The Lair of The Distorted Kiwi

SPECIAL EVENT: The 2006 V Movie Marathon

2006-11-14T03:11:00.000+13:00

THE 2006 V MOVIE MARATHON

V Minus 24 Hours and Counting...

A few weeks ago, my wife referred to the 24-hour V Movie Marathon as my “social event of the year”. I find it hard to argue that point. Once the marathon was confirmed three months ago, I’ve been cranking up the Nerd-osterone levels to critical mass. In fact, I’m worried that this year, I may have gone a liittle too far. It’s not the fact that I requested a day off from my weekend job three months in advance, even guessing at the date of the Fest. (And getting it wrong by a week... luckily my boss at Matua Valley Wines is very accomodating.) It’s not the fact I bugged Ant for months to try and confirm the date, only to fall for his joking comment that he might have to cancel the show entirely. It’s not even the fact that I spent two months scouring soundtrack mp3 blogs to make up a compilation CD featuring tracks from past Marathon-shown films, just so I could give them away to people at the show. No, it’s none of those.

It’s the T-shirt.

You see, while talking with one of my Duty Managers at work, I discovered he made and sold his own funky T-shirts. (Designed for over-40’s who haven’t grown up yet. Ena Sharples by way of Andy Warhol, for instance.) And so, I traded off two decent bottles of Matua Valley merlot for a custom-printed T-shirt. The slogan on the front reads “Vote for Captain Spaulding”. The reverse has a large picture of Sid Haigs grinning face, in full clown makeup. (And considering I didn’t even really like The Devils Rejects that much makes me question my own sanity at times. Sid was pretty cool, though.)

One-off t-shirts to watch movies in. Maybe I’ve gone too far.

Nahhh.

And so, one day out from the marathon, and it’s looking to be an interesting year. Cherie (of the Bad Movie Afternoon crew) has confirmed her attendance again, but Ben and Debs have had to pull out at the last minute. Andrea may be attending the first flicks, driving to Hamilton for a Guy Falwkes party, then coming back for the remainder of the films. That’s hardcore if she does it. (FUTURE SKEETER: Actually, she stuck around for the whole show in the end.) I’m assuming Leon is out for this year, as Tania is about three days from producing her first rugrat. Steve Henshaw, a workmate and projectionist was going to be coming for the first five or six hours, then heading home. Then with literally hours to showtime, his guests from Sydney arrived on his doorstep... 24 hours early. And poof, he’s out, too. Raven’s going to be attending the Wellington show, which is sensible on his pocket, though disappointing on the “Hey, it’s that guy again!” stakes. Boxdog, a local B-Movie fan who’s attended my “Bad Movie Afternoons” AND held a Friday the 13th horror movie double feature I skipped work for, is out too. (Un-dumpable work commitments suck.) And me? There for the long haul, baby. There’s always benifits to having no social life.

The lead-up to the Fest has been good to me so far. Some judicious tape-trading and Internet-buying-by-proxy has netted me the “Extra Weird Sampler” DVD, full of insane and sleazy trailers, and the first 8 “Lost and Found Video Night” DVDs, which are just as twisted as I recall from ‘04. Even more so, in fact. God I hope “Graham Cracker Cream Pie” is a MOCKumentary. I managed to find a copy of Fantasy Mission Force at a local video store, starring an only-in-it-becuase-the-director-saved-my-ass Jackie Chan. It was the perfect lead-in to the ‘Fest, being the type of weirdness that had my brain pounding on the inside of my skull, asking to be excused. And I’ve actually stuck to my goal of minimal snackage for change. Kind of.

The 2006 Snack List

1 Pack Allens Snakes Alive
1 Pack Allens Cool Fruits
1 Box Heards Glucose Fruit Refreshers
1 box Pams Apricot Grove Cereal Bars
1 5-pack of “Little Rippers” mini-salami sticks
1 block Mainland Vintage Chedder cheese
1 water bottle (frozen)

As you may note, I’m ditching a lot of the sugar and salt and packing some “real food” to try and stem the onset of the 3am Stomach Cramps of Doom. I’ll pick up a few bread rolls in Avondale pre-fest to complete my Midnight Matinee Picnic. Of course, being me, I also need a ton of sundries.

1 packet Mylanta antacid tablets
My lime-green V pyjamas
1 new notebook
2 pens
My (hopefully fully-charged) torch
My toothbrush
6 V Movie Marathon CDs (to give away)
Robocop Special Edition DVD (ditto)
Battlefield Earth DVD (Also to give away, wheter the winner wants it or not)

Everything packed down pretty well in my wifes university backpack. In fact it did such a good job of storing everything, while still remaining fairly light, that I’m dubbing it the Portable TARDIS. Right. It’s 2.30pm. Time to load up the last few supplies, break out the Nerdy T-Shirt of Doom, watch a few more trailers and Lost and Found weirdness... then to the bus-stop, and then... (fingers crossed pending the usually unreliable bus service) to the Hollywood!

Let’s get out geeks on!

V DAY!

Prologue: Here We Go Again, on Our Foam

I made it to the bus stop with plenty of time to spare, which let me experience some fresh air and sun for the last time that weekend. It also allowed me the interesting experience of being unexpectedly showered with flying fauna when the man next door arrived with a Weed-Eater. The bus showed up just three minutes past its scheduled arrival time, which was pretty good for a change. As the bus was only going as far as New Lynn, I asked the driver if I could get a transfer to Avondale. “No-this-bus-only-goes-to-New-Lynn” he replied. The sentance was delivered so slowly I think I made the bus drop even further behind schedule. Rather than trying to explain the concept of a “transfer’ to the Zombie Bus Driver, I just brought a ticket to New Lynn, figuring I could hop a bus from there, or walk it if neccesary. Oddly, the driver drove in inverse relationship to how he spoke, so we were soon making good time. Until we hit Henderson.

It was here that we picked up the Loud Family. Mum was a Jamican-sounding woman who spoke very little English, but spoke VERY LOUDLY when she tried to. And even more loudly when she spoke Jamican. Her daughter was translating for her... equally loudly. And her son was an ADD-affected spider monkey who spent half the journey in the schoolbag rack. We spent several minutes stalled in Henderson as she yelled instructions to her daughter, who told the driver, who-responded-at-glacial-speed, whereupon the kid had to translate back to Mum...

We were there so long I was able to spot a guy doing the most over-the-top “staunch walk” I’d ever seen. He was also talking to himself and swearing randomly, so I’d assume his tough-guy walk was directly related to whatever mental illness or P-addiction he had. Eventually we got moving again, only with the bus suddenly 12 times as noisy, despite only having picked up three people. We hit Kelston five minutes later, and suddenly all hell broke loose. Mum wanted the bus to literally go off-route, shouting about which was “her road”. The Zombie Driver got quite animated for him, leading to a brief , though rowdy Jamican-Fuijan shouting match, which only ended when the Zombie Bus Driver opened the doors at a set of traffic lights and threw the entire family off his bus. I could still hear Mrs. Loud shouting at him from outside the bus, so I think it was a ballsy move. She was not the time of Momma you messed with, I feel. Unless you like having someone chase you around the house with a shoe.

At least peace reigned, and I thought the most surreal part of the journey was over. Nope. Entering New Lynn the driver ran a red light... well, orangey-red, but he still left it WAY too late. In the process he nearly ran down a jaywalker, leading to a great Dopplered squawk of “wwwhOOOOOOaaaaah” as we zipped by him close enough to remove the top layer of his skin. In Handerson itself I spotted someone at a table at Starbucks doing what appeared to be a chicken impression for their friends. And, as I left Henderson on a nice, non-zombiefied Stagecoach bus, we drove past a girl of about ten wearing a pink Post-It note on her forehead, much to the amusement of HER friends. Man, I remember when I was young and stupid, too. I think it was last week.

That bus trip was pretty much the perfect lead-up to the ‘Thon. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.

But finally, we rolled into Avondale, home of the Hollywood. I glanced over as we passed through the roundabout, and was amazed to see three people already sitting in front of the theatre. It was probably a minute or two past 4pm, with the doors not scheduled to open until 5. I was both relieved to not be the first Nerd-in-Residence, and oddly disappointed, too. I grabbed a few plain rolls from a local bakery and wandered down to the theatre. To find I was now SEVENTH in line. At the head of the queue was... well, I should have guessed , really. It was regular contributor to the Filmhead Networks’ message board Dave, AKA Steelpotato . He’d not only flown up from Christchurch for the ‘Thon, but in a week would be attending the Wellington show as well. That’s Hardcore, baby! I traded him a Marathon Mix CD for a slightly-bootlegged copy of Confessions of a Young American Housewife. I feel no shame... besides, would that film EVER find wide-scale DVD release? I think not. Another early-arriver was Craig Parkes, the unlucky SOB who won The Incredible Petrified World off me last year. I think he’s forgiven me for that boring piece of shit. I made up for it with a Mixtape CD. (If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have gievn him Robocop as well.) We hung out for a while as the line grew behind us, with me taking the opportnity to shill my Bad Movie Afternoons and gain a few new e-mail contacts. I restrained myself to just the first few groups, figuring the early starters would be the most recptive. (One group of girls gave me a collective “Fuck off, weirdo” look, but a half-dozen others are now in my address book.)

Oh, and the size of some of the beanbags this year were insane. Was there a contest going on?

The dairy owner next door had gone into Parking Space Nazi mode before long, putting out signs offering a free tow-truck ride for any car daring to hog his curb-space. I brought a Royal Crown Draught cola from him, in a token effort to say ‘Hey, we’re customers too”. Are that many people really looking for carparks to buy his overpriced milk and bread, though? Next year, he can go fuck himself. Ant showed up a few minutes later, and I popped inside to have a word and thank him for the freebie again. Which I didn’t really implicatly say. So, thanks for the freebie, Ant! I hope this rambling, badly editied review shows how much I appreciate it. (2000 words so far, and I haven’t reached the first film. It’s J.R.R Tolkien Reviews!) I slipped him a sooundtrack CD, too.

I got a double bonus as Ant got me stamped and inside the theatre right away. Sorry for queue-jumping, Steelpatato... perks of the job, yeah? I did have to do a little usher-duty once the herd was let in, playing Beanbag Traffic Cop to give Ant a defined aisle so he wouldn’t injure himself in getting to the stage around 3am. A videographer was present this year, getting interviews with some of the audience. I got my turn, shilling the review page in the process. I hope he got my best side.

As always, I ran into a few Marathon Veterans, including Thomas the Serious Film Fan, and a guy who looked really familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to. It was of course Chris “Dog” Stott, who’d been part of the group last year. My fabulous memory for names and faces strikes again. I also ran into Doug AKA “Fallback”, another 48hours Messagebord-er and a one-time attendee of my Bad Movie Afternoons. (He’s still trying to forget the horror that is King Kong Lives.) His girlfriend (Wife? Significant Other?) was with him... I did get her name, then promptly forgot it. I should really write these things down.

The Wurlitzer was called into service again, with our organist John giving us a kind of “Hollywoods Greatest Hits” set. He’d been a last-minute stand-in according to Ant, so big props to John! I was kept busy for a while, with one over-sized beanbag causing a kink in my aisle. (Although its owner did bargain me into calling it a ‘chicane’ instead.) After I was satisfied that no-one was going to block the aisle, I headed outside, running into Andrea and Cherie in the lobby. They hooked up with Chris in the front right-hand corner as I went to retrieve my bag from a front-row seat I’d staked out earlier. Only to find it’d been moved aside by the same group of girls who’d given me the “Bet he’s never had a girlfriend” look outside. (Oddly I put even money on them not lasting out the full 24 hours. There were still there at the end, however. So all is forgiven, ladies. Like Henry the 5th, anyone who goes through these trials-by-celluloid is ever more my brother. Or sister, as the case may be.)

As John dropped out of sight playing “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, I grabbed a seat between Craig’s group and the BMA Crew, having not bothered to source a beanbag again. (Besides, I knew for a fact I’d be all over the place as usual.) Ant hit the stage after a Wurlitzer fanfare. He’d ditched the megaphone for an actual cordless mic this year, which was a great improvement. He seemed really up for it this year, not even giving us the usual “I’m never doing this again!” idle threat in his intro. (Which is a vaguely ominous sign for next year.) He let us know he was planning a phone interview with a Troll 2 cast member at some stage during the night and did his thank-yous so he wouldn’t forget people by trying to do them semi-coherantly at the end. And so the projector whirred into life... and we were off!

Part 1: Come With Me if You Want to Laugh Your Ass Off...
Saturday, 17:30-LADY TERMINATOR

And ten seconds later, the projector stopped whirring, and we came to an unexpectedly quick halt. Seriously, it was during the second shot of the flick. It was so fast the guy next to me was caught square in the middle of the first riff of the night. (A shot of a cheap pagoda inspired him to say “It’s only a model”, but the screen was dark by the time he was finished the sentance.) The crowd gave the film break a huge round of applause, which was quickly followed by a loud cry of “Ten seconds into the first fucking film!”. Stephen Grey is in the house, folks! The film sputtered back into life. It died again. And the third time was the charm!

By now the scene had changed, leaving me worried I’d missed the title. Thank God for the lengthy (and hilarious) pre-credits sequence this masterpiece has. We watched as a dark-haired woman quickly seduced a rather sweaty man, leading to the earliest Gratuitous Boob Shot since Evils of the Night back in ‘03. (And not by much... if it wasn’t for the establishing shot of the pagoda, it would have been a tie.) There’s some groping, some grunting and then... some spraying blood. Still not knowing what the flick was, I was searching my memory for a flick that involved guys getting boinked to death. (Having not had word one of dialogue, I didn’t realise this was a dubbed film. If I had, I might have picked it as some bizarre Aisian take on The Hidden.)

As her handmaidens drag off the remains of Exploding Crotch Man, the Chick With the Naughty Bits of Death moans “Is there no man who can satisfy me?”. Well, someone has good hearing as an Oily-Pec’d Warior wanders into her budoir one jerkily-edited shot later. Man, either he’s good impeccable timing, or she’s running some sort of Stud Farm. He proceeds to give her the business, and for once she doesn’t have to lie back and think of Indonesia. Things suddenly go from cheap and sleazy, to warped and crazy as Mr Studmuffin... well, how can I state this gently?

He retrieves an eel from the Holiest of Holys. Which turns into a kris knife in a blaze of zero-budget special effects.

I didn’t even know what this movie was, and I was instantly in love with it.

Slightly pissy at this turn of events, Evil-Snatch Chick gets stabbed with the Unhygenic Eel-Knife of Power and utters her terrible curse of revenge... that one one hundred years, something shitty is going to happen to his great-grandaughter. To his credit, this doesn’t really faze the dude. Let’s face it, why should it? You’re getting off scot free, and in one hundred years, you aren’t going to care what happens. Just leave the kid a note warning her to avoid any crazed chicks with eels up their jackseys and go have a beer to celebrate! After this lame threat, she wanders off into the ocean, and we finally got the title. Obviously I wasn’t the only one who’d heard of the flick as a decent-sized cheer went up. (I’d seen the trailer on Youtube a few weeks prior to the show.)

The next sequence was a delight, proving why you should never abbreviate your credits. The “Ass. Cameraman” got a great reaction, as did his “Ass. Director”. That’s specalisation at work, folks! Oddly, the makeup artist ‘Tetty” got a good laugh too.

And so we skip a century and arrive in the beautiful city of Who The Hell Knows, Indonesia. A caption would be nice, guys. (Although both the “dramatic” leads are Americans, so I guess this is kind of an Anyplace. Unless Yanks routinely run Indonesian homicide departments.) We’re swiftly introduced to a frizzy-haired young American lady, who once again proves that the Bride of Frankenstein look was very big in the 1980’s. She’s doing some research on the legend of the South Seas Queen. (Who had a hit with “Fat Bottom Hula Girls”, and “Honolulu Rhapsody”, I believe.) Her expositionary conversation with the worlds skinniest Indonesian senior citizen had the audience in stitches. (“I’m an ANTROPOLGIST!” she squeaks at one stage. Suddenly Denise Richards’ Christmas Jones character in The World is Not Enough no longer seems to be the worst portrayal of a scientist in movie history!)

Ms. I’m-An-Antropolgist heads out to sea with the Indonesian Captain Quint and his massive crew. Consisting of one guy called “Popeye”. To facilitate a bunch of laughable dialogue, Captain Boozehound orders Popeye to “Shut off the engine!”. Of course, I’m not the most nautical person in the world, but I did see two things wrong with that.

1) There’s no sound of an engine, due to the lousy dubbing.
2) It’s a sailboat.

There’s another great conversation about Gravity-Defying Hair Chicks anthropological prowess, before Popeye restarts the Stealth Engine and they sail off to some undefined area of the Pacific Ocean. One scene later she’s all SCUBA-ed up and takes the plunge. Captain Beer-For-Breakfast panics unexpectedly, shouting “What happened!”. Ummm, you pushed her off the boat, Cap. Try to keep up.

Actually, it turns out she’s dived in without checking to make sure Captain Bonehead turned on her oxygen. Yep, this is the guy I want leading my expidition. Finally she actually starts her dive. Technically speaking, that is, as we get to watch stock diving footage that never actually shows her underwater. CoughcoughCHEAPBASTARDScough. Back up topside, Cpatain Drunkard and Popeye the Mute get to marvel at Indonesias interesting sunsets... brilliant red on one side of the ship, plain white on the other. I seriously think we were looking at a shot of a postcard for a second there. And then came one of the moments B-Movie fans live for. The out-of-left-field “Tidal Wave” that takes out the ship.

It’s a low-angle close-up of a normal-sized wave in slow-mo. I nearly died. B-Movie Oscar clip right there!

Down below, they one-up the stupid level by suddenly have Ms. I’m-Not-A-Lady-I’m-An-Antropologist get into difficulties and ends up... tied to a bed. Buh? In a further attempt to make our brains explode, the Eel of Ickyness shows up again, and... you guessed it, shoots straight up Happyland. Snakey Bender must have LOVED this film. Later that night, or possibly some other night, or a week from Tuesday for all we know, she returns from the sea in a blaze of Full-Frontal Nudity to reveal she’s now... LADY TERMINATOR!

Or to define that better, she’s a blank-expressioned nekkid chick with a really bad attitude. This is quickly demonstrated as she takes a quick stroll along the promenade, probably followed by the Ass Cameraman. Somehow she summons a pair of white thong panties in the process. Man, even Arnie couldn’t materialize a pair of tighty-whites! This chick is GOOD! She stumbles on the local wildlife... namely a pair of Indonesian Howling Pissheads. We’re treated to the sight of one of the pair taking a whizz directly into the air, with enough force to knock small birdlife from the skies. (While the dubbing artists laugh like Hyenas on hash.) Of course the appearance of a semi-nekkid Yank is enough to turn them into drooling hornbags in three seconds. Cue not one, but two Death by Boinkings in the space of three minutes. Kudos to Power-Bladder Guy for being able to sponataneously fall out of a car AFTER he’s been killed. Good commitment to movie cliches, dude.

Lady T.’s next act of Horrible Revenge against some chick she’s never met is to whack a security guard. Who knew security guards in Indonesia were armed with Uzis?

About this time, or possibly before, (Yeah, I’m gonna mangle plot elements and timeframes as always. YOU try remembering the subtle nuances of 13 films in a row!) we meet our Desigated Hero, whose name was in no way interesting enough to recall at this stage. So for the sake of the review I’ll cheat and look it up. It’s Max. Let’s call him Max McWhitewuss. Max’s a tough, gritty homicide cop. Well, in comparison to the guys he works with, he’s tough and grittiy. In reality, he’s likely to get beaten up by a rampaging street gang... of Girl Scouts. He launches one of the lines of the night pretty early with:

“We’ve seen more dead bodies than you’ve eaten hot dogs!”.

Well, you’re obviously doing a great job at stemming the tide of crime there, Max. As stupid as this line is, he gets trumped by his partner mere minutes later. They’re checking out the corpses of three guys who’ve had their cocks bitten off. (That’s their succinct analyisis of the situation, you understand.) Max’s partner quips:

“I’ve heard of the ultimate blowjob, but this is ridiculous!”.

Well, quite. Max needs a little backup on the Case of the Missing Winkies, calling in a few of his buddies. Including crowd favourite Snake, AKA Giant Mullet Guy. Seriously, with his huge nose and gigantic mullet, I figured his mother must have been rogered by a rooster. These three bozos then vanish from the flick for about an hour. No real loss.

Finally we’re introduced to a couple of local chicks, one “Elaine” being an up-and-coming singer. (As evidenced by the worst TV interview since Giant Frizzy-Haired Reporter Lady in Street Wars.) She’s wearing the same necklace as Kill-’em-With-Nookie chick from the start of the film. PLOT POINT! (Actually, since continuity is a foreign word in Indonesia, she’s only wearing it when the plot demands.) Her friend buys a replica necklace, all the better to get herself killed with... and from then on, the movie turns into the Indonesian version of The Wild Bunch, and all sembelance of reality evaporates like morning mist. Every Arnie setpiece is dragged out and beaten within an inch of its life.

Gunfight in a shopping mall, ala Commando? Check, only with about eighty more innocent civilians gunned down in the process. Lady T chasing down cars like Robert Patrick. Check! Shootout in a disco, complete with “Come with me if you want to live!” line? Uber-check! In fact, so much Arnie-esque action occurs, I really can’t recall the exact order of rip-offs. It all just becomes one enormous rip-off blacmange. I did learn several important facts, though.

1) All Indonesian cars are fueled by highly-combustable propane, and will explode if you cough in the general vicinity.
2) Indonesain guns never, EVER run out of ammo.
3) Lady Terminators have terrible taste in cars.
4) Naked yoga is the true path to bloody revenge.
5) When confronted with a naked chick, hotel porters instanly disrobe.
6) Getting you pecker bitten off is apparently a pleasureble expericne for a chubby hotel porter.
7) There’s no such thing as an innocent bystander in Indonesia. You’re a “target”.
8) If Max had just let Lady T. shoot Elaine in the head in the first place, huindreds of civilains wouldn’t have needlessly died.

Seriously, the collateral damage level in this movie will never be surpassed until the video game Duck Hunt gets the feature-film treatment.

Oh, and

9) If you need a early bathroom break, make sure it’s during Elaines’ musical number. You’ll miss nothing you’ll regret later.

Anyhoo, eventually we get one of the greatest rip-off action sequences of all time, as Lady T. shoots up a police station. (Yes, just like in that OTHER movie.) Here I realised she was using an AK-47,000, the only gun capable of firing 96,000, 000 rounds before reloading. Yes, she reloaded her gun. Once. In the entire film. After the hilarious scene in shich she unloaded about ninty-five rounds into a guy, then kicked him in the nuts for good measure. Erica, the great-grandaughter of Oily Pec Warrior is only saved by her mysteriously magical (And yes, worlds skinniest) uncle. Briefly, until Lady T. shoots his nuts off with a machine gun. What is the problem this chick has with penises, man? Max and Elaine beat the feet into the woods, leading to a interesting discovery for me.

There is such a thing as Indonesian make-out music.

I picked up on it right away, but it was a hard sell to convince the others in the group. Luckily, once Max and Elaine started telling each other their backstories, we knew the Unmotivated Sex Scene was imminent. Max finally beats out the “Hotdog” line for most idiotic statement, following up his three sentence speech about his dead parents with “I havn’t talked so much in years!”. Brilliant stuff. (He’d actually talked more in the morgure than he did at the campsite, but that’s by the by.) Suffice it to say, at several times in the next 22 hours, any long monologue was treated to some variant on “I haven’t talked so much in years!”. It amused me, anyway.

During the shootout, Lady T. had taken a single wound. To the eye. You can all see where this is going, right? Yes, back at the hotel she takes to her eyeball with a scalpel. (And by the way, where the hell did she find said scapel?) And of course, pops the entire eye out into the sink. First off, Arnie could do that because he was a cyborg. She’s not, as far as I can tell. And secondly, when she puts it back in, it’s the WRONG FREAKIN’ EYEBALL! (Chris charitably suggested it was a shot looking into the bathroom mirror. Personally I’m blaming it on the Ass Director.)

Well, let’s skip to the end. The Heroicly Mullet-y Trio show up again, and along with a bunch of doomed police extras, get set for the final throwdown. Unfortunately for them, Lady T. suddenly discovers she has the ability to shoot laser beams from her eyes.

On any other film, that might be the weirdest thing you’d see. But since Snakes mullet is in the scene too, it ain’t even a fair contest.

And so the police open up on her with Instant-Indo-Ordinace. Guys suddenly have rocket-launchers appear in their hands in the space of one cutaway shot. Cars blow up. A helicopter gets done blown up by Lady T. More extras get zapped. And then Snake gets his big action scene, driving “The Panzer”! Okay, it’s only a cheap-looking armoured car, but Snake plays it to the hilt, screaming abuse and profanities as fast as he fires bullets at her. Indonesian military strategy proves to be interesting as Snake pins Lady T’s car with the Panzer, then gets another guy to blow BOTH vehicles up with a rocket launcher. That’s gotta blow out the budget for the department right there.

Not the films budget, though, as the “Panzer’ is now obviously a blazing campervan. God, I love this movie.

Now, if you guessed that Lady. T would emerge from the blazing wreckage and continue her rampage, give yourself a cookie. Actually, due to special effects limitations, she really emerges from somewhere in FRONT of the blazing wreck, as a melted-looking zombie chick. It was to be the SECOND-worst makeup job of the Marathon, oddly enough.

And so, more laser-beams from the eyeballs, Max proves to be a total creampuff at hand-to-hand fighting, and finally Elaine uses the Mystical Stabbing Device she’s been lugging around for most of the flick. And Lady T. kind of vanishes with a “Plink”sound. Well, that was a vague disappointment.

And it was over. The cheesiest action flick of the 1980’s has been found. Superb start, Ant!

Even better. It’s available on DVD. Yes!

Right, let’s kick off the 2006 Running themes list:

Wussy Male Lead?: Our choices were Max, Captain Bonehead or Wafer-Thin Aisian Guy. So yes, yes and yes.
Exploding Cars?: In droves, baby.
Overdancing Extras?: One guy briefly seen doing “The Flailing Spaz-Out” at the nightcub.
Strippers?: Oddly, no. But plenty of under-dressed dancers.
Sweaty People?: Hell, yes. Way too many, in fact.
Public Urination?: Public? He was imitating the Tivoli Fountains, dude! I’m surprised no-one tried to toss coins in him.
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: Yes. Very gratuitous.

Skeeter’s Summary: Must. Buy. This. Film. Classic stuff.

Part 2: West Side Story. With Explosions.
Saturday 19:10-STREETS OF FIRE

The 2006 V Movie Marathons’ Salute to the 80’s rolled on with this oddity from 1984. It’s subtitled “A Rock ‘n’ Roll Fable”, which was taken as a bad sign by Andrea. (My Ominous Sign was to come with a credit for the top-billed Michael Pare.) Basically, it’s a musical, set in every era of the last fifty years. 80’s new-wave pop rubs shoulders with 50’s doo-wop. Cops drive stylised 1930-s police cars. The production itself takes place on sets that are stright out of Little Shop of Horrors, and the cast includes Willam Defoe, Rick Moranis and a small part for Bill Paxton, sporting the a hair-do that looks like Chris Isaaks quiff on steriods.

The basic plot has Ellen, the lead singer of a new-wave group getting kidnapped during a gig by pyschotic gang leader Raven. Yes, Mr. Dafoe IS playing the pyscho... how did you guess? Tom Cody, a former soldier who just happens to be the ex-boyfrioend of Ellen returns home at just that minute, and thusly has to play the Gallant Knight to rescue her. He’s helped out by McCoy, a tough female ex-soldier, and Billy Fish, who’s... Rick Moranis. I think you can guess what his character traits are. (Being small, nerdy and white? Got it in one!)

I’m kind of torn on the film. For me it had a plot thin enough to slip under a door, with just enough meat on the script to hang the songs on. Which were for me, pretty forgettable. In fact, the only one that I can still remember is the Brain Setzer-ish “One Bad Stud”. Ry Cooders score is likewise just there in the background, never really leaping out for me. Once our heroes actually rescue Ellen, the movie turns into a musical version of After Hours. The cast drive around darkened city streets, avoiding gang members and police and kidnapping a bus-load of doo-wop singers. We get a number of motorcyles giving their lives for the production and a pick-axe duel at the end, but for me the movie was neither horribly bad, not exceptionally good. It was there, no more.

However, I now think Jim Steinmann deserves some sort of ecological award. He released a solo album soon after his falling-out with Meatloaf and basically, no-one brought it. (Well, I own a copy by that’s another story.) But he’s cut that thing up into pieces and re-used it over and over again. The opening to Bonnie Tylers “I Need a Hero” was a sped-up intro to “Stark Raving Love”. Bits of the album ended up on “Bat Out of Hell II”. And the opening numbers from Ellen Aim and the Attackers includes the “Godspeed!” chorus from “Bad For Good.”. In fact, I was able to pick up on Mr. Steinmanns contribution to the film, despite him not being listed in the credits until the end of the flick.

But anyhoo, let’s list the things I DO remember about the film. To the Bullet Points!

Hey, is that a Jim Steinman song? (See above)

Man, Jim can make any song sound half-decent. Even that Celine Dion one.

Rick Moranis gets a mild round of applause from us old guys in the crouwd.

Say, do you think this is the 1980’s? The production design is making my eyeballs bleed.

White suits, thin ties. The Attackers need to give The Style Council back their look.

Oh, no! Michael Pare? He’s the guy you get when you’re afraid Stallone is going to emote too much

This is a very public kidnapping. I guess when you’re Willam Defoe, you really don’t need to be overly-subtle about things.

Actually, maybe this is what needs to happen at the next Celine Dion concert? With the proviso that no-one pays the ransom.

Man, Pare is really doing a Sly-lite. Same monotonic mumble, same stubble, even the same droopy eyelids. How sad it when you’re stealing Slys’ shctick?

Fight Scene! And as usual, Tom does more damage to his sisters diner than if he’d just left the local hooligans alone.

Bill, air-traffic control just called, asking you to have your hair lowered. It’s causing an obstruction.

Hey McCoy, proving how tough you are by punching out Bill Paxton is like me proving how studly I am by sleeping with Madonna.

They’re taking Rick Moranis into gang territory? Why, do they need him for bait or something?

”One Bad Stud”! I love this song! (Well, more than the other songs on the soundtrack, anyway.)

We have a Stripper! Repeat, we have a stripper!

Actually, she’s so skinny and 80’s it’s like watching the sad decline of Punky Brewster.

Toms plan involves sending McCoy in to stare down Raven, while he plays sniper from the rooftops. On the whole, I think she’s got the harder assignment.

Motorcycle Explody!

More Motorcycles exploding! Stunt work! Fights! Cue up a musical number and let’s make our escape!

Let’s ditch the car and hijack a bus! Later on, let’s ditch the bus and find the car again! Seemed pointless to me, but it did allow a new group of characters to be introduced…

Ladies and gentlemn, The Sorels! It’s always nice to have a capllea musical accompaniment as you make your escape.

Well, we’ve driven down every street in the city. That should do it. Let’s head for home.

Hang on, they rescued the girl and the movies not even half over? Now what do we do?

Oh, we’ll ride around on the subway all night while Willam assembles the troops. Good plan.

Okay, as you tell, I’m having all sorts of trouble re-capping this film. Firstly, it just didn’t stand out for me. Stuff happened, there was the occasional song, but it all fell a little flat for me. The second reason was a little more personal.

You see, about ten minutes in, I broke out the snacks. But without realising it, I accidently managed to gouge the side of my tongue with my in-need-of-dental work teeth. I hardly registered it at the time. But thirty minutes in, the side of my tongue had swollen up and was singing like a drunken Irishman. Chewing anything on that side became painful, and swallowing was twice as bad. I switched to chewing on the other side. Ten minutes later, a transient mouth ulcer I’d been nursing for a few days opened up, nicely equalising the pain, while simultaneously doubling it.

I spent the rest of the film nibbling salami like Bugs Bunny and pouring ice-cold water on my gums to try and numb the pain. It eased off within a few hours, but as you can guess I suffered a major lack of focus during the flick.

I was however surprised by two things that happened at the end of the film, though.

Bill Paxton picked up a shotgun, but his character survived the film. In the 1980’s? This really IS an alternative universe!

Willam Defoe takes on Michael Pare in a streetfight and gets his ass handed to him. I call shenanigins!

At the end of the flick, the Attackers show up for an encore, and we’re out. By midday on Sunday I could barely remember a damn thing about the film, save for my scribbled notes. Normally that would simply show the sad state of my short-term memory. This time, I have an excuse. Three of them in fact. Little did I know the worst was yet to come.

