Kinda young, kinda wow

Hello lady and gentleman, thanks for stopping by. So a while back I rambled about watching the insane Night Train to Terror during the New Beverly Cinema's horror movie marathon. It's a horror anthology that consists of three stories that made little to no sense, because the stories were actually trimmed-down versions of feature-length films written and produced by an Academy Award-winning screenwriter named Philip Yordan, who ended up spending the 80s and early 90s writing/producing low-budget flicks that ended up getting shelved or barely released. One of the stories is titled Gretta, about a guy who gets mixed up with a girl who leads him into a secret club of wealthy assholes who get together every once in a while to play dangerous games that will end in death for the "winner".

I enjoyed that movie so much, I ended up purchasing it on Blu-ray (from the good folks at Vinegar Syndrome). As an added bonus, it came with a DVD featuring the full-length version of Gretta, which was previously made available on DVD and VHS under the titles Death Wish Club and Carnival of Fools. It has yet another title on the IMDB as The Dark Side to Love and the Vinegar Syndrome DVD version opens with the onscreen title of Erskine Caldwell's Gretta and I'm like make up your goddamn mind, movie -- WHOOOO ARRRRRRE YOOOOOU?!

But hey, let's hold up a second. Erskine Caldwell's "Gretta"? Yup, this is supposedly an adaptation of the 1955 book from the author of Tobacco Road. I actually own the book, but I never bothered reading it until I decided to ramble about this flick. So what's it about? It's about 144 pages *rimshot*, making Gretta one of the faster ways to feel sad. Now, if you want to read it, skip the following five paragraphs, otherwise shut your goddamn trap about SPOILERS and read on:

It's a three-part story about a young woman (Gretta) who has fucking had it with having her soul get the shit beat out of it by that cruel motherfucker Loneliness, so she ends up going to a bar, meets some random dude, they go to her place, and they bang. Then in part two, the story skips ahead about half-a-year or so and Gretta is now newly married to a doctor named Glenn and everything seems hunky-dory until they throw a party and one of the guests, a fellow doctor named Royd, gets drunk/belligerent and makes it very clear that he once knew Gretta in the biblical sense, back when she was as easy as pie. Hair pie. 

Turns out that pre-marriage Gretta used to take dude after dude from the bar to her place, where she'd bang them and then kindly request that they would leave money on the table as a "gift" to her. After Royd lets this cat out of the bag, Gretta gets really emotional and is afraid that Glenn wants nothing to do with her, but he insists that none of that shit matters because it's all in the past and now they have each other. Except it's not quite in the past yet; fuckin' Royd shows up to hassle Gretta while Glenn is at work, he gives her a hard time and demands that she run off with him. She refuses, so Royd does the right thing and puts a bullet into his stupid pig head, because really, fuck that guy.

Glenn continues to stand by his girl, until one day he comes home from work and Gretta confesses to him that she just slept with another man earlier that afternoon. Poor motherfucker didn't even have a chance to relax and watch some TV before she hit him with that bad news. So while he's trying to figure this shit out without losing his own shit, Gretta explains to him that when she was a little girl with recently deceased parents, she followed some predator to his house where he charmed her by way of food and games, before taking her to his bedroom where he did his evil thing and then gave her a nickel afterward as some kind of perverted gift of gratitude; this basically fucked Gretta up enough that now as an adult she needs to recreate that experience by bringing home random dudes and asking them to TREAT HER THE SAME WAY THE PEDOPHILE PIECE OF SHIT WHO RUINED HER DID. Ay Dios Mio.

This, of course, takes their marriage straight to Fuckedville; Gretta begs Glenn not to divorce her, but he becomes increasingly despondent knowing that no matter what he does and no matter how often Gretta begs him to stay, chances are that his wife will continue to make money the hard way. Not wanting to break his promise of never divorcing her, Glenn finds another way out of this stickiness -- he kills himself. That now makes two former Gretta lovers driven to suicide; meanwhile I bet you the guy who fucked her up as a kid is currently living a contented life with a family or something.

Part three takes Gretta back to the bar, newly widowed, still lonely, and back on the prowl. She ends up taking a dude to her place and the book ends with her doing the same routine she's done on other guys before making with the sexytime: she sits on the floor and takes her stockings off while the man stands in front of her, just like she did for the kid-diddler back in the day. For the first time in a long time, she smiles. The End (of book SPOILERS you big baby). 

The main thing the book and the film have in common is Nothing. Two of the film's characters share names with their literary counterparts; you have Gretta who likes to get it on, and you have Glen, who is not a doctor like in the book, but a pre-med student in college. And his name is spelled minus one N. But I'm getting ahead of myself here, let me talk about the third main character in the movie, some rich asshole named George Youngmeyer.

The film opens with middle-aged George wearing an ascot and smoking jacket and looking at himself in the mirror like he's the fuckin' man, and I guess he is because the dude is financially loaded. But he inherited it all from his rich mother, so he ain't that awesome. If George had been born much later, like in the late 80s/early 90s, he'd probably be one of those useless walking meatbags like the Rich Kids of Instagram that post photos of themselves living their awesome lifestyles because this is all part of God's plan somehow while some nice family somewhere starves. Mysterious ways and all that.

Deep in my heart, I know these kids aren't good people, the most I'll give them is that they're dumb unaware twats. One of these useless lambs actually said in an interview that by posting those pics of himself posing in his expensive sports car or yacht or house, he was doing a service to the younger kids by showing them what they can get if they work hard for it -- conveniently forgetting that he was born into this wealth and the only work this cunt probably did in his entire blessed life was filing papers one summer at one of the many businesses his father was fucking over the planet Earth with, before getting bored after a couple hours and taking off in his Lambo.

Shit, if I had that kind of money...I'd have that fuckin' money, man. It's not like I want to buy flashy cars or bling bling or any of that shit, I just want to buy a fuckin' island where I can live the rest of my life away from everyone else and not bother anybody again. Basically I want to live like Francisco Scaramanga -- minus Nick Nack trying to kill me.

Anyway, George is also the narrator of the film, which is pretty cool because you have an asshole narrating his point-of-view while the events unfold. George refers to Glen as the snake in the Garden of Eden even though Glen seems like an all right dude. But again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

George calls himself "the last of the great lovers", which I assume is a title he gave himself. The film begins with George going to a carnival in search of someone to love, provided she doesn't love him back. I still don't get it, but that's a big thing for him. The lucky lady turns out to be Gretta, a popcorn vendor at the carnival. She's a tough sell for about two seconds before George begins speaking the international language of Love by shoving multiple $100 bills into her cleavage. Cut to George's mansion, where our man is playing Nocturne no. 2 on his grand piano before being interrupted by Gretta as she slinks up to him while eating an ice cream cone. She then uses her free hand to play something more fast and upbeat before declaring "I'm glad Chopin's DEAD!"

I gotta give it up to Miss Gretta; here's a girl who pretty much won the lottery by hooking up with a wealthy man, and she doesn't even have to fuck him or even like him, he just wants her company. But rather than rake in the dough for not being a ho, she keeps busy by playing piano at a nightclub he owns. And if that's not enough, George tells us that Gretta always wanted to be a movie star, so he made that happen by getting her into porno. Some fuckin' favor. Usually these rich dudes bankroll movies for their trophy chicks to ruin with their bad acting, while all George probably had to do was look up some ad in the back of a stroke mag.

The fucked up thing about these porno flicks Gretta acts in is that they're all about guys forcing themselves on her, doing her against her will until she eventually enjoys it. Not a single one of these joints is about her calling up some hot pizza delivery guy or cable guy with the ulterior motive of Gettin' It On, they all start with her struggling against some dude pawing her and ripping her clothes off or tying her up and all other various situations that I would never try to reenact on my private island with all my money.

Was that something Gretta specified in her request for porn work? Like some chicks do anal, some only do lesbian scenes, but Gretta was like "The more rapey, the better!"? I don't know, but Gretta's an odd duck. Sure, both Book Gretta and Movie Gretta both have holes in their souls and anatomy that require constant filling, but Movie Gretta likes it rough. The filmmakers seem to like it rough too, I think they find nothing wrong with a little forced entry; a couple times in the film, rape is brought up as a solution to a problem. As for what this problem is, I won't tell because this is the kind of movie you should just let surprise you, even though I'm giving away like the first 15-20 minutes of it here.

So now let's bring back our boy Glen. He's painted as the ideal young stud because he's good-looking, used to be in the Army, is currently studying for a medical career, plays on the football team, and most important of all, owns both a motorcycle AND a 70s van. He's introduced joining his frat buddies at a party that is in full douche-swing, and what stood out the most for me at this party was that most of them were gathered around a portable movie screen watching one of Gretta's porno films on honest-to-goodness projected film! Those were the days -- right, fellas? (This film was shot in 1983/84.)

Nah, I've never seen actual cinema porn in the way it was intended, and I can count all the times I watched porn with my friends on one hand (don't ask what I'm doing with the other hand), and the last time I watched porn in a group, I didn't even ask to take part. Years ago, when my future had promise, I was at a party at a friend's house and as I was stepping out of the bathroom, I noticed a small gathering of bros down the hall, so I walked up to them to see what the commotion was all about. They were peering into one of the bedrooms, where my friend's roommate -- absolutely shitfaced hammered -- was happily showing off his collection of clips involving various women's faces being messily introduced to millions upon millions of extinguished lives that never were.

Thankfully, Gretta's porn adventures are missing that endgame. Instead, she's being attacked and raped by someone who appears to be Davy Crockett, which makes me feel better about the Alamo. (But to be fair, I already feel pretty goddamn good about the Alamo, being a goddamn spic and all.) While Glen's buddies are all getting crotch-tight at this film, he actually falls in love at the sight of this violated lady. But why? Aside from her obvious visual qualities, I would guess that Glen senses some kind of unexplainable connection after looking into her eyes, when they're not being blocked by Porn Davy Crockett's head while he's humping her. Maybe he also thinks he can save her from this sweaty career, not knowing that she actually is cool with being a porn star in rapey stag films.

