Late night, and there's a Tom Snyder-sized hole in my soul

So I can't sleep. So I blog. So I'll be (relatively) brief here.

I think.

Last Saturday, I went to the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica for the 9th Annual Dusk-to-Dawn Horrorthon. It had been a while since I last attended; the Horrorthon was always an on-and-off thing for me. Part, if not all, of my not-so-commitment stems from the fact that it's a different environment over there. The All Night Horror Show at the New Bev and Cinefamily was/is more about going to enjoy the films, while the Aero is more about going to enjoy yourself enjoying the films. It's more of a party atmosphere. I never really was much for parties; even my past usual states of inebriation were preferred in gatherings of one.

This is something that I discussed with my friend who went to the Aero with me; whereas the All Night Horror Show has brief intros and plays trailer reels between films, the Horrorthon is as much about what happens between the films, as it is about the films themselves -- maybe even more than the films. And what does happen between films there? Insanity, mainly.

As I've "written" before, the Horrorthons are hosted by Grant Moninger, film programmer at the American Cinematheque, who in the few screenings I've seen him at comes off pretty normal -- but during the Horrorthon he lets his freak flag fly and becomes some sort of wild coked-out preacherman with an internal volume control setting of Infinite. He aims to keep everyone awake and in the proper mood for the night. Dude works himself up into a red-shaded face that goes "beyond tomato", to quote my friend. He also has a cannon for an arm, with the way he launches various candies and DVDs to people in the audience. Damn near everyone left with a Blu-ray of National Treasure (from the "treasure chest"); I didn't, but I did end up with three copies of Boys on the Side and some breath spray. I can only imagine how much more I'd walk away with had I actually tried.

Over the years, he's introduced various characters and gags to the Horrorthon; among them, the Corn Gorn, who is a guy in a Gorn (from Star Trek) costume that gives away cans or ears of corn. This year, the Corn Gorn and his Bride welcomed their first child, a chair. He also pops up during the lengthy interstitials that play between films and come from the Tim & Eric school of odd/random/wrong. Some are ads from television, some are clips of films or music videos or public access, and their presentation in the context of the Horrorthon either lends them a surreal aspect or flaunts the weirdness they always had.

The old faves like the Red Roof Inn commercial ("Muuuuulti-tasking!") and the Stop Using Dirty Catheters clip showed up, as well as some new (to me) ones like a back-and-forth between a helicopter and a washing machine which left me hating both. My personal fave is probably the music video to Dennis Parker's ode to cocaine-fueled self-confidence and delusion titled "Like an Eagle", which is so evocative of the late 1970s, particularly the dark specter of The Party's Over slowly creeping in, hovering ominously in the night sky. I can practically taste the paranoia and desperation that a porn star would feel while recording this song.

There were also the usual TJ Hooker clips with added credits including the names of audience members; my favorite from this year is some dude credited as "Gamer-Gator: The alligator that hates feminism". There was also one that credited Heavy Midnites' Phil Blankenship as "the man who hates Horrorthon"; that as well as Grant even referring to one of his on-stage characters as hating the Horrorthon "more than Phil Blankenship" made me wonder whether this was a friendly jibe between programmers or a legit Fuck You. I don't know and I don't care.

You cared enough to write about it, though.

I've talked about all this stuff before, and maybe I'm just getting older, but while I understand that it's part of the have-a-good-time party atmosphere, it's gotten to the point that frankly, they tire me. So once I sit through the first couple of breaks, I usually use that time the rest of the night to get some fresh cold night air mixed with cigarette smoke. Outside, I got treated to nice sights like one of the Aero volunteers bringing out popcorn to the people in the stand-by line.

I am not a people-watcher, even though I'm sure my ramblings might draw you the opposite conclusion; I was born/cursed with a gravitational pull that pulls such precious humans into my orbit and so I feel I must mention them because they seemed to make it obvious that they wanted to be noticed. This time, I had a group of three in the row ahead of me, consisting of two guys and a girl. I immediately assumed the guy furthest away from the girl was the third wheel (takes one to know one), but later I concluded that it was the girl.

She was the girlfriend or wife or whatever of the guy in the middle, and he averaged about one kiss to her cheek or forehead every four minutes. Usually he would lean in and whisper something to her, and then SMOOCH SMOOCHITY SMOOCH SMOOCH. Never did she lean in or even give off the air that she wanted a kiss; she gave off the air that she wasn't necessarily hyped up to be there. She ended up falling asleep by the second film; before the third film -- a masterpiece -- both guys told her that she was going to/had to stay awake for it, because it was that good. She fell asleep for that one as well. The boyfriend would occasionally hold up his stubby beer bottle for him and the douchebag sitting behind him to see in the glowing light of the cinema screen. My favorite moment was when he started getting into the Like an Eagle video, and in the middle of doing the White Guy Sitting Down dance he looked over to his lady, who could not be any less amused or enthused. She gave him nothing. This only made him dance harder. They all left after the third film. I am single.

Then there were the two ladies who were in the row behind; they arrived shortly before the first film began. They saw that there were three available seats but they were reserved; no problem there, just tear two of the Reserved signs right off and sit down! One of them said something to the effect of "Well, I paid $19 for a seat" and then she kissed her friend on the forehead. They then proceeded to do their best impression of two assholes who think they're in the funniest episode of MST3k never made.

