The Worst Posters Ever!!! Part 12

Here I am, sitting in utter disbelief that I am even writing this particular post, because there is no conceivable way that I should be writing this post to begin with.

How many really awful movie posters can there be in the world?  Isn't there some sort of law against this?  I mean, don't people know that if your poster is bad then the reception to their movie will be even worse?  Do they think about this?  Does anyone?  ISN'T ANYONE OUT THERE THINKING ABOUT ANY OF THIS AT ALL???

I'm sorry...I'm sorry.  I apologize.  I shouldn't have lost my composure like that.  I have to realize that there are just so many really lousy posters for movies that it's going to take a while to catalog them all.  This is a huge endeavor; it's already lasted longer than writing about how lousy 1985 was for movies...and I thought that one would never end as it was.

Okay, let's get to the business at hand and then take our meds.

CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE

So this is how you want to promote your big, high-octane thrill ride of an action film, huh?  Jason Statham pointing a gun against a yellow background.  And does it look to anyone else that they just pasted Jas' head on top of a PED XING figure?  You know, guys, it's junk like this that ruined Charles Bronson's career: no, I don't mean the movies, I mean these posters.

DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS

Congratulations; your poster just got photo-bombed by Steve Carell after he came back from having his teeth whitened.  And Paul Rudd's none too happy about it.  I guess I can't complain about PhotoShopping in this one, but do I really want to see these guys' skin pores up close and personal?  If I wanted dermatology reports of the stars, I have the Internet for that.  And I also don't need Steve Carell trying to steal my soul with his eyes...or eye, in this case.  And that's what he's doing.  Right like that; I...GAH!  Stop that, Carell!!

SEX AND THE CITY 2

Yeah yeah yeah; I know I already did a SATC2 poster before this, I know that - but now Sarah Jessica Parker had to drag her little friends in on this one!  And I mean Cattrall, Davis and Nixon, not her...oh, you know what I meant.  The one on the left has this pained expression like her latte's getting cold, Parker's twirling around her taffeta like a prom queen on Red Bull, Cattrall looks as if she's trying out for the next Jackie O biopic from how wide she's able to get her mouth, and Nixon's just slooooowly inching off to one side, sneaking out to let everyone else act like idiots.  And by the way, there's no city in this poster, and no one's having sex (thank GOD); it's just a desert and material chicks.  Why was this show so popular again?  Anyone?

SOUL MAN

First of all, any movie that has the word "COMEDY" in its poster is just straining for any of the straws it can grab so as to stay afloat.  Otherwise we have C. Thomas Howell off to one side, being his typical C. Thomas Howell self...and that's it.  Well, nothing else says "COMEDY" like that, does it? And for your laff-fest, I'd kinda downplay the fact that it's being directed by the guy who directed Friday The 13th Part 2...unless Jason Voorhees is in it.  Now THAT would make for a "COMEDY".

FURRY VENGEANCE

Join me in welcoming Brenda Fraser back from his last triumphant engagement at TWPE!!!, and I think this one is even worse/ Any live-action movie that evokes the same feel as a Hanna-Barbera cartoon with animals beating up humans is one thing.  But Brendan looks to be stuck in CGI hell with creatures more befitting rejected Over The Hedge characters.  I think if Fraser had his clothes shredded, his hair on fire, a bear trap on one leg and an army of fire ants crawling over his face, it would still look right at home in this paean to overkill.  I get it: the animals are going to go all National Wildlife Foundation on his butt.  Geez, even the poster for George Of The Jungle was more subtle than this.

I have something special coming up for the next installment.  Oh, they'll still be The Worst Posters Ever!!!...but with a little added kick.  Something just for you, you sick twisted sick sicko.  Salivating yet?  Good.

Dope out.

- TGWD

Killing Spree (1987)

You know, there's every indication that this movie wasn't supposed to be taken seriously.

Not that this is some smirking meditation on the whole Mad Slasher genre, like Airplane! was to disaster films or Dr. Strangelove was to Cold War paranoia films.  No, this is an entirely different bird, this is.  Oh it's funny alright, but a lot of times it isn't funny ha-ha.

Something you have to understand is that the whole Mad Slasher world of films is ripe for parody as it is.  It's all so ridiculous and so unapologetically dense and over-the-top in its various incarnations that you can't watch an example without finding yourself talking back to the screen.  The victims run through the woods or the hospital hallways or whatever so fecklessly and with such disregard for good hiding places or protecting one's self with any available sharp objects or blunt instruments that it becomes almost embarrassing.

"Hey, the killer got 'em from somewhere - why can't you?"

Killing Spree understands full well how ridiculous the whole enterprise is.  So much so that it takes the middle road in parodist terms - it's not as messy and grandiose as Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies, but it's also nowhere near as dull-witted and toothless as Greydon Clark's Student Bodies or Alfred Sole's Pandemonium.  In short, director/writer Tim Ritter at least has seen a Friday The 13th or a Repulsion in his time.

So it goes thusly: Average guy Tom Russo (Asbestos Felt...yeah; I'll get to that name in a minute) lives an average life in suburbia with his average wife Leeza (Courtney Lercara) and has the average problems any guy would have including the belief that Leeza is cheating on him. This happened to him before with his last wife...and IT ALMOST DROVE HIM CRAZY!

Wait a minute, though; what would make Tommy boy even suspect his loving wife to be even the slightest bit unfaithful to his big, manly orange troll-like hair?  Nothing really...except for the fact that he finds her diary lying around which details many sordid affairs with several of Tom's friends and neighbors, and a few repairmen and delivery boys here and there.

You know, Leeza, there's such a thing as lockable diaries.

Anyway, this sets Tom's nerves on edge and he explodes in a hail of hairy homicidal rage, killing off his elderly friend Ben (Raymond Carbone) and Ben's teenaged girlfriend Angel (Rachel Rutz), a pencil-thin electrician (Alan Brown), a chunky delivery guy in a pink cowboy hat (Bruce Paquette), a karate-chopping TV repairman (Joel D. Wynkoop), a nondescript lawn guy (Kieran Turner) and an amazingly annoying next-door neighbor lady (Cloe Pavel) who has an amazingly annoying music theme.  Why? Because they all slept with his wife - except for Angel and the annoying next-door neighbor lady - maybe.

Guess what, though...even after killing everybody, it doesn't mean that these dead bodies are going to take such a thing lying down.  Some undead shambling is in order....

The home video school of film-making has given us many examples of how to - and how NOT to - make a movie.  Certainly Chester Novell Turner has no right to call himself a director just because he can hold a video camera.  Tim Ritter however, is no Chester Novell Turner - and that is a compliment.  Working with what he has available, Ritter made films that, rationally, were the better of his brethren, if only because he knew what worked.

He at least knew how to cast his movie.  Look at the star of Killing Spree - one Asbestos Felt.  It's one thing to have the name Asbestos Felt and be an actor, but you also have to have the look that embodies the name Asbestos Felt: bright reddish-orange hair and a beard that seems to be made of an angora sweater wrapped around his head...oh, and it has to be ready to get teased into Nartuto-esque spikes at a moment's notice.  Seriously, this man looks to have been made out of both asbestos AND felt.

And those eyes: with those wide, crazed eyes that open bigger than Little Orphan Annie's, Asbestos (if I may) knows how to emote psychotic jealousy from zero to crazy, as it were.  If someone is going to erupt into a spree of killing, you'd want it to be this man.

Do I really need to mention anyone else?  They're all just victims of Tom/Asbestos' wrath anyway and we don't really have any Lee Strasberg alumni in evidence.  Not that you need any actors for something like this; the ultimate joke in a movie like Killing Spree is the fact that everybody, except the main killer, has the acting talent of a row of plastic milk jugs.

Well, I guess I should mention the lady who plays his wife Leeza.  Courtney Lercara is an actress who, on the basis of the five movies listed on IMDb...has been in five movies.  Including this one.  She's become more of a spokesperson for cancer survivors everywhere which is a good thing; any way she can keep from being connected with a movie character whose best aspect was the fact that she could share the screen with the likes of Asbestos Felt is a major bullet point for the ol' resume, lemme tell ya.

Director Ritter has also seen Creepshow, apparently, since he knows when it's the right time to put a red cel on the klieg light when Asbestos goes into Berserker mode.  And the level of cartoonish deaths (decapitation by a ceiling fan, screwdriver through the top of the head, murder by lawn mower, death by having your decapitated girlfriend's head thrown at you) makes you wonder just how many episodes of Happy Tree Friends one movie can inspire....

And by the end, when we have a whole house full of the undead stumbling around, demanding that Tom/Asbestos kill himself so they can feel a little bit better about being dead themselves, we have come full circle in what certainly must be one of the most incredible flicks ever inspired by Fangoria Magazine - I'm serious; not only has Ritter admitted publicly that he has read every issue of the magazine, Tom/Asbestos even reads a Fangoria during one scene.  Imagine if he'd made a sci-fi flick - we may have been treated to someone leafing through Starlog!

