvet jacket with matching shirt that was unbuttoned to expose both his manly chest and various gold necklaces, as he performed his spoken word cover of the song "If" by the group Bread.

The second Telly clip was from an Australian television series called "The Extraordinary", one of those shows where people tell stories about their experiences with the paranormal, otherworldly, and yes, extraordinary. Celebrity guest Savalas told a story from his younger days -- accompanied by a cheesy reenactment -- where he found himself stranded in the middle of the night on a highway in an automobile with no gas, even though he had just come from a date and you would think he'd make sure he had more than enough gas to cover any possible detours, I mean, who knows how fun this date could've ended up, you have to be prepared for such possibilities.

So Telly's walking down the road, gas can in hand, when a Cadillac pulls up and a creepy high-pitched Good Samaritan offers him a ride to the nearest filling station. The man offers to lend Savalas' broke ass some money to pay for the gas, and again, I have to chide Mr. Savalas for not thinking ahead, because he clearly only had enough money to cover the date -- barely, at that, and I'm sorry, but if you can barely afford something, that really means you cannot afford it.

That goes for dates, that goes for car purchases, that goes for buying a house, buying clothes, all of that. Trust me, lady and gentleman, always give yourself financial breathing room before going in on any kind of purchase: it'll keep the repo man away, it'll keep your inbox clear of Past Due notices, and most importantly, it'll keep you from catching a late night lift from some creepy high-pitched Good Samaritan -- who turned out to be a ghost, by the way, there's the ending to that story.



The first film of the evening was An American Werewolf in London, from 1981, written and directed by master decapitator John Landis. Oh, I kid the head chopper -- I used to be hard on the poor guy about that snafu on the set of the Twilight Zone movie that ended three lives and ruined countless others, but now that it's coming out how frighteningly rape-tastic Hollywood is, I find his crimes are now rather innocent in comparison. Dude pulled the Fuck It card as far as safety was concerned, but who hasn't thrown caution to the wind when it involved somebody else's life? It's not like he grabbed Vic Morrow by the pussy and he certainly didn't fuck those little kids -- well, not sexually, anyway.

David Naughton and Griffin Dunne are two young dudes out backpacking in England's countryside, and for a couple of guys talking about chicks they want to bang, they're actually kinda likable, all things considered. I bet you if they were to make the same movie today, they'd be douchebros right out of an Eli Roth film. Anyway, they end up veering off the road and out comes el hombre lobo to massacre one of them, leaving the Dr. Pepper guy barely breathing.

The rest of the film involves David recovering from his wounds in London, where he hits it off with his nurse, followed by just straight up hitting it. The nurse is played by Jenny Agutter, and if you've seen her in Walkabout or Logan's Run, you'd want her as your nurse too. I'm not into the domination thing -- on either end -- but that part where Agutter is trying to get Makin' It over here to eat his food at the hospital and she says "Shall I be forced to feed you, David?", ay dios mio. I started feeling really weird in a good way and when she says after that, "Will I have to take such drastic action again, David?", I don't know why, but I felt like she was talking to me and my response was YESSSS YES YOU DO NURSE JENNY AGUTTER FORCE ME TO EAT.

I'm just kidding, you never have force me to eat. I eat everything, man. Anyway, David turns into a werewolf.

I first saw this in 2004 and hadn't seen it since, but my opinion remains the same: when John Landis was on, he was ON, and this might be my favorite of his films. Landis balances horror, comedy, drama, and sex with Jenny Agutter in a shower all so effortlessly. Lots of credit of course goes to Rick Baker and his terrific effects work; the sequence where David goes through his excruciating transformation from man to werewolf still stuns, and by the end of it, when you see the shot of the full moon while hearing David do the Altered Beast howl, the audience broke out into applause.



The second film was the 1991's Popcorn, directed by Mark Herrier (who was replacing original director Alan Ormsby). Jill Schoelen stars as Maggie, a film student studying at a college in the Central Coast of California -- or at least that's what I assumed based on the look of the locations, so imagine my delightful surprise when I found out the entire film was shot in Jamaica.

Maggie and her fellow film students -- played by Profile from Heartbreak Ridge, Ellen Sue from A League of their Own, and the dyslexic girl from Summer School who was trying to get her driver's license, among others -- come up with the idea to raise money for the film department by throwing an all-night horrorthon at an old theater that is set to be wrecking ball'd in a few weeks. When the idea is brought up, the words "all-night horrorthon" are actually used, so of course all of us in the Aero cheered wildly upon hearing that.

You don't get much movie geek chat during the film class scenes, which in 1991 would probably consist of debating who was the better director: Orson Welles or Alfred Hitchcock. Maybe they'd go on about guys like Lucas and Spielberg too. Had the film been made a few years later it would be Quentin Tarantino, or it would be like the film class scene in Scream 2 but less insufferable. You make Popcorn today at this very moment, you probably couldn't get them to shut the fuck up about Edgar Wright and Baby Driver.

While cleaning up the place to make it all presentable for the people who are going to spill popcorn, soda, and god knows what else all over the place on movie night, the students and their professor discover an old film that contains a legitimately freaky short called "Possessor", made by a cult leader who went on to pull a Shosanna Dreyfus by setting fire to the theater playing "Possessor". So maybe that has something to do with the murders that occur later on during the Horrorthon, right?

I remember seeing the television ads for this film back in '91; it was sold as a straight-up horror film worthy of being included with Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, I mean they actually mention those films in the ads; I dismissed it as some wannabe slasher that clearly wasn't going to be as good as those films. When I finally caught it on HBO a year later -- where it played back-to-back with the Tom Savini remake of Night of the Living Dead -- I was surprised by how much I liked it. I was also surprised by the tone; Popcorn qualifies as a slasher, but not a particularly bloody or brutal one. It's a much lighter -- even comedic -- film compared to the one that was advertised.

The films-within-the-film that play during the horrorthon are the biggest source of humor in Popcorn; they are all from the 50s and 60s and include William Castle-style gimmicks; the first is about a giant mosquito, which means a fake giant mosquito flies over the audience; the second is about an prison escapee going on a rampage with his new power to kill with electric shocks, so of course there are shock buzzers placed under the theater seats; and the third is a dubbed Japanese movie about a killer gas (?) which plays while nasty odors get pumped in through the air vents of the auditorium.

I liked it even more during this second go-round; watching it with an audience at an actual all-night horror movie marathon added to the fun and I recommend it as part of your own all-nighter playlist. Or maybe as part of a double feature with Joe Dante's Matinee, which also involves William Castle-esque gimmickry.



Speaking of William Castle gimmickry, our third film of the night was an actual William Castle joint: 1959's The Tingler, directed by Castle and starring Vincent Price. The film begins with a prologue where Castle tells the audience how there's nothing wrong with screaming if the fear gets to be too much, because sometimes screaming might save your life. See, in the world of The Tingler, we all have a centipede living on our spine, rent-free, never so much as taking out the trash every once in a while and god forbid it remembers to replace an empty toilet paper roll with a new one.

I mean, really, what kind of fucking asshole doesn't replace the toilet paper? I don't get it. It takes two seconds to take the empty roll out and put a new one in. This is why I prefer the company of myself -- I wash dishes as soon as I'm done using them and I replace the toilet paper roll. Whenever I see an empty toilet paper roll, I can only assume that the lazy motherfucker who used the toilet last is walking around with a shitty ass because he or she prefers to stay dirty down there rather than put up a fresh roll so they can finish the job properly. Anyway, motherfuck a Tingler.

A Tingler lives on your spine and when you get scared it grows like my anger towards people who don't replace toilet paper rolls. It grows and grows and if you don't scream or stop being scared, the Tingler grows stronger and eventually crushes your spine, the way I would crush the spine of some motherless fuck who won't replace the goddamn toilet paper roll.

Price makes friends with the owner/manager of a silent movie theater, who like every other man in this film wears a suit to work. Even the middle-aged employee working the ticket booth is wearing a suit. Go to your average revival movie house today and if you see an employee wearing a suit at work, he's probably wearing it with a day-glo tie over a t-shirt displaying a rainbow or a unicorn, and he's probably sexually harassing the female volunteers. Anyway, that dude has a deaf-mute wife who figures into the plot, and his movie theater figures into the climax in a clever way that involves both the on-screen audience and those of us watching this in an actual movie theater.

This was lots of fun; even the non-Tingler stuff is a hoot, like the scenes between Price and his unpleasant wife where everything they say to each other is dripping in Fuck You. Or the scene where Price takes acid as a way to work up his fear to test his inner Tingler, giving a play-by-play into one of those old-school dictation machines the entire time. That reminded me of the time I recorded myself on a microcassette recorder after I took shrooms. I ended up composing some weird Bobby McFerrin-esque tune with gibberish lyrics. Then I lost the tape.

I got a kick out of how everybody in this movie operates on various levels of Asshole; Price can be short with people who ask simple questions, his wife's a bitch, the deaf-mute woman refuses to shake hands with people, and Price's partner leaves a poor dog in the car with the windows rolled up and because it's the 1950s nobody cares.

This was originally released with a Castle-designed gimmick called "Percepto" with seats in the theater that would give out a vibrating buzz in order to freak the audience out into thinking that the Tingler was doing its thing on them. The screening at the Aero didn't have that setup, so instead they had volunteers walk up and down the aisles whipping out these long furry snake-like vibrators onto our laps. At least I hope that's what it was, and not a bunch of well-endowed pervs having their way with us.

Anyway, get a bidet. They're awesome.



