Death rides an Econoline van

I don't know how, but an old friend I haven't seen for years got my contact info and now I'm getting calls and letters from him in prison. He's excitingly going on about how he's getting out in December and how he's going to change his life around (attempt number 6, I believe) and how he can't wait to kick it with me like old times. This is a man who supposedly shot a rival gang member in the belly at his doorstep, by the way.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that if you don't see any more ramblings on this site about a month after December, that's probably because I'll be fuckin' dead, most likely having caught a volley of 9mm and .22's that were meant for him, courtesy of one of the many malcontents he's probably wronged. Merry Christmas. To be honest, the state of my depression kinda has me wishing for death anyway, but I want to be the one who calls it, not some shaven-headed asshole who thinks the two greatest movies ever made are American Me and Blood In, Blood Out: Bound by Honor.

Mimi, the main character from Massacre Mafia Style (aka The Executioner) would probably hate those movies, since he doesn't seem to be a fan of the gangs anyway. (How's that for a segue?) Not that he's any better; the guy is a gangster who will give long monologues on how the Mafia ruins the image of the Italian (Sicilians, in particular) but then has no problems putting a motherfucker on a meathook in such a way that the poor schmuck's eyeball is poked out -- and that's after strangling him to death.

Yeah, this Mimi is something else and so is his story, for which I will be giving a rundown to ya'll. At the age of 15, his "Lord of Organized Crime" father was deported back to Sicily, so Mimi had to leave as well. For the next 16 years, Mimi lives life, gets married, has a son, and becomes a widow (cancer, not gunfire). He decides to go back to the good ol' U.S.A. and get a piece of that American Dream (Mafia Style) that was so rudely taken away from his father -- so what if the old man was acquiring said dream illegally?

Mimi arrives in Los Angeles, hooks up with an old fat friend of his named Jolly, and off they go. Now, I was completely fucking hammered on Sobieski when I watched this, so mine is not the most clearest of memories when it comes to what exactly happened, but here I go. Mimi and Jolly kidnap a mob boss named Chucky from church, cut one of his fingers off and send it over to Chucky's underlings along with a ransom demand. They go ahead and pay it, so Chucky is let go. Then Mimi and Jolly go to Chucky's son's wedding to talk to him about going into business! What balls! Because Chucky used to work for Mimi's old man, he lets bygones be bygones and allows Mimi and Jolly to do their thing. I don't know, man, that's something I'd always be a little sore about. I don't think they reattached that shit, so it's gone for good. I would at least have to take off a thumb or two before forgiving a motherfucker, that's for sure.

Having forced Chucky's hand (by way of finger), Mimi and Jolly decide to hit the streets and take down the bookmakers and pimps who are cutting in on the action. This is done by apparently going to the same bar over and over again (this is a very low budget movie) and shotgunning them point blank. Again, maybe I was too drunk, but I swear Mimi was killing a lot more women than men. They also try to scare a huge black pimp named Super Spook into giving them his girls (to use in porno flicks, but more on that later) but he's not having it, so instead, our boys figure they could sweet talk him by calling him nigger. For some odd reason, this does not sit well with Mr. Spook. So they crucify him (for real) and make some kind of joke involving Jesus Christ being black.

Oh yeah, there's a lot of matter-of-fact racism in this flick, and as off-putting as that might be, I guess you can say that the filmmakers were just keeping it real. I mean, you're gonna make a film about hardcore criminals who are just as hardcore about their heritage and then you're going to have them regard people of other races and ethnicities as equals? Nah. Having said that, some of it does feel a little like wish-fulfillment from the writer/director; you have a skinny short dude and a fat out-of-shape dude, both of Italian heritage, giving a tall strong black man the business to his face. They're acting like that bit Eddie Murphy did about Italian guys coming out of a Rocky movie, only without the Jujyfruits up the ass.

When people aren't getting Massacred Mafia Style or being called "moulinyan", they're given heartfelt soliloquies by Mimi. These monologues are things of beauty; they start off slowly, and then when you think paisan's gonna wrap it up, he goes into overdrive. It is then that you realize that you are no longer hearing dialogue, but in fact getting a lengthy discourse on What's Wrong In Society from the writer/director, Duke Mitchell, who also happens to be the same guy who plays Mimi. It's like somewhere along the way he got off the script and started to speechify his real thoughts. Something tells me that many a friend of Mr. Mitchell have been addressed similarly after a few drinks or so with the dude, or maybe that wasn't the case at all and this was paisan's chance to let it all out.

Among the things that bother Mimi (and perhaps the filmmaker as well) are the loss of the good ol' days, when there was a code to being a scumbag piece-of-shit criminal; and the destruction of the Italian image by scumbag piece-of-shit criminals like himself (at least he's self-aware). Mimi gives one of these diatribes to Chucky, and rather than telling him "Motherfucker, aren't you the same guy who chopped off my fucking finger one reel ago?!" he just nods solemnly, like he just got dropped some major fuckin' science.

With each following scene, Mimi's hair turns from dark to gray, which I means that years are going by. Either that, or being a Mafia Style Massacrer ages you as fast as being President of the United States (have you seen how Obama looks now?).

So the film follows Mimi and Jolly living life, while ending everyone else's; at one point they even go as far as shooting a motherfucker in the eyeball on live television. In between whackings, Mimi hooks up with this chick and Jolly has a little gay dog that he's real fond of, so you probably know how THAT'S gonna end up.

Meanwhile, back is Sicily, Pops is getting news of Mimi's exploits and is none too happy about it because it doesn't look good or some shit like that, I don't know. He has his guy go to L.A. to beat some sense into Mimi, which he does: SMACK "This is from your father!" SMACK "This is from your son!" SMACK "And this is from the Holy Ghost!". He then gives him fifty-grand and an ultimatum -- stop the killing and start a legitimate business or suffer the consequences. Some more gray hair and a mustache later, Mimi and Jolly are now dipping their toes into the water that is the porno movie biz. They decide to make their own porn flicks by using Super Spook's stable as talent, and well, you already know how that ends a few paragraphs ago.

Killing a pimp so you can steal his women and use them in your porno movies does not qualify as standard legitimate business practice, in fact, it draws a hell of a lot of heat on you. Mimi's girl Liz understands this all too well, since she overheard one of Chucky's guys drunkenly blab about how they're going to set Mimi up and do a little Mafia Style Massacring of their own. Liz tells Mimi all of this during a post-coital chat, doing the audience a favor by having her breasts hang out during the whole scene.

They don't know who exactly in Chucky's crew is going to do the dirty work, so Mimi and Jolly decide to go out and start shooting, strangling, stabbing & eyeball-impaling the fuck out of anyone remotely connected. They shoot up an office building consisting of mostly black employees, and once again it makes a drunk motherfucker like me wonder if this was just a coincidence or if shooting holes into many an African-American did for Mr. Mitchell what Arnold blasting pigs in a police station did for James Cameron (and me). Whatever. On their way from another completed massacre, they bump into Chucky's son and kill him as well, dropping his body off in front of Daddy's house.

It's all for naught, all this killing, because Chucky hires some outside hitters to take Mimi and Jolly out. Jolly is MMS'd first; he goes to a restaurant by himself, and the servers arrive with a plate of Recently Deceased Gay Dog before filling this fat fuck full of .45's. Later, Mimi comes home and not only finds Jolly's body on his bed, but Liz hanging dead in the shower. His calm and rational response is to blow up Chucky and everyone else at the son's funeral by way of hidden explosives. At least Chucky and his wife don't have to live the rest of their lives missing their boy. That's me justifying Mimi's horrendous (but ballsy and awesome) act.

Mimi then goes back to Sicily, giving up on trying to do Cosa Nostra American Style. His father welcomes him with open arms and is glad to see that he's back and here to stay. Mimi then goes on another beautiful tangent about how the old ways are no longer respected "out there", and that the street corners that were once run by the Italians, Jews, Irish and Polish are now all run by the black man -- how dare they seems to be the subtext -- and that Organized Crime is on life support and that there is no law to lawlessness anymore. The young criminals no longer respect/fear the old ones, long-haired hippies are bringing dope home for their parents to take(!) and the shadowy secrecy of the Mafia Don lifestyle is now common fodder for books and movies ("The most successful fuckin' motion picture in the history of show business is you!").

The old man is like Whatever and tells Mimi about the young son he left behind. He tells him that he's been raised clean, going to the best schools around the world and living a life that has nothing to do with the Mafia, and he will not grow up to be his father or grandfather. A tearful, hug-filled reunion follows; Mimi and his son go for a walk to catch up on things and to meet the boy's special lady friend. Later, they get together with other family and friends for dinner. The son cuts a loaf of bread and tosses the first piece to Mimi. Just as Mimi catches the slice -- BOOM -- he takes a blast of gunfire to the chest. Turns out there was a four-barreled gun hidden in the loaf, and the son used it on him. The old man then looks at the son, and I guess this means that he's now a man and I guess this is the movie's way of telling us that the sins of the father, the child is father to the man, evil never dies, the circle of life, etc, etc, blah blah blabbity blah. Whatever it means, it's an awesome way to end a movie. The End.

This is a mob flick done Grindhouse-style, featuring some very raw acting and visuals, but it's a lot of fun and I was surprised by how much I ended up liking it. Usually you have to deal with a lot of dead spots in these kinds of movies, even when they have brief running times like this one, but there's always something to keep your interest here; tough guy talk, violence, titties. Some scenes have a darkly comic approach to them, sort of a proto-Tarantino type of thing going on; the opening scene featuring Mimi and Jolly killing a bunch of people is done to a cheery old Italian song. The dialogue can be very funny at times too, and while I don't know how serious those speech scenes are meant to be taken, I don't care, because they are awesome to watch either way. I understand that's the third time I've used the word "awesome" in this rundown, and for that I win an award: The Small Vocabulary Dumb Schmuck Award. I'd like to thank my teachers for trying to teach me and I'd like to thank myself for not learning.

Duke Mitchell (né Dominico Miceli) was a nightclub singer and all-around entertainer, most famous for hooking up with a Jerry Lewis lookalike and doing their spin on Martin & Lewis. He wrote, produced and directed this, his first movie, and you can definitely see that he had more entertaining flicks (and hopefully better made) in him. Unfortunately, he passed away a few years later, leaving behind an unfinished film titled Gone with the Pope. Based on the footage I've seen for that flick, it looked like he was definitely taking things up a notch in Awesome. Shit, that's four times now.

The cool news is that Sam Raimi's editor and Sylvester Stallone's son have been busy putting Pope together for a DVD release. Massacre Mafia Style, meanwhile, is coming out next month in a two-disc DVD set in October, but get this -- it's limited to 500 copies. So if you want your racist Italian mob killers in crystal clear digital picture and sound, you better snatch up a copy right quick. Me, I'll stick to my shitty VHS version (under the title The Executioner); in a weird way, I think the poor quality adds to the seediness of the movie. Besides, booze and gasoline take up most of my budget nowadays, anyway, so I have to come up with something.

