Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Also ran:

Omega Cop
In the future (and from all signs somewhere in Cleveland), a unit of the special police are cruising around in Jeeps listening to doowop. The fun is abruptly ended when they stumble upon one of the future's ubiquitous gangs auctioning off young women (with a bonus can of gas!) Guns, karate, and one special cop remains: John Travis. Apparently Adam West can't let him back into the secret underground bunker because of solar flares or something, so Travis collects a trio of fine young ladies and makes for a football stadium, where the girls spend the remaining run time washing each other in the locker room showers and showing Travis their, umm, gratitude, right? Wrong. Instead Travis spends his time chasing kids around inexplicable 36-sided buildings to reclaim articles of clothing he left lying in his open-top Jeep, one of the girls is captured, a guy licks her armpit, chanting, guns, bigger guns, chase, repeat. There's a doctor somewhere in there but who cares. at the end Travis blows up Adam West to save ?. I have no idea where these cops draw their paychecks since there doesn't appear to be any society left to serve and protect and John Travis kills everyone else in the movie except the three girls, and then they go swimming (fully clothed). Upholds some traditional drive-in values (future cop, assorted assault weapons fired, paychecks for famous actors in their twilite period), but pretty boring, breast-factor of 0, 2 out of 5 whatevers.
- J. Baker, brilliant young scientist

Monday, May 18, 2009

Taboo

most. timely. post. evar.


'omega cop': this is what the box looks like.

uh, i didn't see 'omega cop.'


'omega cop': this is what the title screen looks like (pictured: omega cop).

i mean, is it my fucking fault that a) spinal tap picked a fucking sunday evening to come here for the first time ever (albeit without any wigs on and playing acoustic guitars and a bunch of songs from other fucking movies)? or that b) my sister totally got us free tickets 'cause she all like knows people and shit? one big fucking answer: no. but still i am sad i didn't see 'omega cop,' if only beacuse i really, really wanna see 'karate cop,' and that is th' goddam sequel.

well i'm sure someone will write about it. i can tell you one thing, tho': the 29 seconds i saw involved pretty much exclusively girls in short shirts running down a massive amount of stairs.



now, that very seriously looks like something you wanna watch like right fucking now, doesn't it? that's what i thought. and hey, it is that good. so y'got johnny travolta on th' mean streets o'the new york city, runnin' (ish) a club called (and i am stealing this first) aka...dump with his pal arye gross (as wendell!)(he was in 'just one of the guys' and 'soul man,' not just 'house II') when this dude bruce smith or something shows up (from russia) to ask them to open another awesome club (only in nebraska) only of course they don't know he's from russia 'cause he says he's from nebraska only here's the thing: they pretty much built some nebraska right there in the U.S.S.R., and he roofies 'em and flies 'em there. it takes a long time for them to get wise to this trick even though the nebraska there looks just like it's 1957 and everyone is pretty off except kelly preston but then again she "boogies" (yes she does, all over the place) with johnny so he's kinda blind anyhow there. well like i said it takes awhile but it's a good while to spend with these fellows and somehow they figure it out and that lands 'em in the joint and they're gonna get executed but then they say america is lame and then they don't and everyone goes all nutso and the rad flat-topped pilot saves th' day like three times and everyone ends up in america anyway but here's the twist, maybe they don't like real america, they can't hang in the big 1989 city so well why not let's just go all live in nebraska, happy ending right? ok. seriously all the awesome parts i am leaving out are totally worth the 65 cents it will take for you to buy this movie and the like better part of an hour and a half you will never want back because it is that good. but the main thing i want to say here is that steve fucking levitt is in this fucker, and he's drunk, and he's a burger boy, and i wish to HECK that he had a career longer than pretty much just this and 'blue movies' because man, he is the shit, and if at least he had made a few more eighties movies with weird russians like brian doyle murray in them then i would have something to fucking do with myself instead of all the other interesting things that i could well be doing all day other than wishing i had a copy of 'danger team.'