I, obviously, am a perfect human being of no flaws, who judges and scorns everyone else for not being perfect me.  Realizing this, I forced myself to join in the fun and make comments a couple times but it was just that, forced. It gave me no fun either way to listen or be part of it. I just...I just can't, man. I like to actually watch the movie and save my comments for afterward, preferably over a meal -- preferably a meal that you're paying for. Even then, I'd rather just eat. The lesson here kids is: Don't ever hang out with me, don't ever watch a movie with me, I am an old man.

So, the films. The first one was Creepshow, written by Stephen King and directed by George A. Romero. This is one of those movies that I hadn't seen in so long (decades, really), that it was like watching it for the first time. I forgot that Ed Harris and Ted Danson were in it. I forgot how disgusting the roach story was; I can handle damn near everything in a movie, I mean, I can eat pasta during a zombie movie, but the roach story (starring E.G. Marshall) actually made me lose my appetite once the free sandwiches were given out in the lobby, following the film. Even the smell of those sandwiches made me sick. (I regained my appetite for the free pizza following the second film.)

But I enjoyed it, this anthology joint inspired by the old horror comics, like Tales from the Crypt. My favorite of the five stories is "The Crate", starring Hal Holbrook and Adrianne Barbeau. I think that one had the best mix of humor and horror, the two H's -- four H's if you count Hal Holbrook. What I didn't remember from my last viewing (when I was still in grade school) was how most of the characters in this film were painted with many shades of Unlikable. But I guess that's how those old EC comics rolled, and it didn't matter if they were unlikable or stupid or even innocent, they're gonna get theirs one way or another.

The second film was Gargoyles, a TV-movie from 1972, starring the lovely Jennifer Salt and muthafuckin' Cornel Wilde. It's about this doctor, I guess he's like a demon doctor or something -- basically something about anthropology -- and his daughter going to Arizona because they heard that those dirty Mexicans have no rights there, making it Nirvana for the Whites. Actually, that's not why they went, because those rules hadn't become a reality yet and I'm projecting. No, they go there to talk to some old dude out in the middle of nowhere, and he shows them this odd-looking skeleton while telling them about the "nakatakachinko" or however the fuck it's spelled. All I know is every time this old dude said the name, the audience burst into hysterics and I bet I looked like fuckin' Daria in the movie theater.

Why do you hate fun?

Wilde doesn't believe this shit, and it's around that time that the naka-naka-not-gonna-work-here-anymore attack his shack and it ends with the old man unconscious and on fire. I hope he didn't wake up in the middle of being cooked, that would suck. Anyway, these attackers are real life gargoyles, played by real life actors in real life rubber suits. They skulk around the desert in stuttery post-production slow-motion, which I guess is a way to make them look less lame. Somewhere along the way, young Scott Glenn and his gang of slacker dirt bikers get involved, and the head Gargoyle is an asshole played by Bernie Casey. He's an asshole because even as a gargoyle, he treats women like objects and even smacks his lady Gargoyle friend on the ass like some secretary during the good ol' days. I was born way too late. Anyway, it's a dull TV-movie presented with fade-to-blacks where I guess the commercial breaks were supposed to come in. Everyone else thought the film was hilarious though, and my friend liked it even more than one of the other films, so I'm just hating on fun again.

The third film was John Carpenter's The Thing -- the masterpiece I referred to earlier. If you don't know about this film, then you just don't fuckin' know and you have to fix that ASAP. I'm not going to try to convince you by writing more about it. There are better pieces on this film elsewhere. Unlike the previous films, this was presented on DCP. It's give and take with these formats; you lose the magic (yes, I said magic) of watching a 35mm film print, but you also get a great looking picture. Look, I prefer 35mm, but in the end, I just want to enjoy these movies with a crowd -- provided the crowd's coming correct.

Thankfully, everybody turned off their Make Fun Of switch and took in this film for the classic that it is. I mean, Wilford Brimley's in the film and nobody even made a Diabeetus joke! He doesn't have his mustache in this, though, so maybe they just couldn't recognize him. Like Samson and his hair, Brimley needs his walrus stache to conjure up the winds of Beetus. Also, he's credited as "A. Wilford Brimley" here, so maybe people thought he was merely A Wilford and not The Wilford.

My friend had never seen the film before, so it was a real treat after to hear him talk about how much he liked it. We discussed the ending and then some dude stepped up and told us about the short story titled "The Things" and how it is told from the Thing's point-of-view. I haven't checked it out, but I've heard good things about The Things.

The fourth film was a reddish-but-clean 35mm print of The Night of a Thousand Cats, a 70s joint shot in Mexico by Mexicans, and unfortunately I have to say that mi gente have made much much better films than this ordeal. It stars Hugo Stiglitz (nice to see he made it out of that German bar OK) as this rich bearded playboy type who likes to chopper around Mexico City in his helicopter, scoping out for hot chicks and then getting as close to them as his 'copter will allow, staring at them through his sunglasses. Rather than flip him off or call the cops, the ladies find this intriguing and/or romantic and he usually drops down a ladder so they can climb up and be taken away to his sprawling castle estate. There, he wines and dines them, introduces them to his creepy mute man-servant, and serves them brandy (or is it cognac) in a giant snifter.

Then he kills them, puts their heads in glass cases, and feeds the remains to his "thousand" cats in a pit.