Glen gets so smitten with Gretta, he tracks down the filmmakers behind these opuses (opusi?) and finds out who/where she is. He then goes down to George's nightclub, gets himself acquainted with George (who warns him not to get involved because Gretta "is from the 4th dimension") and then goes backstage -- located downstairs in a kind of strange paradise of rejects from Fellini and John Waters films -- to finally meet the girl of his dreams. It's pretty funny to watch because you know he probably had this image of her as this damsel-in-distress in need of saving, but instead encounters a foul-mouthed sexual libertine with a taste for absinthe (which she drinks from a straw) who is more interested in fucking Glen while George watches, than in going out to dinner with him ("I only eat one meal a day, and it ain't dinner." Gretta is apparently into intermittent fasting.)

Plus, she's a fucking weirdo, in case I haven't made that clear in these ramblings. But I'll keep bringing it up anyway.

The rest of the film is a strange love story between Glen and Gretta; he isn't so cool with her job in the porn industry, but he puts up with it. He's also kind of annoyed by the relationship she continues to have with George, but he puts with that too. Glen in general is pretty low-key in his slightly baffled reactions to everything going on around him and dealing with the people that work for George, like a gay dude who calls himself Mary who at one points visits Glen in the morgue to relay a message to him while scoping out some dead dong ("What a waste!"), or getting himself sucked into George's underworld friends who together have formed the most exclusive and dangerous of secret clubs.

As mentioned earlier, this subplot about the secret club is what the Night Train to Terror version of Gretta was about. In Night Train to Terror, this story comes off like an episode of Tales from the Crypt or The Hitchhiker on crystal meth (with added gore to the otherwise clean deaths in the Gretta cut). But in the full-length Gretta, the "death club" is just another oddball fabric used in the crazy patchwork quilt of drama, romance, comedy, sex, and violence that is this film.

In addition to George and Gretta, the death club (which I don't recall being referred to by name in the full-length version) is comprised of bored wealthy assholes who get together to stage death games, like sitting in a closed room while a deadly poisonous beetle flies around, waiting to see if any of them will get the fatal sting that will send them to the next world. The way they talk about it (using terms like "exquisite ecstasy") and the way they act the closer they get to dying, they appear to get off on it in a sex-type way. Like I said -- assholes. Although to be fair to these assholes, they've all had a near-death experience in the past (it's required to be a member of the club), so at least they know what they're fucking with here: DEATH, MUTHAFUCKA!

Enough of that shit. Anyway, George isn't kidding about Gretta being from the 4th dimension, I mean that would explain a lot of her wacko behavior in this movie. The only backstory that could possibly explain her ways is that back in the day, she narrowly escaped being the latest victim of a serial killer. But the movie happily hops/skips/jumps past that point, which it does often with other details. Somewhere along the way,  Gretta undergoes a serious change in character that suggests -- without actually declaring -- that she suffers from some kind of Dissociative Personality Disorder. Man oh man, I'd love to tell you more about it but you really need to see it for yourself.

That's right, lady and gentleman, I am highly recommending this wonderfully strange film. It certainly has issues and is far from perfect. But shit man, no film is perfect. No film. Even that one that you love so much has a problem or two. If anyone tells you different, they are deluded liars. That's just how it is, cuz. I can see someone calling this a bad movie, or a so-bad-it's-good movie, but I genuinely like this very entertaining film, this film that would be in the Cult section of Hollywood Video if we were living in 1996.

But yeah it's got flaws like a muthafucka, the kind of flaws you'd have to be a kindhearted soul like this asshole rambling at you to not give a shit about. Like, of course, the couple times where rape is seen as a justified means to an end is disconcerting to say the least. And another problem with this movie is the way some characters just pop in and out of the proceedings without even a hint of a setup, or the giant narrative gaps that you'll have to fill in yourself with the power of your vast imagination.

According to the way-too-brief audio interview with assistant editor Wayne Schmidt on the DVD, there were reedits, additional scenes, and narration added after the original shoot, which would explain the occasional feeling that this shit's being made up as it goes along. I mean, even the Death Club stuff feels like it can be lifted out entirely and you can still tell the same story. But thank the movie gods for Philip Yordan's fascinating mind and his apparent inability to say "Uh, maybe we shouldn't do that". Yordan was more like "FUCK THAT SHIT LET'S MAKE FUN OF THE DRAG QUEEN, LET'S HAVE AN OLD JEWISH COUPLE LISTEN IN ON SEX, AND LET'S PUT A FIGHT SCENE HERE WITH BAD GUYS STRAIGHT OUT OF A RETRO ARCADE GAME".

And hey, you can't hate on a guy who casts himself as a creepy perv at a porn theater. Or who knows, maybe Yordan didn't think his character was creepy. What else? Oh yeah, I also really liked the music; there's a nice piano theme that plays through most of the movie, and then some scenes will go with some totally 80s synth tracks that sound like they come from some movie about fraternity bros playing sports or something. And then some of the other synth tracks sound like porn.

Some of the acting is a little ripe, but I guess Salt Lake City, Utah (where this film was shot) wasn't particularly fertile acting ground at the time. I don't care, man. Good times is good muthafuckin' times, and I certainly had them with this fuckin' flick. And the only acting you need to concern yourself with is the one-of-a-kind performance from the actress playing Gretta, one Ms. Merideth Haze.

I know some of this behavior is a result of Philip Yordan's crazy screenplay, but goddamn, I think a lot of it comes from Lady Haze herself. I kind of ended up like Glen in the movie, finding myself entranced by this sexy nutter with the very expressive face and the balls to go with the least safe acting choice in every scene. I wanted to know more about her, so I looked her up and unfortunately this is her only credit as an actress. She left on a high note, though. If you were to tell me that after this film, Ms. Haze got a sex change and changed her name to Nicolas Cage, I'd be hard-pressed not to believe you. I can totally see that happening because she shares that same fearless approach with Cage, where the results are either really good or really bad or both at the same time -- but never, ever boring.

I can't give short shrift to Rick Barnes, the dude who plays Glen. He's got the straight man role here and it works well in contrast to Haze's goes-to-11 performance. Part of me wonders how much of what he does here is an actual performance and how much of it is him being genuinely bemused at the kind of movie this is. And I'm surprised J. Martin Sellers didn't make a career out of playing assholes like George, but then again, this movie never got a proper release so maybe he would have had a shot at a movie career if people actually saw this movie.

According to a commenter on IMDB, Merideth Haze did not transform into Nicolas Cage. She got married and now runs a talent agency. As far as I'm concerned, Merideth Haze IS a walking talent agency. Ms. Haze, I salute you, wherever and whoever you are. "I'M A FISH!" indeed.

So yeah, man. Check this flick out. If you don't want to get the Night Train Blu-ray, you can get the Death Wish Club version on DVD which is a slightly different edit (the differences are very minor, I'm told). If you don't like the movie, then I don't know what to say, other than I didn't promise you shit. All I said is that I liked it. And I do, man. I liked this movie very much.

In conclusion, if you wanna eat popcorn at the porno theater, that's fine. But c'mon man, don't eat a fuckin' hot dog. There's people trying to covertly jerk off in here and you're eating tube steak. That's off-putting.

(There be major spoilers here, but honestly, this is definitely more about the journey and not the destination, so I'm cool sharing this video with you poor unsuspecting souls)

Entropy and the livin' is easy

As I drove down Melrose, I noticed a bus stop ad for the new film The Other Woman, starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Upton, and the Rebecca Pidgeon of comedy, Leslie Mann. I instantly felt a twinge of sympathy for the men going to see this with their significant others, but hey, that's part of the deal. If Jane Average with her love of rom-coms had to sit through The Raid 2, then Joe Average with his love of ownage has to sit through this bullshit.

Me, I'm neither Joe or Jane Average. I'm Juan Weirdo, who long ago turned Loneliness into Solitude, and thanks to my freedom via unattachment I can do last minute things like attend a midnight showing of Death Promise from The Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles. Which is what I did.

Some things will never go away: while I waited in line, I counted the first of many party vehicles of the evening that would speed down Fairfax while one of the Dude-Bros inside would scream/yell/WOOO at us. They were young, HBO's Entourage was becoming a feature film, and the potential of late night digital insertion into various females was high. Life was good and the night was theirs.

Live your lives, gentlemen, and enjoy every moment -- because one day it will all be gone, you will be gone, and all that will remain to inform future generations of your past existence is the faint lingering trace of AXE Body Spray in the air. Smell on my scent, ye mighty, and despair! 

You know what, I can't even dog on AXE Body Spray, because of some really sad shit. A couple years ago, I got a free sample of AXE in the mail and I decided Why Not? and put that shit on. I ended up seeing my mother for lunch that afternoon, and upon our greet-hug she stopped to ask me what I was wearing because IT SMELLED NICE AND MAYBE SHE CAN GET SOME FOR MY FATHER. I immediately excused myself, went home, and had one of those Tobias Fünke showers where I cried the deepest tears. I had plenty of soap but nothing could scrub away the pain and filth within.

But at least I showered, motherfucker. Thrice I had to inhale the stench of B.O. from my fellow movie geeks inside the theater while waiting for the film to begin; the first couple times came from a dude who left his seat to get popcorn and returned, the third was from another guy walking up the aisle. I don't give a shit what excuse they might have, if they have one -- to me sharing your stink bespeaks a kind of hostility that deserves to be met with nothing less than a firehose straight out of the 1960s Deep South.