So Killing Spree is a good movie, then?  Well, it does have scenes that cannot possibly be taken seriously and acting that follows suit.  And I have to come back to Asbestos Felt, whose crazy, cackling revenge makes one think that if a Muppet ever became a method actor, he would be the result.  Not that this makes the film the same quality as, say, a Roman Polanski work or a John Piquer Simon.  It does have something to it, though.

And what that something amounts to is a sense of fun that makes the viewer realize that this was good time for everyone on camera and behind the camera, and it was a sense of fun that made it through the screen and to the viewer.  How is anybody supposed to take a movie seriously that has a bit part with a woman whose hair looks to be modeled after a parrot, a Koosh Ball and Phyllis Diller?

This is Asbestos Felt's film, beginning to end.  If you do watch Killing Spree, you'll be drawn to him, you'll pay attention to everything he does, you'll admire his decision to wear bikini briefs as he cleans up after one of his dirty deeds and, more than anything, you'll wonder why more actors don't have names as good as his.

Should you watch Killing Spree?  Probably; if you like ridiculous movies that have a sense of humor, ridiculous acting that makes you appreciate the restraint of Betsy Palmer in Friday The 13th (1980) and a mood that helps you realize that, just maybe, this whole genre needs a good slap in the face.  It sure got one here.

You could do worse for $75,000 than make a movie like Killing Spree.  You could replace all your hair with orange cotton candy.  I know of at least one man who did it....

Pieces (1982)

It is with a sense of over-abundant joy that I re-introuce you to my favorite writer/director of all time, a man who created worlds of supersonic men, fuzzy killer E.T.s and voracious slugs: MISTAH Juan (or John) Piquer Simon.

I am so easily swayed when it comes to the idea of JP (I can call him JP) behind the camera for any work of cinematic artistry.  It's almost like an iron-clad guarantee of superlative film that is a natural by-product of his involvement.  Let's face it - the man knew how to make a movie.

I guess it stands to reason to expect universes of awe and mystery from the man who gave us such delights as Slugs, Pod People, Mystery On Monster Island and my extreme favorite Supersonic Man.  These are works for all time; I do not make any bones about the fact that I dearly love JP's films and watch them every chance I get. 

But what about Mad Slasher films?

I know; I've spoken out against such stupid efforts as Friday the 13ths 1,2,3 and The Final Chapter, and how they repeat the cycle of killing teenagers - usually female teenagers - that in and of itself spawned a whole sub-genre of horror that the MPAA has tried to live down ever since.

However, in the case that I'm about to discuss today - Pieces - we have something different...and entertaining.  What we have, basically, is the film that Pandemonium tried to be.

A Mad Slasher send-up?  Sure, but also one that knows where to pull its look and its inspiration from - the Italian giallo.

But before I get ahead of myself, let's get into the plot, shall we?  While playing with a sexy naked lady puzzle in 1942 Boston, a young teenage boy is repressed by his mother, and he kills her with an ax, chopping her into several...well, you can guess what he chops her into.

Forty years later, in a modern-day (or 1982-day) college campus, a serial killer is killing young women and cutting them into various you-know-whats, a different body part from each student. Detectives Lt. Bracken (Christopher George) and Sgt. Holden (Frank Braña) make a deal with the campus dean (Edmund Purdom), to infiltrate the school with police agent Mary Riggs (Lynda Day George) as a tennis teacher so they can investigate the rash of killings inconspicuously.

Together with student Kendall James (Ian Sera), they try to find the identity of the killer.  Could it be the sinister handyman Willard (Paul L. Smith)?  Could it be one of the other leering, nondescript teachers, students or a random citizen of Boston?  One thing's for sure: it's someone with a chainsaw!

Easy enough to explain the intentions of a movie like this, even if its tagline wears its heart on its sleeve: "You Don't Have To Go To Texas For A Chainsaw Massacre!" - and right they are.  Pieces makes the most of every last penny of its microscopic budget to give us - the world-weary viewers - what we expect from a movie that calls itself Pieces.  Body pieces.  Lots of 'em.  Arms.  Legs.  Hands.  Feet.  Metatarsals.  You name it.

But again, this is a parody, a send-up of the Mad Slasher genre that gives the seasoned onlooker reason to smile.  For one thing, it's set on a college campus - a veritable depository for fresh, nubile bodies and more red herrings than the fish market.

Effects gentleman Basilio Cortijo has enough red dye and Karo Syrup to paint the town (or campus, in this case) red.  Not to mention enough animal guts and entrails to sub for their human counterparts.

At one point our killer (whoever he is) surprises some poor hapless lass in the college gym shower and chainsaw massacres her in half at waist level for her troubles.  Of course JP and company couldn't do anything like the real thing, baby, so what do they do?  Dutifully march to the local meat market, buy a freshly prepped pig ready for a luau, dress it up like their character, rev up the ol' Husqvarna and vrrrrrriizzzzz....

The magic of Hollywood, Spanish branch, ladies and germs.

There's a lot of that going on in Pieces, but all the more reason for JP to frame it in bright daylights, quick cuts, clever angles and interesting uses of night and shadows.  This is the work we've seen in the films of Argento, Fulci and Bava, but here its use in an all-American setting (by way of Spain, but anyway...) makes the watcher realize that maybe this JP guy has it right for once.

Though writing uncredited, JP collaborated with other writers John W. Shadow (who only had a couple of other writing credits prior to this) and Dick Randall (who actually wrote noticeable titles such as The Mad Butcher, Lady Frankenstein, The Erotic Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Invaders of the Lost Gold) to get the overwrought parts right.  It's ridiculous all the way through - from a blood-soaked prologue, hysterical characters, overactive cutaways, proper usage of the word "bastard" - many times - , a thoroughly gratuitous Paul L. Smith bit part utilizing his very best Dune qualities, all the way down to a finale that you kinda expect but still manages to grab you when (and where) you least expect it.

That's my JP. 

So let's take a moment and examine the direction.  JP is a past master when it comes to building up drama, showcasing action, giving us dialogue that makes the most of the characters' speaking abilities (usually) and various show-stopping scenes.  Very nice.  Then again, what can you expect from a man who made us believe that a man (on a string) can fly?

The acting cranks it up, alright.  The Georges (Christopher and Lynda Day) made the most of their two-person road act with this, Day Of The Animals and Mortuary.  Oh, there's more but for the purposes of this site, that's enough.  He's stern and stoic, she gets hysterical and screamy and at least once or twice, one shows attraction for the other.  I think it's in their contracts.

And you may recognize actors Sera and Braña in their respective roles, and well you should if you've seen even just a couple of other JP movies.  They are regular players and fill their parts quite well.  As a matter of fact, I think they probably have the best parts in the whole thing, seeing as how when you recognize the regular players in a directors' ongoing works, they're ongoing actors for a reason.  Especially Sera, who actually puts all of himself in his role and runs with it.

And other parts by Smith and Purdom are about what you expect.  Red herrings are red herrings, no matter what, but there are such a thing as memorable herrings.  These guys are certainly memorable.

I really did enjoy Pieces.  What other Mad Slasher movie features a quick bit by a random Kung-Fu master?  What other Mad Slasher movie contains a military march as a dramatic crux?  What other Mad Slasher movie has a female aerobics scene...well, okay, maybe there's a lot of that one, but I still didn't mind.

Okay, so maybe Pieces wasn't a barn-burner in its first release - after all, Pieces had Friday The 13th Part III, Amityville II: The Possession, The Slumber Party Massacre, The New York Ripper, The Dorm That Dripped Blood and The Beast Within to compete with and glom whatever bucks were left over from those under-developed, non-ironic money hogs.  Yeah, even Slumber Party Massacre - Amy Jones and Rita Mae Brown be damned.  It was in video and in rentals that it found its place and JP's fans found retribution for their idol.

With JP's sad passing in January of 2011, we lost a man who may not have had the respect and honor of his contemporaries, but damn it, he sure did have the fire and passion. Pieces was just one example of this passion, and for any faults you may (indecipherably) find in it, it is without a doubt a movie that you know for certain more than one person had fun making, and even more people had fun watching.

As for me, I'll take Pieces over any Friday The 13th, Halloween or Nightmare On Elm Street any old day.  So yeah, that's an average of...oh...25-30 to 1.  Good average, I say.

Happy Jason Voorhees' Birthday!

Yeah, yeah - I know it's Friday the 13th and it's only used as the date of the birthday of a fictional character (he's fictional?...), and even though I've given him a hard time for four movies AND four reviews, Jason Voorhees is the man we associate with the day that, before 1980, we USED to associate with bad luck, black cats, broken mirrors and the like.