Now if you'll excuse me, I now have to look up some gothic designs online to print out and mail to my friend in prison so he can have them tattooed to his leg. Because that's what friends do for each other (especially when they're afraid of getting shivved at their front door in the middle of the night). I need a time machine. I need to go back and tell the 3rd grade version of me to say No to friendship. Then I'm gonna go to the 7th grade me and tell me to make a move on Ms. Travers in Social Studies. Worst case scenario, she says no. Best case, I get a whole lot of much-needed confidence and my life begins a trek through a different path, one that will most likely lead to bigger and better things. I guess the lesson here, people, is this: If you're a school teacher, pick the biggest loser in class and sleep with him. And if you're a student lucky enough to have that happen to you, SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT.

I guess the only early Full Moon flick left to watch is Meridian

Back in my late years of elementary school, I started to rent a lot of these Full Moon movies at the video store. Full Moon was the name of a production company that specialized in low-budget sci-fi and horror for the straight-to-video market. At the end of each flick, there was also a 15-20 minute featurette called Videozone that featured a behind-the-scenes of the flick you just watched, trailers and coming attractions for other Full Moon productions. The flicks were entertaining and fast-paced, and they released a new one every month.

There are still a couple flicks from the early years of Full Moon that I never got around to watching though, and I found one of them at the going-out-of-business video store. It's called Shadowzone, and it starts with a dude from NASA arriving via helicopter at an underground bunker in the middle of the Nevada desert. There's an experimental project called Shadowzone being conducted for the past year, one that involves deep sleep for extended periods of time. NASA is funding it, but there's been a death during one of the procedures, so NASA Dude is here to check out on it and determine whether or not his bosses should continue footing the bill for Shadowzone. He's taken down to the bunker by the maintenance man, nicknamed Shivers because of his always trembling right hand. Shivers is a dirty-looking motherfucker; he's got a huge bushy unkempt beard, filthy clothes (with filthier-looking undershirt), dirty smudges all over his hands and fingernails and he's greasy too. You just know this scumbag has been wearing the same underwear for at least two weeks.

NASA Dude then goes to the pantry to eat and be brought up to speed by Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. She tells him that they are close to making a breakthrough. But NASA Dude doesn't want to hear it; he wants to meet the main dude in charge and he also wants to see the body of the unfortunate test subject who died. We also meet Cutter the cook and Dr. Kidwell, this chick who works with a bunch of lab animals. Kidwell's young and pretty, which means she will be the only other survivor, along with the handsome NASA dude. That's just how it works in these flicks. After inspecting the body, they all go to the control room that is adjacent to the experiment chamber, and NASA Dude meets the computer whiz at the controls named Wiley. NASA Dude then enters the experiment chamber and meets with the head dude, this guy named Dr. Van Fleet. Van Fleet is played by Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China. We have an Asian actor playing a dude with a Dutch name and a German accent, which I thought was pretty cool, because I'm down with the melting pot.

Van Fleet shows NASA Dude the male & female test subjects who have been in deep sleep. Both are laid out and enclosed in sleeping pods and both are completely naked. This is awesome in the chick's case, because she's got a nice rack and we get full frontal too. Her name is Jenna, she's been in deep sleep for only a few days now (replacing the recently deceased security guard) and for the record, the carpet does not match the drapes. The male test subject is named James, he's been under for six months now and unfortunately we see all of him too. Van Fleet explains that he has safely disconnected their brainstems electronically, that way they can enter an even deeper state of sleep without going brain dead. NASA Dude asks if this could've caused the last subject to have his deadly stroke, but like the others, Van Fleet strongly insists that there's no way that could be. It was just a bad coincidence, he says.

That night, NASA Dude has a bad dream where he watches the rest of the crew performing an autopsy on Jenna, then we're off to the next morning at the experiment chamber. NASA Dude has read the print-outs of previous tests and discovered that the last subject had been sent to a particular level of sleep before expiring, called Level 31F. Van Fleet insists it has nothing to do with the test subject's stroke. NASA Dude tells him in that case, if there's nothing wrong with 31F, then they shouldn't have a problem setting one of the subjects on it and letting him observe. Van Fleet tries to talk his way around it, but he knows that refusing to do so would be an admission of guilt and Shadowzone would get shut down. So he and his crew go ahead and set Test Subject James on Level 31F and hope for the best, knowing that the last test subject only lasted 40 seconds under that setting.

NASA Dude goes to the experiment chamber and watches over James' in the sleeping pod as he undergoes Level 31F, meanwhile Van Fleet and his crew are in the control room with fingers crossed and assholes puckered, wishing for NASA Dude to hurry the fuck up and finish getting what he wants so they can shut it down before the 40 seconds are up. Almost a minute passes before NASA Dude is satisfied, and James is brought down to a safer level. Suddenly something interfaces with the computer system and overrides it. Alarms and bells start going off, and Wiley is powerless to stop it. The earth starts quaking and the sleeping pods start shooting out sparks, and it ends with Test Subject James' head exploding all over the pod. The lights go out, and we cut to Shivers as he comes out of the restroom, zipping up his fly and hooking his belt back up. I can bet you this filthy motherfucker didn't even wash his hands. He goes over and turns on the emergency lights, contaminating the switches with his unwashed shit-wipers.

Van Fleet, Kidwell and NASA Dude then go into the experiment chamber to check and make sure everything else is okay. Wiley has control of the system again, so he uses the mapping system on the monitor to keep track of the three while they're inside. The three check on the pods; Jenna is fine, still under deep sleep in her pod. James's pod, on the other hand, looks likes its been coated with Wild Cherry Slurpee, so that's how he's doing. Back in the control room, Wiley notices on the monitor that there is another life form inside the chamber. Van Fleet separates himself in one part of the chamber to look for the lifeform, forcing NASA Dude and Kidwell to go back to the control room. Van Fleet looks around, gets a couple of false scares and is then attacked by some mutated Leprechaun-looking thing in woman's clothing. The last thing he says is "Madam Pip!" and then after that it's just a bunch of high-pitched squealing, the kind one usually lets out when he or she is getting murder-ized.

Our cast of characters all go to the pantry for much "Rabble rabble harumph harumph" about what just happened. Ratched explains to NASA Dude what she and Van Fleet had discovered early on. They found out that when taken past the deepest level of dream-state sleep, a human being's subconscious becomes a sort of radio tuner that is able to communicate with other dimensions. The only reason inter-dimensional communication isn't an everyday occurrence is because the brain wakes the person up as a kind of defense mechanism. In other words, your brain knows when your stupid ass subconscious is walking into a bad neighborhood, so it drives its Hyundai up onto the sidewalk in front of you, opens the door, pulls you inside, and then double-backs the other way and speeds its way back to Mayberry before the fuckin' Crips and Bloods see you and try to jack your shit. But since Van Fleet shut off the brainstem from the test subjects, that means that not only was communication with an other dimension made possible, but with the help of Shadowzone's system, a lifeform from the other dimension has been able to come over to our side and start fucking shit up. Ain't that a bitch?

Dirty motherfucker Shivers explains to everyone that the top is sealed, communications are down, and they only have a few hours of air left. They also find out that the lifeform from another dimension has the ability to change its shape and size, meaning it can be anywhere in the bunker it wants to be. So they also have that going for them. NASA Dude and Wiley decide to go further downstairs to fail at fixing something. Shivers and Kidwell take off to go and check on Cutter in the kitchen. As for Nurse Ratched, she stays to hold the fort back at the control room, where she applies Chap Stick non-stop, and if she's not doing that, she's playing with the tube. Every fucking scene, she's messing with that Chap Stick.

Cutter buys it first. She reaches into a mousehole to replace a trap. She screams, blood splatters on her face, and suddenly a giant mutant rat smashes through the wall, Kool-Aid-Man style.

Surprisingly, Kidwell gets it next. I figured she was going to live to become NASA Dude's fuck buddy, but it's made very clear that she won't, not after she messed with a lab monkey that was really the creature in monkey form.

Shivers is next. After hearing Kidwell's dying screams over the intercom and finding Cutter's mangled corpse in the kitchen, he runs hollering like the mortified hillbilly he is through every part of the bunker. If I was the director of this flick, I would've asked the sound guys to add in the sound of constant urination and bowel evacuating, because that's what this motherfucker looks like he's got going on. Because Scared and Stupid park their cars in the same garage, Shivers' fires his weapon all over the place until he's left facing the unseen monster with an empty shotgun. Well, at least Shivers' no longer has to worry about taking showers anymore. Not that he ever did, the stinky motherfucker. NASA Dude and Wiley arrive and find shredded pieces of meat and gore and a pair of broken glasses where Shivers had been standing.

They stand there, open-mouthed and stunned at all the blood. NASA Dude looks over to the darkness at the other end of the hall. It's completely quiet, and it looks like there's nothing there. But NASA Dude just fucking knows and quietly whispers to Wiley that they should beat their feet. I have to admit, that was a pretty creepy fucking moment. The filmmakers didn't use special effects or sound effects. There's no growl or monster roar. It's just a shot of an unlit section of the hall. And yet even I was like "GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE!!!"

Off they go, to the nearest elevator, which of course is out-of-order. Wiley runs down the hall to a control box so he can hotwire the elevator to work again. Motherfucker. That elevator had been out for a couple of days now, and all along Wiley could've fixed it if he wanted to? Well, Wiley is about to learn a painfully final lesson about procrastination, because while he manages to hotwire the elevator doors to open, allowing NASA Dude to go inside, Wiley does not make it to the doors in time and they close on him. NASA Dude cannot pry them open, and guess who just showed up down the hall? NASA Dude is then treated to the sound of Wiley screaming and the sight of the elevator door window getting splattered with blood.

NASA Dude climbs out through the elevator shaft and makes it to the control room. There he finds Ratched, who tells him what she's found out about the killer lifeform. Based on what happened to both Van Fleet and Kidwell, Ratched has figured out that the creature takes the form of whatever happens to be in the victim's mind. Kidwell was looking around for her monkey, so the creature took the form of that ugly fuck. And before Van Fleet was attacked, he was scared, and his fear triggered an old childhood memory of a carnival geek named "Madam Pip", so that's what the creature appeared as. I guess that would mean that if I was in the movie, either a Scarlett Johansson clone or a giant pizza would end up doing me in. Unless I was scared, because in that case I'd probably be running away from a giant Algebra book. That's Komedy people! Komedy!