I'm sure to your average reader of Fifty Shades of Grey, this is fucking hot, but to me, a man who prefers to abuse women with words, that whole deal sounds fucked up and horrible. By the way, I put "thousand" in quotes because I'd say it's more like a hundred cats that he has. Still, it's an alarming number of kitties. I mean, even cat ladies would be a bit unnerved by this number. And don't get it twisted, that whole premise might sound like it would make an interesting film, except the filmmakers didn't make that film. Instead, they made a boring slog that would be better titled The Night of a Thousand Helicopter Shots. Most of the film consists of shots of the helicopter, close-ups of Stiglitz's blank face (probably some Kuleshov-style directing going on here), shots of the city, inserts of his hand on the cyclic, shots of attractive women. Aside from the shots of the women, I was fuckin' done with this movie by the 20-minute mark -- and there were still about 40 minutes of movie left. Yup, this is flick is barely over an hour and it still felt like three. The original cut is an hour-and-a-half, but no thanks, I gave at the office.

I tried to find things to enjoy, like looking at 1970s Mexico City, the fashions, the interior decorating, and of course, the ladies. On occasion, there would be something to jolt me awake, like Stiglitz grabbing a cat and throwing it up in the air so hard and fast, you'd think Grant Moninger threw that cat. Oh yeah, there's some good ol' fashioned cinematic animal cruelty going on here, but that is to be expected. At least none of the cats appear to get killed, they only get thrown around -- or thrown at people. What else can I say? Oh, there was one part where Stiglitz helps himself to one of the raw pieces of meat that used to be a beautiful woman, and then his man-servant takes a piece and holds it up to a flame, slightly cooking it before handing it to him. It shows that he was looking out for his boss. Aside from that, don't watch this film. Watch this instead.

It was about 5 in the morning by the time the fifth film (out of seven) came on; a wonderfully beat-up/scratched-up 35mm print of Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn (the on-screen title, anyway -- it's actually just The Deadly Spawn, for brevity's sake) from 1983. I've seen bits and pieces of this over the years, but never in its entirety, so it was cool to see it for the first time on the big screen. It's a fun little low-budget alien flick; obviously made for $2 and a dream, but it does the job and the alien effects are impressive. The main Deadly Spawn itself is pretty cool and scary looking, just a giant penis with hundreds of razor sharp teeth.

Like most films of its ilk, this opens with a meteorite coming down to Earth, and of course, the contents of this fallen star include Bad News. They are the titular Spawn, and they're all about the OM NOM. They mostly hang out in the basement of a house, waiting for the hapless and expendable to come downstairs and face the chomping. Eventually, they get bored and decide to venture upstairs and out into the open. One of the characters is this kid who loves him some horror movies; he's got posters and creature masks all over his room (he even has a Gorn head on his shelf). Meanwhile, his older brother is the more responsible one; he wants to borrow his parents' car and take his friends out that night after their study session -- and I got the feeling he actually would get his studies out of the way first before going out. Good for him. Work hard, play hard, brother.

Speaking of playing hard, for a film that doesn't take itself seriously, it still managed to surprise me when it came down to Who Gets Got. I think if this was a studio film -- or at least, a higher-budgeted film with more investors -- I think the filmmakers would've faced some opposition on certain characters being killed off, insisting that things play out in more of a "safe" (and boring) manner. I mean -- SPOILERS YOU SENSITIVE SOULS -- by the end of the movie, the two brothers survive but goddamn, the older one is shell-shocked and the younger one became a Man way too fuckin' early in his life. Neither is gonna be happy or content for quite a while. Their parents died horrible deaths, and the awesome girl who was clearly supposed to end up as the older brother's girlfriend is currently on the front lawn without a head (that particular death bummed me out while simultaneously making me applaud the filmmakers). Early on, this movie takes it sweet time in between feedings, but once it gets going full speed, it does not fuck around. END SPOILERS SWEETIE

The sixth movie ended up being the last movie for me and my friend, which I'll explain later: a DCP or Blu-ray of the 1982 exploitation/horror-ish film Basket Case, from Frank Henenlotter, who has gotten a good amount of representation at these marathons for the past few years. The film's about this dude Duane who shows up at a seedy hotel in New York City with a big basket and a fat wad of cash. What is this seemingly nice guy about? Revenge, my man, revenge.

This guy Duane, he's actually carrying his Siamese twin bro Belial in the basket, and things didn't turn out so well for the other bro. Because, uh, he's living in a basket. Yeah, he's all small and deformed, but don't fuckin' judge Belial because of his handicap. Judge him because he's a murderous fuck and kind of a player hater too. Both he and Duane are looking to take out the doctors responsible for separating them, and while things seem to work out on that end, Duane also hooks up with this chick Sharon or Susan because there's always something, right?

Let me get what I didn't like about this movie out of the way. Henenlotter loves screaming. There's evidently never enough screaming in his films -- and the longer, the better, the louder, the better. It doesn't help that the sound mix and/or the theater's sound system had a love affair with the high-end and the unholy consummation resulted in a child by the name of Audience's Bleeding Ears. Like nails on a goddamn chalkboard, it was.

Aside from that, I dug this movie (which I last watched a couple years ago). My friend liked Gargoyles better, proving that he can get it wrong when it comes to movies and friends. Anyway, Basket Case has that awesomely grimy feel and look that cannot be duplicated unless you took a film crew with you into a time/location machine and went to 42nd Street in the early 80s. I always felt the movie had an interesting mix of humorous and slight melancholy -- I can't explain the latter because I'm just a sad fuck in general, but when I say humorous, I don't mean laugh-out-loud, I mean it's just got this goofy sense to most of it. I don't remember any actual jokes or punchlines, most of the humor just comes from casting the most interesting looking/sounding people in the roles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to take away from Henenlotter's writing and directing, if anything this just shows good he is at getting the tone he is clearly going for. The actors are not only playing characters, they seem like they're genuine characters themselves.