NOW we associate it with masked killers, dead teenagers, machetes and chee-chee-chee-haa-haa-haa.

So I guess it's only fair to now give props to the only mad immortal killer that Alice Cooper would think enough of to sing about.

Happy Birthday, indeed, to the man for whom this day will forever be associated.  The Man Behind The Mask: Jason.

Oh, and since I mentioned Alice Cooper and Jason Voorhees in the same posting, here:


Alice Cooper - He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask) by scootaway

Plugging Up A Site: T-Shirt Bordello

Kids, you who know me know that I do not talk up websites if they don't live up to the hype.

When I go to all the effort of telling you what a great place a certain website is and that you should visit it even if you have to type out the address with your nose, you should listen.

Really.  You should.

The site I'm about to tell you about now is a place that is altogether wonderful, outrageous and, in a word, fashionable.  Yes, consider this your style wake-up call, brothers and sisters.  This is a place you should visit now, in fact. Go on.  Go!

Oh wait!  I need to tell you about it first!  Jeez, sorry; got carried away.

Don Myers (whose middle name just happens to be "Of The Dead"...I like that middle name) contacted me a while back and gave me the heads-up on a site of his that, while up-and-coming, still needs to be made known to the public at large.  I wholly agree...as a matter of fact, I think this is a place that needs to be better known.  I'm completely serious here..look at me, do I look like I'm kidding here???

The name of the place is T-Shirt Bordello, a nice little place that originates out of Florida and is really starting to leap up and make waves.  Sure, there's other places like this online, but I think we've got a winner here.  Especially for the discriminating hunter and collector such as yourself.

T-Shirt Bordello is a site which specializes in t-shirts (duh), but not just any t-shirts.  These are shirts that you, as an individual, a regular reader of this site and someone who appreciates a good chuckle need.  Yes, thee are shirts which are funny - andnot funny in a Big Johnson shirt way.  We're being eclectic, here....

After all, we have a fine selection of preshrunk 100% cotton shirts (no blends here, kids - 100% COTTON!) which feature imagery from such well-respected standards as Star Trek, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Battlestar: Galactica, The Shining, Friday the 13th, Psycho and Ghostbusters.  Not to mention such well-respected individuals as Stephen King, George A. Romero, H.P. Lovecraft, David Hasselhoff, Bigfoot, John Stewart and Chuck Norris...well, of course you gotta have Chuck Norris in there, too.  That's a given.

Not just shirts, though...NO, not just shirts.  If this was a site that specialized in just shirts, then we'd need to go on to something else.  But T-Shirt Bordello also specializes in items such as coffee mugs, beanies, baseball caps, tavern glasses, ashtrays, keychain fob thingys and professionally-printed business cards from a reputable-looking place in Europe called Elite Hunting.  Very nice.

I'm sure Don and company won't mind, so here are a couple of pictures of their product (complete with direct links to the site so you can BUY THEM NOW).  Just look at this:

Are you kidding me; this is must-have stuff!

So go on over - right now - to T-Shirt Bordello, buy two or three t-shirts, pay promptly and thank me later. 

You're welcome.

Dope out.

- TGWD

Visiting Hours (1982)

Sometimes when you're watching your Mad Slasher movie of choice and find yourself examining the storyline, you'll discover strange thing start to happen: you realize that no matter the unique trappings (high-rise building, cruise liner, summer camp, coal mine, high school), you've seen this story before.

It's not deja-vu, it's the fact that they can tell as many variations on a theme as they want but, basically, it's the same thing.

Back story, present-day setup, slow-but-steady murders (some of them under unusual circumstances), false alarms, final showdown, killer strikes multiple times, final victim strikes back, killer dies (or DO they?), horrified survivors' faces, stinger, fade out.

Sound familiar? It should if you've seen a Friday the 13th, Halloween, Child's Play or any variation or sequel thereof. I've written about them here more than once and taken into consideration the various differences in story - if they're there - but they are the same thing. Just a different shadowy killer, is all.

Now, remember back in the late Seventies/Early Eighties when they had the predecessor to the Friday the 13ths and such? These were slasher movies still, but they exclusively featured men and their masochistic killer instincts they practiced solely on women. Titles like Don't Answer The Phone, Don't Go In The House, Don't Go In The Woods, Don't Walk In The Kitchen With Those Muddy Feet, Don't Talk With Your Mouth Full and others made for a full plate for feminist protesters everywhere. And they were out there, believe me; protesting the fact that men were out there killing women - young and old - all over the place on the big screen. (okay, maybe I made up a couple of those, but you get the idea...)

In fact, the most infuriating thing for all these protesters about this entire sordid enterprise was that in every instance of these movies, the victim (the FEMALE victim) is shown to be weak, helpless, easily frazzled, and even-more easily victimized.

Is that a problem, you ask? I'll let you pose that question to a woman and then you get back to me.

In the meantime, let's go to 1982: dozens of variations on this theme have passed, millions raked in and even more were on the way. But it was about here that they (studios, producers) thought they could dress up the genre a bit. Yeah; dress up a movie about murdering women. A year earlier Paramount Pictures released The Fan with no less a victim than Lauren Bacall, and co-stars such as James Garner and Maureen Stapleton along for the gory ride. So with this in mind, 20th Century Fox went the same route and infused their sleazy little slasher with vitamin Lee Grant and an extra fortified shot of William Shatner!

The film was Visiting Hours, it was set in a hospital for the most part and, in spite of the cast and setting (and its strict adherence to The Cunningham/Mancuso Directive), gave us...say it with me...the same old thing.

Killer plot coming through: Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant) is a controversial TV journalist, whose feminist views and championing of battered women and their rights upsets the wrong man. A homicidally-deranged woman-hater, Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside) has hated women since a traumatizing incident from his youth turned him against...well, women in general, I guess. So he breaks into her home, kills Deborah's maid and nearly succeeds in killing her as well. Somehow, Deborah manages to survive the attack and is rushed to the city hospital. Realizing she is still alive, Hawker sneaks into the hospital with the goal to kill her once and for all. It all leads up to a climax where dark hospital halls, lots of sharp objects and blunt force trauma all figure in a battle to the death....

Now I'm not against violent movies in general. Not if we have a good story to carry it along. There was reason for it and reason to follow it through in Charles Bronson's classic meditation on capital punishment Death Wish. The Class of 1984 was not necessarily a movie I liked but I appreciated everything it managed to come across with and how it told a very tightly-knit revenge story. Even a movie like Sleepaway Camp told us the same thing but did it with all its cliches in check and certainly did it with a fascinating twist. The problem with Visiting Hours is that this is a story that only fits in the same mold as its early 1980 brethren.

We've had films in what is called the Mad Slasher Golden Age such as My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday To Me, Mother's Day, Terror Train, The Prowler, Maniac, The Burning, Silent Scream, Final Exam, He Knows You're Alone, Schizoid, When a Stranger Calls...there's more, believe me. And all of them do the same thing that Visiting Hours does, just all in their own varying degrees. It's kind of like saying that they're all car crashes - just this one's a Chrysler, that one's a Ford, this one here's a Yugo...understand?

But seeing that I'm getting ahead of myself, let's backtrack: director Jean-Claude Lord is a native of Canada (surprise!) and at least TRIED to get a giallo vibe going here, what with Hawker's penchant for photographing his dying victims and assembling these pictures in his home and the doom and gloom all being very shadowy and artfully positioned, at least, in spite of the blood and gore. After all, this is the man who gave us a sequel to Eddie and the Cruisers (a fave movie of mine), so I'll let him slide.

The writer, however, one Brian Taggert, is an unadulterated hack who seems to know nothing about writing aside from assembling cliches and cliched dialogue like a Mad Libs page. He's also responsible for Of Unknown Origin (another killer rat vs. man movie), The New Kids (another Sean S. Cunningham kids and killing movie - from 1985!!!), Wanted: Dead or Alive (another "TV-to-movie" effort), Poltergeist III (another Poltergeist sequel), and Omen IV: The Awakening (another direct-to-TV Satanic movie sequel). Feeling warm fuzzies yet? Must be your bunny slippers, champ....

Not a one of these actors invest their parts with anything that could conceivably be called a performance. Grant is an actress, an honest-to-goodness actress who has been in such fine examples of the art as Detective Story, Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell, In The Heat Of The Night, The Landlord, Shampoo and Plaza Suite. Of course, she's also been in latter day efforts like Airport '77, Damien: Omen II, The Swarm, When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?, The Mafu Cage and Charlie Chan And The Curse Of The Dragon Queen. She's had bad times onscreen and though she at least fights back some here, she's more of a symbol than a character. I'll get to what I mean in a second.