The lifeform once again interfaces with the computer system and communicates with NASA Dude and Ratched. The lifeform says that it can no longer sustain itself in our world and wants to go back to its dimension. Our survivors agree to help, but they must set Jenna at Level 31F and risk killing her to do it. They turn on the doohicky, sparks explode and then a big shaft of glowing light forms in the center of the room. The creature shows up, looking nothing like the full-bodied mutant on the video cover. Instead, it looks more like the sad AIDS-stricken version; it would be more at home in a robe and slippers, walking slowly across the study and sipping a cup of broth.

Anyway, the creature walks into the shaft of light and disappears. Ratched just can't leave well enough alone, so she picks up a broken piece of metal rod and sticks it into the light. It gets sucked in. I guess this was Ratched's way of checking if the water was fine, so to speak, because she then walks right into the light and disappears.

NASA Dude figures she ain't coming back anyway, so he grabs an axe and smashes up the entire system, both to ensure this shit will never happen again and to save Jenna from getting the Scanners Treatment. Ratched suddenly returns, stepping halfway out of the light. She looks at NASA Dude with an amazed and excited gaze and tells him "There are thousands of th--" and that's all she gets to say because that metal rod from earlier has just poked out of her chest. She then does that thing we've seen in lots of movies; she stands there confused, rubs the blood off of her mouth and finally keels over. This all just goes to prove my long-standing theory: Never try to confirm if you have been gravely wounded. If you think you've just been shot or stabbed, by all means DO NOT LOOK OR TOUCH, just let it go. As long as you don't try to confirm your fatal wound, you will survive. You can go days, months, years like this. But as soon as you touch it and raise your bloody fingers up to your eyes for a closer look, you will DIE.

Turns out it was the creature who ran Ratched through with the metal rod. It leans in closer and starts stroking Ratched's hair, then looks at NASA Dude before giving out an anguished-sounding scream. The creature then pulls Ratched's body back into the other dimension with it. I don't know, man. You figure that shit out. Anyway, stuff explodes and NASA Dude passes out. He wakes up a short while later to the sounds of someone yelling. It's Test Subject Jenna, now completely woken up and trapped in her sleeping pod. NASA Dude goes over and gets her out, left dumbfounded by the sight of this hot naked piece-of-ass sitting before him. Roll credits. It's gotten to a point that when one of these movies ends without a surprise "IT AIN'T OVAH! DUN DUN DUN!" ending, that in itself is a surprise ending.

Shadowzone was a'ight. It lost two L's and an R over time. The movie looks good for its budget and it has the occasional good moment and surprise. I liked the idea of a creature that takes the form of whatever you're thinking about, and since you're most likely thinking of some scary shit to begin with in this kind of situation, it's not going to be good. Anyway there was no Videozone after the flick. Instead there's an odd promotion for Full Moon merchandise. It's uh...it's...uh...hmm. I'll just post it at the end of the Not-So-Random moments YouTube clip and let you see for yourself.

"And I hope the people of the United States of America will be able to sleep better knowing that women like us have guns."

Recently an audio clip came out of Christian Bale losing his shit on the set of the next Terminator movie. It made me wonder how many more instances are there of on-set shit-losing that we don't know about? What about actors who are jerks to their fellow thespian? What about the ones who are supposed to play lovers or family members or friends or work partners? What about buddy movies? That would be funny if the "buddies" in the buddy movie fucking hated each other. One of my newly acquired VHS flicks is a buddy movie, and the two chicks in it have such a nice chemistry together it would be pretty funny to find out that they wanted to fuckin' kill each other in real life.

Feds starts with this chick named Elizabeth "Ellie" DeWitt, a U.S. Marine, and she's played by Rebecca DeMornay, the smokin' hot woman who was so hot, she managed to turn Tom Cruise straight in Risky Business. Then Tom Cruise went on to make Top Gun, where all those shirtless volleyball-playing assholes turned him gay again and we lost him for good. At the beginning of Feds, DeWitt leaves the Marine base and off she goes into Quantico for FBI training, or at least that's where I'm sure it's supposed to be. You see, they're pretty vague about that sort of thing in this flick because the real FBI didn't give them shit as far as cooperation is concerned.

DeWitt arrives with her duffel bag and leather jacket and has a meet-cute with homeboy from Krull. She then meets her roomie, a studious bookish-type (read: nerd) named Janice Zuckerman. At first, the uptight Zuckerman kinda blows off DeWitt's attempts at friendship, but DeWitt quickly ends that when she straight out asks Zuckerman what's up with the stick up her ass. Zuckerman apologizes, saying that it's nothing personal, she's always like this when in "extreme academic stress".

The rest of the class is mostly white dudes in suits and a black guy in a suit too. They all reek of Ivy League and smugness and Krull is their unofficial leader. There are a couple of other women, but we never hear shit from them and they get axed pretty quickly, so fuck 'em. It's pretty much recruits DeWitt & Zuckerman against the world from here on out. The only guy recruit who is cool with them is another nerd named Howard Butz (ha ha, it's almost like Butts!). He's from MIT where he apparently majored in looking like a jackass and it's only a matter of time before he and Zuckerman become an item.

The classes are hard as fuck for DeWitt, who is constantly coming off like a dumbass when the instructor calls her out to answer a question. This instructor is fucking hardcore, he's the kind of teacher who gives you back your test grade out loud in front of everybody. At one point, he tells DeWitt that only nine out of forty trainees graduate, the rest become salesman or telephone repairmen or beauticians. That sounds a little too extreme for me. I'm sure the ones who fail become police officers or go work in a law firm or something. But I guess he's just trying to make a point and be a dick at the same time.

No worries in the class for Zuckerman, though. She aces all her tests and gives all the right answers when called upon. Whenever she's back in her dorm room, she's busy reading from the assigned books, highlighting sections and putting colored paper clips on the page for quick reference. I used to do that sort of thing, and now here I stand before you, a proud community college dropout, so if I can do it, YOU can do it! The one thing Zuckerman can't do is accomplish anything that requires more physical exertion than taking notes. She can't do one pull-up, she can't shoot for shit, and she's constantly humiliated by her male counterparts when called on to demonstrate handcuffing a suspect.

DeWitt, of course, is fuckin' Hoo-rah Semper-Fi Do or Die when it comes to the manly shit. She always hits dead-on during target practice and you're never gonna make her look dumb during a handcuffing procedure. This big beefy mustached Mike Ditka-looking motherfucker who's probably from Chicago and I'm certain is well-acquainted with all the different subtle flavors of bratwurst makes the mistake of pulling that shit with her. Next thing he knows, he's kissing the mat and his hands are cuffed behind his back. Don't underestimate the lady, Ditka.

Early on, they all meet the director of the program, and he's played by Fred Dalton Thompson. If that name sounds familiar to you, it's probably because he's acted for quite a while. It's also probably because he was a politician for even longer. Same thing, I suppose. Most recently he ran for President, and well, we all know how THAT worked out. It's too bad it didn't happen for him, because I wanted to be able to say that the fucking President of the United States is in Feds. Ms. DeMornay, if you are reading this, I think you should consider a career in politics and you should shoot for the highest office while you're at it. But be prepared for those assholes in the competition to run ads using scenes from The Hand that Rocks the Cradle to pull that "Do you want THIS kind of person running your country?" shit.

During a game of poker at the lounge, Mike Ditka suggests ordering some pizza. Butz figures two large pies should do, but Ditka says it won't because he could eat two large by himself. DeWitt offhandedly comments that she could probably eat as much pizza as him. Next thing you know, they're competing against each other for cash. DeWitt realizes she's way in over her head, or her eyes are bigger than her stomach or whatever the appropriate saying is, so she wins by grossing out Ditka by talking at length about how insect eggs fester in pepperoni and if not cooked properly you could have a bunch of hatching insects in your belly. I don't think that's true, but if it is, I don't give a fuck. Pizza is just too awesome to throw away on something like that. I'm like Chong in Up in Smoke, when Cheech gives him shit for eating food from a street vendor, telling him that it's most likely made of dog. "It's good dog" responds Chong.

While out shopping for the weekend, DeWitt figures this is a good opportunity for Zuckerman to buy a handgun, so off they go to the local gun store. Like other women are good at matching what shoes to go with what dress, DeWitt knows what gun should go with a person, so with her help Zuckerman walks out with a SIG-Sauer P226 fitted with Tritium night sights and a compensator. Our gals then go out to enjoy a nice patioside lunch, and it's there that DeWitt notices a bread truck parked in front of a bank for nearly twenty minutes. The engine's been running the whole time, there are no bakeries or stores on the block, and the bank just closed for the day, so it looks like there might be a robbery in progress. She and an apprehensive Zuckerman go over to check it out and sure enough, out come the masked men with bags and machine guns. The robbers take off, and our gals commandeer some dude's car. The poor dude tells them to be careful with his ride, because he just got it back from the shop, and if you've ever seen a movie before, you fuckin' KNOW where this is going. A car chase ensues, but thanks to DeWitt's expert shooting with the SIG, the truck goes flipping over and the bad guys are apprehended. DeWitt is thrilled and she's sure this will go over well with her instructors.

It doesn't. Coulda-Been-Prez tells her that she and Zuckerman pretty much did nothing by the book, and it's only because the press has agreed not to reveal it was FBI trainees that were involved that he won't expel them, and instead they're put on probation. It's not looking good for our girls, what with DeWitt flunking her tests and Zuckerman flunking in the ass-kicking department. There's a pretty harsh moment during another of the handcuffing exercises when Zuckerman tries to get Krull to cooperate. He ends up taking her down hard, landing her face down and putting the handcuffs on her. He then takes her rubber gun, shoves it against the back of her head and goes "Bang. You're dead". Then he just gets up and walks away, leaving her there. If this was someone else, I could excuse that as someone just trying to teach her the hard way for her own good, so she could understand that this is life and death shit they're dealing with here. But you can tell this guy just likes being an asshole.

DeWitt returns to her dorm room to find Zuckerman packing all her stuff and talking about how she's had it with the bullshit, and that she could be working in a law firm for $60,000 a year. DeWitt tells her that she should be happy with how far she's made it. She brings up that Richard Nixon didn't even get this far, he was turned down by the FBI, and the reverent tone she has when saying this, along with her military background and her love of guns tells me that this chick's GOT to be a Republican. I figure Zuckerman's a Democrat then, since she doesn't appear to give a shit about that Nixon shit. Anyway, DeWitt figures it out; Zuckerman's one of these smart kids who always got A's, the kind who would get all pissy if they got a B+ on a quiz. There was a moment like that on The Wonder Years, where Pfeiffer got a B on his math test and compared it to kissing your sister, and Kevin Arnold held up his C+ and asked "Then who am I kissing?". That show fucking ruled. Anyway, DeWitt tells Zuckerman that she knows they can help each other out and help rid each other's weaknesses by using their individual strengths.

