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"Westworld", 1973, directed by Michael Chricton. by alaffert

When I head down to the video section of my local library to choose a movie to review. I usually avoid the Westerns. I don't care much for Westerns. Most of them look the same to me--they always involve cowboys, they always involve guns, there's always a stampede of cattle, they always have one scene in a saloon where a fight eventually breaks out, there's always the final shootout where the good guy and the bad guy stand at opposite ends of the street with their hands hovering over their weapons, and on a few occasions there's a damsel tied to the railroad tracks. Yeah, I know there were good ones like True Grit and The Magnificent Seven, but it isn't really a genre that excites me very much.

But for the past few days, there has been one DVD that has caught my eye every time I browse the science fiction movies. I read the back of the DVD cover several times and the premise was just too good to pass up.

Written and directed by Michael "Let's Use This Idea Again in 20 Years, Only with Dinosaurs" Crichton, Westworld takes place in the futuristic adult amusement park resort of Delos, where for a meager $1,000 a day, rich people can visit one of three historically-themed areas - Romanworld, a place modeled after Pompeii in the decadent and lustful days of ancient Rome, Medievalworld, featuring 13th-century Europe and all the swordplay and chivalry you could want, and, of course, Westworld, which takes guests back to 1880 in the rough and violent days of the Old West. In Westworld, as in the other two, visitors are invited to indulge their every fantasy--rob a bank, bust out of jail, get into a barfight, have a shootout with the meanest gunslinger in town (played by Yul Brenner, who's even dressed like his character from The Magnificent Seven), and even drop by a brothel and--well, you get the idea.

The parks are all populated by lifelike robots who act out characters in the world to which they are allocated--so lifelike are they that they look, act, talk and even bleed like real people, but fortunately they are all played by real actors in this film so as to avoid the whole "uncanny valley" problem with robot movies. (You hear that, Robert Zemeckis?) They are programmed to interact with the guests and make their visit to Delos a more realistic experience, and borrowing a page from Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, they are specially programmed not to harm the guests, whereas the guests can kill them if they so choose. Heck, the guests can even have sex with them if they like.

...Yeah. They can. I know, I just review these movies, I don't make them.

But wait--how do you tell the androids apart from the guests? Well, apart from the fact that the robots' hands don't look quite right yet, in Westworld the guns they provide the guests, while they do shoot real bullets, are also equipped with heat sensors which prevent them from going off when pointed at any living thing.

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Well, this is from Michael Crichton, don't forget, so don't get too excited.

DELOS IS A WHOLLY-OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS CORPORATION. by alaffert

Our movie today focuses on Peter Martin (played by Burt Reynolds lookalike Richard Benjamin). It's his first time in Delos and he's with his friend John Blane (James Brolin), and once they get there the two of them take a tram driven by robotic stewardesses to Westworld.

Their hotel is on a Wild West movie set (Medievalworld's is in a still shot of a castle, while Romanworld is just shown as an outdoor garden with statues around it).

They wet their whistle at the saloon where they meet the gunslinger, who bumps into Peter, makes him spill his drink, and then sits down next to them casually hurling insults at Peter until the two of them draw their guns and Peter shoots the robot down in slow motion as well as cold blood.

Peter gets thrown in jail for shooting the gunslinger again when he ambushes John in their hotel room, and John busts him out, shoots the sheriff (but does not shoot the deputy) and the two of them ride off into the outskirts.

They even pay a visit to Miss Carrie's brothel in town, where they find some female robots and--

Well, let's just say I hope these robots are properly and regularly cleaned after use.

"Hey there, sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?" by alaffert

While they're at the brothel, Delos maintenance crews are cleaning up the spoils of a bank robbery while some technicians in the underground control room are meeting to discuss some problems they've been having with the robots - apparently they've been breaking down at an increasing rate lately. At first they were minor malfunctions until six weeks ago, and now robots all over the park have been having problems. It's almost as if there's some sort of cyber-disease infecting the machines in the park.

"Cyber-disease"?

...OHH, they mean a VIRUS. Okay. This was before there was any such thing as network security or firewalls, when computers weren't regularly interacting with each other, so I imagine back then you had to program the robots and HOPE that nothing went horribly wrong. They don't really mention where this...virus comes from--some latent programming error, some technical glitch in the robot manufacturing area, or perhaps all the robots in the park have become self-aware and are now taking their revenge on humanity for all the abuse they've suffered at the hands of the park's guests. All are equally viable.

"Sarah Connor?" by alaffert

More strange things occur when John gets bitten by a rattlesnake, a wench droid from Medievalworld refuses the sexual advances of a guest, and another patron is later stabbed with the Black Knight's sword after an unscheduled ambush in the breakfast hall.

Meanwhile, we see a quick glimpse of the android players going all Caligula on the guests at Romanworld.

While this is going on, Peter and John have just come to after the film's obligatory barfight (complete with slow-motion punching) and meet the gunslinger once again. John attempts to engage the android in a quick draw shootout but is shockingly gunned down in the street for his trouble. All Peter can do is run when the gunslinger starts shooting at him as well, which leads to a chase on horseback through the outskirts of Westworld, with the robot aided by an infrared heat scanner and Peter aided by a fleeing engineer who suggests he throw acid into its eyes but otherwise tells him he's doomed.

I'm afraid this constitutes a refund. by alaffert

Peter escapes into the corpse-littered Romanworld where he conveniently finds a manhole cover leading to the underground control area and repair shop beneath the park. He passes by the main control room to find all the engineers sealed inside, dead of asphyxiation. Their attempt to power off the robots by shutting off the electricity in the entire park left them sealed in the room with the ventilators turned off, and they eventually ran out of air.

Not a good idea to run the ventilators and door locks on the same circuit as everything else in your UNDERGROUND CONTROL ROOM. Especially when you need to shut the power off to quell a sudden robot uprising.

Peter finds some bottles of acid and takes the now-dead engineer's advice, throwing it in the gunslinger's face when it finally catches up to him, but it has about as much effect as oil-based makeup with ground-up Alka-Seltzer if you threw water onto it.

We finally end back in the breakfast hall in Medievalworld, where lucky for Peter the gunslinger's heat sensors are confused by the numerous torches lit along the walls. These torches also serve an equally useful purpose when Peter uses one to light the metal man on fire and escape into the dungeons, where after rescuing a girl in chains who turns out to be a robot, the gunslinger's charred, rundown husk of his former self arrives to give him one last scare before falling over and breaking down for good in a shower of sparks.

Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at the very first piece of digitized imagery in a motion picture. Get used to it. by alaffert

Of all the movies I've reviewed so far, Westworld has the distinct honor of being the quickest film I've ever watched. At a running time of 88 minutes, that's not too surprising...and yet it is sort of surprising since nothing too exciting happens for the first twenty. Maybe it's because I'm not too keen on Westerns, but much of the first part plays out like James Brolin and Richard Benjamin in a Western. It isn't until around the barfight scene where things start getting interesting, once the robots start going haywire and the futuristic dream turns into a nightmare.

I will say, though, that veteran actor Yul Brenner does turn in a chilling performance as the homicidal robotic gunslinger. I imagine it's because of his experience acting in Western movies. All he has to do is play the rough, tough cowboy type he's known for, which fits the cold, unfeeling android that is his character. You only have to get a closeup shot of his face to tell that he isn't human. In fact, you can't really tell which of the cast are human or not unless we're previously introduced or we see them from close up, which sets a much, much darker tone than giant reptiles with tiny arms that can eat a lawyer sitting on the toilet in one bite.

Suddenly I'm dreaming of dinosaurs made of liquid metal that can turn their tiny arms into blades and change into other dinosaurs... by alaffert

Adam Lafferty also likes to talk about movies, among other things, on his other blog, popculturevomitbag.blogspot.com.

"Return to Oz", 1985, directed by Walter Murch. by alaffert

Oh, do we Kansans have a history with The Wizard of Oz.

We've heard all the jokes. "Hey, Dorothy, where's Toto?" "Say hi to the munchkins for me!"

We've seen the souvenirs in gift shops all over the state with these characters on them.

We've seen the original ruby slippers at the Smithsonian Museum.

It's been remade many times and parodied on dozens of TV shows and movies, putting it right up there with It's a Wonderful Life as one of the most commonly referenced movies EVER.

It is SO welded into the American psyche that it has become the number one thing that people think of when you bring up Kansas. Well, apart from wheat, flat land, college basketball and conservative Christian extremists.

So well known is it that some people just HAD to make a sequel to it. Some people from DISNEY, no less.

Return to Oz is an unofficial sequel to the Victor Fleming film, but to be fair it does borrow story elements from L. Frank Baum's follow-up books to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which the original was derived from--in particular, The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, and Tik-Tok of Oz. Lucky for Disney, the books were all in the public domain and they already had the film rights anyway so they didn't have to pay anyone royalties, though they did have to pay MGM for use of the ruby slippers which weren't in the books.

Six months have passed since the events from the first film--funny, feels more like 46 years to us--and the Gale clan has hit hard times, in most part because winter is coming and they still haven't finished rebuilding the farmhouse from that tornado (How long did it take to build a house back then? It can't have been longer than six months. Didn't they have farmhands in the first film who could help them? How far out in the middle of nowhere ARE they?) Meanwhile, little Dorothy Gale, played by Fairuza Balk, who looks WAY younger here than Judy Garland did back in the day, is having trouble sleeping--she's still obsessed with her travels to Oz, now convinced that it is in danger and needs her help. A familiar looking key which falls from space in the middle of the night seems to confirm this.

Her Uncle Henry (Matt Walsh) and Auntie Em (Piper Laurie, who also played the more Kansas-appropriate religious fanatic mother from Carrie) naturally don't believe a word she says and decide to do the only thing you can do with a little girl whose imagination is too wild for her own good--take her to a mental hospital for some electroshock treatment to make all those dreams go away.

Incidentally, Toto will not be coming with Dorothy to Oz this time, as we see him chase the buggy as she and Auntie Em ride off. I'm guessing the Emerald City has leash laws now.

"Come play with me, Dorothy...forever...and ever...and ever..." by alaffert

At the clinic which is pretty much the biggest house in the state compared to the rest of the scenery, Dr. Worley (Nicol Williamson) explains the process to Em and Dorothy--they shoot an electrical current through the brain which will zap all those bad dreams right out of her head. No mention of any harmful side effects or what ELSE might be zapped out of her head by accident, however, so his methods are suspect.