Williams Shatner (a nice slice of prime Canadian ham, himself) plays William Shatner. Looking for everything like a man who had some free time in-between episodes of "T.J. Hooker", Shatner offers his face, his acting and his toupee to the service of the script as the TV producer/romantic interest of Grant's character. And while it's always good to see him do his thing, this is more like a walk-through than a walk-on.

Michael Ironside (another Canadian? what IS this??) has based an entire career on being a violent thug and it's worked quite well for him. A career stretching from 1977 on, Ironside has given us violent henchmen, violent ESP practitioners, violent alien overlords, violent generals, violent sheriffs,violent detectives, violent majors, violent inspectors, violent colonels, violent doctors, violent video game voices...let's face it, he's just good at being violent. And it's not like he has the shrinking violet part. He gets to chase women around while wearing their jewelry and nothing else, grind his forearm in broken glass, glower menacingly and have flashbacks - it's not his fault that he has both the most showy part in Visiting Hours and the most thankless. Being a misogynistic murderous loner lout has its perks but being sympathetic isn't one of them.

Linda Purl, a familiar character actress from TV and movies, plays a sympathetic part as a hospital nurse/future victim, but she also suffers the same fate as most every woman who has more than five minutes of screen time in this movie: she will be stalked, threatened, victimized, endangered and attacked. All the while her acting will consist of worried looks, sweats, wide eyes, cowering, whimpers, screams and gasps and little else. Too bad.

The astute Canuck-watcher will also recognize Harvey Atkin in the cast: he of the big mustache, big glasses and expressive face whom you no doubt will remember as Morty (not Mickey) from 1978's Meatballs and a whole slew of other things. Not that he does anything noteworthy here, but just to let you know: this movie has Harvey Atkin in it. So there you go.

Now, what I said about Grant being a symbol instead of a character: she represents the fiercely independent woman of the early Eighties who has ideas, ambition and a strong sense of self. This was, of course, the biggest threat to the men in the movie (not only the antagonist, but ALL the men) and made her both the main character AND the main victim. Think about it: movies like have to have at least one woman in it that stands up to the men, proves she is their equal if not better and that, in and of itself, makes her a threat to all bastions of masculinity that must be conquered and vanquished.

That is not only a symbol in whatever movie like this you choose, but also for the viewer (male or female) to focus on and realize that, if any woman dares act too independent in a male-dominated world, she will pay the price. That sounds more than a little Cro-Magnon-ish but isn't that basically what it all boils down to? And once the independent, assertive woman gets chased and threatened, she turns into a crying, whimpering, cringing weakling, losing every thread of character she had only a few scenes before. It's happened more than once and it sure does happen here.

I realize I'm starting to sound like an old Siskel and Ebert review for something like Eyes of a Stranger or Mother's Day but the fact that Visiting Hours does nothing more interesting than retell a familiar story with no twists other than different people and different setting belies the weakness of these movies: if all you're going to prove in your movie is that women automatically become weak and cowering when pitted against a male aggressor, then all you're doing is reinforcing decade upon decade of static cliches without even bothering to make a difference in what you show.

That was the difference in movies like 1978's Halloween and even the later Scream movies: at least they didn't give us the same thing. They gave us women that thought, were resourceful, clever and bothered to establish characters that made you actually invest yourself in their situation and care about what happened to them. That's why the patron goddesses of this genre are names like Jamie Lee Curtis and Neve Campbell.

Now as far as this goes, I know I'm going to get some feedback on this along the lines of what a great movie Visiting Hours is, how great the cinematography is, how awesome and menacing Ironside is as the killer and how perfect a character we have in Lee Grant. Fine. Have at it. All I can do is tell you that this is NOT the rose-colored classic you think it is. There's a lot to be said for revisiting the past, but not when it makes you question why you thought the movie in question was a classic to begin with.

I didn't like Visiting Hours, not even when it first came out. You just feel unclean watching something like that that tries to fool you into thinking you're watching something not only artful and creative but - dare I say - different. In reality, all Visiting Hours ends up becoming is one of many; a patchwork affair made from different rotted fabrics. If that's what you choose to watch, by all means do.

Just don't blame me if you've seen this story before. It's not like you weren't warned.

Nukie (1988)

In the world of ripoff movies, many titles have come the way of the wary moviegoer. Given that 99% of them are so bad that many TVs are afraid to play them, we're stuck with titles that kept video rental stores in business for many years.

We have King Kong ripoffs, we have Jaws ripoffs, we have Star Wars ripoffs, we have Superman ripoffs, we have Mad Max ripoffs, we have Terminator ripoffs, we have Alien ripoffs, we have Raiders of the Lost Ark ripoffs, we have Friday the 13th ripoffs, we have Enter the Dragon ripoffs...and then we have E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial ripoffs.

I'm sure you can wrap your brain around the others I've mentioned, but E.T.? Sure, it made millions if not billions worldwide, scored a nice plume in Steven Spielberg's chapeau and was a great advertisement for Reese's Pieces, but who in their right mind could or would rip off a movie like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial??

To be perfectly honest, I had no idea there was such a thing as E.T.spolitation, but it seems there is. And we have such sparkling examples of this genre as Mac and Me, Xtro, Pod People - and I also stumbled across two (yes, TWO) pornographic takes on E.T.; hey, if film-makers can do a porno take on Pinocchio....

But all of this pales - PALES, I tell you - to the example I have here for you today. Yes, even the porno E.T.s aren't a shade on this, the one E.T.-wannabe that was not just the worst E.T.sploitation and the worst movie ever made based on a better, but also a ripoff that is an international production

Yes, you read me right, Pollyanna; this was German film production, that was filmed in Namibia, Botswana and all points South in Africa, a scene or two in Munich and they even bothered to lens something in Los Angeles, to boot. If they had just filmed scenes in China and Chile, we could have all joined hands and sung "We Are The World"....

Nukie is an odd fish in that, while gloaming off Spielberg and apparently catering to the kiddies whilst employing scenes that all but play to its German/African market, it also features not one but TWO alien creatures. Two E.T.s - and two of the most horrifyingly ugly, ungainly, mucus-dripping abominations ever to curse a pair of eyes.

While that may give some of you out there an untold "gotta-see-it-so-I-can-say-I-saw-it" high, please keep in mind this is a country-specific kiddie comedy, not a horror movie. Never mind that it'll give you nightmares...this is a comedy. For kids.

Here's some plot for you: In the farthest reaches of outer space, two aliens named Nukie and Miko from some undisclosed planet somewhere are flying around as bright lights in the universe...no, they have no ships - they just become bright lights that sail around; you expected special effects or something? Anyway, Nukie and Miko think it would be a good idea to sail around in Earth's atmosphere until they sail too carelessly and crash-land on different parts of the planet.

Miko is quickly captured by an American space foundation which is only identified as The Space Foundation - in spite of the fact that they drive around in cars which have NASA plainly slapped right there on their doors! - and is given multiple tests which involve wires, tubes stuck up his nose and electricity. Nukie has landed in the middle of the African savanna and wanders all over trying to make friends with the animals (only a few of which TALK TO HIM!!!) until he befriends two young boys from a nearby tribe who themselves become outcasts when they are blamed for damages caused by Nukie.

For some reason, a doctor from The Space Foundation named Eric Harvey (Steve Railsback) tries to track down Nukie with minimal help from a nun stationed out in the middle of this tribal outpost in the African version of nowhere. This nun, Sister Anne (Glynnis Johns), complains, whines, grumbles, argues and does everything but be helpful as the two young boys get in more trouble, Nukie wanders about more, Miko is experimented on more, and everything culminates in a stupid plot twist where everyone ends up in the same place at the same time. And did I mention the talking chimpanzee wearing a pink t-shirt?

Director Sias Odendal has directed and written absolutely nothing before or after Nukie (proving conclusively that justice is out there in the world) and here proves that he is good at nothing more than keeping a camera in focus. His co-director, Michael Pakleppa, at least had a couple more credits under his belt - never mind that you've never heard of them. But Odendal's co-writer Ben Taylor at least got an award nomination for his writing...not for Nukie but for his 1988 film In The Flesh. He didn't win anything for it but hey, at least he proved he could do something creative.

The production aid of choice for this film seems to have been peyote, seeing as how not one thing in this film makes any kind of sense nor is entertaining in any manner than humans recognize. And it all seems to have been edited by an ADHD Edward Scissorhands. In fact, there were no less than seven (that's 7; four plus two, VII) editors working on this film. Not that it makes any difference in this thing as far as content goes - unless you think about it like seven doctors all operating on the same appendix with one scalpel.