A cutesy montage follows, with our girls teaching each other their ways. Butz even joins in to help them every once in a while. Later on, DeWitt scores an A on her exam while Zuckerman slips and scores a B, and sure enough, Zuckerman gets all pissy about it. But it's okay, because Zuckerman gets to let it out when she has to do the handcuffing procedure with asshole Krull again. He thinks it's going to be second-verse-same-as-the-first in The Ballad of Krull & Zuckerman, but instead our girl helps him rewrite that little ditty, and the second verse now goes something like "Ow My Foot/Ow My Balls", preferably sung falsetto.

Krull wants to make sure his dick still works after having it introduced to Zuckerman's size 8, so he asks DeWitt out on a date. She accepts, and off they go for dinner at a fancy restaurant. Meanwhile, Zuckerman is back at the dorm, reading a magazine in her PJ's on a Saturday night because she likes to party. Butz shows up to borrow a couple of books, and they have a little cutesy chat that leads to them heading over to the lounge to catch a PBS special on Nobel Prize winners. DeWitt's date with Krull goes south because Krull's an asshole. Big surprise.

The trainees are assigned to look over and study old case files and one of them involves Navy blankets being stolen when they were sent to a laundry service. The investigation didn't go anywhere and the case is only a year old, so DeWitt and Zuckerman go over to question a suspect who is still in college. They find him and his roommates smoking some herb and watching some football. These motherfuckers are some of the lamest fuckin' stoners I've ever seen in a flick. A lot of "hey baaabe, what's hangin' duuude" and all that shit. Anyway, they play at being official FBI agents and grill the college student, who ends up giving up all the info. He tells them that it was some other guy who stole the blankets and that he hangs out at some shitty club in a shitty part of town.

They go to this lowlife place and find the lowlife blanket thief, but not before a brief scuffle breaks out between DeWitt and some of the patrons, which Zuckerman puts a stop to by blasting the whole fucking joint with her muthafuckin' SIG-Sauer. Wow. In the previous scene, she slammed a suspect against the wall unprovoked and put the fear of jail and assrape into him and his friends. Now she's shooting holes in a crowded bar and aiming her loaded weapon at cowering innocent bystanders, calmly referring to them as smart men but making it very clear what the alternative to not being smart would be. In a few years, Zuckerman will probably end up pulling some Val Kilmer-in-Spartan shit on a motherfucker. The thief confesses to them that he did steal the blankets but honestly didn't know they belonged to the Navy, and they in turn confess that they're just trainees looking for extra credit.

Coulda-Been-Prez reads the report the next day and gives our homegirls some major props for their work. He then congratulates the remaining trainees and tells them there is only one more obstacle to conquer before graduating and becoming FBI agents. Sometime soon, he tells them, there will be a crime simulation exercise that he and the instructors will be taking part in and the trainees must treat this like the real thing. For now, they're allowed to go out and enjoy a well-earned night of liberty. The girls go out to a local bar where they both get hammered and Zuckerman gets all whore-y and tries to hook up with a sailor. DeWitt ends up cockblocking the sailor, probably out of jealousy, and she and Zuckerman stumble back to their room. A few seconds after they go to bed, the phone rings -- the exercise has begun.

The girls apparently managed to sober up when they arrive at the briefing room, where they meet up with the rest of the trainees and find Coulda-Been-Prez leading a group of black-clad men who are carrying shotguns. They are portraying the "Terrorist Liberation Front" and they have kidnapped the president of a major banking organization (played by the main instructor) and are demanding a ransom. The trainees objective is to find and neutralize the kidnappers and save the president. I love how they make the bad guys so vague and politically correct. This was made in 1988, but they still didn't want to offend any real terrorists, because as long as we leave them alone, they'll leave us alone, right?

Krull appoints himself as leader and off they go. A map is found on the grounds and Krull figures it will lead them to the terrorists. DeWitt, Zuckerman and Butz all disagree, saying that it's just too convenient that the bad guys would leave a map out in the open like that. Krull tells them they can either leave and form their own group or shut the fuck up and follow. They decide on the former. Using their brains, teamwork, gumption and all that other crap, our group finds out where the terrorists are hiding -- the conference room of the administration building. They radio Krull and his Alpha Male posse and pretend to be Headquarters, giving them bad information on the whereabouts of the terrorists.

The girls suit up in black and load up with shotguns and rope, making themselves ready to go PG-13 non-violent attack squad on that ass. Butz then busts in the room with his shotgun while DeWitt and Zuckerman swing in from the roof and smash through the windows, taking the terrorists by surprise. Jesus Christ, I know this is an exercise, but is it okay to commit such wanton acts of destruction to government property like that? The terrorists are handcuffed and the hostage is saved. They all go riding triumphantly back to the briefing room on jeeps and run into Krull and the Alpha Male posse, who are looking all worn out and beaten up. These motherfuckers failed at the exercise so badly, they should be thrown out of the program in the same manner that Uncle Phil throws Jazz out of his mansion, but DeWitt saves their asses by thanking them for the idea of splitting up into two to cover their bases faster. Which is actually kinda true, now that I think about it. But whatever, Krull is still an asshole and he'll always know that he got fuckin' schooled by our girls. Forever and ever, he'll know that shit, which is cool but also kinda sucks, because this asshole will probably take that shit out on the chick he marries. He'll probably smack her around in front of the kids, and that's gonna fuck up his young son who will grow up to be a fuckin' pussy-whipped pansy and it will fuck up his daughter who will grow up to become a man-hating stripper. Or maybe he'll just catch a bullet in the line of duty and spare us all that pain.

So it's graduation day, and all the trainees get their FBI shield and are applauded by the instructors and the guests. New Special Agents DeWitt & Zuckerman are named the valedictorians or MVP's or Best in Show or whatever and go up to receive their award. DeWitt makes a stupid joke at the podium, everybody cheers and we fade to black. Roll credits.

Hold up -- there's an extra scene during the credits. Nice. DeWitt & Zuckerman are on their way to be given their first assignments, and Butz meets up with them. He tells them he's really happy with the assignment he got: Duluth, Minnesota. Good for you, Butz. Zuckerman receives her envelope containing her assignment and opens it up: Los Angeles. My condolences, Zuckerman. DeWitt then opens up her envelope: Los Angeles. She and Zuckerman both do that "Oh My God" scream and hug each other and girl power and sequel possibility and all that. Meanwhile, Butz is standing there looking all assed out because his assignment ain't shit compared to theirs. Sorry bro, I don't know what to say other than dress warm.

Feds was written and directed by a couple of Ivan Reitman's homeboys who had previously written Stripes, Meatballs and Heavy Metal for him. I guess the intention with Feds was to do for the FBI what Stripes did for the Army, but I guess it didn't work out that way. You probably already know who Rebecca DeMornay is, so we'll get into the chick who played Zuckerman. Her name is Mary Gross and her brother is best known as the father from Family Ties, or as I prefer to remember him, Bert Gummer from muthafuckin' Tremors. She was also a member of Saturday Night Live, working on the show with Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo. Of those two, one went on to destroy his promising comedy career by working in shitty unfunny movies for the paycheck and the other is Joe Piscopo.

Here's a little confession for ya -- I've seen this flick before, caught it on cable a long time ago. I know this is a terrible film. I know every other human being who has seen it would call Feds a comedy with no laughs, which is the worst thing for a comedy to be. I know this. And yet something about this movie tickles a section of my subconscious that causes me to find Feds insanely watchable. I try to take my boy Quentin Tarantino's advice and not use the term "guilty pleasure", because if you like it, that's all that matters and you shouldn't feel ashamed. Yet I do feel ashamed, and boy do I feel guilty. If this shit was on DVD, I'd have it already, but it's not and that's why when I found the VHS at the going-out-of-business video store, I snatched that mutha up faster than Angelina Jolie snatches up poor ethnic kids at an orphanage. If you were to watch this with me, you would sit stonefaced and on occasion turn to look at me in disbelief as I guffawed at some of the lamest lame shit ever committed to celluloid.

It reminds me of this one time I was hanging out with one of my bros and I noticed Miss Congeniality was playing on television. I don't remember how it came out, but I'm guessing I felt so close to my bro that I could comfortably admit that I really liked this Sandra Bullock flick. The way he reacted, you'd think that I had just told him I really enjoy the taste of warm cock in my mouth -- which I understand might as well be the same thing. Considering the subject matter of both films, the best I can come up with is maybe I have a thing for shitty comedies about female FBI agents. In a way, Miss Congeniality is very much the sequel that Feds never had.

There's a theater in Los Angeles called the New Beverly Cinema where on occasion there are drawings for the prize of being able to program your own double feature there. I figure I'd pick two cool badass cult 70's flicks, but now I think I would go with Feds and Miss Congeniality. I can picture it now, me introducing the flicks in front of an angry crowd of hipsters and movie geeks that are hoping that I'm really bullshitting them and that I'm really about to screen something like the lost extended cut of Metropolis they found in that dead Nazi's closet. Then when the lights dim and the title FEDS fills the screen in all its 35mm glory, the entire audience swarms down upon me and thrash me severely.

A couple of the geeks come down with two big wooden posts and a hammer and nails. I am crucified and put up in front of the screen, blood pouring from my fresh wounds while projected images from the film play over me. Soon, the pain all goes away as I pass out, followed by the sweet sweet release of death. Then, from the back of the theater come three glowing figures in white. They are the fictional characters of Special Agents Ellie DeWitt & Janice Zuckerman and Special Agent Gracie Hart made flesh. They walk over to the cross and take my limp form down. The light of the projector comes down and shines upon me. A few minutes pass and then -- HUZZAH! I am reborn! I awaken completely healed and refreshed with a new sense of peace and dare I say it -- contentment. I join the fictional film characters as we walk out of the theater, ready to begin the much-needed paradigm shift in our ugly self-destructing society. It will be the beginning of the age of The New Mediocrity...and it will be glorious.

O.J. says: "A snake? Damn, I wish I thought of that. (long pause) Oh, what I meant to say was 'Wow, that's scary'."

Right after high school, I started working as a file clerk for some credit financing joint. One of the two main dudes was a guy who I'm going to refer to as Clint Eastwood, because that's who I can see playing him in the movie of my life. For the record, the drunk rich lady on Will & Grace would play me. Anyway, Clint Eastwood was a white dude probably in his late 60's or early 70's, and he was a hardcore Republican and NRA member who would occasionally bring one or two of his guns to work just because. He drove a nice car, made lots of money, treated people like shit and took to making racist and homophobic jokes. Naturally, I looked up to him. When I started there, Clint was going through a divorce, and one day he was looking over some forms he had to sign. Apparently it had to do with the monetary settlement he and the ex agreed on. After signing and putting the forms back into his briefcase, he casually looked over to my supervisor and said matter-of-factly, "It would be cheaper to just kill the bitch".