The Honorable Phil Blankenship presided over the screening; he seemed pretty jazzed about so many people showing up to a screening of a damn-near forgotten grindhouse joint from 1977 that probably never even made it past 42nd Street during its run. He talked about how the director of the film, Robert Warmflash, lived in New York City and couldn't make it but gave us his regards. Death Promise was his only feature as a director; Warmflash has since gone on to a successful career as a post-production supervisor on films like Capturing the Friedmans, Like Water for Chocolate, and The Cove. He then asked the audience how many had seen this film before and I counted about 3 hands and one WOOO, so this large crowd was going into it fresh.

Phil then politely requested us to not MST3k the movie, which I totally understood. I mean sometimes they're bad but there's enough going on in the film that you don't have to supply your own jokes, the shit is funny enough as is. Give it a chance -- hell, the movie might actually be some legit good shit, for all you know. But some motherfuckers are all like HWAAAAW HWAAAAW HWAAAAW SO FAWCKIN' STOOOPID from frame one and I'm like It's just the opening credits! Nothing's happened yet!

But in the case of Death Promise, shit's going down as soon as the opening credits begin because while visually we're being introduced to our heroes jogging through 70s New York, aurally we're being introduced to the awesome theme song to the film, courtesy of a group named Opus. The song -- hell, just listen for yourself:



I'm surprised that the song was never co-opted by some local news program for their investigative consumer reports in the 1980s. I can see Judd McIllvain or David Horowitz or that gruff old man who used to be on CBS but I can't remember his name being intro'd with this tune, standing with their arms crossed because it's their life mission to Fight For Your Rights:

"Have you been ripped off? Sold a bill of goods? Hoodwinked by scam artists? My name is Stern McConfrontation and this is "That's a Promise!" where I will fight for your rights as a consumer and teach these criminals that you can't get away with betraying the trust of the public -- and that's a promise!"

The film stars martial artists Charles Bonet and Speedy Leacock, playing Charley and Speedy, the best of friends who like to jog together and spar together and put their arms around each other whenever possible. Not one to be left out of the arms-around-each-other game is Charley's father, Louis, a former boxer who has just about had it with the conditions of the fucked up slum apartment he and his son live in.

Life in New York City was hard in the 1970s, on account of all the pimps and the C.H.U.D.s. But as the helpful narrator informs us, it was even worse for low-income families living in shitty apartments owned by rich asshole landlords who are all about making as much money as possible. The easiest way to do that is to make the already difficult life of your average poor renter even worse by frequently shutting off the gas, water, and electricity, that way the tenants will have no choice but to move out. Then the landlords can rent out the place for a higher price or tear it down and put up some new shit. Our main characters live in one such targeted building and things have been heating up between them and the evil landlords that form the Iguana Realty Company.

Charley and Louis have to deal with hired goons coming in and fucking up the works on purpose with smuggled rats or sad attempts at arson that result in cartoony explosions straight out of The Executioner Part II. The rat smuggling is awesome because it starts out with two of these goons walking into the building and one of them is holding a medium sized box, followed by a sudden cut to a close-up insert of a rat's face, then it cuts back to the guys walking inside the apartment building. Kuleshov in full effect, homie -- replace the rat shot with a shot of a birthday cake or a stack of cash or tubes of KY Jelly and you'd have a completely different scene each time.

These situations usually end with Charley and/or Speedy kicking some ass and then turning into Brock Landers with their fists primed for another punch and demanding to know "Who sent you?!" from the defeated, then Louis will have to jump in and tell them to ease up because they're just, you know, hired goons. And he's right; while the scumbag landlords are later revealed to have cops and bodyguards protecting them, the people sent to the buildings to cause trouble appear to be amateurs who are just as desperate as the tenants themselves.

I actually felt bad for these baddies, despite being the kind of jerks who like to pick on old people while doing their job, knocking off hats and shit. And while it's super fun to see them get theirs while some onlooker points at them and yells "Yeah kick his ass!", they always end up looking way-too-pussied out when they're helpless on the ground with their hands up, begging Charley or Speedy not to give them no-budget facial reconstruction because they were given $10 to do this simple but morally wrong task. They don't even know who they're working for, they just need the bread (to buy some bread, I guess).

God damn. The shit a person will pull to put food on the table, even if it means fucking up your own people (racially or class-wise). It's easy to say that you would never burn your fellow man while the lights are still on and the fridge is full. But take that shit away and watch how fast your scruples head for the fuckin' hills, leaving you behind. Shit, I'll flambé a whole fuckin' school bus full of blind children if you'll promise me free gasoline for life.

Where you really want to deliver the ass-beatings, Louis tells Charley and Speedy, is to the men who run the Iguana Realty Company and are paying off the poor to fuck up the other poor. They are human garbage in expensive suits, these one-dimensional asshole fucks from the 1% who gleefully share their plans with each other about what they're gonna do with their future earnings as a result of demolishing the old tenement and putting up some new shit. They'll talk shit about the tenants being spoiled by welfare, which to me sounds like self-justification to help them get a full night's sleep on their giant comfortable beds in their big houses. Not even Joe Pesci in The Super was this big a scumbag.

Our head villains are a mixed group of WASP, Conservative White Man, Black, Italian, and Jewish dudes from different walks of life and lines of work. For example, the Black brother is a drug dealer with a taste for naked desperate women, and the Italian paisan is a Mafioso with a taste for archery. (I only assume the Jewish guy is Jewish because he plans to move to Miami; he could be Cuban for all I know.) While the WASP appears to be the main dude, he has his own higher up to answer to, some scary unknown Mr. Big whose face we don't see until the end. What we do see is his arm as he pets his always meowing/always purring black cat, because that's what Big Bosses do. By the way, as far as I'm concerned, black cats are the only cats. I used to have a black cat, and then later I got a black dog. I'm like the Robert De Niro of pet owners over here.

Iguana's attempts at emptying out that building are roadblocked by Louis, who is just too pure a human being to accept a payoff from them to look the other way. So you know what's going to happen next. You fuckin' know what's going to happen next. Even Louis knows what's going to happen because he ends up writing a letter to his son in the highly unlikely event of his death-by-murder, naming those that are surely responsible. You fuckin' know that letter is going to get read eventually. And you know a promise will be made by Charley -- a Death Promise -- to right those wrongs with beautiful violence. And lady and gentleman, he and this film keep this promise.

I don't want to give away too much, but there's a DVD available and if you get it, you should watch this movie with friends and your drink/smoke of choice. It's an incredibly entertaining revenge picture that mixes 70s chopsocky action and good ol' fashioned wish-fulfillment with just a touch of twisted grindhouse sadism, as you watch these smug rich assholes get theirs. It's also goofy as fuck, man.

The performances are mostly of the incredibly low-budget variety; the martial artist leads are pretty shaky as actors but their likability really goes a long way here. Charles Bonet reminded me of a young Tomas Milian, had he been in one of those body-switching movies with young Henry Winkler. Speedy Leacock actually has a nice little moment of thespian-ing where he states his case as to why he should be the one to take out the Black landlord, delivering his lines with a confident flow that was more or less absent from the rest of his performance. The lines may have been scripted or partially ad-libbed, but it's obvious Leacock shares his character's hatred for drug dealers who push poison to his people.

A couple of the Asian actors playing karate/kung fu/whatever grandmasters in this film appear to have been hired for verisimilitude and nothing else; they can put up a good fight with the kicking and the punching, but their fluency in English made many an audience member reflexively reach for their remotes in search of the Subtitle button. Later in the film, Charley and Speedy are joined by Mr. Kim, played by Bill Louie, another dude from the 70s NYC karate scene who also appeared in the Sonny Chiba joint The Bodyguard. I don't know if you've seen that movie but it was pretty bloody. This one, on the other hand, keeps its occasional gore on an implied level, but it's still pretty badass with all the kicking and punching and occasional bone breaking. Goofy badass, but badass nonetheless.

The fights aren't the most wow-inspiring, at least not to modern eyes -- particularly those who recently had their retinas singed from the ingested bouillon cube of violent awesomeness that is The Raid 2 -- but they're impressive for a 70s grade-Z kickpuncher (Bonet and Louie choreographed the fights). Also, this film is chock full of fight screams and yells and duck calls and other various nonsensical vocals -- especially during the climax where it just became too much for me to see what looked to be Mr. Kotter's yoked-up stunt double screaming his cocaine'd head off while clenching a knife in his mouth. I was in hysterics, as was the audience.

Speaking of screams, there's a part where one character walks into a building and we hear him scream from inside "OH MY GOD!" upon discovering something terrible. Then later in the film, when another guy takes a ninja star to the cranium, he also yells out "OH MY GOD!" and I swear it's the same exact Oh My God! audio clip from earlier. A questionable choice in sound editing? Or maybe the director was trying to make a statement about how the cry of the wounded -- physically or emotionally -- is a universal one that sounds the same because as human beings we are all connected. Whatever the case, Death Promise is Good Times with a better theme song than, uh, Good Times.

In conclusion, I actually like Rebecca Pidgeon.

No Oscar for Pale Redheads

Fuck the dark -- Character is what you are on the Internet. Which is probably why you find yourself so moody, disliking human beings more and more each passing day with every new Tweet, comment, or blog post (including this one). Especially the celebrities. It gets to where you consider becoming a cannibal just for the possibility of meeting one of these jerks followed by the eventual pleasure of flushing him or her down the toilet.

You wonder if you are becoming a Hater but that can't really be the case, especially on the eve of the Oscar ceremony. By your watch, it's only a few minutes to the Oscar telecast, yet you're not exactly excited for it. You used to get excited, though. You used to love the Oscars in all its masturbatory glory, but somewhere along the way, it stopped being the Super Bowl for you (or Gay Super Bowl as the truly humorous like to call it). You knew fairly early that it's all politics and ass-kissing and who went to the most Academy old folks homes to brighten some dying day players afternoon with the most fake sincerity, rather than, you know, being the best at your job. But you were a sucker for it. For a while, anyway.