It's hard to pick a favorite performance, but it just might be the actress who plays Dr. Kutter. She's one of the 3 doctors marked for gruesome death-by-Belial and she's a real trip to watch. Her character is introduced having dinner with a younger man and plying him with more alcohol than he probably needs or wants at the moment. Poor guy already has a few buttons open on his shirt, and she's got this slightly creepy way about her while she calls him "Cuddles". I think the creepiness might have to do with her apparent trance-like state while saying the lines, her eyes just a tad too wide and not quite looking at the person she's talking to (or she's looking at his forehead). It's almost like she's reading from a cue card. Except when she gets into bitch mode, the trance ends and suddenly she's fully engaged with the other person. Was that a choice that the actress made? Like it's only natural for Kutter to be unlikeable, but being nice is such an alien concept to her that she can only "act" nice, and even then she's terrible at it?

Whatever the case, it's a suitably weird performance for such a film.

It was about 8 in the morning and at that point, my friend and I were both more excited about breakfast than in watching the final film, Zombie Holocaust (aka Dr. Butcher, M.D.). I had seen it before in both the Euro and U.S. cuts, and honestly, I didn't feel they were great shakes in either form. It starts out pretty promising, with some gory moments in a hospital that culminate in some dude jumping off a building, and becoming a mannequin upon hitting the ground -- which results in the mannequin's arm coming off. Cut to the next shot and the mannequin is now an actor again, arm magically reattached.

Then the film travels over to some godforsaken island somewhere and becomes a cannibal flick with zombies sprinkled throughout the boredom. I watched the Euro cut on DVD and was disappointed. I saw the US "Butcher" cut at the New Bev during one of their Grindhouse nights and was pretty fuckin' drunk, so I enjoyed it a little more. I wasn't necessarily amped up to see it again at the Horrorthon, except for marathon completion's sake.

But, as mentioned earlier, we were both hungry + my friend had a particular place in mind where he really wanted to go eat and where it pays to show up early + I had the movie on DVD if he was truly curious about seeing it = Let's Go. And so we did.

The food was kick ass.

Someone needs to give anti-depressants to the depressed drama queen dog in my neighborhood who always lets out a fuckin' three-minute lament every time a siren is heard. And I live in a shitty neighborhood, so it's sirens, like, every 10 minutes.

Yeah, I'm sure you know what's going on over New Beverly Way, some crazy shit that either you don't care about or you've gotten yourself worked into a Cujo-like frenzy of foamy mouth. As for me, times have proven time and time again to be too interesting to get worked up about it, or anything, for that matter. Par for the course on this island Earth, my fellow castaways. All I can say is pack plenty of lube and condoms, 'cause before it all ends, you're getting fucked or you're doing the fucking. And once/if you realize that you can also observe the whole ride as some kind of fucked-up cinematic masterpiece playing out in real time (directed by an aloof/petulant asshole tyrant) you'll be able to derive pleasure, regardless of position. And me, dear reader, I like to feel good ALL the goddamn time. Those tears in my eyes? Shit, bro, that happens whenever I yawn.

Anyway, the marathon that I know and love -- the All Night Horror Show -- is now at the Silent Movie Theatre/Cinefamily a couple miles away, where the seats have it in for your ass. Now, I've done all-nighters at Cinefamily before, but I was as drunk as Mariah Carey on a good day during those, so it wasn't like I gave a shit and plus they had pillows back then. Now, in my sober state I've learned that apparently your ass raped and killed the Cinefamily seats' family some time ago and now the seats wanna go Paul Kersey, introducing your cheeks to Jesus Christ via .357 caliber bullets. Speaking of Jesus Christ, that's who your ass is. Playing the part of the Romans -- the Cinefamily seats. What I'm trying to say here, people, is that the seats -- specifically the folding chairs placed along the aisle -- are uncomfortable.

But no one is forcing you to go to this theater, sir. You coulda stayed home on your comfortable hipster bean bag and watch all the fuckin' films you wanted with no buttock pain. You wanted to go. You needed to go. So why you don't just shut your fucking mouth and continue rambling about the marathon?

OK, fine. But just give me one more seat digression: Before the show started, I overheard some guy standing in the aisle (waiting to use the Juan) complain to his friend that he bought a ticket for a couch seat (Cinefamily's first two rows consisting of couches that cost extra) and that his assigned comfy couch seat was located in the far left. He said something like "I paid $25 for the worst fucking seat in the house" and strangely enough it wasn't followed by him saying "Wow, I sound like an asshole saying this near people sitting on folding chairs put out on the aisle a few inches from me".

And you sound like an asshole typing this to people who didn't attend. But such is your custom, so sail on, sailor.

It was nice to see Heavy Midnites' Phil Blankenship and Grindhouse Film Festival's Brian Quinn join forces in programming this motherfucker. It felt good to see them stand together on stage, it was not unlike watching Michael Dudikoff and David Bradley get together to kick ass in American Ninja 4: The Annihilation. During their intro, Phil and Brian brought up how they chose films that hadn't been screened in quite some time, rather than go for more obvious choices. They thanked not only the various archives and personal print collectors that made these films available (all in 35mm), but the studios themselves for hooking them up.

They talked about how one helped the other out in setting this up; I want to say it was Phil who offered his help to Brian, but I'm not too sure because my hearing frequency was picking up signals from the other station, where the DJ's were helping latecomers find seats and telling them that they would have to split up their group and have two sit in one section and one could sit in another a few rows down. This group seemed slightly perturbed, this group that showed up late.