Fair Game (aka Mamba) is about a dude who not only thinks the same way, but is actually going to put his money where his mouth is (as opposed to in his ex-wife's wallet). This dude is named Gene, and he's a multi-millionaire in the computer business. He's also a creepy fuck, and you can see why his wife would want to ditch him. Gene meets up a snake wrangler in a shack way out in the desert so he can buy a mamba snake from him. When the wrangler tries to give him all the details about this particular reptile, Gene beats him to the punch. He knows everything to know about this snake; it's one of the most highly venomous creatures around but it's particularly dangerous during the mating season, when the poor thing gets so fuckin' pent up with sexual frustration it has to bite the first motherfucker it sees for some goddammed relief. Can you believe that shit? That's like if some dude walked up to you in the street and suddenly stabbed you once in the chest. As you lay bleeding on the ground, covering your wound, you ask the guy "Why?!" and the guy responds "Sorry, I'm just so fuckin' HORNY, dude!".

It happens to be mating season and the snake wrangler kinda gets the hint that this dude is up to something bad, so he takes advantage and doubles the price of the mamba, which doesn't make Gene so happy. Here's a multiple-part question: if you were to suddenly jack up the price on some deadly shit knowing you're putting the buyer into a real pickle, would you then afterwards take up an offer by the buyer for a ride into town? And if so, would you allow yourself into the vehicle first and wait while the buyer is outside putting the deadly shit into the back seat of the car? And if so, would you just stay there like a dumbass while the buyer stands in front of the car staring at you all sinister-like? And if so, would you still remain seated while the sinister-looking buyer slowly raises his car door-locking thingamabob and points it at your direction? If you answered Yes to all those questions, then your ass is as dead as this stupid-ass snake wrangler.

We're then introduced to Gene's ex-wife, Eva, who is played by Sting's current wife. This is one of those lame fucking intros, with that fucking late-80's top-40 KISS FM Rick-Dees-in-the-morning type of pop music playing and the character being all wacky and cute and shit. She's carrying a bag of groceries to her loft and keeps dropping shit while talking to her cat and turtle. Gene may be a fucking over-controlling creep, but Eva is a fucking loon and you wouldn't want to be married to either of them. Maybe that's how these two found each other in the first place -- no one else could stand them. This flick was made in either '88 or '89, and you certainly will know this when you see the trendy shit this chick's wearing. My favorite article of clothing would have to be the beret with a Swatch watch attached to it, I guess that way everyone else BUT her can know what time it is. Later, when she takes off her stupid overpriced designer cowboy boots and puts her feet up on the table, we see that she's wearing mismatched socks with differing wacky color patterns. We get it lady, you're a free spirit!

The movie doesn't think we get it yet, though. So we get another musical interlude of Eva as she takes of her clothes and walks around in her underwear and a shirt that has a design of fish flying next to the moon, while some Laura Branigan type of shit plays in the background. Eva struggles to put her groceries into her already full refrigerator (then why the fuck did you go grocery shopping then?!) and solves her spacial problems in her own wacky way. Oy. She even gives a name to the fish she puts in the freezer, she calls it Moby Dick, and I just want to beg her through the screen to please stop with the wackiness. Please, lady -- I never did anything to you. Dial it down a tad for me, and I'll buy you some matching socks. Please! Por el amor de Dios, STOP!

Eva is also a sculptor, and she's currently working on some grade school piece of work, an octopus. Two of them, actually, a male and female octopus. The person who commissioned it calls Eva to tell her that he is sending the finished female one back, because he wants it to look meaner, along with the male octopus she's currently working on. She's kinda bummed about it, but she goes ahead and gives the octopus a mean face. She's interrupted by Gene, who sneaks in and gives her a good scare doing so. He notices the octopus and believes she's making it look like him. Dude, it's not always about you. Much dialogue follows. This is actually a pretty decent scene, because Eva changes her attitude quite a bit, turning into this rather meek and scared individual. It felt a little real, I thought. I mean, I'm sure there are people out there like that, loud and boisterous people, incredibly confident people who you'd never expect were actually frightened victims behind closed doors, people who somehow fell under the spell of some creep and may even excuse the creep's abuse with illogical logic. It happens to the best of us, I guess, and I can see how it happened to Eva. During the scene Gene is saying how much he despises Eva and weak people like her and then next he's hugging her up and nuzzling against her neck doing the "I'm sorry, baby" thing. Shit, that pretty much sums up their relationship right there.

Gene manages plant a tiny transmitter on the back of her necklace. This will be important later. Eva tries to get tough and tell him off, but it's obvious how scared she is of him, which leaves the fuckin' asshole pretty satisfied with himself. At this point, you figure it's less about the money and more of a "If I can't have you, no one else will" trip he's on. He takes off, pretending to accidentally leave behind one of those long cylinder-shaped blueprint containers. But you just fuckin' KNOW there ain't no blueprints in that motherfucker. Eva suggests that maybe in about a month they can get together again and talk about this more (Jesus Christ, girl! Stop doing this to yourself!) and he responds with "I don't think that's very likely". MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Outside, he jams the lock to the only door in the loft and then rigs the phone lines so that only he can contact her and she can't make any outgoing calls. He gets into his SUV parked across the street and takes out his heavy duty briefcase and opens it, revealing a heavy duty computer setup like the portable computer in Spies Like Us, but that shit controlled nuclear missiles. He turns it on and activates a program called "Fair Game", which consists of an entire floor plan of Eva's loft with two flashing icons moving around within, a blue snake representing the Mamba and an apple representing Eva. An apple and a snake? Oh, I get it. "Ladies, do you have to eat everything?" Anyway, thanks to the transmitter he planted on Eva and the snake, he can track their movements around the loft. There's also a timer in the game, counting down from 60 minutes. Why, you ask? You see, Gene wasn't happy with setting a highly venomous and eager-to-bite snake in an enclosed area loose with his ex-wife. So he ended up injecting a shitload of sex hormones into the snake, making the mamba REALLY hard up now. The downside to this is that the snake will die if it doesn't bite within the hour. Don't I know the feeling. Anyway, it's Eva vs. The Mamba, the clock is ticking, and it's on like Donkey Kong. Or Fair Game.

We get Snake-Cam whenever we cut to Mamba's point-of-view, as it slowly slithers it way throughout the huge loft. There are some near-misses as Eva walks around in her bare feet (says Quentin Tarantino: "Oh yeeeeaaaahhhh!") and talks to herself. A lot. Look, I spend as much time alone as Eva and I hardly talk to myself. Oh yeah, I'll whistle and maybe even sing a tune. But the most that I ever do as far as talking is maybe repeating something funny I heard, like some dumb line or impersonation. There's one in particular I've been doing variations on for a while. But even then, it's very rare that I do so. This chick, on the other hand, talks non-stop. She talks while treating a cut on her finger, she talks while watching television, she talks while taking a bath. Fucking conversations, too. This ain't I Am Legend, ma'am, there's people outside that loft of yours that you can talk with. But then again, she lives in L.A., so I could understand why she wouldn't want to deal with those assholes.

Eva comes up with the idea of videotaping a message to Gene, to tell him everything she wants to say to him without having to deal with actually having to go face-to-face with the scary motherfucker and freezing up again. By the end of her message, she remembers she left a kettle of tea on the stove and bolts up to go get it. When she comes back, she plays the tape to watch herself, and even though she shot the video and was on-camera the whole time, there's a surprise ending that she didn't see coming. That's because at the moment she jumped up in the video, the muthafuckin' Mamba made a bite for the booty and missed, and the whole thing was caught on tape. AIIIIIEEEEEE!!!!!

So our girl Eva knows what's up and immediately heads to the door. But of course, the lock has been jammed, so she can't get it open. Bunch of savages in this town. If you didn't get it through the visual representation of Eva unable to open the door, she says out loud "Why won't it open? The door won't open!". That's our Eva, always looking out for the dim bulbs in the audience. She tries to calm herself down, telling herself that it's probably a garter snake. Eva eventually realizes that she's up against a mamba, though, and freaks the fuck out.

Meanwhile, Gene is watching all of this in his SUV, watching as the video game snake chases the video game apple, and the whole time he's munching on a sandwich and drinking coffee from a thermos. This shit is only supposed to last an hour, but the motherfucker still thought to pack a lunch. That's a little bit of awesome. It's human nature, really. Set me up in a stakeout-type of situation in my car, and it won't matter if it's supposed to last eight hours or eighty minutes, I'd still wanna bring coffee and donuts to the motherfucker.

Eva keeps moving and getting away from Mamba in her loft, but Mamba is part-zombie or part-Jason or something, because no matter how fast she runs, the snake is always there waiting. Mamba will make the occasional bad choice, though. It's like he knows she's going to eventually want to protect her feet, so he finds a pair of boots to hide in and wait, and she ends up putting on the other pair of boots right next to him. Ha ha, Mamba. Don't you feel like the fucking asshole. Eva, on the other hand, ends up looking like an asshole, after she puts on layers after layers of clothing from her closet. But since it's being done for her own survival, it's excusable. She now has on all these tacky and soon-to-be outdated clothes all over her body, and given her already nutty predisposition, she looks like a brand new crazy women ready to hit the streets with her shopping cart full of cans. She's already got the Talking To Herself part down.

The lights conveniently go out, so Eva heads over to the fuse box to fix that. Sure enough, Mamba's there waiting for her. But he doesn't strike, because the fire from Eva's lighter scares him. Eva realizes this and gets all happy about it, or at least that's supposed to be the idea, because she displays this wide-eyed look that one usually gets when they've been ignoring their meds for about a week. Eva ends up setting a small fire between her and the snake, and again, she comes off more psychotic than triumphant. She then starts running laps around the loft, I guess to throw Mamba off or frustrate him or something. I'm surprised Mamba hasn't starting chomping on a couch or something by now, with his blue balls wracking him out.

Later she ends up covering the whole kitchen floor with flour, and waits on top of a refrigerator for the snake to come in. This scene is so full of Win; you have Eva propped up on this refrigerator, dressed up in layers of mismatched clothes and a scarf wrapped around her neck, face partially covered in flour, all sweaty and giving out that psycho look of hers as she darts her eyes in all directions. She looks like an older version of Kirsten Dunst in Crazy/Beautiful after a three-day crystal meth and LSD bender. Then Mamba arrives and she starts pelting him with deadly weapons like eggs, apples and Moby Dick all the while screaming "Filthy! Filthy!".