Wussy Male Lead?: It’s Michael Pare, folks. ‘Nuff said?
Exploding Cars?: No cars, but several Combustable Hondas bit the dust.
Overdancing Extras?: There was plenty of bad dancing, but the guy doing the Hand Jive during the last Attackers number really caught my eye.
Strippers?: Just the one. And she really only flashed us. PG-13 stripping.
Sweaty People?: Greased-up 50’s rockers in leather. And sweat.
Public Urination?: Not that I recall, but there’s a lot of blank spots in my memory for this flick.
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: None springs to mind.

Skeeter’s Summary: Not that bad a film, despite my rather apathetic review. Just not one I’ll be hunting down on disc anytime soon.

We took a brief break after Streets of Fire. Ant had put out a call for compilation discs of remixed trailers and general Youtube weirdness on the 48 Hours board, but with only 48 hours notice, offerings were pretty sparse. (We in fact ran out by the 18th hour of the show. I KNEW I should have packed the Extra Weird Sampler disc.) However, Steelpotato came through big time in the first break, with the roof-raising trailer for Must Love Jaws. There were also the usual 35-mm trailers before each flick, but truth be told I missed quite a few this year. After having attended four of these shows, the social side is starting to really kick in. I spent a lot of time between films catching up with people I only see once or twice a year. (Including the little Irish guy who got my super-bastard question last year. In the same seat as last time. Traditions are being formed quickly, it seems.) I meant to get his e-mail address for the BMA Crew, but put it off too long, and he was gone before I packed up at the end. Maybe next year.

However, Slithis is now on my must-find list. That looked brilliant.

Around nine-ish, we had our first contest of the night, and a Lady Terminator Line-Off was the theme. I was ready to vote for whoever did the Antropolgist line. Sadly, the girl who tried it substituted “Archeologist” instead. And they’re just not as funny. And so, the guy who busted out his best “Ultimate Blowjob” was an easy winner.

Deciding to give the BMA crew a break from my puns, I headed into the stalls to where Fallback and Ms. Fallback were sitting, and we were away again!

Part 3: They’re Coming For You, Babara! (So Walk Slowly Away!)
Saturday, 21:05-BURIAL GROUND

People have been asking a question of Ant the last few years. “Why haven’t we had a really good Italian Zombie film yet?”. And this year, Ant answered the question. And guess what?

We’re STILL wating for a really GOOD Italian Zombie film.

Admittedly, there’s a chance that a “good Italian zombie film” is just an total oxymoron. But Ants’ sadistic sense of humour strikes again as he programmed the WORST Italian zombie movie he could find. And we thank him for it.

It kicked off with a heavily-bearded archeologist (See, not funny, right?) having a Eureka Moment. Which causes him to have a badly-dubbed panic attack. (In fact just mentally add “badly-dubbed” in front of random phrases in this review, and it’ll save me a lot of typing.) We have no idea what he’s found, as he quickly dashes off into a dusty catacomb that’s apparently on his property to begin digging around. We have no idea what he’s looking for, why it’s so important, or what he’ll do with whatever it is when he finds it. This serves us well for the remainder of the flick, as not one thing in the film is every really explained satisfactorily. In fact, if you cut this film up into ten minute blocks and then shuffled the footage into a random order, it’d probably make as much sense. Possibly more.

After scant seconds of watching Mr Beardy frig around in the dusty tomb, the walking dead suddenly start sloooooooowly popping out of their tombs. We have no idea why.

Before I continue, let me expound on Skeeters Theory of Public Humour. You see, at the ‘Thon I’ll always try not to annoy people I don’t know with my near-constant observations, quips and bad puns during these films. After all, sometimes they don’t work. Usually, you’d have to be sitting right next to me to hear the gags. But sometimes, you know the joke is going to kill, and will work on a wider scale than just the guy next to you. So when a man with a huge brown beard, dressed in brown tweed is suddenly (Okay, laboriously) threatened by zombies, I fired off one of just two public riffs that night. A loud shout of “RUN, GIMLI, RUN!”.

It went down well. Sometimes you have to know your audience.

Sadly, the Dwarven Archeologist didn’t heed my advice, and went down under the horde of zombies.

Three is a horde, right?

The zombie themselves were brilliant. Grey pancake makeup, copious amounts of live worms and maggots for that “Ick” factor, and… huge googly eyeballs. Add in the buck teeth on a couple of them, the one guy who seemed to have missed his makeup call and was just wearing a thin layer of grey paint, and you’ve got the most amusing Undead Army in decades.

But a zombie film isn’t complete without a house full of victims, right? So to the strains of an unexpectedly easy-listening theme we get a couple of car-loads of Italians with the collective IQ of a bowl of mushroom soup. Thjey’re heading to the Professors house for no readily-apparent reason. As they pull up at the house, I spotted an unusual presence in the back seat… an off-focus form that looked like the Mekon from the Dan Dare comic books. When we got a full look at him, Ant was ready with a perfectly-timed “UUGH!” sound. The “kid” playing the dude’s son is either a horrible genetic mutant, or, as I suspect, a midget. A midget who’s about 45 years old if he’s a day. The effect was that their kid had that horrible disease that makes them age too quickly. The topic of whispered conversation quickly turned to why the HELL you’d use a midget instead of a child.

Trust me, the reason for that became abundantly clear. And then we wished we’d never asked.

But once we had our cast assembled, we hd to find out about their character trats. Too bad they didn’t have one. The entire group was the human equivaent of the Professors tweed coat. Servicable, but dull as ditchwater. I dubbed one the Plaid Avenger for his fashion sense, but the Mutant Kids parents were as well-defined as shopkeepers dummies. The main purpose they gave us at the start of the flick was for a bit of gratuitous lingere modelling by Mum, and Dad’s charming assesment of “You look just like a little whore!” in response. Interestingly, he meant that as a compliment. They get down to a bit of boinking as the Zombie Hoard finally clears the tombs entrance, having travelled about ten feet in the last hour and a half.

Inside the house, Mom and Dad suffer a little Nooikius Interruptus as their door slooooowly creaks open. And then a shadow SLOOOOOOOOwly begins to emerge. So in other words, someone opened the door, then backed up twenty feet in order to walk toward the door in a slow, dramatic way. If you thought for one second it’s the zombies, currently doing 0.00005 kph toward the house, punch yourself in the face right now. It is of couse Michael, (AKA Mutant Kid) having a little Parental Perv. Pretty much everyone who’d seen Confessions of a Young American Housewife or Toys Are Not For Children knew where this was going, I think. And a lot of those who hadn’t, too. Ant, we really need to talk this problem over. Mom doesn’t help things by leaping out bed to cover herself up with a robe. You know, you were actually covered up, but thanks for the gratitous full-frontal there, Mom.

Meanwhile, the other characters go off into the garden for either some photography, or some making out. (Seriously, everyone decided to spontaneously boink or swap spit in this flick. What is it, a Swingers Weekend Getaway?) Zombies continue to creep through the garden, bar the one that burrows up out of a garden to menace a pair of Maker-Outers. Sorry, what? Did they bury this guy in the garden like he was a run-over kitten? Or is he some sort of Zombie Commando? (Another shows up later in a fountain-side raised crypt. Mob hit victim?) Kudos to the the makeup artist who plasted zombie makeup on the top of the actors hands, but left the bottom completely bare. The clean healthy skin really helps us suspend our disbelief. Not. Anyhoo, he gets a hold of an ankle and the chase is on!

Actually, since the zombies are slow enough to be outdistanced by one-legged man wearing a blindfold, it’s more a case of now the standing still is on. Stand still, scream, stand still, watch zombie approach, stand still, let them touch you and THEN run away. One of the female Zombie Niblets sets a new low in Botched Escape Attempts, however. Falling over and twisting your ankle? Nah, that’s for amateurs. She manages to run directly into a bear trap!

I’ll repeat that. She steps in a BEAR TRAP for Gods sake! On a country estate? What are they hoping to catch, the Italian Bigfoot? The Plaid Avenger tries to rescue her, quickly gaining the title of Least Effective Hero of the Night! He acheives this honour by managing to slam the trap shut on her ankle no less than FOUR TIMES! He follows that up by picking up a pitchfork that just happens to be lying around and gently tapping a zombie on the head with the flat part of it. The Moron Trifecta is completed as he siezes a zombie by the wrists and very deliberately guides its hands to his throat. Look, I want your character to die too, by you’re not getting out of the movie that easily, pal! He eventually had to be rescued by a chick. Hang your head, man. Lower!

Back at the house, Michael broke up the audience by picking up a piece of fabric and uttering the immortal line “This cloth smells like DEATH!”. I was moved to remark “If that’s his mothers’ panties, I’m out of here.”.

At this stage Stephen Grey returned to his seat in front of me. It may not be obvious when he does his thing on “Good Morning”, but that mofo is about six feet eighteen if he’s an inch. With half the screen now looking like the back of his head I got to do the usual Cinema Seat Yoga short bastards like me have to do on a regular basis. Of course, he was blocking fifty percent of the hideous 1980 fashions on show, so I guess I owe him a debt of thanks.

Back on-screen, the zombies had shuffled into the house at long last. Michaels dad proved to have the survival skills of chocolate donut, getting cornered and eaten in graphic, butcher-shop off-cut style. Notice how Italian zombies (and cannibals for that matter) always have to play with their food? Much liver-jiggling later the remaining Mobile Zombie Muchies congregate back at the main building, only to discover a bunch of zombie literally guarding their cars. Look, you’ve see how fast they move. Walk up, rifle around in your pocket for your keys, sing a couple of verses of “O Sole Mio” and they’ll still be raising their arms to attack you as you drive off.

Of course, then the film would be over, so everyone barricades themselves inside the house. The next half-hour or so lead us to one inescapable conclusion.

These zombies are far more intelligent than the humans in the movie.

Seriously! Firstly, the barricades include thin pieces of firewood nailed across doors. Yep, that’ll hold ‘em! Then the maid is sent off by herself on a pointless errand, only to discover that they’ve forgotten to close all the windows. (Which would seem a priority in the event of a zombie attack.) Thirdly, the zombies , despite being ancient, decaying creatures, turn out to be incredibly accurate knife-throwers, pinning the maids hand to the window. Maybe they were an ancient circus troupe, condemmed to walk the earth after their cruel treatment of the dancing bears?

The zombies also know how to use weapons, as evidenced by the scythe-related dispatching of the unlucky maid. You see? 1000-year-old cadavers can use a scythe for it’s intended purpose, but Wussdork Beigepants couldn’t work out how to use the pointy end of his pitchfork? Darwinism at work, folks!

Another strike against the homo sapien team? That after hearing the zombies using axes to chop through a door, one chick takes shelter BY HERSELF in the room they’re trying to cut their way into. What’s Italian for “DUHHHHHHHH!”?

Admittedly, most of were hoping that chick would get whacked. She was Foot-in-the-Beartrap Woman, and despite suffering some mild Makeup Bruising of the ankle, spends the next hour of screen-time whimpering like a wounded puppy. Sadly the movie decides she’s the most interesting character and thus she survives until the last scene of the film.

Next up, one guy suggests letting the zombies inside to “see what they want”. Nice plan, Chad.You moron.

Plus the capper on this little test of humans intelligence levels? Not one of them suggested tossing Mikey the Wonder Mutant out the window as a diversion.

Hey, it’s what I would have done. He was a freaky little dude.

As the zombies inevitably break in, Michael comes within an inch of becoming Bub-Chow, only to be saved by his mother. Damn it! And then came the moment that really made the film. Mikes’ mum takes him out into the hallway to confort him… and the freaky little bastard makes a move on her!

You only wish I’m joking.

After receiving a mild rebuke for his attempt to return to the breast (and grossing out 300 people in the process) Mike takes about fifteen more minutes to fulfill OUR dearest wish. The one where we wished to see the little bastard get his throat ripped out. We also get the traditional eyeball violence and the equally-tradional I’ll-approach-you-even-though-it’s-patently-obvious-you’re-a-zombie-now scene. I’d run this film through Gangrene Widescreens’ Zombie Cliche Checklist, but they’re reviewing it themselves fairly soon. I predict a 90% rating at least, with extra credit in the “Woman Falls Down” category. I mean, it was a BEAR TRAP!

My God, this review is getting long. I’ve hit 9000 words and I’m on the 3rd film. Of 13. Could someone hire me an editor for next year?

Let’s speed this one up. Professor Zombiedwarf returns, eating the butler in loving close-up. Thank you Jeeves, that will be all. Our Bumbling Human Quasi-Heroes make a break for it, burning down the house in the process. They run away, meaning they should be able to at a minimum safe distance from the Shambling Hordes of Sluggish Doom in about ten minutes. The next morning they arrive at a deserted monastry. Captain Beige goes off to look for help. By himself. Captain Beige is a complete fucking moron. Captain Beige finds a roomful of Zombie Monks. They eat him. The crowd, now firmly on the zombies side, cheer wildly.

The last three survivors hear his screams. They run TOWARD the noise. These three are ALSO complete fucking morons. They run away again. The zombie monks chase them. So does The Zombiefied Beige Avenger. They reach the “safety” of a model-makers house and barricade the door with a balsa-wood model so flimsy it moves when you breathe on it. Yep, that’ll hold them out. Good work.

The zombies have of course already made it there, including Mikey the Incredible Petrified Mutant Middle-Aged Teenage Zombie Boy. (On any other day, that would be the strangest thing you’d hope to see. Not even close, brothers and sisters. Not even close.)

Mum invites Mikey over for a nice cup of breasts. Mikey eats one. The crowd goes wild.

The zombies defeat the impregnable five-ounce barricade and eat the remaining cast. A badly-spelled proficy... sorry, prophecy appears on screen. The End.

And the crowd goes wild.

If I have made this film sound in any way exciting, coherant or well-paced, I apologise. I’ve apparently failed in my task.

Wussy Male Lead?: The wussiest. Ever. Also the Beige-est.
Exploding Cars?: On this films’ budget? You wish.
Overdancing Extras?: If a zombie had over-danced this would have been the greatest film ever. It’s not the greatest film ever.
Strippers?: I think Mikeys Mom used to be one, yeah.
Sweaty People?: Maggoty, yes. Sweaty, not so much.
Public Urination?: No, but that’s tricky to do when a zombie is eating your bladder.
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: Sadly no-one took the chance to kick Mikey in the nuts.

Skeeter’s Summary: I learnt one important rule in this film. Never, EVER film zombies in slow-motion. Worth it for the weird-out factor that was Mikey, though.

PART 4: WHHHHHHHOOOOOOA, Baby!
Saturday, 22:45-CRANK

Right up until the day of the Marathon Ant was telling us theat there would be a lack of new films this year. In fact, he even joked he’d have to cancel the show due to a lack of new films. But as we all saw with Anacondas, new doesn’t always mean “cool”. So when this New Zealand premiere (opening Nov. 30th) appeared in the lineup, I was both surprised and nervous. Was this the Saw of ‘06? Or the Emily Rose?

Saw.

As is my way with not-released flicks, I’m not going into major spoiler-y detail, but the premise is ludicrously simple. A mob hitman (Jason Statham) has been poisoned, with just our an hour to live. The drug is slowing down his system, and only one thing can stop him from checking out.

Adrenaline.

Strap it in folks, the ride is about to begin.

Basically it’s a 50-50 blend of D.O.A and Speed, shot in fast-forward, studded with some really black humour, enhanced with every trick in the Cool Editors Handbook, and delivered to you in uncompromising “Shut the fuck up and enjoy it” kind of way. Trust me, the only way to watch this flick is to ask that piece of your brain that controls logic... you know, the one screaming “This could never happen in real life” at you every ten minutes or so... to wait in the car for the next ninty minutes. It’ll be happier there. Crack a few beers, even if you have to smuggle them into the theatre. Ditch your bullshit film-school, arthouse pretensions at the door, don’t think about it too hard and just go with it. It’s a hell of a ride.

Oh, and hooray for REAL stuntmen doing REAL stunts! Welcome back guys, we missed you.

Wussy Male Lead?: Fuck, no. Flamingly gay co-star, though.
Exploding Cars?: Crashing cars, motorcyles and helicopters. Not nmay exploded, though. Realism!
Overdancing Extras?: Who had time to dance in this flick?
Strippers?: Well, she did. But she was pretty restrained.
Sweaty People?: At the speed the flick moves, pretty much everyone.
Public Urination?: Public SOMETHING. But they weren’t urinating. Trust me.
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: Pretty much Gratuitous EVERYTHING Abuse.

Skeeter’s Summary: The best no-brainer action flick since Con Air. Sue me, I like Con Air. Also includes the REAL Ultimate Blowjob.

Another brief intermission followed, allowing us to chill out a little after that ampheteme-rush of a flick. I’ve always thought that the hardest thing about organising one of these things must be finalising the line-up. I know how much trouble I have choosing two flicks for a Bad Movie Afternoon. But Ant was picking them beautifully this year. One comment was that if you edited the glacial Burial Ground and Crank together, you’d actually have one very long, but perfectly paced-film. But next would be the tester, apparently. The one even I was worried about. The legend. Mr 1.9 out of 10 on the IMDB. Currently sitting at #9 on the Bottom 100 Films of All Time, after over a year at #1. Still rating two places lower than Manos, The Hands of Fate. The one now known as...

Part 5: The Worst Film Ever Made!
Sunday, 00:40-TROLL 2

Bullshit.

Sorry to be blunt, but sometimes honesty is the best policy. The Worst Film Ever Made? Are you kidding me? Have people never seen White Chicks? Did Little Nicky never exist? Did Dolph Lungdren decide to become a chiropracter back in ‘84?Are you serious?

I’ve seen worse films that won Oscars, for fucks sake.

Let’s put this into perspective. I’m not saying this film is a world-beater. I’m not even saying it’s good. The script is weak, the acting ranges from “mediocre’ to “atrocious” and the directing is non-existant. The special effects suck. On the positive side the camera is aimed at the right thing most of the time, there’s enough unintentional laughs to keep the thing afloat, and there’s even one “jump scare” that actually worked on me. Sure, there’s no way the aforesaid “jump scare” would have been possible except for a dodgy edit, but it did actually make me jump. Worst film ever?

Not while Hulk Hogan is still getting acting roles, it’s not.

You know, folks. I usually don’t give a toss how accurate my review of the films are in these recaps. All I’m trying to do is remember the night itself, with the exact order of events in the films plots being a secondry concern. But Troll 2 is a special case. And so, I’m making the ultimate sacrifice. I’m cueing up my own MGM-taped copy of the film to ensure the following sarcastic summation of the Not-Worst Film Ever Made is somewhat more accurate than usual.

Or at least as accurate as I can be with a huge can of Speights to fortify myself before tackling this flick for the second time in three days. And two more in the fridge.

Let’s go to work.

It’s the MGM Lion! Yeah!

Hey, Peter Pan! You’re in the wrong movie!

Eviler-than-usual Ewoks! Nooo! Oh wait, they must be trolls.

Wait, they’re goblins? In our Troll movie? Was there a copyright issue on trolls?

We’re seriously ripping off The Princess Bride with this start.

Grandpa Seth looks like the low-rent version of Wilford Brimley…

Yo, Pete! Run faster, you’re getting gay all over the screen.

Filmirage Presents… oh, good. The whole film is just a mirage. That’s a relief.

Starring George Hardy. A man I’d love to buy a beer for one day and have a chat. Or more likely, a listen. (You’ll understand that joke later.)

Margo Prey? Bet she gets eaten.

He’s being chased by pissed-off Muppet Babies!

Boy, look at all the Italian names in the credits!

Hey, he ran into Gladriel! Before her derambrasion, that is. The make-up artist need to work on his freckles I think.

”I offer you this refreshing bowl of St Patricks Day cake frosting!”

Gah, the nerdy little kid just warped into the story! Is this taking place on the Holodeck?

This is a really dark bedtime story. Must be by Roald Dahl.

Ugggh, she snagged on him! Could we get Peter a Kleenex?

Our first sighting of the Googly-Eyed Goblin. Someone in the costume department got a little over-creative on that guy. (I spent the rest of the film looking out for him. Got a laugh every time he showed up. Marty Feldmen, we miss you!)

Damn it, I just spilled beer on my V pyjamas. Oh well, at least if there’s a really bad film next year I’ll be able to suck the alcohol out of my pants.

”Half-man… half-plant. The goblins favourite food.” So they turned him into Cubby Broccoli?

*crickets chirping*

Not one of my better puns, I’ll admit. Let’s move on.

Hey, Seth wasn’t really there! Josh is a hallucinating psycho kid! That’s TWO creepy kids in three films. Recurring theme?

I loved how Mom feels the need to clarify her relationship with Grandpa Seth. “…me, his daughter.”. Script doctor to page 5, stat!

We formed the theory that the film must have been shot sequentially pretty soon. Notice how the early acting is wooden and stilted, and the later scenes are… well, slightly less stilted and a teensy bit animated? I guess it was a case of learning on the job. Which is fine if you’re at Burger King, but for a feature film… not the best approach, one feels.

”I DO believe in goblins, I do, I do!”

Hey, Johnny Depp! I’m surpised that poster didn’t receive a credit. Maybe he sued to get his name taken off the project. Ditto the smurf.

It’s synth-tastic iron-pumping action!

They’re off to Nilbog! Gee, does that name sound slightly ominous for some strange reason?

GEORGE!

Man, George’s accent hasn’t changed in 16 years. You can take the boy out of Alabama, but… well, you know.

”Michael, who are the Goblins?”. Yes, that did spark a brief flurry of Dario Argento references. We film-geeks are a predictable bunch at times.

Someone’s at the window! Boy, I hope it’s a vampiric Jason Patric!

Great, some guy is leading a panty raid on Josh’s bedroom.

Window is closed. Window is open. See my Burial Ground recap for my theory on Italian film-makers and continuity.

Hot, sweaty teenage chick! We have fufilled one of the running themes!

Elliot the Perv gets kicked in the ‘nads. We have fufilled another running theme.

Josh’s sister must have been a stage actress. She’s projecting the HELL out of her dialogue. Miss, we have microphones. Tone it down a notch or nine.

”Are you trying to turn me into a homo?”. Thanks for giving the crowd a head-start on the jokes, dude. The next seventy minutes were FULL of gags directed at Elliots sexuality. Mainly by me.

Preparing for over-acted Expositionary Speech, sir! Increasing acting levels to “Painful”!

Geez, someone tell her she’s not auditioning for the high-schools production of “Kiss Me Kate”!

Holly now has a crying scene. This script hates us.

”Joshua, start singing! Sing that song I like so much!”. And the crowd goes wild.

Personally I was hoping Mom was requesting a quick chorus of “Smack My Bitch Up”, but no dice.

I tried doing my best Scorpio impression once Row Row Row Your Boat kicked off (“Sing damn, you… sing! Row! Row! Row!..”) It proved once again that some attempts at humour amuse everyone, and some just make you feel stupid. This was the latter. Oh well, they can’t all be gems.

Country-Western Music! The horror!

Elliot and the Hetro-Nerds are on the road!

Josh is so sweaty he looks like someone glazed him. If it wasn’t for the lack of country strippers, we’d be heading for a clean sweep on the Running Themes List.

Dream Sequence! With Holly becoming the Googly-Eyed Goblin! And Josh getting covered in grape jelly.

Grandpa Seth! That’s strange, normally dead men hitch no lifts.

Grandpa Seth is now appearing as Crazy Old Ralph in “Get the Hell Out of Nilbog!”.

I think Elliot and Holly were made for each other. Both appear to have bionic eyes that can see each other gestures through tinted glass windows fifty metres away.

Nilbog! Wait, why the hell does a town with 26 people apparently have a 125th North Street? Unless they’re naming every half-ass alley as a street, that just seems a litlle off-base to me.

You know, for the WORST MOVIE EVER MADE, this actually has some pretty nice scenery. Unlike Burial Ground, which looked like someone’s home movies. After the family dog took a whizz on the negative.

The Inbred Backwoods family stand by to trade houses. I hope their son isn’t late for his 1930’s paper route. (Seriously, my grandad had that same exact hat.)

Man, the whole family has matching hickeys. This farm must be in Tasmania.

George tries to talk the ear off the farmers before they leave. We’d later discover that was simply method acting!

He threw a snowball at him!

Oh wait, it’d a baseball. With the phrase “Eat Before We Eat You.”. Shouldn’t that be “You’all”?

We have reached the classic scene where Grandpa Seth freeze-frames Josh’s family so he can work out how to stop them eating poisoned food. During the Marathon, I giggled away at how much the supposedly “frozen family” are moving during each and every take. In watching it a secod time I got an even bigger laugh for the actual “freeze” scene. Keep an eye on Mom. She actually misses her cue and has to bring a green-frosted scone up to her mouth at about 95mph to be in the right position. Was that REALLY the best take? If so, how funny would the out-takes be?

Okay, who decorates corn-on-the-cob with neon green frosting? I’m thinking that’s a minor warning sign, Holly.

Geogre, you’re breathing WAY too hard into your drink. It loks like the tide is turning in your glass.

Off-screen unrination! That counts!

”You can’t piss on hospitality!”. You’re my hero, George!

Of course, Dad adjusting his belt right after Josh presumably whipped out his winkie at the table got a really dirty laugh.

Okay, this script really does suck a dick. But I still point out the film doen’t feature Marlon Wayans in any way. So it’s not the Worst Film Ever Made.

The Really Hetero Crew are watching some bizarre program with a rocket-powered monkey. I hope that’s a real film, it looks more interesting than this one.

Arnolds off on a wench-hunt! Since he’s the nerdiest guy in the film, I wish him luck.

Hey, he flushed out a blonde! Nice work, Arnold!

Arnold makes the tackle on the 30-yard line, but it’s a first down the the ragged blonde chick! Let’s go to a commercial!

”You’re human?”. That’s a matter for better-qualified people than us to decide, babe.

GOBLINS! The sight of them makes the girl over-act. Arnold turns totally monotonic. On average, they’re actually acting okay.

HUGE close-up of Googley-Eyed Goblin. He looks like a rejected Goldie painting. (“Man, those mokos are way too deep. Tone it down a little, man!”)

Arnold takes five steps away from the goblins. One goblin throws a spear. It flies about nine hundred feet to skewer him. Interesting geography around Nilbog.

MOUNTAIN DEW SHOT! Their product placement guys made a wise investment in this film, huh?

”That wasn’t the scream of a woman, that was Arnold!”. Yeah, like there’s a difference.

We keep wandering in and out of focus. Either the cameraman is drunk, or I am.

They found Poison Ivys’ secret lair!

Enter the woman who took top honours in the nights Supreme Overacter awards. Someone tell here she’s not playing Witchiepoo in a community theatre production of H. R Pufenstuf, please!

”I am Krgg Laylnrrg Gooog”. Well, that’s what it sounded like to me, even with the benefit of a rewind button. We’ll just call her Ms. Goog, then.

I was really afraid Ms Goog’s acting style was actually going to make her eyeballs pop out by the end of the film.

I missed her pronuciation of “Vegetal” in the first screening. I loved it this time. She just tears that word a new one and keeps gamely acting away.

The Anicient Evil in this town just isn’t very subtle. Lucky her prospective victims have the mental capacity of a brain-damaged howler monkey.

Linda Blair!

”I put a spell on youuuuu.. now, you’re slime!.”

Arnold appears to be reading his lines off a mental cue-card that doesn’t include punctuation.

”So I lie around screaming in a puddle of neon-green slime? Wow, this’ll
be my breakthrough role! Sign me up!”

Arnold ups the classic line ante for the night with the ”They’re eating her…and then tey’re going to eat me…. Oh my GOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDD!” monologue. It’s the delivery that makes it funny. Bravo, Arnie!

Am I only 30 minutes into this film? Man, I suffer for my art.

Unepected dance number! I actually liked the scene, but only for Hollys’ Garfield nightshirt. I think my sister had the Gemini version.

Grandpa Seth shows up for a perv. He’s a dirty old dead dude.

George makes even the bad lines sound good. Or worse, which is better. Man, that made sense in my head at first. I withdraw the comment.

The Disembodied Head of Orson Welles shows up to advise Josh. This is a weird film.

Two topless-though-studley-and-hetro guys sharing a bed in a campervan. Five films into the Marathon. Yes, the crowd went wild. It’s homo-tastic fun for the whole family!

If that campers a’rockin’, don’t come a’knockin’!

Whoa, all of a sudden Josh is all upbeat and focused . Guess they found his Prozac and Ritalin.

Enter Sherrif Gene Freak. Well, that’s what I heard, anyway. You’re results may vary.

Everyone that turns up in Nilbog gets fed within and inch of their lives. It’s like the entire town is run by Jewish Mothers.

Arrgh, a Goblin! Running the General Store! (Man, that guy must have help slash the makeup budget… he looks like they moulded him out of latex!)

Coffee is the Devils Drink! And Eggs are Satans Nutsacks! And bacon? Well, bacon’s good with anything. Have some moo-juice, it’s Jesus’s favourite!

You know, giving away litres of posioned milk for free is just telegraphing yor evilness just a tad. Why not just dance around him singing “Momma Weer All Goblinz Now”?

Burt Reynolds! Foster and Allen! The founding members of the Beaver Brown Band!

She turned Arnold into a Chia-Nerd!

Ms. Goog is over-acting so much the Wiggles just called and told her to tone it down a little.

Arnold, Woodland Gimp!

”NILBOG! It’s Goblin spelled backwards!”. No wonder there’s no trolls in Troll 2, otherwise the film would be set in some tiny Welsh town called “Llort”.

He’s Gleaming the Cube! In public, no less.

Sweaty Virgin in the Woods!

”I’m Ms. Goog. Mind if I let myself in? Oh wait, I’m in your kitchen, guess I already did.”

Okay, maybe her name is “Creedence Gaynor Froog”? Sounds like a prog-rock band.

Great, the whole town is at a Goblins Anonymous Meeting.

Behold the Mystical Ceiling of Randomly Varying Heights!

Weird Preacher Guy is making me hungry with his anti-meat diatribe. Mmm.. steak.

He’s like an Evil Doug Henning!

“I gotcha nose! And the rest of your face, too!”

We have weird spacial anomolies happing all over Nilbog. Or is it just haphazrd film-making?

Whoa, has Elliot been having a little afternoon delight in the ol’ campervan of Homoerotic Fun?

Direct-to-Camera Overacting! Plastic Goblins! And the Freaky Rubber-Faced Guy all in the same scene! Maybe this is where it turns into the Worst Film Ever?

And then a close-up on the Googly-Eyed Goblin makes it fun again.

Man, the ice-cream on Joshs face evaporated pretty damn quick.

It’s a Mexican Bland-Off. George wins!

Elliot has finally made his commitment to Hetrosexuality! He still LOOKS pretty gay, though.

COMEDY DRUNK WALK!

He’s being watched by a the love-child of Audrey II and Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat!

Arnold, you look like a sap. Get it! It’s a plant joke. Oh, please yourself.

Ms. Goog channels Ash. Groovy.

And two characters check out of the film, without us every really knowing their fate. Thay’re the lucky ones… the others still have half-an-hour of moronic dialogue to spout.

Ack, the Elliot/Holly saga is turning into an episode of Family Ties.

Once again, there’s a lot of non-too-subtle evil at work. And once again, George proves as perceptive as a concussed wallaby.

Well, at least Josh didn’t whip of the Trouserhose of Salvation again.

Hey, Edward Scissorhands appeared in Josh’s mirror! Must be a crossed line Please check your dead relative and dial again.

Mom looks spaced out. Are we SURE we’re using the BEST takes?

Impressive hang-time on the scream, Ms. Goog. And she was getting ready for a second go at it before the jumpcut.

Grandpa Paul Buynon!

Gramps is packing Molotov Cocktails. About now I was SURE Grandpa Seth was simply the Evil Voice in Joshs head that told him to burn things.

No-one has any idea what’s happening in this scene, do they?

Grandpa Seth vs the Evil Doug Henning! Make him vanish, Doug!

Cartoon Lightning Bolt! Burn, baby, burn! Saved by the power of the jump-cut!

And so begins the stupidest seige in movie history. It’s Dork Day Afternoon!

Hey, was that Dustin Hoffmans character from Tootsie?

”Stand there and do nothing folks! That’s it! Keep standing there. Let’s wait until they’re back in the house before getting revenge for our fallen leader!” SLAM! “Wait, that was bad strategy. My fault. Now what do we do?”.

Hey, Ms. Gooog turned into Kate Bush! Sing “Running Up That Hill”!

”They’re throwing sandwiches at us! This is just like the Siege of Constantinople! Only stupid.”

Whoa, Moms either panicing, or the dishwasher under the counter is on and she’s getting off on the vibrations. Can we try a take WITHOUT the orgasm-face, Mom?