The fourth film was the 1988 masterpiece Hack-o-Lantern (aka Halloween Night), directed by Jag Mundhra, a name that should be familiar to anyone who has watched more than his or her fair share of late-night Skinemax in the 90s; with titles like Night Eyes, Last Call, Sexual Malice, and Improper Conduct under his belt, Mr. Mundhra gets my eternal respect for riding in like a knight in shining armor wielding the legendary Shannon Tweed sword to slay the dragon that is Teenage Horniness.

The movie puts the name of actor Hy Pyke before the title, causing most of the audience to react like "Are we supposed to know who this guy is?" It wasn't until later that I found out Pyke appeared in Blade Runner, which I guess made him the default name actor for this low-budget production where he plays a piece-of-shit farmer type who once raped his daughter on her wedding day and then later went on to murder her husband.

He's also a Satan worshiper who often makes the sign of the horns with his hands, and every time he did, most of us in the audience would cheer because like him, we are all fans of Ronnie James Dio. I applaud the filmmakers for casting a guy who looks like a beer-swilling hayseed because I have a feeling that's what your average Devil worshiper looks like, not some sinister-yet-distinguished-looking gentleman like Christopher Lee.

Anyway, this grandpa now dotes on his daughter's kid (who for all we know might actually be his, the fuck) and while some grandfathers teach their grandkids how to fish or why ethnic people can't be trusted, this one is getting the little boy all up in the Devil business. Years later, the kid grows up to become Gregory Scott Cummins aka Mac's Dad from "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" aka The Devil in Snoop Dogg's "Murder Was The Case" video and I believe this marks the third time I've seen him pop up at one of these horror movie marathons. He was in Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge at the marathon at the Cinefamily, he was in Blood Games at the New Bev all-nighter, and now here he is in this movie at the Aero.

Anyway, his character's got a pretty sweet life going; living in his mom's basement with movie posters and neon beer signs on the wall, wearing his black shirt with the sleeves cut off, sporting a pair of shades, smokin' cigs, working out on his weight bench while wearing a Rambo-style headband. All that's missing are some sweet nunchucks to practice some Bruce Lee moves with. I could see hanging out with him, spotting each other while we do bench presses, watching horror movies, smoking some of his weed (which is fuckin' schwag but it's free), and listening to fuckin' Slayer, man!

He has also has a hot 80s-style platinum blonde who doesn't believe in pants to speed off with in his bitchin' Pontiac Fiero. Unfortunately, he can't have sex with her because his grandfather insists that he has to remain pure in order to perform some Satanic ritual on Halloween night. So in the meantime, Mac's Dad has to release his pent-up I Wanna Fuck energy in other ways, like beating up his sister's boyfriend on some Tony Montana-shit, or worshiping the dark lord in his closet where he keeps a Helga Pataki shrine to Lucifer, or listening to that evil rock music on his Walkman, which causes him to have dreams about being in a rad band playing a guitar that turns into a pitchfork which is then shoved into his neck by an evil devil woman who also happens to be the only African-American in this otherwise lily White cast.

There are murders with decent levels of blood and gore, lots of scary rituals involving the Satanists giving props to their horned master, and most disturbing of all, a scene where a random character at a Halloween party makes a few casual comments, but rather than moving on, he keeps talking and that's when I realized that this guy is doing an honest-to-goodness stand-up comedy set! He goes on to make fun of strippers, asks why nude pictorials in adult magazines include bios, and acts out the plight of a turkey before Thanksgiving.

This movie is goofy as hell. It's also that special kind of bad, that Samurai Cop or Dangerous Men kind of bad that can only be achieved by having a foreigner with a shaky grasp of his or her second language in charge of the proceedings -- which makes me wonder if there are American filmmakers in other countries making terrible movies that people in those countries like to goof on.



Between films, as per usual, the volunteers at the Aero began serving out the free eats and drinks; pizza from Little Caesars, Monster Energy drinks, wraps, sandwiches, Rice Krispie Treats, candy, Hostess cakes, coffee. As in past Horrorthons, Grant threw and tossed various Blu-rays and DVDs and candy at audience members. With each year, there seems to be a larger crowd of people gathering near the front of the stage to catch movies or gather the ones that land on the ground -- and with special edition Blu-rays of John Carpenter's The Thing and Society up for grabs, I don't blame them. By the end of the night, it was mostly bargain multi-movie packs for public domain titles that were left -- plus a lot of Vicente Fernandez joints. I ended up with a DVD triple pack of Valentin Trujillo flicks; and if you don't know about him, then you don't fuckin' know, bro.

Two of those movies in my triple pack turned out to be among my brother-in-law's favorite films, so Happy Birthday to him, I guess. And Happy Birthday to my niece, who ended up with the Corn Gorn shirt I purchased in the lobby, which despite being labeled as X-Large, fit me like an O.J. Simpson glove. So my advice to any Horrorthon-ers who want to buy a shirt next year is to take that thing to the restroom and try it on before going home -- not that going to the restroom was an option for a few hours that night.

To the best of my knowledge, a water main broke or a major clog backed something up, and the upstairs restrooms had to be closed for a while -- another reason I was glad to have held off of eating that day. Eventually, plumbers were called in and the restrooms were reopened but the stairs leading to them were wet and sticky and it had made it's way down to the carpet of the Aero's lobby, leaving behind the unmistakable smell of water that should've remained in pipes.

On our way out for some fresh air between films, my friend guesstimated the high price for the overnight plumbing job; he also said that the carpet would have to be shampooed as well, adding more to the bill. I asked him how long something like that would take and he said it would take a while -- there's also the amount of time needed for the carpet to dry to consider. I told him that the Aero had a screening of the classic horror film The Haunting scheduled the following evening and his response was a look that I could only interpret as "Good luck with that".


The fifth film of the night was the 1989 Wes Craven picture Shocker, starring Peter "You gotta join the Army, motherfucker" Berg as Jonathan, a college jock who gets mixed up with a serial killing television repairman played by Mitch Pileggi because they have some kind of psychic connection and what-not. This murderer has a thing for taking out whole families and he's so full of rage, this dude, he's not like some creepy calm type of psycho, he's seething and pissed off about who knows what. And he kills the shit out of them! He's just so mad! Angry all the time! He's like me, only I haven't started to kill people yet, but give me time. And your address.

During the opening credits sequence we watch inserts of a television set being repaired with various tools by a muttering, grumbling Pileggi -- so of course it's the angriest muttering and grumbling, and it's a pretty good sequence and I think a big part of it is the title song performed over it by a band called The Dudes of Wrath that's comprised of guys from KISS, Whitesnake, Motley Crüe, and Van Halen. There's also a cover of "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Megadeth on the soundtrack, which you might want to look up the music video for because it's hilariously obvious that that lead singer & guitarist Dave Mustaine is so high on smack he can barely stand,so they never show him play guitar and sing at the same time, it's always in separate shots, and even then he's never in sync.

Anyway, the movie. I found myself feeling so sorry for Peter Berg's character for the multiple wringers he gets put through early on; I apologize for getting all spoilery here but the movie IS nearly 30 years old so here goes -- he loses his entire family save for one foster dad to angry murder-happy Pileggi, and shortly after they're buried, Pileggi leaves Berg's oh-so-pretty girlfriend dead in a bathtub of her own blood. Berg really plays the hell out of his despair, breaking into tears and rage at these situations, so when they finally catch the killer and Berg demands to his police lieutenant father that he be seated front row to the motherfucker's execution, I was like "Fuck yeah, son, you earned it! Watch that motherfucker fry like bacon, record the goddamn thing so you can watch it over and over again!" -- and I'm against the death penalty!

I feel OK spoiling this much of the film because this is really only a third of the entire story and where it ends up going after this left me incredibly amused and surprised at Craven's audacity. I heard of Shocker over the years but never bothered watching it, because I was under the impression that it wasn't one of Craven's better films -- the funny thing is, had I watched it back then as a kid, I probably would've felt that my impression was correct, and the culprit would've been the running time. You see, Shocker is nearly two hours long and half of it doesn't feel like a horror film at all but rather a very dark crime drama with a light touch of the paranormal -- or should I say, "extraordinary"? And little kid me would've been like "Hey, I thought this was supposed to be Freddy Krueger all over again!"

But as a patient adult who recently purchased Tarkovsky's Stalker on Blu-ray, I was able to enjoy this and go "Oh, this IS Freddy Krueger all over again, only this time we get the prequel to how he became the Freddy Krueger we all know and love for the first 45 minutes or so". Once Pileggi's character reaches his full horror villain potential, the movie gets downright nutty in where it goes. It really feels like the part of Craven's brain that would stop to question him on whether an idea made sense or not was on vacation while he was writing this script, and I really appreciate that because it makes for a fun movie that had me laughing and clapping at times -- actually, to be specific, it makes for a fun second half of the movie in which I laughed and clapped, because to be honest, that first half about Pileggi making Berg's life hell got a little too grim at times for my liking at four-in-the-morning and I was even considering stepping out for some fresh air.

By the way, I was so entranced by Peter Berg's girlfriend in the film that I looked her up like a goddamn Internet stalker. Her name is Camille Cooper and she no longer acts; she became a citizen lobbyist in the 90s and got the Commonwealth of Virginia to include women and African-Americans in their school textbooks, and has since gone on to become the Director of Government Affairs for PROTECT, "a national bipartisan pro-child, anti-crime lobby whose sole focus is making the protection of children a top political and policy priority at the national, state, and local levels". And now I'm probably on some kind of list for looking her up.