Other factors began to factor into your not-so-much-enjoying-it anymore. Along with cynicism and age, came a creeping ever-growing fear -- the fear that if you stop running/stop hustling, and take even a millisecond to look over your shoulder, you will find the immense dark spectre known as Quiet Desperation literally an inch away from you, practically hovering over you now, like a tidal wave of Fail ready to crash down. You know not to acknowledge it, because that's all the darkness needs to swallow you whole and do to your inner soul what The Blob or the Sarlaac do to flesh and bone, only it will do it for a much longer period of time -- as in the rest of your fucking life (or a thousand years, whichever comes first).

Plus, half of the people they choose to host the fuckin' thing, you just want to judo chop their throats.

But on the other hand, Amy Adams is nominated again! Yay! Hello, sir. Hello, ma'am. Thanks for stopping by. I'm going to ramble about a couple Oscar-nominated films The Adorable Amy Adams recently appeared in while kinda/sorta watching the Oscars. I'm going to ramble about them because once I start on a running gag based on a sincere appreciation of someone, I see it through to the end, baby. Plus, I watched them again recently thanks to a couple of borrowed screeners and I can't do the Oscars with my 100-percent attention and/or sober anymore.

I'll start off with Her, the latest Spike Jonze joint. The film takes place in the not-too-distant future (next Sunday, A.D.) where the world is heavily populated but technology has made it so that we don't really have to reach out and make connections with our fellow humans. Shit, you don't even have to write directly to people you already know, you can have someone else write letters or birthday cards or anything else stationary related and send them out.

That's the job of Joaquin Phoenix's character, playing a high-pants-wearing motherfucker named Theodore, who actually makes a living taking the simple act of writing to a loved one and turning it into a more complicated deal; he dictates the message to a computer, which then prints out the words in the client's handwriting, and it looks like the message gets printed out and mailed out old-school style, even though I'm sure the recipient has to be a little suspicious that it was someone else who wrote it. I'm sure this service is fairly popular, taking what Hallmark does and moving it up to the next level.

It's really how it is nowadays, isn't it? Simple stuff taken for granted has been improved yet made more fragile and complicated. It used to be that I could take a book off a shelf and read it. Now I have to keep up with the techno-Joneses by having all my literature on a fuckin' tablet. Sure I save space but God forbid my shit's not charged up. And if I spill my booze on it, oops, I better dry that shit up quick, lest I lose all my shit and then I have to go make a bigger ass of myself at the fuckin' Genius Bar where the guy behind the counter acts friendly but I know he's really thinking "Listen, you fuckin' Mexican..."

Speaking of which -- donde estan mi gente? This film takes place in a future filled with so many buildings and people, yet very clean and positive, like a Canadian version of a Mega City. But Latinos apparently don't exist here. "Then who occupies this wonderful utopia?", you ask. Well, it's all clean hard-working Anglos with the occasional sprinkle of those wily Asians. What is this, fuckin' Blade Runner? No, it's Shanghai, where quite a bit of the film was shot. But it was also shot in Los Angeles, so you know fuckin' Jonze could've thrown in a few busboys or cholos or whatever passes muster with Hollywood casting agents, but chose not to. Why? I don't know. He probably got knocked off his skateboard as a child by raza once and won't let it go, fuckin' rich boy asshole.

I know to most of you a future with no brown around sounds awesome, but get this, it's even more awesome because like I mentioned earlier, no one really needs human contact anymore. You need an assistant/best friend/lover? Hook your shit up with the newest OS that features some badass artificial intelligence that among many settings includes the former Mrs. Ryan Reynolds as your Girl Friday. That's what Phoenix chooses, and because our lead is currently recovering from a failed marriage and hasn't had the best of luck in the dating scene, soon he and his super-Siri "Samantha" fall in looooove and that's what the movie's about.

I liked Her; it's a sweet movie and has a lot to say about the fragility of relationships and using technology to overcome loneliness (or at least the hint of a threat of loneliness). If it's not those fuckin' dictated letters or cyber sex with chicks into freaky shit that doesn't get you off, it's people having hands-free conversations with their OS in public and no one bats an eye at 'em because the concept of crazy people talking to themselves is practically a quaint memory now, along with milkmen and quality American-made products. I mean, it's really no different from today with people Tweeting/Facebook status updating everything just so they can ensure that the experience has been shared with someone else, like enjoying something by yourself doesn't count or something. Which, I will agree, can really fuckin' feel that way sometimes. I once made an even bigger ass of myself than usual about it.

I BET EVERYTHING I OWN THAT SPIKE WILL WIN BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY(*)

What I dug most about it (aside from You Know Who) was that Jonze, for all his rich-boy Jackass-playing visual smart-asseries, has a very sincere and non-snarky/non-cynical view about it all. It's like he cares about everyone in this film in one way or another and isn't judgmental about them in any way -- which I guess gives him an extra point over ex-wife Sofia Coppola, if you were to believe what she denies. I mean, she can say otherwise all she wants, but there seems to be at least a little ax-grinding with at least a couple of the characters in Lost in Translation, not to mention a minute scosche of Tee Hee Hee Japs Be Funnay. Meanwhile in Her-ville, the hidden subtext running throughout could be interpreted as I'm Sorry I Wasn't A Better Husband And I Hope We Find Happiness In Our Separate Lives, Also I Liked The Bling Ring.

My favorite moment of the film, and probably the most telling of the inner workings of Adam Spiegel is far into the running time: Phoenix puts on his little earpiece so he can start talking to his artificial sweetheart, only he can't find her. She's offline or out of range or some shit. He freaks out, trying again and again, to no avail. Eventually, he dashes out of the building, and through the Hispanic-less streets of future L.A. trying to find a signal somewhere, anywhere. As he runs around like a cyber chicken with its head disconnected from its main frame, he ends tripping over himself and falls down right there on the pavement. Immediately, the people around him, who up until then were ear/eye deep into their own earpieces and smartphones, or just minding their own business, run up to help him. Jonze has a positive attitude on human beings, I thought to myself. Tech'd out or not, the human connection will always be there, somewhere.

That kind of sentiment is heartwarming, especially nowadays with my faith in humans now neck-and-neck with my faith in a higher power. I would've sooner believed that at least one of those guys would start recording that shit, his cock rock-hard at the possibility of a major view count on his YouTube channel or massive Likes & LOLs on his Facebook account. I'm reminded of something Paul Thomas Anderson once said somewhere, about walking out of a donut shop early one morning and finding a woman sitting in her car, crying while singing out loud. The way he talked about it, it sounded like he was worried for her and hoped she felt better. Lucky for her it was him and it was the mid-to-late 90s and not some other asshole in the 21st Century because her weak moment would've Mos Def become many others' highlight of their workday, know what I mean?

I don't get it. Like the other day I saw a prank video on television where these cunts would fool people into thinking a baby just got crushed in its carriage. They all freaked out and ran over to help and then these sadistic pieces of shit would laugh in their face all HAW HAW MADE YOU CARE. Some of these people looked really fucked up about it, like borderline heart attack bad. Had I been one of the fooled, I know how I'd react. Knowing me, after the confusion goes away and the prank revealed, I'd probably get a little choked up by the overwhelming mix of emotions within me. Then, because I'm a man, I'd stuff the tears back inside before they go public and laugh along with the prankster. Then I'd grab something large and bash the fuck's head open Irreversible style until the prankster's death spasms ceased and the urine/fecal tinged scent of Finality filled the air, then I'd take this asshole's iPhone and take a snapshot of the cherry pie/broken candles mixture that used to be his head and forward it to his parents along with a caption reading "Do a better job the next time you decide to shit another one of these out."

This is why I rarely leave the house, by the way.

So. The Adorable Amy Adams plays Theodore's best friend, The Adorable Amy. We never get her last name, but she might as well be Alternate Universe Amy Adams here. Instead of charming audiences everywhere with her awesomeness, in this universe she makes video games for a living but her real passion is in documentary filmmaking. She lives in the same building as Theodore and she pops up in the film every once in a while, usually with her husband. Amy does a great job as Amy, inhabiting her character with a lived-in quality that made me recognize various elements and behaviors that I've seen in other people, rather than the usual overly quirky or overly quippy bullshit you see come from Female Best Friends In Film and thank the fuck Christ that she has nothing resembling Manic or Pixie.

I liked the interplay between her and Phoenix, especially after seeing them in a completely different relationship between them in The Master. I totally bought them as good friends, and I liked how the dynamic between them is that he's always a bit more serious than her and she'll occasionally bust his balls in the way that friends do to each other, even though behind her side of the conversation is an undercurrent of genuine concern for the emotional well-being of her buddy. And while she is but a side character in this Joaquin-centric story, you get the sense that she has own shit to deal with -- like we all have our own shit to deal with -- and she can't always be checking in on the homie, you know?

Another break, another 2nd glass of wine, another bathroom break. OK, I'm back. The magic of the written word, ya'll. Jonah Hill didn't win. The Oscars are A-OK with me as of now.

Anyway, I've heard people call Adams' character "dowdy" or "plain" or even "ugly" but I honestly feel she just looks real (more like real adorable -- AWWW). She's a busy working gal who dresses (and hair dresses) for comfort, not to make all the other men and lesbian woman go I WANT THAT. So quiet down about that shit, gang. Who's to say that she doesn't clean up spectacularly when she goes out, hell she'd probably look not too dissimilar from her character in the next film...

