Interesting Dated References: The railway being an economic and secure method to ship top-secret government goods. Helping bandage a work associate with an open wound and actually touching their skin and blood.

Best Line: “The only time I stay in one place this long is when I’m in bed with a chick, or just sleeping.”

Social Context: There’s some vintage anti-government/cover-up sentiment going on here, but really, who cares. Aren’t you tired of listening to your one paranoid friend ranting on and on about the Illuminati, and shit? Aren’t you tired of your uncle acting like he’s all cool because he’s in the Masons, and shit? All those dudes should go chill the fuck out and focus on doing things like not drinking a bunch of pop all the time.

Summary: I spent the majority of the early 00s thinking I was better than everyone. I had trapped myself in the confined doldrums of a day job, and then overspent myself so much I was suffocating in debt. I was rude to coworkers, never shared personal information, and looked down on everyone. I talked to people like they were stupid whenever they asked me a question. I was the asshole coworker nobody likes. … And I’m still that person. I still do all that shit, only now I drink way more than I used to and spend my day constantly trying to shake off a hangover. I am a sociopath and misanthrope of the highest caliber. I constantly think about murder and suicide. I look down on everyone and at the same time wish they were capable of understanding my art. I am a fraud, a phony, a person who despises women, then obsesses over needing them. I let people walk all over me because I am afraid of being alone. I am a piece of shit.

So I dare you to guess who’s in this fucking movie? Now really, think broad here and come up with a name. I’ve got time, go ahead. Ready? Okay, tell me who you thought of.. No, you’re wrong, that’s way off.

It’s the fucking Menards Guy! If you are from the Midwest, you are familiar with the home repair supercenter that is Menards. If you aren’t from the Midwest, you probably aren’t reading this blog because you think I am ignorant. The Menards Guy was a staple of television commercials all throughout the 80s and 90s. If you really don’t know who The Menards Guy is and want to figure it out, read about it on the internet. If you know who The Menards Guy is, then I may as well stop typing and give you a minute to put your socks back on.

So the government finds some type of substance on Mars, and a bunch of lab scientists determine it is dangerous to the human race. Someone makes the wise decision to ship the substance via train to Denver, Colorado, with only a single guard.

On the train, the wacky, drunken, train worker, Hank (veteran character actor George ‘Buck’ Flower), becomes curious and opens the box of the mysterious substance, while Mr. Sorensen, the government guard, is snoozing. Through the use of wacky sound effects, we realize Hank accidentally breaks open a container of said goo and cuts his hand.

In the meantime, a bunch of scientists who are sitting in what appears to be a church basement, talk about how dangerous the substance is. So, I’m getting a roommate in like a month. He said he has to have the internet, so I guess that means that I will have the internet in my house for the first time since 1996. Yes, I had the internet in 1996. Eventually, the train stops in Moose Point to swap engines. Hank and Mr. Sorensen go into the train station and meet characters with distinguishing names like Jack, Jenny, and Charlie.

Sorensen sees the wound on Hank’s hand and immediately the government quarantines the entire area. Sorensen calls The Menards Guy who doles out orders, some other scientists talk about mice with exploded heads, and Jack the railway worker tries to escape..

..only to be shot by Sorensen, but then spends the rest of the movie rubbing his arm like he was stung by a bee. Then movie transforms from sci-fi infection movie to Lord of The Flies-esque claustrophobia melodrama. It actually does this rather effectively, I might add, despite the barely penciled in characters.

As time goes by, tensions mount and Hank the drunk tries to escape. In order to leave lots of holes in the plot, Sorensen shoots him once in the leg and allows him to continue running. Nice fucking gun.

Because this “cooped-up people turning against each other” thing couldn’t go on much longer, Sorensen receives a phone call with the instructions that all those in quarantine can’t fall asleep. He also informs everyone that the government will be delivering a bunch of “amphetamines” to help them stay awake. You know, I once went to a party in an abandoned train station with a bunch of amphetamines, but the cops showed up and didn’t seem too enthused about it.
Then the group discusses what they could do to stay awake. Jack has a chuckle, despite being shot in the arm. Then a helicopter drops off a bunch of cigarettes and amphetamines. Man, where was that helicopter when I was letting my entire family down in 2001? I could have really used its services. Everyone does a bunch of amphetamines and smokes cigarettes, yet no one has sloppy sex or falls asleep in figure drawing class.

Then for some reason, Jenny the secretary changes into a negligee. This gets Jack all hot n’ horny, so he plugs in a radio and finds Hank’s booze. Sorensen actually says, “I think you should stick to the amphetamines.” Jack finally convinces Jenny to get busy with him, and in the meantime Charlie falls asleep and his head explodes.

After this, Jenny fucking commits suicide with a gun in her car. It’s totally thrown in there and comes out of nowhere! What the hell? Then an antidote arrives via helicopter. Jack takes his immediately and dies. Get it? It wasn’t an antidote, at all, it was something to kill them. Doesn’t the government suck? Don’t you hate the way the government controls things? Get the fuck off my website you paranoid loser.

Sorensen doesn’t take the pill but falls asleep. The next shot is of the National Guard (guys wrapped in tin foil) arriving to clean up all the corpses. Sorensen wakes up on the ground to reveal he hasn’t been infected. But the mean old National Guard pays no attention to this fact and shoots him like 87 times. The end. The director (Bill Rebane) also did Blood Harvest, which stars Tiny Tim as a clown in a slasher movie.  I bought a shatty $3 public domain copy of this back in 1996 and watched it without realizing it starred Tiny Tim.  It was a really bad transfer and was hard to see.  I remember it being a complete mess of a movie and I was really confused by what I was seeing. John Alderman stars as one of the scientists. Alderman must have been totally awesome since he was in a bunch of obscure 60s exploitation movies, a few 70s blacksploitation flicks, and some 80s hardcore porno. What a fucking life.

Scientists or indie-rock DJ hipsters? You decide. Either way, they’re trying to give your girlfriend herpes.