From one attempt to create a new Freddy Krueger-style franchise, we went to another attempt to create a Freddy Krueger-style franchise with the sixth film of the marathon, the 1994 cyber-horror Brainscan, written by Andrew Kevin Walker of Se7en fame and directed by John Flynn of Rolling Thunder and Out for Justice legend. It stars Edward Furlong as Michael, this kid who I think is supposed to be a kind of withdrawn anti-social type except he has at least one friend and he has a horror movie club at his high school, which means one actual friend and a handful of acquaintances to me, and it sure as hell takes more than a modicum of effort to set up a goddamn club.

I don't remember there being anything like a horror movie club at my high school, at least not some kind of official deal that you could actually go to on campus. Shit, I wasn't able to find people my age who were into movies the same way I was into them, the best I could do was find a guy who was really into Sailor Moon. He would listen to the soundtracks of that series in his car, and he had posters of those anime chicks all over his room; there was one looming over his bed, so that was cool, knowing what he jerked off to.

And we all know what Michael is jerking off to: his video recordings from his peeping tom sessions of the girl next door played by Amy Hargreaves, an actress who was in her early 20s but she's supposed to be like 16 or 17 here which makes it weird to see these brief shots of her topless here -- and now that I think about it, wasn't Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High supposed to be underage too, as was every other actress in a teen comedy or teen horror film in the 80s?

See, but that was OK for me when I saw those movies because *I* was underage, and when I first saw Brainscan on cable, I was still underage. But now, I'm an adult and I'm watching another adult show me her titties and we're supposed to be all tee-hee-hee about it because she's pretending to be a fuckin' kid. It's kinda why the whole schoolgirl thing bothers me -- and by bothers me, I mean makes me rock hard because I'm a man and the sooner the women of this planet turn Amazon and murder everything with a penis, the better.

Then it'll just be women preying on women.

Anyway, I'm like fuck this Michael, he's living the life, as far as I'm concerned. Sure, his mom died in a horrible accident and his father is never around, but he's still living the life. Wait until you see his room; his situation is like homeboy from Hack-o-Lantern except his room is in the attic, and it's one of those huge attics like that spoiled fuck Kevin McCallister had in Home Alone. This place is big enough to be the main set of a sitcom, that's how big it is. He's got the stereo, he's got the widescreen television -- which for 1994 is really bleeding edge -- and it's all hooked up to his voice-activated computer with the Internet hooked in and everything. You don't see him ever going online to chat or face off against Zero Cool and Acid Burn, though. I think he just sticks to computer games.

The Internet was some slow dial-up shit back then, you couldn't download games the way we can now. Shit, back then it took me seven months to download Ini Kamoze's "Here Comes the Hotstepper" MP3, that shit was played out on the radio by the time I got the complete song, so who knows how long a fuckin' game would take. No, you needed a CD-ROM if you wanted in on some sweet computer game action -- which is what happens here when Furlong's buddy tips him off to a new game advertised on Fangoria. So he gets the CD-ROM and jacks in -- or whatever was the cool term back in '94 -- to this new experimental game called "Brainscan" which gets into the player's brain and scans it, I guess. Whatever the case, the player is sent on kill missions that require breaking into a house, finding a murder weapon, and taking out a chosen victim. So this movie kinda sorta predicted open-world assassination games like the "Hitman" and "Assassin's Creed" series.

Unlike those games, Brainscan does not result in shitty film adaptations but rather in the horrifying aftermath of the killings; after Michael takes out some dude in the game, he finds out that some dude in his neighborhood was killed in the exact same way. He immediately freaks out and tries to jack out, but that's when the mascot of the game enters the real world to fuck with Michael's shit big time. His name is Trickster and he's played by T. Ryder Smith, a stage actor who has a really good write-up about his Brainscan experience on his website.

As with most of John Flynn's filmography, this is a movie that is way better than it has any right to be. I liked the film when I first saw it back in '94 and I really liked it this second go-round; it's got a tiny little bit of a teeny-bopper Videodrome vibe going on with the main character's obsession to find the ultimate experience becoming way more than he bargained for. Or maybe I just got that vibe because it was filmed in Canada. Either way, it's a well-made film and it's early 90s as fuck -- which for me, is a big, big plus but for others could be a hindrance. But it's a hindrance that I feel the film manages to work with by telling an involving story and featuring good performances by everybody who isn't Edward Furlong, who is adequate at best. (Sorry, Edward.)



Unlike the previous six films which were all presented in 35mm, this seventh and final film of the Horrorthon was presented via DCP and I wouldn't be surprised if a 35mm print no longer exists, or ever existed, for the shot-in-16mm Death Bed: The Bed that Eats. Written and directed by George Barry, Death Bed began production in 1972 and was completed in 1977, just in time to show that Star Wars movie a thing or two about how to blow the minds of the audience.

The film mostly takes place in the basement of an old abandoned mansion where the titular bed resides, suffering from a chronic case of the munchies, with only the trapped spirit of an early 20th century artist chilling out behind a painting on the wall to keep it company. The artist narrates the film while occasionally making disdainful comments to the bed, which it deserves because the bed's an asshole.

The bed waits for any unfortunate schmucks who enter the basement for whatever reason -- in the case of the opening sequence, it's a couple looking for a place where they can fuck and eat fried chicken -- and once they get on the bed, yellow foamy liquid rises to the surface and suddenly the bed becomes a swimming pool of oblivion as they fall in and are eaten or digested or whatever it is the bed does to them because sometimes you hear chomping, sometimes you don't hear anything. I like that the bed is susceptible to indigestion and has to take Pepto Bismol, and at one point, the bed gets a bleeding ulcer. This helps to humanize the demonic man-eating bed.

The movie is broken up into several acts with cute title cards like "Breakfast", "Lunch", and "Dinner". We watch various people become food for the bed in between flashbacks to previous meals over the past few decades and it's all done in a goofy manner -- except for the parts where it's not being goofy and is being deadly serious instead. Because for every wacky scene of the dad from "Boy Meets World" sticking his hands in the bed and then pulling them out as skeleton hands, there's a sadistic moment of the bed using its powers to slowly saw into a sleeping woman's throat with her necklace. But the constant changing and blending of tones actually worked here and rather than being jarring, it created this unsettling sense of overwhelming creepiness with dashes of perversion -- like maybe the guy who made this is not all right psychologically and/or mentally.

I mean that as a compliment, by the way.

Based on what I heard about this film over the years, I went into Death Bed: The Bed that Eats assuming it was going to be a really shitty failure in the "so bad it's good" category, but I feel this is too strange and unique to be dismissed that way. It doesn't feel like weird for weird's sake, it feels like it comes from a sincere place and it's a genuine exhibition of George Barry's bonkers sensibility. It definitely suffers from the pitfalls of a first-time filmmaker working from a super low-budget; of its many flaws, I feel its biggest one is that even at 77 minutes the movie overstays its welcome. But that only left me wishing Barry was given a shot at making another movie with a bigger budget so we can really see him rock and roll.

Doesn't look like that'll happen, though. After completion, the film failed to secure distribution and languished in obscurity; Barry didn't even know there was a cult following until nearly 30 years later after finding out about his film making the bootleg circuit. I don't know how old Barry is but it looks like he gave the movie game a shot, it didn't work out for him and he's since moved on, which is too bad. Who knows what weirdo shit the guy could've been giving us for decades had Death Bed: The Bed that Eats been given a chance back in the 70s?



And so ended another Horrorthon at the Aero Theatre, sometime around 9 in the morning; of the remaining survivors, some got up and made their way out to the lobby, others walked towards the screen to plunder the leftover loot inside the cardboard boxes left on the stage, while my buddy and I surveyed the damage in the auditorium. So much trash was left between the rows of seats and throughout the aisles -- because apparently garbage cans don't exist -- plus the extra dirty business with the plumbing problems earlier that night, left me not envying the clean-up crew one bit.



We then left to have our traditional post-movie-marathon breakfast; this time we went to Milo & Olive on Wilshire and had their breakfast pizza which I highly recommend -- just ask them to add an extra egg to it, if you're like me and want more protein and calories. It's got some kick to it as well, so be sure to have something to drink to cool down. Then I went home and took a nap. When I got up later that day, I checked my Facebook and saw a post from the Aero Theatre. It said that the screening of The Haunting had been cancelled. So much for luck.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Another country heard from


Just an FYI for you all:

Beginning with my most recent ramblings (the Tales from the Crypt presents Demon Knight posting), for those who prefer to listen to my ramblings while you're in your car, working around the house, or out selling crack rock to feed your baby daughter, there will now be a podcast version as well.

You can stream or download here on the blog or you can go to the Exiled from Contentment page over at Podbean. The podcast is also available on iTunes.

This was an idea I had been playing with for a while now, and I actually went as far as recording the Crypt episode in mid-October. Then I listened to it, found it to be hot garbage, and changed my mind about this whole podcast deal.

Then a few days ago, I received an email informing me that my free month at Podbean was over and my credit card would be charged -- which probably had something to do with all the wine I drank that night giving me the courage to open an account with a podcast hosting service and going through with this stupid idea in the first place.

At that point, it's easier to just go through with this rather than try to fight that credit card charge.

Anyway, that's why my Demon Knight episode came out in November, and I'm talking about Halloween as if it hadn't already come and gone. Or how I mention something about how "I'm sure someone will ruin October 31st for the rest of us" as if I wasn't aware that one of God's creations decided to rent a Home Depot truck and take it for a hell ride through Manhattan that day.

So it looks like I'm in this game now, at least until next October, when my year is up and I either re-up with the fine folks at Podbean or I finally throw in the podcasting towel for good.

I figure to do at least two of these a month to justify the whole caper. I'll try to up my postings, but maybe I'll also take the opportunity to revisit some old postings and do podcast versions of those as well.