As far as the attitude of this film, let me just mention that Odendal and Taylor both collaborated on this script after apparently going on a viewing binge on their Australian better The Gods Must Be Crazy, where a Coke bottle dropped from an airplane set off an epic comic quest. The fact is that here, even with two aliens, a talking chimpanzee in a pink t-shirt, a whole African tribe, lots of stupid white people, a nun to throw in some always-funny Catholic guilt into the proceedings and an overly-smart computer who learns to get in touch with its inner HAL, Nukie tries too hard to shoehorn in a bunch of subplots, details, and characters to aim for slapstick, and instead end up with scattershot.

There's chase scenes to spare, lots of stock footage of wild animals, a musical sequence or two, white dots moving across postcards of outer space and various Earth panoramas and fast-motion scenes of African tribal hunters running around, a la Benny Hill, BUT when you couple all for this with scenes where Railsback and Johns have lukewarm heart-to-heart talks about whatever, heartless scientists being heartless to ugly aliens, and depressing scenes of expressionless aliens dripping snot, mucus and various fluids from every available orifice while squealing like pigs cross-bred with prunes, the Spielbergian sense of wonder is gone. Instead, the only wonder associated with Nukie is, "I wonder what kind of weird psychedelic head trip the guys who did this thing were on?"

The actors who play The Space Foundation scientists and the African tribe members both seem to have gone to the same acting classes - looking at them you cannot tell if they had any professional acting training or not. If so, it sure doesn't come through here. The Space Foundation scientists are all so dull and boring and borderline sinister that you really don't care about anything they do - especially not to their little captive mucus machine.

Every single thing these idiots do is so completely and utterly stupid; especially when one of these "men of science" is convinced by The Space Foundation's computer named EDDI to become a clown and so dances around and starts talking off his clothes. Just like a regular clown.

The African tribe members at least come off better by the sole virtue that no one ever tells them to be circus clowns. Other than that, I guess the best thing that can be said about them is that it looks like they went ahead and saved themselves a lot of production money and hired an actual African tribe to be in this movie. Who needs actors when you can get "the real thing"?

And speaking of the actors, I remember when Steve Railsback was in his heyday in the Seventies and illuminated the small screen with his electrifying performance as Charles Manson in the made-for-TV film "Helter Skelter". Then again in 1980 when he shone brightly in that wonderfully artistic stunner The Stunt Man. I mean, he was quite literally lauded all over the place for a breakout performance against the likes of Peter O'Toole. That was such a loooong time ago.

What about Johns, though? She was in such classics as The 49th Parallel, Mary Poppins, The Sword and the Rose, Rob Roy The Highland Rogue, The Court Jester and Around the World in Eighty Days. But like everyone else, she fell on hard times after a while and took a job wherever she could get one. Apparently it's a toss-up as to whether she thought she was in a comedy or a drama, judging from her performance which teeters dangerously between doddering dottiness and grim talkings-to.

At one time they were both their respective darlings of their respective cinemas but Nukie contained some pretty high hurdle to clear. Some people make it over such hurdles, some clip the bar, other times still the runners stumble. This, however, was a race run in scuba flippers.

Nothing about this film comes even close to hitting the tone of E.T. - heck, they don't even reach a Mac and Me vibe. How did something like this go so wrong and fail so completely? I'll tell you exactly why: because Odendal, Pakleppa and Taylor saw E.T., came up with a cute title, then completely forgot to do anything original once they got past the "hey, let's make a movie" stage. Nukie is a product of people who not only didn't care about what they were making but made darned sure no one else involved cared and that no one who watched it would care, either.

I'm going to give you a few names: Marguerite Sehr. Thorsten Schreiber. David De Vries. Kissi Schwabe. Neil Swanepoel. Charlotte Van Graan. Johan Barnard. Jorg Springfield. Rod Dyson. These are the names of the people responsible for (as they say in the credits) makeup, wardrobe props and special effects for Nukie. Why do I mention their names? Because NOWHERE in the end credits do they mention anything about who was responsible for constructing and bringing to life the hideous alien costumes used in this thing. No one. They refuse to take responsibility for either Nukie or Miko. Not that I blame them, but I want to know who to write my letters to ... uh, my fan letters. Yeah, that's it: FAN letters.... Yeah.

The only thing I can tell you about Nukie, money-wise, is that the lack of any hard facts as to what this thing cost to make only adds to my suspicion that this was something funded by the blood of the innocent. I suspect some arcane chants were employed during various points of production and are still going on to this day, just to keep the dark secrets of Nukie hidden. After all, if the truth were to be known, would we want Germany to make any more sci-fi-oriented kiddie films?

I think anyone who willingly subjects themselves to Nukie deserves everything they get, right down to talking chimpanzees in pink t-shirts.

David Friedman Dead at 87.

The man who came to embody exploitation AND over-the-top promotion has went the way of the blood feast.

Herschell Gordon Lewis' favorite producer/collaborator and the promotional genius behind what would become the "Gore" film was someone who could have kindly been called "bigger than life" when it came to how he lived, how he hawked his wares and the style of film-making he gave the world.

Of course, Lewis was the writing and directing genius who gave us such classic blood-and-guts fests as Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs and Color Me Blood Red, but it was thanks to his working partner Friedman that such works found a voice and a face in the drive-in world where they became the bread and butter of the industry and laid the foundation for what would later to give the world Friday the 13ths, Halloweens, Nightmare on Elm Streets and gore flicks galore.

Friedman would move on to produce and release nudie cuties, as they were called for the ever-burgeoning sleaze market and Trader Hornee, The Erotic Adventures of Zorro and The Adult Version of Jekyll & Hyde could only benefit from his participation in them.

Surely no one could say that Friedman wasn't a showman; anyone who had the career he had doing something that not only he loved doing but was loved so much by others was a successful man in every sense of the word. We are all richer for having witnessed his effect on the movie world and poorer now for having lost him.

No better way to remember his donations to the world than to watch the original trailer for his(and fellow film-maker Herschell Gordon Lewis') biggest hit, Blood Feast.


Blood.Feast.[trailer]
Uploaded by soulpatrol. - Watch feature films and entire TV shows.

Rest in peace, David. May you huckster your way up to Heaven.

Dope out.

- TGWD

King Kong (1976)

For any child of the Seventies, chances are they had never even seen the 1933 King Kong, seeing that video rental places weren't really right around the corner at the time, unless of course they happened to catch it on the late-night movie or the Saturday Afternoon Movie right after the Pro Bowler's Tour. That kinda thing.

So when Dino De Laurentiis announced his intention around 1974 or so of remaking this classic monster movie, teens didn't really make that much of a big whoop on the matter. Purists who had seen and loved the original stop-motion classic, of course, kind of winced and turned their heads, hoping that the producer of such cinematic treats as Crazy Joe, Lipstick, Mandingo, Drum and To Bed Or Not To Bed would do their big hulking primate proud.

That's the thing about monster fans; they always hang on to that last thread of hope as long as they can, no mater how outlandish that hope may be: they were counting on Dino De Laurentiis to produce a great movie!

Now on the subject of remakes for a moment, of which 76's King Kong most definitely falls into category-wise, I'm not sure when the first remake was made; probably right after the first motion picture was made by the Lumieire Brothers. For such a lofty tradition, it had to have begun relatively early so as to become such an expected by-product of the film experience.

Certainly, as sure as the sun rises in the morning, there has been remake after remake after remake of almost every major motion picture ever made - and a few of the minor ones.

Sometimes they're good, but that is not always the case as one would expect. I've lost count when producers, studios and directors have put their heads together to make high-standing wrong-headed decisions, most of which led to major disasters right there on the screen. And I don't just mean in monetary terms - that's a given. But disasters also in terms of loss of integrity - both artistic and personal - for all involved. And it hurts. Bad.

You remember the first King Kong from 1933, don't you? I'm safely sure we've all seen the original at least once in our lives, right? Sure, it's old school, and not the CGI marvel we expect from all modern films. Even so, you could see the desire to entertain, bring things to light that had never been seen before in films and make a story that would fill you with awe and wonder as to what lies in the deepest jungle on the farthest reaches of the Earth.

We're talking Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Empire State Building, "T'was beauty killed the beast", the whole thing.

So came our old friend Dino, the very man who thought he could do everything better - including The Bible! And with the opportunity afforded him by thees a-big a-monkey, he saw a way to not only update the story and make a spectacle for this generation but maybe even make a few bucks in the process.

Then we were given Paramount Pictures' Dino De Laurentiis Production of King Kong in Christmas of 1976. Or as I like to call it: The Year Without A Santa Claus.