Poster and Box Art: The original movie poster for The Alpha Incident is pretty cool. It’s almost entirely hand drawn and is done in marker (I think). Unfortunately, the Betamax cover is terrible. It’s just a desolate Martian landscape with some rocks and stars. It looks like the first lesson in that “How To Airbrush” book my mom bought me when I was 12. Totally terrible. They should have stuck with the original poster, and my mom should have stuck with her first husband (my father). Then I would be a successful businessman with a crop of grandkids and be socially well-adjusted instead of an emotionally stunted recluse who can’t maintain a meaningful relationship.

Availability: DVD, but no word on quality. I’m also starting to realize that a lot of movies I review are on youtube split into many sections, but you already knew that because you are a thief.

Interesting Dated References: Mailing people Xeroxed sheets with vacation itineraries instead of an email or Facebook message. Also dated is the notion of the backwoods being a dangerous place for successful white men looking to have fun. With cell phones and GPS, the only places successful, white businessmen are afraid to go to now are certain alleyways, neighborhoods, dance clubs, and any place where the lighting will put focus on their ever-thinning hairlines.

Best Line: Shouted by angry camping group member — “Look, two months ago I sent everyone Xeroxed sheets of what you were to bring!”

Social Context: Even though this was billed as a Deliverance-esque survival film, it isn’t. It’s actually a white-guys-camping-get-stalked-by-vengeful-killer type of movie. The social context? Nothing new here. We all know privileged, white, males are the worst kind of people on earth, and they all deserve to be killed. Don’t trust people who’ve never had to struggle.

Summary: Five wealthy doctors (each in the middle of their own moral/workplace crisis) all go on vacation together. Hal Holbrook stars as Harry, the down-to-earth doctor who isn’t in it for the glory, unlike his friend Mitzi, who is pressuring him to come work at the fancy hospital.

So this troupe is dropped off by plane for a hiking/fishing trip in the Canadian wilderness. For some reason they all are wearing the same hat and apparently bought the exact same backpack. This has nothing to do with the plot, at all, and I can only assume there was a good deal on the backpacks and the prop department bought them in bulk. On the first night, they all sit around and have more ethical talk about surgery and other shit doctors apparently sit around talking about. I assume doctors also talk about how much money they make by piling patients on top of each other, how half-assed they do their jobs, and how much better they think they are than the people they went to high school with. In the morning, Marty, the incompetent doctor with a drinking problem, realizes everyone’s boots were stolen. Well, everyone’s boots but DJ, who apparently slept in his, or something. DJ is a real tightwad and obviously is super insecure, and as a result has to control and schedule his friends. I know nothing about this personality flaw. So in a fit of rage, DJ takes off to get help at the dam that is 12 hours away. That night, the remaining four doctors are awakened by a deer carcass and use their fancy medical knowledge to figure out that the deer is “still fresh.”

The next day, they tie plastic bags onto their feet and wade through a bunch of water trying to find DJ. At some point they are attacked by a giant hornet nest and they all immediately run down the nearest hill into a pond. And get this, one of them dies! That’s right, he dies from the stings. Doesn’t that seem just a little too easy? Fuck this movie.

And I know, your cousin is allergic, and your friend died from bee stings because he was allergic. I get it, I know people are allergic. But maybe five fucking doctors on a hiking trip would plan ahead if they knew one of them was so fucking allergic to bees that he would immediately die from stings. Or how about this, if you are that allergic to bees, don’t go on a fucking hiking/fishing trip. Just find a different hobby! We won’t judge you. Just take up something that under no possibility would involve bees, like online gaming, or being a shit musician who thinks he’s going to “make it.”

So, eventually our trio reaches the river crossing that is featured on the poster. As expected, Marty the fucking drunk gets his leg caught in a bear trap. Harry and Mitzi sit there and discuss how to amputate the leg properly. This shit goes on forever. You know what? You can tell the filmmakers paid a bunch of extra money to hire a medical consultant to help with the dialogue and they wanted to make damned sure they got their moneys worth.

Then Harry and Mitzi carry the now-crippled Marty all over the fucking place. They theorize DJ is stalking them, but change their mind when they find some fucking WWII medals placed on Marty. Ha, the whole fucking time Mitzi keeps saying how they should leave Marty. That’s the proper fucking attitude. After much boring chatter and endless walking scenes, the guys wake up the next morning to find a head on a stick.

I think it was the head of the doctor who was allergic to bees. Harry gets super dramatic and throws it off a cliff. Then they find an x-ray of some bizarre head injury. Can you believe they’re fucking going with the angle that it’s some old war vet looking for vengeance? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to make the killer be DJ and give him some weird ethical medical slant? Whatever.

A lot of people like to say this movie is good, or even a “Canadian version of Deliverance.” These people are fucking worthless piles of shit and think bands like The Strokes, Wilco, Pearl Jam, Arcade Fire, The Hives, and The Flaming Lips are really good. This movie isn’t good. It does everything it can to disengage the audience, and let’s not overlook the fact that it’s boring.

Okay, let’s get this done with … Harry finds DJ dead, Mitzi runs off, Harry cries, leaves Marty, wakes up in a house, fights a blind guy, finds out the killer is blind guy’s brother, then there is like ten minutes of super dark footage that is either two men fighting or two men having sex.

I seriously can’t tell. Suddenly Mitzi is hanging from some type of tree and he and Harry are shouting back and forth about a wound Harry has incurred. There’s a pointless moment where Harry uses gunpowder to cauterize the wound and shout-describes it to Mitzi whom offers advice. This shit goes on for like another ten minutes. They seriously were really trying to get their moneys worth with the medical consultant.

Then we see less than one second of Mitzi being set on fire and some weird burned thing runs to where Harry is and he shoots it. Then Harry sits in the road and waits for help.