You want my opinion? Stick with the written version if you can. Better to hear it in the mind-voice of your choice rather than my lame-ass vocals. But I'd rather you get some of this EFC action one way or the other, rather than not at all. I mean, hell, this Crypt episode is about 20 minutes long and I'm sure there will be episodes shorter than that, and the longer ones, shit, I'm guessing 30-40 minutes tops. (I hope.) This ain't no three hour party, I'm all alone here. I'M IN THE DARK HERE!

You can listen to my bullshit while you download a better podcast, and that's a pretty good deal, if you ask me.

In conclusion, this was a terrible idea.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Everybody is a secret scumbag






Nearly every holiday has an element that fits awkwardly with my soul, causing my enjoyment level to drop down to the ninetieth, or god forbid, eightieth percentile.

For example, every Thanksgiving I'm hit at least once with what I can best describe as clouds of uninvited mantras blocking out the sunshine in my mind for minutes at a time. Mantras like: Somewhere There Are People Starving -- Somewhere There Is Someone Going To Work That Day For A Bullshit Pre-Black Friday Sale -- Somewhere There Are People Who Can't Spend Thanksgiving With Their Families.

Christmas? Forget about it; I think of all those people working their asses off to make enough money to get their kids some presents only to come up short. Or the poor fathers dressing up as Santa to surprise their children only to break their necks coming down the chimney. I think of them, and I think of Uncle Alfresco dead under the Christmas tree, shot through the back of the head. Plus, no bicycle.

But I don't get that way with Halloween. I'm not even sure Halloween is a holiday, but for the sake of my rant, let's say it is. I love Halloween and everything about it. On my way home tonight from work, I passed three houses that went All-In on the decorations: orange lights, black streamers, cobwebs, spiders, skulls, bats, rats, African-American cats, Jack-O-Lanterns, spooky ghosts, and that's the magic of the season right there.

There is no ninetieth or god forbid, eightieth percentile. I get to enjoy Halloween in its one-hundred percent pure uncut form. I'm sure if we give it time, someone will find a way to ruin October 31st for everybody, but until then, there is little to none to get bummed out about. For one thing, this holiday is friendly to all income levels, it can be as much fun for those with a lot as it is for those with very little. Let's say you can't afford to give out candy, then you can just turn off the lights and close your window blinds -- and if you're lucky, you'll have plenty of free toilet paper waiting for you in the morning to stock up on.

On the costume end, you can pull out all the stops and wear whatever you want or you can go trick-or-treating with no costume at all. Now if the reason you're not wearing a costume while standing on my front porch is because you can't afford one, I understand. But if poverty is not your reason and you're just some entitled pre-teen asshole in street clothes with nothing but a pillow case looking to score one of my fun-sized Snickers bars, bitch, you're getting a fun-sized stink-eye instead. You could've at least cut a couple eye-holes in that pillow case, put it on your head with the pointy-end up and go as a motherfucking Trump supporter, but no, you chose to put no effort into your lack of effort.

I'll say it again for the cheap seats: I love everything Halloween -- even the Rob Zombie remakes. Speaking of which, I also like to watch as many horror movies during October as my schedule will allow. One of which is a request from a reader by the name of Kris Wallace; he's requested my ramblings on the 1995 film Demon Knight aka Tales from the Crypt presents Demon Knight aka Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight aka The Cruelest Story About The Saddest Man.

You're asking me who the saddest man is and if you give me a couple seconds, I'll tell you: It's Wally the small town postal worker, played by Roger Rabbit himself, Charles Fleischer. Wally's recently been fired because of some bullshit about not being able to steal other people's mail, which I don't get. It's not like anybody is using the post office for anything but voter registration anyway and what little mail is going around is probably junk and ads and what not. If he wants to stock up on coupons to Pizza Hut and Subway, then it ain't nobody's business but his own -- and those whom he's stealing mail from. So Wally's fired and now he's at the local hotel doing the Feel Sorry For Me shuffle to local hooker Cordelia (played by Brenda Bakke) and she's listening to it all because it doesn't cost anything to listen. A sucker move on Cordelia's part, if you ask me.

I bet you Wally has been doing this shit to Cordelia night after night after night -- at the hotel or the local watering hole or wherever else she happens to be. Every night he's talking about the shitty day he's had while Cordelia sits there doing touch-ups on her make-up, brushing her hair, looking in her mirror. I'm pretty sure she knows Wally is sweet on her and if she wanted to she could probably charge him a few bucks for the privilege of flapping his lips at her. Not hooker prices, just a few dollars. Five bucks for every 20 minutes, something reasonable like that. And Wally -- sad fuck that he is -- would absolutely pony up the dough.

But no, Cordelia actually considers throwing him a fuck for free, never considering that beneath Wally's schmucky exterior is the demon of male entitlement. If Cordelia were to do the right thing and tell him "You know what, Wally? I'm fully booked tonight. I have a cocksucking coming up at eight o'clock and a pegging at eight-fifteen and I just don't have time right now to listen to how bad you're getting fucked in the ass. So how about I take a rain check on your bitching for later", if she were to say that, rather than let him hijack her time yet again, Wally's pent-up nerd rage would come bubbling up to the surface and he'd grab Cordelia's arms way too hard and respond: "You know what, Cordelia? I've always been nice to you. I don't know why you go out with asshole jerk types like post-"Wings"/pre-Sideways Thomas Haden Church who treat you like shit while I treat you like a queen!"

He'd never consider that maybe Cordelia goes out with post-"Wings"/pre-Sideways Thomas Haden Church because post-"Wings"/pre-Sideways Thomas Haden Church pays her for her time. Instead, Wally would force himself onto her and feel justified because of his self-perception as a wronged nice guy.

"I had so many other things I could've done with my life. I could've taken that job programming movies at the repertory theater, I could've been writing fuckin' movie reviews for a website, I could've been a movie producer and get all that actress snatch! But no, I zigged instead of zagged and now I'm a fuckin' postal worker, and all I have to get me by is the few minutes I get to be near you. I carried your guacamole-stained bedsheets up to your room with no complaint! I worshipped the ground your well-worn hooker shoes walked on! I carried an M-16 and you, YOU carry that -- that -- that -- purse! Who are you? Where do you come from? Are you listening to me? What do you wanna do with your life, you fucking cock-teasing bitch!"

Sorry about that. I couldn't help but sprinkle a little topicality on that rant back there, because the news this past month has really been ramping up with almost daily updates on yet another new member in the public chapter of the Sexual Offender Club - Entertainment Division.

Look, I'm no paragon of virtue. I know I'm a creep and yet I've never had the balls to even remotely entertain the iota of a germ of an idea of sending a woman a text about how she can "have my vienna sausage anytime" like that scumbag Harry Knowles did.

And what the fuck -- OK, look -- back in high school, I spent my Friday nights watching "Friday Night" on NBC. While my contemporaries were out on dates pouring Stacy Joslin and Laura Sandoval paper cups of Cisco wine, I was at home raising my glass of Dr. Pepper to my television date Rita Sever. From back then to right now, my confidence levels remain in the negatives. But I'm pretty sure I'm better looking than Harry Knowles. At least I smell better, I'm sure. And yet he's rubbing up against ladies and giggling with no sense of shame. Me, I accidentally brush up against a woman in a crowded room and I immediately drop to my knees and cover my face and go "OY LAY-DEE PLEEEASE DON'T HIT ME IN DA FAAAACE!"

I recently wrote a comment on a female friend's Instagram and about a minute later I thought "Fuck, I might have just sent a creepy comment" and suddenly I could hear the faint sounds of "U.N.I.T.Y." by Queen Latifah from a distance. I began to panic and I sent a personal message to my friend, apologizing for what I wrote, all the while the song was getting louder and louder, and I knew in a few seconds my front door would be kicked down and in would walk Lexi Alexander like some Chris Hansen of Internet movie feminism. I started to sweat and my fingers fumbled all over my phone until I finally, frantically, repeatedly hit Send -- and then the music stopped, and I exhaled in relief.

So I don't feel I'm some kind of saint, I have the asshole gene too. But is it really that fucking hard -- OK, wrong choice of word there -- is it really that fucking difficult to not unapologetically over and over again be a piece-of-shit to the ladies? Or does the difficulty level in being decent get higher and higher the more power one gets, and maybe it's my lowly position in life coupled with a fear of people that keeps me in check.

Maybe that's why I think Wally would lose his shit to Cordelia, because as nice as he is to her, he probably still thinks in the back of his mind that even an unemployed postal worker is higher on the food chain than Cordelia the prostitute, and therefore, she is in no position to be what he would perceive to be ungrateful.

Not that any of that matters. Because they don't even get close to any of the bullshit I've been spewing, because everybody in the hotel is dragged into some bullshit involving William Sadler and Billy Zane, because this movie is called Demon Knight and not The Cruelest Story About The Saddest Man, like I was bullshitting you guys earlier. OK, so Sadler's a mysterious leather jacket-wearing dude named Brayker and Zane is some good-looking motherfucker in a duster and a cowboy hat known as The Collector, and these two assholes are facing off at the hotel over a key-shaped relic that contains the blood of James Caviezel among others and this key the, uh, key to controlling all of eternity for either better or worse.

Yup, we're talking some Good versus Evil, Heaven and Hell shit, and you know it's serious business because their tale begins with that rockin' song by Robert Patrick's brother I used to hear on the radio all the time in the mid-90s and before you can say "Oh man, Billy Zane can totally rock the bald look", this chrome-domed motherfucker is outside the hotel pouring neon green blood from his hand all over the ground and out come these impressively nasty-looking demon creatures and they all want In.