There's a bit of a close call for Gene when some Rastafarian dude on a bike shows up with a boombox hanging from his neck. Goddamn, the things some people went through before the iPod. The Rasta Man has come to drop off a package for Eva, and when he rings the doorbell and the film cuts to Eva's frenzied reaction, anyone coming in late to this movie would assume they were watching a flick about drug abuse. Rasta Man leaves the package on the doorstep and heads back to his bike. By the time Eva gets to the door and starts banging away at it, he's already taking off, plus his loud boombox makes it impossible for him to hear her. But at least he left the package for her. I hate when the opposite happens, when you're waiting for something you ordered on Amazon.com or something. You're like a little kid waiting for that shit, and then you come home one day to find that note on your door, the one from the UPS that says that they came to deliver your package but since you weren't home, they will come back on the next business day, but today's Saturday and Monday's a holiday. Then you're all like "Nooooo!!!! I was waiting all week for that!".

Eva finally loses it and starts whacking away at her indoor tropical garden with her hatchet, screaming at the Mamba to come on out and finish this once and for all. I guess this really freaks the Mamba out, because he slithers back toward Gene's blueprint container. Eva catches all of this and puts two and two together.

The hour is nearly up, so Gene calls the loft again. There's no answer, so it looks like it's all over. Gene gets out of his SUV with a golf club, heads back to the loft, unjams the lock and makes his way in. He looks around and finds the mess that's become of the loft, and then discovers Eva sprawled out on the floor with a motionless snake beside her. He chops the snake in half with the golf club, then goes over to the dying Eva. This asshole is such a sore winner, the way he just goes on and on about how the snake was only minutes away from dying anyway, and how she belonged to him and blah blah I'm better than you blah blah everyone is for sale blah blah the game is over blah blah. He then goes over to the container and opens it up to put the dead snake inside, but upon closer inspection he notices something. The dead snake isn't a snake at all, but a sculpture of one. And if that's not the snake, then that could only mean...CHOMP, baby! The Mamba pops out of the container and gives The Bite to the son-of-a-bitch.

Gene freaks out and starts running around the loft like a chicken with its head cut off, bouncing off the walls and tripping over furniture while Eva follows him. When he finally falls to the ground, she goes down to gently hold his head as he passes. She's not there to spit in the motherfucker's face or kick him and tell him to burn in hell. I'm taking it as one more example of how fucking opposite they are to each other. Whereas Gene stood over Eva and acted an asshole to her in what he thought were her final moments, Eva's too decent a human being for that kind of shit. There's no anger or excitement in her eyes, nor is there that psycho look she had for the past ten minutes. It's a passive, nonjudgmental look that she seems to be displaying here. It's like she's saying "Gene, you're a fucking murderous prick who tried to kill me with a motherfucking mamba, and you reap what you sow. But no matter who you are, death is a real bitch to have to go through, and I'm sorry this is how it's going to end for you." That's how I took it anyway.

You know what, Eva? You're a wacky broad and not my type, but when push came to shove, you held your own, you made it through and when you came out a winner, you stayed classy about it. That makes you better than me and a whole lot of other motherfuckers out there. You're certainly leagues above that prick diddler Gene. I tip my hat to you, Eva. You're all right. Now go put on some decent socks. You're not 12 years old, you're pushing 40 and that kind of shit ain't cute anymore.

So Eva goes outside her loft and finds the package on her doorstep. She opens it up, and finds that it's female octopus for her mean octopus sculpture. It's a smiling lady octopus, painted pink and wearing a bow on its head. She's supposed to change it to be as mean as the male counterpart, remember? Eva begins to tear up. Aww. Roll credits and cue late-80's love song.

This is about 80 minutes long, and there's definitely some heavy padding all over, but I dug Fair Game. It kept me interested. It's really a 45-minute movie stretched out, but even with the padding it moves fairly quickly. Like Curfew, it's something you'd watch at two in the morning and chill out with. There's only three actors in the entire movie (Yo what about Rasta Man, you fuckin' racist?) and they all do well with their roles, even Trudie Styler, who I don't think is bad, but just very inconsistent. Like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, we weren't given much difference between regular Eva and crazy Eva. Instead you have nutty Eva and even nuttier Eva. But because Styler has since gone on to produce both Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt and blame the director for that shit. That's the kind of slack I cut a motherfucker if they were involved in something I liked.

But the real hero of this flick is my main ace, the Mamba. There wouldn't be a movie if it wasn't for homesnake. You can't call the Mamba a villain either, it's just doing what nature put him out there to do. You might as well hate the fucking sun for shining. Mamba. I like to say that, I've noticed. Mamba mamba mamba. MAMBA. As you can see, I like writing it too. I also like to say the word "snake", except I like to pronounce it "snaw-kee" or "snaw-kay" or "snack". The last one I got from my father, a good man from Mexico who speaks English as a second language. He has a strong grasp of the language and speaks it fluently, but every once in a while, he'll take a word that he's prononced correctly many many times before and come out with a brand new pronounciation of it, like he forgot momentarily or he just got lazy. And boy, is it glorious when that rare moment occurs. "Tienes la pelicula con el 'snack'?" he asked me, wondering if I had Anaconda in my collection. Oh, how I loffed and loffed behind his back. In case my father ever reads this, I Love You Dad. Please don't hit me with the belt.

Show me 'round your fruit cage

A long long time ago, I read some article in Movieline (that's how long ago it was) where they asked a bunch of celebrities what their favorite movie was. Some actor named Jeroen Krabbe mentioned one that of course I can't remember the name of, but I do remember that he agreed with its theme, something like "Your whole life is a pursuit for something and when you finally get it, you die". I don't know what this has to do with what I wanted to write about, but whatever dude, it just came up.

So I had a little double-feature of shot-on-video gore flicks a few nights ago, and after the disappointing 555, I made another bowl of popcorn and poured another Jack & Coke and put on the second flick, Sledgehammer.

First off, the opening production credit is done in that old-school computer generated font I used to see a lot of on public-access television, back in the day. It only appeared to have two styles -- regular and bold -- but at least you could change the colors. The main title follows, and instead of using a computer generator, they actually shaped the words Sledgehammer out of stone or brick or balsa wood or something, and it has blood leaking all over. Then a sledgehammer comes down and smashes it to bits. It's a beauty, that title.

The film opens in an old farmhouse where some lady in a slip is yelling at her little boy. She then locks him in a closet and tells him to be quiet or else. Turns out she has a man in the house and they're about to get intimate. She twirls around for him, showing her body off and asking "What do you think, sexy enough for you?". Baby, I just watched a flick where the hot chick was played by an older lady whose day job was probably as school principal, so you got my fuckin' vote, that's for sure. The dude asks the lady what happened to the boy and she responds with "I took care of the little bastard" and it just goes to show that even in this wonderful free country of ours, we really need to require licenses for people to have kids. But we don't have to worry about these two procreating, because someone shows up and bashes both of them to death with a sledgehammer.

We get a "Ten Years Later..." card and now we're back at the same farmhouse, looking exactly the same. A van pulls up in front and when the doors open, douchebags and assholes tumble out of it. They immediately go WOOOO! and ALL RIGHT! and one dude even does the Tarzan yell before getting pantsed by his shirtless friend who's clutching an overflowing can of beer and singing "Hound Dog". They then start taking out sleeping bags and cases of beer and radios and cases of beer and food and cases of beer. And a guitar. The driver of the van is an old man, and he drives away with the van so he can fix it overnight, and the screenplay to give us a roadblock later on. In this one scene, we find out everything we ever want to know about our young characters, mainly that they're douchebags and assholes. But we're going to get a lot more of these scenes throughout the movie.

Among the group is a girl named Joanie, who is obviously going to be the Final Girl of this flick because she's not having as good a time as everyone else. She must feel the same way I do about these assholes. Her shirtless boyfriend (who I'm gonna call Matthew McConaughey, after the actor who also can't get enough of going shirtless) takes her aside and tells her to try to enjoy herself, all the while bouncing his beer can on her head, pulling her shirt open and giving her noogies. We then get this awesome scene where they're walking together past a field while soft 70's lovey dovey music plays and the whole thing plays in one shot. In slow motion. For two minutes and twenty seconds. And at the end, he balances his beer can on her head. Young love.

There's about seven people in this party, three couples and one guy all by his lonesome. You have a now-shirted McConaughey and Joanie, you have this beefy bearded dude and his chick, you have this blonde chick and her boyfriend Tony Orlando With AIDS (which I guess makes him John Oates), and finally you have the one lonely guy, Dead Meat. We watch them all as they party in the den, drinking beer and liquor and dancing along to tunes from the boombox.

There's lots of WOOOO! going on in this motherfucker, and the WOOOO! type of behavior that goes with it. There's also a lot of spitting of drinks and pouring of drinks onto others. At one point, Beefy Beard starts to speak in a lisping gay guy voice, grabs a cowboy hat and uses it to block our view as he goes over to Dead Meat to kiss him. I thought he was only pretending to smooch him as a goof for the others to laugh at, but Dead Meat gets up and freaks out, wiping slobber off his face. You know Beefy Beard is totally one of those guys who makes fun of gays, but can't seem to stop pulling gay stunts with his bros either. The kind of dude who always manages to show his penis to his friends "for a laugh". You wonder about those guys.

Later on, McConaughey and Joanie have a heart-to-heart about his change of heart. You see, they've been together for two years and had plans to get married, but now McConaughey is having second thoughts. If you ask me, "Not Sure" is a great reason not to get married, but then I'm a guy, so I don't know how those without penises (or is that peni?) feel. Joanie doesn't have a penis, so she takes this as meaning that he's not interested in her anymore and wants to see other women. McConaughey steadies her down, telling her that he only wants to be with her, he's just not sure of taking the big step I like to call Ending The Fun.

This dude ain't so bad, he sees the writing on the wall. Even though this was made in the early 80's, this motherfucker probably knows all about Bridezillas and Jon & Kate Plus 8 (or as I like to call it, "The Cunt, The Ball-less Douche, and Their Spawn") and he figures that some great relationships are ruined by putting that shit on paper. I'm telling you man, look at Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. Those motherfuckers are gonna last forever, and that's because they know what's up. They're both divorced from previous marriages and they know all about how hearing the words "I Now Pronounce You Husband and Wife" cause something to change in a couples' psyche for the worst, and that those words might as well be changed to "Begin Countdown to Relationship Oblivion". That's right folks, for the majority of people, marriage is a motherfuckin' timebomb and saying "I Do" is like setting the timer on. And some of these doomed couples actually think having kids is gonna save their marriage. But the truth is that by having kids, all they did was take a guess on the timebomb and cut the blue wire, which causes the timer to speed up. I knew we should've cut the red wire! But it doesn't matter which wire you cut, that motherfucker is going to blow. This isn't Speed, this isn't Blown Away, this is the fuckin' first five minutes of Lethal Weapon 3 and it's going to end with you running away with a cat under your arm as the fucking building (aka Your Marriage) explodes behind you. Now you're divorced, alone, and all you got to keep was the fucking cat. You're too old for this shit.