I should acknowledge the following: Rituals had a theatrical runtime of 100 minutes. The Embassy Entertainment home video edition was edited down to 89 minutes. According to experts (fucking nerds) the scene(s) edited out of the film happen at the end. In fact it’s basically the climax where we see Harry get injured and Mitzi burned to death. Why not edit out the bee stinging sequence? I guess what I’m getting at is Rituals could be a much better movie than what I saw, but I’m not going to investigate any further because I still think it was fucking boring and pointless, much like dating. Also of note is that this was directed by Peter Carter who directed High Ballin’, the very first movie we ever reviewed on The Betamax Rundown.

Poster and Box Art: The poster for Rituals follows right in line with Deliverance and all the other men-in-backwoods-get-attacked-by-locals films, which is that they all have to feature water and something coming out of or walking in said water. On a side note, being released in 1977, this was probably one of the last posters ever to feature a single scene showcased on the poster. It was right around this time that posters took on the montage type of illustration used until computers were invented and everything went to shit.

Availability: Allegedly this movie is about to be released on DVD fully restored and uncensored.

Interesting Dated References: People actually being concerned about the ozone layer.

Best Line: Any line said by Leslie Nielsen in a serious manner. These include, “I use my head all the time, a lot of people use their butts,” “I’m running this power trip,” and a scene in which he screams to the heavens in the rain with his shirt off like he’s in a fucking Creed video.

Social Context: I read a review for this from 1977 that declared it “a wake-up call.” Actually, a movie dealing with ozone depletion in 1977 does seem somewhat ahead of its time, but to then insinuate it would make animals go crazy is a little far off. Isn’t the whole point about animals that they are wild and will attack you regardless of the ozone layer? You know what, I was going to try to resist but I just can’t. I have to drink tonight. It’s just too difficult to hang out with myself alone and sober.

Summary: There’s only a few really great ways to die and I know this because I constantly fantasize about how I’m going to die. The current top fantasies in order: 1 – Beaten to death with my own flashlight by a girlfriend or wife with whom I am having a disagreement about our relationship. 2 – Torn apart by a mountain lion while hiking. 3 – Mauled by a grizzly bear or large chimpanzee (also has potential for violent sexual assault). 4 – Trampled by any type of stampeding herd of animals. (END) Those are my top ways I want to go out. I just realized every option on the list has to do with being destroyed by a wild creature that has no control over their emotions.

Day of The Animals came a little late to the disaster/animal attack genre of the mid-70s, but what it lacked in timing is made up for by having the exact same creative team and stars from Grizzly on board. I guess technically it’s a sequel, but with different animals, and the same actors playing different characters than the previous movie.

So things get started right away. A group of individuals covering almost every facet of society want to go on a two-week hiking trip in the mountains. There’s the football player, the mom and son, the sexy news anchor, the young couple, the middle-aged couple, the rich businessman, the nerdy professor, the American-Indian (a.k.a., an “Injun”), etc. They are all led by the fearless tour guide, Buckner (Christopher George).

There are lots of forewarning shots of animals looking all crazy, which eats up a lot of the initial running time. When the group reaches their first rest stop, they get attacked by a hawk. Did I tell you Leslie Nielsen is playing the smug businessman? Do you know how hard it is to take Leslie Nielsen seriously after the year 1978? Is this my first drink or my second? I need to keep a chalkboard in the kitchen and mark this shit down because I sure as fuck don’t want things winding up like last night. Did I tell you about last night? Talk about awkward. People should have to change their cell phone numbers every two years in order to prevent making late night calls to people with whom they should never have had contact with again.

There are lots of annoyingly obvious characterizations going on in this movie, like, the nerdy professor only talks about photography and is always taking pictures, the mom is always complaining about walking and rubbing her feet, the newswoman is always being curious, and the Injun is always sensing shit. I don’t know why I’m talking about it; these movies were never known for their subtlety.

So, the middle-aged couple gets attacked by a wolf late at night and the solution Buckner comes up with is to send them back on their own for help. After being stalked for a long time by hawks, the chick gets attacked and pushed off a cliff. Meanwhile, the main group of people continues on their journey.

I’d like to point out the newswoman (Lynda Day George) is wearing a businesswoman’s pantsuit for her hiking trip, which is supposed to last two weeks. When the group winds up at the food supply site, all the food is destroyed. Somewhere in there they caught a radio transmission about the impending danger of animal attacks. Leslie Nielsen starts to dissent and take control of the group, but no one can take him seriously. Interspersed in all this are shots of the sheriff in town watching news reports about the ozone problem and its effect on animals, which prompts the plot to have more animals stalk the group, including owls and spiders (which aren’t really animals). Owls are the animal equivalent of people with no personalities who feel the need to be well-liked and do cocaine at bars because they both stay up all night, never say anything worthwhile, and just sort of stare off with their mouths open. For that matter, earwigs are kind of like the strippers of the insect world because they can pick stuff up with their asses.

So back in town, police are ordered to evacuate the citizens, and some rats attack the sheriff. I guess the goal is to get people below a certain elevation where animals are no longer crazy.

Back at the hiking groups’ camp, they are attacked by cougars (the animal kind, not the sort of sexy kind with HPV), but no one dies. The next morning these fuckers just screw around in a stream and try to catch fish. You think they’d be more in a rush to like, get the fuck off of the mountain full of crazy animals or something.

Dissent reaches a boiling point when Nielsen divides the group in half. He convinces some to go with him to the ranger station at a higher elevation, while the others (led by Buckner) head for town at a lower elevation. Did you know on certain online singles dating websites that when you set up your profile and they ask you about drinking, the only options are Never, Socially, and Moderate? There isn’t an option after that like, “nightly,” “to forget,” or “as needed.”

Okay, so the two groups split up and it starts raining. Nielsen has his shirt off for an uncomfortable amount of time and starts to go crazy with power. He tries to rape the younger couple chick and stabs her boyfriend. I guess they were trying to do some Lord of The Flies-type shit here, but it’s really an afterthought. The other more civilized camp begins to discuss how the ozone problem may be affecting them, as well, thus trying to explain Nielsen’s insanity. Then Nielsen is raped/killed/raped by a giant grizzly bear.