Anyway, Phil and Brian were doing things a little different this time. Past All Night Horror Shows always had one Secret Film that would keep the audience excited and guessing, but this entire night was going to be all Secret Films. Aside from Phil, Brian, and the projectionist, no one else knew what would screen that night. So that was pretty cool, thought the blogger.

After a trailer reel, the first film turned out to be Bad Taste, the world's introduction to Peter Jackson. This was his first movie, shot on 16mm with his mates on weekends over a four-year period. It's a funny gross-out joint about aliens coming down to a small New Zealand burg to harvest humans for their fast food chain. Based on what the head alien tells his minions, with this new addition to the menu, the "Crumb's Crunchy Delights" chain is going to smash the competition -- which made me wonder about the other fast food establishments there must be in outer space.

I mean, if Crumb's is going to dole out human flesh like they were Big Macs, that would make them McDonalds, right? Well then, if I was a space alien I'd invest in creating the extraterrestrial version of Chick-fil-a, and I can come up with cute/lame advertising of aliens in human costumes defacing billboards with cutesy misspelled scrawls like "EAT MOR BOGHOGZ" or whatever the fuck other choices are out there for aliens to eat.

Anyway, to figure out what the fuck is going on, the government sends down "The Boys", who I guess are supposed to be a badass investigation/disinfestation squad, but look more like a group of regular dudes with day jobs at the local newspaper -- which is what they are, being Jackson's buddies and all. Various gags ensue, with plenty of jokes, gore, and EWWW. It's entertaining in an El Mariachi sort-of-way, watching what Jackson was able to do with very little money and a whole lot of passion.

I remember watching the behind-the-scenes doc on the DVD and tripping out on how Jackson had to build most of what he worked with; he created his own Steadicam, his own camera jib, he created the alien masks using his mum's oven, he even built his own (fake) guns. The effects were homemade & handmade, whereas if this movie were made today, he'd do all that shit on his computer, and no one would give a shit about his film because those days are over. He'd have to go to Kickstarter and promise to fellate his investors just to work up the same exact budget for his follow-up. Fuck that shit.



Phil told us that nachos, pizza, and various snacks were made available outside at the patio, and beer was available for purchase as well. Some people brought their own, though; the group in the row in front of me had stubby bottles and pillows and sure enough, they later took turns nodding off.

The next trailer reel came courtesy of Quentin Tarantino, who is either the savior or Antichrist right now, because there is no such thing as in-between. They were mostly for giant monster films like Gamera the Invincible and Varan the Unbelievable, as well as one of those beach flicks starring Frankie and Annette.

The second film, according to Brian, hadn't been screened in L.A. for about 30-40 years. It was a beautiful print of The Monster of Piedras Blancas from 1959, a Creature from the Black Lagoon knockoff that was pretty silly but good times nonetheless. This would've been great on MST3k, but I guess I'll accept a Rifftrax version, if that's what it takes.

It's about a lighthouse keeper who's kind of a grumpy dick of an asshole but he has a soft spot for the scaly fuck who feeds on the meat scraps the old man leaves behind for him. Everything seems OK until one fateful day, when the lighthouse dude shows up to see the local butcher/storekeeper/insurance agent named Kochek and finds out this man with the indeterminate accent sold his meat scraps to some other dude. Because of this, the impatient creature ends up going out into town to get his own food, which means he ends up decapitating motherfuckers and drinking all their blood because that's where the flavor is.

The Monster, he does not discriminate, he will kill male and female, old and young. Speaking of young, that was one of my favorite parts of the movie, where this catatonic father is carrying his little girl's body with a sheet draped over her, with only her tiny Mary Jane-clad feet dangling out. This was an image I found both tragic and fucking hilarious, for some reason. All that was missing was the girl's limp bloody hand dropping into view, still clutching onto a giant lollipop. Sorry for your loss, though, pops.

At one point, there's a close-up of a severed head in the Monster's hand, which I'm sure freaked many a moviegoer out back in '59, that shit was probably as scary as Communism. But there isn't that much monster action in this movie, because back then, you were able to pace yourself with that shit, plus, it's cheaper to film people talking about the monster than to actually show it (I don't think you even see it until the last half hour or so). But the people in it are interesting to watch, like the sheriff with the fucked up ears, or the doctor who will quickly prescribe sedatives in zero seconds flat. He hands them out like candy to some scared lady. Those were the days. Nowadays, you need to tell these motherfuckers a whole sob story about the despair that comes with being in your thirties and having accomplished nothing, just for a couple pills to help keep you calm on an airplane.

One scene involving the doctor has a pretty awesome punchline, although I'm not sure if it was supposed to play that way (the audience thought it was great); one of the townspeople barely manages to survive a scrape with the Monster and is face up on a table, all fucked up, face all bloody. Dude is damn near motionless as the doctor looks him over, and you're wondering what's going to happen to the guy. In the same room, the hunky former Marine/current marine biologist and the sheriff are trying to figure out who/what is this Creature of the White Rocks and what to do with him. When the scene ends, the doc sits the wounded man up and then damn near pushes him out the room, telling him he's good to go. The American health care system at work, folks.

Another part I really liked in the film is when a kid discovers the body of yet another monster victim; he ends up running to a funeral currently in progress (cause of death: MONSTER) and interrupts it. Almost immediately, everyone there is getting ready to take off because I guess it's cooler to actually look at a corpse at the scene of the crime, rather than look at a box with a corpse inside. The fuckin' minister actually has to tell them to stop because he's not finished yet. You can damn near hear the disappointment in the crowd, even from the victim's family.