Auntie Em leaves Dorothy in the capable hands of Dr. Worley's aide Nurse Wilson (Jean Marsh), who promptly takes away her lunch pail and locks her in a dreary-looking room.

Throughout all this Dorothy notices a blonde girl about her age appearing in the windows and mirrors of the clinic, and she even visits her in her room with the curious gift of a jack-o'-lantern.

Nurse Wilson returns rather nonchalantly with some men and a gurney, and Dorothy is strapped in and wheeled to the operating room where she is hooked up to the electroshock thingy. Dr. Worley is just about to pull the switch when a freak lightning strike cuts the power throughout the building. All the doctors leave Dorothy momentarily unattended while they see to getting the electricity back on.

So, to recap, Dorothy is in a cold dark room strapped to a gurney, moments away from having several hundred volts course through her brain, with a violent thunderstorm raging outside which does nothing to drown out the distant screaming coming from the patients locked in the good doctor's basement.

This is a kids' movie.

And to think in about a hundred years they'll have a pill for this. by alaffert

While the doctors are gone, the blonde girl comes back, frees Dorothy, and the two of them escape the hospital with Nurse Wilson in pursuit. The chase ends at a river, where both girls fall in and are washed away while grabbing onto a crate for dear life. The blonde girl disappears, but Dorothy continues to float downstream into a vast ocean (yes, Kansas has an ocean now) and finally washes ashore in the Marvelous Land of Oz.

Oh yeah, and her favorite chicken Bellina is there, too. And she can talk now.

Here we get to see some areas of the Land of Oz that you never saw in the first movie, like the "Deadly Desert", where anything living who touches the sand turns INTO sand. Also there's the "Lunch Pail Tree", which is...a tree...with lunch pails growing on it. Oh, and if you follow this overgrown brick path, you'll come across the ruins of some ancient city with statues all around it, including ones of the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion.

Oz just hasn't been the same since the Lollipop Guild disbanded. by alaffert

Oh, hang on. That's the Emerald City.

And it looks like six months of neglect have taken its toll--the place is ashambles and all of its inhabitants have turned to stone. As a further degradation, some of the lady statues have their heads missing.

While all this is going on, some Claymation® rock faces report to someone off-camera that Dorothy has returned to Oz, and she's brought a chicken with her. Whoever he is talking to seems more concerned about the chicken.

Some friendly graffiti written on one of the crumbling walls reads BEWARE THE WHEELERS. No sooner do Dorothy and Bellina question what a Wheeler is when some fancy-dressed psychos with wheels for hands and feet show up and start chasing them around, laughing maniacally and accusing her of grand theft lunch pail and illegal possession of a chicken.

This is a kids' movie.

Looks like the flying monkeys have evolved. by alaffert

Using the aforementioned key in an otherwise random hole in the wall, the two of them escape into a secret room where they discover a mechanical man named Tik-Tok, who serves as the entire Royal Army of Oz, who was stowed away to wait for Dorothy and managed to avoid being turned to stone himself since he is, as constantly pointed out during the film, not alive. (Wait...technically, the Tin Man isn't alive either, but he was turned to stone? How is that possible?) Tik-Tok fights off the Wheelers and interrogates one of them, who between Jim Carrey impressions kindly fills us in on the plot: apparently someone called the Nome King kidnapped the Scarecrow, who became ruler of Oz in Dorothy's absence, stole all the emeralds in the city and turned everyone into stone. He name-drops a Princess Mombi as the only one who knows where the Scarecrow is.

I have to admit at this stage that Tik-Tok for this scene alone would have to be my favorite character in this film. There are Wheelers all around him and he stands perfectly still as his midsection spins around and his arms swing freely and smack all of them down, and then he picks one of them up by his shoulder, and shakes him up until he talks, letting him know that his being a machine makes him impervious to his threats. That's bad-ass right there. Tik-Tok is bad-ass.

"I like you. That is why I'm going to kill you last." by alaffert

A visit to Mombi reveals that she looks just like the nurse from the hospital in a fancy cape and has a chamber full of heads that she wears like a closet full of shoes. A question about the Scarecrow goes ignored as Mombi is more interested in Dorothy's young head--so interested that she plans to lock her in the tower until she's old enough for her head to join her collection.

While trapped in the tower, Dorothy recognizes the Nome King's mountain from the view in the window, even though she hadn't even heard of the Nome King before she came here, and then meets a new friend--Jack Pumpkinhead, a rickety man made of sticks with a jack-o'-lantern for a head whose voice is despite the rumors the only major contribution of Muppet man Jim Henson's son Brian to the entire film. In HIS moment of exposition, he mentions that Mombi has an powder of life, so Dorothy makes off with the key to one of her head cabinets and steals it while the others put together some kind of flying machine made of couches, palm fronds and a moose's head. A sprinkle of the powder, a recitation of some magic words, and Dorothy and company are flying off to the Nome King's lair.

Dorothy wakes up the next morning just in time for their flying machine to come apart and send them crash landing right at their destination.

"I'll get you my pretty, and your little chi---okay, chicken? Seriously? Didn't you have a dog with you last time?" by alaffert

Upon arrival, the Nome King pleads his case for stealing the emeralds while dropping Dorothy through a very pretty crevice. Apparently the emeralds were mined from his mountain first, so the King believes himself justified to have taken them back because they belonged to him in the first place. Dorothy argues that he had no right to kidnap the Scarecrow, since they were already there when he took power. The Nome King offers Dorothy and her friends a game - he has turned the Scarecrow into one of the ornaments in a very fancy room in his underground palace, and each contestant has three tries to guess which ornament is him.

Of course he leaves out the part where anyone who guesses wrong three times is turned into an ornament himself until AFTER the moose-head, who went in first, flunks the test.

Mombi and the Wheelers, meanwhile, race to the Nome King's mountain to warn him about...the chicken. Oh, yes, Dorothy is the main character in this story, and yet everyone in Oz is worried about the chicken.

While the game continues, the Nome King, who's looking more and more like Dr. Worley by the cut scene, reveals to Dorothy that he stole the ruby slippers Dorothy left behind which made it easy to take back the emeralds and rule Oz, which sort of negates his justification for stealing the emeralds since the slippers didn't belong to him in the first place so his actions in the Emerald City were based on a double standard and I'm thinking too hard again.

The only way to fly. by alaffert

Tik-Tok pretends to have wound down during his turn so that the Nome King can send Dorothy in to wind him up and make her guesses in the process, in hopes to give Dorothy some clue should his last guess be wrong...which it is...but he doesn't. After two wrong guesses, Dorothy resorts to closing her eyes and wandering around until she finds something, but the rule of threes prevails as Dorothy gets it right on her third guess when she touches a green shiny thing and the Scarecrow comes to life, and the two of them set about restoring her friends. Meanwhile, the Nome King is talking to Mombi when he senses the Scarecrow's presence, gets pissed off, imprisons Mombi in a cage for allowing Dorothy to escape, and turns into a big, giant scary rock monster who decides to devour Dorothy and her friends. When he tries to eat Pumpkinhead, Bellina, who had been hiding in his jack-o'-lantern head the whole time, gets so scared that she...lays an egg down his throat. Eggs are apparently poisonous to Nomes as it turns out (OHHHHHHHHH, so THAT'S why they don't like chickens...'kaaaaay) and the Nome King politely sets Jack and Bellina down before slowly disintegrating from too much cholesterol, I imagine. Dorothy finds the ruby slippers in the rubble, and as the Nome King's underground lair caves in around them, does some heel-clicking and pulls a major deus ex machina that returns everyone to the Emerald City (including Mombi) and turns its residents back to normal.

"Admit it, girl, they look WAY better on me." by alaffert

A big party is thrown in the newly-restored Emerald City where all the main characters are paraded around to cheers and applause, including Mombi (she's still in the cage, and Dorothy has also removed her powers--don't ask how, they don't explain it). Everyone is hoping Dorothy will stay and become the queen of Oz, but she doesn't want to. She yearns to go back to her half-finished farmhouse in the middle of the cultivatable desert of the Kansas prairie (which, ironically, is why Bellina decides to stay), but luckily the blonde girl in the mirror is willing to take the job--turns out her name is Ozma and she's the rightful heir to the throne, or was before all this stuff happened according to the exposition provided by the formerly headless women standing around Mombi's cage. After some tearful goodbyes, Dorothy clicks her ruby heels and is returned home to Kansas where Toto and Uncle Henry greet her warmly.

Auntie Em wraps things up by saying that Dr. Worley's laboratory was hit by lightning during the storm, and Dr. Worley himself was the only casualty of the resulting fire when he went back to try to save his machines, and Nurse Wilson is conveniently wheeled past us in a horse-drawn paddy wagon. And in the final scene we have Dorothy in her bedroom when who should appear in her mirror but Ozma and Bellina, who smile at them in a way that tells you that everywhere she goes, they will follow her to the ends of the earth for all the rest of her days, with nobody else seeing them.

This is a kids' movie.

And a VERY WEIRD kids' movie at that. Not as deranged as that Raggedy Ann and Andy movie or Mexican Santa Claus, but it's pretty high up the list. It is WORLDS apart from the original movie in look and atmosphere--it does a more accurate job of capturing its late 19th-century setting, but that only make it a darker and more bizarre movie, as if the Wheelers, Nomes and disembodied heads weren't doing a good enough job of it. Much of the story you kinda have to read the books to understand, barring a plot hole or two, but worry not, as there is a ton of expository dialogue that fills in the blanks. The only problem with this is that there is TOO MUCH of it...and every character has at least one scene where they make these long speeches, some of which have nothing to do with the story. Just about the only thing they DON'T tell us in advance is why Nomes hate chickens.

I'm not sure I can recommend this to children, especially those who scare easily. I first saw the original Wizard of Oz as a kid, as I'm sure millions of us have, and I'm pretty sure any young viewer seeing Return to Oz would probably prefer the first one--not because of the obvious discrepancies between the two films like the age difference between both Dorothys, the similar-looking sidekicks (Pumpkinhead = Scarecrow, Tik-Tok = Tin Man), and the lack of songs, but rather the presence of giant rock monsters and homicidal maniacs rolling around on all fours.

"See you while you're asleep...and while you're getting dressed...and when you have boys over!" by alaffert

Adam Lafferty also likes to talk about movies, among other things, on his other blog, popculturevomitbag.blogspot.com.