I totally ignored the subplot about the middle-aged couple guy. After his wife was killed, he found a small child and traveled down the mountain with her. When he gets to town, it’s totally abandoned, everyone is dead, and he gets bit by a snake, then eaten by a dog, all while the little girl watches from inside a nice vintage 1976 Bronco.

Back at Buckner’s camp, they stumble upon an abandoned campground. The campground is overrun by German Shepherds who we all know are the assholes of all dogs and no one should own them or even have fond memories of them. They escape on a raft (a few don’t make it) and the next morning all the infected animals are dead.

And that’s pretty much it. I know, there isn’t really much of a postscript, at all. The movie ends with the police finding the little girl and Buckner and the few survivors washing up on shore.

Poster and Box Art: The poster for Day of The Animals is pretty average. Not average in a bad way, though. It’s a disaster movie, which means that before I even type, “the poster,” I could have told you it would have a large montage drawing featuring various scenes of action from the movie, a woman screaming, and some type of epic giant font. And there you have it.

There’s also this weird anti-CFC poster, which must have been for display in theaters.

Availability: DVD.

Interesting Dated References: Being able to order alcohol over the phone for delivery. Really fancy beachfront homes being filled with shag carpeting.

Best Line: “I don’t mean to be mean.”

Social Context: The movie-going public had an insatiable appetite for teen boob sex comedies in the late 70s and early 80s. They couldn’t get enough of them at the drive-in or direct-to-video. Syphilis and Gonorrhea had been conquered. Drugs were readily available. Shit was on! Nothing was ever going to put an end to the party!

Summary: It can get pretty hard to tell all these 70s/80s teen boob comedies apart. Sometimes in my head they all blend together into one giant convolution. Reviewing a few of them in a row really fucks you up.

The Beach Girls introduces us to shy-gal Sarah (Debra Blee, on the left with the dude) and her two party-girl friends, Ginger and Ducky (on the right). Sarah is staying at her uncle’s beach house for the summer and invites her boy-crazy friends along.

Ginger and Ducky want to get down with some dudes and start inviting over all the repair and delivery men they can find. These two chicks are fucking hot to trot.

Before you know it, there’s a full-fledged party going on. Sarah is uptight and worried, but Ginger and Ducky want to get fucked up and do shit they blame other people for.

Check out all this hot 80s dancing. Check out Ginger getting down. She’s fucking hot. There’s something so much more attractive about girls who were only ever in one movie and then vanished from the face of the earth.

Ginger knows how to fucking dance. People need to bring this shit back in a big way. The one thing I really blame hip hop culture for is ruining how white women danced. As soon as all these white chicks saw a rap video, they all abandoned this 80s style of dancing. I miss it. I wish you would dance like that. I think our relationship would be stronger if you did. Then a bunch of people go skinny dipping.

Darkness falls, and Sarah’s uncle shows up. Instead of breaking up the party right then and there, he decides to break it up in the morning. Please don’t ask the logic on display here.

So, Ginger and Ducky decide to seduce the uncle and get him high so the party can continue, even though the uncle was already cool with the party going on. I should mention Ducky is played by Jeana Tomasina who was in ZZ Top’s “Legs” and “Sharp Dressed Man” videos, and later (and aged) she wound up on Real Housewives of Orange County. Since this movie needed a subplot, we get one that involves weed-smuggling drug dealers on a boat. They had to dump their stash and it just happens to wash up on shore at the party house the next day. The girls find it and lo and behold they have another party and give all the weed to everyone.

Sarah finally decides to let her hair down and “get loose” with a traveling, guitar-playing drifter. I actually think there was just a reference to those old Parkay™ butter commercials, but I can’t be certain and I’m not going to waste the time to figure it out. I have better things to worry about, like when I should pay my mortgage from last month. There’s also a very long scene where a Mexican property maintenance worker and an Oriental limo driver get into a long racially-motivated fight. This scene seriously goes on for five minutes.

And then the coast guard shows up and burns all the weed, which gets everyone contact-highed and it’s totally, like, this awesome party I was at last weekend where we all got so high, man, on weed. Fucking Tony was barking at the moon, man! We totally got way high on weed and smoked so much weed out of various things that we were so baked, man. And, man, I swear I will get you the money you fronted me. I really appreciated that by the way. My mom was coming down on me fucking harsh, man. Do you got a cigarette?

Poster and Box Art: The Beach Girls poster isn’t even really worth talking about. It’s a picture. There’s people on it. These people are having fun, like in the movie. Everyone is enjoying life. Everyone is happy and fulfilled. No one wonders what could have been with their lives, or if they are making the right choices. They all just want to have fun and live in the moment. Shame, regret, sorrow: These things do not exist.

Availability: Packed onto a double feature DVD at a rock bottom price. If you’re so inclined to watch such films, this may be worth your while.

Interesting Dated References: Teen prostitutes being easy to find. Man, this is my second review in a few months or so that takes place in New York and focuses on teen prostitution. Any of you guys over there with your stupid haircuts and lame t-shirts want to explain something to us here in the Midwest? Are we missing out on something? Is that why you really moved there? That whole “club DJ with a shitty beard” was just a farce, wasn’t it?

Best Line: Said by john — “I’ve got a hard-on.” Said by hooker in retort — “Nigga, you better go get your friend to sit on it.”

Social Context: Again, the whole teen prostitution thing I just wrote about above. Apparently it was epidemic if they made multiple movies about it. But I’ve asked around, and other then getting really nervous and shifty, no one seems to know anything about it.

Summary: Can you believe the box for this reads, “Take a rock-hard walk on the wild side with Streetwalkin’.” What the fuck does that even mean? Are they trying to say “hard” as in the streets are hard? You know, the concrete jungle-type hard? It’s throwing in the word “rock” that is confusing me. Usually “rock-hard” is reserved for stuff like Craigslist and various movies you watch every single night after you get home from work. Also, don’t you think masturbating immediately after you eat dinner is going to give you some type of food/sex association issue? People invite you out to eat all the time and you always decline so you can go home and do this eating/porn routine. I just think it’s very unhealthy, that’s the only reason I bring it up.