If there was another intro before the third film, I missed it because I was using the facilities; this French-Canadian attempt at supernatural horror is called Cathy's Curse, from 1977. This movie -- holy shit, this fuckin' movie, man. It's hilarious. Were I the kind of dude who used a grading/rating system, I'd give it zero stars for what it tried to do, but for unintentional results, I'd give it all the stars in the heavens above.

The movie starts out with a title card explaining what's going on, and not in a Star Wars "the story so far" sort-of-way, but in a "we fucked up and don't know how to tell a story, so here's some help after the fact" way. It's 1947 and some father comes home to find that his daughter Laura has been left alone; she tells him that mommy ran off with the son and his response is "Your mother's a bitch!" And I guess God must be a woman, because a few minutes later, homeboy and his daughter accidentally drive their car off the road and become human barbecue.

The word "bitch" is used a lot in this film to the point that I kept waiting for Queen Latifah to eventually burst through the wall like some kind of Kool-Aid Man of Feminism, booming out "WHO YOU CALLIN' A BITCH?!" There is an actual female dog in the film (named Sneakers), so maybe that's what all the bitch talk was referring to.

So yeah, this movie, right? It's about this family that moves into the same house that we saw at the beginning, only now it's the 70s, and the father (looking like a cross between Will Forte and Kelsey Grammer) happens to be Laura's brother, now grown up and with a wife and daughter (the titular Cathy). Faster than you can say "cliched phrase", the evil spirit of Laura possesses the daughter (via a doll found in the attic -- everyone refers to it as a "rag") and the rest of the film consists of various examples of what a Sneakers this Cathy/Laura is. She does such naughty things like driving an old handyman to drink or an old nanny to throw herself out the window. Come on, that's what non-possessed children do to adults all the time!

The wife is a real nutty broad who declares out loud that she had a nervous breakdown in the past, even though she's saying this to her husband who already knows, because the screenwriters love expositioning the fuck out of the dialogue for the stupid audience's sake. Anyway, the wife is a hoot because she's supposed to be in a better mental state since her breakdown, but you'd never know it by the way she acts -- or "acts", because the actress playing her is pretty terrible. For all I know, she's better in other projects, but in this flick, she is as bad at acting as I am in making something of myself. It is so fucking bad and laugh-inducing, I felt I was watching a lost SCTV sketch, featuring Count Floyd showing yet another lame horror film and trying to convince the viewers at home that it's very scary.

The biggest mistake made by the filmmakers -- besides making this film in the first place --  is never giving the viewer a chance to know Cathy before she gets Laura'd up. As a result, one never really can tell the difference between them. For all I know, Cathy was already kind of a troublemaker, and there are scenes where Cathy begs her parents to stay with her and I still don't know if that was genuinely Cathy or if that was Laura setting some shit up. But if the filmmakers were trying to pull some shit like "eh, perhaps there never was a difference, mon ami", well then that flew over my head.

Cathy's Curse is awful, mean-spirited, and as far away from scary as a horror film can be. It is very funny though, and highly recommended if you need about ninety minutes of WTF. A woman gets called a "female cow" in it, so there's that. Also, it's very Canadian in that even after a little girl nearly gets her eye poked out by Cathy/Laura during a play date/mother's coffee klatch, the mom still remembers to thank Cathy's mom for the coffee while carrying her crying/bleeding child away.



In Phil's opinion, the fourth film of the night is also the best horror film ever made, some real gauntlet-throwdown shit. As bold a statement as one could make, one that got the audience hyped up. He said it was a film from the 70s, and then he and Brian gave us a warning that this was a UK print, meaning it was censored in some parts. I guess in exchange for free health care and not having to worry about being gunned down at school, UK citizens have to give up the freedom of seeing some good gore. Phil and Brian felt that the best way to cushion that blow was to look at it from a positive angle: This is what UK audiences saw in movie theaters back in the 70s, and it still made Classic status over there. Immediately, I thought of myself in a UK cinema back then, probably watching this late at night and following it up with a few pints at the local pub before ending the night with an early morning English fry-up.

(Oh, how I love an English fry-up! It's tied with an old-fashioned American breakfast as my choice for a last meal, which I hope never comes to pass because I never want to die. Someone needs to find a cure for Death as soon as humanly possible.)

The trailer reel that followed consisted of horror sequels like Evil Dead II, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Phantasm II, and I'm sure a couple I forgot about. With each trailer, I grew more excited because my guess hadn't shown up as a trailer and I felt that the film they were going to show might actually be my 35mm holy grail. The one film I've always wanted to see for the past two decades projected on honest-to-goodness film in an honest-to-goodness movie theater with an honest-to-goodness crowd. And it turned out that my guess was correct and my hopes were actually met for once because the film turned out to be...

THE ORIGINAL DAWN OF THE MUTHAFUCKIN' DEAD YOU MOTHERFUCKERS DO NOT DENY THE GREATNESS OF THIS CLASSIC UNLESS YOU WANT TO SOUND LIKE A FUCKING ASSHOLE CONTRARIAN AND IF THAT'S HOW YOU ROLL THEN YOU AND FELLOW CONTRARY MOTHERFUCKER ARMOND WHITE CAN GO DIE IN A FUCKIN' FIRE WITH LAURA AND HER FATHER.