I Want You To Know

so, at some point last week i sat and watched two very drive-in worthy flicks all by my damn self. indoors, even. but lo, should ye think me th' sad & lonesome sort, ye can just shove that ol' notion clean and clear outta yer fuckin' braincase cuz usually i can't even get rid of you fucks (a few of you are ok). as usual i digress.



this movie was fucked up. i mean, the tape. the tape of 'blue movies' (an' just you googlificate on over an' have yerself a mess o' fun lookin' for that parr-ticular poster in th' image searcher) that i have is fucked up. really, really fucked up. probably th' most fucked up piece of tape i have let run to its logical (ahem) conclusion in my prized hand-me-down-12-year-old-not-even-then-was-it-state-of-th'-art machine. about 14 minutes of it a third of th' way thru didn't have any picture at all an' the rest was filmed in an oddly rotating snow or sandstorm. but, ah, yes, i stuck withit, dontcha know, i'm just that kinda guy. an' if ya find a better copy somewhere, why i might even fire it up with ya. anyhrrr, buzz (steve levitt!! just you wait!) has many crazy quick-money-makin' (but they never do, do they? ahoy!) schemes, th' most recent bein' a midget/chick/wrestler thing that gets him in somethin' like deep with th' russian mob or something (just. you. wait.) so he recalls a certain ar-tickle in th' biz secssshhh of whatever rag losers read (i would not know) pertaining to th' amount of VHS tapes sold with naked, copulating people all set to play on 'em vs. the amount w/o and comes to th' conclusion that porn is th' way to go when you don't have enuff ducats fer th' phone booth an' i gotta say he's got as much a right as anyone to be maybe right about something there. with th' help of his pal cliff an' a pervy dentist an' like his dad's yacht or something they like montage their way into some actors and stuff and whoa is it zany but hey did i tell you i liked this flick? 'cause i did, it was more than alright, maybe it was the nice sandwich i had on such a lovely afternoon as well but it was really quite grand and i hope it does get its due release on dvd sometime in the near-ish future for everyone's sake, really. 'cause everything turns out alright in th 'end, they hafta edit the 19 minutes of footage that's all they managed to get into a feature-length feature all by their lonesomes and then they hafta steal it from th' big pornmogul guys (there are three dudes that work there ok and they all have guns) but somewhere along th' way everyone gets to fall in love - like, fer real - and th' movie becomes a big hit, theaters in malls everywhere, parents taking their kids and goldfish to see it, evil plots foiled, &c, &c, chases on foot to rival 'point break' and well i really don't hafta tell you do i 'cause yer gonna track it down already i'm sure you've decided so just get on withit.



now 'roller blade,' i b'lieve this got shown last year or th' year before at th' drive-in proper, you'll hafta ask someone else 'cuz i musta been dead at th' time. but hoo-ee is this wurth another spin around the chateau, holy hell, is it ever. basically an excuse fer a skinflick i actually coulda done without th' skin in, th' nonsense these fux came up with in order to show a little mmffff is really quite fucking inspired, the writer musta been a bigshot at some point (maybe summaya see what i did there). see there's these comic strip nuns who have magic healing steak knives and don't they just irk th' hell outta the baddies and the sorta goodies, all o'them roller-skatin' around ('cept, junior, and whaddya know without his skates he just goes an' gets all kid-stolen an' torturficated on o'course) th' wastelands of southern california or wherever they could film for free all afternoon (oh, btw there aren't any rollerblades, dude, it's rollerskates and knife blades, ok, so it's ok) an' gettin' in knife fights just like fern an' volker sing about (both inspired by this here flick dontcha know) an' tryin' to basically just make their honest way about the post-apocalyptic world they've been born into - hey, they didn't have a choice. there's this weird head honcho of th' pro-wrestler (er twisted sister, as if there's one diff) types that's like a puppet-baby-guy who tries to make th' one girl betray th' nuns but don't she just see th' L-I-T-E there o'course and well, i am just gonna stop right there cuz i really do not want to spoil this for ya one bit (and anyway as if i could even pack th' plots an' subplots an' uberplots of this devastator into all of th' internet, man it would just take all the words from all them other sites and i do NOT want th' internetspolice on my ass for that shit, no thank you very much either). talk around th' watercooler is that that jesse doesn't like this one but he likes 'the apple' so you can see what i'm saying there i think. (OH, and by the by in lookin' fer this poster i came across a similar film what goes by th' name of 'roller blade warriors: taken by force,' sounds like mebbe bigger knives but all else is th' same and y'know, fer chrissakes at th' bottom o'th' amazonian page there it sez 'if ya like this...' you'll like 'hell comes to frogtown' and dammit i hope th' reverse iz true 'cause well you all know how i feel about that one anyway. so please if y'gots that one send it on over, bring it down, whatever, i'm bettin' we all wanna see it, i mean check this out:

i mean, right?!?)

1,000,000

okay, okay, so it's monday and i haven't got th' thingy done yet, BIG DEAL. and like big oops but it's way past due on the whole last week thing but whatever, i thought about going to rock on the range and that made me all tired so i slept for a week or something. i dunno, unemployment has its benefits. like not worrying what fucking day it is. anyhoo...

last last weekend happened to be the one where we commemorate being born and raised and all that other stuff or at least some of it that goes along with them what birthed us so we tried to come up with some mother's day-worthy flicks but we only had one (nobody had 'mother's day,' weird, right? i mean it's fucking troma) so being as how there was a full moon the night before and everything had gotten itself all weird from like thursday on anyhow we went with the werewolf thing established early on instead, still appropriate, duh. well anyways more cohesive than normal or something.



'my mom's a werewolf.' uh-huh. so....shot over a few hours one tuesday afternoon/evening in the time before after-school specials went off the air, this mess of brown-tape insanity holds to no strict rules about werewolves or moms, so it's a-ok in my little red book. mom has lunchtime affair with creepy guy she meets who's already eaten (a rat! at the pet store! ew, amiright?), grows white polyfill all over, makes the scene at th' halloween party (of course it's halloween!), almost bangs said creepy dude in th' oddly moist environs he maintains in the back of said pet store, almost goes to th' dentist (not c. bernsen, dammit) in her undies, almost holds film together. meanwhile her daughter, blossom, along with her trusty pal 6, manages to not really figure out what's (bang! that was the frying pan that is the retardo plot & premise of the movie hitting you, i know, very easy to miss, but i don't blame you, young actress with the monobrow of gold and yer weird yellow brick friend, i'm sure i wouldn't fucking come straight to th' conclusion that my mom was a werewolf - she's not, thx - even if all the signs pointed to it in neon either, i don't think) going on. but with th' help of 6's (again) trusty vintage horror mag collection and encyclopaedic knowledge of how to kill a werewolf (among other things), they manage to stab the fucking baddie with a fork on a stick which eventually kills him and so mom is fine again...AND ON TV! obviously i'm really leaving a lot out here but y'know it's pretty dense and heady stuff and i wouldn't want to bog anyone down in discussions of distanciation and stuff. oh, and jason quicksall is in it.