Streetwalkin’ opens in the subways of New York with pimp Duke (the dad from Pet Cemetery) talking to the crying young Cookie (Melissa Leo, which probably doesn’t mean anything to you unless you watch Homicide: Life on The Streets, in which case you are my mom and should stop reading my website because you don’t like it when I talk about “sex stuff”). Before you know it, Cookie is a regular whore; Duke her abusive pimp. You’d think I’d have a fucking picture in the review by now.

I’m curious about this authentic “New York City Rap” poster that appears to have a bunch of band logos beneath the title.

So Duke beats up this other whore and that gets Cookie upset, but then she realizes men are always right and it’s okay if they hit you.

Later, Duke goes to an all-black strip club and orders a double Scotch and talks to that weird guy from Ally McBeal. At that same club, the guy who was Huggy Bear plays a pimp and yells at his ladies. Did I mention the entire fucking movie has been filmed at night? There’s jack shit to take pictures of.

It was also supposed to be a big deal that Julie Newmar plays the queen pimp in the movie, but really, who cares. At some point Duke gets abducted by another pimp and they have a really poorly choreographed fight. After that, he trashes the apartment he and Cookie live in. Does any of this seem interesting? It’s like this movie skipped the entire build-up part that makes you care about the characters and just jumped into the drama. Too much 80s and not enough 70s. Hookers? Teens? New York? Prostitution? This entry should have a picture every other sentence, but somehow it’s just not happening.

So Duke gets a gun and goes to shoot Cookie because she’s trying to see another pimp. Duke reminds me of me in three weeks because he thinks a gun will solve all his problems. Then he gets in another badly choreographed fight. I’m not even wasted, there’s just nothing to take pictures of! I swear!

While Duke searches for Cookie, she and another hooker do some kinky domination thing with a john. For the record:

Those are the same Return of The Jedi curtains with which I had the accompanying bed linens. Well, I had the sheets, but I didn’t have the pillow cases. When our house was burgled in 1984, they used the pillow cases to steal all of my dads Betamax tapes. They didn’t take the player, though, which happens to be the same player I’m using right now. Talk about full fucking circle.

So, Duke continues on his barely interesting search for Cookie. He has the Ally McBeal guy in tow and proceeds to kill Huggy Bear. Meanwhile, all the hookers are playing poker with Cookie and her younger brother and drinking Jack Daniels and Heineken. You know what I think about people who drink Jack Daniels and Heineken? I think they have real bad bowel movements and shitty taste in music. Duke and Ally McBeal show up at the poker game and get all violent, but none of us care because the entire movie is really boring. At some point Julie Newmar shoots Duke like 34 times because he was beating on Cookie. Then Cookie shoots him for real and the movie fucking ends. Jesus. All the elements for a good story, but not enough development to make anyone care.

Poster and Box Art: For the record, I just want to state that 1986 was the year they finally figured out how to use quotes on modern day movie boxes/cases. I’ve never seen this occur before 1985/1986. I have yet to pinpoint what movie made it standard, but I’m sure you recognize the “big quotes” style of promotion used on the back of this box.

When did we start caring what these people thought of movies? Before this you rented a movie based on the story, cover, actors, word of mouth, etc. It’s as if at some point around 1985 everyone said “Fuck it, we don’t know shit, let’s put these giant quotes on here, that will tell everyone what to rent.” And guess what, this is right around the point that being a piece of shit P.R. person started to become a career choice. The world sucks now.

Availability: Used VHS.

Interesting Dated References: The 80s in their entirety, including how people made movies and illustrated movie posters.

Best Line: “Women marry men hoping they’ll change. Men marry women hoping they won’t change. They both end up very disappointed.”

Social Context: I’m going to tell you something about cocaine. When I say people shouldn’t do cocaine, it isn’t because I care about your health. Quite the opposite. I could care less if you die. I tell you not to do cocaine because everyone knows cocaine makes you talk like an idiot and think your ideas are very important and ground-breaking. This is why we have the shitty version of “rock music” going on these days. Cocaine is for fucking stupid people with little talent, snorted to feel good about what they do and feel less mediocre. Unfortunately, it sometimes makes them enthusiastic and successful in business. Anyway, in the 80s, people did a lot of cocaine and wrote a lot of shitty scripts they thought were really great. A lot of these got made into post-Woody Allen romantic comedies. Everyone thought their script was so smart and edgy and “indicative of our day and age.” They were all wrong and full of shit. This is one of those movies.

Summary: How confusing is it to look at a 20-year-old romantic comedy movie poster and not recognize either of the “big name” leads? It’s actually very refreshing. Perhaps some of today’s romantic leads will share the same fate. One can only hope. Oh, I just realized the guy in this is from American Werewolf in London. He must have been trying to expand his horizons.

So wow, talk about hyper-realistic depictions of life; Richard is jogging with his walkman. He gets home just as hot breakfast is being served by his wife Sarah to their three kids. Typical comedic banter ensues, then it’s off to school for the kids with their already packed lunches. Then Richard is suddenly at his super awesome job as an architect in a really neat office. I mean, it’s just all so … not at all what life is really like. So Richard talks with his coworker, who explains an affair he’s having.

Holy fucking just-1985-everywhere, man. Datsuns, wood grain kitchens with red and orange tile, buildings with weird angles, houses with weird doors, frumpy potato sack pants on women, pastels. Everything in this movie is 1985. It’s like a time capsule of shitty aesthetic choices.

So, Dick decides to go on vacation by himself in Mexico while his wife and kids go on a skiing trip. Then the movie just starts flying by. Dick tries to have sex with women but fails over and over. His wife, meanwhile, is seducing a young ski instructor. Oh, and Sarah referenced that she was 30. That’s stupid. She has 3 kids and she’s clearly 37 or 8.