I wonder if Martin Scorsese has seen American Hustle. If he has, I bet you his reaction was probably like that scene in Single White Female where Bridget Fonda gets creeped the fuck out by Jennifer Jason Leigh's attempt to look like her. It would make a pretty good double-feature with fellow bizarro Scorsese flick Blow, is what I'm saying. I've seen the names Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder thrown around as well, but I didn't get that vibe at all. To me, the camera work, editing, sound design, soundtrack, use of voiceover, the angry/awkward arguments between competent husband and harpy wife, all of that shit screams I Heart Scorsese. But it's not directed by Marty S., it's David O. with another one of his films filled with loud and mostly unpleasant characters. Fortunately, I like his films, even if I think the director's a twat. I liked this film too.

The film starts out with Christian Bale doing a great impression of me, with his fat fuckin' gut squeezed into a dress shirt and spending forever making his bald-ass head look like it still has hair. You in-shape hair-having motherfuckers don't know how easy you have it, with your thick hair and thin stomachs. But Bale's character is like the better version of me because despite his visual inadequacies, ol' Light Trasher here still managed to score not only an Amy Adams-looking lady, but one in prime hotness. More on that later.

So Bale is a scumbag con artist named Irving, and we're supposed to be cool with his ripoff games because his father was a hard worker who got screwed. Come to think of it, that's actually a pretty good reason to go the dishonest way. If the news -- and I mean the news for the past 50-100 years -- is any indication, dishonesty is the way to go, bro. Make that fuckin' money and if you have to betray the confidence of your fellow man to do it...well....what's the problem here? I don't see a problem, unless the problem is that you're not making any money. Then that's a big fuckin' problem.

Adams plays his chick, Sydney, who tried making bucks the straight & narrow way before reinventing herself as some English bird with a Kevin Costner-style British accent. Yeah, it wavers but that's OK because her accent is supposed to be shaky, or at least that's what I will tell you while slapping you senseless for even entertaining the idea that maybe Ms. Adams' strengths in acting do not include foreign accents. *slap, backhand slap* How DARE you, sir!

Anyway, she hooks up with Irving and everything is going great -- or as great as things can go for a dude who's still married with a kid -- until Bradley Cooper shows up, which sounds about right because Bradley Cooper always ruins everything with his handsome face and charming personality, the bastard. With his perm, Cooper's character Richie looks like some vaguely Middle Eastern ethnic you'd find at a discotheque wearing tight pants to enhance his bulge, but he's really an eye-tie FBI agent in search of a career-making bust.

Because The Wolf of Wall Street is too harsh and Gravity is too Mexican, this flick has a good chance of winning the Oscar for Best Picture, which wouldn't bother me except I don't think American Hustle is worthy of it. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid joint that's never less than entertaining and featuring great performances by literally everyone in the fuckin' cast. Everyone, even the extras are fucking killing it. There are no small roles here, just brief running times for certain parts. Off the top of my head, I thought whoever played Cooper's mom had a borderline heartbreaking moment where she just has these sad-as-sad-can-be eyes while he's assuring her (but really assuring himself) that he's gonna go places.

It just doesn't give me the Best Picture vibe, that's all. But what do I know? I thought Inside Llewyn Davis, Leo Snorts Off/Blows Into A Girl's Asshole, and the 90-Minute Panic Attack Starring Sandra Bullock were far more worthy of the golden statue, and one of them wasn't even fuckin' nominated for the big prize. I also think this photo here is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. See, people, these are my tastes. Different strokes and all that, you know? It's still a while before they announce the winner. Eh, they'll probably give it to 12 Years a Slave, because it's a strong film about an incredibly important subject. And because Obama.

I've read some comments online from people who feel the same way I do the Hustle, except then they knock on O. Russell, saying that his Scorsese-ish direction exposes our fearless Clooney fighter as some kind of hack to which I say Bullshit. Sure, he may have approached the visual/aurals on this bitch that way, but all the back-and-forth between all the characters here scream Russell. I understand his style -- at least for his last couple films -- is to do a lot of rewriting and improv on the set, even throwing new lines at the actors during scenes. So you can say what you want about the style of the film, but the content is all David O., baby, and while the story may be kinda/sorta based on a true story that happened here on Planet Earth, the characters in the film are all from the Planet David O. Russell.

I think Cooper's character is the most D.O.R.-ish of the crowd, because he's a pushy bully who apparently doesn't really understand that he's a pushy bully, especially the way he fucks with his superior, played by talented fuck Louis CK. It reminds me of the story about O. Russell going up to Christopher Nolan and putting him in a serious headlock because Nolan wanted to use one of his actors for The Prestige. Just because Nolan made Batman doesn't make him Batman, so he was helpless against rager Russell's violence.

I bet he apologized to Nolan immediately after fucking his shit up, just like Cooper does to a couple people during this flick. This is not how normal people act, David. Crazy people act like that. Which I guess explains why O. Russell was trying so hard with Silver Linings Playbook to tell us that crazies are people too (ESPECIALLY MY SON, YOU BASTARDS!!!), so rather than act with alarm, we should be charmed by obnoxious behavior caused by mixed wires in the head. Ah phooey, you fuck! Quit trying to justify your fucked up behavior by having the characters in your film act the same way. Got it? Now go tell Nolan you're sorry.

So obviously, O. Russell has lots of sympathy and empathy for the main characters, even if they're kinda like assholes -- but he does a good job at convincing the audience (me) that they're deserving of it. I mean, for all of Cooper's assholishness, I can totally feel where he's coming from, as well as Adams' character. They're not content with their current square in the game of life, they want more. In the case of Cooper, accomplishing this goal involves pulling off this big Abscam bust he's working on. In the case of Adams, it involves reinventing herself completely and always pretending she's someone else. I liked that shared dynamic, probably because when it comes to not being happy with who you are while trying to be someone else, not only have I heard that song before but I can sing it to you note-for-note perfect.

Speaking of sympathy and empathy, my favorite character not played by Amy Adams is Mayor Carmine Something-or-other, portrayed by Jeremy Renner from Dahmer. Did you ever see that film? It's pretty good, but thinking of that movie reminds me of a girl I once knew who told me that she saw it something like 4 or 5 times at the movie theater, this film about a serial killer who brought dudes home to kill/rape/eat them. (I guess that makes me the Jeffrey Dahmer of fast food.)

At this moment, I'm one wine bottle down and an hour into the Oscar telecast and I have three things to say about it -- one, Ellen Degeneres is officially an Oscar host I do not wish to judo chop in the throat, and two, Amy Adams was caught looking down at something (her phone is my best guess) while Tyler Perry droned on and on and on about how the Best Picture nominees will change the world and all that shit. Our gal Amy does not give a shit about that Madea bullshit. I further approve of our lady.

Anyway, Carmine is the mayor of Camden, NJ and he seems like a cool dude to hang out with, singing popular guido tunes all night and then taking you out for breakfast, but he's not some asshole either, which you would assume because of his being in office. Carmine really believes in his town and wants the best for his people. That's why he gets mixed up in all the Irving/Sydney/Richie shenanigans, causing me to shake my head and wish for his character to get the fuck out of this movie because he's such a good dude with good intentions. Watching his particular tale unfold was like watching a car crash in slow-mo with someone you really like sitting in the death seat.

But on the complete opposite end of the Sympathy/Empathy scale, you have Jennifer Lawrence's character as Bale's killer shrew of a wife. If this broad hooked up with Sharon Stone's character from Casino, they'd leave behind a trail of broken-hearted/stupid moronic asshole men from here to Timbuk-fuckin-tu. I gotta tell you, man, I've never been one for wife beating, especially in real life, but at one point in this movie, I used all my mind energy trying to conjure up Lawrence Fishburne as Ike Turner into the proceedings so he could give Katniss the boot treatment. Man oh man, it got to where I wanted to scream out loud while punching every wall in the world -- and I say this as someone who is rather fond of Ms. Lawrence.

But enough of that unpleasantness, let's talk about something absolutely pleasant, like how without warning The Adorable Amy Adams turned into The Incredibly Fuckable Amy Adams all of a sudden. I feel like Marty McFly's brother post-car wreck: When the hell did this happen?! I am not complaining, good sir and madam. No, not at all. She looks very good here, and the 70s fashion is quite becoming on our gal. It's just that there are scenes here where our dear Princess Giselle from Enchanted gets all sexed out with her fellow man, causing my crush on her to battle it out with my newfound lust. It's like my heart was saying NO AMY NO while my poor abused manhood happily declared YES AMY YES. Based on some of the shots of her character in the film, I'd say both O. Russell and cinematographer Linus Sandgren's physical emotions went with the latter.

By the way, I'm spending all this time on how good she looks because it's way past an undeniable fact that she is excellent in the role, like she is in everything else, including life. (And because I'm a sexist pig who only sees the ladies as sex objects.) Since 2006, she's been nominated like 3 or 4 times already, which shows to go you how fuckin' talented our gal Amy is. It would be so sweet to see Ms. Adams win Best Actress for her performance, but I can't say with total conviction that she deserves it, because I haven't seen Blue Jasmine yet and I keep hearing Cate Blanchett is the one to beat. If she doesn't win, that's cool, she's proven herself time and time again and more than held her own with the likes of Streep, Day-Lewis, Seymour Hoffman, and Kermit the Frog.

But you know who did just win? Muthafuckin' Mexican and Kenyan citizen Ms. Lupita Nyong'o. Classy acceptance speech too. I approve of these Oscars. And now the double shot of awesome that was Amy Adams and Bill Murray presenting becomes a triple shot of awesome with his Harold Ramis shout-out -- nay, quadruple shot because muthafuckin' goddamn badass cinematographer Emmanuel FTMW Lubezki just took the statue for Gravity. How can this be better -- holy shit Alfonso Cuaron was one of the winners for Best Editing and I'm so -- oops, they cut him off when he was about to accept: Shut up and get going Cuaron, these leaves ain't gonna blow themselves. 