The crowds reaction to Holly suggesting a séance was a uniform groan. Doubly so when Josh calls her a genius for the idea.

It’s the awe-inspiring “Popcorn Sex” Scene! This supreme moment of hiliarious idiocy makes a mockery of that “Worst Film Ever” bullshit. Geez, go watch The Passion of the Christ and then try to argue that this is a worse film, people. You’ll lose.

If that’s salted, he’s going to be itching for a week.

We never really tied up the loose ends of Popcorn Guys story. It’s probably for the best.

You know, the townsfolk really could have walked inside the house anytime they wanted. Luckily the combined IQ of all 26 of Nilbogs population is about 43.Maybe 31 now the Preacher is dead.

There’s that jump-scare I mentioned. It seriously wouldn’t work in any way shape or form, but it got me. On second viewing, it’s just funny to see how plasticine-y the Goblin actually is.

Well, we’re into the final 15 minutes of the film. To not spoil the ending for anyone who might want to see this film, I’ll stop recapping there. Suffice it to say it involves over-acting, Goblins being tossed down stairs, the Healing Power of Love, Exploding Googly Eyeballs and the Awesome Cosmic Power of a Baloney Sandwich.

Yes, I’m quite serious about the Baloney Sandwich.

Wussy Male Lead?: Hmm. Dad was less than manly. On the upside, he was bland and pasty white. And Josh was a squeaky little wussbag. So that’s a yes.
Exploding Cars?: There goes the clean sweep. But then again, that would have been a shade expensive. Especially after those million-dollar Goblin costumes.
Overdancing Extras?: OverACTING extras, yes. And Peter looked like he was doing an interpretive dance, but that might have been his running style.
Strippers?: Nope.
Sweaty People?: Sweat, slime and exploding eyeballs. This movie gets Extra Credit.
Public Urination?: Off-screen, but it was a plot point. So that counts.
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: It was Elliots testes, so the abuse was Mandatory, not Gratuitous.

Skeeter’s Summary: Did I mention this is NOT the Worst Movie Ever? Oh good. Just checking.

Interlude: A Brief Conversation With George

Once Troll 2 had come to its schocking(ly stupid) Twist Ending, Ant undertook the most technological callenge of any Marathon… a phone interview with George Hardy, AKA “Dad”. Surprisingly, the cellphone-connected-to-a-cordless-mic system actually worked perfectly first time. Even more surpisingly, after our first nine hours of films, at 2am, it was George who sounded like he hadn’t slept in weeks. Admittedly, it was 8am local time for him. Admittedly it ‘s got to be a weird experience to do an interview with 200 people half a world away, who are awake at 2am watching a film you made 16 years earlier. But my God, that man can talk.

Every question Ant asked was responded to with a breathless monologue, words not so much uttered as fighting to get out in the right order, huge run-on sentences hitting us with machine-gun pace, always sailing off on unprompted deviations, never coming within a mile of actually answering the question. My query as to whether the IMDB rating was manipulated was replied to with a frantic spiel about the cast screenings, Georges dentistry business and how good the skiing is in Utah. The only real bit of info we gleaned was that the director spoke no English, and the cast spoke no Italian. That answered more than a few questions about the production, I think.

It just raised a lot of questios about George.

After we managed to cut George off and let him go back to bed, (Or whatever nightclub he was partying the hell out of at) Ant promised us something rare for the “Thon. An INTENTIONAL comedy. And like The Thing, the moment it started, I knew what it was.

Part 6: Have We Not Met Before, Movie?
Sunday 02:30-TOP SECRET!

Here’s a blast from the past. I’ll admit, I’ve seen this film more times than I can count, but it’s been about 20 years since I saw it on the big screen. And so, once I spotted Omar Sharif climbing on top of a steam train, I was a happy man. As Ant said later, it’s a very hit-and-miss film at times. But when it his, it hits big time. During this film, as with Crank, Andrea had retreated to a seat to rest her back. I claimed her beanbag, settled in and just enjoyed the flick. I’m assuming my geeky laugh was heard all the way up in the balcony at times during the film. And I don’t give a toss.

If I made a list of everything I love about this film, I’d be here all day. And so I’ll just list a few of the things that made me giggle like a schoolgirl, even after six or seven viewings.

”I got a gun-rack, in my Chevy, for when the surfin’ flak gets heavy!”. (Like I couldn’t love a song called “Skeet Surfing” with my last name. I also love #4 on the charts, “Your Skeetin’ Heart”.)

And Time Permitting, Frank Sinatra.

”There is sauerkraut… in my liederhosen.”

The National Anthems’ lyrics.

”You dropped your funny dog poop.”

The brilliantly choregraphed and straight-faced insanity of the Traditional German Waltz.

Fun with car aerials! (Whirrr… honk honk!)

Proof that “Nuryev” is Russian for “Look at the SIZE of that thing!”:

Janitor!

That frickin’ surreal bit with the road-hog gerbil.

”I’ve even talked to the U.S Ambassador…”

The “attachments” to the Anal Intruder.

Ipso facto, ad naseum… Amen.” BZZZT!

Val Kilmer in “The Great Toilet Escape”. Very loony toony.

Submarine!

The classic “Truckload of Dead Rats” line.

Spooking the bycycles.

Pretty much the entire Blue Lagoon spoof, with a special nod to Nigel spear-fishing for bananas.

Nicks’ balsa-wood make-out guitar.

”I am Albert Potato.”

Have we not met before, m’sieu?”

The succession of window-breaking gags.

Chocolate Mousse’s machine-gun skills.

The rock-n-rollers girl-twirling skills.

That damn fireplace.

”Shhhh!”

”Why are you always in such a bloody hurry! Oooh.”

The sheer brilliance of the Ceramic Nazi. (Yes, I was the sad bastard who applauded that gag.)

Jaws Music!

”Niiiice work!”

Nicks Evil Kanevil-esque Great Escape.

Submariner Bar-fight!

“And I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow!”

Wussy Male Lead?: Well, Val was a decent hero. But the man sure can’t hold his gasoline.
Exploding Cars?: PINTO!
Overdancing Extras?: By design, yes. See my comments on the Waltz.
Strippers?: Well this running theme petered out fast. But it picks up again later…
Sweaty People?: LATRINE!
Public Urination?: No. And it didn’t need it for the movie to be funny. Take THAT, Farrelly Brothers!
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: The calf wasn’t really abusing him, but close.

Skeeter’s Summary: Steelpotato was a little disappointed, as this film played in Wellington last year. I’d have no complaints about waching it once a year. But if there’s a copy of Blazing Saddles hanging around, I’d be even happier.

Another break, another snack break, another belt of caffine. I headed into the centre of the floor and commadeered a vacant beanbag next to Steelpotato and a friend of his whose name predictably escapes me. I was jacked from Top Secret! And ready for the 4AM Sexploiation Feature! With the memory of Confessions… still fresh in my mind, I was ready for a lot a sleazy fun.

And then it all went horribly, horribly wrong.

Remind me why I do this every year, willya?

Part 7: Who Knew Birdwatching Could Be So Dull?
Sunday, 04:15-BEHIND LOCKED DOORS

A few months go I made up a mock poster for the Marathon, using my rudimentary Photoshopping skills. It was a take on the original Saw poster, with a dismembered hand clutching a badly-edited V can. I was pretty happy with my authentic-looking caption of “October 2006” (Out by a couple of weeks, I’ll admit.) and the slogan “You’ll gnaw your own arm off to avoid watching the 3am flick.”.

I was only out by an hour.

I knew we were in trouble right from the start. It wasn’t the title, which hinted at a vouyeristic expose of perverted sexual practices. It wasn’t the print, slightly orange but in pretty good shape. It was the dancing. Lots and lots of dancing.

I’ve watched quite a few Herschell Gordon Lewis flicks recently. And it taught me one important fact. If people dance for more than five minutes at the start of the film, fuck all is going to happen for the next eighty or so. And this was no exception. As in Just For the Hell of It, we watch (supposedly) American teens dance. (Bizarrely, this was shot in South Africa.) And dance. And dance some more. There’s no dialogue. There’s a startling array of musical styles used, but everyone just keeps on jitterbugging away in the same fashion. One couple sneak off and there’s a pair of bared breasts four minutes in. We ignore that as being too interesting and begin following a pudgy birdwatcher. He sneaks into the barn where the dancers are continuing to dance. There’s still no dialogue. There’s a hell of a lot of dancing, though.

Like I said, I knew we were in trouble.

Less than five minutes in, Steelpotato and I were already beginning to dissect the flick. After what felt like fifteen minutes of dancing two pairs of breasts had been bared, one during an attempted rape scene. I hate rape scenes. Even attempted ones. Doubly so when it’s used for titilation purposes. About now I remarked semi-publically “Well, this is a taught political thriller!”.

It’s possible I announced that a little too loudly. In fact, a few quips later, our group received a subtle, but obvious “tone it down” warning from Ant, who was seated a row behind us in his Gigantic Mobile Throne. Okay, I received the warning. But as an occasional stand-up comedian and a full-time sarcastic prick, I couldn’t help it. There’s some sex films that suck you in with their perceptive, witty script. There’s some sex flicks that ditch the pretentions and just go for the T and A. And then there’s sex films made in the 1960’s. Before even Playboy could show pubic hair was no time to make a sex film. An era where a minute of coy nudity was worth sitting through ten minutes of clothed people dancing to hot jazz. When a long dicussion about sex was apparently sexier than seeing anything that resembled actual sex. When the only perversion happens off-screen via sound effects. When people would pay money to watch a bloated birdwatcher cover himself in baby oil.

The Marathon is a strange beast. At times you sit there looking at your watch, saying to yourself “Man, there’s only ninteen hours to go! This’ll be over before I even get warmed up!”. Other times you also stare at your watch, wondering how the hell a digital can STOP. I swear to God time was running backwards for a while there. Flashbacks to Psychout to Murder came flooding back. I’d staved off the 3am Stomach Cramps with bread and salami, but this flick was going to make me break out the Mylanta in short order. There was a brief but memorable masturbation scene, enhanced tremendously by Steelpotato’s perfectly-timed “POP” sound effect. The film resumed its former lacksidasical pace. I was no longer at the Hollywood, but Satans own private theatre, the Hadesplex. My notes read “Tedium in 10 minutes or your money back!”. Below that was the succint analysis “This movie sucks!” I’d even underlined the word “sucks”. Twice. I closed my eyes and listened to the soundtrack, which I probably unfairly dismissed later as “Library Music”. Ant assures me it’s an original, and regarded as a classic amongst 60’s film scores. To me it was the soundtrack to Purgatory. I wanted to riff, I wanted to crack wise, I wanted to yell abuse at the screen! To steal a line from the B-Movie Messagebaord, I wanted to rip off my own penis and throw it at the screen in defeat. But Ant had spoken, and so I suffered in silence. Finally, I risked a look behind me.

He’d fallen asleep.

I think that might have been my breaking point.

For the rest of the flick Steelpotato and I quietly riffed the flick. But it was a forlorn effort. The film gave us nothing to work with, and even the double-whammy of unexplainable-barring-a-concussion ending and a I’ll-hook-up-with-the-NICE-rapist
coda was no help. The movie ended like it started, with a whimper. I think I was the one whimpering.

According to his blog, Raven has brought pretty much every film Ants’ screened at the last four marathons. If he even THINKS of buying Behind Locked Doors, I’ll fly to Christchurch and sign the commital papers myself.

Wussy Male Lead?: Pudgy is a synonym for Wussy, right?
Exploding Cars?: The most exciting vehicular stint was a Leaky Car. Thrills!
Overdancing Extras?: Only the entire cast.
Strippers?: In a coy, 60’s kind of way.
Sweaty People?: Oily, sweaty and pudgy. Why does Ant hate us?
Public Urination?: I’d like to take a whizz on the negative, yes.
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: The movie sucker-punched me all right.

Skeeter’s Summary: Ant calls this film “hypnotic”. It sure made me very, very sleepy. Possibly the dullest study in peversity ever! (Until Body of Evidence premiered, that is.)

I returned to my seat with the BMA Crew, and prepared for the next film. As much as anyone could prepare for the assault on our senses that was to follow.

Part 8: What the Bloody Fuck?
Sunday, 05:50-LIZSTOMANIA

You see that tagline between “Part 8” and “Sunday” up there? Twenty or thirty minutes into the flick, that line was shouted by some guy in the balcony. I concur, good sir. It became the running gag for the rest of the flick, and indeed, the rest of one other film before the night was out. In fact it became a kind of rallying cry, used to stop our brains exploding every twenty minutes or so from then on.

On the other hand, Ant finally found a solution for that tricky pre-breakfast slot that was the death of Breakin’ and Guyana: Cult of the Damned in the last two years. The solution is a borderline genius-slash-mental case called Ken Russell.

(An aside. While typing the last paragraph, I accidently pasted the contents of my clipboard into the sentence. Thus creating the film Guyana: Cult of the Gratuitous Testicular Abuse. I’d pay to see that.)

Anyhoo, when Ant announced that the next film would be from the works of Mr. Russell, Fallback said “Man, I hope it’s Lisztomania!” I’m now contemplating signing his commital papers as well. Because this film is as bonkers as only Ken Russell and a ton of now-broke investors money could make it. From the moment Roger Daltrey appeared on-screen, clad in only a diaper, accompanied by a naked woman and her affronted, sword-wielding husband, we knew we were in for the type of ride you’d have if you dropped a little acid before watching Crank.

Okay, a LOT of acid.

EXTREMELY loosely based on the life of composer Franz Liszt, this trippy flick comes off as a combination of a rock opera, a thinly-vieled (Okay, bloody obvious) political analogy and the over-blown fantasies of a then-hot director able to command massive sums to create his “art”. If gigantic penis-shaped columns, bum-saunas, wacky musical tributes to Charlin Chaplin and Roger Daltrey riding a ten-foot long mechanical erection are considered “art”. He fills the screen, packing it with insane, wall-to-wall visuals, pop culture references, naked people AND treats us to the sight of Ringo Starr as the Pope. The film melds period costumes and modern-day settings, lets Roger Daltrey play Franz Lizst as… well, Roger Daltrey, (While at times looking scarily like a young Triple-H) and tosses in every other compser you can think of in one incredibly crowded opening sequence.

The plot almost seems a secondary concern, and frankly I have no way of relating it without going batshit insane myself, but it finally gels around Liszts rivalry with Richard Wagner.(Who I’m almost certain is played by the same actor that was Cousin Kevin in Russells almost equally-bonkers version of Tommy. And yes, the IMDB confirms that.) Which in Russell demented vision culminates in a deranged Wagner raising an army of children dressed like members of the Mickey Hitler Club. (I did of course try to create a singalong theme song with Andrea. H-I-T, L-E-R! Oh, and I think of dressing like a Nazi Superkid next Halloween.) Wagner then creates a Robot Glam Rocker, starts World War II and becomes Giant Zombie Hitler, (I repeat… What the bloody fuck?) before being destroyed by Dead-Via-Voodoo-Liszt and his Angelic Air Force in their Pipe-Organ Starship.

And all that happens in the last fifteen minutes. I’m not even going into detail about the Ten-Foot Strap-On Penis scene.

On any other night, THAT might be the weirdest thing you’d see. Little did I know we were still three films away from topping everything in this film, and any three others you’d like to mention.

But I’ll give it this much. While the film is erratic, pretentious and makes your brain beg for mercy… it sure as hell isn’t boring.

Oh and did I mention it’s a musical?

Wussy Male Lead?: It’s Roger Daltrey. I’m not dissing Roger Daltrey.
Exploding Cars?: Nope. Exploding piano-shaped coffins. You read that right.
Overdancing Extras?: In a Ken Russell film? Yes. Naked ones.
Strippers?: Nope. He probably decided it was either the strippers of the smoke-belching buttocks. Good choice, Ken.
Sweaty People?: Fer sure.
Public Urination?: I think so, but in this film there could have been a pink elephant and a troupe of nude midgets on unicycles and I might not have noticed them. So don’t quote me.
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: Well, if that was the size of Franzies’ winkie, his testicles were being abused by gravity at the very least.

Skeeter’s Summary: Boobs, Dracula, Chaplin and Zombie Hitler. God, I love classical music.

Sunday, 08:00-ish: BREAKFAST!

With everyone severley woken the hell up, it was time for breakfast. Ant and Stephen ran a quick giveaway at first, with some trivia. Until Stephen started a question with “In Behind Closed Doors…” and they both went blank. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one that movie brain-fucked. I was called upon to provide a question, which turned out to be the only one I used that night. (Despite writing up a dozen or so for my expected end-of-marathon quiz, which never eventuated. I never even had the chance to give away Robocop or Battlefield Earth, which are now back in my DVD cabinet. Luckily I like both, for completely different reasons.)

Had I known it’d be my only appearance on stage, I probably wouldn’t have asked my sexist and juvenile “How many pairs of boobs appeared in Behind Closed Doors?” question. And yes, I did count. Hey, I needed SOMETHING to do during that dreary fuck of a film.

It was seven, by the way.

And so we retired to the Bakehouse Café for breakfast. Learning from last years 200-covers-in-an-hour experience, they had put on a breakfast buffet this year. For seven-fifty a decent-enough feed of eggs, bacon , hash browns, sausage and toast was procurred, and eaten while working out exactly what the hell we had just watched in the last two hours. Most of the talk was about Lisztomana, of course. I even discovered Stephen Grey and the “Hey, It’s That Weird Bad Movie Afternoon Guy” chicks discussing the flick in front of a laundromat on my way back to the Hollywood. Mr. Grey did try to convince me that the film was actually pretty historically accurate. Oooo-kay.

Incidently, it’s somewhat of a testament to the suberb of Hollywood that several hundred people in pyjamas and dressing gowns didn’t raise an eyebrow amongst the “normal people” who were out and about at 8am on a Sunday. Gotta love West Aucklands’ “don’t look, don’t ask any silly questions, don’t make eye contact.” attitude to people like us. Appitites saited by our breakfast of salt, cholesterol and Watties Tomato Sauce, we returned to the theatre. And with the appearance of Gerry Andersons’ “Century 21” logo, we were into the Nostalgia section of the ‘fest.

Part 9: A Little More Adante in the String Section, Please!
Sunday, 08:40-THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!

I’ll have to admit, once I saw the Centry 21 logo, I was mentally chanting “Captain Scarlet! Captain Scarlet!”. But deep down I knew what film we were about to see. (Mainly because Captain Scarlet only made a TV movie.) And yes, it did my heart good to hear people cheering for the intro to a 40-year-old kiddie flick starring huge-craniumed puppets. But internally, I was more than a little downbeat. For one thing, I had watched about 90% this movie on Sky TV probably less than eight months ago. I had even written a review of it, now lost to history in the Great 50Megs Page Erasing of ‘06. And I knew this movie has two major flaws.

One, it’s really aging badly. Aside from the dated dialogue, the slightly-racist charater of Tintin and the fashions that would make a blind man recoil, the appearance of the “Galxay’s Greatest Singing Star” turns the “sci-fi” into “oh, my”. Because it’s Cliff Richard.

yeah, I know the film calls him “Cliff Richard, Jr.” But seriously, what are the odds of Sir Cliff procreating? We all know it’s that near-immortal SOB gyrating his way through an insanely catchy, though ultimately meaningless pop ditty. In it’s entirety, while the plot grinds to a halt. And therein lies another, more serious problem with the flick.

It’s kind of dull.

Seriously, for the first fifteen minutes, there’s nary a Thunderbird to be seen. We’re shown every groovy and gimmicky set that Gerry and Slyvia could afford to build, from kitset interstellar craft to transforming hangers, to sets that prove that in the 21st Century nobody needs to walk anywhere if their desk can be mounted on rails and driven around like a golf cart. We see real hands turn knobs. This garned a cheer the first time around, and a much more muted one by the twent-third time the technique was used. We see the aborted forst attempt to send a spaceship to Mars. It gets sabotaged, crashes and explodes. And that’s pretty much all the action we’ll get to see for the next hour or so.

Even when the Thunderbirds do show up, the first thing they do is an escort mission, in which NOTHING goes wrong. That’s like having a Rambo movie where Stallone never runs into the enemy. After this rather long and dull opening act, they return to their private island and present us with the excruiciating second act. About half an hour spent in the pysche of Alan Tracey. Its almost unbelievable to me now that so much of the film was used to explore Alans’ severe case of Youngest Child syndrome, complete with his pouting, sulking and borderline erotic dreams about Lady Penelope. Who was the target audience for this film again? Ten-year old Thunderbird fans weren’t buying tickets for this lengthy melodrama. They were there for the cool spaceships, the funky gadgets, and above all the exploding minature sets.

Sadly, the film saves eveything in reserve for one huge, explosive finale. And by the time it gets to it, we’re already so numbed by the Alan Tracey Let’s-Wallow-in-Self-Pity Hour that it’s just too little, WAY too late. And so, knowing what the film had in store for me, I did the unthinkable. Something that I would ever even have contemplated in past shows. Something I thought I’d never, EVER do.

I curled up in a vacant seat and tried to catch some Z’s.

Let’s put this into perspective. In ‘04 my head nodded a couple of times during Pychout to Murder. Call it twenty seconds shut-eye, tops. In ‘05, I was fighting to stay awake during Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, which was in no way due to the film itself. I drifted into my own little world during Emily Rose, but never actually fell asleep. And here I was actually TRYING to fall asleep.

And failing. My foot was pressed firmly up against the back of Chris’s beanbag, and everytime I did drop off, my ankle cramped up, waking me right the hell back up. And everytime I did wake up and looked at the screen, there was a human hand turning a knob.

Eventually I gave up sleep as a bad idea. I’d probably notched up 15 minutes naptime in the laste hour. On the big screen, Alan was involved in some heroic wire-twiddling that would save the lives of three men and help cause the destruction of an entire town. It was a suitably explosive finale to a rather pedestrian film. But all I could think was that at this stage of the film, Captain Scarlett would have been taking names and kicking ass.

Martian ass, of course.

Wussy Male Lead?: Alan was the male lead for the most part. So for the most part, that’s a yes.
Exploding Cars?: And houses, and oil refineries and schools. But only in the last five minutes.
Overdancing Extras?: As much as a semi-mobile puppet can overdance, yes.
Strippers?: It’s a kids flick, dude. Don’t get your hopes up.
Sweaty People?: Sweaty puppets. In bed. Not like that, you perverts!
Public Urination?: No, that was Team America’s deleted scenes...
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: What testicles?

Skeeter’s Summary: Man, half of all the IMDB comments on this film make it sound brilliant! There’s something to be said for the blinding power of nostalgia. Stick to the TV series.

Part 10: Action Grissom!
Sunday, 10:40-TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A

I returned to the Fallbacks row in the stalls as Ant shiffled the line-up, not wanting to hit us with a trippy 70’s flick right after the T-birds. He instead gave us an action film to wake us up a little. Sadly, Crank had already done that 12 hours earlier, and this gritty 80’s crime drama just wasn’t going to be a fair comparison. It had a lot of interesting elements, such as a young (and thin. And athletic) William Petersen, AKA Gil Grissom of C.S.I in the leading role. It featured the second appearance of Willam Defoe in the Marathon, making him the first Martathon Repeat Offender. (Doug offered to bet me that Mr. Dafoe would be playing the villan. I declined the wager. It saved me money.) It has a hell of a twist ending that had me go from semi-drowsing to wide awake in two seconds.

BUT...

Right about the time proto-Grissoms partner mentioned he was just three days from retirement, I knew we were on the Action Cliche Express. And that the partner was a dead man walking. The script gamely dragged out every Cop Movie Convention you can name, dusted them down and ran thme past us. Visit to a strip club as part of the investigation? Yep. Cop goes outside the law to solve his partners murder? Uh-huh. Car chase breaks out in L.A and ends up in the sewer system, getting passed by both Arnold Schwarzenegger on a Harley and the giant ants from Them going the other way? Well, apart from Arnie and the ants, yes.

And frankly this isn’t an actioner. It’s a long crime drama, with much more plot than action. After near on seventeen hours of movies, and twenty-four hours since I last slept properly, I just didn’t have anywhere near the attention span the film required to enjoy it properly. I was missing chunks of the flick, not so much sleeping as just staring blankly at the screen, unable to work out what was happening. The car chase scene woke me up a little, because let’s face it, car chases are ALWAYS cool. But even that seemed a little tacked-on. I added some caffine into my system in the shape of a Coke, but it was probably a lost cause by then, as the film just failed to grab my attention until that remarkable finale. It probably didn’t help that William Petersen’s character was a bit of a prick, either.

Several people I talked to really enjoyed the film, though. Maybe they had slept through Behind Closed Doors. Lucky bastards.

Wussy Male Lead?: Skinny, but not wussy.
Exploding Cars?: I can’t really recall.
Overdancing Extras?: Huh? Is the movie over yet?
Strippers?: Yep… in the background only, though.
Sweaty People?: *snort* I’m awake! I’m awake!
Public Urination?: No idea. Need sleep.
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: Almost certainly.

Skeeter’s Summary: Might have been better served with an earlier spot. But that would have pushed Behind Closed Doors into a slot that would have forced me to stab myself in the face with a ballpoint pen. So it’s for the best, really.

We were running behind schedule by now, so the breaks were just the few minutes needed to change reels. Which meant there was no time to brace for impact as Film Eleven kicked into life. A film that will probably never be equalled in its ability to mind-rape an entire audience, even if the V runs annually for the next fifty years.

Part 10: How Many Surrealists Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb? Blue Lemon Pixies!
OR
Holy Shit!
OR
Did Everything Just Taste Purple There For a Second?
Sunday, 12:45-THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

So here we are. The moment I’ve been dreading. The un-recappable film rears its ugly head. This is possibly the reason my review has blown out so wildly this year, in an unconcious attempt to delay the inevitable. (Either that, or I’m just a blabbermouth in deperate need of some self-editing skills.) But here goes. Let’s commune with the Universe, contemplate our navels and try to determine what the bloody fuck was going on. Which is a task equivalent to describing the smell of the number 3.

The Holy Mountain is the work of one Alexandro Jodorowsky, film-maker and surrealist. Possibly not in that order, either. This film, his follow-up to equally surreal western El Topo is one of the rarest films ever to appear at the V, with only a few prints still in existance. (Oddly, it gets beaten out by Troll 2, which became the first flick to be shown via a DVD since Street Wars. Ant even hunted down the director, and was unable to source a print. I’ve been trying to hunt down Jamaa Fanakaa, director of Street Wars, but only because I think he owes me two hours of my life back.)

Reading up on Jodorowsky post-‘Thon I found a quote where he states his intention to “do with films what Americans attempt to do with hallucinogenic drugs”. All I can say is, mission well and truly accomplished, dude. I once had such a high fever I hallucinated that Michael Caine had put a bomb under my bed, and it was STILL a weirder experience to be sitting in the Hollywood stone-cold sober watching The Holy Mountain. If my underpants had gained sentintince half-way through the film and discussed Euclidian Geometry with my last remaining salami stick, I would have ignored it, since something stranger was almost assuredly happening on-screen. I discovered I’ve used the phrase “and then my brain exploded” too lightly, as this time I’m sure I FELT it go Kablooie… three or four times to be precise! Twice during the film there was a sharp CRACK sound from the front of the theatre. That was me, smacking myself in the face with my notebook to ensure I hadn’t fallen asleep during Thunderbirds Are Go and was simply having a vivid, caffine-induced dream.

Folks, I’ve never done drugs. But now I know what they’re like. From the moment the film kicked off, with Jodorowsky, appearing as a cross between a Shaolin Monk and Gandalf the White, shaving the heads of two naked woman, to the moment he turned the entire flick into a shaggy-dog story two hours later, was perhaps the most deranged and trippy experience of my life. To even try to desribe the plot would be an exercise in futility, but before long we had seen a sweat-stained Jesus impersonator lying in a puddle of his own urine, a stunted dwaf rescuing him from a mob of rock-throwing naked boys, tourists happily photographing soldiers gunning down and shagging innocent civilians, Jesus making duck noises while costumed frogs re-enact the conquest of Mexico, and more unexplained animals than a petting zoo. We would go on to meet people representing the planets, including the poor bastard “from Uranus”, witness the Mechanical Orgasm Machine, hear copius amounts of Peru-bashing and look at more sweaty male butt-cracks than should be allowed by law.

The entire film is a series of visuals, some obvious, (The Jesus-ish Dude surrounded by false wax images of himself, for instance. Most of which reminded me of “Buddy Jesus”, I have to admit.) some unexplainable, (Turning Not-Really Jesus’s shit into gold comes to mind.) some repugnant (The armless, enraged dwarf) and some a combination of all three. (The old guy lovingly handing his glass eye to a seven-year-old prostitue.) It all seems to revolve around a (possibly metaphorical) journey for Jesus Guy and his (also possibly metaphorical) dwarf friend, along with a bunch of kind-of-disciples, to the Holy Mountain, where the Cosmic Truth is revealed to be “There really is no Cosmic Truth, you know.”

Does any of this recap make sense? I can’t tell anymore. My notes are no help, as only two sentences make any more sense than the film. One reads “He’s not the Messiah, and I have no fucking clue what’s going on!”. The other syas “My brain hurts”. The only other thing I wrote is a long sequence of words like “Buh? Th’ Hell? Whaaa? Huh? Monkey!”.

When a film reduces you to writing down your confused sounds, you know it’s a brain-snapper.

I did like the monkey, though.

About twenty minutes in, I tore my eyes away from thescreen and looked back toward the projection booth. From my position near the front of the house, I noticed an amazing thing. Each and every person in the theatre was sitting bolt upright, eyes fixed on the screen. Not one single motherhumper in the house was asleep, wheras at this time last year the place looked like a triage ward. Everyone had the same expression, too… a mixture of concentration, confusion and mild amusement. By the end of the film, a few people had dropped off, but most were still wide awake, compelled to keep watching for the same reason I did. Namely, just to see what else the movie had left to throw at us. We kept watching, it kept throwing.

Finally it faded to white, and I had a huge revelation.

I finally realised what Lizstomania was trying to say.

I still have no clue what The Holy Mountain was all about, though.

Interestingly, when discussing the film afterwards, everyone seemed to have a different perception of how long the film ran. Some people thought the film was well over two hours, some didn’t think it was even nintey minutes. It was about 1:50-ish by my watch. I had to double-check my notes to make sure.

It sure didn’t feel like it.

Wussy Male Lead?: Which one, Jesus or the Stumpy Dwarf?
Exploding Cars?: No, but plenty of exploding brains.
Overdancing Extras?: I’ll have to watch the film about eighty more times and get back to you.
Strippers?: Nekkid people galore, but no pole dancing.
Sweaty People?: Yes. Mainly their butt-cracks in glorious close-up..
Public Urination?: Right off the bat.
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: Brain hurts. Ooh, monkeys!

Skeeter’s Summary: Can I get back to you once my brain processes this film properly? Say in 200 years, give or take?

Part 12: Who’s the Black Screenwriter Who’s a Bit of a Dick to All the Chicks?
Sunday, 14:50-BLACK AGENT LUCKY KING

With our brains well and truly scrambled, we took another mini-break and then raced right back to the 1970’s. Specifically, the week where Ugly 70’s Fashions actually hit their offical high-point of Ugliness. This was one of the few prints that was really showing its age, and frankly it was a blessing. Fading this print to orange-purple actually managed to DEcrease the films eye-blistering colour scheme by a factor of ten, at least.

It was patently obvious from the pre-credits sequnce that we were in for some Blaxplo-tainment. Huge flares, giant afro, 70’s muscle car. Hit the wacka-chicka guitars and make with the funk!

Then the title appeared. I loved it… both descriptive and nonsensical in the extreme. It was such a jumbled phrase I suddenly became convinced we were about to be hit with a bad-ass kung-fu flick starring some guy who thought he was Jim Kelly. I was to be somewhat disappointed as the expected martial arts action and badly-dubbed dialogue failed to materialise. Because that title is more than a bit misleading. In fact it’s a (very) alternate title to Solomon King, and its star Sal Watts doesn’t think he’s Jim Kelly.

On the contrary, he thinks he’s Richard Roundtree.

Yes, from the soundtrack to the style to the ‘tude, this is an out-and-out loveletter to Shaft. In fact, it’s less of a loveletter than an obscene phonecall, so blantant is the ripping-off at times. How blatant? I haven’t even SEEN Shaft, but after having Youtubed (Yerah, it’s a verb now. Live with it.) the opening credits sequence of the film, I was able to recognise a high-angle shot as a direct steal. And Solomon King, our hero, really does go out of his way to be a sex-machine to ALL the chicks. In L.A.