Speaking of getting old, this Douchebag Debauchery going on the flick certainly is. Our assholes are sitting around a dinner table and GO! GO! GO!-ing Beefy Beard on as he shoves an entire Dagwood-style sandwich into his mouth. He then spits all of it onto Joanie's face. Nice. McConaughey then pours a whole bottle of mustard on her hair. Much screaming and WOOOO!-ing follows, and then a food fight breaks out. After everything I've seen McConaughey do to this chick, I'm pretty fucking sure that Joanie is no stranger to the Dutch Oven treatment from him. Hell, every guy in this movie has probably at one time or another farted in bed and put the blanket over their girl's head. They seem like that type. And that's why I'm going to die lonely while every mustard-pouring, beer can balancing, liquor spitting, WOOOOO! and PAAAARRRRTTYYYYYY! yelling motherfucker is going to die loved.

Later that night, there's more drinking for a while until McConaughey comes up with the idea of holding a seance. They're all down for it, so the lights are turned off and McConaughey begins by first telling a story about Mr. Sledge Hammer. We then watch as the opening scene is played out again in its entirety while McConaughey narrates what we already know. What new stuff we do find out is that the murdered couple had actually been engaging in a extramarital affair. The lady's husband was the prime suspect, but was never charged in the crime. And while the bodies of the couple were eventually discovered, the little boy who was locked in the closet disappeared and never returned. The seance then begins, with McConaughey calling for the spirit of one of the victims to join them. Loud ominous noises are heard, followed by an angry otherworldly voice. Everyone freaks out, but it turns out it's all a prank devised by McConaughey and Dead Meat, who is upstairs controlling the sound and voice with his trusty boombox.

But I guess the seance really worked, because the spirit of Mr. Hammer, looking like a construction worker in his flannel & work boots getup, shows up and turns Dead Meat into his namesake by stabbing him in the neck with a knife. His body is then dragged away while everyone downstairs decides to play charades and drink some more. After a while, Blondie takes Tony Orlando With AIDS upstairs to have a little fun, while McConaughey also goes upstairs to look for Dead Meat. He only finds Dead Meat's boombox and some splattered blood surrounding it, which would completely set off the Something's Not Right alarm, but since he's pretty trashed it comes off kinda muffled and he doesn't react as fast to it. Meanwhile in the next room, Blondie is taking the initiative and trying to get Tony Orlando With AIDS to give her some. After much prying and prodding, it's revealed that Tony Orlando With AIDS is a virgin, and that's why he's been kinda shy with Blondie the whole time. After that, Blondie gets on top and proceeds to tie her yellow ribbons 'round his old oak tree. I have no idea what that means, but I wrote it anyway.

Joanie joins McConaughey upstairs where he tells her about the blood and Dead Meat's disappearance. She tells him he's probably hiding somewhere, pranking him back. She changes her mind, though, after she finds Dead Meat's body in the closet. McConaughey tells her to go find Tony Orlando With AIDS and Blondie while he goes to tell Mr. & Mrs. Beefy Beard.

But there will be no dawn for Tony Orlando With AIDS and his chick, because after completing the deflowerization, they are both killed by Mr. Hammer. Joanie walks in on the aftermath and a chase ensues. Well, maybe "chase" is the wrong word. It's more like she's very slowly followed by Mr. Hammer while she constantly stumbles down the hallway. Joanie manages to get away and run into the rest of her jerk friends downstairs.

The survivors argue about what to do next. The idea of Getting The Fuck Outta Here is shut down by Beefy Beard, who believes it's better to stay and hunt for the killer rather than hiking to the next town (there's that screenplay roadblock I mentioned earlier). It's a good plan, because it ends with that asshole Beefy Beard getting a knife in his back. Mrs. Beefy Beard takes the knife and goes out for revenge, only to suddenly get teleported into a locked room with Mr. Hammer. When McConaughey and Joanie arrive, they find Mrs. Beefy Beard's corpse being repeatedly stabbed by a junior little boy version of Mr. Hammer. I'm guessing that here the kid explains how he can take shape as both a little boy and a big man and why he has teleportation powers, but since he says it way too fast and his voice is altered too much, I couldn't make fuckin' heads or tails of it. There are bloody pentagrams on the wall, though, so I guess it involves dealings with El Diablo or other similar evil spirits. McConaughey goes over to smack this kid around and teach him some manners, but the little boy fuckin' bitchslaps the dude. That moment is so full of Win, it brings a smile to my face just thinking about it.

More chasing and cheesy synthesized music ensues, and it all climaxes with a fight between McConaughey (inexplicably shirtless once again) duking it out with Mr. Hammer. In the end, McConaughey takes Sledge's hammer and bashes his head in, killing the supernatural construction worker. Both McConaughey and Joanie exit the farmhouse and the camera begins to pan away from them, and the movie hasn't faded to black yet, so you're just watching and waiting for the moment that these movies usually end in. The camera continues to pan away, finally moving up to the second story window of the house, and guess who we see staring out of it? Junior Sledge Hammer! DUN DUN DUN! Or in the case of the synth music used in the movie, SQWEEEEEYOWWWNNNN! Roll end credits, and wait till you see what kneeslappers these turn out to be:

Choreography
I.C. KNUN

Locations
MIKE HUNT

Secretary
JAC MEOUGH

Special Sound Effects
I.P. PHREILEE

Here's a couple more that seem a little too on the nose:

Lighting Director
MICHAEL WATT

Edited By
RALPH CUTTER

Of my shot-on-video double feature, I liked this one better than 555, but not by much. I liked the first two-thirds of the flick, but then it gets pretty dull for the last third, which is weird because that's where the real horror stuff happens. The gore isn't much to write home about, and the killer only uses the sledgehammer twice, which is pretty disappointing. It's like if I made a movie called Butcher Knife and out of the ten victims in the flick, the killer strangles seven of them. I wouldn't have an excuse and neither should the makers of Sledgehammer. But it nearly makes up for that shit with the wall-to-wall douchebaggery displayed and all of the WOOOO!-ing and the shit-treating of the women by the menfolk. So while it may fail as a genuine scary movie, it does barely succeed in having enough moments of What The Fuck? and Get The Fuck Outta Here! and Are You Fucking Kidding Me? to make it entertaining for the most part. I figure you can watch this one with some friends and some booze, and by the time it gets boring, you're too drunk by then to care anyway.

Unlike the dude who made 555, the guy who made this flick has gone on to have a career as a filmmaker. He's written and directed over 30 movies, working with Pamela Anderson, Lance Henriksen, Tony Curtis and David Carradine, among others. That's a pretty good step up from shooting Tony Orlando With AIDS on video. The guy found his niche, making low budget B-movies with guns, blood and titties -- the stuff Pure Cinema is made of, if you ask me. David A. Prior is the dude's name, and I've seen quite a few of his flicks. All go well with beer and pizza.

One of my faves was called Mankillers, a chicks-with-guns flick that featured one of the longest painful death scenes I've seen a villain go through. The bad guy in that movie got shot a bunch of times and squealed like a stuck pig for each bullet received. I swear this shit went on for five minutes, he kept popping up and one of the good guys would shoot him and he'd go AAAAAGGGGGHHH and fall to the ground again. I think all the surviving characters managed to pop a cap in him somewhere along the way, and in the end, he still wasn't dead. He got into a car and tried to run over the heroine. But she shot a fuckin' bazooka at him and the whole car exploded -- and he STILL screamed afterwards. That's the kind of suffering and assbeating I thought was missing from Curfew. So good on ya, Mr. Prior. Good on ya for giving the audience what it wants. I raise my Jack & Coke to you and I'd like to see more violence and titties from you in the future, if you please. But for Sledgehammer, I'll only raise my Jack & Coke halfway up.

(Note: I censored one of the moments in the video below, and that's because I'm sure showing one innocent titty is a lot more dangerous to the YouTube Police than showing blood and gore. Sorry.)

The saddest part is that I wasn't kidding about wanting to hit that

Back in the 80's, any struggling/aspiring filmmaker who wanted to make a quick buck could make a horror movie and put that shit out on VHS or Beta. Because back then, video stores were as numerous as McDonald's chains and those places would take ANY movie available just so they could have product to stock their shelves with. The movie didn't even have to be good, it just needed blood, a couple of titties somewhere, and a cool video box cover for suckers to want to rent it. Some filmmakers didn't even let the lack of film stock stop them -- they just shot the whole thing on video.

One such shot-on-video flick is 555, which I watched along with another flick that I'll write about next time. I watched them back-to-back, along with some Jack & Cokes and a bunch of popcorn because I'm a fat drunk.

555 starts out with an old man walking down a beach in the middle of the night, while somewhere nearby two naked guys make out. I'm sorry, that's one guy and one unfortunately heroin-thin and flat-chested girl making out. It isn't long before some guy shows up with a knife, makes quick work of the guy and takes his time with the girl, as they always do in these movies. The old man finds the bodies and the next day he's being questioned in a public access television stage passing itself off as a detective's office. The cops do everything in this room -- eat, sleep, interrogate people, but I guess you have no choice when your police station only consists of one office, one hallway, two detectives, two uniformed cops, and the Captain's voice coming from a speakerphone (I assume he's calling from home).

The detectives are played by guys who look to be at least in their mid-forties, which I found believable compared to the photogenic models they have playing cops nowadays. You got a guy with blow-dried helmet hair, you have the district attorney who looks like a local anchorman and then you got this dude who looks like Todd Barry on crystal meth. Det. Todd Barry is the loose cannon maverick kind of cop while Det. Helmet Hair is the more sensible type. D.A. Anchorman only appears in like three scenes, so fuck him. We find out that the old man is a retired Army colonel, and that's all the cops find out because the questioning goes nowhere. He claims that the killer was a hippie, judging by the way he dressed and looked. Whatever dude, they're all hippies to guys like you. The Colonel is let go, leaving Det. Todd Barry pissed because he's sure the old dude is guilty.

Two more young lovers are getting it on in a van, with the guy saying such sexy things like "Ohhhh, yeah that's it, don't stop. Uhhhh pleeeeease, unnnnhhhh" and then the chick opens up her blouse and takes one breast out like she's gonna give milk to her baby and the guy's reaction to this is to put both hands over his chest, shake his head back and forth and go "Unnnnhhhh!", like he doesn't want it. They cuddle up and the chick goes on about how she can't wait until after they graduate so they can get married(!) and have more nights alone together without worrying about her parents coming home. The guy responds with "Yeah, and no more gettin' it on in a van neither!". He's got that right, because the killer shows up and knifes the dude across the back of the neck. He then ties up the chick and cuts her up while she screams the same exact dubbed scream they used on the previous lady victim.