I think I'm gonna hold off on ending this until I find out whether our gal Amy wins or not. And now that I'm all Mex'd up, I need to know if Cuaron will take it as well. And then I'll know whether or not to begin writing my buddy cop movie/secret Miss Congeniality sequel starring Adams, Sandra Bullock, and Bill Murray. Emmanuel Lubezki will shoot it, and Alfonso Cuaron will direct.

8:35pm: ALFONSO FUCK YEAH

8:44pm: Awww, you'll get them next time, Amy. I can't hate on Cate because they say her performance in Blue Jasmine was all kinds of perfect, and because she held open the door for me at a screening of Notes on a Scandal and gave me a warm smile, proving that she is indeed a great actress. For another year, The Adorable Amy Adams will have to settle for being the Roger Deakins of acting. And that ain't bad, if you ask me. You know what? I actually kinda liked this year's Oscars. Keep running, ya'll.

Fuck it, I'm writing that Miss Congeniality script anyway. Because Hollywood is a land where dreams come true and blah blah blah blabbity blah blah bullshit blah blah my ass.

* - I wrote that part after he won, obviously. 

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Tender is the bite

It was Saturday night, and so the bearded gentleman strolled down the sidewalk wearing his shtreimel for Shabbat. He passed me and two young men in their leather jackets and rocker shirts (which only made them look more harmless), and after the man with the large fur hat was out of hearing range, one of them leaned to the other and said "I feel like I'm in Russia" and they both laughed. We weren't in Russia, we were in Los Angeles, standing outside the New Beverly Cinema for the 6th annual All Night Horror Show. It had been a rough drive to the New Bev for me, as the streets were littered with many a dead Dodgers fan, having taken their lives in despair after the disastrous conclusion of the previous evening. On my street alone I counted 4 dead cholos.

But I was cheered up at the box office by the pleasant voice of owner Michael Torgan as he thanked me by name while handing me my ticket. Brian Quinn of the Grindhouse Film Festival greeted us at the entrance while giving us our wristbands that would allow us to come in and out of the New Bev as we pleased. I said hi to fellow movie geek Cathie Horlick (having given her advance warning this time) as well as Messrs. Eric Ess and Dave Wilson, rejecting their niceness with extreme prejudice.

Mr. Quinn then came up on stage to intro the show; he told us about how the 35mm prints for the 6 scheduled films (movies that hadn't been screened in Los Angeles for quite some time) were acquired from places like the Academy Film Archive, Universal Pictures, and various universities. He told us about the men who would be manning the snack bar, and the two projectionists who would split the 12-hour duty into two 6 hour shifts. We clapped for all of it, all of them. He then asked us to be cool with our outside food & drink (snuck-in booze included) by cleaning up after ourselves and to try to keep the odors (both food and personal) to a minimum. As always, the films would be preceded by trailer reels and shorts, and one of the movies would be a "secret" one that we wouldn't know about until it started.

For years, many a New Bev regular (including Mr. Ess) had requested the 1986 vampire flick Vamp, and tonight it was finally going to play the All Night Horror Show. It was the first film of the evening, and I'd never seen it before. Vamp opens with two college students pledging a fraternity, mostly for the living accommodations provided by the frat house, rather than being part of a group of binge-drinking date-rapists who will look back on college as being the high point of their lives. Chris Makepeace from the fondly remembered youth classic My Bodyguard and Robert Rusler from the touching homosexual drama A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge play our main characters Keith (straightlaced type; a little bit country) and A.J. (has the gift of gab; a little bit rock and roll).

In exchange for membership into the frat, he and Keith will provide a stripper for their upcoming party, which is of course the kind of thing one says regardless of whether or not they can make that happen. They need a car to drive to the city in order to get a stripper, so they hook up with a fellow student named Duncan (played by Gedde Watanabe) who's blessed with a fat bank account, using it to pay people to do his assignments for him, like he's Thornton Melon or something. But unlike Mr. Melon, this cat doesn't have much going on socially -- don't I know the fucking feeling -- and so in his desperation he allows Keith and A.J. to borrow his automobile in exchange for a week's friendship. He's not a dick or douchey, he's just a nerd (back when it wasn't cool to be uncool), and so I felt bad for the man, especially with Keith and A.J. not even trying to pretend to enjoy having his company. Kind of a dick move from our "heroes", if you ask me.

They decide to go to The City (played by Los Angeles) and for some reason, they figure the After Dark Club in Downtown The City is the place to go, despite the newspaper ad consisting of a frightening picture of Grace Jones' frightening face. Jones plays Katrina, the star attraction at this club, and she is introduced wearing a very Grace Jones-type of outfit, doing a very Grace Jones type of dance routine. It really is quite a sight to see, and the silent open-mouthed reaction from the patrons following her performance left me thinking that those were the real reactions of the actors and extras who just witnessed whatever the fuck Jones just did on stage.

A.J. becomes a slave to the rhythm, deciding that she is the one to hire for his college fraternity fuck-around. He's off to her dressing room following his dick muse, unaware that Katrina is like a hawk steeling for the prey, or to be more specific, a vampire looking over a potential victim. Yup, turns out Katrina is Queen of the Vampires and this strip bar is the original Titty Twister. So now Keith, A.J., Duncan, and Michelle Pfeiffer's adorable kid sister have to deal with bloodsuckers, familiars, an albino Billy Drago, chicks with fucked up teeth, and the guy who gave Jerry Seinfeld his space pen.

This movie was written and directed by Richard Wenk, a name I recognize as the screenwriter of what will most likely be Richard Donner's final directorial outing, the Bruce Willis/Mos Def flick 16 Blocks. I liked that movie, and I liked this one, despite the print going in and out of focus for most of it. I overheard Quinn talking to someone about it during the film, but I guess nothing could be done about it because it came and went all throughout the running time.

My friend said Vamp eminded him of From Dusk Till Dawn, because of the whole strip-bar/vampire haven thing, and yes there's a definite strong similarity, but hey -- Vamp got there first and it has a much lighter & less violent tone to the proceedings. It's a little less mean and a little more fun. Also, From Dusk Till Dawn doesn't have Chris Makepeace in a letterman jacket, looking like a poor Hollywood Blvd. street impersonator of Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 2.

If From Dusk Till Dawn felt like Desperate Hours Goes To Hell, then Vamp is kinda like the bloodsucker version of After Hours; the film doesn't keep all the craziness to the strip club, it also widens out to the nearly deserted part of town the club is located at, populated by people who for all of their unsettling weirdness might as well be creatures of the night, every one of them. It's got a great 80s look as well, with Steven Soderbergh's former cinematographer Elliot Davis lighting everything with neon pink and green. It's also very 80s in that Grace Jones is the main selling point.



The second film of the evening was Dracula's Daughter from 1936; this follow-up to 1931's Dracula starts out with a couple of your usual old school Brit beat cops with their bushy mustaches and harrumphing manner of speaking, watching over the recently deceased Count Dracula and weak-ass familiar Renfield, because this flick is like Halloween II in that it starts off pretty much after the first one ended. Anyway, along comes some chick in a burka and the cops freak out for a bit before realizing that it's 1936 and terrorists weren't doing the bomb vest thing yet.

Instead the lady behind the terrorist veil turns out to be Countess Dracula (I forgot her real name), a handsome woman if there ever was one, and she just wants to confirm that her deadbeat dad is indeed merged with the infinite. Once she's satisfied with that knowledge, she's ready to go full Miley and break the chains associated with her father's achy-breaky ways. She is done with the nightlife and the bloodsucking and just wants to live, dammit, live. Unfortunately, her creepy asshole manservant Sandor succeeds in putting a damper on her dreams, convincing her that she was born to vamp and forever will she vamp and that's just the way of the world.

What we have here is a classic Hater, this Sandor. Lady Dracula over here is trying to turn over a new leaf, yet this asshole chooses to hate rather than congratulate her attempts. I think a good part of it comes from him hating the idea that he's going to lose her to some regular chap; Sandor probably spends his non-serving moments jerking off his frustrations in the broom closet, rather than growing the fucking balls necessary to just go up and express his love (or lust) for her. You never know unless you try, right? But considering how creepy he looks, I think he sees the writing on the wall, he knows his chances for consummation are practically nil, and besides, this is England; they have a whole class system and the Countess probably doesn't see him as anything more than a servant.

But rather than move to the United States, where fucking and/or marrying the help merely makes you the former governor of California or the star of Mrs. Doubtfire instead of some pesky offender of the social paradigm, Sandor and the Countess remain in England, where she fails at her attempts to not Drac out. Some poor high society man in his top hat and coat is among the first to fall victim, not understanding that he will indeed get sucked off by her, just not in the way he was hoping for. Speaking of upper class Brits and blow jobs, I'm now flashing back to that Hugh Grant scandal once upon a time. That would've been funny if the hooker he hooked up with turned out to be a Vamp and later the cops found his dumb ass completely drained of blood, and I say that as someone who is quite fond of About a Boy.

Despite her occasional bloody nightcap, Ms. Dracula doesn't allow Sandor's bullshit to color her thoughts totally; she hires some asshole psychiatrist to help her fight her urges. I guess this psychiatrist is like the hero of the movie, even though he doesn't really do much and he's not very likable either. The only thing I liked about the psychiatrist is that he couldn't tie a bow to save his life, that, and his special lady friend is always fucking with him. If she's not purposely messing up his tie, she's making prank calls to him while he's trying to conduct business.

Anyway, back to the Countess -- she's still trying, our gal. The psychiatrist advises her to confront her problem head-on, which she soon does by inviting a poor fresh-faced girl named Lily off the street to her estate so she can "paint" her. But we know what the fuck is up; this girl is the Brit equivalent to the small town country girl lost in the big city, her dreams of stardom or reeling in a big fish dashed, leaving her alone on a bridge, thinking the unthinkable. But that was then. Now she's warm and comfortable, her formerly empty belly now full of crustless sandwich and wine, and I'm sure she figures if this nice lady with the big ring asks her to do more than merely model, well then hey, it sure beats the alternate. And because she's a girl, she can always call it "experimenting". Us guys, on the other hand, we put one dick in our mouths in college and we're marked as Friends Of Dorothy for all time.