Let's peel this banana of a story now. Big oil company Petrox is heading for distant Kong Island in search of a hopefully-large oil strike. The expedition is headed by the equally oily Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin), who promises to bring back "something big". Hmmm.... In the process, the crew comes across a stowaway (Jeff Bridges), a castaway (Jessica Lange) and the island in question which may not hold oil but does hold natives who worship a gorilla named (ironically enough) Kong. The crew is slow to catch on that the natives' huts and housing are encased within some VERY BIG WALLS. In time, they'll soon discover what the walls are for after the castaway is kidnapped and offered as a sacrifice. After that, it's pretty much your basic monkey-loves-girl, monkey-gets-captured, monkey-escapes-in-Noo-Yawk, catch-the-big-monkey, save-the-girl, destroy-the-city-in-the-process story. They even managed to include the recently-completed Twin Towers to fill in for The Empire State Building.

We got us one big honkin' movie here, $24 million worth - and Lorenzo Semple Junior wrangled a script from the original Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace story that dolloped in some heavy doses of...well, I can't really call it irony and it isn't quick enough to be considered a satire...let's just call this heavy doses of Mad Magazine-level nonsense.

Now, about the acting? Chuck Grodin is always worth watching and makes slimy and reprehensible very entertaining; of course what could you expect from the man who all but made Ishtar his own? Jeff Bridges will always be a great actor and makes his moments memorable - though I liked him better in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, he at least fares better here than in the Farrah Fawcett-Majors vehicle Somebody Killed Her Husband. Lange had several years to go to get better parts in films like Frances, Country and Blue Sky, and not be thought of as a model. She at least does her best while playing against a superimposed image of an ape head, but I'll get to that.

This is one of those films that you'll enjoy even more if you have any knowledge of who was who in Hollywood bit-parts and have watched more than your fair share of films in general. Then you can join in with the rest of the people who've watched this and play "Spot The Star - Seventies Version". The attentive will amuse themselves no end by catching performances by Rene Auberjonois, Jack O'Halloran, Ed Lauter, John Lone, Forrest J. Ackerman, Corbin Bernsen, Joe Piscopo, Walt Gorney (Friday the 13th's own Crazy Ralph, ladies and gentlemen!), and even a little part for John Agar, speaking of old school....

Director John Guillermin isn't known for his good judgment in lensing such "epics". Oh sure, he can use the widescreen lens as well as anyone else, but the stories he films? Check out The Towering Inferno, Sheena, Hell Heaven or Hoboken, and the inevitable King Kong Lives for further proof. Of course, he did helm Shaft in Africa, so a few coolness points go to him for that. Still, Sheena....

Can we at least count on the awesome effects expected for 1976 as compared to 1933? Well, Rick Baker designed a pretty effective monkey suit and a well-articulated face for it. He even played the title part - as he is wont to do roles in monkey suits from time to time as he did in The Thing With Two Heads, The Kentucky Fried Movie and The Incredible Shrinking Woman. Then all we're left with are small-scale sets with Baker in his suit stomping around; the sets are about the same quality you'd find in your typical Godzilla flick. Then we have to have 30-foot tall Styrofoam and semi-mechanical Kongs in big settings so we can have people mill around at his feet and/or run in pants-wetting terror from him. It's that whole to-scale thing we're talking about here, and it's not always successful - you tell me; if you're going to build a giant robot of a gorilla to use in a movie, shouldn't it at least not look lobotomized, as compared to the non-suit-wearing and articulated-mask-wearing scenes?

Then we have Lange interacting with blue screen scenes so that her emoting can show Kong reacting in kind. After all, it's hard to act against a styrofoam ape head. And there are a couple of successful scenes, like when Lange is held under a waterfall to clean off by our big boy then he blows air on her to dry her off, his cheeks puffing out as he blows. That part kind of amazed me as a kid, seeing as how even then realized we were talking a mask here instead of a real ape. Overall, it kind of lacks the entertainment value that A*P*E had in its cheap, dumb setup and purring gorilla destroying buildings made of paper.

Back in the day, I remember all the hype that Paramount ladled over the American public like so much ape gravy. Kong's face was on everything you could imagine: t-shirts, cups, stickers, drink glasses, magnets, posters, candy, and I think someone even came up with a King Kong Cocktail! Just the thing to drown your sorrows after watching the film!

But the fact of the matter is that Dino's Kong, no matter how much you saw of it on posters and at Burger Chef or whatever couldn't mask the fact that THIS version, while big and flashy, just didn't hold the same allure as the 1933 original.

What went wrong? They treated the whole endeavor NOT as a sequel to the original, but as a continuation of the clunky, jokey Japanese versions where their Kong would fight against Godzilla or some big robotic version of himself. They don't even do a version of the "beauty killed the beast" line. They do have Kong's hand reach in and grab up Lange at one point like in the '33 version, though without the hysterical screams.

Man, people were so depressed in the Seventies they didn't even scream when gigantic monkeys abducted them.

And even with all of that working against it, King Kong STILL managed to make $132 million overall, well over five times its budget. See, all those drink glasses they sold made SOME impression. And I think that may be it - merchandising is a big part of any movie's success. the more stuff you have for sale with your movie's name on it, the more money your movie will pull from it and the better your chances of making a profit. That's the power of marketing for you, baby - it has the power to make fertilizer appealing to the unwashed masses; even the unwashed masses expecting a 1933 throwback and instead got thrown down. To the curb.

When all was said and done, I guess there were some who preferred the Seventies' Kong to the Thirties' Kong. All well and good, save for the fact that they were replacing cinema gold with fool's gold and doing no one a favor in the process except the studios. Just another example of what a good advertising campaign can do for you.

It didn't last, though. The 1986 sequel to THIS film, King Kong Lives (oops, sorry - SPOILER ALERT), didn't even earn back it's $10 million budget. Ten million bucks - that's what they get for not getting Rick Baker back, I guess.

So when it comes to a taste test, comparing 1933 with 1976 in terms of gigantic gorillas, 4 out of 5 dentists (you innocent viewers being the dentists), would be wise to stick with the original.

That fifth one? If he wanted monkey shines, he sure got 'em.

Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes (1978)

Mutated giant monster movies can be fun. Anyone who has seen the likes of The Giant Gila Monster, Night of the Lepus, Empire of the Ants and Food of the Gods can attest to that fact.

What you have here are gigantic creatures brought about by mankind's tampering into God's domain (to quote one such flick), resulting in the murderous beasties destroying cities, armies, weaponry of all kinds and threatening the rule of man on Earth. But we brought it on ourselves, so it's okay.

Not a lick of it is believable for a minute of course, but it's fun to watch all the scale models being destroyed scene after scene. It's like being a kid again and watching the Saturday Afternoon Movie, right after the "Pro Bowler's Tour" and before the 30-minute commercials extolling the virtues of the latest model of Chevrolet and its scientifically-perfected suspension system.

Why were these movies so popular? Because they all took themselves so seriously and with such solemn pretension that you could feel the corners of your mouth twitching as they stretched for profundity with every appearance of a gigantic mutated grasshopper crawling up the side of a building (which was really a building on a postcard or some such).

Of course, it stands to reason that all these huge mutated whatevers were allegorical as to our contamination of this precious Earth we are left to care for. So you see: it's all serious. Stop laughing at the giant killer rabbits - they're representative of man's mistreatment of his natural resources.

This does NOT make them any less hilarious, however.

In fact, the only thing that can ruin the good fun of such movies is when they are made the center of a parody.

There's that word again: parody. Like Jekyll & Hyde...Together Again parodied Robert Louis Stevenson or Pandemonium parodied Friday the 13th or The Underground Comedy Movie parodied...whatever it was it tried to parody.

With those examples, you should know what I'm getting at; so let's get right to the point 'kay?

I first came across Attack of the Killer Tomatoes when reading through Harry and Michael Medved's book The Golden Turkey Awards (did I ever mention I proudly own a copy? Just checking). Such an ungainly title, conjuring visions of Fifties movies where gigantic forms of produce attacked the likes of Peter Graves and John Agar, made me expect something that would not only be entertaining but funny (in a self-important way). Yet, after finally watching this same movie on an old episode of Elvira's "Movie Macabre" TV show (remember, fellow b-movie fans? Remember...) not only convinced me for certain that such a movie existed, but at the same time convinced me beyond the shadow of a doubt that such a movie did not NEED to exist.

I watched the whole thing, even caught it in a rerun of this same episode, and yet I was conflicted. Is Attack of the Killer Tomatoes a bad movie, struggling to make us believe it's good? A good movie, celebrating the bad qualities of its brethren? Is it just plain ineptness, trying to make us believe that the mediocrity is the message? Well, if there’s any place where you can get into the aesthetics of a movie about murderous vegetation, the Internet is the place, let alone this very blog. And so with that in mind....

Leave us begin: intrepid and schlumpy government agent Mason Dixon (David Miller) is called into action when people left and right are being rubbed out by the killer tomatoes of the title. Where did they come from? Why are they killing people? Who knows, and who has time to examine the whys and wheres and whens - this is a comedy, any kind of explanation would just bog down the story, wouldn't it?