In addition to our hero Sadler and our couple Wally and Cordelia, there's Irene the hotel owner (played by CCH Pounder), my man Mr. Dick Miller as the town drunk, Wings Sideways as an asshole named Roach, Philbert from Powwow Highway as the deputy, and last but not least, Jeryline, the ex-con on work release played by Jada Pinkett (before the Smith, before the Xenu, and before their goofy son who will probably end up becoming President of the United States, given the way things are going in this goddamned country).

Oh and there's a little boy with little girl hair.

Let's talk about hair. According to the audio commentary by director Ernest Dickerson, Ms. Pinkett showed up with short blonde hair much to the surprise of the producers, who had been expecting her in her usual medium-length brown hair. The filmmakers had another hair surprise when Billy Zane showed up to their offices completely bald and carrying a small case containing an assortment of wigs. Zane, it turned out, had been losing his hair for quite some time and was giving Dickerson and company the choice as to which hairpiece they wanted him to wear. In the end, Dickerson felt Pinkett's new blonde look and Zane's naturally hairless pate were the way to go for Demon Knight.

So what we have here is one of those "people trapped inside while outside hostile forces are trying to get in" movies, or a "siege" movie, if you want to be that way. (On the commentary, Dickerson brings up Night of the Living Dead, Prince of Darkness, and Assault on Precinct 13 as major influences on this film.) I'm a sucker for siege movies, maybe because as a shut-in, my life is a siege movie with all you motherfuckers on the outside trying to get at me with your fun activities like talking to people and having barbecues and checking out live music and going out on dates and all that bullshit.

Anyway, in between the sequences involving the skinny freaky demon crackheads getting inside the hotel to fuck everyone's shit up on a permanent level, you have scenes where Zane is going about it another way by trying to sweet talk these innocents into giving him that key (and their souls, I reckon) in exchange for a better life -- or in the case of that asshole Roach, just the mere opportunity to live his asshole existence because Roach is a fucking asshole.

I mean, shit, you have Brayker telling you that these things -- these creatures! -- that shoot green lightning out of their eye sockets after you shoot their eyes out are demons from Hell who want that key to bring Darkness back to all of Creation, and you're still going to be like "Nah, that's bullshit. I'm gonna go give that key to that evil Collector and I'm sure he'll let me move on while the whole universe turns to shit"?

Fuck, man. You tell me that the green lightning coming out of those slimy crackheads is their tortured souls and I'll believe you. I really will. I see that shit and I'm ready to believe ANYTHING. You can tell me the lightning is the evil engrams being purged from the now-clear thetans of these beings and I'll fuckin' believe it and I'll buy every fuckin' copy of "Dianetics" and give it to my relatives and all two of my friends while apologizing to Tom Cruise. I'll apologize to all of them. I'll be like "John Travolta, you and Kelly Preston are the gold standard of heterosexual marriages." I'll blow that creepy fuck David Miscavige, I'll do all that shit, if I see some shit like that, some fuckin' crackheads with green lightning.

They went old-school practical with the effects for this movie, but it's not like they had a choice. They shot this in 1994, after all, and they certainly didn't have the budget for CGI -- and thank the maker that they didn't, because I like the old-school shit. There's lots of old-fashioned prosthetics and real fake blood and latex and all of that shit for nice helpings of gore here and there. The opticals are just that -- opticals; we're talking matte paintings on glass, models being blown up, and footage being shot in reverse only to be played back forwards to complete the effect. There's another audio commentary on the Blu-ray by the special effects team and it's fun to listen to them talk about the nuts & bolts, pointing out the difficulties of setting up these old school effects and stunts on what was pretty much a 24/7 schedule. But judging by the satisfied tones these gentlemen have while watching it all over again, the end results were well worth the trouble. Also, they mention that William Sadler was the kind of good dude given to buying the whole crew pizza on occasion, just because. Fuckin' A, Mr. Sadler.

I felt the performances in this film made Demon Knight better than it really is. First, let me talk about our boy Billy Zane. The Phantom here is having himself a good time playing the villain; his Collector character is clearly from Hell but Zane mostly plays it goofball-style with lots of funny lines that I found out later were improvised, my favorite being:



While he's doing his "in on the joke" thing, everybody else is playing this on a more serious tone with only the occasional moment of levity when it's called for. Sadler does very well in the role of Brayker; he has this mix of uneasy & weary that he pulls off. The more you get to know his character, the more his performance makes sense; he has the weight of the world -- of all worlds, on his shoulders. He's running the mother of all relay races and knows it's a matter of time before he loses his step and has to hand the baton to someone else. If I have any complaints, it's that I feel his role was sorely lacking in doing some naked tai-chi like in Die Hard 2.

Pinkett slowly gets better and better throughout the film, which I feel says more about the way her character was written rather than her performance. You couldn't really do more with her character without ruining the "who is gonna survive?" feel to the movie, so for most of it she's mostly relegated to reacting to all the blood and slime being thrown about.

And then there's the great Dick Miller being awesome as always just by being Dick Miller -- which is not to say that he's not acting, it's just that by simply being Dick Miller he exudes enough awesomeness. His face tells a million stories and there's a moment late in the film where he has this look that tells you one more: a story about a man who can't overcome his weakness even if it means making the most terrible decision of his -- and everybody's else's -- life. So don't ever let anybody tell you Dick Miller isn't that good of an actor, not unless you're gonna give them a backhand to the face in response.

The film looks good, as I suppose is expected when you have a talented cinematographer like Dickerson behind the wheel. He had just finished his second film Surviving the Game, when he got the gig for Demon Knight, and I'm guessing he got this job because anybody who's worked with Gary Busey is clearly a master of horror.

Dickerson and director of photography Rick Bota manage to use colored lighting, canted angles, and stylish shafts of light to convey an elevated EC Comics look throughout the picture; Bota was a regular cinematographer on the "Tales from the Crypt" series, and he definitely succeeded in carrying that look over to the big screen.

And I guess this is where I mention the film's connection to the television series; I'll be honest, the Crypt Keeper sequences that bookend Demon Knight were my least favorite parts of the movie. There's nothing particularly wrong with them, I mean, you do get to see tits and John Larroquette in the opening -- and as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to John Larroquette, I'd throw myself on the mercy of his night court anytime -- am I right John Larroquette's wife?

The plan was to make three of these "Tales from the Crypt" movies; at the very end of the end credits, the Crypt Keeper pops up to do one of those "James Bond Will Return" deals to the audience by telling us the title of the next film, Dead Easy, which as we all know, never came out in this particular timeline. I've heard two stories about that film: the one that gets told the most is that after many rewrites to nobody's satisfaction, the film never went past pre-production.

The other, more interesting story I heard in a couple places is that they actually shot the film but it was never finished because producer Joel Silver freaked out over how racially insensitive it was coming off, so it got shelved. I highly doubt the second story to be true, but holy shit, how cool would it be to know that there's an unreleased "Tales from the Crypt" joint languishing in some secret vault.

Instead, they made Bordello of Blood starring Dennis Miller, babe, and after that bombed, a third film called Ritual starring Craig Sheffer went straight to video in the U.S ten years later -- and that's your "Tales from the Crypt" trilogy right there, what can I tell you, I'm not King Hollywood, I don't make the rules.

Demon Knight is at heart a low-budget drive-in programmer, but because drive-ins don't really exist anymore, this almost became a straight-to-video feature for Full Moon Pictures when Charles Band and company had their hands on the screenplay. If it had gone that way, I bet you the demons in the film would've been 12 inches tall and Tim Thomerson would've played Brayker. Instead it was given big studio attention and bright Hollywood sheen and the end result is not the most original movie, nor does it really feel or encapsulate the Crypt comics and television series. But for what it is, it does it well and it makes for a dependable viewing choice during Halloween season.

Well, I have nothing else to say about this movie, so I'll close it out with this: I read somewhere that you are never more than a few feet away from a spider.

Upon reading that, two thoughts came to mind, the first being:

AIIIIIEEEEE!!!!!

My second thought was, Wow, I guess that means every time I see someone in a movie brush away cobwebs, like they do in Demon Knight, there must be a spider watching this from a few feet away, and the spider's thinking "GODDAMMIT!"

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

25 Hour Fitness




As my friends and I sat down in our seats, Phil Blankenship came up to the front of the theater to tell the packed house the good news and bad news: "The good news is you're about to watch 12 hours of Arnold. The bad news is I picked all the movies."

We were at the New Beverly Cinema for the All Arnold Night in celebration of Arnold Schwarzenegger's 70th birthday. Those of us lucky enough to score tickets within a minute of their online availability before they sold out were going to watch a 35mm marathon of films featuring the former Mr. Olympia. The concession stand even had a special hot dog available for the adventurous called the Arnold Dog, which was bigger and meatier than your average dog. Plus, free sauerkraut.

The lights went down and the first trailer reel began; every trailer reel between the films were all for Arnold films. I'm too tired to remember them, but if it was a movie featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, they showed a trailer for it.

Following the grindhouse "Our Feature Presentation" bumper and a scratchy 20th Century Fox logo was a shot of a star field -- and that's all it took for some of us to began audibly geeking out in recognition of what was being projected onto the big screen: Predator, directed by John McTiernan. Once everybody else saw the title, the crowd went nuts because...why do I have to tell you what you should already know? If you don't know, get the video. Or DVD. Or Blu. Or digital download or whatever else you need to get with the goddamn knowledge of how great this movie was, is, and always will be.