Like most sequels, Dracula's Daughter doesn't match the strength of the original. But it's still a pretty good horror flick; the lady who plays the title role is good and conflicted, I totally dig that old-fashioned horror atmosphere of yesteryear, and you can never go wrong with a little lesbian undertone either. It's also over and done with pretty quickly; by the time the film reached its climax, I was surprised and figured there had to be more. (And it was then that I realized how it felt for the other women in my life who were unfortunate enough to sleep with me.) It was also interesting to watch such an old genre film featuring female characters displaying signs of strength, only to be kept down or mocked by the filthy pigheaded men in their lives -- which I guess makes Dracula's Daughter the prototypical Lifetime movie.



We watched a Three Stooges short called Who Done It? followed by the third film of the night, 1980's Death Ship, about an evil deserted freighter prowling the sea in search of people to fuck with. Next up on the chopping block: a cruise ship containing Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, and best of all, George Kennedy as the captain of the Life Ship, and he's such a fuckin' sourpuss incapable of having anything remotely approaching joy or happiness or pleasure. It's his last day on the job before handing over the reins to Crenna, so at first I thought he was upset about retiring, but no, his is an aggressive discontent because he spent his life shipping passengers in and around vacation spots, rather than exploring the oceans and getting into adventures or something.

Early on in the movie, there's a big dance happening on the cruise ship and he's sitting at a table with Crenna and his family, making it very clear that he doesn't want to be there. He can't fake a smile or anything. Crenna's kid with the overactive bladder notices that Kennedy isn't eating his slice of cake, so he asks him if he could have it -- even throwing in a "please?" -- and this fuckin' barrel of laughs proceeds to push the plate away from the kid and says "isn't it your bedtime?" You never see him eat the cake either, the cocksucker. I mean, I can't stand kids either but even I know not to treat them like shit, especially if you're somewhere you don't want to be.

It's like this one time I was at a birthday party for my friends' kid -- trust me, there were a million other places I'd rather be on that beautiful Saturday afternoon. My friend's wife suddenly brought up to her fellow mommies how I can make a mean bowl of popcorn (based on the movie nights I used to have with them, pre-child) and like a schmuck I volunteer to make one for them. Motherfucker. First I gotta waste my Saturday on this shit, now I gotta further waste it working this lady's goddamn kitchen? This is what happens when you let women run their mouths. So, I went into the kitchen, and this little boy from one of the other mothers walks in and says he wants to see me make the popcorn.

Now, I could've been like George Kennedy's character and put on the asshole act by telling him to fuck off, but instead I decided to make lemons out of lemonade, by way of popcorn. I told this kid that not only could he watch, he could help me make it and learn how to make the best goddamn popcorn around. Because this is how legacies are created, people. One day I'll be gone, but this kid will be making awesome popcorn for his parents, his friends, his significant others, and one of them is bound to ask "Where did you learn to make such good popcorn?" and he'll say "Remember my dad's friend, the one they found hanging dead from his closet with his pants around his ankles, while his tv was playing the music video to Marky Mark's 'Good Vibrations' on a loop?"

Anyway, that bad Death Ship just about licks its chops at the disagreeable aura of Mr. Kennedy, so off it goes, getting closer and closer until it rams the cruise ship and ruins everybody's fun time. It is such a scary powerful ship, this Death Ship, it not only has the power to make everything around it look like daytime while making everything around the cruise ship look like nighttime, upon collision it also causes the cruise ship turn into mismatched stock footage from other movies. I thought it was a nice touch from the filmmakers to never show the actual sinking of the cruise ship. It's far more effective to leave all that expensive spectacle to the imagination of the audience.

The survivors end up on some giant piece of wood, and while adrift at sea they find Kennedy passed out in the water. In one of the most harrowing scenes of the film, the survivors have to lift his big ass out of the water on onto their makeshift raft. Out of nowhere, the Death Ship shows up behind them and these poor bastards think that their luck has changed for the better, not knowing the terrible scary fates awaiting them. Scarier than that, they have to spend a good 30 minutes or so carrying an unconscious George Kennedy around, leaving me to imagine that maybe poor GK was unable to handle what a piece of shit he signed on for and drank himself into a stupor on the set of this movie, leaving the filmmakers to rewrite 1/3 of the film in an effort to salvage it. That would also explain the long shots of him passed out on a bed, or passed out on the captain's chair. Had Kennedy turned this film down, I bet you Joe Don Baker would've rocked this role something fierce.

Death Ship is basically a haunted house movie that takes place on a ship, only the malicious spirits here are evil Germans who turn Kennedy's character into a Nazi Jack Torrance. Much like a Breath-Asure capsule, the Death Ship works our man from the inside out; his behavior slowly becoming suspect until it all comes out front and center with the poor guy swaggering through the freighter in a snug German naval uniform. Up until that point, the movie alternates between goofy and dull; long scenes of characters exploring the huge vessel intercut with other characters doing stupid things, like eating 40-year-old hard candy or getting naked and showering under the ancient faucets because that's what you want to do in a spooky dirty rusty freighter with evil German writing everywhere.

Jack Hill (of Spider Baby and Switchblade Sisters fame) is credited as one of the writers, and supposedly he wanted to direct this flick until it fell out of his hands and the duties went to a respected BBC & stage director to fuck up. With the exception of all the unintentional comedy, nothing really works until the last third of the film when the filmmakers pull out all the stops and start incorporating footage of Nazi rallies and Hitler into the shittiness of the proceedings, which I think says more about the inherent horror in anything involving the Third Reich than it does about the quality of the filmmaking. But hey, if you want to see a naked chick scream bloody murder while stage blood pours all over her titties, then knock yourself out, man.



Somewhere during the night -- I want to say it was after the third film -- Quinn threw a raffle for prizes like posters, DVD's, and coolest of all, VHS dubs of horror flicks from the late great Johnny Ramone's personal collection. I won nothing, which is fine because Clu Gulager won; knowing indeed what the fuck is up, he requested one of the Ramone tapes. Quinn pointed out that Mr. Ramone would label both the side of the cassette and the side of the box, which I found amusing because I used to do that shit all the time with my VHS tapes, as well as putting down the year of release, the actors, the running time and whether or not it was a letterboxed print. These kids today, with their downloads and instant streaming and disrespect for my lawn, they don't know about that shit.

The fourth "secret" film of the night was revealed to be Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes from 1977. I'd never seen this film before -- actually, I'd never seen any of the films shown that night, until they were shown that night -- so it was cool to finally watch it on a 35mm print with an audience. Quinn had told us about how there were about (I think) 3 existing prints of this movie, and they were all in pretty worn-out quality, but I didn't think it looked that bad. Besides, a grindhouse quality print for a movie like this can only up the enjoyment level.

So you have this family taking a very 70s road trip (camper, station wagon, CB radio) and they end up getting lost somewhere in the Nevada desert, as road-trippers tend to do in these kinds of flicks. The father is stubborn and the mother can't read a map for shit, so thanks to that combination they end up in a bad part of the desert -- off road, smack dab in Air Force flyover territory -- and it's only a matter of time before freaky shit starts to happen, which it does when a family of savages living up in them titular hills come down to do their thing. They're like a weird freaky crossbreed of hillbillies, mutants, and Eegah; they live off whatever they can scrounge off the land, like the occasional wayward family.

Because it's a 70s flick, shit takes a while to go down, but that's OK because we can take in the whole seventies ambience. We can take in the hair styles, the mustaches, the clothing, the lack of cell phones and laptops, Dee Wallace before E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, the cool station wagon, that awesome camper, and an old ex-cop with his old school casual racist language. But when things finally get going, it gets pretty harsh and uncomfortable. Because Wes Craven was following up The Last House on the Left, with this, he seemed determined to prove to everyone that he still knew how to get down with making things violent and rapey.

Now I can handle the violence -- hell, I welcome the violence. It's in my soul, the violence. I'd punch every motherfucker in the throat if I could, all day everyday. Even you, friend -- I'd punch you in the throat if I could. But I won't because I always look deep within myself and find that tiny spark of Good that I have left and use it to shower my fellow humans with Love instead. That is why I say God Bless the Cinema for giving me cathartic experiences like Taken where Liam Neeson throat-punches his way back into his kidnapped daughter's heart.

Movies getting rapey, on the other hand, well that's something else. I can not abide and endure that shit, and will only accept it in the most grudgingly manner possible. The best I can say in Craven's defense is that it's not done in some asshole Michael Winner "tee-hee we can see her boobies!" kind of way, the way your average garden variety rape scene in a genre film of the 70s and 80s would get down. Craven wants you to understand how fucked up these assholes are, to show you the depths of their savagery -- this and only this. It's also part of the game plan on an audience manipulation level -- the end result being all of us cheering when the bastards get theirs.

But because Craven is one of these dudes who takes himself a little too seriously, I bet you he's also trying to show you some kind of duality of Man thing when it comes time for our helpless/hapless family to get some Payback, letting their bloodlust get the best of them as they create elaborate death traps and get down with a little Stabby Stab Stab. Whatever. If that's how you want to see it, that's cool. Me, I think just think it's awesome to see people get owned -- especially when the owning is done by the family German Shepherd named Beast.

Dogs are awesome and Beast is among the awesomest. I wasn't with him at first; his backstory is that back in the day he killed some poor defenseless poodle in Miami. I don't like poodles either, but obviously that dog was somebody's baby, and unless that poodle raped a member of Beast's family, there's no good reason to kill it. But if I can forgive Danny Trejo for traumatizing the many people he robbed at gunpoint back in his lawless days, then I should be able to forgive Beast for taking care of business when it comes to a bunch of stinky rapey desert trash.