Supergirl, 1984, directed by Jeannot Szwarc. by alaffert

In 1978, Mexican film producer Alexander Salkind and American film director Richard Donner brought Detective Comics' Superman to the big screen in his first feature-length movie. Starring Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel, Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, and the preacher from The Poseidon Adventure as Lex Luthor, the film made $300 million at the box office, paved the way for three sequels and earned Salkind a place in comic book lore.

Alexander disappeared from the franchise after Superman III, being replaced for the fourth movie by Golan-Globus, the people who brought you a plethora of Chuck Norris shoot-em-ups and Alien from L.A., but between III and IV, Salkind and his son Ilya had a go with another DC superhero.

Supergirl was an attempt to jump start another DC comic movie franchise with another hero from their catalog. Directing duties were handed to Jaws 2's Jeannot Szwarc, whose name I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce. Actresses such as Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn and Dolly Parton were considered for the role of the villainess to be named later, which eventually went to Faye Dunaway. Younger actresses such as Melanie Griffith and Brooke Shields were considered for the title role, but Alexander and Jeannot wanted an unknown actress for the part, which eventually went to Hollywood newcomer Helen Slater. The music of John Williams, the man who composed the famous Superman theme...was not used in this movie, as Jerry Goldsmith was brought in instead.

The movie was a flop in theaters, didn't fare well with critics and audiences and never got its franchise, although Slater was nominated for a Saturn Award (the Oscar of sci-fi movies) for her performance as Supergirl.

The film tells the story of Kal-El's cousin Kara Zor-El (Slater), a young Kryptonian girl living with other Kryptonians in Argo City, a giant crystal in the middle of innerspace with flood lights spinning around it...which sort of begs the question of where this film fits in the DC canon. I know that Kara is supposed to be the only other survivor of the destruction of the planet Krypton, but what about everyone else? Superman is referred to during this scene, so we know it takes place AFTER Krypton went, but is this supposed to be some kind of distant colonization? Some kind of Noah's Ark which left the planet shortly before it blew up? Do they even KNOW that their ancestral home planet is gone?

Aren't you a little old to be showing her something like that? by alaffert

Anyway, one day she pays her...teacher? Mentor? Godfather? Err...one day she pays her friend Zaltar (Peter O'Toole) a visit, and he shows her some magical items: some kind of wand he uses to make something that looks like a tree (he's very fascinated with Earth culture) and also an orb called an Omegahedron, a very powerful item which powers the city and is not to be taken without permission of city government. Kara plays around with the wand a bit and then accidentally makes something which pokes a hole in Argo City's outer wall and sucks the Omegahedron out with it. Zaltar is very apologetic about the whole thing and offers to send himself to the Phantom Zone as punishment, while despite the protests of her parents (Simon Ward and Mia Farrow in brief appearances) Kara sits in this hovering...onion blossom...pod thing on a nearby table and sets off after the Omegahedron...

...which falls to the planet Earth and is found by a flamboyant sorceress named Selena (Dunaway), who like most villains hungers for world domination. Her current boyfriend Nigel (Peter Cook, the Elmer Fudd priest from The Princess Bride) is boring her, so once she finds the thing and discovers its power she and her personal assistant/suckup Bianca (Brenda Vaccaro) ditch him.

Looks like Bonnie's aged better than Clyde. by alaffert

Following the creationist theory of superheroes suddenly coming into being fully formed, Kara emerges from inner space through a lake in the mountains and suddenly realizes that she's wearing a blue suit and cape just like that other super guy! And she has super strength and heat vision and can fly now too, as she discovers when she crushes a rock with her bare hands, makes a flower bloom with her heat vision, and kicks a horny trucker in the gonads, sending him flying into a fence.

Oh yeah, and she's also wearing this bracelet which...I don't know, blinks at her...whenever the...Omegahedron is nearby? I don't know...they didn't really explain that.

During her search, she infiltrates an all-girl private school posing as a transfer student named Linda Lee, a cousin of Clark Kent in Metropolis (which isn't that far from the truth when you think about it) and moves into the student dorms with a girl named Lucy Lane (Maureen Teefy), Lois' younger sister.

Wow, what a coincidence! ...Both of their initials are L.L.! What are the odds?

Sorry boys, no peeking down her costume. Who do you think she is, Power Girl? by alaffert

Nigel, who also teaches at the school, informs Selena of Supergirl's presence, and vows to keep an eye on her, while Selena pays a visit to the school and notices a hunky, half-naked gardener named Ethan (Hart Bochner) doing some grounds-keeping and--

Oh no, don't tell me...

Ugggggh.

Great. I come in expecting a superhero adventure and I end up watching a chick flick.

So basically the rest of the story is a love triangle where Selena lures Ethan to her hideout and slips him a potion which will make him fall in love with her, but then gets distracted by a visit from Nigel while Ethan wanders off out of her lair and into traffic in a drug-induced haze, forcing Selena to take control of an excavator to chase him through the streets of Midvale and bring him back. Lots of property destruction, cars careening every which way and a gas station almost goes up in flames when Linda changes into Supergirl to rescue Ethan and save the town, and then changes back again just in time for Ethan to fall in love with HER, while Selena watches the whole thing from...I don't know, a magical camera or something and suddenly wants to kill herself a private school student.

"Man, what was I smoking last night?" by alaffert

With the exception of an action scene where Selena sends an invisible creature to the dorms to kill Linda and Supergirl fights him off with an electrified lamppost, not much happens from there. Supergirl and Selena just continue to battle each other until Selena finally teleports Ethan to her lair, conjures up a castle atop a huge mountain in the middle of the city, takes over the town, captures Lucy, Nigel and young reporter Jimmy Olsen (yes, THAT Jimmy Olsen played by THAT Marc McClure) and uses her new love slave as bait in a trap for Supergirl to send her straight to the Phantom Zone. She even uses the same spinning mirror effect from the Superman films.

I know what you're thinking--where's Superman in all of this? Well, any viewer with sharp ears would have heard a snippet over Nigel's car radio in an earlier scene stating that Superman is on a peacekeeping mission to a distant galaxy, which is a quaint way of saying that Christopher Reeve opted out of a cameo appearance.

"You will bow down before me, Selena! Both you and one day your heirs!" by alaffert

Stripped of her superpowers, Supergirl wanders through the Phantom Zone (hey, we actually get to SEE the Phantom Zone this time, so that can't be bad, right?) and is rescued from an oily swamp by a disconsolate Zaltar, who really DID send himself to the Phantom Zone for losing the Omegahedron. Zaltar, glutton for punishment as he turned out to be, is convinced that there is no way out, but Supergirl suggests a rift which serves as a gateway between the Phantom Zone and wherever it leads out to. Let's say Earth for plot convenience.

So they both climb up this very deep hole while trying to avoid getting sucked into the Phantom Vortex, a red tornado that looks like something out of a Twizzlers commercial producing very strong winds and making it difficult for the two of them to grab onto the rock. Selena happens to notice this from her magic mirror and starts firing things at her to make her go away, and Zaltar continues to push Supergirl upward before he loses his grip and is sucked into the Vortex. Supergirl eventually makes it out and with her powers restored flies out through Selena's mirror for the final battle. Selena early on has the upper hand with the help of another interdimensional monster and some cheap video squashing and stretching effects, but one telepathic speech from Zaltar a la postmortem Obi Wan Kenobi and she frees herself of the monster's grip and then flies around Selena in circles really fast, creating another tornado which sends Selena, Bianca and the monster into the magic mirror through to the Phantom Zone.

I guess.

So the magic mountain disappears, Lucy and Jimmy get together, I suppose, Ethan SOMEHOW figures out that Linda and Supergirl were the same person all along, and Supergirl returns the Omegahedron to Argo City, which lights up again in all its celestial splendor and then starts machine-gunning the audience with end credits.

"I PROBABLY DESERVE THIIIIIIIIIIIIIS..." by alaffert

You all remember the first Superman movie, don't you? The story was a little basic and Lex's comeuppance was kind of anticlimactic, but it was still an impressive and exciting film. And Superman II was even better...remember General Zod and his cronies and Lois inadvertently finding out Clark's secret which would eventually put the entire world at risk?

Well, compared to those two movies, Supergirl is a bit of a disappointment. The special effects and visuals are on par with them, no denying that, and Slater makes a competent Supergirl, but once Ethan shows up the love triangle subplot takes precedence over everything else and it all goes south from there. The character Selena was also a letdown. Nothing against Faye Dunaway's performance, she plays the villain quite well, but an all-powerful sorceress who can conjure up otherworldly beasts, magically remote control heavy machinery and can pretty much bend the world to her will, and she uses her magic to attract one beefy barrel-chested gardener who's about half her age?

THIS is our villainess? A man-starved COUGAR?! THIS is the plot to our feminist Superman movie? A two-hour equivalent of a trashy romance novel? I mean, sure Superman II had a romantic angle as well, but at least Lois and Clark were about the same age! Here it just makes me uncomfortable. And that's on top of the numerous plot holes or, as many comic fans would question, I don't know, I'm not one of them, the use of magical powers in a superhero movie.

I welcome more movies with female protagonists--considering how many of them have all been about dudes with women playing eye candy token chicks, stories with strong leading ladies are a nice change of pace. But with writing like this, I'm not surprised Wonder Woman still doesn't have her own movie.

"Will I get a sequel?" (shakes Omegahedron) "'VERY DOUBTFUL'?!" (throws it at the ground) by alaffert

Adam Lafferty also likes to talk about movies, among other things, on his other blog, popculturevomitbag.blogspot.com.

"Red Dawn", 1984, directed by John Milius. by alaffert

The Reagan years were a glorious time for filmmakers. It was at the height of the Cold War between us and the Soviet Union, some of the most popular shows on television like Dallas and Dynasty and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous were focused on the goings-on of wealthy, upper-class capitalists, and also the Vietnam War was still pretty fresh on everyone's minds. So the movies of the time often had Russian and Latin American socialists as the bad guys and pitted them against Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rocky Balboa in a never-ending war on the communist menace and the left-wing, freedom-hating principles it stood for, all in the name of truth, justice and the American way--though probably mostly the American way.

It's a frame of mind that still exists more than two decades after the Soviet Union collapsed--throughout the 1990s we had Middle Eastern terrorists as villains, China is now an economic threat to the U.S. if Fox News is to be believed, and North Korea's obsessive self-militarization has earned them the honor of being the new invading country in the upcoming remake of the 1984 John Milius film Red Dawn (even though with their small GDP and increasing social and economic problems, they can't even AFFORD to invade anybody).