But there’s a reason that Mr. King apparently has the sexual magnetism of Hugh Hefner, Cassanova and Gene Simmons of KISS combined. And the answer lay in the credits. A Sal/Wa Production? Co-starring “Little Jamie” Watts? With several other Watts’es in the crew? Hoo-boy. It’s a vanity project.

Having just sat through a double-feature of R.O.T.O.R (produced, written, directed and just about everything elsed by Cullen Blaine) and Battlefield Earth (More maniacal laughter, Mr. Travolta!) I can spot ‘em a mile off. And since a vanity project allows you to be exactly the type of cool mofo you want to be, Mr Watts becomes the baddest brother on the West Coast, bustin’ heads and bonking babes with a bit of bad private dick-ing thrown in for good measure.

So it’s a bad rip-off of Shaft, you say. Well, that’s tue for a certain value of “bad”. Personally, I’m a sucker for blaxploitation flicks, and even the worst I’ve seen are usually pretty good. This one’s a little talky, the early action scenes are pretty random, with the unexpected punch-up and shootuout in the diner being the most obvious time-filler. But Sal makes for a decent enough badass and has enough charisma to carry off the role. There’s a great cameo for a guy playing a pastor who probably WAS one. (He sure wasn’t much of an actor, and I’m sure Sal enlisted all his friends and neighbours in the making of the flick.) MAN could that guy talk up a storm. In fact, he talked so much his dialogue literally over-ran into the next scene, either by design, bad editing or a jump in the aging print. Damn, I wished he’d come back into the film… he was the Afro-American version of George Hardy! Put those two in a room together and they’d still be talking at each other come Doomsday.

But the film isn’t without it’s flaws, too. The plot (and no, I haven’t mentioned the ploot yet. There’s a reason for that. Stay tuned.) was pretty basic, with Solomon King having to protect a possibly-Middle Eastern princess from her evil uncle. Which he does pretty badly in the end, letting her get taken out by a snipers’ Magic Bullet. (Which manges to hit her at a nintey-degree angle to which it was fired.) There’s a number of over-long scenes that add nothing to the plot and are used mainly to put Sal’s family in the flick. (Including one I termed the “Fabulous Chicken-Eating Scene” that showcases all of Sal’s sons, while making the film grind to a halt for five minutes.) The film is really inconsistant in it’s treatment of action scenes. The first shooting is totally bloodless, making me speculate that the budget for squibs and blood bags ran out. The diner-fight is an out-and-out bloodbath in comparison.

But the biggest flaw was one particular scene that nearly caused my physical pain. It started so innocently… Solomon heads to the Kings Row Club for a few drinks and a little man-whoring. (Hey, he’s not the type of guy to spend Friday night sleeping alone!) Sadly, it seems that the entire sequence is an attempt to kick-start a singing career. For the next few, terrifying minutes, we’re “treated” to a jazzy number by a woman I assume was Sals’ main squeeze at the time. It would have been pretty forgettable… except for the chorus. Dear God, what a chorus.

Imagine you’ve used the Brudlefly Machine to fuse together Yoko Ono and Bjork. Now take the creature you’ve created, get it drunk and feed it’s ass slowly into the spinning blades of a bacon slicer. Tape the noise it makes.

That’s a hell of an anaolgy, huh? But trust me, it’s not even HALF as annoying as the sound this chick coud muster up from the depth of her diaphram.

As she hit the forth chorus, I let loose my second public comment of the night. A heart-felt shriek of “OH, SHUT UP!”.

It made me feel better. Doulbly so because she did a few seconds later. Worst musical number since Ant made us Do the Rooster.

But frankly, even this couldn’t make me hate the film. I stayed awake, gamely trying to folow the plot. As it turned out, I shouldn’t have bothered. I’d been checking my watch, concered at how far behind schedule we were. At this rate, Dawn would be sitting outside waiting for me for an hour or so. And suddenly, it happened.

Solomon King and his brother chased a suspect into an alley on a hot-looking Los Angeles afternoon. And abrubtly, it was the middle of a hot-looking night. Solomon and his bro were in camoflague fatigues, accompanied by a tubby Mexican-looking dude we’d never seen before. And together they were assaulting the outskirts of a palace owned by an evil Middle Eastern prince, which in no way looks like a sewer outlet in Hollywood. Okay, yes it does. Someone got shot, but no-one was really sure who. (I assume it was Solomons brother, but I loved the comment from I-Think-His-Name-is-Andrew of “Oh, no! They shot the Random Guy!”.)

Yes, we’d suddenly skipped about three reels, and were right at the end of the film. Not quite the upside-down, running-in-reverse finale of Girly from last year, but pretty close. Solomon had his big throwdown with Evil Uncle Prince, who sportingly left his palace to do battle with Mr. King. (Thus saving a huge budget blowout caused by having to build palace sets.) Solomon kicked some Royal Ass, of course. And we were done.

At least we were back on schedule.

Wussy Male Lead?: You calling Solomon King a wuss? Prepare for an ass-whupping!
Exploding Cars?: Mucsle cars, yes. Exploding? Nah.
Overdancing Extras?: Yes. OverSINGING, VERY yes.
Strippers?: None that I can think of.
Sweaty People?: The seventies always look sweaty in blaxoploitation films. I have no idea why.
Public Urination?: Maybe that happened in the missing reels.
Gratuitous Testicular Abuse: If Solomon wanted too, he would. I don’t think he did, though.

Skeeter’s Summary: I just realised I used the term “man-whoring” in assOciation with Solomon King. If Sal Watts hadn’t passed on, he’d probably find me and kick my honky ass. But what I saw, I liked. Blaxpo rules!

And we were down to the final film. Ant and Stephen gave out the last of the door prizes with a Thunderbird Walk Contest. Meanwhile I bounced up and down in my seat, waiting for Ant to call me up for the final quiz. Which he never did, of course. Fuck it, there’s always next year. And next year I’m bringing copies of Eegah! and Raptor to really make some “winner” hate me. But it was nearly over. The last film. The Traditional Fan Favourite/End of The World flick. And once again I recognised it pretty quickly. Not as fast as I recognised The Thing, but before the credits stopped rolling at least.

Part 13: For Gods’ Sake Skeeter, Don’t Fall Asleep! Skeeter? Well, he’s Toast.
Sunday, 16:15-INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

And so we finished up with a film I’ve seen quite a few times over the years. (Although I discovered I’ve never actually seen it right from the start. I always seem to run across it playing on MGM, coming in a few minutes after it has started.) It’s the mid-seventies version, starring Donald Sutherland, with a supporting role by Donald Sutherlands Huge Moustache. (Bookending the Marathon nicely, as many horrendous ‘taches featured in Lady Terminator.) Having seen this so often, I didn’t have to concentate on the plot, and with it not being as big a film-geek buzz as The Thing, I kind of drifted through the film in a hazy pink brain-cloud. I’d perched myself on the ass-end of Chris’s beanbag, and I’m sure I had a few moments of sitting-up sleep during the film. Still, as wiped-out as I was, it was strangley comforting to be watching Body Snatchers… like I was hanging out with an old friend after a few beers. And that final scene still gives me goosebumps.

Oh, none of the Recurring Themes seemed to recurr. So let’s just skip them, shall we? We’d better, I just checked my watch and found it’s Tuesday. I think I’ve spent enough time on this review for one year.

Skeeter’s Summary: Classic paranoia-filled ‘70s sci-fi. With Leonard Nimoy! Excellent choice, dude.

And so we’d come to the end of another one. We cleaned up after ourselves, doing a fairly decent job as far as I could tell. I bade farewell to the BMA Crew, the Fallbacks and Ant. I mentioned to Ant that these things get tougher every year. On reflection, I’m probably just getting older and wussier every year. Sleeping during a Marathon. I ought to be ashamed of myself.

Steelpotato and his mate needed a lift back to Kingsland, so I found where Dawn had parked and carefully broached the question. I’m glad to report that she graciously agreed to having three Film Geeks and two huge beanbags crammed into out Nissan for the next fifteen minutes or so. Although she did have to roll down the window due to our combined Nerd Reek of sweat, junk-food and stale V. The three of us spent the journey dissecting the films and trying to work out what wouldn’t be screened in Wellington. In the end, Steelpotato did get a second viewing of both The Holy Mountain and Behind Closed Doors. I can’t say I evny him THAT much.

Once we’d dropped the pair of them off, Dawn and I grabbed the traditional Thai take-out and headed home. Normally I’d have crashed ten minutes after finishing my last spring roll, but this year turned out a little different. I first hooked up the 48Hours board to discover a Team America-inspired lament by the not-in-Auckland Raven, and the first apres-Thon post by Fallback, then Dawn convinced me to stay up a little longer and watch Top Gear. And since the World Series of Poker was coming on an hour after that, I dozed on the couch during a documentary on an Amazonian tribe, then watched people play cards for two hours, having somehow having gained my forteenth wind.

By the time I hit the sack it was 1AM. I’d been (mostly) awake for 38 hours straight. That much sleep deprivation does funny things to your mind, man.

I could almost figure out what The Holy Mountain was all about, for instance.

Almost… but not quite.

The Final Thoughts

The following day, I actually had a Movie Hangover. Headache, raw throat, dodgy stomach, the works. I was slightly depressed, due to the fact that it’d be a year before I did that again. But frankly, it was worthy it. An amazing line-up of obscure, challenging films, coupled with crowd-pleasing, entertaining crap, and sweetened with some old favourites I’d never expected to see on a big screen again. There were a few dead spots for me, and one somebody-shoot-me-this-film-hurts flick, but they were pretty minor in comparison to the high-spots. The lack of new-school films didn’t hurt one little bit… and Crank was an inspired choice. People still thnk I’m crazy for going to these things.

I say, you’re crazy if you miss it.

Groovy.

The Thank Yous

As always, thanks to Ant for being the B-Movie Puppeteer pulling the strings. We always forget to thank him on the day, but I seriously intend to next year, even if I have have to storm the stage and yank that microphone out of his hand. Thank you Dawn, for not divorcing me on an annual basis… that’s now five nights we’ve spent apart in eleven years. All of which have been due to the ‘Thon. Thanks to the Hollywood once again. If I ever win Lotto, I’m writing you a cheque to keep that place running. And to every single one of you crazy Marathoners who showed up, cheered, booed, laughed at lousy Italian Zombies and managed to keep a relatively straight face during George’s intervew, I salute you. You guys and girls rock.

See you next year.

At the movies.

ADDENDUM\ERRATA: A couple of things were brought to my attention after making this review public. One, Steelpotato is from Wellington, not Christchurch. Which means he flew up from a city that was actually showing the Marathon, watched, then went home and watched it again. The word 'hardcore' becomes an understatement. Ant apparently made the "POP" sound effect, not Steel. Well played, good sir. (He also denies sleeping during Behind Closed Doors, but I know what I saw, dude.) And I forgot to give props to BMM-Board regular Tim "Telstarman" Lehrener, whose B-Fest CDs were the obvious inspiration for my Maraton Mix CDs. Rock on, man.

MINI REVIEW: Blood Tide

2006-10-22T23:06:00.000+13:00

NOTE: Blood Tide was a movie "gifted" to me as part of the B-Movie Messagebaords "Pass the Turkey" Review Circle game. I can't complain, it was my idea.

But I'll complain anyway.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I like my movies in one of two ways. Very, very good. Or very, very bad. I can't stand people who settle for mediocrity.

Blood Tide is the pinnacle of mediocrity.

In just over eighty minutes of running time, the closest thing to an action sequence we see is James Earl Jones punching open a watermrelon. The closest thing to any sex or nudity is a 1/16th-of-a-second boobie shot that re-defines both "gratuitous" and "piontless". And the closest thing to the effect of the movie is a general anesthetic.

The plot (term loosely used) centers around Neil (Marty Kove, the Evil Sensei from The Karate Kid) and his new bride Sherry (Mary Louise Weller from.. well, sweet fuck-all, really.) Arriving on the Greek isle of Cinnimon. Cimmaron. Symmilie. Anyhoo, they're there to find Neils missing sister Madeline. There they meet crusty treasure hunter Frye (James Earl Jones) and his shapely-though-dumb assistant Barbara who's accidently released an ancient horror from the deeps..

Okay, ignore that last paragraph. It kind of makes the film sound like it may be interesting. It isn't. The first 45 minutes could well be titled "James Earl Jones: What I Did on My Summer Vacation", as we watch him lie around on the beach, dive into a dank cave, and cit-chat with our insipid leads. (To give you an impression of how much impact they made on me, I had to use the IMDB to remember their names. I finished watching the flick five minutes ago.) Eventually the monster does get released, but don't get too excited about that. In the remaining 40 minutes or so, the two(!) shots we get of it (discounting a brief shot of the critters webbed hand) last about one second, tops. I'm aware that if your monster suit looks shoddy, it's best to hide it. But rubbery gill-man or not, we really are missing our creature-features Creature. The last 15 minutes of the flick see the already-wafer-thin plot wobble off course, with a little off-screen slaughter of nuns, auto-self-pleasure-by-unexplained-mystic-amulet and an unsatisyfying James Earl Jones Explody finale.

I'm at a loss how to pad this review out, folks. Seriously, nothing happens. There's unsubtitled Greek dialogue, which is all Greek to... well, you know. The minscule budget means James Earl Jones's salary was evidently deducted from the lighting budget, as many of the opening scenes are so dimly lit, it's more akin to a radio play than a motion picture. James himself looks like he took the flick to avoid paying for a European vacation. Marty Kove looks like a chunky Micheal Landon, and Babs's gratuitous topless scene is filmed from the back only. Jaws rip-off attack scenes are a given. The 80's soundtrack is big on Casio musical stings and awful ballads. And the island itself is pretty butt-ugly by Greek standards.

In the end, only two major questions have been raised from me.

1) Was the UK cut of this film (FIFTEEN minutes longer than the U.S version) even MORe boring?

and

2) Why the hell did Neil give his sister and WAY-too intimate tongue kiss after rescuing her? Ick, dude.

OTHER RECENT MINI-REVIEWS:

(And repeat viewings)

Battlefield Earth: Still excellent, mindless fun. John Travoltas' wild over-acting is awe-inspiring. Goofy plot elements, idiotic characters, laugh-out-loud dialogue. A modern B-Classic.

Robot Monster: Brilliant stuff. Gorillas in diving helmets. Billion Bubble Machines. Insane dialogue. Craptacular plot. Abrubt bouts of claymation dinosaur stock footage. A bonkers wedding sequence that would make David Lynch go "Huh?". The "Must, but cannot" speech. The Space Platform that's spinning in cirlces trailing smoke and flames while emitting a noise like a bumble-bee with a faceful of Raid. The "Sonic Hotdog" Brand Soldering Iron. The brilliant 'You're so bossy, you ought to be milked before you go to bed." line. Homicide of a Minor. Grips-hand-in-shot. The Rug-out-from-under-the-feet ending. Cheese Factor Five. Thumbs WAY up for our sort of required viewing. "Normal" people need not apply.

REVIEW: Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn

2006-08-23T20:56:00.000+12:00

Hey, guess what? I found a review on the laptop I'd forgotten to add to the Blog. Excellent, more content, less work.

METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN (1983)

We're heading way back down Fading Memory Lane, with a brief stopover in What-Was-I-Thinking Lane? This movie is in fact the first movie I ever saw on home video, back at the tender age of ten. A friend of my mothers let me pick a film to watch on his enormous, top-loading VCR, and, being a huge sci-fi fan, I grabbed this one. Looking at the video box, it may not have been the wisest choice. Luckily, Mac, the owner of said VCR, picked another sci-fi movie, a bizarre flick invovling cattle mutilations. At least my film had explosions.

So, let's see what my taste was like back in the long-forgotten year of 1983.

I'm going with Bullet Points, so my brain doesn't implode after reviewing 2 Cannon Films movies in Two Days.

Wow, the tape looks in pretty good shape for a 22-year-old film! I must have been the only one to watch this since then...

A preview for 2020: Texas Gladiators. that appears to have been editied by a blind butcher with Parkinsons. Looks like entertaining crap, though.

And we're underway! I think, this copyright warning is taking ages.

Arista Films present... the flick that bankrupted them, probably.

Oh crap, it's a Charles Band film? My early taste was worse than I though.

Superman rip-off titles, quasi-John Williams score! (Actually, it's pretty reminiscent of Krull at times. It wasn't too bad, in its' own right.)

Starring Tim Tomerson! Kelly Preston! And Richard Moll!

Oh, did I mention this was in 3-D? The acroynm P3DFX means "Pointless 3-D Effect" from now on.

Richard Band! Albert Band! Charles Band! It's a family affair, all right.

Aggh, it's a Cinema 360 experience!

The new Winnebago Deus Ex! With optional armor-plating and extra-wide wheelbase!

Our possible Hero looks like an extra from Battlestar Galactica.

Look, we shot a lot of driving footage, and we're using all we got, okay!

Meet Mr. Latex-Face!

Superimposed Laser Battle!

Man, Traffic Cops of the Future are STRICT!

Hero Guy 1: Bad Guys 0

If Mad Max had been made in 3D, I'd be watching it at the moment.

Archeologists... of the FUTURE!

They're in "Nomad Territory"... I though Nomads were kind of, y'know, Nomadic?

She found a rock! A valuable rock!

Dune Buggy Alert!

Aww, he broke that guys' rock and splashed him with liquid lime Jell-o! Damn you, Mr. Extendo-Hand!

Ten Minutes in and I'm confused as Hell already. I THINK he got zapped to another deimension to get killed. Or something.

Captain Wiener to the rescue! Either that, or he's going dirt-biking. (If his outfit is any guide.)

Ranger Doujin.. Do-jin... Anyhoo, he's our hero. (Or "Captain Wiener" as I quickly dubbed him.) Jared-Syn's the badguy who broke "The Treaty".

Metalarm Guy is "Baal"... Jared-Syns chip-off-the-old-DNA-Extractor.

Prospector Girls seems to be our Luke Sykwalker charater. She's stealing his dialogue, anyway.

They're cremating Dad? Wouldn't he just boil and vapourise?

"Sorry your Dad died... must be off, the Dykes on Bikes parade kicks off in an hour..."

Long emotional scenes would be better if we knew more about the beareved girl. Like, her name for instance.

Ack, Jared-Syn is the Two-Tone Limey Mark Hamil!

Red Shiny Crystals of DEATH! (I knew that New Age crap was dangerous.)

Whoa, where the hell are we now? Some scruffy hermits' cave? Weird place to run a crystal appraising service, but I'll go with it for now.

"It's not a power-cell... not the new iPod... maybe it's a windchime?"

Oh, it's a Pong crystal.

Okay, seriously, it's a life-force storage crystal. From the Lost City of Set. "Can you take us there?" To a lost city? Sounds tricky.

Rhodes is the man who'll lead them to Set. Not Dusty, I hope. If ya weeeel!

Attack of the VW Beetle... OF THE FUTURE!

Okay, it's a chase scene. Baal likes to drive with the tongue poking out. Must have been cloned fron the DNA of an Irish Setter.

Small Car, Mammoth Car Explody!

Shit, Baal ran down the only piece of vegetation in a thousand miles. He IS evil!

Do all cars have an automatic self-destruct system that triggers if you drive off a cliff? Because, like always, that car didn't hit anything before going Kablooie.

Unexplained Futuristic Sound Effect!

P3DFX!: Extendo-Claw to Camera.

Man, he got him with the Lime-Green Snot-Gun of DOOM!

Still trying to work out what the Green Goop does. I THINK Doujins' unable to be zapped to Jared-Syn's dimesion because she was hanging on to him. Weird flaw in his Evil Technonlgy?

REALLLLY Long slow-mo shot of Jared-Syn doing... nothing. Still on that shot. He's evil, we get it. Can we move on, please? Second-longest shot ever. (And thank you SO much for reminding me of Pyschout to Murder, movie.)

Unmotivated Romantic Subplot!

DIANAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa! Thanks for giving us her name, at least.

Attack of the Neon Walrus Face! Love the cartoon ligtning bolts!

Fun Fact: Cartoony Neon Monsters are vulnerable to tiny trickles of water.

"Yes, I know my armor is three sizes too big. Shut up."

Oddly, Jared-Syns' accent makes it sound like she's being threatened by Sam Neil.

Sweaty leather armor abounds, and everyone lives in the deseet. Man, the future must really stink to high heaven.

Meanwhile, in the poor mans' Mos Eisly.

The Cantina under Canvas!

Tim Tomerson IS Rhodes! Was that guy EVER young?

A cameo appearance by the Futuristic Rodney King!

Shootout at the O.K Dustbowl! Tim Tomerson IS Doc Holliday!

They had "Sand Wars"? Who fights over sand? (Unless there's oil hidden underneath it, I suppose.)

Wow, a tree? In the context of this future, that's practically a National Park.

"You are now entering Cylopean Territory. Abandon Depth Perception, all ye who enter here."

Where the hell are the Pointless 3D Effects? I'd feel cheated if I'd paid money and wore those stupid glasses for this. (Well, maybe they were just trying to be subtle about it... unlike Friday the 13th, Part 3)

Warning! Mole attack immenent!

Little too much smoke, Mr. Director... Hello? Anyone still in this movie?

They found the H. R Gieger Memorial!

"All this way for a 1970's fruit bowl? What a gyp!"

SOCK PUPPET ATTACK! My God, that made my day... little hessian sock puppets with pointy teeth attacking our Heroes. Tremors they weren't, but funny as hell they were. Kinda cute, too.

Richard Moll IS the Cyclops!

Cyclops Law means trespass and die! Jehovahs Witnesses must have a bloody hard time in the future.

Cyclops Richard Moll vs Captain Wiener in the Pit! This Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

P3DFX: Knife in the Camera!

Fun Fact: Having only one eye makes knife-fighting a bitchkitty. Yay, Captain Weiner!

"Go in peace, Captain Weiner... now get off my land!"

A not-bad vehicular stunt... Ballsy stuntmen, too.

Chase Scene #2!

Okay, more like "Drive in Circles Scene", but still...

Baals' makeup effects make him constatntly look like he's got something in his eye.

HUGE Car Explody!

Car off cliff, no Explody? What a rip-off!

I think I know where Battletruck got its ideas from...

Jim Carrey is Captain Weiner in The Mask II: The FUTURE!

Still not 100% sure if this red-tinted place people keep leaping into is another dimension, or just a weird mental thing.

Jawas!

Tim Tomerson takes one for the team!

P3DFX: Metal Arm-ectomy to Camera!

"Just lie there in the baking sun with a head injury, Rhodes. I'll be back." "Yeah, thanks a bunch, Captain Weiner..."

Davros looks pissed.

Hey, Diana finally came back into the flick.

Alcoholics Anoymous Meetings... of the FUTURE!

Doujin has eyes like Bill Oddie.

Jared-Syn controls The Light Crystal! Only the power of the Billy Crystal can defeat him!

Disappearance-by-jumpcut. Could you have made that a bit MORE confusing?

Doujin just turned himself into the Rocketeer!

Badly-Superimposed Low-Altitude Chase Scene! (Probably a 3D shot, but it's hard to tell.)

Doujin couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if his was inside it.

All these first-person flying/driving scenes are giving me motion sickness...

It's the 2001 "Warp Jump", done on 1/200th the budget!

Hang on, Jared-Syn escapes? I'm having bad flashbacks to Knights! Well, maybe there's more time to wrap things up.

Hey, Rhodes. Glad you survived.

Fuck it. We're out of time. Stupid cop-out potential-for-a-sequel ending!

So it's less "The Destruction of Jared-Syn" and more "The Heroic Escape of Jared-Syn"? Maybe I was rooting for the wrong guy?

Oh well... it was better than Cyborg, anyway.

Skeeters' Summary: Low-budget, aging special effects and pretty derivative. But on the whole, not a bad use of 80 minutes. It entertained me, anyway, in a guilty-pleasure, Krull-kind of way. I've seen a lot worse.

REVIEW: Gammera the Invincible

2006-08-11T20:32:00.000+12:00

Well, this could be an interesting experience. Writing a review while watching a movie that's being streamed through cyberspace from a site called Clashtv.com. It truely is a small word these days. Let's just hope my broadband is broad enough.

Gammera The Invincible(1966)

Surf Guitars!: Whoa, who knew there was a Japanese Beach Boys?

Captain Scarlett?: We open with a shot of VERY puppety-looking jet planes flying through a painted skyscape. Destiny Angels, SIG! Cutting from there to a toy boat.. sorry, impressive naval vessel, we learn that an expedition is underway to find a shipping route though the fabled Northwest Passage (Ooo-er!). Meanwhile, Dr. A.G Hidaka drives his Tonka Humvee through the snow to a small Eski..Inuit village, proving that mid-60's igloos were made of moulded plastic. Very rescourceful people, the Inuits.

Mr. Iagi, photographer!: "I hope my camers don't freeze!". Good exposition, Iagi-san. Joing him are Dr Hidaki and the nearly-dispensable Science Chick. (She gets some dialogue here, then stands around and looks interested in future scenes.) Iagi takes a photo of the low-flying jets, which are Strange and Mysterious, it seems. The navy boys spot them too, making me wonder how far inland this village is. About eight feet, at a guess. They notify...

Arctic Air Defence, Alaska: Where everyone is in proper uniform, rather than bundled up to the nines. Must be a bitch to heat that place. A group of decidely non-Asian personell banter a little, including one with a brillianly over-the-top Wild West accent. Private Cisco Kid, stop harrasing the WACs, please. Is this the Americanised version, I wonder?

General Peter Pan!: Whoever told the General to stand in that pose should be beaten. It's a tad fruity, especially when you're yelling orders to your men. Anyhoo, the U.F.O's are headed for the "missile base', which apparently is on the Artic iceflow. Yeah, I can just see guys volunteering for that assignment.

Reds Overhead!: Great, it's the Godless Commies. I see a Diplomatic Incident and a shitload of paperwork coming up. General Arnold (Brian Donlevy) takes a call from "Washington, The White House.. the President...". Thanks for the heads-up, Corporal. If I get a call from "My house, the living room, my wife..." just put her on hold, okay?

We've struck Oil!: Oh wait, its just Heroic Army Guys' head. Man, he must have been responsible for the Great Brylcreem Shortage of '67.

Red Alert!: And I love how he puts the emphasis on "Red'. A shot of persuing U.S jets seems to indicate they're chasing the bogeys with the Space Shuttle Columbia. There's a tragedy in the making. The Ruskies fire off their secret weapon.

Inverted Missiles?: Who knew you could fire an air-to-air missile BACKWARDS? (I hope it's not heat-seeking, otherwise you've got an excellent chnance of instantly shooting yourself down.)The Yanks repsond with Doug Henning missiles, which fire, then magically re-appear so you can shoot them again. One bogey gets hit.

Goin' Down in a Blaze of.. BOOM!: Whoops, shouldn't have shot the plane carrying the nuclear weapon. (I don't think that's quite how they detonate, but let's not split hairs.) Iagi-san comes to the brilliant idea of actually using his camera, slight too late to get the money-making action shot. Lucky everyone was coindently facing away from the explosion, too. Flash-blindness would have made his job even more difficult.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: Slightly-Wooden Afro-American Sarge reports in on the "4 megaton" blast... which is a pretty accurate assessment for about ten minutes work. Somebody promote that man. Everyone's safe from the fallout, though... the only cancer risk being the General himself, who's puffing away on a ciggy while being briefed. Gotta love the 50's and 60's. The only characters not to smoke on screen were the Giant Monsters and children under 10. Okay, 7.

The pavlovas done!: Okay, that's probably the ice-shelf cracking open, but I call it like I see it. Light comes spilling out, either from lava (probably not) or because a Giant Monster just turned on a really big torch. (Even less likely.) And...

Heeeeeeres Gammera! Out come the big-ass Turtle in a blast of snow! And with his arrival.. the Opening Credits! (Along with our first taste of the Gammera Roar... think Godzillas' classic roar, after a big mouthful of helium. The credits indicate this is the Americanised version, with Brian Donleavy second-billed. Well, I've watched Raymond Burr frigging around in Tokyo AND reviewed the Frankensteins' Monster of King Kong vs. Godzilla, so I can handle this. There's lots of close-ups of Gammera, which indicate he's made of fruits and vegetables. (Prune for a head, artichoke-scaled back, etc.)

There's that diplomatic incident I mentioned: Well, the Ruskies are claiming the planes were off course. Of course. But it's the height of the cold War, so it's probably unlikely. Meanwhile, we can't reach the other movie... I mean, the Japanese ship due to unknown radio interference. Presumable round, pissed-off chelonian interference. Typically, the General orders the menfolk to gather more info, scramble more interceptors and other military stuff. Sarah, our one American female cast member, gets to make him his coffee. (Black, 2 sugars. I'm just glad he didn't give her a tushy tap on the way out.)

Eski-moromoto: That is the most Japanese-looking Inuit I've ever seen. Iagi and co. pack up and ship out, leaving the natives to hope the wind doesn't suddenly change, showering them in radioactive particles. Before they go, the chief gifts them an ancient carving of a... dramatic chord... primative turle! (In the Arctic? I'll be right back, I have to Google this piece of proto-palentology.)

I'll be damned, they DID find turtle fossils in Arctic Canada! Score one for scientific accuracy! (Although I get the feeling the final score will be about 1-250 in favour of big-moster sillyness.) Gammera gets named here, as an ancient legend of death. Well, at least they didn't need the Japanese Ministry of Giant Monster Names to form a comittee. "Chelmosto!" "No, I like "Shellzilla!" "Are you trying to get us sued, Asoka-san?"

Gammera breaks the ice: Literally and figuraitively, introducing himself by busting through an ice-shelf next to the Japanese ship. Everyone panics, and for one glorious second I thought one of the crew was taking a cell-phone photo of the beastie. (It was of course a radio handpiece, what with it being about 35 years too early, even for Japan.) The crew abandons ship, as gammera unleashes his strangely Big-G-like power.

Flame On!: Burn, baby burn! He's got flamethrower breath! Then again, he just woke up after a million-year doze, so that's not too unusual. Amusingly, Gammera waddles along on his back legs, meaning that if someone devises a way to make him fall over backwards, the big guy is screwed. The Yanks get a report from their flyboys, letting them know a 150-foot tall turlte just ate their allies. It's met with mild scepticism, of course.

Non-Spinning Newspapers? Guess they had budget restrictions. Interestingly, the papers are all from different countries, yet all the headlines are in English. Like I said, it's a small world after all. The "Corriere Della Sera' has the headline "Giant Turtle? Baloney Says Scientists". Now I'm imagining a film about a 150-foot pissed-off baloney. I can dream, I guess. Le Monde goes with "Giant Turtle Controversy". Great, Japan probably wants to scientifically harpoon it. Cut to...

Oh, Dear Lord: Severe King Kong vs. Godzilla flashbacks as we join the TV talkshow of "Mr Standish", recalling the interminable discussions about Godzillas brain capacity. The set is hilarious... three chairs set up apparently in a basement, with a ladder and what seems to be (In the tiny box I was watching it on) a fire hose attachment. One of he shows guests resembles a young Ronnie Barker, and is of course sparking himself a smoke. The other guest is already puffing away. "Chordata Weekly was brought to you by Winston Cigarettes! Now with extra tar! Healthy, life-giving tar!" Eye-popping overacting and rampant smugness happen, along with the usual smattering of interestingly plot-padding facts.Dr Contraire brings up the Giant Prehistoric Turles of India, while smoking a David Copperfield cigarette. ("It's long, it's short, it's long again! Magic!")

X-Files '66!: Doc Contrare also speculates that there's a HUGE GOVERNMENT COVER-UP in place! I have no idea who the actor is playing the good doctor, but he's camping it up to the extreme, and appears to be having a really good time. I like him VERY MUCH! (Sorry, wrong Japanese sci-fi flick.) Checking the IMDB, it turns out he's Alan Oppenheimer, voice of Mighty Mouse in the 1940's and character actor in everything from four episodes of Hogans Heroes to Bonaza to The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. 60 years in the industry and still going strong. Way to go, dude!

And it all ends in tears: Well, a flaming argument, anyway. Cut to Stock Footage of a Pan-Am jet. (I remember those. Vaugely.) Our Japanse heroes are on board. Iagi accepts his complimentary Plot-Advancing newspaper, turning instantly to a story about mysterious flying saucers being spotted. Complete with a photo of an upside down aerial pie-plate. Deep-dish apple spotted at 2000 feet, sir! If that's supposed to be Gamera, he's a Master of Disguise. Everyone is this half of the movie is convinced Gammera's the real deal... but what's happening in Mis-Matched Stock Footage Washington?