Let's talk about that repeatedly used scream. It sounds like they got a 50-year old former opera singer who has since gone to seed and destroyed her voice with alcohol abuse and too many cigarettes to do it. Or, they got a fat dude to scream in as high a pitch as possible. Either one sounds about right. What makes it worse is that apparently the filmmakers did not instruct their screamer to cry out in pain, but rather told him or her to scream in reaction to the on-screen events. That's two completely different kinds of screaming. It's amusing, to say the least.

Dissolve to the next morning as our cops are at the crime scene, looking over the bodies. Looks like there's a serial killer on the loose, one whose M.O. is to kill love-making couples and then have sex with the female's dead body afterwards. Yup. The scene is intruded upon by the kind of Nosy Lady Reporter who always show up in these flicks. It goes exactly the way you'd think it would go; she asks the cops questions, they tell her to go fuck herself, she gives them some lip, and they have her escorted out of the premises. How much you wanna bet she does that whole "The people have a right to know!" routine as she's being walked out?

Now a word on the Nosy Reporter. Like the cops in this flick, she also appears to be pushing fifty. She's got that extra heft that only middle-age brings to a person, and her neck and chin blend in like mine does. She looks like my third grade teacher, minus the granny glasses. She looks like someone who likes to gossip with the other moms in the neighborhood. She even sounds her age. Look, I know I'm an asshole, I'm just saying that this is one of those flicks where the reporter should be a hot chick in her mid-twenties. I know that probably doesn't make it realistic, but that's just how it is in these flicks and they're not doing it that way here. Which is not to say that a woman pushing 50 can't be hot, because I've seen my fair share of very attractive mature women. I'm just saying that this lady ain't one of them. Calm down, I'm simply judging her by YOUR standards, not mine. I'm so fucking horny and in desperate need of getting laid that I would definitely hit that and come back for seconds. But any other red-blooded male or lesbian under 30? No dice.

The District Attorney digs her though, in fact it's public knowledge that she and him know each other rather intimately. You get the sense that's the only reason the cops don't just straight out smack her. They figure their boy D.A. Anchorman has that shit under control, especially when he admits he's only sleeping with her because literally being in bed with the press has its advantages. Too bad Ms. Nosy Reporter hears all of this while eavesdropping on him.

By the way, is it Cat-Fucking-Season right about now? I ask because as I write this, some cat is going MMMMMOOOOOOOOWWWWWWRRRRRRRR outside and freaking me out. The sound is coming closer and closer towards my shack. If the cat's in heat then that's okay, it's just looking for another cat. Otherwise, the only other possible answer is that there's a Devil Cat coming to feast on my immortal soul and I really hope that isn't the case here.

So Todd Barry and Helmet Hair go to the Colonel's house to question him some more, and when they find a collection of knives and swords in the next room, the colonel loses his cool and kicks them out. Looks like they got themselves a prime suspect. He isn't, though, just so you know. After they leave, Ms. Nosy Reporter arrives and gets on the Colonel's good side by showing off her matronly figure and letting him shove his face into her breasts. A make-out session follows. If you like watching old people swap spit, then you came to the right place, my man. At least they look compatible, which is easy since they're probably no more than ten years apart in age. In the end, this scene doesn't do anything for the movie but show that Ms. Nosy Reporter is not above whoring herself out just to land The Big Scoop.

As the movie progresses, we get a better look at the killer. He wears a long-sleeved floral pattern shirt, has long unkempt hair and a long beard to match, making him look a little bit like Peter Jackson if he went nuts and disappeared halfway through production on Lord of the Rings. Mr. Jackson finds another couple bumping uglies in some graffiti-covered shack and while the girl takes a bathroom break, he chops the dude's fingers and head off. It's a pretty nifty effect actually, but I was slightly more interested in the graffiti in the background, specifically the big "555". It's cool to see a movie promote itself like that. When the girl comes back, Peter Jackson does the tie-her-up and slice-her-up thing he likes to do, then we're treated to the sad sight of him fucking her corpse.

It's really depressing, because the way he's lazily humping her and the way she just lies there motionless reminds me of the last couple of girls I slept with. They were just doing me a favor and you can tell they had other things on their mind, meanwhile I'm thinking that I'm some fuckin' stud, a stud with a fat hairy belly bumping against their navel while giving them such hot dirty talk as "Is that good? Am I doing all right? Is that okay? Do you like that?" said in the most pathetically eager-to-please voice possible. Fucking sad.

The detectives find out that Peter Jackson has been a bad boy for a much longer time than originally suspected. The Captain informs them that Jackson has been traveling around the country for about twenty years, and every five years he's killed five couples over the course of five nights. 555, get it? The reason the detectives didn't know about this until now is because it's been kept on the DL in all of the affected cities so as not to cause any copycat killings. Now he's here and has killed three couples so far, leaving the cops only two nights to stop the motherfucker before losing him for another five years.

Well, make that one night to stop him, because now we're watching another couple in a bedroom doing some pre-coital chatting. The dude resembles Mitch Hedberg circa 1999 and the girl reminds me of the kind of chicks I used to jerk off to on the Spice Channel (thanks cable descrambler!). Come to think of it, this whole movie looks like a porno, only with all the XXX scenes taken out. Kinda like what they did to my boys' stag film in Bachelor Party. What's that line, "I usually don't like my filth this clean"? That movie was awesome, definitely Tom Hanks' best flick, his purest work before he got all Oscar-friendly playing gay dudes and retards. Anyway, our couple hears a noise, so Mitch Hedberg gets up and takes a knife with him to check on the noise. A few seconds later, he returns with an even bigger knife shoved into his throat. Upon seeing this, the girl starts screaming with a smile on her face, then takes the idea of a "security blanket" literally. Stab stab stab die die die. End of scene.

Okay, I'm hearing more of the MMMOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW now, but it sounds like there's also another slightly less freaky MOOOWWW joining it, so I guess it's just two cats about to fuck. Good, that means my soul is safe for now. Those cats in heat remind me of something that happened when I was 11 or 12. My buddy Jerry was spending the night at my house and after all the pizza and video games, we decided it was time to hit the hay. And to suck each other's cocks. Disregard that last part, I was just trying to beat you assholes to the punch. Anyway, about ten minutes later we hear a bunch of cats in heat doing their whole mating call in the backyard. It was fucking exaggerated how loud and crazy these cats were going, like the backyard was filled with the feline equivalent of drunk fratboys looking for some sorority snatch. If these cats had opposable thumbs, they'd probably be holding up little plastic cups of beer yelling the Cat version of WOOOO! or PAAAARRRRTYYYYY! like they're doing right now. Suddenly, I hear someone in the house walk down the hall and all the way to the back door. It's my mother, who then opens the door and angrily tells the cats in Spanish to get out of the yard. The cats stop. It gets completely quiet. Then out of the far end of the yard, one of the cats goes RRREEEERRRR! which I'm guessing is Cat for "Shut up, bitch!". Jerry and I started busting up, it was so funny. We laughed so much, we couldn't sleep after that. So we went back to playing video games and sucking each other's cocks.

Ms. Nosy Reporter breaks into the detectives' office and goes through their files. She finds out that the killer is actually District Attorney Anchorman, so she tells the two cops and they all go together to find the crazy bastard before he commits the final murder. Well, Big Massive Fail on that plan because the next shot consists of a bloody naked dead man on the floor, a helpless tied-up woman next to him, and Peter Jackson/Anchorman standing over them both with his knife. He slices her up a bit and then cuts her throat. Then he has sex with the dead body.

Police sirens are heard approaching, which causes Peter Jackson/Anchorman to stop mid-hump, look up at the sky and scream "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!". He then continues raping the dead girl. I think the idea was supposed to be that he realizes that the police have arrived and he has to hurry, but it comes off more like he's part Dog and the sirens hurt his ears momentarily.

These fucking cops, man. The rest of the time they'd been spending the movie talking and talking and talking and talking in that shitty office of theirs. They'd been having leisurely lunches at some hot dog joint that was bigger and more populated than their own police station. They'd been taking naps in that goddamn office with a bottle of booze to keep them company. They'd been trading important dialogue like how long before one should buy the other a ham sandwich for lunch. Only after ALL of that boring shit do they finally get on the ball and even then it was the fucking reporter who broke the case. And did I mention the killer succeeded in killing his five couples? These cops fucking suck.

A short foot chase ensues, ending when Peter Jackson/Anchorman is trapped behind a fence he apparently didn't think was worth climbing. Both detectives catch up and blow the necrophiliac motherfucker away. Ms. Nosy Reporter goes over and kicks the dead son-of-a-bitch, less likely for all the victims and more likely for all the shit he talked about her behind her back. She and her men then walk away, I assume to go eat some more hot dogs and ham sandwiches. We then watch a repeat of the murder scenes intercut with D.A. Anchorman lying dead in the street. Roll credits and cue porn music.

The story goes that this movie came together after some dude supposedly told his wife one day that he could make a better horror movie than some of the shit that'd been stinking up the local video store, so he got some cash and some friends together and made this lovely movie. I give him points for having gotten off his ass and actually making something, but that's about it. The end credits promote future productions from the dude but it never happened, and since he died in 2006, it never will.

I first heard about this movie on some movie forum, where they lumped it in with other shot-on-video trash faves like Boardinghouse. Now THAT movie was real good times, so I figured 555 would be along the same lines. But it was actually kind of a chore for me to watch, even with the booze. It's about 80 minutes, but the gore scenes and preciously few funny moments are padded out with shit like a guy taking his shoes off and laying down on a couch, then getting back up, walking over to a drawer, opening it, pulling out a pillow, going all the way back to his couch, making himself comfortable, taking a quick drink from a bottle of booze, then going to sleep. Other movies can and have made such routine shit watchable, but this flick isn't one of them. They talk talk talk in this motherfucker, and once you get over the hair and clothing styles, you're just watching boring stuff being told in a boring setting -- that goddamn bland office of theirs.

The video box really tries to sell the gore on you, with lines on the cover like "SHOT IN BLOOD-VIVID VIDEO for your VIEWING PLEASURE" and "Caution: Viewing may cause severe damage to your brain cells". I love that. It brings back memories of being a little kid and going with my family to the local mom-and-pop joint like Video Flicks or Electric Video and freaking out at all the movies in the Horror section. They all had awesome covers and they all convinced a 6-year-old me that Satan himself would come out of the screen and pull me into Hell if I watched any of these movies. My parents would never let me rent them, but luckily I grew up with two teenage girls in the house who lived on horror movies and had no problem warping my fragile little mind with them. But the truth was that for every good horror/slasher flick, there were also ten shitty wastes-of-time that failed to cover anything the boxes promised you. There was a silver lining to this cloud, however -- if the movie made up for the lack of scares or gore with the kind of unintentional laughs and moments of absurdity that only the best of the worst can give you, it was worth it. Going by that scale, there ain't enough of either to make 555 worth it.

(The following contains violence, language, and mature woman cleavage)