The original Red Dawn was not the first movie to depict the Cold War boiling over--movies such as Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe have given similar visions of a US/USSR-induced global disaster, MST3K fans may remember such films as Rocket Attack USA and Invasion USA (no relation to the 1985 Chuck Norris film), and let's not forget every Missouri fan's favorite TV movie The Day After. But darn it if these little what-if movies didn't know how to scare the pants off of people. You might have seen a picture associated with this film with Russian soldiers and a tank standing in front of a McDonalds? This was six years before they finally opened one in Moscow, which is now the largest Mickey D's in the world. That's how scary it was.

It was also very historically important for other reasons--it was the first movie to be released with the MPAA's new PG-13 rating, it was the Guinness World Record holder for most violence depicted in a movie probably until Rambo III came out in 1990, and it has become so well-known that the U.S. Army named the 2003 operation to find and capture Saddam Hussein after it.

The movie begins with some quick back story--Russian wheat crops fail, riots in Poland and subsequent Soviet invasion, unilateral European nuclear disarmament, Cuba and Nicaragua invade the rest of Latin America, communist revolution in Mexico, and NATO eventually crumbles.

The movie continues with one of its most memorable scenes--a high school history class in a fictional town of Calumet in the Colorado Rockies is interrupted by the arrival of Russian paratroopers who immediately gun down the teacher and then start shooting up the whole school. Soon the entire town is under red revolt, and during the chaos several teenagers load up a truck with food and supplies and escape into the woods. These teenagers include the high school quarterback Jed Eckert (Road House's Patrick Swayze) and his brother Matt (Charlie Sheen in his movie debut), as well as their friends Robert, Danny, Daryl and Aardvark. (Also there are two sisters, Erica (Lea Thompson) and Toni (Swayze's future Dirty Dancing co-star Jennifer Grey), but they don't join up until later)

After the boys spend several weeks hiding in the woods, their food supplies are running low, so they decide to return to Calumet. The town by this point has become a communist stronghold under martial law and many of its citizens have been captured for possession of firearms. Robert's father is learned to have been killed because of the missing guns they took as they were escaping the initial invasion, and Jed and Matt visit their father (Harry Dean Stanton) in their newly-established reeducation camp, where we get a tearful reunion as well as the film's iconic "AVENGE ME! AVENGE ME!" scene.

Sadly, no one would avenge the deer. by alaffert

Then one day while hiding themselves from soldiers visiting Arapaho National Battlefield Forest, they are accidentally discovered and are forced to gun them down to avoid being caught. The last one momentarily forgets that he subscribes to a political doctrine that designates religion as the "opiate of the masses" and shouts "God help me! God help me!" before Jed shoots him point blank from the front seat of his Jeep. This event inspires the kids to start a resistance movement, and naming themselves for their high school mascot, the "Wolverines" wage guerilla warfare against the occupation forces. We even get one of those 1980s movie montages. You know, the kind that can easily be set to any type of music. I think the theme song to The A-Team would fit this one quite well.

Man, the judges on Soviet Idol are HARSH. by alaffert

After the montage, Powers Boothe joins them as Lt. Col. Andrew Tanner, a downed F-15 pilot from the Air Force, and he kindlt fills us in on the war so far. Apparently it started with nyclear attacks against several American cities, followed by Cuban infiltrators sneaking across the border and neutralizing Strategic Air Command bases in the Texas and the midwest, which allowed Latin American armies to walk across the Mexican border, while at the same time Russian armies came through the Bering Strat to Alaska and Canada to reinforce them. As of now, the battle lines have pretty much stabilized, and neither side is willing to use nukes on American soil.

How the most technologically advanced army in the world missed a whole bunch of Cuban and Nicaraguan soldiers marching up through the Mexican border AND Russian armies simultaneously raining down through Canada by the truckload is neither explained nor elaborated upon. (You'd think a communist revolution south of the border would have sounded a few alarm bells.) Neither is why Europe, consisting mostly of countries with whom we are allies, isn't helping us fight the Second American Revolution, or at least sending in humanitarian aid.

"Tails again...comrade." by alaffert

Much of the second half of the film is a war of attrition between the occupiers and the Wolverines, during which the psychological effects of battle take its toll on our pack of heroes. Jed and his gang have been talked about on the home front all the way to California, and the Free American military have even talked about backing them up with real Green Berets...in the spring. (Why not send them now? I'm sure your ragtag guerrilla force of HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS fighting the HEAVILY-ARMED RUSSO-LATIN AMERICAN ARMY could REALLY use the backup.)

And his leadership skills are put to the test when the occupation forces stop using reprisal tactics of wantonly killing civilians and start getting smart. An enemy soldier finds out where they are and because of this, they are forced to execute Daryl--turns out his father, the mayor of Calumet, was busy sucking up to the invaders to the point where he sold out his own son and they caught him and made him swallow a tracking device so he could lead them straight to the Wolverines in a part of the movie we never see. Morale continues to weaken when the Soviets stage a fake supply drop that lures them out into the open for an ambush.

Eventually the Wolverines' numbers have thinned down to just Erica, Danny and the two brothers. Jed and Matt plan a final assault on the communist stronghold in Calumet and tell Erica and Danny to escape to liberated territory, because someone's gotta live to tell their story. In a very poignant moment during this siege, the invading general in charge is about to shoot a fatally wounded Jed, who is carrying a fatally wounded Matt in his arms, but instead lowers his weapon and lets them pass with a "vaya con Dios" in a sign of amnesty or mutual respect or even both if you prefer.

Eventually, according to a monologue by Erica in the movie's final shot, WWIII comes to an end, save for some diagnosed cases of PTSD. The rock on which the Wolverines etched the names of their dead is now a monument--Partisan Rock--which Erica still visits to this day...and nobody else. I don't think they've even paved a parking lot next to it. There's a flag and a plaque and that's it. The survivors probably didn't even get any medals or anything.

Much of the second half of the film is a war of attrition between the occupiers and the Wolverines, during which the psychological effects of battle take its toll on our pack of heroes. Jed and his gang have been talked about on the home front all the way to California, and the Free American military have even talked about backing them up with real Green Berets...in the spring. (Why not send them now? I'm sure your ragtag guerrilla force of HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS fighting the HEAVILY-ARMED RUSSO-LATIN AMERICAN ARMY could REALLY use the backup.)

And his leadership skills are put to the test when the occupation forces stop using reprisal tactics of wantonly killing civilians and start getting smart. An enemy soldier finds out where they are and because of this, they are forced to execute Daryl--turns out his father, the mayor of Calumet, was busy sucking up to the invaders to the point where he sold out his own son and they caught him and made him swallow a tracking device so he could lead them straight to the Wolverines in a part of the movie we never see. Morale continues to weaken when the Soviets stage a fake supply drop that lures them out into the open for an ambush.

Eventually the Wolverines' numbers have thinned down to just Erica, Danny and the two brothers. Jed and Matt plan a final assault on the communist stronghold in Calumet and tell Erica and Danny to escape to liberated territory, because someone's gotta live to tell their story. In a very poignant moment during this siege, the invading general in charge is about to shoot a fatally wounded Jed, who is carrying a fatally wounded Matt in his arms, but instead lowers his weapon and lets them pass with a "vaya con Dios" in a sign of amnesty or mutual respect or even both if you prefer.

Eventually, according to a monologue by Erica in the movie's final shot, WWIII comes to an end, save for some diagnosed cases of PTSD. The rock on which the Wolverines etched the names of their dead is now a monument--Partisan Rock--which Erica still visits to this day...and nobody else. I don't think they've even paved a parking lot next to it. There's a flag and a plaque and that's it. The survivors probably didn't even get any medals or anything.

Ever since the commies took over, the annual St. Patrick's Day parade hasn't been as fun. by alaffert

Red Dawn is a film derived from the fantasies and imagination of an American adolescent growing up in the heyday of Reagan-era politics. The thought of war breaking out between America and the Soviets was a terrifying thought back then, what with mutually assured destruction from each country's nuclear arsenal, and I would imagine that any kid raised in this era who watched the news every night and listened to war stories of a relative who fought in 'Nam spent his time imagining himself in the heat of battle against armies from communist countries, and this movie does seem like the perfect outlet for its young adult audience.

However, I do appreciate the sense of realism it adds to this fantasy, as the horrors and the dehumanization take their toll on the Wolverines, who, let's not forget, were originally a group of scared, emotionally imbalanced teenagers. Also, consider the climax with Jed carrying his wounded brother in his arms, facing down a Cuban general with a rifle pointed at him only to lower his weapon and let them by. That is perhaps the most powerful moment in the whole film. It makes the theme a little more complex than the whole jingoistic flag-waving "better dead than red" mentality would allow.

Calling Red Dawn a piece of paranoid anti-Soviet propaganda doesn't really do it justice. It's a little more than that. It is by no means a perfect film, what with its plot holes and occasional cheesy acting, but in a cultural sense it's earned its place.

But don't worry, I don't think China wants to invade us anytime soon. Not while we're still trading with them.

Tourists are communists with cameras. Communists are tourists with guns. by alaffert

Adam Lafferty also likes to talk about movies, among other things, on his other blog, popculturevomitbag.blogspot.com.

"Alien from L.A.", 1988, directed by Albert Pyun. by alaffert

I would like to know how 1980's culture has suddenly become popular again.

Yes, it sounds weird, me cursing the decade in which I was born, but I did live through most of the 80's, and let's face it, a lot of the stuff that came from that period in time has not aged well. Feathered hair, New Kids on the Block, Jem and the Holograms, Saved by the Bell, such fashion items as leopard skin tights and anything in neon...sure, we all have our memories, but would you really want to watch an episode of the original My Little Pony nowadays? I like to think that times are better now that MP3 players have replaced Walkmans, phones you can carry in your pocket have replaced phones as big as your head, and there are way more than a meager handful of channels on cable TV. Our family sitcoms are better written now, our cartoons are better animated now, and if we don't like them, we have an Internet on which to complain.

I have sort of a history with a certain movie from this accursed era, Alien from L.A. My family and I were big fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its Comedy Central run and this was our favorite episode. It was quite early in Mike Nelson's tenure as host - four episodes after Joel Hodgson left the series, in fact - annd the way they put this film through the wringer makes this one a classic. My sisters and I could make fun of its leading lady's high-pitched voice all day long.