Gentlemen, welcome to another long, cheap dialogue scene: Well, it's just a guess, but... come on , make with the Giant Turtle already! The General begins his report, suddenly speak...ing... like.. William Shat..ner for reasons unexplained. One guys gives him a long stare presumably so we can make joke about his dead-on resembleance to Larry King. Senator Larry King Guy also speaks in a weird... stop-start.. kind of.. manner. Maybe they should have chanced their arm and hired some, I don't know... actors, for this film. Not the guys from the local bowling alley after they promised to supply their own cigarettes. The senator gets right over the top, prompting me to check HIM in the IMDB too. Ahh, a writer/producer with just two acting credits to his name. Probably a wise choice, that. Wait, he produces Revenge of the Nerds II and IV. I take that back.

The Upshot: Gammeras on his way to Tokyo. That's my summation of five minutes of dialogue, anyway. Bring it on, Shellhead!

Comedy Drunk Guy! Man, UFO's only apear for winos and rednecks, huh? After a few aerobatics, we head to the coastline. Look, a lighthouse! I hope Gammera gets to destroy is before the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms beats him to it.

Oh Good Lord, Part II: Uh-oh. They're introducing a plotline about a schoolboy who's "obsessed with turtles". I was hoping the Americanized version might have trimmed this bit... but no. We have a Orange on the 'Kenny Alert" meter! It turns out the kid lives in the lighthouse, and is facing the first ever reptile-based expulsion from a Japanese school. (His name is "Toshio", incidently, but "Kenny" is easier to type, so there.)

"Are you going to feed your turtle...: "...To your snake?". Okay, I admit, I added that line. Kennys Dad and oddly-older sister are trying to persaude the kid to release his turtle, because if you love something... I'm going to stop that sentance, otherwise Sting could show up and start singing. And this ain't a horror flick. Cue the mornful saxaphones. This is a weird soap opera plot, folks. Keeny releases his pet, apparently from the top of a cliff. (Evil kid.) Kenny lies down to mourn his loss, and several HOURS later (It's night all of a sudden.) Gammera literally sneaks up on him, appearing over the clifftop like the worlds largest Stealth Reptile. He then manages to make one of the quickest sideways movements I've ever seen, so that Kenny can look over an unoccupied cliff, then find the mammoth critter to his right in the mother of all double-takes. (He needed a mouthful of water for full effect, too. *spray*) Gammera gets a nice full-face shot, revealling his mammoth underbite. If those tusks curved the other way, they'd be going straight up his own nostrils, methinks.

The illusons of Penn and Gammera: Man, that creature can MOVE! One moment he's there, then POOF, Just as Kenny sister Noboyo arrives, he's outta here! He does cause an bit of an earth tremor, before revealling himself for the THIRD time. Nobody likes a show-off, man. His huge googly eyes wobble back and forth, making me think there's an optometrist somewhere about to make a FORTUNE creating his corrective lenses. Mild panic ensues and Kenny runs back to the lighthouse. Probably after a net and a frickin' enormous jar with holes in the lid. Gammera rips the roof off the lighthouse, instantly killing Kenny. Oh, damn, he survived. Kenny hangs onto a rail for a few seconds, then loses his grip and plummets to his death. Nuts, no he doesn't...

Gammera makes the catch!: Dude, if you eat him, I'll give you all the lettuce leaves I can find.

Japanese First Aid: After diching Kenny on the ground, his family immediatly pick him up and shake him like a margarita. Yep, that should help any broken bones to heal. Good work folks. Interstingly, when he wakes up, there's a quick blast of the ol' Porno Sax. Interesting choice of music, Japan. Meanwhile, Dr. Hidaka FINALLY arrives at Tokyo Airport. But that's not very interesting, so we head right back to the Lightouse Family. (I'd make a joke about the band, but I honestly can't remember the name of any of their songs, so let's move on.)

Gammera Come Home!: Man, Kenny takes a licking and keeps on ticking, huh? And where's the Big guy? creeping slowly toward a nuclear power plant, of course. This cold get ugly fast. A company man inside feels the first Gammera-induced tremors. His boss tells him not to worry as "We have them all the time here". Great place to build a nuclear power plant, then. Okay, my mistake, it's a "Geothermal Plant". Take that with as many grains of salt as you like. A pilot spots Gammera and radios in, but gets nothing but "a high-frequency noise". Having just watched a segment of MST3K's Alien From L.A episode, I assume he's hearing Kathy Ireland talking.

Meanwhile... somewhere else.: Doc Hidaka, Iagi-san and the Science Chick arrive at some sort of army base. They've been tracking Gammera, who's able to cross a pretty decent distance in ten minutes. The first Gammera-cacking scheme is rolled out, using the 350, 000-kilowatt output of the power plant to take him down. (Allowing Doc Hidaka to use the expression "It might just work." Cliches are in position, sir!") Also rolled out is the the Stock Footage of WWII tanks. (The Japanese military can deploy itself damn fast, I tell you. Hidaki and co. pile into a jeep (off-screen) and drive.. somewhere.

"Red Scout Calling Red Leader!": Dude, the Cold War is on. Bad choice of callsigns, yeah? A stock shot shows they're driving through the Araizona A-Bomb site, apparently. Buy a tree, Japan! Arriving at the geothermal station, they get ready to crank up the Juice on ol' Shelly. Hidaka orders Full Discharge, which just sounds filthy if you're... well, me. The electricity works about as well as throwing pillows at a supertanker, so it's time for...

Stock Footage Attack!: About here I learned a harsh lesson. Watch where you click during a streaming movie. Otherwise, you might accidently close the page and have to re-download the flick. I think I'm busting my 5 Gig allowance this month, for sure. Oh well, time to spellcheck my work so far.

Man, my spelling sucks. Onwards!

So Gammera gets busy on the Powerstation, which explodes a lot. ("Some like it hot, and some sweat when the heat is on...") There's an interesting shot of Gammera blowing flame in reverse. "Doctor, it looks like he's eating it!" someone shouts. Well, the special effects eat it, anyway.

Professor Bleachdome: Hey, a blonde Japanese guy. I assume he's supposed to be a grey-haired old scientist. He chats with Hikada about his acient Pet Rock, while the Air force continues to ineffectually bomb Gammera. (Who hasn't moved from the spot in the time it's taken Hikada and crew to travel to wherever the scientist guy is. Continuity is not this movie strong suit.)

Back in Washington...: More guys in a room, more arguing, more bad acting. The Japanese want a few Yankee missiles to blow Gammera up real good. Meanwhil in Japan, night has fallen, but gammera's still standing. Professor Morasi (Pronounced "More-ASS-y"? Tee hee.) shows up as the Yanks get set to fire nukes at the big guy. Hikada nixes the idea, so the military immediately caves in. Man, this is one wussbag army.

On the other hand...: Once Hikada speculates that Gammera might be vulnverable to cold, the Military guys immediately tell them they own a "Cold Bomb", which lasts for ten minutes. Whew, that was handy. Gammera wanders off, leaving the power plants as an area ripe for redeveloment. The Freezing Bombs are deployed pretty much instanteously. I'm now thinking Japan uses ACME to deliver its military ordinance. It appears to work because Gammera.. well, slows down. He IS a turtle, so I'm hardly expecting him to run the 100 in 9.9, but I'll go with it. The Good Guys plant a butt-load of dynamite in six minutes (Now THAT'S Japanese efficiency!) and clear the area.

BOOM! And he's down!: They've done it! he's on his back and helpless! With nearly half the movie to go, too! Hmmm... I sense a plot-twist.

Holy Flaming Frisbees, Batman!: And suddenly, Gammera ignites four flaming gas jets(?) from his shell(??) and flies away upside down.(!!!!!) Y'know, I've read about this ability, but it's still a mind-fucker of a scene. And with that, Hidaka finally works out the Rogammera Stones meaning... It's a flying giant turtle. Goofy monster movie logic at it's finest!

The United Nitwits: General Arnold gets the chance to address yet another rather cramped room of stuffy white guys. (And one African guy for colour. Wait, I badly phrased that. Oh, never mind.) He once again goes into his usual halting.. trying to.. rememeber.. the technical.. details.. delivery. Also in the room is a fez-wearing man. Either he's the Morrocan delegate, or the Shriners have double-booked the room. Internatinal co-operation is pedged to defeat the creature, which is a lot easier than today, due to the fact that only ten nations seem to be represented at best.

The Yanks and Reds go at it!: And it suddenly breaks down with the U.S and Soviet ambassadors shouting at each other. Well, at least these American scenes are consistent. Eventually a joint command is agreed on. Phew, that was a minor crisis averted. Plan Z is raised as the best way of destroying Gammera. I assume that means the first 25 plans just plain sucked, huh?

Back in the Original Film: Stuff happens. Kenny and family move to Tokyo while the lighthouse gets rebuilt. Kennys now preaching love and tolerance to turtles. Man, that kid needs therapy. An odd edit later, it's night tme. Good, dream of turtles and shut up, kid.

Stock Mayhem!: Gammeras' frigging around with the tides, causing oil tankers to collide and the footage to get all old and grainy. Also stock footage of planes arriving make the main headlines. Slow news day. Gammeras' back in town and he's ready to PARTY! Plan Z gets almost-revealled, and we're shown the island with attached dormant volcano and research facility it'll hopefully happen at. As the research facility is a Gerry Anderson-esque model, I think the chances of Beakface showing up are pretty good.

Gammera buzzes the tower!: Man, he could lose his pilots liscene for that stunt! Oops, misjudged the height. RIP air traffic control! He then appears to spontaneously explode, although a shot later indicates he's fine. Just loves to make an entrance, that guy. And we cut to...

Gammmmmmera!: Oh, dear. Gameras' got his own theme song. Sung by a bunch of 60's Japanese beatniks. It's a total knock-off of the Batman theme, but the kids seem to dig it. Groovy, man. Gammera breaks up the party. Literally.

And it's ON!: Tokyo is under attack! Again! And just like all Giant Monsters, he follows standard operating proceedure and makes a beeline for the nearest tourist attraction. In this case, the Tokyo Tower. As Mothras' lawyers quickly prepare the copyright infringement lawsuit, Gammera files a deed poll to drop an "M" from his name. Oh, and kicks ass on various cardboard and balsa wood skyscrapers. We cut between unconvincing special effects and unconvincing model work as the populace run and flee. Kenny abrubtly goes missing thanks to a jumpy edit, and we cut to a...

Loaded fuel train?: Y'know, keeping the trains running on time is the sign of a good city, but this is just tempting fate. Kenny folows it to the refinery, where Mr Leatheryback is rearranging the buildings. It turns out the train is actually part of Plan Z. Bags not being the driver of that one. Plan Z's main aim seems to be "Wait until Gammera sits directly on a train line." Which he obligingly does. VERY polite society, Japan. The train trundles in, blows up and we... cut to a ringing telphone.

What IS this plan?: I'm losing the already rather tenuous plaot here. Apparently they're going to keep rolling fuel tanks at Gammera until he... I don't know, gets tired? Kenny, moron that he is, hitches a lift on a train. The foreman tries to rescue the little idiot, and...

Cliffhanger Explosion!: The train blows up. Three times. YES! And no. Yep, they've leapt off at the last second, and weren't killed by the force of the explosion. Stop taunting me movie!

Fun With Accents: Back at the U.N, the American movie goes out of it's way to insult the Japanese movie, with the Japanese Ambassador uttering lines like "Our fuel surplise dangeloury low.". This after the perfect-English dubbing of the original is pretty cringe-inducing. Doubly so after he assures the Soviets they're working "around the crock" while not putting enough emphasis on the 'r'. They have twenty-four hours to get the Plan in action. No kidding, it's ALWAYS twenty-four hours.

Ahh, Science Chick spoke!: Well, one line, anyway. Plus "Goodbye". What a rewarding role. Gammera's still at the refinery, in the water now. (And apparently showing off his genitalia to the dockworkers. How rude.) Kenny sneaks on board a ship inside a cargo container. Well, hopefully there'll be trigger-happy armed guards on board.

VERY efficient country: Y'know, a Giant Turtle is attacking your country. When did you have time to have the "The Plan Z Headquarters" sign made? Oy.

Follow the boats, Gammera!: Well, they found Kenny. Apparently he stowed away from the dock to.. the dock again. The ship never left. Fun Fact: There's no Japanese word for 'continuity'. Oh no, he's on the island, apparently. So maybe the word "editor" is what I meant.Finally, the plan rolls into action.

This is the Plan?: Apparently the plan is to sailt miles out to sea and shoot oil barrels, making them explode to draw Gammera to the island. Because he'll instinctivly travel miles to a tiny oil fire, abandoning the blazing refinery and the huge, combustable city he's mere feet from? Ooooo-kay. Sure, the six oil barrels manage to set the entire sea of Japan aflame, but still...

I see a problem: He'll have to cross a time zone or two. It's midnight where Gammera is, yet daylight on Oshima Island. And then...

YES!: That's the sound I made after the filmakers went "Giant Turtle? Not enough.. let's throw a typhoon in there as well!". Yes, there's the Worlds' Fastest-Forming Typhoon on the way! And it's going to cause... volcanic activity? That's brilliant. Even I didn't see that twist coming. Because I'm not clincally insane.

Plot spinning off into the void!: So the typhoon winds show up thirty seconds later and start to blow the fire out. In ten seconds, the fire's out. Gammera turns back, as Iagi takes matters into his own hands, setting fire to a small hut. This seems like a logical course of action, so Hidaki orders the fire lit. And helpfully, someone must have already laid a gas trail to the fuel dump. Five seconds later (No fat in this script) an explosion draws Gammera back to the island. He waddles ashore as the rain starts. And begins to put out the fire. God hates these people.

And then...: The volcano explodes. So does my head. Everyone gets happy, rather than dies in the volcanic fury. And suddenly a strange edit takes us to... the next day? Later that afternoon? A year from Tuesday? And... we're at the research base, looking at a matte painting of.. things. Big Things. I have no idea what's going on. Sorry. Okay, they're setting flares alight, attracting Gammera, who appears to have survived the (brief) eruption. He steps onto a trap so obvious Wile E. Cyote would reject it, and is encased in a geodesic dome.They energise the Big Thingees and... blast him into space. You think I'm kidding? Somehow or other they built a Gammera-sized rocket in 24 hours and blasted him to Mars.

Um. The end, I guess. I need to go lie down.

Oh, the film? Pretty fun. Stupid, but pretty fun. Now, maybe I'll check out those sequels.

Oh, and HUGE thumbs up to clashtv.com. They rock. If I had an iPod, THIS is what I'd be downloading to it.

Pointless Filler Post #2

2006-07-30T17:19:00.000+12:00

I wanted to add a few MP3s of TV themes to cover the gap until I get reviews written. But Ezarchive wants me to pay for the privaledge of being able to link to them. So fuck 'em. Go, Youtube, go!

2006-07-25T00:15:00.000+12:00

Okay, I admit it, I'm a lazy non-reviewing slug. But here's something to keep you occupied in the meantime.

SPECIAL EVENT: The 2005 V Movie Marathon

2006-05-02T01:51:00.000+12:00

The 2005 V Movie Marathon

Or: “Who are all these people?”

From: Skeeters' Pre-V Marathon Mailer

(As I've) either a) Never met you, or b) Probably briefly met you at a party/LAN day/DQ game, I should intro myself.
Skeeter: Stand-up comedian, tour guide, webmaster of the Crab Chips b-movie site and the loser who writes 13,000 word reviews of the Marathon each year.
I'll be the five-seven white guy, Ramones t-shirt, middle finger in a splint on the right hand, carrying a blue chillybin and lugging a campchair. The password will be "pancakes". Because I like pancakes.

V Minus Three days and Counting...

It’s that time again... three days out from the 24-hour Festival of Cheese and Sleaze that is the V Movie Marathon. It’s been a much different set-up for me, especially compared to last years last-minute scramble that saw me go stag for the first time. This time out, I was informed of the marathons confirmation no less than three months in advance, form an unexpected source. An e-mail showed up from Steve “The_raven7” Austin, an occasional poster on the B-Movie Board who lives in Christchurch. He’s heading up to Auckland for the show, which is pretty hardcore... he usually attends the Wellington version instead. (Henceforth named “Raven” to avoid confusion. We arranged to hook up at the show, and I set about firing off e-mails to the Usual Suspects.

Interestingly, while I have managed to arrange a group of attendees, most of them are people I’ve literally never met. Mandos had to decline, with his wife being rather inconviently nine months pregnant and due on or about Halloween. (Which strikes me as appropriate for Mandos’ first offspring. My wife named him “The Bad Seed” after viewing the results of our pub-crawl nights. Now perhaps.. the Bad Seedling?) Ben (AKA Cosmo) and Debs are only probables, due to illness and a 50th birthday that night. Hopefully they’ll show up, though. Tania, a workmate was enthusiastic, only to have exams scheduled the same weekend. Rick’s career has seen him move to Wellington, and from there to Hanmer Springs, and my old school-friend Matt had to pull out after being offered a one-night bartending job that pays a LOT better than I could offer.

On the flipside, Tanias’ boyfriend Leon is still coming for at least the first half of the show, and bringing two flatmates. I’ve never met him, but he was at last years marathon, apparently. I’ll have to apologise for screaming at the screen during Psychout to Murder, then. Raven (Who I’ve never met) is bringing a friend, Nick (ditto) up from Christchurch. Ben was bringing three people, Andrea (No, don’t think we’ve met, either), Cherie (Met briefly before the ‘03 marathon, at her birthday dinner.) and Chris, aka “Dog”. (The nicknames’ familiar, but I’m not sure if I’ve actually met him.) They’ll now be looking for a 5’7” guy in a Ramones t-shirt on Saturday night. There’s the faint possibility of another workmate, ALSO called Steve to show on Sunday morning. (Even if he doesn’t show up, I would like to thank him publically for sourcing me the DVD copy of “The Wasp Woman” I intend giving away on the night.)

The Eski of Discounted Delights is pretty well stocked up... a smaller selection this time, after dragging most of it home again in ‘04. (Future Skeeter: And yes, still half of it returned home. My wife happily finished the Pringles.) Here’s the list:

* 1x4-pack of Royal Crown Draft Cola
* 1 box Arnotts Chocloate Tiny Teddy Biscuits
* 1 box Signature Range Apricot Fruit Cereal Bars
* 1 tube Pringles, Texas barbecue flavour
* 3 assorted bags of Starbursts. (I love 3-for-five-bucks week at Foodtown)
* 2 small cartons Ribena (For Vitamin C)
* 2 Bananas
* 2 frozen water bottles

* Mylanta rolltabs
* A couple of Paracetemol
* 1 new mini toothbrush-in-box, which I promptly lost.

* My Bag O' Splints and Tape.... as three weeks ago, I sliced halfway through a tendon in my middle finger while using a very old tin-opener. Belive it or not, surgery was actually required to repair the thing. It's healing nicely, but will be in a plastic splint for another three weeks. As you can imagine, this is not the best set-up for writing a colossal review like this. But I'm a 2-finger typer anyway, and neither of them are the one I injured. So I may be slower than usual, but the Review Must Go On!

* A pillow, as Ant's last e-mail specified "no chairs". He later told me I could have brought my campchair, but in all honesty, there wouldn't have been a lot of room for it.

The last thing to go in were my DVD Gift Packs: A half-dozen Cheapass DVD's for Ant to give away. I decided to do this as my way of "paying" for the tickets Ant keeps comping me. I typed up little notes for the covers, with "Things I Learnt", silly gags and in one case, an apology for the film being as dull as dishwater. They are, in no particular order:

* The Wasp Woman
* Hercules in New York
* The Petrified World
* A Classic 4-Movie Pack: Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Maniac and The House on Haunted Hill
* Teenagers From Outer Space

And yes, I DID watch almost all of them before the Marathon...

Okay, I'm set. Let's bring it on!

V DAY!

Prologue: Many, MANY Meetings.

October 29th, 2005. Not the sunniest of days in Auckland, but since I'll be indoors for the next 24 hours, that's not that big a problem. I had intended to sleep in as long as possible, but it was not to be. Some weeks ago my grandmother passed away, ten days after a stroke. (Which, considering she had turned 93 the day before the stroke, was a testament to how strong a woman my grandmother was.) And so, Dawn and I rose at 8am(!) to pick up some items she'd left us from her apartment in Orewa. (Just under an hours drive from my place.) We were home by 1pm, but since I'm clinically incapable of sleeping in the daytime, I was pretty much consigned to 36 hours of sleep deprivation. Unless one of the flicks is REALLY dull. A last-minute message from Ant on the V Movie site informed us that Wolf Creek had been pulled, but a replacement flick had be found at VERY short notice. The Mystery Lineup gets more mysterious. At 4PM, I had the earliest evening meal of my life. (The new 6pm start time is probably better for the Hollywood, but it makes for a tough scheduling task for us night-owls.) Dawn was working, so I called a taxi, which showed up just before 4:30. I bundled my gear inside, amusing and confusing the driver when my answer to "Where are you off to?" was "The movies."

We arrived at the Hollywood at about quarter to 5. There was already about twenty or so people forming a queue. (And providing an endless parade of "What-the-fuck?" double-takes for the passing motorists.) Beanbags abounded this year, from the half-filled, droopy Student Flat variety to some mammoth, brand new ones. Ant had already set up his Bean-bag Armchair in advance, in the approved "King of All I Survey" position, of course. (Front and center, for optimum viewing.) I caught up with him, and was told he had a job for me... one I'd find out about in his intro. The plot thickens! I hung about for a while, keeping my Ramones shirt as visible as possible, until a voice from behind a pillar said "Pancakes!". It turned out to be Cherie and Andrea, both burdened down with as much gear as I had, plus a mattress. (Which turned out to be a godsend, being big enough for three people to fit on. The Eski of Discounted Delights was supplemented with their carry-on -flight-luggage of snacks, which was fairly stylish in my opinion. We joined the line, and I was thrown by the sight of another guy in a Ramones t-shirt behind us. (I hope he didn't get strangers trying to work out if he was me...)

The line moved at a fairly fast clip one the doors were open, and I secured my double pass. I told Cherei and Andrea to grab one ticket between the two of them, but the guy at the box office let them both in free. Cheers, dude! We received huge, neon green arm-stamps and headed into the theatre. A great turnout this year meant space was at a premium, so we staked out a spot on the floor, just in front of the first row of seating. We did try to form an aisle to let people through, but of course, being the outside man, I was still the recipient of every second beanbag in the theatre bouncing off my skull in succession for a while. Including two of the hugest examples I've ever seen. I forgave that guy because he sat next to us, and I was able to use them for back support later in the night. Cherie and Andrea took turns on Dog-watch until he showed up, and I headed back outside, and quickly spotted two guys getting out of a taxi, one wearing a t-shirt with the slogan:

"PUT YOUR MONEYSHOT WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS!"

Houston, we have The Raven! I have to say though, the t-shirt he was wearing at the end of the night, a black-and-white "Zombi" one, was by far my favourite. Both he and Nick were on the comp list, so a quick arm-stamping later, we we inside. "I thought you said they just renovated this place?" Raven asked. "They did, kinda." I replied. "I love it!" was his response. A word about the Hollywood. Yes, it's a tiny, single-screen old-school cinema. It's still got wooden floors, worn carpet, and the toilets still sound like a plane taking off in a tornado when you flush them. The renovations added some new permanent seating, but it still looked just like last yar. But frankly, it's perfect for the Marathon, and with any luck will be the permanent home for as long as possible. Raven, a HUGE movie buff, just fell in love with the place at first sight. He and Nick took seats in the front row, while I went back outside to look for an Englishman, an Irishman and a Hamiltonian. Which, as I pointed out, sounded like the start of a bad pub joke. I couldn't see them unfortunately, leaving me hoping they would spot me at some stage. I grabbed some gum (toothbrush substitute) and garbage sacks from the dairy next door, and headed back inside. As I came in, organ music began to play, and I figured they had put on a CD. Then the cheering started.

If the Hollywood hadn't got Raven hooked before, it sure did now. The Hollywoods Wurlitzer organ was rising majestically up, and for the next twenty minutes we we treated to a mini-concert. (Including a predictably well-received version of the Star Wars theme that our organist Margaret learned just the week before. Bravo!) She finished with the Phantom of the Opera theme, dropping back out of sight to a raucous ovation. Ant made his appearance, delivering his intro through a bullhorn this year. He'd been on an emotional rollercoaster this year, with the last-minute pull-out of Wolf Creek being the capper. But, he was buoyed by the last-minute substitution, and seemed in good spirits, all thing considered. He informed the crowd (and me) that I'd be running the Trivia Quiz at the end of the night, after last years slightly-chaotic twenty minute affair that left him short for questions. Suffice it to say, I took a LOT more notes than usual this time. People at the marathon may have noted that all my questions came from the first four films, though. There was a reason... more on that later. And so, the lights dimmed, the curtains opened... and once more, it begins!

Part 1: Chicks Rock!
Saturday, 18:10-THE DESCENT

Well, actually, the film started at 18:20, but that's just me being picky. You see, before each flick, at least 2 previews were screened, all on their original filmstock. (Ant saves the DVD weirdness for the break periods... this year we had preview reels, MTV comedy, and compilations of bonkers Japanese TV shows.) And so, we kicked off with trailers for The Lifetaker, which I can’t honesty remember anything about. Then the first full-frontal nudity of the fest (4 minutes in? Man, talk about making us wait, Ant!) with Smooth Velvet, Raw Silk. (AKA Velluto Nero, Emmanuelle in Egypt, Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle etc.) Lesbian Sex Scene at 6 o’clock, captain! The Screaming Tiger, your bog-standard badly-dubbed kung-fu flick was next. (AKA “Ten Fingers of Steel”... which confused me, as I thought I had that flick... until I discovered my DVD was of Five Fingers of Steel. I assume “Ten Fingers...” is TWICE as good!) And finally, The Long Days Dying, an insanely tedious-looking war film. (I’m mentally dubbing it “A Long Day’s Viewing”.) The trailers’ editing DID make it look like our hero accidently blew himself up with his own booby trap, which amused me no end.

The choice of the first actual flick surprised me... this was the first time we’ve started off with a new release. (So new, in fact, I, and I suspect, many of the other Marthoners hadn’t even heard of this film. Which was THE best way to see it. So if you haven’t yet, go see it, then read on. I’ll wait.) It was a refreshing change to see a pristine print right off the bat, but after the Insta-Nudity of Revenge of the Cheeleaders in ‘02, the wierdness of ‘03 Evils of the Night and the abject hilarity of last years The Creeping Terror, I was worried this one might not have that “Wow Factor” to hook the audience from the get-go.

I have GOT to trust Ants’ judgement more.

Five minutes in, a scene abrubtly occurred that caused the entire audience, even battle-hardened multi-Marathoners, to utter a collective “WHOA!”. Or, for people with no Internal Profanity Filter, like me, a loud cry of ‘JESUS, FUCK!”. Great start, dude.

So, let’s run down the film in a carefully non-spoilerish way.One year after that opening scene (The one I won’t say word one about), a group of Scottish women travel to the Appalachian Mountains to go caving with their girlfriends. Yeah, it’s a chick flick. In the best possible way, that is. For the first section of the film, the girls drink beer, talk and yes, one takes a shower. Given the Evil Dead-like cabin, and the lead characters occasional Flashbacking, I was picking this as either a “Spam in a Can” or a Japanese-style Ghost Flick. To quote Oscar the Grouch, “Ding-dong, you’re wrong!”, as the next morning the team heads off to Boreham Caves to do a little spelunking. Now, I’ve always like movies that could be described as “Claustrophobic”... Saw, for instance. But this one? REALLY fucking claustrophobic. Literally. People crawl around in tiny little tunnels like that for FUN? And people think I’m weird.

So, things seems to be going well for the girls. Until our Heroine gets wedged, a tunnel collapse soon after traps the crew, and they discover three vital facts.

1) They’re not in Borehem Caves
2) They have no map. (Which thankfully doesn’t trigger a Blair Witch Project-style arguement.)

And

3) They’re not alone.

Hoo boy, they are SO not alone! To say too much would ruin the flick, but let’s put it this way. The IMDB User Comments are WAY positive, and for a horror flick, that's a hell of an achievement. At the time of writing, Rotten Tomatoes currently has the flick showing11 positive reviews. Out of eleven. It's from the writer/director of the top-notch horror/comedy Dog Soldiers, and the ending was about fifty steps above the typical bullshit Hollywood "It's-over-or-is-it-BOO-wow-what-a-shocker" formula. (Oh, and to the IMDB message board poster who posted a message titled "What was that ending all about?"... you sir, are a fucking moron. No wonder I've never signed up for those foums.) There's a little CGI, but a lot is used to enhance some really kick-ass practical effects. The leads are likeable, act realistically (Even the one I nicknamed "Robochick".) and yes, easy on the eyes. The Creatures were appropriately scary. (I called them "Evil Gollums") And the gore levels were perefct... not too unbelieveable or gratuitous. This, in fact, is one of THE best modern horror flicks to date. Awesome start.

Right, time to start the 2005 Running Themes List... although to be honest, most them faded away by the end.

Tough Female Character(s)? : Pretty much all of them.
Puking? : Yep.
Horrific Leg Injury? : More than one, but definatley the most horrific of the night.
Ugly Facial Hair? : Nope, but in an all-female cast, not surprising really. Some ugly BODY hair, though.
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls? All female-cast, but yes. Twice in a row. My sympathies momentarialy switched sides.

Skeeter's Summary: My personal favourite flick of the night. Gurl Power, and then some..

Part 2: Redneck Rampage!
Saturday, 20:00-THE DEVILS' REJECTS

Before our next film, we watched the promo for The Chamber of Horrors, the only film to feature the "Fear Flasher" and the "Horror Horn" to warn less macho members of the audience of upcoming ickyness. This garned a huge laugh, as the Fear Flasher was a siezure-inducing red-flickery light dealie. Sufferers of epilepsy need not apply to watch THAT flick. Then the double-feature preview for Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory and Corridors of Blood And then... another pristine 2005 print. (Back-to-back new films were the last things I expected.) This is of course the sequel to Rob Zombies House of 1000 Corpses, a film I never actually saw. After this one, I'm probably not in any rush to go rent it, either. I didn't actively dislike the film so much as sat through it with a "Been there, seen that" attitude. I'm aware Rob really likes using bits from classic horror movies, but I just felt that there was a lack of anything, well, new in the film. Besides, I like a little more plot to go with my ultraviolence.

Yeah, ULTRAviolence... this thing isn't one to show grandma. Concerning "The Devils' Rejects", a happily pyschotic family of inbred rednecks, lead by Mr. Dental Hygene '05, Captain Spaulding. (Sid Haig) The pre-credit sequence introduces us to them, and their movie-long nemesis, Sherrif John Quincy Wydell, who opens a big can of Alabama Whopass on their corpse-filled home. It's a fairly kick-ass opening, with lots of gunfire, home-made Ned Kelly-esque suits of armour and a little slow-mo for the artsy-fartsy movie-critic types. And then, the film turns into From Dusk to Dawn without the vampires. And so we spend a fair amount of time in a hotel, playing "Let's Torture The Hostages"... an odd echo of which would show up some 16 hours later. And then thins just go from gross to downright disgusting. Anyhoo, here's a bit of a bullet-point list of things I remember about he film.

Devils Rejects Films? I think I just guessed what film we're seeing.

Raven tried to get a round of applause going for Sid Haigs' credit. It didn't catch on. I was tempted to do the same for Danny Trejo.

Full-frontal corpse nudity! Ick.

Freddy Krugers' redneck cousin does a cameo! I wonder if he'll show up again sometime?

Dude, your bedmate died. Like, a month ago. See that "Ick" and raise it a "Bleech".

Yessir, preparing for an Old-Fashioned Alabama Asswhuppin'!

Fuck, this a LOUD movie.

Perky ass-crack shot during the opening credits! Of Rob Zombies' wife. A bold directorial statement. That his wife has a nice ass.

Argh, Sid Haig having sex! Must. Scrub. Brain!

ARRRGH, Sid Haigs' ACTUAL sex-rhino is horny! Where's the goddamn Fear Flasher when I need it!

Oh look, a nice, clean-living country-and-western band. Bet they're fucked.

Fuck, I'm saying fuck a lot in this review. Then again, guess which movie currently holds the record for Most Gratuitous Use of the Word "Fuck"? This one. 560 times in 100 minutes. I'm not fucking kidding.

Devils Reject Mom's interrogation scene is a masterpiece of wallpaper chewing. LOUD chewing. (Leading to my remark to Raven "I don't like this new directors cut of Basic Instinct". Yeah, I know it's a Simpson reference. If Zombie can do it, so can I.)

I liked Jimmy the roadie. Too bad his dream of rodeo clowning had to be put on hold. Hope he'll make it out of the film alive.

Crap. Guess not. I hope they buried him in the cool Cheap Trick t-shirt.