This is where I would tell you things you already know about this film, about how it is more than one film; it's an 80s-tastic macho movie filled with macho men -- a team of Badass Muthafuckin Military who chew tobacco, tell pussy jokes, shave on dry skin, toss the word "faggots" around like so many hand grenades, and more importantly, kill the fuck out of all the brown people they are officially cleared to kill in the cine-jungles of Val Verde.

But it is also another film, a tense and horrific slasher body-counter featuring an outer space Jason who is here on Earth to practice his God-given right to hunt in this beautiful galaxy and ain't no libtard cuck gonna take away my rights as a Universal Citizen to hunt and use my here shoulder laser rig or my double-speared hands because if you take away our rights to kill lesser dangerous species and pull out their spinal cords and skulls out of their corpses and then polish off that there skull to mount on top of my space fireplace -- I mean, that ain't no universe I wanna live in, no sirree bob dobalina. #MakeMilkyWayGreatAgain.

One of my favorite sequences -- in this film consisting of nothing but favorite sequences -- is the raid on the evil people camp. That's where they terminate them with extreme prejudice (unless you're a girl, which in that case you just get a rifle butt to the face) and it's all slow-mo bullet hits and bodies falling from short heights and dudes on fire. On the audio commentary, McTiernan said he wasn't fond of this part of the film because it was all 2nd unit stuff and it was done in a typical "stuntman" style. Well, remind me not to invite McT to my next backyard screening of Stone Cold because the director of that film directed this action sequence, and sure there is a lack of stylistic finesse that McTiernan would've provided, but it still works as a straight-up shot of well-made Ownage.

The print was good; colors were perfect, it just had a little wear and tear with occasional scratches here and there (and for some reason, Elpidia Carrillo's credit in the end with her smiling at the camera was chopped off) but nothing to complain about whatsoever for this rare screening of Predator in 35mm. Phil told the audience after that Fox, for whatever reason, doesn't allow this print to go out for screenings, but it sounds like the New Bev people begged and pleaded to the point that Fox was like "OK fine".



Among the next batch of trailers were Twins and Junior; so when the 75th Anniversary logo for Universal Pictures came up, I bounced in my seat like some asshole kid who knows a secret he ain't telling, because I knew it meant we were watching Kindergarten Cop. For years, I associated this film with various quotes that would float about the middle school ether during lunch period and in between classes. Then in recent years, it seemed to be the main source for many an internet sound board.

Arnold is Detective John Kimble, a cop who Plays By His Own Rules with a hard-on for Richard Tyson -- which I can understand, I mean, have you seen Two Moon Junction? Rawr. But anyway, Kimble has been after Tyson's sweet ass for years and it looks like he's finally got his hands on both cheeks but it's gonna mean going to Astoria, Oregon and getting ex-Mrs. Tyson to testify against him. Comedic circumstances dictate that he will be going undercover as a substitute teacher for the K-grade children -- a Kindergarten Cop, if you will -- and then the laughs are scripted to ensue.

It's weird, man, how I thought this movie was OK back in 1991 when I saw it on video and was young enough to be all HWAH HWAH HWAH with the Arnold vs. Kids goofball-isms, and yet I remember being underwhelmed. My problem with it, I recall, was that the kid stuff was few and far between compared to the cop stuff between Arnold, his hypoglycemic partner, Richard Tyson in an ill-fitting suit and fake-looking real hair, and Carroll Baker as a mom who should just go out and live the single senior life while letting her murderous asshole son deal with his own goddamn problems.

This time I liked the film more because I found most of the non-kindergarten stuff interesting and/or funny. I really enjoyed Pamela Reed's performance as Arnold's partner this time, while the stuff involving pretty Penelope Ann Miller is where I started to feel the late night whisper into my ear things like "rest your eyes and save up your energy for the other movies". There's a part, the "who is your daddy and what does he do" scene that might be my favorite because there's a few nuggets in there where the kids sound like they're just being themselves, like the one who says that his father is a psychiatrist. It felt real and I was getting into that until they went to the next kid, a girl who is speaking Spanish which of course means Komedy! because it's so funny that this alien is speaking some weird language from some weirdo country, isn't it funny Ivan Reitman, you Czechoslovakian fuck?

Arnold does a really good job here; he's very funny with the kids, but I also liked the way he played those scenes where he mentions that he has a 13-year-old son somewhere out there, and it's interesting to see him do that middle-distance staring thing whenever he talks about him. I have to give the movie points for never giving us an ending to that little ditty; I'd like to think it was a choice to do it that way but it's probably more likely one of those "oh my god, our first cut is six hours long and we need to chop stuff out of this movie" decisions. They probably cast some kid as his son for a heart-to-heart scene and then they cut it out and sorry kid, there goes your big break, enjoy your drug abuse.

Anyway, the whole divorced dad detail made me look at that scene where he beats up some kid's dad for being a kid-beater differently, because maybe Kimble is also working out some I've Abandoned My Boy! issues on the dad, like "you son-of-a-bitch, I don't even get to see my kid and here you are beating on your kid?!"

The kid's mom, by the way, took this opportunity to change her life. She left her husband and dumped the kid at her mom's and drove south to Los Angeles. She crashed at her little brother's place and hit the ground running, eventually finding work as a receptionist at General Apparel West. Soon, things were going very well for our Carolyn, surpassing her brother who was still working at some hot dog joint as she went from pushover to go-getter; she was making money, living the trendy L.A. lifestyle, moving from her brother's couch to a new apartment off Crescent Heights, banging Bruce the head inventory clerk, and leasing a BMW with a CD player installed. Life was good and she was on the fast track to a promotion as the administrative assistant for GAW's head honcho, Rose -- until that bitch Sue Ellen came on the scene.

Carolyn hated this blonde bimbo with a passion, this strumpet who came in to apply for a job at GAW at her desk because she was too stupid to read the big "Personnel" sign on the first floor -- yet SHE got the administrative assistant job! Carolyn knew something was up and she would begin doing some detective work to find out what was really going on with Sue Ellen. But deep down she also knew that this change of luck was probably some kind of karmic retribution for the sin of leaving her son back in Astoria. She managed to keep it to herself, though, even when Bruce noticed the tears rolling down her face after a particularly passionate night of lovemaking. He knew he wasn't that good, so he would ask her what was wrong and every fiber of her being wanted to scream "I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD" but instead she would take a deep breath and say nothing.

I remember a few years back when the Criterion Collection website announced this film as their latest release as an April Fool's Day prank. First off, fuck pranks and fuck pranksters even harder. Second, I wonder if that stung for director Ivan Reitman upon hearing that, because it's basically being laughed at like "As if we would ever consider making a special edition of that film and adding it to our illustrious lineup of excellence plus a couple of Michael Bay movies."

What would sting more, and for who: Ivan Reitman hearing about this prank, or the day Wes Anderson finds out his latest film will not end up on the Criterion Collection?

I would wager on Anderson. Reitman probably has a good sense of humor and realistic attitude about his films (plus he already has a Criterion laserdisc edition of Ghostbusters out there), while I can see Anderson -- standing dead center in the frame -- dropping his monocle, followed by him walking out of his Parisian apartment in ultra-wide-anamorphic-lensed side-profile slow-motion while The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" plays in the background, his mind reeling and memories flashing of the good times in New York, Rome, France, but never will he remember that he grew up in Houston -- no ma'am, he made sure that the visit to Lacuna Inc. would take care of that.



By this time it was around midnight and so it was July 30th and officially Mr. Schwarzenegger's 70th year on this planet. The New Bev crew came out with a birthday cake and we all sang "Happy Birthday" to the here-with-us-in-spirit Arnold, who according to Phil, was told about this event and responded with something to effect of "That's nice, have fun." I overheard some people say that they wished he would've stopped by.

First of all, it's his 70th birthday, I'm sure he has other places to be with friends and family to celebrate that landmark. And remember, Arnold told Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to "have fun" at the beginning of The Rundown and where is Mr. Johnson now? Sitting on top of the fucking world. He just finished a movie with a short-shorts-clad Karen Gillan, and I bet you he hugged her every chance he had in a friendly type-of-way while thinking to himself "I would snap this girl in half, I'd bang her so good". So I'm not complaining. "Have fun" is being anointed king of your personal universe, as far as I'm concerned.

We then went outside to help ourselves to birthday cake; the flavors were Vanilla and Chocolate but let's be real, with birthday cake it might as well be the choice between White Diabetes or Dark Diabetes.

As we ate our sugar bombs and slowly became Wilford Brimley, my friends and I discussed the possible films that would be shown later. One mentioned the trailer for Raw Deal we saw earlier, wondering if that would be on the schedule. I responded that in my experience at these marathons, if you see a trailer for the film, you won't see that film in the marathon.

Which is why as soon as I saw the DEG logo come up, I knew I was about to look like a bigger asshole than usual, because that meant the third film of the night was Raw Deal.

Arnie plays Sheriff Raw Deal, an ex-FBI agent who now upholds the law at the kind of small town that probably has a roadhouse in need of a cooler. This is his reward for beating the daylights out of some evil man who pulled off the triple M: Molest, Murder, Mutilation. Poor Arnold has to recite the triple M in this movie and I bet you director John Irvin and the crew were laughing their asses off watching the dailies of this scene while producer Dino De Laurentiis was sitting in the back with his broken English wondering "why-a do they-a laugh-a heem?"

Thankfully, his old FBI boss's son just got whacked during a pretty awesome opening sequence that ends in an awesomely cold-blooded moment of Victor Argo forcing his mark at gunpoint to look at a mirror so the mark can see his own head get blown off. A dead FBI son means an opportunity for Deal to get back into the FBI by going undercover among the Chicago crime families as Joseph Pussy Brenner. It's also an opportunity for Deal to take a break from his wife, who has taken to getting sloppy drunk while making sloppy chocolate cakes because the small town life is killing the big city girl. If he comes out of this job alive, it'll be a win-win for the both of them.