Sorry for that outburst. But I really like this film, easily one of my all-time favorites. You know, the first time I went to the New Beverly Cinema, I remember seeing a guestbook in the lobby where you could write down requests for future screenings. Immediately I wrote down Dawn of the Dead, and that was back in '99, but since then I've never heard of any 35mm screenings anywhere -- except for one in New York a few years ago as part of a weekend of films that Paul Giamatti hosted at some museum somewhere. And for all I know, that shit was actually on DVD.

But man oh man, what a wonderful treat to finally get to see it, even in a censored print (titled "Zombies", looked great too!) and even with some guy in the audience who occasionally snored super-loud like some asshole who should've just gone home or should've just taken a nap in his car or something. It took a while before someone managed to work up the strength to get up and not slowly decapitate this asshole with a plastic spatula, nudging him awake instead.

Some of the more memorable gory parts were missing, along with some choice headshots -- but thankfully, the Brit censors still retained their sense of humor when it came to the helicopter blade scene. Compared to shit on television today like The Walking Dead, this cut of Dawn would barely rate as a light R. And you know what? The film still worked. One could even argue that taking out the most extreme gory moments made it less over-the-top in a comic book way, and more disturbing in a real life situation sort-of-way. (Two could argue against it.)

It also helps that this movie isn't only about the gore and zombie make-up, which come on, let's be real, some of that shit does look downright quaint nowadays -- the situation, characters, and point-of-view is what really makes George A. Romero's film a bona-fide classic. Earlier in my life, this film was good times as far as watching people try to survive while shooting muthafuckin' zombies in the head. But as the years go by and I get older, I find myself more and more scared and disturbed and depressed beyond my goddamn wits with each viewing -- and it has fuck-all to do with the zombies.

"I think Foster's right. We're losing."

"We're blowing it ourselves." 

I could go on and on and on but I gotta keep this short. So before I move on, I'll say this: considering the thoughts and feelings and prayers -- holy shit, PRAYERS, can you fuckin' believe that shit -- this film stirs up within me, I'd have to disagree with Phil's statement about Dawn of the Dead being the best horror film ever made. It is the second best. Number one would be the film we're currently all starring in -- because this all has to be a movie, right? I mean, nobody would be this stupid and petty and bullheaded in real life, right? For God's sake, somebody fire the screenwriter and get someone talented to rewrite this shit!



Phil said that the fifth film was not only made in the 80s, it IS the 80s. After watching it, I would say it's most definitely the late 80s compressed into a 90-minute running time: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge, starring some guy I don't know, some girl I don't know, the dude from "Silk Stalkings", Morgan Fairchild, the Most Interesting Man in the World from the Dos Equis ads, Mac's Dad from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", and the juice-weezer himself, Sir Pauly Shore.

Oh, and in a very welcome appearance (based on the audience's applause), one of the stars of the previous film, Ken Foree, as the main security guard of the mall. Poor guy just can't keep away from those shopping centers, I guess. Hey, by the way -- why didn't any of you tell me that Foree was in the film adaptation of Water for Elephants? What a pleasant surprise, right up there with Franco Nero showing up in Letters to Juliet DON'T JUDGE ME

A mall has recently opened up in town, giving many people many jobs for little money; among the new employees is this chick named Melody who can sure use the extra bucks, not to mention the distraction that keeping busy will provide. See, about a year ago, her boyfriend Eric died under mysterious circumstances, the kind of mysterious circumstances that involve burning to death along with his house that was not-at-all-coincidentally located where the mall stands today.

Eric, it turns out, is still alive (only he's very badly burned) and now resides somewhere in the dark, dirty recesses of the mall itself, using the transportation system that is Creeping Through The Air Ducts and having set himself up a living space bigger than my apartment. Fuck this guy, living rent free with his weight machine and multiple television setup complete with top-of-the-line double tape deck stereo system. As for how he eats, I can only assume he has his pick from the many fine eateries in the building after hours. As for how he showers, I'm pretty sure he doesn't, which means some of the stinkier members of the Cinefamily audience could sympathize. What did deodorant DO to these people for them to avoid it so much?!

But Eric ain't just a-squatting, he's a-killing -- introducing eternal darkness to anyone who fucks with his girl Melody. My favorite kill is probably the dude who sits down on the toilet and suddenly a cobra pops up and chomps on his package -- King Cobra? More like Queen Cobra, amirite bros? -- causing him to go out like Pavarotti, with the kind of scream he belts out. That's what he gets for being a pianist (plays for the mall) with a penis (tries to rape Melody).

The Most Interesting Man in the World plays The Most Douchey Guy in the Film, the owner of the mall who obviously had some hand in the mysterious fiery circumstances that led to Eric's current situation. I wouldn't have recognized this dude as the Dos Equis man except the lovely Erin from Seven Doors of Cinema pointed it out in her much better review of this film. His son is also a real douchey shoplifting/skateboarding asshole -- typical rich kid, if you ask me. Oh, I'm talking about the son in the film, not the son of the actor in real life; if he has a son, I'm sure he's a decent dude. Sorry, Dos Equis Man.

This Eric, he's a Freaky Psycho Jason and all that, but he's also very much a young man in that stage of his life between Teen and Adult, and is as susceptible to painfully awkward personal behavior that comes with not having really Lived Life. When he's not shoving some dude's face into a fan or crossbow-ing pervs, he spends his alone time watching videotaped footage of Melody while playing some love ballad on his tape deck for musical accompaniment. Bro, you need to get over it. Move on. Find a half-burned girl and have some half-burned kids. Get a half-burned dog. Name him "Lucky".