Once upon a time (the movie does in fact open with those words - blecch!) on the perpetualy sunny beaches of Malibu, there lived a young girl named Wanda Sakmuss...Sakmuseum...Sakmunmsenmun...Wanda, a mousy teenage girl with enormous glasses and a voice that sounds like someone opened a tank of helium on the Bambi set. Her boyfriend's just dumped her because she's a dumpy-looking plain-Jane with no sense of adventure who's too afraid of everything for his active lifestyle of surfing, rock climbing, camping and everything else Californians in 1980's movies do.

She is played by renowned supermodel Kathy Ireland.

Yes, basically they're trying to tell us that Kathy Ireland can't hold down a boyfriend.

We learn as her friend drives her to her roller waitress day job at a typical 1980's pseudo-50's burger joint that her mother was hit by a car and killed when she was young, and that her father is an explorer who left her ten years ago to travel the world or some such excuse and has been missing all this time, so she clearly has abandonment issues and feels she's been rejected all her life.

Yes, basically they're trying to tell us that Kathy Ireland thinks people have an aversion to her.

Seriously, who'd want to date a total washout like Kathy Ireland? by alaffert

Mercifully, before she starts singing a heartfelt ballad about her low self-esteem and desire to change herself, we cut to somewhere in Africa, where we see her father (Richard Haines) wander around some ancient ruins and fall down a very deep hole.

Somebody (the cameraman, I'm guessing, since there was no one else around when he fell) sends Wanda a letter saying that her father's fallen down a bottomless pit and assumedly died as well as a plane ticket to somewhere in Africa to help settle his final affairs. She flies out there, even though she's afraid of airplanes, and while sorting through his belongings, she and by extension we learn that her father was looking for the fabled lost city of Atlantis, populated naturally by Atlanteans, an alien civilization who traveled to Earth thousands of years ago on a massive spaceship that eventually sank deep into the bowels of the planet and still survive today where their spaceship is buried, in a city deep in the center of the Earth.

Well, eventually, Wanda finds those very same ruins that her father was rummaging through during the opening credits in his closet or something and, because nobody told her not to or put up a sign or a barricade or even some yellow tape or anything, not that that would have stopped her, this being a movie and all, she wanders down in them and eventually falls down the very same bottomless pit her father fell through.

The pit doesn't prove to be as bottomless as advertised, as there appears to be a bottom for Wanda to land on. It doesn't seem to be that deep either, since she survives the fall without injury. She's perfectly healthy enough to stand up on her own power and walk off to explore this strange new world.

The first person she meets wandering around down here is a heavily Australian-accented miner named Gus (William R. Moses) whom she rescues from a pair of murderous claim-jumpers, and who afterwards reluctantly agrees to take her into Atlantis to find her father, obviously annoyed by her voice, which sounds like a Care Bear on Ritalin. Her "big bones" (which are alluded to several times throughout the rest of the film) cause her to tip his tractor when she first gets on, and in the accident she loses her glasses, but it's perfectly all right since she doesn't really appear to need them for the rest of the movie.

Funny, I thought the lost city of Atlantis was underwater. And populated by merpeople. by alaffert

As they drive along to Atlantis, she tells him her life story in a voice that makes Alvin and the Chipmunks sound like James Earl Jones, and he promises to help her find her father seemingly in the hopes of shutting her up and making her go away. While the two of them stop off at a tavern and Wanda takes a much-needed steam bath, a ratty-looking girl who has overheard her talking about the surface world and the sun and Malibu Beach reports to Atlantean General Rykov, an eyepatch-wearing female David Bowie impersonator (played by Janie du Plessis, who also plays Rat Girl) that an alien from the surface world has infiltrated Atlantis.

Rat Girl appears again at a restaurant where Wanda and Gus are having a bite and knocks out Wanda with a syringe of something (insert modeling joke here) and takes her away when Gus walks off to make a phone call. She delivers Wanda to so-called "boss of bosses" Mambino (played by Deep Roy, more recently known for playing every Oompa Loompa in existence in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), a midget dressed like a 1930's gangster and weirdly sporting three-inch eyelashes, and then goes behind his back to Rykov to report her whereabouts.

"Has Maybelline called me back about that endorsement deal?" by alaffert

Okay, a quick word about Atlantis. You'd expect a great underground alien city to have highly-advanced technology and everything's all nice and shiny and there's Apple logos all over the place, but to be honest it looks more like a series of grimy back alleys and industrial basements populated by 80's music video dancers and Lady Gaga impersonators. A million possible ideas for an ancient underground alien civilization and they decide to watch a bunch of old Madonna videos on a bender and see what comes from it? Couldn't they have been a little more creative, like with the Silurians from Doctor Who? At least those guys LOOKED the part. And how come these people have never heard of the surface world or anything from it when Mambino is clearly dressed as a stereotypical Mafia don AND I could easily spot a Roy Lichtenstein painting in plain sight in the background of a clothing shop?

Roy Lichtenstein, "M-Maybe", c. 1965, oil on canvas. by alaffert

This isn't an underground city. It looks more like an underground shopping mall.

After going around town saying that he's "looking for a girl with big bones" (try the personals, buddy) Gus reappears to save Wanda as Mambino and his thugs attempt to hide her from the government (Mambino conveniently gives Wanda something to knock him out with while watching his thugs fight off the Aussie miner), but then loses her again when she falls over a railing. By this time the government has a picture of her and has put a bounty on her head (why the photographer couldn't just make a citizen's arrest right as he took the picture I just don't know), and after a chase scene from a money-hungry mob and some more of Mambino's thugs, she is rescued by a handsome-looking street urchin named...Charmin (Thom Matthews).

Yes. They actually named him Charmin. The film literally opens with the words "once upon a time" and now Wanda has been rescued by a princely fellow named Charmin.

So when does the wicked queen turn up with the poisoned apple?

Mr. Whipple, please don't squeeze the Charmin! by alaffert

Charmin proves to be the only person in this movie who can stand the sound of her voice, which if you will recall feels like a bundle of railroad spikes tied together with barbed wire are being driven into your brain with a sledgehammer, and even starts to fall for her a little. This relationship is only about ten minutes long when Mambino's thug attacks again and Charmin fights him off, allowing Wanda to run and hide somewhere. Then Wanda just...lingers around somewhere for a couple minutes before Rat Girl points her out and she finally gets arrested.

Rykov and another very important guy discuss what to do with the aliens with the Atlantean Overlord, a very deep-voiced short guy sitting in what looks like a motorized swivel chair with no "off" switch. Rykov wants Wanda and her father killed, accusing them of being spies from the surface world sent on a reconnaissance mission for a possible invasion of Atlantis, while the other Very Important Guy says that they both arrived by accident and should be released on the condition that they keep their civilization a secret. Wanda is eventually brought before the Overlord to defend herself (gotta love the voice contrast here--like Beelzebub talking to a Japanese cartoon character), and no sooner is she finally reunited with her father than Gus suddenly barges in and pulls the both of them out of there.

Gus takes Wanda and her father to join his friend Midget Robbie Coltrane, who has been making a vessel which will return the aliens to the surface world via the same hole they fell through. As they say their goodbyes and are about to take off, Rykov suddenly appears, announcing that they are to be executed as spies, when the other Very Important Guy comes in, simply punches out Rykoff, and sends Wanda and her father on their way with the promise that they will never reveal the existence of Atlantis to anyone on the surface.

Wanda returns to SoCal with a newfound self-confidence, proven by the fact that she is no longer afraid to be seen at the beach in a bikini top. Her ex-boyfriend sees how attractive she's gotten and suddenly wants to date her again, but she just brushes him off. Then Charmin for some reason shows up on a motorcycle which, being an alien, he shouldn't know how to ride, and despite the fact that she's only known him for ten or fifteen minutes, another fairy tale subtitle tells us that she will "live happily ever after." (Gag.)

Err...just cover that up with a tarp. I'm sure no one will notice. by alaffert

Somewhere in Alien from L.A. is a story about an ugly duckling who becomes a beautiful swan. Somewhere in Alien from L.A. is a story about a girl braving the elements looking for her long lost father. Don't get me wrong, those subplots ARE in there somewhere, but they are buried quite deep in this mishmash of early MTV, Alice in Wonderland and Blade Runner. Much of the film is just Kathy Ireland running around Atlantis squeaking at everybody while the other characters are so underdeveloped that they just come and go as they please. Not that back alleys and industrial basements aren't a good place to chase a movie character around in, but back alleys and industrial basements with Australian glam rockers, flamboyant gangsters and a lady Dick Cheney with an eye-patch kinda force you to tune out the rest of the movie.

Another thing that is distracting from the plot is that Kathy Ireland CANNOT ACT. Yes, she's quite easy on the eyes, but that's about all she contributes to this film. You can tell that she had to be DIRECTED to act in some parts--for example, one scene requires her to be tired and she acts like she's just smoked a truckload of weed. It's little wonder why every one in this film thinks so little of Wanda--she doesn't really do anything to make her a very sympathetic character...or make this movie enjoyable to anyone except masochists and the most enthusiastic bad movie aficionado.

And have I mentioned that her voice is unnaturally high-pitched and really annoying?

Adam Lafferty also likes to talk about movies, among other things, on his other blog, popculturevomitbag.blogspot.com.

"Head", 1968, directed by Bob Rafelson. by alaffert

When England gave us the Beatles, NBC responded with a sitcom.

The Monkees made its TV debut in September of 1966 and introduced America to a Pre-Fab Four--Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork, four up-and-coming musicians who ran around everywhere and got into crazy 1960s sitcommy situations. It lasted two seasons and even picked up an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. My sisters and I loved the show as kids, and we even have select episodes on videotape in storage somewhere.

Outside of the boob tube, they were a real life honest-to-goodness band. They made albums, played concerts and attracted a large number of groupies, even after their TV show ended. They even got back together for a reunion in 1986, when reruns of their show brought on a whole new wave of Monkees fans. And a lot of their music is actually pretty good--"Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Last Train to Clarksville", "Daydream Believer"...

In short, the Monkees are the only manufactured pop group that I have respect for. And this is coming from someone who survived the darkest days of the turn-of-the-century boy band craze.

Partly because of their music, but also because they made Head.