so, can i just say that when i'm looking for posters to put up here i just get really fucking jazzed when they're WAY cooler than th' video box? but more than that, yes, FAR more than that - most of all, even, it stokes me to no end when i find that one of these awesome examples of the triumph of just pure fucking unadulterated human desperation and trust fund usage *cough* i mean determination and the power of dreams is available on dvd somewhere. and 'full eclipse' is. yuh-huh. now, mario van peebles has done worse movies than this; he is not, to my memory, all that great of an actor. but his dad got him laid onscreen, sacrificing his virginity for all to see - not to mention starting a fucking boulder rolling that culminated in the jaw-dropping display of awesome that is 'i'm gonna get you sucka,' a flick so goddam great that, like 'top secret' and many others before and since, we probably wouldn't even think of playing it here, unless there was nothing else or something - and that's pretty cool. but it is not as cool as this movie, i tell you, and it is way, way not as cool as the thirty fucking times mario van peebles flies thru the fucking air in order to shoot a bullet because i am pretty sure that is the only way that he can shoot real good or something. his partner tries it sometimes too, even going as far as to, while standing on top of a moving bus, leap into the air like one foot ahead of where he was and land on his chest, firing away the whole while. it's for accuracy, obviously. try it out sometime. it just happens to look totally badass, esp. in slow motion. coincidence. so in an attempt to ruin everything for you (for the eighth or ninth time, i tell you it's not going to ruin yer enjoyment of these films if i or anyone tell you what "happens"), here's th' deal: ancient and powerful werewolf baddie creates vampire-style coven of awesome crime-fighting insane-o's (some of them are foxy. ish.) and makes the world a better place, city by city, except that he fails to tell everyone that he's gonna get real powerful and stuff whenever there's a full lunar eclipse (see what i did there) and probably rip them to shreds and eat their souls eventually. MVP (seriously) looks at microfiche (which as far as i can tell is just what somoeone who is confused should do right fucking away, go look at some random microfiche, because that will immediately - give or take one montage-makin' sleepless night - make all the reasons for everything become just so painfully obvious) and is unimpressed with baddie's plan. foils it. moves to denver. end. (caveat: the ending of this - and i'm not even talking about th' denver part, that's kinda alright actually, i'm all for it, it's a nice town, lush and green, good schools, great food and entertainment, or for that matter the actual final fight scene which is cool in itself, it just ends up kinda totally meh - is about .003% as good as the rest of it. but do please bear in mind the rest of it is FUCKING AWESOME, and adjust accordingly.)

Thursday, May 7, 2009

We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives...

but first, some unfinished business from last season:
I caught a lot of flack for this flick (mostly from Scuddy), and even accepted censure standing by it, love it as I do. Now, I'm not going to preach a bunch of camp value bullshit here or quote some obscure passage from Schiller on the aesthetic values of irony because I know you are all busy people; and I don't want to over-analyze this thing (though I could, and have) so, simply put: This film is a fascinating matrix of poor decision making and overall lack of good sense, like staring onto the void, and can be as rewarding and instructive as watching a very well-crafted movie. For example, if you've ever wondered what the term deus ex machina means...
No one thought maybe having the only two black characters in the movie singing a reggae-ish ditty about how Bugalow knows "how to be a master" was a bad idea? From the bored look on Candy's face starting around the 35 min. mark, by guess is that Mr. Golan wasn't fooling anyone. I mean, an Israeli makes a movie in Berlin equating the fall of man with disco, and then hires the entire line of, ahem, dancers standing outside the unemployment office in Manhattan who obviously feel the same way. Anyhow, those songs have lain barbs in my heart, and now when Bibi and Alfie sing "Cry for me", I do.
And this movie wasn't nearly as bad as last year's real stinker:

Looking now to the future:










The real object of this post is to issue a challenge. You think the Apple is bad? The Apple isn't bad, this is:

I dare ya to fucking watch it.

-J. Baker, brilliant young scientist

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

I Hate It Too

UPCOMING!!! yes, here at the drive-in we sometimes really do have some idea what we're gonna watch more than seven seconds beforehand, tho' merryman shows up with such unheralded and unforeseen gems week after week that sometimes those dreams just head out th' window. i can say that we're planning both bobcat goldthwait AND arch hall jr. double features this season, and that 'stay tuned' has been brought up way too many times to ignore. well, maybe. horror films all october is kinda obligat'ry, right, and abel ferrara's 'driller killer' is at th' top o' that particular list. th' law of no repeats may finally fall to dust simply due to th' utter undeniable glory that is 'eliminators;' laserdisc nite has been bandied aboot & since currently th' only two in th' house are 'steel dawn' & 'timecop' i don't see why that should be at all fucked with; & if there ain't 'action sports' nite feat. 'gleaming the cube,' josh brolin's finest moment 'thrashin',' & perchance a late-nite 3rd of 'rad' i think i may just throw myself in th' ravine. o'course some amount of troma worship is a must...maybe 'surf nazis' - and there's always 'fat guy goes nutzoid'...





a mandroid, a mercenary, a female botanist, and a ninja walk into a bar. obviously.