Stripping the hostage. Check. Sexual molestation via a phallic symbol. Yep. We're getting all '70's grindhouse here.

You know, I hate country-and-western too, but beating the lead singer with a pipe? Little excessive.

Well, the groups down to a duo. Hope the girls can sing acapella.

If not, they're getting plenty of practice to become WWE Divas. Less slapping, more perky butt-shots!

Baby isn't the sharpest hatchet in the Devils Rejects toolkit, is she?

Butt shot! Thank you. Now pull the trigger, stupid simpering hostage.

Killed by Psychology!

Oh. Rob? Lose the fucking CGI blood next time. I hate that. If you're making a gore film, just pour some gore on them! CGI blood NEVER looks real

The Sherrif is getting REALLY nasty. They're going for the Double Face/Heel Turn on us. (cf. Brett "The Hitman" Hart vs "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Wrestlemania 13.)

The Groucho Marx expert was one of the best parts of the film for me. Great punchline to the scene, too.

Bela! (Okay, hands up who else recognised Bride of the Monster?)

Man, this scene with George, Wydells' dead brother, has a real An American Werewolf in London feel to it. Or am I over-reaching for references?

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE REFERENCE!

I see it coming, she runs into the road and she gets run over by an OH FUCK! Jesus, if I send Rob a cheque, maybe he'll buy a sense of restraint?

Charles' Frontier Fun Town! Man, all that place needs is Cheech Marin doing the Pussy Speech and it'd be the Titty Twister.

The Chicken Fucking speech is funny as hell. Totally irrelevant to the plot, but funny.

Better send Rob out a rowboat, his films just treading water now.

Ugly Redneck Sex! Why does this film hate me so much?

We're getting to the climax! Or at least within shouting distance.

HIDEOUS LEG INJURY!

Sherrif Wydell learned his interrogation tactics by watching Nu Jack wrestle in ECW, it seems.

This torture scene is horrendously long, graphic and brutal to watch. Still, it's more fun than watching The Passion of the Christ.

Our second neck-snapping in two films! Maybe that's a running theme. (No, as it turned out.)

Maybe it's because I missed the first flick, but this seems like the biggest cop-out ending possible.

Tough Female Character(s)? : Mom took the crown there. All the rest were slutty-stupid or cringingly wussy.
Puking? : With the amount of bodily fluids spilt in that flick, I'd have to assume so.
Horrific Leg Injury? : .38 Special, meet leg. Ouch.
Ugly Facial Hair? : Not as ugly as the teeth, but still pretty bad.
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls? Who can remember something as minor as that in comparison to the chairs-ifixtion scene?

Skeeter's Summary: A little too long, a lot too familiar. Had its moments, but not one for my DVD drawer.

We took a break between every second movie at the start. I spent most of my time writing down questions for my quiz, at least at first. Because the first Reason For No Questions Past Film Four occured.

My torch went dead.

I had forgotten to charge the bastard up before I came, and near the end of The Descent it suddenly became a Hollywood Slasher Torch, fading out whenever I needed to see something important. I soldiered on for a while, writing blind, but as I grew more tired, my notes became less and less ledgible. By 8am the next morning, I managed to write three sentences on top of each other during a flick. I took no further notes that night bar the times and titles of the last four films.

I did head out to stretch my legs in the break, and was stopped in the aisle by a young man in a Irish football jersey. Leon had taken a seat just four rows back from us, as it turned out. His flatmates pulled out of attending late, but he came anyway. I invited him to join us in the front, although in truth there probably wasn't enough room unless he was packing a human-sized shoehorn. Sensibly, he stayed where he was, and for the next 12 hours I bounced around the theatre like a social pinball, watching flicks with all three grouplets. (Did I just invent a new word?)

I get the feeling it saved me from get a pun-related beating or two. Small doses of my humor are probably best.

I also spotted Thomas, the Serious Film Fan across the theatre and said hi. He was surprised I recognised him, having not read last years review. (Which reminds me to take a hard copy next time and leave it in the foyer for the new fish to read.) Later I ran into Paul (Or was it John?) and Nadine (I think) from the group I hung out with in '04. They were in the balcony this time, safe from my wisecracks.

And so I joined Leon in the stalls and the show rolled on.

Part 3: Mommy, They're Hurting my Childhood!
Saturday, 22:15-THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SNOW WHITE

Preview Time! Let's see, we've got The Burning, or "Friday the 13th Knockoff #132". The Curse of the Fly, or "Churned-Out Hollywood Sequel #4,356" and The New Adventures of Snow White. Boy, that looks... European.

Man, this is a long preview.

Oh, Dear God.

And so, a soft-core 70's adult fairy tale unspooled before our eyes. It was Grimm. (*rimshot*) Leon quickly demonstarted a remarkable ability to hit me with an incredible funny riff (or perfectly-judged Monthy Python-ism) just as I took a swig from my water bottle. The guy sitting in front of me must have thought he was sitting in a carwash. Let's get a bullet-pointing!

Ahh, Hans and Heinz, our bumbling Comic Relief Nerds. Bulgarias finest comedians! Oddly, I remember the whole "Bungled Trades" storyline form actual fairy tales. Glad to see they stayed true to the source material.

I'm also kind of glad the print had faded to purple... Hans' slightly anachronistic Paisley shirt was hard enough on the eyes WITHOUT being in living colour.

Snow White is being played by Princess Leias' litte sister, I see.

"Bring me her sex organs!"? I don't remember that line in the Disney version! (She is aware sex organs work better when they're still, like, ATTACHED, right?)

Topless woman being chased through the woods!

It’s the Seven Dwarves! Look, there’s Pervy, Horny, Fugly...

Hans, Heinz, will you two goofs ever learn? No, because I'll kill you if you don't start being funnier soon.

Okay, the Wicked Queen can't tell the difference between the female sex organs and a pile of raspberry jelly?

Okay, that's tasty, but probably really unsanitary. Maybe this should have been the pre-breakfast movie?

Terrifying Wolf Alert! (So long as the stupid-looking alsatian playing the part doesn't start wagging his tail.. nuts. Bad dog! BAD, though undeniably cute, dog!)

He's going to eat her! No, he's going to... Oh, dear God. Just say NO, Snow White!

Hey, how did the chainmail underwear magically appear on Snow White? She's a witch! Burn her!

Worst guy-in-a-bearskin suit costume I've seen this week. (Even though the one Arnie wrestles in Hercules in New York runs it a close second.)

Paging Snakey Bender!

Even the frog wants to shag her! I gotta say, that little guy's even more optimistic than the wolf.

It's the Off-Greeny-Purple Witch! Okay, Blue Witch, but the print is really getting faded now.

Snow White goes down! Maybe it’s the enchanted mirror, or the dwarves invented Medieval Rohypnol.

You know, I swear one of those dwarves is a woman.

Uh, Cinderella, this isn't your fairy tale. Either get naked or beat the feet.

Yep, that’ll do. You may stay.

Hmm, murder, rape, cannibalism, beastiality, and we’re only about fifteen minutes in. My kindergarten teacher must have been the David Lane of fairy-tale censorship.

Comedic fight scene! It’s turned into an X-Rated Beach Party movie!

Looks like Cinders became the victim of “Friendly Cleave”.

Hey, a Nekkid-Woman-in-the-Box!

Cinderella isn’t dead, but my brain is trying to commit suicide...

Heinz and Hans have been turned into doves... where’s Chicken-Fucker Man when you need him?

Cinderellas’ evil stepsisters fall out of their tops faster than the cheerleaders in ‘02. And more often.

Okay, you’re naked, there’s soapy water on the floor... why aren’t you two wrestling? (Leon suggested they were still waiting for the Jell-o to set.)

Prince Hornbag invites the virgins of the kingdom to a ball! I guess it’s a Come-As-You-Still-Are Ball.

Well, despite the dialogue, there’s not a 10-year-old in sight at the dance. I guess there’s a few line even the Europeans don’t cross. Yet.

This is actually a remarkably accurate retelling of Grimms’ Cinderella. With extra titties.

I note this is a sex-flick where no-one actually has sex. Either that or we’re skipping huge chunks of the flick.

Things I Learnt: There were no Animal Cruelty Laws in 1970’s Europe.

HIDEOUS FOOT INJURY! (Times 2)

Heinz and Hans are even less amusing as birdlife. Where’s my shotgun?

Meanwhile, back at the cave of our titular heroine... nothings’ really happening. So let’s go check out Sleeping Beauty.

Okay, Heinz and Hans dual-kissing someone is getting high on the Disgust-omenter.

The king’s getting a blowjob from that mermaid in Stingray!

Annnnd.... long pause for hilarious audience reaction... nothing... nothing... still nothing... okay, let’s move on.

Hans and Heinz can’t have sex with a woman because “They always do everything together”? My brain just imploded.

Oh, that’s right, Sleeping Beauty’s “ugly”, too. Yep, three lumps of plasticine on a womans’ face always makes a man Mr. Floppy. Come out of the closet boys, door’s WIDE open.

I think we’re getting to the dramatic finale! Oh, GOD I hope this is the finale.

Okay, so the Evil Queen was defeated by a combination of her own incompetance and botany? Whatever.

Man, it must suck when you can’t even get a toad to boink you.

Human-ursine relationships... next on Springer!

Ugh, he was better-looking as a Wookie!

The movie must be over... oh, fuck you Hans and Heinz! Let the running gag die already!

And they all shagged happily ever after.

Tough Female Character(s)? : Nahh... every single one was as tough as Eddie Deezen having an athsma attack.
Puking? : Nope. Damn, so much for any running themes this year.
Horrific Leg Injury? : Yes! This one’s still running, at least.
Ugly Facial Hair? : And this one.
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls? Me, every time Hans and Heinz did their act. At least that’s what it FELT like.

Skeeter's Summary: How... European. The smut was funny. The comedy wasn't. But I actually enjoyed it a lot, for sheer mockage potential. Although I assume the comatose Snow White/7-Dwarf Gangbang was snipped for taste reasons?

Part 4: The Second-Easiest Review Ever
Saturday, 23:30-SAW II

I returned to the floor for the next film. My notes refer to “Voyage to the End” as a preview, which I assume was Voyage to the End of the Universe. Sorry, I was losing focus early, huh? Then B-Fest-screened Japanese sci-fi flick Message From Space, which I now really want to see. (Although it’s supposed to be slightly stop-start, as well as totally bonkers at times.) And then... Hellllo, Twisted Films!

Yep, it’s time for the Sequel to last years uber-crowd-pleaser, Saw! And once again, I ain't telling you nothing. Why? Because... brace yourself...

It’s prety good. Seriously, a LOT better than I was expecting. It does follow the Hollywood “Bigger and Better” rule, its’ twist ending isn’t quite as mind-fuckingly twisted as the first, and the first one had a better cast. Still, considering the rushed-into-production crapfest I was expecting, it was a welcome surprise.

Tough Female Character(s)? : Yes.
Puking? : Uh-huh.
Horrific Leg Injury? : Definately.
Ugly Facial Hair? : Minor.
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls? Not that I recall.

Skeeter's Summary: Solid... 2 for 2, gentlemen! Now, will Saw III: The Sawening be out in time for the ‘06 Marathon?

Part 5: Excuse me Sir, Did You Lose Something?
Sunday, 01.30-THE CHRISTINE JORGENSON STORY

Back to the stalls I went, both to keep Leon company and because of the back support I was lacking. Due to the early start time and the cramped conditions, my stomach was giving me trouble already. (I was popping Mylantas by 3am this year.) A blaxploitation trailer was first up, The Mack. Then a young Melanie Griffith in Joyride. And finally Motel Hell (Where “It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent fritters!”) And next... ooh, this could be a REAL horror movie!

I recognised the title at once... and had a horrible feeling this would involve actual footage of a sex-change operation. (I was wrong, mistaking it for Let Me Die a Woman... which apparently WAS screened in the late-lamented Incredible Film Fest some years back.) But yes, it’s a docu-drama about the worlds’ first sex-change operation. So WHY was this screened, you ask? Pure camp value, baby! The laugh-out loud dialogue, the brilliant double-entundres (“You know, what you need is a good stiff... drink!”), the insane flashbacks. (“Oh, great he’s flashing back to a much less interesting part of the film!”,“Jesus, apart from the dress and lipstick, that kid's ME in 1975!”). The main character, so torn and indecisve about his sexuality, while dressing in some of he campest outfits this side of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. (“I’m just off to put Freds’ cravat back in the Mystery Machine!”) The even-more hilarious dialogue (“You play ball with me and you could be the Top Boy!”) The great double-take our Hero(ine?) does when reading “Sex and The Glands”.

Then the film moves to vonderful, vonderful Copenhagen. And gets even MORE ridiculous! We meet Aunt Thora, who turns George into her long-lost daughter. (Me: “She went caving vith a bunch of Scottish girls and I’ve never seen her since!”) The indescribably hilarious Dr Victor Dahlmen. Okay, not indescribably... just read this direct quote:

“Ah, you Americans, you're advanced in so many ways! But when it comes to sex, hmm! Childish! Operate on the brain! Perform a lobotomy, fine! But take a pair of testicles and *everybody* explodes!”

You see what I mean?

Even his great description of Geroge/Christines’ condition was a gem. Tapping the wall between a male anatomy chart and a female one, he announces “Zis.. is you!” “So he’s plywood?” I asked. “It would explain his acting ability, I guess.”. I braced for impact during the operation scene, but since it turned into an Ed Wood-like sureal flashback, no permant mental trauma occurred.

The film started to bog down a little at the end, turning into a romantic drama(!), as dashing reporter Tom Crawford gets up-close and personal with his story-to-be. The final reels were livened up a little with the brilliant “Army Days” flashback, which coincided with our first film break of the night. (Right during an all-male shower scene... censorship in action!) Even better was Angela, the cackling harpy of a hooker that would send most STRIGHT men into insta-Hans-und-Heinz Mode.(I did like the fact she charged ten bucks for a shag... in the Devils Rejects, that would only have got you a quick handjob at Charlies’ place. Bloody inflation.)

Tough Female Character(s)? : Well, not our lead, certainly, but Angela fits the bill. Cackling harpy.
Puking? : Yes! And not just in the operating room scene, either...
Horrific Leg Injury? : Not his leg exactly, no...
Ugly Facial Hair? : 1970’s, dude. Very. And a big-ass chin on old Christine.
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls? Not KNEED, exactly, no...

Skeeter's Summary: Surprisingly fun on the whole. And it did allow me to fire off my best line of the night during the operation. (“Okay, who vants to try ze Danish sausage?”) Yeah, that was my best line in 24 hours. It was a quiet year by my standards.

Part 6: Bow-Wow-Chicka-Chicka-Bow-Wow...
Sunday 03:30-CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE

Ant, is there something you need to discuss with the group?

I kid! I kid because I love. But seriously, dude! Where are you finding these films? This was one of the least-viewed flicks on the bill, nearly unseen for 30 years. (And thus, a crystal-clear print.) And why hasn’t it been seen in so long? Well, let’s put it this way.

Take the central theme from last years Toys Are Not For Children. Change the gender of the “Love Interest” from Dad to Mom. Get sleaze-god Joe Sarno (Deep Throat II, “Daddy, Darling” etc.) to write and direct. And toss out any page with plot points on it. Then film the entire thing in one house and the park next door. Voila! You just made Confessions of a Young American Housewife!

I have NEVER in my life heard an audience make what Ant refers to as the “euuuuwwww” noise so frequently. Overly-public foursomes, parental voyuerism, spontaneous lesbian orgies, sweaty male butt cracks, and a low-rent Shaun Cassidy lookalike. (“She’s fucking a Hardy Boy!”) Just wrong! Wrong, wrong, WRONG!
I fucking loved it.
Of all the films this year, THIS was the one with the most riff-making potential. And Leon and I teed off it it with wild abandon, along with pretty much the rest of the theatre. I should walk you through the plot, although that’d take about eight words. (You could sketch a synopsis on a napkin and still have room for your shopping list.) Anyhoo, let’s give it the old college try!

Ooh, good title! I was starting the Prono Music Parody before the credits stopped rolling.

Starring... nobody!

Hope you like the apartment, because that’s pretty much where the film will be set for the next ninety minutes.

Three women, staring at each other silently. This is a good start.

”Uh, did anyone write us any lines? None at all? Okay, just keep staring.”

This is like Peter Greenaway decided to make a skin-flick. Dialogue is good folks... can we have some?

Jesus, that chick can mow through the Arnotts Digestive Biscuts, huh? (Leon: “She’s eating a tea-coaster!”)

This is the longest stare-down since Hogan and Andre at Wrestlemania II.

Enter, Sleazy Seventies Chickmagnet!

Great, he’s going to have sex with Ally Sheedy!

Expository Dialogue! Delivered around a mouthful of biscuit. (And so begins the endlessly hilarious scenes of “Annie” stuffing her face with food every second scene.)

Dude, you’re not even being subtle about your infedelity, are you? People in the next building can hear you!

Every time this girl has sex, dogs start barking three streets away.

So your husband has sex with women in the next room, and you shrug it off because it’s 1974? Groovy, I guess.

Oh, dear Lord. Mom just arrived for a vacation. Cue the first “euuuuwwwww” of the flick.

”Hi, I’m your son-in-lust.. law, law! I meant law!”

Am I the only one who thought “Mom” was about five months older than her daughter?

Should we just inject Annie with an IV of pureed Vanilla Wines? They’re be less crumbs on the carpet.

So this movies kind of Pete and Carol and Eddie and Alice and Carols Mom and the Next Door Neighbour and the Mailman and the Paperboy... I knew I should have brought my filthy raincoat.

Mom can cook. She’s made a friend in Annie, then. Please hold all orgasmic noises until the after-dinner mints arrive, Annie!

Mom make her excuses and leaves. Leon (Brightly) “I’m having a football team over!” Me: *spray*

”Okay, nice dinner party everyone... back to your place for coffee and sex?”

Hey, Annie forgot to take a doggie bag with her! She’s going to pass out!

Naked MILF! Well, a Mother Everyone in the picture would Like to F... you, get the picture.

Still a naked MILF...

Jeez Joe, we get it, she’s naked. Move on!

We have the Maternal Boobie-sucking speech! Annie, you scare me. (Maybe she just wanted milk to go with her biscuits?)

I can hardly hear the dialogue over the cries of audience disgust...

Good Taste Breach! (Carol: “Mother!” Me: “Theresa!”)

That’s a fucking awful place to put a mirror... Pete and Eddie are having to do yoga to avoid giving their dinkies a supporting role credit.

So that’s from the Bantam Books Karma Sutra for Four, page 14, I believe.

”Harder, faster! Harder, faster!” And Joe Sarno had the balls to take a “writing” credit on this flick.

Annie, if he goes any harder and faster, he’s going to spontaenously combust!

Annnnd... scene!

The first of the Walking in the Park Scenes. And in every single one, the characters walk into shot for about sixty seconds, deliver three lines of dialogue and walk away for another minute. Padding? Nahhh...

Wait, Annie didn’t bring any trail mix or biscuits with her! She’s going to die!

”Let’s go get a hot duh.. frankfurter!”. Man, when Annies blood sugar gets down, she really butchers her lines, huh?

Good god, that’s the biggest microwave oven I’ve ever seen! You could roast a cow inside!

*Jaws Theme*. Get out of the kitchen, Mom! Sleazy Son-in-Law approaching!

To quote Men Behaving Badly, why don’t you just bend her over the cooker and chuck one up her?

Mom must be cooking chicken, because he’s got a handful of breast meat.

Thanks for the unwanted sexual assault, Pete. You big studmuffin, you.

Dinner scene, again! Annie, it’s binge THEN Purge! You’re only doing half the job!

”Now, what’s for dessert? Oh, me! Thank you, honey!”

Remind me, was there a time this dialogue was considered “Hot” and not “Hilarious”?

So, two couples boinking in the living room while one boinkees Mom watches from the balacony. While naked. And doing the two-finger taco tango. This is like, 10 pounds of wrong in a 5-pound bag.

”It’s you’re turn tonight, Annie... we’re going to split you right down the middle.” Okay, is that a GOOD thing?

Did I mention that Moms’ name is “Janet Robinson”? Which explains why, when best-friends hubby headed upstairs, I blurted out “DANGER! Danger, Mrs. Robinson!”. (My second-favourite riff of the night. Even the row ahead of me appreciated that one.)

70's mustaches' make for awful kissing scenes. ("Aggh, a giant centipede is attacking both of them!")

Arrgh, sweaty man-ass!

The guy next to me commentated “I’d love to be a cameraman” around this time. Yeah, but if this guy gets any closer-up, we’re going to see Mom’s appendix.

Man, if this sex scene goes on any longer, it’ll be 1975.

Anyone else expecting to see “The End” flash on-screen.. WHOA, it’s over! Nice editing, Joe.

And we’re back in the park. Annie IS eating this time. I figured she killed a squirrel in a fit of hunger-crazed rage.

"My husband drained his crankcase in your mother!". We have reached a Comedic Peak, folks!

”Hi, I’m the Delivery Boy”. Good crowd reaction. Nice to see we all recognise the classics.

Delivery Boys’ pants by Swandri!

Dude can’t take a hint, can he?

More assorted walking in the park footage. I think the film turned into a Flake advert.

Well, the movies starting to loop. Nookie, park, nookie... what can we do to liven this up?

In all honesty, I didn’t think the answer to the above question would be “New-Age Tantric Titty Yoga”.

I loved the Yoga Mistress, though. Not only because she was the only brunette in the film ("This is like watching clones fuck!") but her classic “I FEEL your vibrations!” line. Well, you’re probably sitting on some sort of adult toy, lady. (Vibration jokes abounded for the rest of the night, of course. I was even inspired into a brief Beach Boys number.)

Annnnnd, spontaneous four-way Lesbian Orgy... GO!

We are really flirting with crossing the Taboo Line, here. Go on Joe, I know you want to...

You pussed out! You pussed out! You pussed out!

Shaun the Hardy Delivery Boys acne-scarring is really kind of distracting me.

Hey, he brought a clue! Let the shagging commence! (I hope she leaves him a tip.)

Great, now the park scenes are reminding me of old episodes of Rainbow. If Zippy and George show up, I'm outta here.

Okay, the films nearly over... so let's introduce the next-door neighbour! Great idea, Joe!

"Oh my god, they're fucking.". I wonder if Annies' brought a nose-bag so she can eat at the same time?

You've heard of Party for Six? Well, here's a REAL Party for Five!

It was at this stage that I commented "Jeez, I'm glad these poeple don't own a dog...".

Yahhhhhgh! After looking at those slacks, I think I prefer the Delivery Boys naked man-ass!

And apparently, the films' over. Oh, wait... no it's not. Oh, yes, it is. Possibly. Okay, good.

Well, we managed to avoid the Incest sex scene, in our incestous sex film. Pussbag director.

I have to say though, that's a film for the whole family to enjoy. *shudder*

Tough Female Character(s)? : Liberated, certainly. Tough? Nahhh.
Puking? : Nope, even though Annies constant eating suggested bullemia.
Horrific Leg Injury? : Horrific leg COVERINGS, yeah. Fucking plaid flairs. Die, 1970s!
Ugly Facial Hair? : Agian, it's 1970’s, dude. See previous film.
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls? Not KNEED, exactly, no...

Skeeter's Summary: Loved it. Great, now you think I'm a perv.

Part 7: Word Up. And Wake up!
Sunday, 05:20-BREAKIN'!

Yeah, yeah, I know. It was called Breakdance!. I also know. Everyone hated this film. Hated it, hated it, hated it.

Fuck you.

I love this movie...

Seriously, what the hell went wrong here? The pre-breakfast spot goes horribly askew again. A neon-bright, totally 80's, upbeat, feel-good, phat with a PH movie! It should have had people dancing in the non-existant aisles. It should have had people popping, locking and breakin' on the stage. Instead, the place looked like a triage ward. The Killing Fields would have had people dancing faster than this! Ten minutes in, I'm the biggest slumber party Auckland has ever seen. And you know what? I love this flick.

Come on, who can hate a film where the characters nicknames ("Ozone" and "Turbo") are less idiotic than their REAL nicknames! ("Shabba-Doo" and "Boogaloo Shrimp"!) Where the romantic male lead would get kicked out of The Village People for looking "Too faggy"! Where Ice T raps not once, but twice! Where a guy makes a broom dance to Kraftwerk! Where the bad guys think a Pink Floyd cap and a beret make them look tough! Where comedy Rednecks start barfights for no reason! Where a supremely-confused looking Jean-Claude van Damme is an extra! Where Ozone has the amazing ability to spot Kelly (AKA "Special K") arriving at his crib, despite having a wall and a mostly-closed door in his way! Where multi-coloured legwarmers and purple lycra can be worn in a public place! Where everytime you think you've seen the gayest-looking outfit, a better one shows up! Where a guy on crutches breakdances with pommel horse moves! ("GYMKATA!") Where a dance-off gets won by illeagal use of Jennette Goldstein! (I pooched that joke in the theatre, saying "Jeanne Tripplehorn", but hey, no-one ever gets the joke but me. Jennetes' Vasquez in Aliens. Never mind, explaining the gag just kills it.) Where the credits list guys nicknamed "Crazy Legs", "Skip Dip" and "Poppin' Pete"! Where the final rap can plug the already-in-production sequel!

Classic film! This was my fifth time seeing it, the last just about ten days before the fest. I could have fired off a gazillion jokes, but, judging the apathetic mood of the crowd, settled for pointing thing out to Andrea. ("Man, Che Guevara always ruins the atomsphere!" "See the guy in the blue tracksuit trying to do the robot? I think that was me in 1984!". Oh, and Andrea says Adam packs to the left.) and enjoying the performance of the Overacting Female Judge in the finale. (God, I love that woman.) Maybe I'm in the minority, but I thought this was a great choice. Maybe I'm just an idiot...

Odd Note: Near the end of the film I popped out to use the facilities. There in the foyer was Ant, and his body language was loud and clear. "Brace for Impact!". Oh well, maybe he'll find Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo in time for next year. If not, I have a videotape of it.

Tough Female Character(s)? : No tough charcters PERIOD.
Puking? : No, but you could get motion sickness watching the flick.
Horrific Leg Injury? : Horrific legwarmers, certainly.
Ugly Facial Hair? : The Schickmatic Cleanshaven 80's look all round.
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls? Me, if I champion this flick any more, right? I'll be quiet now.

Skeeter's Summary: BREAKIN'!

Sunday, 07:00-ish
BREAKFAST BREAK(Dance!)

So, We were past the halfway point, and breakfast was about to be served... so what bertter way to wake up the crowd than with a Dance-Off! Yes, A Breakdance contest was held. Yes, I entered.

No, I didn’t win.

Still, considering my skills extend to a backspin and the Robot, I came a creditable third. (Winning a DVd of House of Wax. Yes, the Vincent Price film, not Paris Hilton. Thank God.) The rest of the time I performed the Electric Spazaloo, including fucking up my first-ever attempt at a kneespin in spectacular fashion. That’ll teach me to breakdance with a finger in a splint (Stephen Grey, who’d arrived during the flick, did seem to like my style, though.) Bonus points to the 2nd-place getter for doing an Electro-Rock and advancing on me in a vaugely-threatening fashion. I should tried the Malli Vanilla chest-bump on him.

Afterwards, we headed to the Bakehouse Cafe for a cheap-and-edible breakfast. (Bacon, eggs, sausages, hash browns and toast for $6.50! Too bad for the vegetarians, but hey, their loss.) I decided to head back early to stretch out and catch some Z’s before we kicked off again, only to discover the theatre was still pretty full. It really WAS a good turnout this year. And so, after previews for Secret Agent 101 and A Flea in Her Ear, we were off again!

Part 8: Nice Film, Shame About the Eyelids...
Sunday, 0800-ish-KISS KISS, BANG BANG

So this was THE film. The one named film on the program. The one that most Marathoners have been picking as the Film of The Night! And it was a great film...

I think.

You wouldn’t believe it. My early-morning start came back and kicked me in the ass. Twenty minutes into the movie, I started to flake out. My eyelids drooped. I keep forcing myself to stay awake, several times coming to attention with a series of whiplash-inducing jerks. I drank cold water. I sat with my eyes open so wide I must have looked like a possum staring down a petrol tanker. It didn’t work. I’m not kidding. I wish I was. I probably only slept for 45 seconds in total, but trying to keep the plot straight got harder and harder. I woke up a little near the end, but by then it was too late. And so, forget about a plot summary. Kiss off any chance of a decent review. There’s reviews on the net already, but trust me, don’t bother reading them. From what I managed to take in, it’s a damn fine film. Go see. I will, too.

Fuck it. I should have slept through Breakin’...

Tough Female Character(s)? : Umm..
Puking? : My notes say “Yes”...
Horrific Leg Injury? Buhhh?
Ugly Facial Hair? : *snort*
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls? Whaa? *jerks awake*

Skeeter's Summary: Funny, sharp, slick and satirical. I think. I’ll let you know for sure when I see ALL of it.

Leon took his leave at this stage, heading home to explain to Tania why he hadn’t responded to any texts in the last 16 hours. (He’d left his cellphone on the train coming in...) I meandered back to the floor and hoped for something sutiably kinetic to wake me up.

Part 9: Gosh, Did I just Kill You? Awfully Sorry, Old Chap!
Sunday, 10:00-MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY

What the hell did I just watch?

Kinetic? No. Wake me up? Yeeeeeah, you could say that. A fairly obscure (Although I KNOW I saw the start of it on TV many, many years ago) British black comedy, this was for me the Pychout to Murder of ‘05. Slow-paced, talky, but so bizarre you stayed awake just to see what was going to happen next. (Thanks, 1969. You weird, freaky year...)

To sum up the plot, an English family, consisting of the aforementioned foursome, kidnap men, force them to play childrens games, and eventually kill them. Sounds relativly straightforward? Well, how about the fact that the”kids” are in their twenties, but dress in school uniforms? That the man they kidnap is never called anything but New Friend. That in the course of the movie, you will hear the titular names mentioned about 14,000 times each. That sex rears it’s ugly head, including the cherry-popping of a cowgirl.

Murder, mayhem and madness.. and yet, it’s so... English! It’s polite, genteele, stiff-upper-lip-type insanity. (I figured it was a government-produced film to warn you aginst the dangers of the English Public School System) The sex is implied, rather than in-your-face, the murders elegantly plotted and executed, the nanny.. well, as Matronly as you can imagine her to be, despite being a sex-starved murderess. It’s all rather talky (being an adaption of a play), rather late-60’s, and not one I’d pay to see again. But the end...

Hoo boy, what an ending!

Or more to the point... “What ending?”!

You see, as the plot turned to paranoia and distrust from our wacky band of Murderous Misfits, we suddenly (And I do mean SUDDENLY) jumped to the final scene of the film. Which was upside down. And running in reverse. Suffice it to say, the crowd woke up in a hurry. The film stopped. It started again. It was still upside down. I assumed a breakdance pose and watched it for a while. It stopped again. And that, as they say, was that!

I still have no idea how it finished. I assume someone got killed.

Tough Female Character(s)? : Pyschotic? Yes. Oversexed? Sure. Tough? Hmmm...
Puking? : Not this time.
Horrific Leg Injury? Politely delivered full-body injuries, mainly.
Ugly Facial Hair? : Yeah, the 1969 porno-mustache...
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls?: No, but Sonny deserved a crotch-munting at times.

Skeeter’s Summary: Interesting, but possibly not the best choice for 16 hours in. But the inadvertant comedic highlight, with the upside down, reversed reel. (Could you imagine "Confessions..." in reverse? Whoa.)

Part 10: The Sherrif is a Ni.. Oh, Wait. Wrong Film
SUNDAY 11:45-FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE

Migrating back to the front row with Raven and Nick (And the slight scary woman next to them) we settled in for one of Ants’ favourite grindhouse flicks. It was one of those “Been Through Every Drive-In in America” prints, with major scarring at the start. (But it improved a lot as the film progressed.) It’s the 1970’s, it’s New York and there’s action in progress! We have bad guys, a funky soundtrack and people are getting shot by... William Sanderson? Now that’s playing against type! Let’s go to the bullet ponts...

Wacka-chicka-wacka-chicka. Come on, isn't every them music enhanced with 70's wacka-chicka guitars? Remember The Professionals? Best them music ever! After Speed Racer, that is...

Hey kids, it's time for Violent Puppet Theatre! (Damn, this is a scratchy print...)

Hi, I'm Larry, and this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother, Darryl...

Escape plan? Nope, just luck by lousy driving for these three.

Gunfire! Murder! Mayhem! Just a typical day in the Big Apple, huh?

It's Huggy Bear!

Pimpslapping your hoes in public and demanding your money? Way to perpetrate the stereotype, Eugene!