My favorite scene is when he has Melody over at his lair (she's passed out on his couch) and when she wakes up, she finds him a few feet away, slowly working on his lats with the pulldown bar. This sad fuck was probably staring at her for a while, waited until she started to stir, and then rushed over and began working out, probably counting out "one-hundred and five, one-hundred and six" even though he probably only did like 8 reps total.

Anyway, the movie's OK. I think the circa 1989 vibe helped keep things interesting in between the kills -- there's little to no gore, and the most horrific sight in the film is Pauly Shore's exposed ass -- and I can't hate on a film where Morgan Fairchild plays the mayor. Whenever she pops up in anything, she makes me smile, even when she's reminding me that death is coming to get us all. The most 80s thing about the entire film would have to be the end credits song, where the word "retard" is used because the mentally challenged didn't qualify as human beings back then. But hey man, it's The Vandals!



Following a trailer reel of sword, sorcery, and loincloth flicks, the final film of the night/early morning began: Lucio Fulci's Conquest, starring Mexican star of Mexican screen, Jorge Rivero -- or as he's credited here "George Rivero". Homeraza never really found success with the English speaking crowd, he's probably most famous over here for his role in the 1996 film Werewolf, which made for one of the better MST3k episodes.

Now, technically this film shouldn't qualify as horror; it has more in common with movies like The Beastmaster and the Ator series. But there is enough nightmarish imagery here (thanks Lucio, you sick fuck) that I can see why it was chosen. Also, the combination of the hazy soft-focus cinematography, the crispy-clear loud electronic score by Goblin's Claudio Simonetti, and the many strange moments that make you question whether or not you're truly awake or dreaming this shit up -- well, it made this film perfect for bleary-eyed early morning viewing after a long night.

Rivero plays Mace, your typical badass barbarian type who doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself -- and birds, he likes birds too. He fucks people up with these extra thick bone nunchucks and his relationships with the opposite sex are of the "love 'em and leave 'em" category, except he does return to them occasionally just to love 'em and leave 'em again. Until the next time.

He ends up partnering with this young dude named Ilias, who's more of the idealistic type. It's like Mace is from the hood and had no parents and had to fend for himself, while Ilias is like a rich kid from a loving family. But Ilias ain't just some geek off the street, he can be handy with the steel too. He has this awesome bow-and-arrow set that not only uses real arrows but can also conjure up these glowing laser arrows with the use of magic or Jesus' love or some shit. It's awesome and he never runs out. Later in the film, he even upgrades that shit to fire multiple magic arrows. Fuck Hawkeye.

OK, maybe a bow & arrow doesn't qualify as "steel", but you know what I mean.

So these dudes end up traveling the fantastical fantasy lands where it's always foggy/windy and there's always a body of water close by and it's always dusk or it's always dawn. They do this because some evil chick named Ocron has a hard-on for them and is sending her army of Asshole Chewbaccas to take 'em out (to the movies? to a ballgame?). Why is she doing this? Shit, son, I've been trying to figure women out for most of my life, but alas, they are all a lovely mystery that even Hercule Poirot couldn't fuckin' solve.

Oh wait, I remember now -- Ocron had a vision of some faceless dude showing up with his bow & arrow and giving her a few shots. She didn't ask for that, she doesn't want that, so she's gonna stop that before it even comes close to becoming that. And if she has to slaughter a whole bunch of Mace's peeps, thereby actually beginning the process of Mace and Ilias going to look for her so they can bow & arrow her into the next world, then fuck it, a masked girl's gotta do what a masked girl's gotta do.

Yeah, I forgot that part. Ocron wears a golden mask covering her entire face but that's about it for modesty because she's pretty much naked the whole time. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess that she's probably hiding a world of hurt under that mask -- it takes a rocket scientist who has seen more than a few films in his or her lifetime.

You got yourself some beasts, an master-of-disguise assassin made of metal, typical Fulci zoom-in shots of blood spewing out of freshly created wounds, an evil chick getting off on snakes while petting her bewildered dog, evil killer Chewbaccas grabbing a poor girl by each leg and splitting her open, dirty people chanting, a couple of genuine surprises in the plot, and a whole bunch of nicely shot (if a little too hazy for my taste) scenes. In other words, freaky good times.

Most of it makes little to no sense, but this is a Fulci film, after all. I'll be honest, when this movie started I wasn't feeling it, and I wasn't looking forward to sitting through the rest of its bullshit, but by the final shot of Mace walking away (over to Kirk Douglas' house, I reckon), this wonderfully strange, borderline hallucinatory, and occasionally off-putting movie had succeeded in rocking my barely awake world.



Following the film, the National Anthem came on, followed by a Tom & Jerry cartoon that was basically Sorcerer with a cat and mouse. Then we were treated to free breakfast at the patio: Scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, cereal, and coffee. A couple dudes ahead of me in line tried working up the munchies with the help of some medication and a spoon pipe. Me, I need no help working up an appetite when it's free.

And so ended another All Night Horror Show. I'll be honest here: Would I have preferred the original venue? Yes. I like the Cinefamily but I guess I'm just more of a New Bev guy (to speak only of the Torgan era, I haven't been to the New-New Bev yet) as far as vibes go -- whatever the fuck that means. Then again, free breakfast! But make no mistake via my bitching -- I thank the Goddess for allowing both of them to exist in this universe.

Ultimately, it's the movies that matter, and since it was Phil and Brian picking 'em, we were in good hands. In the end, all one can do is Go or Not Go. I went -- and I had a good time. My ass, on the other hand, begs to differ.

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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