The Neutral

last week, hmm. musta been nobody went to the bar or something. they just went to my house. not that i have any real problem with that. i had a blast. and there's an unclaimed case in my fridge. consider it claimed. anyhoo, monday was a wash. i didn't even go see the stitches. barely made it to th' pizza place so i could pay half-price. but i digress...point being there was a little movie marathon on th' indoor stage. which counts fer th' drive-in, 'cause, well, ya coulda been there.



'dreamscape'...i wish that asshat tommy had been foiled by th' inconsistencies of dream logic and not a goddam pipe. whatever, it was ok.



'knightriders'...i love this movie. i think this is the the third time i've watched it, and at 147 minutes, that's a life commitment. it'd be a tough one for the drive-in; the length as well as romero's penchant for character-driven drama and interpersonal politics might bog it down a little, though the ham-fisted commentary on cops and drugs and freedom...priceless. tom savini is brian o'halloran's father. i'm sure of it.



'beach girls meet the monster'...aka 'monster in the surf'...and that way it's got a theme song. been meaning to see this one for quite awhile, & i gotta say i have no clue where th' bad rap comes from. completely hokey, but i mean, duh. b&w scooby doo tale interspersed with worthless color surfing footage to pad it out. th' monster is amazing, maybe better even than th' one in 'it conquered the world,' a personal fave. th' foxiest chick dies in th' first ten minutes, tho'. bummer.



'flying saucers over hollywood'...felt like watching this after that. included on one of th' 'plan 9' dvds. no johnny legend, but still great. lotsa maila nurmi.



'maniac (1934)'...while i wouldn't say it's at all as nutso as i'd been led to believe it's pretty fantastic - exploitative in every way th' filmmaker could think up in th' eight or so minutes he spent thinking about it before filming. pre-code, kids...yes, two o'the poor young ladies lose their tops. th' scene in a room with four flapper-types takes th' whole thing. should be remade with john c. reilly in th' title role.



had a friend run my killer 'crimson ghost' tapes (orig, b&w serial version, not the still-pretty-ok colorized and movie-edited one) to dvd & watched th' first six again. perfect.

a decent amount of throwback mountain dew cans and pizza crusts ended up on the coffee table.

Bring Me The Head Of The Fortune Teller

this past week marked our first night of fully unofficial pro-sponsorship and boy was it a doozer: 'c.h.o.m.p.s.' (that's k-9 home protection system fer you uninitiates), the 1979 boy-makes-dog tale from evidently the complete asshole half of th' hanna-barbera partership, and the very, very odd 'starcrash'. yer humble o-rater here thinks perchance one mr. brooks saw this slip o'celluloid a time er ten prior to building his 'spaceballs'. onward, then...



first order of biz here is to lay a whole mess of ack-o-lades on yer 'chomps' box copy, as it attempts to paint some unhealthy parallel betwixt th' flick contained therein and the mega-status-owning 'short circuit,' tho' it was made six years prior. kudos, peter travers or whoever you are, that shit is gold. so, right, guy with foxy girlfriend he pays NO fucking attention to whatsoever (valerie. bertinelli. seriously.) builds robot/AI dog that looks just like his dog (rascal, that one) and teaches it some very detailed commands like "go in mall, ride weird plastic tote-box conveyor belt, deal with baddies, come back," to be triggered mostly by the numbers 48 and 21; meanwhile rascal's nemesis next door, monster, talks or thinks out loud or something, and red buttons annoys his way thru th' o-bligat'ry scooby doo B-S while thurston howell III chews cigars and scenery and eventually explodes. i gotta tell ya about twenty mins into this one i didn't think i was gonna make it, true bereavers, but i'm here to tell ya, stix withit. a more surprising ending 'dirty mary, crazy larry' has not.