Nice boxers, dude. And here ends the comic relief in the film.

Okay ladies, let's meet Bachelor Number 1! He's Chico Rodriguez, he's a professonal Cheech Marin impersonator, and if you call him a "spic", he'll rip your fucking lungs out!

Bachelor #2 is Chow Ling! His interest include rape, murder, arson and rape! Yes, I know I said rape twice!

And finally, Jesse Lee Kane! He's a long-hair racist redneck with bad hygene standards and awful teeth! No, he's not being played by Sid Haig, why do you ask?

Enter Captain Cagney-Bogart G. Hamilton! Someone tell him he's not in a remake of Little Ceaser, willya?

“Rulebook” Hamilton? Man, and I though Lucinda Dickey got boned with her weenie “street name”...

We now join My Dinner with Malcom X, already in progress.

”The path of the righteous man... darn, wrong sermon.”

”Yes, lovely speech dear. Eat your potato salad.”

Hey, he’s son’s a Mini-Ali. “Float like a butterfly, pass the collard greens!”.

Man, Grandmas’ a firebrand, ain’t she? I like her already.

They’re stabbing Oliver Hardy! Nooooo!

”Ugghhh.. *cough*.. sir, you forgot your Texaco Collectors Beer Stein!” *thud*

Geez, Cheech Marin must be really stoned to wear that. Oh wait, it’s just Rodriguez.

She’s off to buy wine? In the 1970’s? Great, break out the Blue Nun, we got company coming over.

Mini-Ali just became a Blood-Brother to a young Richie Cunningham!

Ebony, and ivvvv-ory! Live together in perfect, har-mon-y! (But probably not for long in this flick.)

The kids dog is freaking me out. What is it, A Rat-Weiler?

Wrong time, REALLY wrong lace to shop, lady.

”Hey shopkeeper, wanna do some shots?” BANG! “Heh, I love that joke...”

I’ve heard of “shelf life”, but that’s the direct opposite. Feeling a little flat, dude?

CHILD IN PERIL!

Racist redneck takes Afro-American Family hostage. This is going to get ugly REALLY quick.

Speaking of ugly, where did Chico find that shirt? The “Cowboy at the Hero Parade” look never really caught on.

Jesse, slow down, you’re going to run out of racist epithets!

Well, the dogs in the cupboard and the silver spoon...

Okay, you’re all my hostages, I’m an asshole and your pet’s in the wardrobe. Let’s eat!

Man, if looks could kill, Grandmas’ a triple murderer by now.

Passive resistance is a noble concept, but I really think it’s a waste of everyones’ time and energy to try it on Jesse.

FOOD FIGHT!

Comic Relief Drunk Driver! Only not that comical.

Arrest the drunk driver? Before he, y’know, kills someone? Wow, you’re such a stickler for the rules, Captain...

Drunken Rednecks can liven up even the most sedate of dinner parties.

Oh, don’t make dad bust out his Phat Moves, he just ate!

Dad’s name is ‘Ted Turner” by the way. Jane Fonda has better taste than I thought...

Man, one gunshot and he turned into Bill “Bojangles” Robinson!

I think Jesses’ running out of offensive names.

Damn, was it wrong to laugh at “Martin Luther Coon”?

Now he wants him to sing... ooh, ooh, do “I Get a Kick Out of You”!

Hey, I saw this bit before! They’re doing the gospel version of Casablanca! *hums the French National Anthem*

Anyone else getting flashbacks to Room 2 of the Kahiki Plams Motel?

Jesse gets his chance to speechify. Yeah, you had a bad childhood. You’re still an asshole, whiteboy.

Token White Chick picks a bad time to keep that dinner date...

Topless woman being chased through the woods! (Who have thought that’d be a Running Theme?)

Oooh, she did a Greg Louganis!

I think they snipped a rape scene. Good, I hate rape scenes.

Richie Cunningham to the rescue!

Or, not.. run, Richie, run!

We are approaching the line of Good Taste...

”Hey kid, you like Rock music?” *thud*

BREACH! BREACH! The Line of Good Taste has been breached!

Did I mention Richies’ the local Sherrifs son? The shit is heading fanwards.

Man, I’ve been typing the review for like, three days, and I’m one-third of the way through the flick. Let’s sum up until we get to the climax. More racial abuse. The family gets control of the situation. For ninety seconds. Racial abuse. Attempted hanging! Rape scene! (Bleech) Cops are on their way! More rape, implied. But the cops are here! And they do dick. Typical.

Incidently, is that an ambulance, or did the cops bring an icecream truck along? (“Squad 1, left side! Squad 2, fan out on the right! Johnson, get me a triple cone with a flake in it!”)

This is a table. This is the table, turned. Now, will Ted be all forgiving, and turn-the-other-cheek-y about this whole affair?

Guess not. Jesse, he’s about to go Ezekiel 25:25 or your honky ass.

I won’t give away the ending. Let’s just say, it’s a feel-good finale for everyone that DOESN’T get their balls shot off.

Oh, and the Captain totally redeemed himself with one simple line near the end. You know the one I mean.

Tough Female Character(s)? : Go Granny! Tell Whitey you’re made as hell, and he’s got a tiny peepee! \metal/
Puking? : Not a lot, no.
Horrific Leg Injury? I don’t think so. However, torso, throat, head, ballsack...
Ugly Facial Hair? : Ugly hair, period.
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls? Not KNEED exactly, no...

Skeeter's Summary: A little talky in the middle (As low-budget flicks always tend to be) but the finale woke the crowd up in a big way. Once Ted went Wrath of God on the rascist honkey, it got ROWDY in there! (Even bleached-white guys like me wanted to see Jesse get his comeuppance.) Offensive, crude and violent. I loved it.

Part 11: Never Sleep Again... *snore*
SUNDAY 13:35-THE EXCORCISM OF EMILY ROSE

I returned to the floor for the last time. Two movies left. Time for the last premiere, the “based on a true story” Excorcist-alike, The Excorcism of Emily Rose. I hate excorcims films. Every since watching the previously mention Linda Blair opus at the tender age of 13, albiet in hacked-to-bits TV edited form, I just can’t watch them without getting grossed out. Too much puking, usually. This could be a bad half-hour or so...

Wait, what happened. Crap, I’m dropping off again. Maybe it’s the body position, wedged between Cherie and that guys giant beanbags? I'm cramped, but comfy. Jump scene! Fuck, that was loud. Shit, did I nod off again? Dammit. Ooh, freaky but too CGI-ed. Looked fake. Fuck, the soundtrack is making the walls vibrate. I’m in a really wierd position, occupying a space that could fit maybe half of me normally. So is the girl on-screen. For some reason I just find that terrifically amusing. Shit, this is a long movie. More courtroom scnes than an L.A Law Marathon on Sky 1 so far. JUMP SCENE! Well, kind of, nothing actually happened. 3 AM is the Demonic Hour, huh? True we were watching Christine Jorgenson having Cliched Fireplace Nookie at that stage. It IS evil! Courtroom Scene. Mild Jump Scene. Okay, that was kind of eerie. Eyelids drooping again. Excorcism Scene! About time...

Goddamn, my ears are being driven back into my skull. No puking, though. REALLY loud! I’m awake, movie, honest! And deaf. Annnnd...scene!

Back to the courtroom. Time to sum up. This takes ages. And in ten minutes, I manage to do what the film couldn’t in 2 hours.

I severly freak the shit out of myself.

You see, in the final scenes, I wasn’t watching the lawyer deliver her summation. I was staring at the shadows on the wall behind her, trying to work out of they were forming patterns. Getting darker, making demonic faces, that kind of thing.

Ever tried that after 45 seconds sleep over a 32-hour period? Yeah, you’re damn skippy I saw patterns forming. I'm surprised I didn't see the ghost of Elvis Presley doing the handjive with John Lennon everytime I blinked. And while near the end I convinced myself I was just imagining things, it was probably the freakiest ten minutes I've ever had in a movie theatre. And that includes watching the Roller Skating Alien Lesbian Nurses a few years back.

Tough Female Character(s)? : Fairly tough, yeah. But she's a lawyer in a modern film, so I guess she's supposed to be...
Puking? : None. I feel severly ripped off.
Horrific Leg Injury? Well, she might have pulled a ligament doing that Demonic Yoga.
Ugly Facial Hair? : Nothing spring to mind. But then, my mind wasn't really in "Spring" Mode at that stage.
Someone getting Kneed in the Balls?: Your guess is as good as mine.

Skeeter's Summary: Looked okay, but a little talky. Not bad jump scenes, but few and far between, with a ton of courtroom drama instead. Ant called it A Few Good Demons. I like that.

Afterwards, we held the Door Prize Quiz. Heading up on-stage with Ant and Stephen, I was amazed at how many people had stuck around to the end. Last year, maybe 40 people were there at the end. This time, the floor was still packed, and while the balcony had thinned out a little, there had to be nearly 200 still in attendance. (I figure we had 40-50 dropouts, tops. That's a phenomenal acheivement for only the 2nd year of a 24-hour program.) After writing up about 60 questions over the night, Ant ditched the concept of an elimination round and just let me fire questions off in an "Answer One, Win a DVD" Free-For-All. It actually worked a lot better this way. I only used maybe a dozen questions, and we were done fairly quickly. I think if we do that next year, I'll alternate bewteen the balcony and the floor on each question, as the forest of extra hands on the floor might have skewed the prize distrubution a little. Kudos to the Irish guy in the back who correctly answered my Super-Bastard Question, naming a seen-but-unmentioned brand of beer for a film watched 22 hours before.(!) One of the regular attendees sitting near me won my Booby Prize DVD (The Incredible Petrified World.) He jokingly tried to give it back. I don't blame him.

And so, we come to the final film. There's no way I can stay awake for this. God, I'm such a wussbag this year. *yawn*. Oh well, let's see what it is.

I'm awake. I'm SO fucking awake!

Part 12: The Perfect Ending to a Perfect Day.
Sunday, 16:00-THE THING

Time for a Film Geek Moment for me. The first credit fades up. No music, no cast members name, no directors credit. Just the name of a prodution company. And I say "Oh my God, it's The Thing!". I'm not even sure how I knew that. Maybe because I've seen the film a half-dozen times in the last ten years. But anyway, I was instantly awake. My appitite, muted for the last few film, came roaring back. (Half a tube of Pringles later, I was done. Next year I'm taking the bare minimum of snackage, seriously. Probably.)

I'm not really going into detail on this film, because most cult movie fans have watched it, right? If you haven't, see it! Get grossed out at the slimey practical effects. Get spooked by the Crawling Head-Crab. Get a laugh out of Donald Moffets reaction to being tied to a couch Get the DVD and listen to the commentary! If you've already seen it, see it again. Brilliant choice for the Big Finale/End of the World/Fan Favourite Spot the final film needs to be.

And so at last, the Big Bang had gone Boom, the Big Bad was dead. Possibly. The light came up, and it was over for another year. Remarkably, after 24 hours of living in our own squalor, the theatre was as clean as it could be (bar a sprinkling of orphaned polystyrene beans) in about ten minutes. Huge props to the guys and girls that pitched in and cleaned that place up so efficiently. You're back on my Christmas Card list.

We emerged, said our goodbyes and headed off in search of hot food and a warm bed. I finally found my bed exactly 36 hours after leaving it on Saturday morning. Three pages of an old Empire Magazine later, turn out the lights, Skeeters' gone a'sleepin'.

==============
The Final Thoughts
==============

A really interesting line-up this year. Some films I would have never picked to work in this sort of event went down amazingly well. The film I figured would have been the Crowdpleaser, was instead the Crowdkiller. I’ve written 12,000 words and feel like I barely scratched the surface of this thing. All I can say is... roll on next year!

And bring back Bigfoot!

==============
The Thank Yous
==============

As always, massive thanks to Ant for running this thing, and The Hollywood for putting up with us for another year. We’re never leaving after the Wurlitzer bit, you realise that?

REVIEW: Boa vs. Python

2006-05-02T01:46:00.000+12:00

I can never resist a challenge. I've stated that on many occasions. It doesn't mean, however, that I always COMPLETE the challenge. Take Anubis von Mojo's "Vicious Cycle" review challenge. In theory it was simple. Select one of three movies picked by the other review-ees, write it up, simple as that. Sadly, my local video stores selection of old and obscure was a grave disappointment. So, failing to secure pretty much anything I needed, I was reduced to renting my OWN selection. The CGI-Creature Feature, Boa vs. Python. Okay... let's go to work!

Boa vs. Python (2004)

UFO Films!: Well, there's a surpise. I gues they have the pedigree to produce a giant snake flick, if nothing else. A bunch of no-names in the credits, with Angel Boris being about the only one I recognised.

Atlantic City City on the MOVE!: We kick off by cross-cuttng between Atlantic City and Pennsylvania.In AC, we're watching the intros to a wrestling match. (Cheekily, it's between "The Dreaded Python" and "The Boa". Both wear luchadore masks, but I assume they're just actual wrestlers who don't want to be recognised appearing in a low-budget CGI-flick. (Then again, when you compare the production desgin on this open scene to, say No Holds Barred, maybe I'm being a little cynical. The ref gets off a good line by warning the wrestlers' that there's to be "No licking, biting or eating" in the match. Meanwhile in Pennslyvania, a guy dressed like an extra frm Grand Theft uto: Vice City takes delivery of a truckload of... something. "Ramon" calls Broddick, our potential evil bad guy type. (Hey, he's got a British accent... What else am I supposed to assume?) Broddick's also got a cushy ringside seat and easy-on-the-eyes girlfriend. Bad Guy alert! Broddick checks on his "delivery" from South-East Asia... ooh, I wonder what it coild be?

Worlds Longest Wrestling Match!:The truck moves out, and pretty soon is driving along in full darkness. Which means the cutaways to the wrestling match make little sense. (Unless they've been going at it for like, three hours already.) I'll cut them some slack and assume it's foreshadowing, though. A guard gets woken up by loud banging coming from the truck.The passenger doth awake, methinks. The truck appears to be carrying the rare South-East Asian Roaring Snake, by the noises emitting from the back of the truck. Ramon takes charge, ordering one of his flunkies to open the truck, allowing him to pump it full of tranquillizers. I think you can guess how well THAT strategy is going to work.

Whip it! Whip it good!:And of course, a CGI snakes tail... or possibly head, it's difficult to tell in the dim lighting... starts carving up the assorted underpaid henchguys. This is also intercut with Boa dn the dread Python punching each other in the ring. At one stage, one guy is tossed out the irng, landing at Broddicks feet. Whereupon his girlfriend/bodyguard(?) pulls a gun on him. Someone tell that girl the wrestling is rigged, please! (Besides, you think she'd actually be allowed to cart that through security these days?) Ramon goes for the last-ditch plan as his troops get decimated.. a block of explosives. One false whip of the big snake and it's...

Adios, Ramon!: So long, stereotyped Latino bad guy. Nice knowing you. We don't get to see what happens to the "passanger", but I'm taking a guess it probably escpaed. We cut to Broddicks private jet, which includes of all things, a bathtub. Must be a bitch to clean up if you hit turbulence. It does however give his girlfriend a chance to show off her snake-motif back tatoos with a...

Random Gratitous Bath Scene!: Just before, however, there's a shot of her putting Broddicks hunting rifle on a stand, next to a photograph that seems to show big game. That scores points for me, as it's a more subtle way of exposition than a clunky conversation about big-game hunting would have been. Of course, the film is til young. After a fair bit of slow=mo soaping and scrubbing, there's a low-level "Sanke-POV" shot. As I somehowhow doubt the snake manage to hitch a lift on his jet, I'll assume it's a False Sacre.

Yep, it's a false scare: It is in fact a tiny garter snake, relaesed into the bathroom by Broddick to help "condition" Still-Nameless Girldfriend for the weekends hunt. Yes, instead of hunting creatures in their natural environmnt, Broddick flies them in. I wonder what Customs would have o say about that? Not to mention the Department of Fish and Game. (Futture Skeeter: Later exposition mentions that the Department of Fish and Game has a file on his activities already. Makes you wonder why he's not injail for smuggling dangerous species of animals into America, really. Or is that just my country that does that? I know you can get a large fine for bringing in fruits and vegetables into New Zealand, let alone gigantic snakes. Your mileage may vary.) In a fairly gratitous moment, this conversation takes place while the Girlfriend is still naked. Admittedly, if you're on a private jet with your main squeez, it's probably as good a tme as any to wander about in the altogether. Plus, the boobage makes up for the lack of CGI killing machines in the scene. Broddick recieves a call from his haulage company, informing him of his trucks non-arrival. His resulting temper tantrum negates any Random Gratuitous Nookie, sadly. They're further interrupted by...

Automatic Plot-Specific Television!: Y'know, I swear that gint-screen TV was never on in this scene. But the moment we get a live report (from the Worlds Smuggest Reporter), BOOM! It's on the right channel, and loud enough for Broddick to hear it. Gotta love modern technology. And so, we cut to "24 Miles Outside Philidelphia". Here we get to properly meet

Kent Humphries, Channel Dork News: Kent is hopefully NOT going to be our odious comic relief. Although his comedic mispronouciation of "Al-Queda" is a worrying sign. (As his his awked reporting style and the fact that he's leapt to a wild conclusion about terrorist groups without getting a shred of evidence to support that theory. Spot the guy who'll be either eaten or looking for a new job in a out 80 mintues or so.)

Enter Agent Sharpe: Agent Sharpe of the FBI arrives, suffers through a horrible unfunny interiew with Kent while doing his best Agent mith voice, and heads in to investigate. The exploded car is still on fire in the background, I note. Someone want to get an extinguisher, please? Shapes FBI-Sence leads him straight to a busted-in sewer inlet (Or possibly water... I don't know inlets.) and helps him ID a giant snake scale with a glance. I spot the Government Sp00k! Do I win anything? (Future Skeeter: No, you're wrong. Sharpe in fact plays a fairly sympathetic character, not involved in any Evil Government Schemes whatsoever.)

Meanwhile... At Philidelphia Water and Power, a grate suddenly gets knocked open. Cue sneaky music! And cue the brief appearance (And equally brief vanishings) or two workers. Nothing like an attack sequence where you don't get to see the attacker to help stretch the effects budget. Back at the scene of the escape, there's a brief bit in non-comedy with Deputy Brendan Frase-lite , before the attack gets called in to Agent Sharpe. Man, that's quick, he's only been there for like, three minutes and he's already right up with us, even without kniowing the backstory. There's a litle Clunky Exposition (Yeah, I told you the film was young.) as he asks for the infor on the "Larson Project." Pompting his FBI collegue to blurt out "That was the CIA project gone bad!". Yikes, who tlaks like that? Ever? I'm assuming it's a line designed to tie (however tenously) to either Pythons II or Boa. Having seen niether, I'm not sure WHICH film had snakes getting loose in Russia. It's probably not important anyway.

"And get me Monica Buns.. uh, Bonds!:Ms. Bonds is of course in Miami, which apopears to be in the middle of a rather sedate Spring Break. She'sfirst spotted... after a long tracking shot featuring more thong bikinis than the Carnival in Rio... betting a group of college guys she can hold her breath underwater longer than their guy, a giant mullet-locked dude. And so, we get a good long sequence of people cheering while they stare at each other underwater. She wins, of course, mainly thorugh the technique of flahing him (But sadly, not us), causing him the revert to a 12-year-old boy peeking at Dad's Playboys. She's quickly intercpted by an unseen agent who is there to take her to Agent Sharpe. And in one of those wacky UFO film coincidences, the "Agent" has no acting ability and a thick Eurpoean accent. Thank you, cheap Bulgarian grip for playing that part.

And so... We're off to Elkins, West Virgina. It turns ot Moncia has been working with dolphins, and Sharpe needs her "equipment". Well, we almost saw her equipment back at the pool.. oh, sorry, wrong concept. It's probably a tracking device by the sounds of it. We arrive at Longreen Snake Reserve, there to meet Dr Emmet, the worlds leading herpetologist. (Of course.) Ther's a wee bit of self-referential dialogue before he appears. Monica proves to be a real whiz in the lab, tapping away on the tank of a snake. (Which, even if it's not poisonous, is a really starnge thing for someone who supposedly works in an aquatic institute to do. I know as a kid most pet shops tell you not to tap on the tanks, as it, k'now, kinda kills the fish.) Into the vaults they go... and...

Herrrre's Betty!: "Betty" is the gargantuan Boa Constrictor Dr. Emmet is breeding to produce anti-venom. (Which he does by feeding poisoned smaller snakes to her.) Oddly, depsite having three people in her cage Betty quite happily eats the little snake, rather than making h'ordouves out of our protagonists. Back out in the lab, we learn that Monicas work invloves "Implants"... it's Termi-Boa-nator! Dr. Emmet notes that his snake has been raised emtirely in cpativity, but it would still have the huinting instinct. Which again raises the question of why he isn't Snake Kibble by now. Anyway, we have our set-up. Sharpe is going to use Betty to hunt down the missing giant Python. Sound like a good idea to anyone else? Anyone? Me either.

Just some good ol' boys!: Meanwhile, it's back to Broddick,who's meeting up with his "hunting party. Each gets to turn up individually, so we will at least learn their names. First up, in his big ol' truck is "Tex".(Whoa, don't strain your creativity muscle, Mr. Screenwriter.) His snake-snkin boots are a nice touch, though. Then , in a red sportscar, Mr Foley, the sniper. (In fact, "(the) Militarys' greatest sniper." It's never the third-best whatever in the world, you notice that?) Next is... whoa, whoa, whoa HOLD IT! Broddick just said his girlfriends name!

Hi, Eve!: I should have gueesed. Evem, as in Adam, as in "serpent". This script is at times better than it has any right to be. Anyhoo, back to the Expendable Hnters.

The Danners: Just your average redneck family outing, huh? I hope he brought enough weak, American beer for everyone. And finally, Littlefield, your obligatory bare-chested, crossbow-carying "Master Hunter". One brief Resivoir Dogs slow-mo walk and we're off! There's a bit of character stuff... Danner Jr. is slightly dorky, Littlefield is mr Strong and Silent, Foley is doing a pretty obvious job of flirting with Eve, etc. Foley toasts the hunt and we... cut to black. I take it this was a made-for-TV production, then. Post-what-would-have-been-an-ad-break, we're back with Sharpe and co.

Exposition Central: Yep, it looks like Monicas' implants will help track the Boa, as it hunts down the Python. (And contains a handy-dandy 80, 000 volt shock-the-snakey device, too.) Emmet helpfully points out that this is the stupidest idea he's ever heard. (The snake vs. snake thing, not the implant.) Sharpe compares the idea to mine-seeking dolphins. Not really the same concept, but hey, if it gets us into the Giant Snake Face-Off, I say do it. The Pythons about to get active, it appears, leading to Emmets assurance that, security teams or not, it's on! Prepare for disposal, dispensible extras! And sure enough, it's quickly escaping through an inlet as we speak.

Dr. Bonds, Snake Medicine Woman!: There's a brief monatge of Monica going to work on Betty before we suddenly cut to two kids making out in a car. (A scene that made me flashback to the 1988 remake of The Blob instantly. Even the cars position, looking down on the lights of a city was perfect. Too bad Kevin Dillon isn't going to ride up and take ont he snake with a snow-maker. That would have been worth the one buck it cost to rent this thing.) "Something" givces the car a toothrattling thump. The girls repsonse.. "I heard something!". Yeah, and maybe the whole car shuddering might be a giveaway, too. Her young Hornbag boyfriend immediatley goes outsode to check what it was. I've paused the DVD, to allow you to place bets on his survival. The odds aren't that great, by the way.Oh, and he's drinking too. And has a nickname for his penis. On the whole, this could be a mercy killing.

And there he goes!: Brian, being the male, gets kacked instantly. His girlfriend however, gets a little Python foreplay first. You think I'm kidding, right? I wish. Meanwhile, back at the lab...

Braiiiins: Well, thats an icky shot. Almost as icky as the tender musics that plays as Emmet carresses Betty scales.(!) I'm no longer wondering why Emmet runs that lab alone... long nights, a selection of mice, a nice bottle of wine... say no more. The film decides we need more horror here, so we... cut back to Kent.

Comedy hurts!: Yes, Kent is now reporting on the deaths of the water workers. He's wildly speculating again, espousing a half-baked conspiricy theory that would get him kicked off any network in the country. (Well, since "Hard Copy" went off the air, anyway.) Luckily, Kents cellphone is having trouble getting a signal, so he leaves p his (European-accented) cameraman, and wanders off into the countryside. LET'S GO PY-THIN, LET'S GO! *clap clap* LET'S GO PY-THON, LET'S GO! Is it obvious Kents not one of my favourite characters in the film? There's another nice subtle bit, as Kent wlks over what appearas to be a deep snake-induced track in the grass. Once again, the director doesn't explictly call attention to it, but it's there all right.

Kent gets it!: Sadly, off-screen. This is kind of like "Npthing vs. Not Yet" at this stage. Back at the lab, Betty wakes up just as Agent Sharpe gets word not only of the Horny Teens, but also of Kents' disappearance. Man, the FBI has SO picked up it's act in this film. (Either that, or he's a psychic scanning the thoughts of the python.) Abrubtly, there's a bit of a disagreement over wether the snake should be killed or not, leading to Agent Sharpes...

Finest Acting Moment!: A term I brrowed from the An American Werewolf in London DVD. Griffen Dunne uses it to descripe how real snot flew out of his nose in a early scene. Here it's the huge gob of spit that flies when Shapre yells about how's he's "running short of... PAITENCE!". He plays it well, not blowing the scene by reaching for a handkerchief, though. Emmet offers a snake tranquillizer to capture the critter alive. Sharpe takes him up on the offer, but reserves the right to shoot to kill. Sensible descion, really. (Despite the whole ludicrous "Catch a giant snake with another giant snake" plan, of course.)

Ahuntin' we will go!: And so, the hunters tool up in the time-honoured tradition. There's a sudden cutaway to a pile of the "Philidelphia Inquirer"s morning edition. The headline "Ginat Snae Loos in Water Plant!" The sub-heading "Water Prices Skyrocket!" And the smaller story "Local Teens Missing". Man, THAT'S some quick reporting, seeing as how the teens were only killed about an hour before dawn. And the darn water companies, putting up prices after the H2O's been off for like, a single night. I feel that shot was a mistake.

Release the Boa!: And she's off! Our first glimpse of her in daylight shows she's bright red, and as usual, moves like greased lightning, depsite being 70 feet long and weighing 11 tons. The implant has an audio and video link back to Monica, but within five minutes of its realease, they lose both. I'm not sure why, and the movie won't tell me. Guess it's made by the same compay that manufactures Instant-Break Radios and Nev-r-Start car engines for slasher movies.

Scooby Tactics! Outside, the hunters split up. The Danners play Comedy Redneck for a while, getting possibly menaced by what could potentially be a snake. Or just a breaking branch. Foley goes Rambo, dashing off into the woods, as we go back to to Monica and co. The Marines get impatient, and go off solo, so now we've got dueling Snake Munchies on both fronts.

Boo!: Tex gets to be our first to see the Python, which rises up behind him in a clearing. It's actually kind of cute, rather than scary, it's expression equal parts attempted menace and goofy grin. As usual, it strikes, and it's victim buys it off-screen. Meanwhile, the Danners are shooting up the local landscape, and demonstrating Improper Use of Small Explosives. (Dude, it's best not to throw the grenade right at your own feet, yeah?) They manage to ice something small and furry, so I guess it's not a total waste of time. Eve finds the tunnel entrance, so it's about time to re-enact Aliens, I think. Betty has detected the soldiers, and the Pythons inside. Who's first to score?

Shoot to...Something!: A firefight breaks out, but because shots of Betty would cost money, it's mainly a lot of shot of guys firing seeming at random. One soldier accdently barbeques his team-mate with a wild shot. He gets taken out by Betty in a brief, implied kind of way. Betty front on shots aren't helping my suspension of disbelief... her head is oddly shaped, making her look like she's wearing Dame Ednas' sunglasses. (Future Skeeter: A later shot reveals the lumpy bits to be the Implants... two metal devices that look like the microphones off a couple of camcorders.) The team makes a hasty retreat and we head back to the hunters. Broddick busts out a flamethrower, meaning this should REALLY look like Aliens once they hit the tunnels. And sure enough, they're into the inlet the very next scene.

Getting to Know You...: Emmet and Monica chat about their respective motivations for a while. Emmets lost a sister to a snakebite, leding to his work developing anti-venoms. Before we can hear about Monicas' traumatic memories of Flipper, Sharpe butts in, stealing my "Getting to know you..." line. Riff-back! The Pythons are in the diversion tunnels, so Emmet devises a plan to flush them out to a position where the Marines can trank them. The video uplink comes back on, just in time for a little...

Serpent Nookie!: Ahhgh, interspecies mating! That's not exactly the plan, Betty! You were supposed to kill him, not thrill him! There's a dome horribly choppy editing in this scene, but Emmets scientific explanations of what's happening to a grossed-out Monica are pretty amusing. The special effects of the entwined snakes suck balls, though.

Rednecks are funny!: The Danners head into the tunnels, unaware of the impending flooding the marnies are setting up. Yay! Drown their asses like rats in a trap! Brief shot of the pyhthon, doing bugger all. Well, that was worth the money there. Sharpe, Emmet and Monica head for the tunnels, where the Militarys' Greatest Sniper proves to hav...

Great Reaction, Lousy Judgement!: He proceeds to put a slug in Sharpes chest at near point-blank range. (Sharpes last words... "Outstanding." Personally, mine would have been... "You #######", but Sharpe was obviously a very positive person.) Foley tries to back away, and gets instantly dragged off by... something. Oh wait, it's the Python. Nice of it to show up after instantly wallowing him without trace. (and off-screen, although you probably guessed that.)

Bulletproof Snake!: Danner snr. opens up on the Python, but oddly, several point-blank shotgun blasts simply spark off it's hide. (!!) One whippy snake tail later and Big Daddy Danner is off, via a convienent sticking-out piece of metal. Danner Jr. gets to yell Roy Scheiders line from Jaws II, but hasn't taken the safety. He dithers around a bit, before getting removed from proceedings via a wave of (CGI) water. Jesus, can't film crews even dump real water on people these days? Because that really loked as fake as you could possibly get!

PENALTY FLAG!: Suddenly, Eve has spottesd something. It's an egg! The dinosautrs are breed.. wait, wrong CGI flick. Frankly, I'm calling a big, fat foul on this plot twist. The shagging snake scene was literally ten minutes ago. Even taking into account some slithering around and killing people time, that still pretty freakin' fast for Betty to be laying eggs. Does the word "Gestation period" mean ANYTHING to the people that made this film? Sheesh. Anyhoo, Bettys still in the area, nuzzling up to Eve in a "please put the egg down" kin d of way. (Including a hiss that's much more velociraptor roar than snake noice. Eve slips, however.

Sunny side up!: And it's goodbye egg. Betty doesn't take to kindly to that. Who ordered the snakeskin jacket? Meanwhile, Emmet and Monica are hiding in the flooded tunnel from the Boa. Good thing we know how long Monica can hold her breath, huh? Broddick tries to save Eve by using his flamethrower, somehow not turning her into a briquette in the process. Emmets' having trouble holding his breath, especially when Sharpes corpse floats by in a nice post-mortem cameo. And so, it's up to Monica to save him with the...

Kiss of Life!: Great, all of a sudden I'm watching Splash!. This kiss goes on long enough that the Python gets bored, and slithers off. Y'know, it's just occurred to me that instead of typing "The Python" over and over, I should have given him a cutesy nickname. Like "Monty". Oh well, too little, too late. (And Betty was red... not, Whoa-oh, Black Betty. Ram-a-jam.) Back at Boa Central, Betty lets go of Eve and...

Happy Trails, Littlefileld: Wow, our first actual on-screen snake-related kill! It's kinda disappointing, though. And since when do constrictors bite their prey in half? Eve does appear to heve been offed, though. We're getting down to the nitty gritty, now. Emmet and Monica make the sensible descion to get the hell out of Dodge, only to run into Broddick. The confrontation comes to a sudden halt by the mysteriously appearing Marines, who show up to arrest Broddick. There's a brief, slightly confusing shot of the happy, snakey couple which seems to indicate that Bettys' shorty out and Monty is snacking on the eggs.

Base Camp: At a temporary military base outside of Philidelphia, (A small village in Bulgaria) Broddick imforms Emmet of the clutch of eggs he found. And wonder of wonders, they do try to explain the "Insant Egg" thing. It's not a brilliant explanation, as we suddenly have to backtrack to "They were fighting, not mating", but at least they tried. Broddick makes his getaway at this time, seeing as how being arrested means you get to stand around unguarded, unmanacled and pretty much ignored. Now THAT military Intellignece for you! AND he proceeds to steal a tank(!) to make his big break. One that resists a direct hit from a rocket launcher, to boot.