Dixon is immediately assigned a crack team of associates to fight the fruits. They consist of Lt. Wilbur Finletter (Rock Peace, aka: J. Stephen Peace), who drags around a deployed parachute and a samurai sword, Colburn (Steve Cates): a guy who wears scuba gear constantly - even when not in the water, Attenbaum (Benita Barton): a female Olympic swimmer who's built more like a shot-putter, and Agent Smith: (Gary Smith) a gentleman who’s supposed to be a master of disguise...never mind the fact that his best disguise is Adolph Hitler. . .and the gentleman in question is black. This has all the makings of the stuff of comedic legend...or it would, if it were handled the opposite of a sledgehammer and the subtlety of a truck crashing into a brick wall.

With all of these goings-on going on, the attention is attracted of an intrepid lady reporter named Fairchild (Sharon Taylor), who trails after the group, witnessing the carnage and contributing next to nothing to the story, let alone filing a report or anything. But that's okay, she's not supposed to - this is a comedy, after all.

A few blackout routines involving a Senate discussion on the matter headed by Senator Polk (Eric Christmas, more famous as Principal Carter from the Porky's series) pop up, as does the dealings of presidential aide Richardson (George Wilson) who teams with TV commercial whiz Ted Swann (Al Sklar) to devise a series of ads which will convince America that killer tomatoes aren't that bad of a thing after all....

We also have numerous (WAY too numerous) government satires thrown in - or at least satires in the sense that a large group of people meet in a closet-sized meeting room, a Japanese scientist speaks in a perfectly enunciating English voice and a scientist who has just suffered an explosion of chemicals in his face must wait in line at a drinking fountain to rinse out his eyes. Is that satire? Maybe in the sense that stunted humor and characters doing face palms en masse at ridiculous situations is satire. If that be the case then yes, this is satire.

We even get a few song-and-dance numbers (one about the garish world of advertising, and another one with a stripping Army sergeant -- don’t ask, don't tell). Then there's the business of strained takes on "The Six Million Dollar Man", Jaws and Superman, wacky radio news reports, a President who is constantly sharpening pencils, people running for long distances and others who dress in tomato suits and ask gigantic killer tomatoes to "pass the ketchup".

Then we have a whole glut of "special effects" (see what I did with the quotes, there?), headed by Craig Berkos, Robert Matzenauer and Roger Dorney to give us the aid needed to believe that 'maters can murder....

SEE! Stop-motion tomatoes crawl over two people in a supermarket!

SEE! Tomatoes floating in the water to suggest an aquatic attack!

SEE! A papier-mâché tomato chase someone down the sidewalk whilst perched on a skateboard!

SEE! A very durable - perhaps rubber - tomato roll after Agent Dixon and reverse-camera bounce its way up a flight of stairs!

SEE! Off-camera crew members throw real actual tomatoes at moving vehicles!

Oh, and then there’s “Puberty Love”. Sweet, squeaky, quiveringly lame "Puberty Love". This is a featured song in the film and is played over and over and over until it gets to the point that the viewer will use their "MUTE" button on their remote more than the "Fast Forward" button. And you thought hearing "That Thing You Do" over and over was bad....

Ah yes, “Puberty Love” - music by Paul Sundfor and Gordon Goodwin; lyrics by Costa Dillon, John De Bello and Steve “Rock” Peace.

Thought you’d want to know who to blame.

And everything culminates in a huge football stadium where the tomatoes are cornered and hundreds of foolish-looking people who wanted their 15-seconds of fame dress up in garish costumes and stomp down hundreds of tomatoes into the AstroTurf. Yep. The pie fight in The Great Race ain't got nothin' on this finale, folks.

Oh, sorry: SPOILER ALERT, up there.

Well there you have it, there’s the facts. Now, is Attack of the Killer Tomatoes any good?

How can I put this? I've agonized over the concepts of "good" and "bad' as pertain to this monstrosity and came up with a few rationalizations.

Follow me on these - when it comes to the theory of this being a parody of giant monster movies of yore, it fails. Those movies were all parodies in and of themselves. Sure, films such as Them! had thrilling moments, built good suspense and contained exciting climaxes. But for every film like that we had something like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman or Beginning of the End and some really bad, stupid, cheesy or just downright embarrassing effects meaning to relay a towering threat to man. Next to these, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes isn't much. If anything, it's too much - it tries too hard and attempts to throw everything in but the kitchen sink in the name of humor but succeeds only in making itself look foolish instead of funny.

In another sense, there are elements here that are good by the virtue that they ARE so bad. It’s obvious we’re dealing with a non-existent budget, way-beyond amateur actors, partially fleshed-out ideas where you can see what they were aiming for but are still juuuuuuuust out of reach. That's one of those situations when you can feel yourself be embarrassed for everybody on screen as they struggle to make the unfunny funny and helplessly watch things crumble in their hands.

So there's nothing good in this movie? To be fair, I enjoyed a scene where Dixon and the parachute guy are on one set of payphones, and the lady reporter and her editor are on another set of phones and their mixed conversations mesh into one of those kind of “Benny Hill”-ish double-entendre conversations. That was funny.

There's an old couple in the beginning of the film (Don and Rebecca Birch) who react to an off-screen tomato attack as the marauding fruits attack and eat their son that was terribly funny in that they were so obviously trying to act by reading cue cards with disinterest. That's always good for a laugh.

And Miller's performance as Agent Dixon was actually good in the sense that his character was so completely put-upon, over-his-head in the details and incredulous at the stupidity surrounding him that the very desperation of his trying to catch up with everybody else was, in fact, funny. Never mind the fact that those surrounding him were so feckless and glassy-eyed in their desire to overact and be broad comic stereotypes that they were all ambulatory nails-on-the-chalkboard. HE was funny in spite of them.

However, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes came into its own in spite of itself. How? By admittedly being the only film of its kind, to be perfectly honest. Nowhere else in 1978 could you find a killer tomato movie. Nowhere else did a marauding creature movie have a scene with The San Diego Chicken and "Bob Newhart Show" regular Jack Riley as a no-nonsense FBI agent. And no other film like this $90,000 slapdash effort could spawn three sequels (one of which starred a pre-stardom George Clooney), and a kid's cartoon series that itself lasted two seasons, surprisingly. And no bad movie festival is complete without a showing of this film.

Director/writer/co-producer John DeBello apparently made enough of a splash with this flick to prove at least one point: if you aim low enough with your film, there is a demographic out there that will make it a success!

Naturally, it all depends. If you’re one of these types who want to have actual, recognizable humor in your comedy movie, this isn’t for you. And if that's the case, what are you doing reading this, anyway? By the time this flick's over and that small row of carrots poke their heads out of the ground to see if the coast is clear, the viewer's gotten everything they deserved. And then some.

Have I thought too much about a movie that contains fruits on a vine as its villains? Was Attack of the Killer Tomatoes in reality some kind of revisionist joke on anyone who expected to find a funny comedy in a film with a title like this? Was Attack of the Killer Tomatoes the 1978 version of Freddy Got Fingered? Well, let's not get too carried away. I do think this film is not the best of its kind, though.

Unless we're talking about over-reaching comedies. If that be the case, then we have a winner.

Dune (1984)

When I see an ad for a movie, I usually know more or less what to expect when I see the actual film. That was the case when I went to see Star Wars, Porky's, Friday the 13th, Amityville II: The Possession, StarCrash and Assault of the Killer Bimbos. It was all out there on the line and I wasn't disappointed by what their trailers promised.

Granted, I wasn't expecting much from some of these choices, so I wasn't really disappointed by them.

Now, when I saw the ad for Dune, based as it was on the Frank Herbert novel and directed by no less a visionary artist than David Lynch, I realized I hadn't seen any images like these before. And it was for darned certain that the images I did see were from an altogether different train of thought than your average run-of-the-mill science fiction epic.

What this promised to be, according to the trailer and the book it came from, was thinking man's sci-fi; something far removed from the robots and green-skinned aliens and dogfights in space we were all so used to.

Frank Herbert's "Dune" series is the work of a genius. In it he had not only created a world but a whole universe of individuals, races and planets that were enthralling, plots both labyrinth and beguilingly simple, and political intrigue that would make Watergate almost seem an insignificant tantrum. I loved the books.

And naturally, since I enjoyed the books so much, I had a set of expectations for anyone who would dare to bring them to life. I had envisioned who would be Paul Atredies and Baron Harkonnen and what the Fremen would look like and how the Sandworms of Arrakis would appear and move. Our own dreams and imaginations have limitless budgets and we can only hope that those who try to bring these images to life have at least as generous a bankroll at their disposal.

Like I said, I first approached David Lynch's Dune with high expectations. Sure, he made off-balance film-making seem easy with Eraserhead and I still think The Elephant Man was an elegant and prestigious piece of work even after all these years. It wasn't like he just stepped into this cold.