alright, lovers of all that is good about movies tinted blue beyond our control and large filmstrip screens begging for hurled aluminum (er "aluminium," as sez our brothers and sisters across the pond), 'dark star' it ain't, but 'starcrash' is one well-worth th' price o'xxtra fish oil. we gotta hottie (caroline munro) who gets progressively less-amply-and-appropriately-clothed as scenes go on fer no discernible reason, a robot who talks like foghorn leghorn, mr. 'dreamscape' himself, chris plum', and...introducing...david the fuck hasselhoff! now normally as ya may well know i don't fall in fer talent but this one's so chock full o'nuts even i was "star" struck! hui hui! plotwise some stuff happens on cardboard spaceships and some stuff happens on cardboard planets and sometimes we're in hyperspace which looks like clouds racing along in time lapse over everything & i'm fairly sure that some great cosmic disaster is averted when the baddie blows up real good nearing the end there and the one good dude just dies 'cause his work here is done (kinda like philo in 'uhf' tho' he's so much more sane about it, just goin' all large marge and blasting himself back to x-17 or wherever) & he needs to go inspire the greatest american hero's hairstylist anyhoo but like that's the point anyways, the point is they got lightsabers/schwartzes and john barry music and it's about a blilzzion times better than 'krull' and there are these two c3po skeletons that will make you yell "harryhausen" whenever they show up so ok i had a good time.

100% of whatever we were drinking out of ended up near the screen, or was meant to.

Melon Yellow

well, folks, we's up an' runnin' in this here 2009 season...o-fish first showings were two sundays ago (after a preliminary 'repo man' screening at the mayor's mansion weeks before) with the MIND-BLOWING 'roadie' starring our hero meatloaf followed by the not-really-a-linda-blair-vehicle 'nightforce' (shades of the cake-takin' 'eliminators' here, no kiddin').



basically what you've got with 'roadie' is our boy meat', a backwoods beer delivery dude and all-'round jury-riggin' inventor an' fix-it type who gets all a-tangled with a rail-thin, orthodontics-needin' doll of self-professed jailbait magnitude and joins up with some kinda rock and/or roll circus headed by none other than yer one-an'-only watch-out-he's-currently-tuff don cornelius. zaniness ensues (NATCH), including an outdoor concert run on cowshit, a roy orbison (er RAY ORBISOE, as sez shane's pals on the road) an' hank jr. duet on 'eyes of texas' in order to stop a barroom brawl, an' a night out with the ever-mild-mannered (it's not a good joke in retropect, shoulda seen that comin') vincent furnier. & all the while we're serenaded by the dulcet tones of the cheap trix. kinda essential and i can't believe after meanin' to see it all of forever that it took this long. oh yeah, and art carney (art. carney.) is in it as meat's pop, embos fans. deal.



'nightforce' is a li'l more, ahem, existential, ladies and al, but in the end there's a grimy helicopter and all gets themselves out alreet so a success it shall be called. to start at the start (as we must, loverboy never-be-damned), what ya got is some kinda field trip to central america with a u-haul full o'weaponry in tow in order to rescue the quite often suddenly topless daughter of some evidently somewhat very important fellow who's been kid-popped by a softball buddy of brother fidel's. oh, and th' aforementioned tart is bangin' a pair of brothers, one of whom she's betrothed to an' the other who leads our mission. after the first reel of skinemax softcore we dive right into the mississippi soundstage jungles an' run into our crocodile dundee/rutger hauer know-it-all o'course (in a saloon. true.), & everything proceeds to make even less sense, & eventually we get to th' helicopter. there was some confusion as to whether we were dealing with one baddie referred to as both esteeban and estobahn, or a coupla warring factions headed by coincidentally similarly-named doods, but in the end tho' i don't know that we ever figured it out it hardly mattered. stars t.j. acosta as "fat man," and that should be more than enuff to recommend it.

100% of alcohol containment devices ended life in front of the screen.