Richard fails in Mexico after a few attempts at affairs. These scenes include some nudity, if you care. He returns home to the ski lodge and finds Sarah in the arms of the ski instructor. Then she tells him their marriage is over and he slaps her. What the!?! She plays it off as no big deal. Is that how women act when you hit them? Dick heads home and attempts to bang the babysitter, while Sarah attempts to bang the ski instructor, but both chicken out. Sarah goes home, they talk and make up, and then they have sex. They realize the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, and that they need to focus on their relationship more. If this movie were made nowadays, it would involve a loveless couple getting Facebook accounts and attempting to contact old loves. The movie actually ends with the family in a circle with the dad saying, “Come on kids, let’s have fun!,” and then ends with a freeze-frame of everyone jumping in the air.
And yes, I was still having camera issues on this review. Lets just ignore it like we ignored the fact that I didn’t post a review last week and that this review sucked.

Poster and Box Art: This movie gets mad props for its weird airbrush/painting hybrid. They could have easily gone photo, but they actually paid someone to airbrush the shit out this thing. I mean, look at that chick’s teeth. Mad airbrushing skills.

Availability: I’m willing to bet I’m the only person to watch this movie to completion in the last 10 years. Seriously. But if you wish, you can buy it here.

Interesting Dated References: Toward the end of the film, there is a scene filmed inside New York’s Haymarket Bar, which allegedly was one of the seediest of the mafia-run gay clubs in the early 80s. Haymarket was noted mostly for being a place where a lot of hustling went on. Oh, and why the fuck is a young guy in his late-20s obsessed with an aging actress in her 60s? Is that how it was back in the day? Did men actually lust after older women? If so, that’s a fucking dated reference if I’ve ever seen one. Now men only lust after celebrities of increasingly younger age. It’s way better now, for the record.

Best Line: Apparently The Fan had some type of goal to deliver one of the most extreme and out-of-context lines in movie history: “Dearest Bitch, see how accessible you are? How would you like to be fucked with a meat cleaver?” To be fair, nerds on the internet say this line appeared in the book.

Social Context: Released only a few months after John Lennon was shot, I suppose America considered The Fan in poor taste. It was merely a coincidence, but still, it probably didn’t help. It also doesn’t help that The Fan isn’t all that great to begin with.

Summary: The Fan opens with one of many hilarious letter-writing voiceovers provided by Doug the Fan, played by Michael Biehn (Terminator). He rants on and on about how much he likes Sally the Actress, played by Lauren Bacall (everything). Then the director does all he can to make sure we know Bacall is famous.

We see her sign autographs, bark orders at her secretary, have fancy dinner with her ex-husband, and complain about her life as a star. Mixed in with all of this (and at a pace barely fast enough to move the plot along), we watch Doug write more letters and become mentally unhinged at responses he receives from Bacall’s secretary. We also see him dine with a picture of Sally and do some other crazy shit.

Check it out, Doug works in a record store. A record store is like iTunes, except you had to deal directly with sociopath elitists in order to get them to tell you about the interesting new stuff coming out. Thankfully, record stores no longer exist and you can freely buy and steal music without fear of being judged by someone in their 7th year of college, or as they liked to call it “advanced studies.” Doug gets bullied at his record store job, so he quits in order to allow for more time to practice-talk into the mirror a la-Taxi Driver. Oh, and after he writes Sally a sex letter, her secretary advises him not to write again. Of course this throws him into a tailspin.

Nothing else goes on here, but some great 1980 New York street scenes. Check it out: “Wienerwald.”

So things go on, and Doug gets so mad he slashes the secretary’s face on the subway. I forgot to mention that the secretary is played by Maureen Stapleton, who was always one of my favorite actresses in the Cocoon Trilogy. The cops catch on and start trying to find Doug. This leads to a bunch of fucking talking scenes that are boring. Isn’t having to fake conversations with people the worst? I mean, I just can’t fucking stand it when someone walks into work and you have to make some shit up about how you are looking forward to the day or some shit. Jesus. Like, “Oh, hey, yeah, how was the weekend?” If I really cared how your weekend was, wouldn’t I have tried to involve myself in it? If you genuinely cared about my weekend, wouldn’t you have called? How about you just drop off whatever package you have and get out.

Doug then slashes up Sally’s dance instructor while he’s at some weird underground pool. The paranoia sets in for Sally and her entourage.

Then the maid gets fucking killed. Check out the single fatal slashing that causes her to die. I’ve cut myself deeper on accident at work. Then Doug trashes Sally’s apartment, which they didn’t really explain how he got into. After that a bunch more cops ask questions and Sally goes into hiding.


Meanwhile, Doug goes to legendary New York gay bar Haymarket and picks a guy who looks just like himself to murder in an effort to stage his own death. This is the only movie to have any interior shots of Haymarket which was one of the early New York Mob-run gay bars. They leave the bar and Doug kills the guy while receiving a blow job from him. This isn’t really the big deal it’s made out to be by other shitty losers that review movies. Doug burns the corpse and writes a fake suicide letter. There are so many fucking fade-to-black scenes in the movie I’d swear it was made for television. So Sally comes out of hiding and does the big play premier. Then there’s a bunch of fucking musical numbers! Seriously! Like 15 minutes worth!

The play ends and of course this leads to Sally being alone in the theatre with Doug who hid backstage, or some shit. He tries to kill her, but she delivers some boring monologue and stabs him in the throat. Yet another book from the 70s made into a misguided movie.

Poster and Box Art: A nice, classic composition makes this poster a great piece. Of course this is an instance where the poster is way better than the movie, so it gets forgotten since no one would ever want to hang a The Fan poster in their house. Oh, and for a real fucking laugh, check out the DVD cover. I’m not posting it here because I quit doing that shit in like 2007.

Availability: A remastered DVD came out a few years ago and should still be available.

Interesting Dated References: Los Angeles being a place cool people are from and/or want to live.

Best Line: Arthur — “She’s slipping away from me!” Eli, in reply — “Then compromise.” Arthur then answers — “If I compromise then I’m you.” Later, said by an artist to Arthur — “You can’t paint or fuck.”