Quinn told us that there would be one final trailer reel, followed by the last two films of the program playing back-to-back with no breaks, so my buddy and I went outside for one more breath of fresh air and nicotine before going back in. Lady and gentleman, if you took a script by Edward D. Wood Jr., gave it to John S. Rad to direct, and then had Godfrey Ho come in to supervise the editing, then maybe, just maybe, you might have something approaching the relentless insanity that is the 1985 anthology movie Night Train to Terror. This was easily my favorite film of the night, but I wouldn't argue with you if you said it was the worst.

So God and Satan are chilling out in a private car on a doomed train that is scheduled to crash in the morning, killing everyone onboard who isn't God, Satan, or the underlings who are moonlighting as the porter and conductor of this Death Train. Satan is tickled pink by the imminent high body count, while God can only shake his head at this fool. But this ain't no social call, it's time to get down to business: to go over the case files of three recently departed souls, deciding what the eternal endgame is going to be for these motherfuckers. This is the wraparound story, the glue that holds together this wicked hodgepodge of Absolute Cinema that is unloaded onto the viewer without so much as a warning. You think you know what you're getting into, and that will be your undoing, dear viewer.

By "absolute", I'm referring to something I once read in a Lucio Fulci interview; he was talking about his film The Beyond, and how he had intended to make an absolute film that was simply a succession of images without any rhyme, reason, plot, or logic. Sorry Mr. Fulci -- your film is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid compared to the rampant randomness that is Night Train to Terror. And yet, for all that this movie gets entertainingly wrong, this is the first movie that I felt came closest to approximating the feeling of a nightmare, right down to the part where I'm struggling to remember it immediately after. Even great horror films haven't been able to do that for me; this film proves that it doesn't even have to be good to pull it off.

The first story stars John Phillip Law as some dude who drives himself and his new bride off a bridge, thanks to the use of anamorphically squeezed stock footage of a foreign putt-putt car. He wakes up in a sanitarium. A psychologist briefly introduces herself, then tells him dinner will be ready soon. Next he's out slipping mickeys into women's drinks at bars and restaurants -- he even fucks with the blood of Christ at a church! Then Richard Moll shows up as some kind of psycho orderly at the sanitarium who takes pleasure in his job of torturing and mutilating women. Suddenly the narrator blurts out BODIES FOR MONEY, BODIES FOR MONEY. Then Richard Moll is putting severed heads into jars with their names on it. Everything happens so fast and furious here but ain't no way Dominic Toretto is gonna save you from this mess.

The second story is supposed to be about some chick named Gretta -- I mean, that's the soul in question, right? But soon, we're focusing on some other guy who falls in love with her after watching Gretta bang dudes in a porno flick (a couple minutes ago she was selling popcorn at a carnival). He finds her, she impresses him with her masterful playing of the Alphabet Song on the piano, and they hook up. Problem is, Gretta already has a man, and he doesn't appreciate this new set of testicles third-wheeling into his relationship with her. So he drags them both into this underground club of losers that like to get together and play elaborate suicidal death games involving giant killer bugs, electrocution machines, and wrecking balls. Somewhere along the way, Gretta becomes a man. Then she goes back to being a girly-girl again.

The final story is about a surgeon named Claire, so naturally the film immediately focuses on a Holocaust survivor for a while, then switches it over to Cameron Mitchell playing Detective Cameron Mitchell, then brings back good ol' Richard Moll again, this time playing an author of a best-selling book titled God Is Dead. I like the way he preaches his atheism, this Moll; rather than get all Ricky Gervais smug about it, this dude is very solemn, like he's truly sorry to burst your bubble but it's for your own good that you understand the undeniable fact that God is about as real as this blogger's sex life. Somewhere along the way, some dude who looks like he should've been in all the disco movies shows up to fuck up everybody's shit something awful, which might have to do with him possibly being an emissary of Satan.

From what I've heard, these three stories started out as full-length features that were then cut down to the quick (with additional effects and gore footage) for Night Train to Terror. But it's also my understanding that even with the benefit of being allowed to breathe in their uncut forms, the stand-alone versions are wacky in their own way. All three stories/films were written by Oscar-winning(!) screenwriter Phillip Yordan, even though they feel more like they were transcribed from the sugar-fueled rantings of a demented 6-year-old allowed to watch all the R-rated movies he or she wants -- So then this happens and then this happens and then he explodes and then a giant monster comes out and goes RAWR and then they fight karate and then we see her boobies! In other words, you'd think 6-year-old me wrote this flick.

One last thing about this movie before I move on: the God & Satan scenes are intercut with footage of a painfully 80s group of youngsters who are dancing and lip-syncing their poor excited hearts out to the same cheesy song. They're supposed to be on the same train, even though nothing in the set design really convinced me of that. It looks more like a very sparse public access approximation of someone's house. Of all the dancers shown, the film spends the most time with the lead lip-syncer, who then goes on to demonstrate his breakdancing chops in slow motion for what felt like a little bit of forever. According to the end credits, he's related to the screenwriter. And for once, something in this film finally makes sense.
(NSFW trailer)


It's unfortunate that we didn't have a break following Night Train to Terror, because I think all of us in the audience would've appreciated the time required to regain our bearings while sharing a simultaneous WHAT THE FUCK DID WE JUST WATCH. Instead we had to catch our breath during the opening credits of the next film: 1983's The Final Terror, directed by Andrew Davis, who had a pretty good career going with films like The Fugitive, until he decided to work with that asshole Ashton Kutcher. Now he's tainted, and will carry with him the Mark of the Beast for all eternity. Hope it was worth it, Davis.

So a bunch of these young forest ranger types (or whatever the fuck they were) decide to go deep into the California redwoods with their ladies and have a good time fucking around, telling campfire stories, and making straight-up jack moves on some poor marijuana farmer's crop. What bastards. Too lazy to grow their own, so they have to fuck with someone's income. For that, they should be condemned to swift merciless death. Thankfully, the film shares my opinion because soon enough, swift merciless death arrives! And because they were a bunch of assholes to Joe Pantoliano earlier in the film, he's taken off with the bus they arrived in and so now they have to take the long way home while steering clear of whatever the hell is out there ready to pounce and slice a sucker up with its pretty wicked blade.

The movie starts off like it's going to be some Friday the 13th knockoff, and the poster certainly sells it that way, but it's really more like Just Before Dawn, which itself was more of a Deliverance-esque survival tale about how easy it is for Nature to turn Man into Bitch. I'm surprised Werner Herzog hasn't made one of these types of flicks yet, since he's always fond of finding danger in the beauty of the outdoors (and being such a wet blanket about it); if he can't find an original story, well then, hell, he had no problems remaking Bad Lieutenant, so why not do-over Southern Comfort? I mean, these assholes are gonna eventually remake everything I love anyway, so I'd rather they give it to someone awesome who's actually gonna try to do something cool with it.

I really liked the performances from the cast in this film, most of them familiar faces back when they weren't so familiar (and some who never became that familiar). Among them, you have Daryl Hannah and Rachel Ward in mint condition, you have homeboy Lewis Smith from Buckaroo Banzai and The Heavenly Kid, you have the aforementioned Joey Pants, and you have that sexy Romanian beast known as Mr. Adrian Zmed. They're all young, good-looking, and stupid, so it's fun to watch them go through bad shit. As far the best performance in the film, I think it's a tie between Pantoliano's high strung former mental patient and John Friedrich's alternately annoying and menacing character who fancies himself quite the badass. Both those motherfuckers made me uneasy.

Mark Metcalf is also in this and it's a pleasant surprise to see him playing a rare non-douchebag role; here, he's the levelheaded man in charge and he even gets a chance to have one of those sex scenes where the guy does all the moaning. So if you ever wanted to see the naked ass of Neidermeyer from Animal House or hear the angry teacher/father from the Twisted Sister videos have an orgasm, well my man, you best search this film out because the Maestro is busting a nut here like nobody's business.

Like I mentioned earlier, this isn't really a slasher movie, so don't expect much gore or a body count. It's not a very long movie but it does have a deliberate pace, making it an interesting choice as the last film of the evening. Maybe Quinn figured the audience needed to gently come down from the high of the previous film; it would be irresponsible to send us out back into the world all goofed up on Night Train. During the film, I could sense some people getting impatient and noticed others shifting around in their seats, but I suspect if they were to watch this movie in a far less tired state of mind, they might've enjoyed it more. Maybe, I don't know.

Me, I wasn't tired at all and I don't need my forest-based thrillers to be packed with murder-death-kill in every frame. I just need it to tell me a good story, and this flick had one to tell. I dug it quite a bit, actually. It had some very intense moments, and the ending was pretty cool too. I don't remember a single laugh in the film, intentional or unintentional, except for Zmed's introduction; he's reading what I thought was a nudie magazine but it turns out to be weed porn instead. Anyway, I couldn't find a trailer for this movie, so here's a clip from another Andrew Davis film; like The Final Terror, this features a psycho killer terrorizing a group of innocents:



And so the 6th annual All Night Horror Show ended. I'm six for six and hope to continue the unbroken streak. My favorite films of the night were Night Train to Terror, Dracula's Daughter, and The Final Terror. Vamp and The Hills Have Eyes were good. Death Ship can take a flying leap.

It was about a quarter past 7 when we stepped out of the New Beverly and into the chilly mist-filled morning. I took my friend over to IHOP on Wilshire. I had coffee and the Breakfast Sampler, with extra bacon and sausage instead of ham. I think that was a good selection. My friend had coffee and the International Crepe Passport. He could have had anything he wanted.

Now click here to read Cathie Horlick's ramblings on the evening. 

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