A destroyed mob gambling den later, Deal is in with one of the families, run by Private Benjamin's Dad and Sosa from Scarface, with Robert Davi to do the dirty work. Most of the film is Arnold playing fast and loose with his new bosses, the Chicago authorities, and a lady (played by Kathryn Harrold from Modern Romance) who is just trying to pay off some kind of debt. This must've been an odd one for general audiences at the time, an Arnold movie where he isn't doing much compared to his previous roles. Up until this film, Schwarzenegger was making his name playing larger-than-life characters that pretty much only Arnold could've played; a Cimmerian warrior or a cyborg from the future, among others -- roles that one would've had to invent Arnold Schwarzenegger to play had he not already existed.

Here he's playing a role that doesn't feel like it was written with him in mind; the story is credited to Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati, who had written for Dino De Laurentiis and Sergio Leone in the past. I wouldn't be surprised if the original script was kicking around as far back as the 70s for someone like Charles Bronson to star in the Arnold role and his wife Jill Ireland in the Kathryn Harrold role (Maybe Riz Ortolani would compose the score. Michael Winner or Terence Young to direct.)

But they didn't go that way. They got Arnold to play this role (shit, even Stallone would've been more appropriate) and it's like giving the poor guy a suit three sizes too small for him to wear but with big-ass pockets, if that even makes sense. I mean, shit, you know something's amiss when Kathryn Harrold's character has more one-liners than Arnold's character. The one-liners, by the way, were written by the credited screenwriters, Gary DeVore and Norman Wexler. The former died under mysterious circumstances in the 90s, and the latter turned out to be the infamous "Mr. X" that Bob Zmuda told stories about to his buddy Andy Kaufman, who used some of Mr. X as an inspiration for his Tony Clifton character.

Anyway, they try to make up for Arnold's lack of action in the last twenty minutes by having him do a pre-Commando arming up routine where he puts on his best leather jacket and packs up his favorite shotguns and automatic rifles before he goes off to massacre -- holy shit, I mean it, it really is a massacre and it involves him going to two separate locations to murder everybody there. He's cleaning house and it doesn't matter if you're armed with a gun or a phone (which you were going to use to call the police) -- he's going to spray you with bullets. Even being an elderly man running away won't help -- Arnold will just pump shotgun shells into your old man back while generic badass music from the DeLaurentiis library plays in the background.

I can see Charles Bronson shooting an old man in the back and having it look awesome, I mean, hell, Bronson blew up an old man with a grenade launcher in Death Wish 4: The Crackdown. But when Arnold does it here, it just looks so fucking wrong that all you can do is laugh.

(On the other end of the spectrum, you have peak physical condition Jean Claude Van Damme beating up a dying Raul Julia in Street Fighter, which is just sad.)

The audience definitely did laugh (and cheer) at that old man death, as well as the touching ending that involves a teary-eyed nurse that had everybody in stitches while I laughed along because I wasn't ready to admit to anybody that the first time I had seen this film, I actually got legit teary-eyed at that ending because I'm a mess of a human being who in reality sees most of everything in the most overly sincere manner possible. But I'm not ready to admit it now.

Overall, this is not a must-see Arnold movie, but the last twenty minutes should definitely be watched on YouTube or wherever you can find it. It's not a bad film; it's well paced, the dialogue is pretty snappy, and I really liked the way it was shot (lots of nicely composed widescreen location-flaunting cinematography by Alex Thomson). I just think Arnold was kinda miscast here.

By the way, the print for this film was gorgeous. I recall the print for another DEG production that was shown at the New Bev years ago, Trick or Treat, looked just as good. What I'm getting at is this: If there are pristine prints of DEG flicks around, there has to be a good-looking print of Traxx somewhere out there, right?



Phil told us that we were now going to get into the weirder stuff, leaving me to rack my brain for "weird" movies that Arnold starred in. I couldn't come up with any, because I had never seen the sword & sorcery joint Red Sonja, the fourth film of the night. Mr. Schwarzenegger does not star in this even though his name comes up first and is printed in bigger font than star Brigitte Nielsen's name, so the powers that be must've literally wanted him to be the biggest name in the film.

Ms. Nielsen plays the title role, a gal living life in the Hyborean Age until Sandahl Bergman and her minions come in for some rape and murder. She's left lost and family-less until some special Girl Power specter tells her to get her shit together and so she does, learning how to slice and dice others via swordplay by some Mako-esque peacock of a master. She and him have a funny conversation that I interpreted as being about how she should give dudes a chance and boy, Red Sonja, if I were 30 years younger I'd give you such a bangin', you wouldn't believe it.

It all comes down to Sonja and company in search of a stolen ball filled with Predator blood that has the power to destroy shit -- a ball only women can touch, by the way. If a dude touches it, he's vaporized because fuck that shit, bro, why would you wanna touch a ball, that's fuckin' gay, bro. This ball's for chicks only.

I don't even think vengeance is on the menu until Arnold shows up as Not Conan to tell her something like "Red Sonja? I'm looking for Red Sonja. You're Red Sonja? Yeah, your sister? The one who's played by the chick from City of the Living Dead? You know, the one who does paintings of rhinos and ends up getting her brains squished out of her head? Yeah, her. Well, she's dying, I guess, whatever."

I'm guessing this was a contractual obligation for the Oak; his line readings are hilariously stiff and, well, "I guess, man" in their deliveries. The only time he seems to come to something resembling Life is when he's talking about getting with Sonja in the biblical sense; it turns out she will only give herself to the man who can defeat her, which I guess gets him hard because it's like "Oh wow, so I get to beat you and THEN bang you? Two for one, baby!"

Ernie Reyes Jr. shows up as a real brat of a prince, and it's to the movie's credit that as rude and punkass as he is, he never quite crossed the line into PLEASE DIE ALREADY, at least for me he didn't. Maybe it's because Red Sonja straight up tells Reyes' servant that he should give him a spanking, followed by her telling Reyes that his servant is a real man compared to the petulant fuck that he is. I'll take that as a reasonable compromise for justice, her making him feel like shit with words.

What a goofy movie. It's the kind of movie where they'll spend big money early on with impressive sets and costume design but then they'll start running out of money along the way and cheapen out on special effects sequences like, say, the destruction of a city, where they'll just have characters talk about it instead of showing you, or when the heroes fight this giant water serpent and you're left wondering why it looks all robotic and maybe it's a robot and then the characters say out loud "it's a machine" and you're now wondering if it was because the filmmakers couldn't afford to make a realistic looking serpent, so the filmmakers just said "Screw it, it's a robot serpent, then. Make sure to have the characters say out loud that it's a robot serpent".

It's the kind of movie where the villainess will stride into her evil lair and casually pets her Golden Retriever-sized pet spider -- a spider that looks so fake just standing there and kinda bouncing like it drank too much Red Bull. Silly spider, I know Red Bull gives you wings but you're a spider, you can just web your way around, you don't need wings. You never see that spider again, by the way. I guess it just walked away during the climax of the film, the same way one of Sandahl's ladies does rather hilariously while she and Sonja face off. This chick does that whole "Don't mind me, just passing through" in the background and goes off to who knows where.

It's the kind of movie Richard Fleischer would direct at the end of his career.

Nielsen does what is required of her in the role; she looks good and wields her sword well, and that's about it. If I had any real problems with this movie its that Red Sonja doesn't really get to do her own thing. She says she doesn't need a man, but there sure is a lot of Arnold coming in to save the day. Is the movie saying she (and all women) are wrong? It's like the movie doesn't have faith in her carrying it, because after all, she's just the titular character. Maybe I'm just spoiled by current movies like Wonder Woman, and this was as good as it would get for lady heroes in the 80s, at least in American cinema (produced by Italians).

But hey, it moves fast, Giuseppe Rotunno's photography looked nice and Ennio Morricone's music sounded nice. Morricone got a nice round of applause from the audience when his credit came up. Would I watch it again? No. But at least I can say I watched it once.

My friend had said earlier that night that she was hoping Red Sonja would be one of the films shown at the marathon because as bad and cheesy as it was, she had fond memories of it as a kid. When it turned out to be one of the films being shown that night, I believe I saw her raise the roof in my peripheral vision. After the movie, she told me that she didn't remember it being this bad and cheesy.



Phil told us the last two films would be shown back-to-back with no intermission, so I made sure to get a hot dog and settled in for the last leg of this Arnold cine-tour. The fifth film was The Terminator, a movie that is similar to Predator in that I'm going to have a difficult time writing about it because what can I add that hasn't already been said much better by so many? Then again, that's pretty much the same deal with all the other movies I've talked about here, so why am I worrying now?

Watching this film today, with the opening text telling us about the "ashes of the nuclear fire" brought back a Cold War chill in my system that I'm sure was gone for a couple decades. I mean, back in '84 people lived with a low-grade anxiety that Nuclear War could break out at any time, so it must've been interesting to watch movies like this and the countless other post-apocalyptic joints that were made back then. There was always that thought in the back of your mind that, shit, there's always that possibility, right?

Then the Cold War ended and people kinda forgot about dem nukes, didn't they? Even me, Debbie Downer that I am with my belief that nukes are the ultimate Chekhov's Gun and that it's not so much a question of If as much as When, even I forgot about them. Those were beautiful days, man. And now they're back, baby! Thanks to that scary motherfucker Putin and that fat motherfucker Kim Jong Un and that bloated walking shit stain some call President, it's all about clocking those N-Bombs -- and I ain't talking about the N-Bomb that supporters of POTUS probably throw around when they know there are no Black people in the room.