Social Context: So I know I keep ranting on and on about this, but it seems to keep happening … In Los Angeles in the 80s, a lot of scripts were written about relationships, which were penned by people high on cocaine. This is yet another one of those movies. you know how nowadays people do cocaine and “jam out some tunes” and get record contracts? Well take that same scenario and apply it to the 80s and the film industry and you get what was happening. “Coke Buddies” would sit down, write a script about some relationship BS, then get it made into a movie.

Summary: Peter Coyote has the best fucking voice of anyone ever of all time. In Heartbreakers, he plays a failed artist named Arthur, who works in a print shop. His girlfriend can’t commit to him because he is fiscally immature and preoccupied with his art. As a result, she meets ex-boyfriends for lunch which infuriates Arthur to no end. What a fucking shitty life. Arthur has a friend named Eli who is a successful businessman who wants nothing more than to be in a long-term relationship, but instead just fucks random chicks. What a fucking shitty life.

Okay, so now that the setup is all clarified, let’s move on. Arthur quits his print shop job and goes to Eli’s house to vent. Because Eli is a fucking whore, he has a topless chick on his bed. Because it’s Los Angeles, they all decide to go to Fatburger.

Look at the fucking interior of this fucking restaurant. It’s possibly the grossest thing I’ve ever seen and I saw that internet video where those chicks piss and shit all over each other. While at Fatburger, Arthur sees his girlfriend on a date with one of her exes, who is played by Detective Wojo from Barney Miller. The next day she moves out. Holy fuck, Coyote really gives her the what-for. He smacks her around and tells her she’s a whore who knows nothing about passion because she’s delusional. I can’t be certain but I think I just drank a bottle of wine in like ten minutes.

Look! It’s Peter Coyote and some chick with huge disgusting breasts reenacting that scene from Ghost! So Arthur gets an art show, Eli fucks up his dad’s business, and both go to an 80s party where Arthur yells at the Barney Miller ex-boyfriend.

Remember when women could wear baggy sweaters and it was considered sexy? That was disgusting. I was only five at the time, but I knew even then that it was gross. So Arthur and Eli pal around and take the baggy sweater girl (Carol Wayne, who died in a bizarre drowning accident the next year) to dinner, and then have a really awkward threesome with her. Really though, aren’t all threesomes awkward? People should just stop having them.

Eventually, Arthur goes to visit Barney Miller and they straighten things out. That’s very unrealistic. Then Arthur argues with Eli’s new art gallery-working girlfriend. The girlfriend is played by Carole Laure who was Miss Monde 1984 in Sweet Movie. Seeing her in a normal role is a little disorienting. Then all of a sudden Pat Benatar’s “Love Is A Battlefield” gets played during a disco dance scene sequence.

Arthur and Eli immediately get into an argument because Arthur danced with the art gallery chick. “Love Is A Battlefield” is still playing. Did you realize that during that song Benatar sings “touch me deep inside?” That’s sort of sexy. It’s even sexier that she has vanished from pop culture. That takes real integrity. So, Arthur and Eli decide they should play racquetball at like 3 am in front of the gallery working-chick, and then they get into a fist fight. Arthur and Eli make up and have a successful gallery show, I don’t know, what the fuck do you want from me. Then some more bullshit happens. The moral here is that even though Arthur goes on to great success, the girlfriend who left him is stuck with Barney Miller. And everything works out fine for Eli. And yes, I was having some camera issues during this fucking movie.

Poster and Box Art: It’s that same aesthetic that somehow lasted from 1985 to 1993. The Heartbreakers poster walks the same line as the Saved By The Bell intro. Computer generated patterns, squares, fluorescent colors, some weird type. Welcome to 1985. The real tragedy is that this style has seen a renaissance.

Availability: VHS as always. Can you believe this interview with director/writer Boby Roth in which he stated that if he could only watch three movies the rest of his life they would be: “Bertolucci’s ‘Last Tango in Paris,’ ‘De Sica’s ‘The Bicycle Thief,’ and my own film ‘Heartbreakers.’” Jesus.

Interesting Dated References: Joyfully jumping into a swimming pool with a woman on a hot sunny day.

Best Line: Teen boob comedies typically have a funny few lines, but I didn’t feel like going through the hassle of actually paying attention to complete this section for this review. Did you know there’s this house a few doors down, and there are like 10 kids playing in the yard who are shrieking non-fucking-stop and I haven’t seen an adult supervise them once?

Social Context: If this were a Troma movie, I would be talking a bunch of shit about it and not reviewing it in a serious manner. Don’t you think it’s bullshit that I unfairly chastise their movies just because of the namesake? Because this isn’t a Troma movie, I will probably take time and lots of pictures and blah-blah.

Summary: When Arcade/Video game fever swept the nation in the early 80s, pinball saw a sharp decline in popularity and sales. It wasn’t until a few years later that the two technologies found a way to coexist. In 1983, the Canadian makers of Pinball Summer were trying to market their 1979 pinball movie in America. They decided that since pinball had fallen out of favor, they should change the name of their movie to Pick-Up Summer, despite the fact that the main theme song still says “pinball summer” over and over.

Pinball Summer begins by introducing us to Greg and Steve, our main good guys. They are 30-year-old high school students who like to play pinball, harass townsfolk, and chase after Donna and Suzy. They also like to fight with Bert and his bike gang.

Doesn’t this all sound thrilling? Greg and Steve do have an awesome boogie van.

And that’s a pretty nice boogie van t-shirt. So, the owner of the arcade, Pete, decides to have a pinball competition. Bert and his bike gang steal the trophy, and then Greg and Steve steal it back. Seriously, aren’t you excited?

There are lots of Canadian 1979 tits and ass being flashed about. In fact, every girl in this movie has her ass cheeks hanging out of her sheer short-shorts. It’s so apparent that we will never surpass the levels of greatness achieved in the 70s that we should all just kill ourselves.

You know what method of murder is now almost totally obsolete? Strangling someone to death with a phone cord in your home. If I was gonna strangle someone with a phone cord, I wouldn’t even know where to start. I guess I would have to go to Radio Shack and try to track a phone cord down, or go to work and borrow a phone? I don’t know.