"Hey hey we are the Monkees / You know we aim to please / A manufactured image / With no philosophies." by alaffert

Conceived by the band on a tape recorder alongside director/producer/writer Bob Rafelson and co-writer Jack Nicholson (yes, that Jack Nicholson) during a trip to a resort in California--with a little help from their friend Mary Jane, if you know what I mean--Head was designed as the antithesis of the Monkees' TV show, an unsubtle deconstruction of the vehicle which made them idols to millions of screaming teenyboppers, a middle finger to the mass media if you will.

Don't let its G-rating confuse you--there isn't any language or nudity or sex in it, but the movie is actually quite dark, darker than any episode of the TV series. There is a piece of footage of a Viet Cong operative getting shot point blank in the head on camera which is used at certain points throughout the film. The movie also begins with one of the Monkees jumping off a bridge...and then ends with all four Monkees jumping off the same bridge.

As a matter of fact, many theaters slapped the film with a "mature audiences only" label because of its psychedelic nature, which kept the band's underage fan base at a distance. This, along with a poor marketing campaign, production delays which saw the film come out two months after the TV show was canceled, and flat-out indifference from the hipper adult crowd it was aimed at, led to an abysmal performance at the box office. The accompanying soundtrack album also became the lowest peaking Monkees LP on the American charts.

Quite ironically, Head also marked the beginning of the end for the Monkees--having cut ties with Rafelson and executive producer Bert Schneider after they learned they wouldn't get writing credit for the film, Peter Tork left the group in 1969 out of exhaustion, and the band broke up completely in 1970. It finally got critical respect in 1973 during a special screening with Raybert Production's other two films, Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, and since then it has become a cult classic, either for its innovative surrealist approach to film-making or its slow descent into madness.

"BOB SENT ME TO TELL YOU YOU'RE WANTED ON SET." by alaffert

Normally this would be the part of the review where I give an extensive and occasionally sarcastic review of the plot without giving too much of it away, but...this movie doesn't have one. No storyline, no continuity, nothing. Instead we are given a series of vignettes linked in stream-of-consciousness fashion with nothing whatsoever in common outside of a biting satirical undertone. The film doesn't even have any opening credits, choosing to drop us straight into the action right at the beginning.

Think of it as an extended episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus--only with more songs in it and nobody wearing a dress.

Well, okay, ONE guy in a dress. by alaffert

As I've said before, the movie is the antithesis of the TV show. It references the tropes it established--Davy is the chick magnet, Peter is the dummy, Mike is the deadpan and Micky is the wild one--as well as their experiences during its production--many of the studio's veteran actors weren't pleased to see them and even walked out of the commissary whenever they came in. A recurring motif is the Monkees being ushered into a big black room with the door closed behind them, an allegory to the break room that the studio set up for them so they wouldn't wander around off-set. There is also the occasional jab at other topics such as commercialism, celebrity culture, the war in Vietnam, and the Hollywood movie machine. We see the Monkees sitting in a trench in the middle of a war scene as they fight to advance upon--the stage for their next concert, where after a performance of "Circle Sky", the mob of screaming teenagers charge upon them and literally tear them limb from limb (or their respectively dressed mannequins, anyway). During all this, Micky wails on a Coke machine in the middle of a desert and eventually blows it up with a tank, Peter punches a lunch lady in the face, and all four of them get sucked into a vacuum cleaner.

The movie also sports a number of big name or soon-to-be big name guest stars: fellow musician Frank Zappa, former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello, pro boxer Sonny Liston, veteran actor Victor Mature, more psychotic veteran actor Timothy Carey, the future Mrs. Fronk-en-steen Teri Garr, and uncredited cameo appearances by Nicholson and his future Easy Rider co-star Dennis Hopper.

Also look for Green Bay linebacker Ray Nitschke as an American football player who constantly tackles Peter while chanting "We're number one, we're number one" before throwing him his helmet.

Brought to you by Pepsi. by alaffert

And of course, no movie starring a band would be complete without an original soundtrack. And the music here is a major departure from the pop rock as heard on the TV show--particularly Carole King and Gerry Goffin's "Porpoise Song" which bookends the movie, which has to be the most out there song they've ever done. Other musical highlights include Davy Jones singing Harry Nillson's "Daddy's Song" and dancing with choreographer Toni Basil as their costumes change colors, and also the aptly named "Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again" during a beautifully trippy dance montage at Mike's birthday party. The comparatively slower "As We Go Along" segment is pretty good, too, if you need a place to catch your breath between all the cutaways.

In closing, if you like psychedelic rock music, experimental cinema or just enjoy a good old fashioned mindscrew, I highly recommend this movie. Those who enjoy looking at movies from an analytical viewpoint will have a field day with it as well. Me? Well, I fall in all of these camps, so I friggin' love this movie. It isn't as linear as A Hard Day's Night or Help! or, hell, even the High School Musical movies, but it doesn't really need to be. Its sole purpose is to tear down the Monkees' image in the eyes of the media--and considering its take at the box office, it wound up succeeding beyond anyone's wildest imaginations.

My only qualm with it is that you kinda have to know a bit about the Monkees going into this film, since out of context I suppose it would be a little confusing. There is sort of an introductory segment of the film in which the band admits there really isn't a story and they "might tell you one thing, but [they'd] only take it back." Suffice to say it isn't for everybody, but for anyone who's eager, it's a pretty fun ride.

Despite all their rage, they're still just rats in a cage. by alaffert

Adam Lafferty also likes to talk about movies, among other things, on his other blog, popculturevomitbag.blogspot.com.

"Santa Claus", 1959, directed by Rene Cardona. by alaffert

This lesser-known and badly-dubbed import from Mexico has something of a special place in my Christmas psyche. I know it shouldn't, but it just does. It has been featured in one of two holiday episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 along with the more infamous Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and between the two of them I cannot help but like the episode this one was in a little more. I'm not even sure I can call this the worst Christmas movie I've seen--everything in it is just so bizarre that it actually makes it kinda fun.

And who do we have to thank for this warm cup of spiked eggnog? None other than K. Gordon Murray, a Florida-based film producer who spent much of his career importing low-budget fairy tale, horror and exploitation films from other countries, dubbing them into English and releasing them in American theaters. Santa Claus was the first fantasy film he released in America, and surprisingly it was a major hit with family audiences when his English adaptation came out in 1960. It was so successful that he started putting out more family films in the years to follow, earning him the title "King of the Kiddie Matinee" by the time the business was beginning to peter out in the 1970s. Santa Claus in particular flourished, and theaters continued to show it again and again every few years for a staggering THREE DECADES, nearly ten years after Murray's death by heart attack in 1979.

The movie starts off by shattering every idea you've ever had about Santa Claus. For example, according to the screenwriter, he does NOT have a workshop at the North Pole which he staffs with pointy-eared elves three apples tall. Instead, he lives, according to a narrator, "away up in the heavens, far out in space in a beautiful gold and crystal palace right above the North Pole", which is staffed by a multitude of children from all over the world. Or rather, the same children dressed up in different ethnic stereotype costumes, as shown in a "parade of nations" segment at the start of the film where kids (often the same kids) sing ethnic songs horrendously off-key while Santa (Joseph Elias Moreno) accompanies on the organ, squirming strangely in his seat all the while.

A devil-shaped firecracker provides a segue to a rather strange location for a movie about Santa Claus: the ninth level of Hell.

Satan himself, represented by a disembodied voice and a shot of flames, assigns Pitch, chief of all demons (José Luis Aguirre) to travel up to Earth and attempt to thwart Santa Claus' efforts and make all the children of the world do evil, threatening to feed him chocolate ice cream, which Pitch claims is bad for his delicate digestion, if he fails.

Santa is friend to all children. by alaffert

Meanwhile, it wouldn't be a Santa Claus movie without some children in it, and this film focuses on five in particular. One is a rich little boy whose parents are never around. Then we have a cute, thick-accented little girl named Lupita whose family is poor; her only goal in life is to have a dolly to play with. Finally, there are three bad, evil, nasty little brothers whom Pitch immediately latches onto.

Through the so-called wondrous instruments in Santa's magic observatory, which include a telescope with a snake-eye attachment, a pinball machine with big red lips, and a Pop-o-matic bubble which lets you look in on what children are dreaming about, we learn a little more about these kids. Peeping in on the rich little boy's dream, Santa learns that all he wants for Christmas is to be with his parents. Through his earscope (an oscillating fan with Van Gogh's missing ear attached to it) he hears the three little street urchins make fun of him and tells them off in a loud, booming, disembodied voice.

But more importantly, we see Lupita caught between moral grounds when she is tempted to steal a doll from a sidewalk marketplace, with a little nudging from Pitch. After she decides to put the doll back, Pitch follows her home and blows in her ear while she is sleeping, which causes her to have a nightmare. In this dream Lupita sings to a little doll in a room full of smoke surrounded by several giant boxes. The boxes open, and several freakish man-sized dolls dance awkwardly around the confused little girl, one of which engages her in conversation about the negative ramifications of her honesty when presented with an opportunity to illicitly relieve herself of a consequence of her family's desperate, impoverished living conditions. In other words, "why don't you steal a doll?"

I'm guessing this smoke ISN'T from a fog machine. by alaffert

Next we see a montage of kids writing and mailing letters to Santa which magically rise out of the post office incinerator with the power of rolling film backwards and up into Santa's crystal castle. These letters he divides into three boxes: "verdad surtase" (telling the truth), "mentira tirese" (lying) and a third slot delivering letters to the metaphorical stork for kids who want little brothers and sisters.

Then we visit Santa's crystal meth lab where Merlin the Magician (yes, THE Merlin the Magician) provides him with a magic flower which will make him invisible when he sniffs it, as well as a special dreaming powder which will send anyone still awake when he arrives to sleep, dreaming dreams of joy and good will. Next a magic blacksmith and keymaker provides Santa with a magic key with the power to open any lock on any door, presumably for houses without chimneys.

Now we come to Santa's training room, where we learn that he does in fact NOT have a belly that shakes like a bowl full of jelly - no, he has to keep his waistline in check so he can fit down any chimney. During all this Santa continues to laugh unprovoked, probably because he is the jolly old elf that he is, but I can't help but suspect he's taken one too many sniffs on that magic flower.