I wonder how James Cameron feels about the New Cold War (from the makers of "The New Odd Couple")? Between this film and the nuclear holocaust scene in the sequel, I'm sure it's something he's thought about more than once. I remember hearing a rumor long ago about how supposedly Cameron spent New Year's Eve '99 holed up in his private bunker with booze and an AK-47 in case the Y2K bug was legit and the world fell apart come midnight. Then nothing happened and he was probably like, shit, I guess I better get working on another movie now. Maybe that's why he's now dragging his heels on another Avatar movie. He's probably freaking out like Sarah Connor in T2 ranting about how people not wearing 2-million sunblock are going to have a really bad day.

So it's 1984 and thanks to time travel technology, Kyle Reese arrives naked as the day he was born and so he needs some clothes, right? He ends up jacking a pair of pants from a homeless dude and for years I was like Ewww because let's be real, man, those homeless pants haven't been washed in who knows how long. So many scents and textures and stains -- boy oh boy, the stories those pants could tell. Any port in a storm, though -- right Reese?

But it wasn't until this recent viewing, slow fuck that I am, that I thought it really doesn't matter to Reese because he just came from a post-apocalyptic world where the word "bath" probably doesn't even exist. OK, maybe they have do take baths between Hunter Killer attacks and eating slop in dark rubble-strewn hallways and just generally being miserable, but you just know those baths are few and far between. At most, maybe every other week. And it's probably by lottery. And the survivors live with dogs because dogs can tell who's human and who's a Terminator, so you know they got unwashed dog stink on top of human stink. Christ, the lucky ones did die in the blast.

And Sarah Connor -- freak that she is -- falls in love with this sweaty fuck! Me, I'm back to two showers a day now that we're not in a drought anymore, but I ask a lady for the time and she looks at me like I'm Willem Dafoe in Auto Focus asking her for the time. Me, I'm sitting here at the New Bev looking over at the male & female smoocher couple in the row in front of me and the dude's hair clearly hasn't been washed or combed in god knows how long WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING WRONG?

Lady and gentleman, allow me to talk about the smoochers. I always get these people sitting in front of me, and if it's not them, it's the sasquatch-sized motherfuckers wearing a hat. But for now, let me talk about these here smoochers at the New Bev that night. So earlier that night, a couple sat in the row in front of me and it's all good. Then the dude puts his arm around his lady and keeps it there. All night. And every five minutes or so, he would lean in and whisper or smooch or whisper then smooch. And I was able to see and hear every last one of them. Smooch. Smooch. Smoochity smooch smooch smooch.

I began a tally. Predator: 16 smooches. Kindergarten Cop: 8 smooches. Thankfully an opening a few seats down was available by the third film and so I moved over there. But every once in a while, I'd glance over to see if this dude still had his arm around her, giving her the smoochy smooch smooch smoocharoo, and sure enough he was.

I get it. As a perma-single, I'm probably jealous and a hater, right? Except I'm really not. I'm just not a fan of PDAs and I get it if that makes me an asshole, I'll accept that. But allow me to let you glimpse my diseased soul by telling you that I always found something of the "Hey everybody, you worthless sad fucks, look at how much in LUUUUUUV we are with each other, don't you wish you could be us" with the public smooching. And I'm a pretty lenient guy about this shit. It's one thing if they're smooching in a park or some nice area with a nice view or somewhere with the hint of romance or something like that. But right in fuckin' front of me at a movie theater or at a fuckin' restaurant or the fucking bank! The bank! THE FUCKING BANK, PEOPLE. WHILE WAITING IN LINE! AT THE BANK! SMOOCHERS!

But I'm the asshole here. That's cool. It's me, that's what it is. Maybe the sounds of kissing are like the smell of food: Wonderful if I'm partaking, disgusting if I'm not.

Speaking of food, back to Sarah Connor. Before all the shit goes down, she was planning to go out on a date but then her date cancels on her with some lame bullshit, so off she goes to see a movie by herself followed by dinner alone. Sounds like my kind of girl, right there. Anyway, she's at this pizza place, about to tuck into a whole pizza (again, my kind of girl) and she's about to bite into a slice but then she overhears the latest report of another Sarah Connor being murdered. She freaks out and never gets around to eating that pizza, which is a bummer.

I don't think she gets to eat anything for the rest of the film -- not even a bullet, much to the T-800's dismay, I'm sure. Later in the motel with Reese, I didn't see any food come out of that grocery bag of supplies he brings over, just ammonia and moth balls. The closest thing to food in that bag is corn syrup, but good luck with getting sustenance from that, chief. I hope she was able to at least scarf down a couple doughnuts at the police station.

Anyway, when the panic-stricken Sarah finally gets in touch with Lt. Traxler, she tells him she's at the Tech-Noir club and he tells her he knows where it is, which got laughs from the audience. See, that's what happens between watching a movie at home by yourself and in a movie theater with a sleep-deprived crowd: what I once interpreted as Traxler basically saying "yes, I know where that club is because I've had to go down there or near there before for law enforcement purposes" was now being taken as "Oh yeah, I know that place, honey. Ol' Traxler here likes to go down there on Saturday nights and teach those lame White kids a thang or two about real dancing."

"Hey man, you got a serious attitude problem" says the bearded dude in overalls, right after Arnold quite rudely pulls him away from the pay phone he was using. That's all he can say, and he knows it, and it amuses me to no end, as does the Bad Outfit moment late in the film when the Terminator walks down a motel hallway with his rifle in full view, passing by a guy who observes this with a "God damn!"

So, there you go. The Terminator. Lean, mean, and relentless action filmmaking from a hungry motherfucker with something to prove. Some of the effects are dated in a bad way, while others are dated in a charming pre-CGI way, but it's still all very impressive for the budget they were working with. It was awesome in '84 and it holds up now. Most of all, I was very happy to get to see this movie on the big screen in a spiffy 35mm print.



Before the trailer, there was an anti-crack ad featuring Rae Dawn Chong and a final reel of Arnold trailers. Then, the Fox logo followed by a shot of a garbage truck driving up a suburban hill and we all knew what that meant: Commando, the sixth and final film of the night. This is the one where ex-military badass Arnold is out to save his kidnapped daughter while killing lots of motherfuckers in the process. Also, there's a bad guy named Bennett who has a hard-on both literal and figurative for Arnold.

I already did a full way-too-long rambling on it years ago, and I'll post an excerpt from it below. But if you'd like to check out the whole deal, you can click here if you want to destroy the rest of your free time:

People go on about Why Do People Love Commando When It's Just A Shit Movie and to that I respond with Silence You Commie Motherfucker. The movie is 92 fast-paced minutes of ownage, and if you didn't feel that way for the first two acts, you'll sure as shit feel that way about the last act, because that's all it is, ownage. Supposedly the original script for this had a more serious tone and I think it took place in Israel, which to me sounds like it would've played like The Delta Force -- not nearly as fun as you'd think it would be. Thankfully, Joel Silver stepped in and had Steven E. De Souza do his thing, which is take everything out but the bare bones, and put in a bunch of one-liners. Works for me.

This movie should please anybody who isn't an asshole who likes watching waves of bad guys getting killed. It becomes a video game in the way Matrix goes through each of his weapons -- assault rifle, grenades, machine gun, that bullshit Desert Eagle, shotgun -- firing bullets that cause the receiver(s) to perform acrobatics upon being struck. At this point Matrix is an invincible Angel of Death, nothing can touch him as he places periods at the end of the sentences that represent the soldiers' lives. I swear, at one point Matrix turns around, sees a bad guy coming toward him, ALLOWS the bad guy to get off a few shots, and THEN he fires back. He knows he's that fucking good. He knows how this movie will end, he's read the script.


I'll add this, though. Before, I thought Bennett wanted to bang Matrix and that's why he was so hard up for him. Now I'm of the belief that he and Matrix actually did have one sweaty night together long ago. I can see it now: They had already spent weeks doing recon, just the two of them, and here they were, the night before the Big Day, sharing a couple flasks of whiskey for warmth and preparing themselves mentally for a suicide mission. Next thing you know, they lock eyes, one hand ends up on another's thigh, another hand ends up on the other's shoulder, and soon it's Brokeback time.

Now, the mission goes through and it's a complete success and they survive. Everything's great, except Bennett caught feelings for Matrix and doesn't understand -- despite Matrix constantly telling him -- that what happened that night was just a one night stand and nothing more. And that was pretty much the beginning of the end for Bennett's time on Arnold's team.

Anyway, it was a great way to end the marathon, with a full-on display of Arnold being Arnold in the purest way possible: muscles, one-liners, and lots of killing. The movie ended and those of us left in the audience were given special Arnold pins as a gift on our way out.




My friends and I went to eat next door at Lulu's next door (I recommend the smoked salmon benedict); we talked about the movies and I brought up something my friend said earlier about how she associated Arnold Schwarzenegger films with her father, who was a big fan. They watched a lot of those films together. I brought up how they reminded me of my cousin and my father, who were the ones I'd watch those movies with back in the good ol' days: a simpler time of eating pizza and watching movies starring an awesome motherfucker named Arnold Schwarzenegger on a square tube standard definition television.

So I can't speak for everybody else but it seems like maybe that's what some of us -- if not most, if not all -- got out of the Arnold All-Night movie marathon. Not just 12 hours of entertainment Governator style, but a trip down childhood memory lane when we'd watch our movie heroes on-screen and we didn't have goddamn smoochers sitting in front of me with their goddamn smooching NO I STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN OVER IT LEAVE ME ALONE