So, Greg & Steve keep stealing the pinball trophy back from Bert and his biker gang. This happens three or four times, over and over. Don’t ask me how Bert keeps getting the trophy back, because it’s too hard to remember. Then Donna’s parents go out of town and there’s a beach party on the shores of Montreal.

Yes, I know this video is all fucked up. I also know that my pictures have been all blurry. I’m having some camera issues okay? Fucking leave it alone. I’ll fix the problem. There are also lots of awesome 70s shit I’m forgetting to mention like this awesome chopper poster on the wall in the background:

And I don’t mean chopper like, “I watch TLC and drink Jack Daniels and listen to shit music, therefore I know a lot about choppers.” I mean, like, original biker shit, back before pop culture got it’s hands on everything and ruined every single fucking thing in this world that was ever genuine or had integrity.

I don’t like Ted Nugent, but that’s a Ted Nugent pinball machine in the background. In fact, I would go so far to say that if you offered me Ted Nugent mp3s for free, I would decline them. However, one of my favorite Ganksta N.I.P. songs has all those samples from “Stranglehold” in it, but what the fuck am I going on about?

So after Greg and Steve battle some more with Bert and his biker gang, they finally have the fucking pinball showdown. Bert tries to rig the game, but is found out. Then the movie ends with some whacky chase scene and everyone having a bunch of fun.

Poster and Box Art: The poster for Pick-up Summer is some type of disaster. It’s a photo of some chicks (none of which are in the movie) and it appears to be really sloppily altered with bad airbrushing to add bigger boobs and nipples, and shit. I mean really, look at it. It’s a terrible job.

Even though the film was originally called Pinball Summer, the makers still took time to do a nice original type treatment for the replacement title. It’s fucking great, unlike the weird poster that just looks awkward.

The poster for Pinball Summer is fucking awesome, complete with cheerleaders and some type of awesome drawing. I couldn’t find any higher resolution version of the image.

Availability: Amazingly, it is out on DVD.

Interesting Dated References: A rim-job from a prostitute costing $50.

Best Line: Said to 16 year-old hooker by a john: “Where’d you get those stretch marks down there? You got a baby somewhere?”

Social Context: Jesus, I mean, certainly somewhere at some point in time, teenage prostitution was a big problem. I don’t think it is anymore, but I don’t really go to prostitutes. If you think it’s still a problem, perhaps we should go do research on the matter together.

Summary: As far as I can tell from the scant online information, Scarred was some type of student-art film that got a grant, a budget, and a theatrical release. The director, Rose-Marie Turko, didn’t do much else after this. Neither did the main actress, Jennifer Mayo. In fact, the only person associated with this that went on to do anything substantial was Alex Cox, who has a small role and apparently worked on the film. What the fuck am I going on about? Dude, did you totally get wasted last night? I did. I don’t even have a reason. It was a Wednesday for christ’s sake. A squirrel died on the small piece of lawn between my driveway and my neighbor’s driveway. It’s an unspoken stand-off to see who’s going to scoop it up.

Scarred begins by showing our main teenage whore, Ruby, on the phone with someone asking about her baby. After that, she tries to turn a trick and meets an older hooker named Carla, who helps her land a john. How fucking boring is this review so far?

Sometime the next day, Ruby visits her kid, then gets threatened with eviction by her landlord. Then she taps on her fish tank and smiles at her fish. That’s where you know this movie is full of shit. Fish in a tank never brings a smile to a person’s faces. They aren’t fucking puppies or kittens, they’re fish. They elicit no emotions in people. The next day, Ruby tries to get into art school.

She gets rejected, which I found odd, since 100% of the girls I went to art school with (for the 6 months I went to art school) were clearly whores. The fact that they never talked to me and used me for rides to raves only helps support this fact. When she returns to her apartment she finds her shit gone and a new guy living there. Ruby then decides to lose the frump and turn the whoring up a notch. The first guy she picks up turns out to be a pimp named Easy who has been tracking her. After that, some “thugs” throw paint(?) at her, and then she gets arrested. The whore, Carla, and her pimp, Easy, bail her out.

Next thing you know, Ruby is on the set of an 80s Star Wars-themed porno trying to earn money. Only, she uses a giant fake boob to fend off the guy she is supposed to fuck. After all these antics, she speaks with Easy about coming to work for him, but she resists and says she wants to remain “independent.”

Then we’re suddenly immersed in an episode of Pimp Barbershop for a full minute and a half. I don’t know, you try to make sense of that shit.

All the subject matter is here for a good movie, but the shit is just really boring. I keep feeling like something exciting is going to happen, but much like all the women I have made love to, I’m left waiting for a climax.

Easy then yells at Carla for plotting to buy a Monza, and beats her up before splitting town. Ruby and Carla go to the ‘burbs to take care of her kid, and another fucking Kim Fields song happens. Jesus man, then Ruby sees a fellow whore getting taken advantage of and uses flour, whip cream, and other groceries to scare him away. Then all the hookers have a fun birthday party for Carla.

I feel like I’m watching a Lifetime Movie Network film written by Paul Schrader in his hey-day and directed by John Cassavetes. Some hookers argue and commit suicide. Meanwhile, Ruby hooks up with some creepy insane musician who seems modeled after Phil Spector (gun and a wig). The guy threatens her and speaks all philosophically.
Then she shoots him and has some type of acid freak-out. I mean, seriously man, what the fuck is this movie on about? She has sex with Easy while Carla goes and gets her kid. Then they leave in a car to run away from life. I just went and picked it up with a trash bag. What the fuck is a squirrel doing dead in the middle of some grass? Don’t they usually die in the road? Did it just die of natural causes and fall out of the tree? Shit’s really bothering me.

Poster and Box Art: Since Scarred was a student film, we can only assume that a student was hired to do the poster. That’s not a slam because the poster is great, it just doesn’t look like the poster for the movie I just watched.

Availability: DVD if you feel like it.