"First batch is free; the SECOND one'll cost ya." by alaffert

And now it's time for Santa to make his annual Christmas Eve rounds. As he prepares his sleigh, a clever little child with a poncho and sombrero whom I suspect the dubbers of having named Pedro warns Santa that he must be back at the castle before sunrise (he doesn't mention in which time zone) or else his FOUR NAMELESS MECHANIZED PHOTOSENSITIVE REINDEER will turn to dust, and Santa would perish on an Earth diet of "most of the animals, the plants, the flowers, the roots, the birds, even smoke and alcohol" instead of the "pastries and ice cream made of soft clouds" he normally eats. A parade of Santa's child labor form a line to his sleigh and start loading his great big seemingly bottomless sack of toys, singing a song with strange lyrics all the while. Santa joins in a couple of verses, singing "Hurry up my children, get on with your packing, it's the night for Santa Claus to fill all those stockings" in a VERY DEEP, VERY OFF-KEY VOICE which must be heard to be believed. I'd call this the worst Christmas-related song I've ever heard if not for Carrie Fisher's drug-induced crooning at the end of The Star Wars Holiday Special, and the fact that it's the most unintentionally hilarious bit in the whole movie.

Then after he winds up his reindeer, one of which joins him in a magic flower-induced fit of laughter which, again, must be heard to be believed, he finally sets out to deliver the presents.

Santa's first stop is--here's a shocker--Mexico City, where Pitch is waiting for him. From here, we get some Wile E. Coyote-Roadrunner-style shtick where Pitch sets traps for Santa to thwart his yuletide duties, such as pushing chimneys out of place, super-heating doorknobs with his breath and setting fires in fireplaces he's about to enter through. Naturally Santa sees through Pitch's every move and even comes up with a few tricks of his own, like blowing soot in his face and shooting him in the butt with a toy rocket launcher. Meanwhile, the subplots with the lonely little rich boy and the three young rapscallions are quickly resolved - Santa poses as a waiter at the only restaurant that's open on Christmas Eve night and serves the rich kid's parents a magic cocktail with undisclosed ingredients that makes them want to go home and see him, and as for the three plotting to capture him and make off with his toys, he shoots some kind of sparkly missile at them and scares them back home where they find lumps of coal in their shoes.

Blow in his ear and he'll follow you anywhere. by alaffert

Well, around this time the writers finally decided to add some tension to the story, as Pitch sneaks up to Santa's sleigh while he is making another delivery and conjures up a pair of scissors to snip a hole in Santa's bag of dreaming powder, which also causes his magic flower to fall out of the sleigh. Santa doesn't realize this until he's sneaking through some rich family's front yard and Pitch sics a vicious dog on him, and while he is forced to climb a tree to get away, Pitch gleefully wakes up the whole neighborhood and summons the police and the fire department.

With morning imminent (Mexico standard time) Santa calls up to the castle for help, which Pedro overhears while dusting the observatory and rushes to retrieve Merlin. Merlin racks his brain for a few seconds, and then suggests that Santa use a stuffed toy cat on wheels (and apparently motorized) from his sack to distract the dog and make his escape as the authorities and firemen arrive, one of whom turns on his hose and drenches the residents for no reason. Pitch lingers around the scene long enough for one of the firemen to notice some smoke from where he is standing and unknowingly hose him down, to which the narrator comments "Well, that serves him right, the old troublemaker. He'll probably catch pneumonia, but he asked for it." Sheesh, narrator, whose side are you on?

Meanwhile, Santa's magic flower has conveniently landed right at Lupita's front door, which is where Santa was making one last stop before flying home. Lupita suddenly wakes up and gives a semi-intelligible thick-accented monologue to her mother and father that Santa left a doll for her, which is waiting for her right outside her door, and wow it's just as tall as she is. Lupita thanks Santa as he arrives back at his castle, having once again brought joy and love to all the children of the world. Or rather, four or five children in Mexico City to the exclusion of every other Christmas-celebrating household, let alone all the children who are from Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish families or are otherwise celebrating other winter holidays, but whatever, happy ending.

He sees you when you're sleeping. And he KNOWS when you're awake. by alaffert

Wow. This movie is just...wow.

I don't think there is any conceivable way to describe just how utterly outrageous this movie is. Picture a Sunday school class taught by a hellfire-and-damnation preacher combined with a wildly inaccurate episode of Mythbusters and a Nativity play on PCP and airplane glue and you haven't even come remotely close to how crazy this movie is. There are some genuinely sentimental moments in it which mostly revolve around Lupita and the poor little rich boy, but those bits just get lost in the sheer insanity of everything else. This is without a doubt the strangest Christmas movie I've ever seen. It just defies all belief.

So would I recommend this movie? ...Well, obviously not to kids, since some of the imagery would scare them into celebrating Festivus for the rest of their lives. If you prefer more competent Christmas movies, then...no. Just no. Everybody else? Well, if you like bad movies, and bad Christmas movies in particular, be advised that there's no lifeguard on duty, so swim at your own risk. And mind you don't catch pneumonia.

Adam Lafferty also likes to talk about movies, among other things, on his other blog, popculturevomitbag.blogspot.com.

The man, the mullet, the legend. by alaffert

If you don't know who this guy is, either you don't deserve to be called an '80s man, or you probably weren't one.

Some know him as one of the Wolverines from Red Dawn.

Some know him as a dance instructor in Dirty Dancing.

Some know him as a ghost in, err...Ghost.

Despite how you remember this guy, he was undoubtedly one of the biggest names to come out of the penultimate decade of the 20th century.

Come on, when Mystery Science Theater 3000 writes a Christmas carol around somebody, you're gonna remember him.

Speaking of MST3K, today we're doing the movie that head writer Mike Nelson once called the cheesiest film he'd ever seen.

And it also has that guy in it! What a coincidence!

"Road House", directed by Rowdy Herrington, 1989. by alaffert

The dearly-departed Patrick Swayze, if you hadn't already guessed his name, stars as Dalton, a mild-mannered professional bouncer whose calm demeanor and NYU degree in philosophy have made him the best man you could hire for the job of tossing horny boozehounds out of otherwise well-respected bars. He has just been hired away by Mr. Frank Tilghman (Kevin Tighe), a bar owner with dreams and aspirations who runs an infamous little dive in the fictitious (or is it?) town of Jasper, Mo., named the Double Deuce, a dirty, grubby little music house where the drinkers are rowdy, the bands play behind a chicken-wire fence, and the waitresses are considered prime real estate. Tilghman has big plans for the Deuce to improve its image in Jasper, and hopefully Dalton will keep out the riffraff who threaten his investment.

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. by alaffert

Dalton quickly settles in, buying a new car and renting out an upstairs apartment in the barnhouse of one Emmett No-Last-Name-Given (Sunshine Parker), who as it turns out lives right across the lake of one Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara), the local tycoon/sadistic bastard who has his fingers in the back pockets of every business in town, not to mention the sheriff and police department. At the Double Deuce, he instills his iron-fisted regime upon the tavern, firing the drug-pushing, till-skimming, backroom-snogging bouncers who don't cut the mustard with him. Of course, some of them were in Wesley's employ, and one of them, Pat, the one who was caught skimming the till, turns out to be the man's nephew, and when some of his thugs intimidate Tilghman into giving the boy his job back, a fight breaks out that ends with Dalton escorting them out of the building by their shirt collars.

Dalton goes to the hospital to tend to a knife wound the fat guy gave him during the fight, where he meets Dr. Elizabeth Clay (Kelly Lynch), a nurse. You know, I just bet they'll get together later in the film.

When Wesley's thugs drop by the Double Deuce to maybe shake things up a bit, Dalton and his bouncer army remain resilient while forcefully ejecting them from the premises. Then Wesley invites Dalton to his home to try and hire him away from the Deuce and he refuses, perhaps becuase he nonchalantly mentions that he allegedly ripped out a guy's throat in Memphis with his bare hands.

On top of that, it turns out Wesley has a thing for Dr. Clay. Way to spit in his eye, Dalton.

Ah, so THESE were all the rowdy friends he was singing about. by alaffert

That evening at the Double Deuce, which has re-opened after apparently having undergone the quickest building refurbishing in human history, things get busy.

Wesley starts choking the Deuce's booze supply, and when his goons attempt to stop an impending liquor delivery, a fight breaks out. Luckily, Dalton's good friend and fellow bouncer Wade (Sam Elliott) comes to Dalton's aid and scares them away.

Meanwhile, Doc's uncle Red Webster (Red West) has an auto parts store over by the bar ... or had, until Wesley's thugs blow it up in a massive fireball for non-payment of protection money. Wesley celebrates with a drink at the Deuce while the sexy blonde who walked in with him performs a striptease, and then a fight breaks out.

Another of Wesley's stooges drives a monster truck through Jasper citizen/superfluous character Pete Stroudenmire's (Jon Paul Jones) Ford dealership.

With Dalton all riled up, Doc comes by one evening to persuade him to leave town, when on her last word, which she just happens to be shouting, and as if she had commanded it herself, Emmett's house explodes in a the same albeit perfectly timed giant fireball that took Red's shop.

...

Some of the best movie villains ever conceived, including many of the most outrageous James Bond baddies, have always had a motive. They didn't just choose to be bad; they were victims of circumstances which made them cold-hearted individuals, and this makes them more human, more believable. Brad Wesley has no motive. He's just a grinning, psychotic bastard who sponges off everybody in town and hires murderous thugs to wreak havoc and destroy private property for fun, smiling all the while. I bet there was a scene on the cutting room floor where he skins a kitten alive while drinking the blood of an orphan child.

"Whose firstborn son do I have to kill to get a drink around here?" by alaffert

Anyway, after Emmett's house explodes, (Emmett's okay, BTW) Wesley's toughest stooge Jimmy (Marshall R. Teague) drives by the scene on his dirt bike gloating at his dirty deed done dirt cheap, and Dalton chases him down to the riverside where another fight breaks out. In a move which sort of confirms that rumor about him ripping a guy's throat out in Memphis, Dalton does the same thing to Jimmy and dumps his body in the river. Unfortunately, his new girlfriend arrives in time to see him do that. Naturally, this causes her to cool on their relationship immediately.

The next morning Wesley calls Dalton and casually informs him that today he's going to kill either Wade or Doc, deciding on the flip of a coin. Wade wanders in bruised and battered, so he heads to the hospital to get Doc out of there. She flatly refuses his offer, citing that Dalton is just as dangerous as Wesley and asks him to leave.