Well, almost. This was one of those Development Hell projects that took decades to bring about and went through the hands and minds of such directors as David Lean and Alexandro Jodorowsky, tried to bring aboard Dan O'Bannon as a writer and no less a man to play the Emperor Shaddam IV than Salvador Dali.

Names were brought up and dropped, workers were brought on then dropped, funding came and went, studios had no idea what to make of it, Jodorowsky was afraid of the whole thing turning too "Hollywood" and decided to let it go.

Then in the early Eighties, Lynch was brought on as director and writer, in order to bring Herbert's words to a life that only Lynch himself would be able to fully understand. And as far as casting goes, Lynch already knew how to find faces that were indelibly expressive. He proved that as far back as Eraserhead and his short subjects up to that point. And Universal Pictures and Dino De Laurentiis gave him a nice $40 million budget to play with and an extensive crew of special effects workers to bring universes and worlds and entire civilizations to life.

It could work, I thought.

Oops; I almost took for granted you knew what the plot of this was. My apologies:

The year is 10191. Arrakis is a desert planet in a distant galaxy and the only source of a spice known as Melange, which is a vital drug used by an association known as the Guild Navigators for space travel from star system to star system. Two rival royal families, the Atreides on Planet Caladan and the Harkonnens on Planet Giedi Prime, fight for control of the mining operations on Arrakis.

The Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (Jose Ferrer) has allowed Duke Leto Atredies (Jürgen Prochnow) to arrive on Arrakis with his son, Paul Atredies (Kyle MacLachlan) and Paul's mother Lady Jessica (Francesca Annis), forcing the hand of the Harkonnens and permitting a war to escalate between Duke Leto and the Harkonnen's leader Baron Vladmir Harkonnen.(Kenneth McMillan). This leads to lies, betrayal, murder, battles and escalating bloodshed on both sides until Paul, taken in by the desert-dwelling Fremen of Arrakis, realizes his place as the leader of an underground movement to usurp the power of the Emperor and fulfill his destiny as a bringer of peace to the universe.

Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn't it? And if you go with what the book says, it IS kind of straightforward. There are no more nor less characters in this book than there would be in your typical novel about kingdoms, leaders, battles, hidden civilizations and destinies to be fulfilled. The book, as mentioned before, is very good.

But I'm not here to talk about the book, am I?

First of all, and I think this is the biggest problem Dune has, is Lynch's approach to the material. For a galactic religious allegory (young man frees universe from conventional laws in holy war, becomes god-like in process to bring water to the desert planet Arrakis), the look of this film suggests that Lynch examined the style of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, with some of the dullest, brownish-yellowish-est look to a multi-galactic movie ever. And it's not like the cinematographer was a slouch, but I'll get to that.

Lynch directs dialogue and many multi-character scenes so flat and static that he does seems to have come in to this cold, though I know that isn't true (he'd worked on it for three years or so). Unusual for the man who brought us such wild and varied films as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Lost Highway to bring about such a disinterested work.

The story goes that Lynch passed on the chance to direct Return of the Jedi to do this. In retrospect, that's probably a good thing.

Now about the cinematography. This was headed by Freddie Francis - the SAME Freddie Francis who lent his hand to many of the more atmospheric of Hammer Studios' horror movies. He was a man known for his rich, luxurious vistas and bright colors (especially blood red). Here, it's all flat, dull, dark, grungy and undefined. Seeing all that's onscreen, it's hard to tell at times any difference between the different planets (Atredies, Arrakis, Harkonnen, etc.) without the helpful subtitles for each planet that come up in the beginning.

Lynch's adaptation of Herbert's story is no help; it tries to follow the first book but trusts so little of the audience's intelligence that the largest part of the story is exposition! Look at films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Forbidden Planet, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Sixth Sense. Low to nil on exposition, and all good films, do we agree? I think a big factor in that is because the audience is trusted to just pay attention to the stories and follow them through, like a good book. Here, it was as if several chunks of book were omitted to permit for the running time. When Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen) explains what's going on in the beginning and it still makes no sense (her image even fading in and out as she remembers to include information), who can be blamed?

And what is it with Lynch's penchant for disturbing images in a movie where they really serve no purpose? Baron Harkonnen had no boils or welts on his face that needed drained in the book. Neither did he have to have his attendants' eyes and ears sewn shut. Both are true here. The added grotesqueness adds nothing to Dune; it just serves as another off-putting side note in a movie full of them.

What a great cast was assembled for this film! I already mentioned the principle actors but what about the fact that we have such well-regarded names as Linda Hunt, Freddie Jones, Richard Jordan, Everett McGill, Jack Nance, Paul L. Smith, Max Von Sydow, Dean Stockwell, Patrick Stewart, Sting and Sean Young and so little is done with any of them? They have all been involved in great things before and since and all of them have talent! A couple have even won some pretty impressive golden statues of their own!

So what happened here? Is it me or does everyone seem shell-shocked and somewhat deadened in their acting, especially in a situation where the weight of the story rests on what is said and how it is worded. Nothing sounds as urgent, important, desperate, intriguing or as good (or bad) as it should. Rather, it all sounds and looks like one big dress rehearsal BEFORE the real film was to take place.

The spaceships herein all look the same: black, undetailed and stationary. Even when they "fly" it doesn't look any more nor less convincing than when you made student films in school, trying to ape the Star Wars dogfights. Bet yours came out looking better. And the sand worms? Good for looking at a moment or two, but on close examination (and they get closer examination, being as central to the plot as they are) they aren't as well-designed or articulated as they could be. Same goes for the huge floating worm/brain creature. The effects were done here by Carlo Rambaldi, famous for doing E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. And this was released 2 years after? What a difference 730 days make.

And as far as the music goes...Toto? I think Brian Eno's "Prophecy Theme" was exceptional and very mystical; good stuff. But again - Toto? I know what Lynch and De Laurentiis were probably thinking; hey, the group's hot and they can at least get some kids to shell out bucks for the sound track. I thought the main theme was good, but after they repeated it the twelfth or thirteenth time, it began to be somewhat akin to water torture.

The main feeling that went through my mind when I saw Dune was that there were a lot of parts of this movie where Lynch put in some of his usually dependable "symbolism for symbolism's sake" of exploding planets, water droplets, an outstretched hand floating in mid-air, and those always-odd touches of black humor which usually gets Lynch purists their prerequisite chuckle. They weren't enough, however, to make it feel like this was anything else but one long (very long) meditation on a theme that should have been meditated on longer before cameras rolled.

Dune, then, is an incomplete movie. And by incomplete I mean it simply doesn't feel as if everything went into it before it was finished. Huge sets were built but without detail or interest. The Fremen are introduced as keepers of the water beneath Arrakis but they are seen as nothing more than a warrior race without digging deep into their history and purpose as Herbert's book had. One of the best lines of the book, "A million deaths were not enough for (Doctor) Yueh" is treated as a throwaway when it should have been a centerpiece.

When all was said and done, however, no one could argue with the bank. Dune made just barely over half of its $40 million budget and very few of the original reviews were very encouraging.

David Lynch can say he was enthusiastic about Dune all that he wants, but the plain fact of the matter is that this version of "Dune" is not the version of "Dune" you would be looking for. That is, if you've read the book. More likely, this is the version to watch if you HAVEN'T read any of Frank Herbert. Granted, you'll still need a score card to follow along. And you'll probably need a nice long nap afterwards. Or a good drink. Maybe both.

I know there will be people who defend this movie to their dying breath and feel it is the absolute best adaptation of "Dune" to be had because, after all, it WAS directed by David Lynch. Anything he does is worth watching for his fans. Dune belongs to neither he nor Herbert, however; this is a project that ends up, both visually and story-wise, adrift in a sea of drab and dirty stars.

However, if you are a fan of Frank Herbert and watch this movie regardless, think about a couple of things: wouldn't it have been better if they'd added more original book story and added an hour or so, maybe even split into a two-parter? Maybe Brian Eno should had done the entire sound track? How about some more color being brought into the proceedings? Think of what David Lean did in Lawrence of Arabia, where 90% of the scenes played out in the desert - maybe if they'd went with Lean originally? What if a younger actor played Paul (MacLachlan was good, but maybe one closer to the preteen Paul in the book could have made for even more bold acting opportunities)?

Of course, the horse is long gone out of the barn, so there's no need in closing the door now. Whenever you try to literalize a novel, you make enemies of the writers' fans who say it cannot be done and the movie fan who could not/will not understand what the story is trying to say. Same thing with writing about it; what one opinion can embody every movie viewer?

You may love the movie. Good for you. As for me, I'm still looking for the perfect visualization of Frank Herbert's work. Hey, SyFy Channel couldn't even do it! Is such a thing possible?

Maybe someday THAT sleeper will awaken.