Oh, yeah, I get it. Dalton's not the one who's a money-grubbing psychopath with zero value for human life and HE'S crazy. Dalton's not the one who hires ruthless, violent thugs to extort local businesses and destroy private property for kicks and HE'S crazy. Dalton's not the one who recklessly serpentines his car into both lanes of the highway, potentially running other cars off the road, and HE'S crazy. Lady, Dalton may have the capacity to relieve people of their ability to swallow food and he might be a little P.O.-ed right now, but compared to Wesley...he's Mother flippin' Teresa.

Besides, Jimmy had a gun on him. It was self-defense.

I haven't seen him this mad since he was gunning down Commies in the Rocky Mountains. by alaffert

Anyways, Dalton returns to the Deuce to see Wade laid out on the counter with a knife sticking out of him with a note reading IT WAS TAILS.

And Dalton's thinking only one thing: HEADS WILL ROLL. (C wut I did thar?)

Dalton stages a one-man assault at Wesley's place, dispatching his hired men one at a time (though the fat guy gets off easy — he follows Dalton into the trophy room and has a stuffed polar bear fall on top of him) until the final boss Wesley enters, and then a fight breaks out. They fight for a while and Wesley has just pulled a gun out when Dalton has him floored and is about to deliver a second trachaectomy when he has a moment of realization and eases off. Doc, who shows up for some reason, comes in just in time to see Dalton stand down, and as Wesley gets back up intent on shooting Dalton in cold blood suddenly finds a shotgun-shaped hole has appeared in his belly — Red, Emmett and the other townspeople have turned up with their rifles, and Tilghman appears to deliver the one-liner — "This is OUR town, and don't you forget it" — before making it quite difficult for him to forget anything ever again by shooting him once more in his stomach, quite fatally. The sheriff arrives and everybody hides their guns and denies everything, while the fat guy mentions that a polar bear fell on him.

Doc and Dalton have a celebratory skinny dipping session while the band from the Double Deuce plays over the end credits.

A majority of action movies are not so much praised for their genius plots and complex characters as they are for their big name actors kicking and punching and shooting and killing the crap out of the bad guys. Steven Seagal made a career for himself by kicking gangsters and drug dealers in the crotch for 90 minutes. Arnold Schwarzenegger took his Terminator persona to great heights fighting terrorists, aliens, and even the Devil himself. Bruce Lee...well, he was Bruce Lee. His name alone should tell you enough.

"Road House" is no exception. Patrick Swayze was already a Hollywood name with an action film or two under his belt, so all director Roddy Herrington had to do was cast him as a macho badass, give him a crime boss and some lackeys to fight, throw in a love interest, set it all up in a trashy bar location (the music in the background wasn't bad, by the way), and there you go, instant action classic. Story? Ehh, don't strain yourself. Character depth? Well, okay, but not so much for the villain. Philosophical insight? Come on, a woman gets felt up in the first 10 minutes.

If you like movies with barfights but don't really care much for Westerns...or story or characters or anything else for that matter, "Road House" is the movie for you. It is by no means an intelligent movie, but then some movies don't have to be intelligent to keep you entertained, particularly action movies.

Meanwhile, downstream, some kids are poking at Jimmy's corpse with a stick. by alaffert

Adam Lafferty also likes to talk about movies, among other things, on his other blog, popculturevomitbag.blogspot.com.

"Carrie", directed by Brian de Palma, 1976. by alaffert

Caution: may contain spoilers.

Throughout his writing career, Stephen King has had his books turned into movies and TV specials more times than Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare COMBINED. The more you watch them, and the more of them you watch, the more you notice that many of them have certain things in common — most of them take place somewhere in Maine, there's a parental character who slowly goes insane if he hasn't already gone insane, sometimes there's a religious icon who is self-righteous to the point of having a possible serious mental condition, and usually there's a monster that is something out of a deep-seeded childhood trauma which shakes the protagonist even today, like Tim Curry's Pennywise the Clown from the "It" miniseries or the primitive-CG'ed Milk Duds of Doom from the TV adaptation of "The Langoliers."

But "Carrie" was a little something extra special. It wasn't just King's first published novel to be turned into a movie — in 1976 by director and co-producer Brian de Palma, and the first of a great many, I'm sure — it was also his first published novel period, first printed in 1974. And while most of the other films you can take or leave, "Carrie" has since become a horror classic and a staple of pop culture and also spawned a sequel, a musical and almost a TV series. King himself has even said that it was one of the best adaptations of one of his novels ever made, and even prefers it to his original book.

I kinda wish he'd felt the same way about "The Shining" ...

This is what you call "No Child Left Behind"? by alaffert

Sissy Spacek stars as Carrie White, an ostracized high school student whom nobody understands. You know the type — the slow, mixed-up kids who fall off the beaten path quite often and, well, just don't fit in. As shown in the opening scene where Carrie is showering after gym class and notices a bit of blood running down her legs. Confused and horrified, she goes to the other girls for help and they respond by mocking her and throwing tampons and sanitary napkins at her. Only after the gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) breaks things up does she calm her down, but not before a light bulb breaks over the shower stall.

And then while at the principal's office where he dismisses her for the rest of the day, an ashtray flips off his desk and spills onto the floor when he gets her name wrong for the fourth or fifth time.

And then a kid on his bicycle crashes into nothing and falls over while riding past her and calling her names.

Of course, it's not Carrie's fault in the least. A good portion of the blame lies with Carrie's mother Margaret (Piper Laurie), known throughout the neighborhood as a religious fanatic who believes that the transformation of a young girl into an adult is not so much natural as just God punishing you for something really naughty you did. She responds to the news of Carrie's first period ("the curse of blood", as she calls it) by throwing her in a small closet full of grotesque Catholic imagery kicking and screaming.

"There comes a time in every young girl's life when God curses her for her lustful ways..." by alaffert

The next day, while Carrie is in the library looking up telekinesis, Miss Collins gives her students detention for yesterday's incident. One of her girls, an especially nasty feather-haired girl named Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen) walks off in a fit of rage, and in the midst of a night of romance with her boyfriend Billy Nolan (John Travolta in the Vinnie Barbarino, pre-"Saturday Night Fever" phase of his career), she is too upset with Carrie to think.

Another of Carrie's tormentors at the scene, a plain looking girl named Sue Snell (Amy Irving) has a change of heart about the whole thing and decides to make it up to Carrie by asking her intended prom date, the VERY permed Tommy Ross (William Katt) to take the poor girl out instead.

Her heart a-flutter with the thought of normalcy and against her mother's wishes (even after closing every window in the house with her telekinesis in protest), Carrie is off to the prom with Tommy. She's sewn her own prom dress ("I can see your dirty pillows", says her mother), she's had her hair done, she's got makeup and lipstick on, and her new-found self-confidence is firing on all cylinders. She's the proverbial ugly duckling transformed into the proverbial beautiful swan. And everybody loves it.

And as if the night couldn't get any better, her and Tommy's names are on the ballots for prom king and queen. Score.

Look at them, with their hats and their sunglasses and their notebooks...SINNERS, THE LOT OF THEM! by alaffert

The votes are in — Tommy and Carrie are the king and queen of the prom! Feeling on top of the world, she escorts Tommy to the stage and recieves her tiara and roses, smiling and waving as everyone applauds. Truly it is the happiest moment of her young life.

And then a bucket of pig's blood is dropped upon her head while Tommy is knocked unconscious by the bucket.

It turns out this whole prom queen thing was a prank by Chris and Billy, who snuck into a swine farm, bludgeoned a pig, bled it into a bucket and snuck into the prom and rigged it above the stage, and they rigged the votes as well to get her up there just to epically humiliate her at her crowning moment of glory. Now whether or not the subsequent pointing and laughing is all in Carrie's head is up for debate (the ambiguity there is well established) but only one thought is running through her head: IT'S GOING DOWN.

Using her telekinetic powers, Carrie closes every door in the gymnasium never to open again, and then ...

I really don't think it's necessary to tell you what happens next. I mean, if you were a high school outcast with telekinetic powers and someone had dumped a bucket of pig's blood on you at the apex of your short-lived popularity, what do you think you'd do? Besides, I'm guessing many of you have already seen this movie, or at least this part of the movie in some form or another, so you really don't need me going too much into detail about it.

I will say this though: NO SURVIVORS. Well, except for Sue, who sneaks in to check on Carrie and notices the bucket over the stage but is thrown out by Miss Collins before she can warn anybody about it.

I really have nothing to say here, it's just that reviews of this movie all have a picture like this. by alaffert

As for Chris and Billy, don't worry, they get theirs. After fleeing from the gym, they see Carrie in her blood-stained prom dress and in a momentary fit of homicidal glee try to run her down (oh yeah, another Stephen King movie staple, the school bully who stoops as low as committing murder in the first degree), but she casually glances backwards and diverts their car, flipping it over several times before it explodes as cars normally do.

Carrie returns home to clean herself up when her mother comes in to comfort her...and then stabs her, now fully convinced that her daughter's new powers make her a witch. After a brief chase downstairs, Carrie fends her off by flinging kitchen utensils at her with her mind, literally crucifying her on her own kitchen doorway, and then while crying over her body, ducks into the closet while inadvertently bringing her entire house crashing down on top of her.

The final scene is of Sue Snell waking up screaming from a nightmare in which she walks in slow motion to put flowers on a makeshift grave for Carrie where her house once stood and is grabbed by a hand popping up from the ground.

Pretty sure they don't cover this in the Bible. by alaffert

Stephen King based his novel Carrie on two girls he went to school with who were both in the same boat as its title character, and had written it as sort of "a reverse Cinderella story". The theme of teenage alienation translates well into the movie, aided by the performances of Spacek as Carrie, Laurie as Margaret, and ... well, almost everyone else, I suppose. It's sort of a "who's the real monster" message type of film, but it isn't played like an after-school special — it feels real, and it has you pitying Carrie and her hard-knock life, and pays you off with the "prom night" climax that the film will have had you counting down to by the time it happens.

But...DAMN, IS IT '70S! I don't think I've seen anything as '70s as this outside of Sid and Marty Krofft. The perms, the feathered hair, the tuxedo jackets, the music in the background during the gym class scene, that one kid with the Elton John hat during the getting-ready-for-the-prom montage ... the story is timeless, but I can't think of anything else about this movie that is as well. However, this can only be attributed to the passage of time and is just a minor complaint towards otherwise prerequisite viewing for anyone who loves horror.

Or anyone who loves stories about bullied schoolkids getting revenge. Those are always good.

Adam Lafferty also likes to talk about movies, among other things, on his other blog, popculturevomitbag.blogspot.com.