Plot starting to wander off course, sir!: Abrubtly, a new element gets tossed into the mix... a nightclub is operating nearby. One that coincedently features body-painted topless dancers. And I thought the EARLY nude scenes seemed tacked-on. Enter one of our snakes... it's tough to tell them apart with the blue lights, but I THINK it's Monty. He proceeds to stealth-eat a raver... leaving behind nothing but a blank spot on the floor and a hearty belch. You WISH I was kidding about the belch. My brain officaly just imploded. I'm still at a loss as to how an 80-foot, 12-tonne Python SNEAKS through a crowded club. It's not even that DARK in there!

Don't eat me, I'm only the DJ!: Oh, man, I HOPE I can get screencaps off this DVD. As the snake rises behing the clubs resident disc-spinner, we get a hilarious wide-shot of the clubs terrified patrons. All 24 of them! (I've seen bigger gatherings in a West Auckland kitchen on Friday night! The Marines roll in a second or two too late to save the DJ. (Well, actually, they do arrive on time, then stand around and watch him get digested, but I digress.) Broddick ALSO shows up, but how he knew where to come defys my overworked brain. Man, someone hit the "STUPID" button late on this film. He uses his flamethrower on both Monty (With no noticable effect) and the Marines. (With somewhat more success.)

Big Finale Time!: Now, I have been accused (by myself) of constantly give=ing away the end of the flims I review. So this time, I won't, just in case you want to see the film. (Or even buy it... it's on sale here for the unbelievable opening price of ten bucks!) But let me say it does involve a shirtless Broddick, the Boa and the Python FINALLY getting to live up to the title, a character who's able to continue screming even AFTER two snakes have torn him apart, an unexpected bit of snake vs. snake biffo in an underground train station, and possibly the WORST CGI effect of the year 2004. (Unless the head of a 80-foot snake weighs the same as a helium baloon with a marble in it.) We end with a mysteriously-vanishing giant snake, a happy-ending coda and a credit roll full of people whose names end in "...ov".

Skeeters' Summary: Well, it started a lot better than I was expecing. Hampered by a small-ish buget, obviously, but lacking the tons of padding these films usually have, a better-than-average script and it moved at a brisk clip. Then with 15 minutes to go, the frickin' thing exploded in a shower of abject idiocy and cut-rate CGI. I feel slightly disappointed by that. Worth a look if you're in a Big Monster Movie mood, but don't expect a masterpiece. And trust me, that ending really did bite the big one.

DOUBLE FEATURE: American Ninja 2 & Cyborg

2006-04-24T23:50:00.001+12:00

It's been a while since I got ONE review done, let alone a Skeeter Double Feature. But it was a cheap-ass hire day at the video barn, so let's delve in the Cannon Films back-catalogue! First up, a sequel to a previously-reviewed flick, then, the return of the infamous Albert Pyun!

American Ninja 2: The Confrontation!

Preview Time! La Bamba is first up... there's a surprise, as it was on 98.89% of the video tapes put out in the 80's. Next up The Lighthorsemen an Australian WW I flick I've heard about, but never got around to seeing. It's Galipoli on four hooves, by the looks of it. Nice to see big horse-led battles pre-CGI, though. Supercarrier is next off the rack... a lame-looking Top Gun knock-off with a fair-few familiar B-faces in the cast. And... oh, my God... Leonard, Part 6! I still can't believe I paid money to watch that piece of crap. (Hey, I was young and went to the movies every second day during the school holidays... I spent money to see Condorman, for God's sake!)

And here we go! There's the Cannon logo! Let's get ninja-ing!

Torque '86! Three guys are burning rubber on motorcycles, through twisting terrain and bright red credits as we kick off. They pull up at the all-camo pants bar for a drink, proving to be overly-cleancut college types. (Although they turn out to be Marines. Weenie-marines, perhaps.) Prepare for an asswhipping! (Which would have happened at a Girl Guide meeting, such is the geek levels the bikers are giving off.)

Aussie Thugs! And yes, two of the three get their asses kicked by the strangely Australian (and oddly polite) thugs. The third hides like a sissy, in an obvious set-up. Once the pride of the U.S military has been taken out by barflys, the Head Goon opens a door, revealing a...

Ninja Storeroom! They make off with the unconscious pair, thus raising the average efficiency of the American military by a fraction. And we cut (in a blast of kettledrum music) to re-meet our hero, Curtis Armstrong.

Enter the Dudikoff! Welcome back, Michael Dudikoff! Yes, he's STILL our hero, despite STILL looking like he's just started shaving. We appear to be in the Philippines again, or some equally budget-stretching location. (Note: Its St. Thomas Island in the Caribbean, according to the video box.) There's some unfunny business with a couple of possible-marines who pick up both Armstrong and his back-for-the-sequel partner Jackson. And a quick glimpse of a very English-accented Authority Figure. That usually spells trouble. Onwards though... let's head out to...

Camp Nudiebeach! No, there's no gratuitous nudity. (Yet) But the marines’ base is slap-bang on the beach. Dress standards are somewhat... lax. The C.O "Wild Bill" looks like he's ready for a YMCA revival, for instance. (Who knew marines were allowed to sport two-toned feathered hairdos'?) He's missing four marines so far, and gives a brief description of the black-clad suspect. Amstrong and Jackson exchange a Significant Look as the traditional Ominous Chord plays. On a synthesizer, of course. It is the 80's after all. We get to meet the local Kid-of-all-Trades, Toto, too. Well, he may be called Toto, but he dresses like a member of Culture Club.

Gay Militia Man, the 80's made a lot of guys look a little... fey. Even when they're trading sophomoric comments about women. Then again, Taylor, one of the guys taking Armstrong and Jackson out waterskiing keeps giving Armstrong the eye. Sure, he's the dude that got the other two kidnapped, but he's really too keen to strand himself with a bunch of buff, shirtless guys. Armstrong deduces the problem with the boat in about three seconds, and about five after that it's...

Ninja Time! Ooh, a flock of wild Beach Ninjas! That's rare at this time of the year! Some kicky-punchy stuff happens, as the ninjas employ the traditional tactics of hanging back and waiting for the chance to go one-on-one with the Good Guy. Who proceeds to hand them their collective asses, of course. One ninja appears to get his neck broken, but shows remarkable recuperative powers by, y'know, not being dead afterwards.

Clown-ninjas. Friendly Stab. Shaft! I'm gonna git you, sucka! Armstrong makes a break for it, only to have the ninjas suddenly turn into a troupe of acrobats to pursue him. (Yes, nice ninja-ladder... now let's see you form a human pyramid!) Their group attacking tactics prove even LESS effective than the one-on-one stuff, as every sword swipe manages to take out one of their fellow ninjas. Jackson gets involved, using a boat hook as an improvised staff. (And, as is traditional for HIS character, fights bare-chested.) Meanwhile, I realise a fact about the attackers.

5 Ninjas! No, 7.. okay, 8. Wait... 15! They're multiplying like a hydras heads... kill one, two more show up! Even though none of them seem able to do so much as scratch our heroes, Armstrong and Jackson finally bail to the cliff tops.

Acapulco, here we come! And one quick cliff-dive later... into the boat, not the water, which seems less than logical to me... they're out of there.

Debrief 1/We've got a lead! Really? Could have fooled me, guys. I've got no idea what leas you're following, but whatever. Sgt Shouty gets his Oscar moment post-debriefing. I doubt he won... woosh, that's some wooden acting. Taylor sets up a little Armstrong-acide for the next day. Ooh, I hope it involves ninjas! Taylor invites Armstrong to the Blind Beggar, which is probably the local gay nightclub. (Look, I'm just speculating... he's still wearing those fruity shorts AND he makes the invite while practically sharing Armstrongs' bed.) Armstrong looks confused, but that's a natural Michael Dudikoff expression anyway.

Aussies at 12 o'clock! Okay, so maybe this WON'T involve ninjas... there's the big guy from the opening kidnapping. He's another contender for the Woody award for Least Emotion in a Supporting role. The resulting fight scene is brief, with the result that Armstrong has 2 unbroken arms, and the attackers only 6 between the four of them. Taylor tries to plead wussiness when confronted by Armstrong. (Who's probably going to die a Redemptive Death... or at least a Pointless Death.) The thugs re-appear and another brief fight scene takes place, which is almost as exciting as the first. Not very, that is. Taylor makes my prediction come true by stupidly standing by the window, getting a bamboo spear in the chest. Just call me Criswell. So the ninjas finally get on the scoreboard, at the cost of about 12 of their number. Great assassins, my ass.

Debrief 2/Partytime Now this is interesting. I accidentally knocked the plug out of the laptop I was using to review the flick, losing my notes for then next ten minutes of action. When I rebooted... I couldn't remember what happened! Now either my attention span has shrunk to zero, or this film's more generic than I thought. To be fair, it's ten minutes where the film just treads water, with another lengthy scene in the C.O's office. (And with a huge boom hanging visibly in shot for most of it.) The British-accented Local Inspector is present this time, blocking the Marines efforts to investigate the killings. *dramatic chord* Yeah, I'm guessing he's not a good guy... call it a hunch. And then we waste some more time at the Governors garden party, watching bad comedy and character moments for our leads. The plot meanders back into action with an unexpected Hissy Fit! Delivered by a Random Woman in the general direction of...

Hey, it's the Head Ninja!: The somewhat-Indian head ninja is hanging out with a friend of the Guv'ner. Who's hanging out with the inspector. The wafer-thin plot thickens. The Governors hired goons hustle the woman away, hotly (well, tepidly) pursued by the Heroic Duo, along with a token Marine. I braced myself for a car chase. No such luck. It's more like a leisurely drive back to the same ol' Sleazy Bar as before. The kettledrums kick in again as the Aussie Thug Squad engage Armstrong and Jackson in a...

Comedy Barfight!: Yes, despite the gratuitous, testosterone-fuelled violence, the score informs us this is meant to be played for laughs. Jackson goes wonderfully OTT here, running his mouth a mile a minute as he fights, sounding like Hudson from Aliens on crystal meth. They fake us out briefly with a Railing Dive that MISSES the traditional table full o' beers... Only to have Armstrong and a Goon take it out a few seconds later. Anyway, the upshot is that our Heroes beat up the goons, but fail to get back the girl, then run away when the Head Ninja shows up. Their car has been severely reconditioned by the local street gang, but it belongs to the Base Commander, anyway. We're only missing the "Wah-wah-wah" musical cue to Komplete the Komedy.

Leo the lion... uh, Drugdealer/Toto knows all: More stuff happens. The Head Drugdealer/Ninja Commander turns out to be Leo, although he often gets called "The Lion". Maybe Tony the Tiger is his silent partner in crime? ("Ninjas? They're grrrrrrEAT!") Armstrong gets Toto to lead him to where the girl (Whose name is later (or possibly earlier, when I wasn't paying attention) revealed as "Alisha") is hiding. There's no real explanation as to HOW Toto knows this, bar the fact he's a Streetwise Urchin With a Heart of Gold. Armstrong shows up to rescue her, only to be attacked by the...

Toughest Amway Reps EVER!: Whoa, door-to-door Ninjas! A little more low-budget streetfighting breaks out, this time in broad daylight in front of a large crowd of locals. Silent Killers of the Orient, my ass.

Slow-mo mayhem: Dawn commented on the pace of the fight scenes here, and I had to agree. Could we put a shade more "action" in our action scenes, boys? It looks like the rehearsal footage. In fact, most of the fight scenes throughout the flick are pretty lame... way too careful, and overly stagy. But I was hardly expecting Jet Li-style action.. you gets what you pays for, after all.

Keystone Ninjas/No Reaction Toto: The Ninjas self-destructive tendencies kick in again, with most of their losses suffered at the hands, feet and swords of their compatriots. (Several go out via the Traditional Ninja Art of gently running their sword blade over thir opponents stomachs. Who knew katanas were too blunt to cut clothing, let alone skin?) The good guys make a break for it in a truck. One ninja takes out the back window with his fist, which oddly doesn't get so much as a jump out of Toto. Kids cool as a freakin' cucumber frappe. (Either that or he just didn't want a faceful of sugar glass.)

Street surfing! After getting tossed from the truck, the ninja manages to hook the vehicle with a grappling hook. (Via the ancient art of Bullshit Editing... even without slow-mo, the hook is about ten feet from the truck at best.) This results in him getting dragged behind the truck for about sixty miles. Interesting strategy, dude. He manages to climb aboard, though, just in time to get...

Edited to Death!: ...As the truck drives slowly into a pile of barrels, then jump-cuts into a high-speed Flying Truck Explody. Apparently they just arrived at the St. Thomas National Jet Fuel Depository. Having divested themselves of the ninjas, Armstrong sends Toto back to the base, while he and Alisha get set to head out the Leo's base, Blackbird Island to rescue the missing Marines. (Remember them?) Or was it BlackbirdERS Island? Damn short attention span. And up yours, movie.

What the hell is that accent?: Armstrong and Alisha cit-chat a while, after a burst of make-out music that made me think we were about to see the most tacked-on sex scene ever. Wads of exposition splash across the film as Alisha finally fills us in on the plot. (Long story short: Her dad's been forced into creating genetically-modified ninjas. Same old story, huh?) Because one chunk of plot is never enough, we cut to Leo and a bunch of his Badguy Cronies as he adds his own...

Exposition... and SuperNinjas!: Okay, the shot of his Superninja Army positioned around an indoor arena was pretty cool. Nice colour co-ordination, too. But what's with the Red Ninjas? The one's on black are for attacking at night, I get that? But bright red ninja suits? Where are they heading, tricky assassinations in the Australian Outback? Leo waffles at length about his Uber-Army, leading to the expected outbreak of...

Ninjarobics: The usual display of co-ordinated kicking, punching and grunting is intercut with Armstrong beaking into the base with help from his Rambo-knife. (While beating up the occasional hapless Ninja.) Meanwhile, Head Ninja heads out into the arena for a little sparring practise with the Superninjas.

Self-Defeating Strategy: Okay, I have issues with this scene. Number one, is the best way to show off your unbeatable Superninjas by having them get their asses kicked by one well-trained swordsman? Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in me, if I'm an International Badguy. Second, he's really killing off quite a lot of your own Superninjas, dude. Wanna tell him to stop? Any time's good. Leo?

Bullshitology: FINALLY Leo calls off Head Ninja guy. By this stage Armstrong and Alisha have infilitrated the base in their spiffy new Ninja disguises. They manage to join the badguy party, and we get more exposition as Leo runs a quick tour of the facilities. (Including his nifty Frozen Marine Pods) As you can tell by the title of this section, I had my doubts about the scientific accuracy of his project. Eventually our Heroes peel off and head for the Marine's.

Punch, kick, flashback!: Of course, theyrun into a little resistance en route. Very little resistance, really. Armstrong also has an oddly-placed Flashback to the first movie, which ends with a smoke bomb going off in front of him. In a stairwell. Don't look at me like that, I can't explain it, either.

Weenie-Marines, GO!: Back at the base, the Homoerotic Attack Force finally rouses themselves into action. (After spending hours deciding on whether to disobey orders... this after their flagrant disregard for just about every other rule in the book.) Jackson looks excited... I think he spots another opportunity to tear his shirt off. So, everything looks good for Armstrong. But as you can probably guess, once he finds and releases the Marines, the first place they direct his dumb ass into is...

The Arena! (Is THIS the Confrontation?): I sure hope it is... I'm starting to side with Head Ninja Guy... he at least LOOKS a little more badass than our Prepubscent American Ninja. Leoshows up with a convieniently-captured Alisha and The Superninjas run in for a bit of sword-fight-ery. And here we go! I quickly learned several important things.

Swords go "thud"

Ninjas have no blood.

Four beaten-up U.S Marines can defeat 20 highly-trained, genetically-enhanched Superninjas in a sword fight.

Eventually, though, weight of numbers takes its toll, and all four of the Marines appear to be dead. Note I say "appear". Things look grim for our Dorky Ninja Hero...

Happy 4th of July: But here come the Marines! Nice to see they brought their ordinance from an unliscenced Mexican fireworks factory. I'm seriously questioning their decision NOT to change into their uniforms, too. It looks like the compound is being assaulted by the Jock Fraternity from Revenge of the Nerds. Actually, with Wild Bills goofy cowboy hat, maybe he'd fit in more with the Tri-Lams? Jackson commences with the shirt-ripping and tash-talking as Leo heads for high ground. (Leaving Alisha to her own devices. You suck as a hostage-taker, Leo.) Alisha makes the most of her new-found freedom to... well, stand around and practise her concerned looks while Armstrong FINALLY gets to go mano-e-mano with Head Ninja Guy. Bizarrely, we actually watch more of Jacksons' fight scenes than we do Armstrongs'. I guess the director finally realised who was the more interesting character. The funniest part of the flick occurs as Jackson suddenly manages to produce two HUGE Bowie knives from... well, somewhere. His ass, possibly. If so, even Goatse Man would be impressed.

Exunt Leo/G.I Bro!: Leo ends up running into Alishas' old man, who's wired up a Multi-Genetic-Marine-Slash-Ninja Self-Destruction Device in about eight seconds. Lucky he had that lying around. And with one quick kaboom, they're outta here! Let's wrap this thing up...

Shotgun!: The battle between Armstrong and Head Ninja Guy finally answers the question of why ninjas don't bother to pack heat. Head Ninja Guy produces a shotgun, possibly in an attempt to one-up Jackson. (Where the hell ARE they pulling these weapons from, anyhow?) Armstrong simply dodges the blasts. All together... "Yeaaaaah, right!". And so, we get the Final Confrontation as the two of them draw swords and spend about a week posing with them while Alisha makes a succession of ever-more amusing faces for our amusement. And three quick swordthrusts later, it's over. To avoid spoilers, I won't tell you who wins.

Fakers!/And we out.: Anyway, once Head Ninja Guy dies... oops, sorry... two of the Marines leap up, completely untouched. Nice work lying there playing dead for the last ten minutes, guys. Alisha acts at acting pleased, there's a way too long post-battle wrap-up and we're done. Yeah, I'm sick of reviewing this film... nice of you to notice.

Skeeters' Summary: Cheap, dumb 80's action flick. Not a lot for action fans, and not bad enough for stupid movie fans. Just kinda there. About what I was expecting, really. Lucky I hired a couple of other flicks this week. Mr. Pyun, do your worst. I dare you.

Onwards!

Y'know, for most action stars, their early films are the best ones. Young, thin Stephen Seagal’s films. Commando. Die Hard as oopposed to Striking Distance. But when your early film is helmed by the infamous Albert Pyun, somehow I'm thinking it's got a good chance of bucking the trend. But, let's keep an open mind as we check out...

CYBORG

Previews! Let's see, we've got John Candy in Who's Harry Crumb?, Matt Dillion in Kansas, Julian Sands (What the hell happened to him?) in Warlock and a bunch of nobodies-in-particulars in what I first took to be the awful Where the Boys Are remake from 1984. It was instead Shag. Looked like the same film, really.

Cannon Films! What, again? Man, I know how to pick them, huh? It's The Future, according to an introductionary voice-over. Usual sort of thing, war, death, misery and plague...but hey, scientists are devloping a cure. Too bad whoever was doing the voice-over considered that a bad thing.

Flea Markets... of the FUTURE! Man, they really need to un-clutter this future. We open with a couple getting persued through the debris of NYC (in slow-mo, no less) by a motley group on Badguy-Types. The chick takes off, as her male companion tries to hold off their attackers. He does a less than stellar job of it, getting the crap kicked out of him. (How embarrassing must it be to be beaten up by a guy dressed as a battery hen... lose the feathers, dude.) In a nice piece of Pyun-ish editing, one of the badguys, a huge dude with no shirt, is seen walking toward the fight, then appears to stop and back up so he can join a large group of thugs doing a Right Stuff slow-mo stride to camera.

Enter Voice-Over Guy! That'll be the rather monotonic leader of the street gang. Nice to see chainmail is back in. He wants to own the Cure, so as to make himself "a God", apparently. He ventilates the guys throat, and we fade through flames to the credits. Well, this plot would fit on a matchbook with room to spare. Hey, there's Golan and Globus! Those guys must have been produced a crapfest a week at their peak.

Chase me! Post-credits, the gang goes after the chick again, aided immensley by her flame-red jumpsuit. Maybe she's a Superninja in her spare time? There's a sudden shot of a gang member getting kick-boxed into unconciousness. Hey, it's a cameo by Jean-Claude van Dammes' leg! (Although the editing did make me wonder how the girl managed to kick the dude while running away.) Two goons manage to corner the girl in an alleyway, which Jean-Claude apparently has the ability to see into... man, he's got X-Ray Vision.. OF THE FUTURE!

Who Are You? Well, according to JCv-D's acting ability his first line displayed, it's actually Daniel Bernhardt! The girl (Who now appears to be a Cyborg, due to some computer graphics in her eyeball and a stop-motion clockwork hairdo) needs to get back to Atlanta. I guess she has a plane to catch. The gangs show up, blasting JCv-D (aka "The Slinger") through a door. Monotonic Badguy (MB until the movie tells us his name) takes possesion of the Cyborg Chick. (CC, until further notice) And we fade to that night.

Early Flashback? Okay, I'm wrong... it looked like we were about to fade into a flashback, but it was just a confusing edit between The Slinger re-hearing CC's dialogue and MB attacking a random couple's wedding. (Possibly to steal their boat, possibly just because there's been no violence on-screen for eight seconds.) MB seems to like talking like a pirate, incidently. (Sure, everone calls the thugs "Pirates", but ease on on the "Mates", Jim lad.) The Slinger shows up at the scene of the attack that night and incapactitates a random someone.

Care of Your Weapons Demonstration Gosh, this following scene where The Slinger sharpens his knife is fascinating. Fascinatingly long, that is. Wait, now we ARE in a flashback. I think. Pony-tailed Slinger is suddenly "gedding people outtada ciddy" (his words, not mine), escorting a group of kids whos parents are dead. There's some indications that MB gets involved, bringing pain to a child. Well, that''s just mean! Hopefully we'll find out what this was all about before the end of the flick. But I have my doubts.

Atlanta, the lost contintent!: Random chick wakes up, and apparently even she's heard the plot. The Slinger repeats "Atlanta" like it's some sort of futuristic Mecca. The pair chat for a second, allowing me to make a comparison between their equally-poofy 80's haircuts. (She wins, but only by a fraction.)

The Odd Couple The Slinger and the Random Chick (RC for the moment... oh, and Albert, would a couple of NAMES be too much to ask for?) hook up, presumably to rescue CC. Or something. Fuck, I have no idea, and I doubt Albert did either. A rest stop seems to send The Slinger into a coma, but it's just another brief flashback. It now appears that The Slinger is after "Fender", who I'll assume is the Monotonic Badguy. Although he might just be after a bitchin' guitar.

CNN.. of the FUTURE!: Man, no matter how munted the future is, there's always someone who can tell you exactly where Fender is and what he's doing. That's lucky, or the plot would just sputter out. We're into our third Flashback, with The Slinger giving up... uh, Slinging... to stay with the Southern chick and her siblings. We head to a...

Random Unconnected Scene And just so you know, I think I'm going to copy-and-paste that quite a bit in this review. There's an equally-pointless shot on board the boat, before we head to...

The Wasteland Which is helpfully signposted "The Wasteland". Which seems as pointless as streetsigns in the Sahara, but let's just smile and nod. Actually, the Wasteland appears to be a rather pleasant forest. Maybe the definition of Wasteland has been altered in the future. There appears to be a lively paintball game going n out in the woods, so The Slinger bails. RC stands around for a second, then a jump-cut sees her go from 0-40 in about one second. She takes refuge in an abandoned building (Where did THAT come from?) as The Slinger begins killing people randomly. The building happens to be the Unexplainable Badguys hideout, as evidenced by the ones who rappel down from the upper levels. Man, they're prepare for everything, huh? They swiftly take RC hostage, but The Slinger has magically teleported to the building, too. Commence your kickboxing! (If we're lucky, that is.)

Lucky? I should be so lucky... Yeah, there's a little kickboxing, but it a random mish-mish of confusing eidts. (Pretty much the story of the flick, really.) For those keeping score, there's more testicular abuse in the fight scene than normal, including one guy who gets them abused TWICE, plaus a knife in the back. Bad day at the office for that guy.

Random Unconnected (Nude) Scene Hang on, weren't they just in the forest? Now they're on a beach? Man, geography (Of the FUTURE) is confusing.Well, it does allow RC a quick piece of full back-al nudity as she takes a dip. She runs like a girl, by the way.

Flashback-ette Geez, don't ask him about Fender? It keeps triggering one-second flashbacks. Hey, we've shared our feeling for nine seconds. That's long enough for a Boobie Shot! Aww, he's too much of a nice guy to go for the Random Gratuitous Sex Scene. Annnnd... cue the flashbacking! So he hooked up with the Southern Chick, huh? Good, good... and for some reason, Fender showed up to perve at them... keep it going, we might actually finish the Flashbak a this rate... CRAP! Instead we see a sweaty Slinger wake up abrubtly.

Apocolypse Fender! In the morning, Fenders' riverboat cruises past. Cue a long, extraordinaryily dark shot of... something. I THINK it's Cyborg Chick below decks, but it's hard to tell. Okay, yeah it's her. And.. GOD-DAMN! Now she's flashbacking! Well, at least we learnt her name... "Pearl". (At least it was before her Cyborg-ing, that is.)

Ambush! The Slinger and RC catch up with Fenders' boat at an abandonded factory. Ahh, there's a surprise... nothing says "Dystopian Future" like an old, rusting industrial complex. Fender spots them coming, everybody splits up and it's about four seconds before RC wanders into danger. Meanwhile, The Slinger starts the game of cat-and-mouse, only to be confronted by a knife-twirling pirate. Hey, the guy brought a knife to a gunfight! So why are you putting away your gun, moron? Sheesh, some guys HAVE to do things the hard way, huh? And so a slow-mo fight scene breaks out between The Slnger and the Amazing Chicken Boy. JCv-D gets to do his famous straight-legged split kicks, but basically gets his butt kicked. He makes a break, shoots some people, spots Fender and puts on his angry face. Random pirates attack!

Hey, he beat up Animal! Never recruit Muppets for your futuristic pirate gang. They're not very effective. The distraction allows Fender to shoot The Slinger in the arm, wounding him so badly he has another flashback. Oops, looks like Southern Girls little sister grew up and joined Fenders gang. Oddly, she gets a name in the flashback, Haley, even though barely anyone else in the film has yet. The Slinger tosses a knife and runs like a rabbit, doubling back to take out Pearls two guards. (Which seems a little light, seeing as Fender appears to have about forty guys working for him.) Pearl basically emasculates The Slinger, refusing to go with him because he's "Not strong enough" to protect her. Ouch. Make up your mind, woman. So instead he takes the unconcious Random Chick and bails via the sewers. In slow-mo. This whole film feels like it's in slow-mo.

Pitch-black Persuit Several pirates follow The Slinger into the drain, resulting in a sucession of under-lit scenes. You'll be glad to know they escape, however, "I guess I should have stayed put" Random Chick says afterwards. Well, as you were captured approximatley three feet from where the Slinger left you, it probably wouldn't have changed much.

Run like the wind! (And like a girl) Man, The Slingers' running style is even MORE girly than Random Chicks! The chase is intercut with extra pirates craling out of the manhole, so apparently we're going to pad the film with an individual shot of everyone in the film. Finally though, Chicken Boy catches up with The Slinger in a swamp. (What the fuck part of the country is this? Albert Pyuns' blatant disregard for basic geography, as seen in Knights comes back to bite me in the ass again!) A knife-fight breaks out, although neither man seems to have the ability to even get their blade within five feet of each other. Meanwhile, RC is attacked by..

Her identical twin? Guess these two went to the same Hairdresser... of the FUTURE! Shrieking Harpy Chick gets taken out in the typical blaze of Random Unconnected Shots that make up an Albert Pyun action sequence. (And frankly, I'm about to take out a court order banning Al from ever using slow-mo again.) The Slinger gets the upper hand on Chicken Boy, only to be back-jumped by another pirate, who INSTANTLY carries him to... a sandy patch? In a swamp? Is this even the same fight scene? Stuff happens. Pirates run up. The Slinger gets knocked down, but doesn't get up again. There's now the remains of a beached sailing ship in the background. My brain just handed in its notice and took a vacation. Apparently he thinks I won't need him for the rest of the film. They're back on the beach now! Fender starts pummeling The Slinger. Fender punches once and they foley in two impacts. It's not even lunch time and I really need a beer. Maybe two.

Villian Rule Number 1! That's "Never just shoot the Hero"... Fender ties The Slinger to the mast of the beached ship instead. Yeah, that'll work, dude. Especially since Random Chick is presumably still alive. The Slinger shares a significant look with Haley before she runs off. Another flashback, this time to ones we've already had. They had better show us what actually happened in the end, or I'm going to be very ratty about watching the same footage repeatedly. Wait, we might be getting to the point at long last. Looks like Fender made Haley torture herself with barbed wire while trying to prevent her family and The Slinger from falling to their deaths in a well. She failed. How this led to her joining Fenders' gang, well, beats the hell out of me. Anyhoo, this is intercut with The Slinger managing to kick down the mast, just in time to be rescued by Random Chick. Yay.

Random Unconnected Scene Well, if it gets us to the end of the film, whatever.

Atlanta City Limits! Which are apparently in the woods, although the random burning cars must be some sort of border marker. Do you think the city officials pop out there every day and torch a car, or was this just the result of bad drivers in Pintos... of the FUTURE? Our first matte-painting shot of Atlanta shows that it's a ragged, blasted ruin. Kind of like modern-day Detroit, I hear. (And it has its' own Perpetual Ominous Thunderstorm, too!) Suddenly it's night, and The Slinger has somehow gotten ahead of the pirates. He gives away his location right off the bat by firing an arrow at Fenders feet. Okay, WHERE did he get the bow? He hasn't carried one around with him, and I doubt many sporting goods stores are open in a war-devestated Atlanta. Especially at this hour. He immediately ditches the bow and goes for his knife. Just shoot him, dumbfucks...

Cyborg: The Confrontation! And so another badly-edited knife-fight breaks out. Once again there's a chick to throw down with RC, this time Haley. (I think... it's kinda dark and difficult to tell.) People catch fire, things blow up, Haley (I think) is actually getting ready to fight The Slinger, staredown, staredown, staredown... Fuck, this editing is killing me here. No. it's not Haley, it's Fender about to fight The Slinger. Ahh, Haleys' just watching the rumble, with lots of closeups. I assume she'll help The Slinger win. Or at least just starting crying "Stop it!" like a petulant seven-year-old until she's nearly stabbed by Fender . Everybodys' dialogue devolves into "YAAAGH!", "NYUUUGH!", and "GAHHHHH!" as the kicking and punching continues. (Although that has been the only lines given to the minor pirates throught the flick. Screenwriting for Albert Pyun must be a breeze.)

Two Minutes of Idiocy Later... Fender finally goes down after much "AGHHHHHH"-ing, coutesy of a knife (his) in the gut. Haley simpers on The Slingers' shoulder and...

Robo-Fender ...He pops back up like Jason. Shoulda seen that coming. They duke it out in a building that's nearly pitch-black, save for the... you guessed it... light coming in through a moving industrial fan. Of the Future. The Slinger manages to re-break Fenders previously-broken arm, and either impales him on something, or Fender just winds down. ("AGGGGGGGggggggghhhhhhhh......") Anyway, the plinky-plonky score does seems to indicate he's finally dead. Haley seems to have gotten killed at some stage in the proceedings, but I'm buggered if I know how.

We're nearly there... The film's winding down, as Pearl arrives back at her base... and we finally learn The Slingers name... Gibson. Gibson vs Fender? Sheesh. (Future Skeeter: In fact, the credits list most of the cast as having names derived from guitar and amplifier brands... "Fender Tremolo", "Marshall Strat". Which would have been interesting if anyone actually, I don't know, SPOKE the names during the film.) And less than a minute later, we're done.

Skeeters' Summary: Awful fight scenes, non-existant plot and guttural vowel sounds instead of dialogue. Albert Pyun, you're off my Christmas Card list. Again. Don't bother, unless you're a Jean-Claude van Damme completist, or a schmuck like me who reviews dreck like this. And even then, I'd think twice about it.

SPECIAL EVENT: Skeeters Video Fortnight

2006-04-10T11:31:00.000+12:00

The summer of 2004-2005 has been a bugger down here in New Zealand. Pelting rain, hailstorms, high winds and winter-like cold. So what am I doing during the consistently first week of good weather? I'm inside, watching movies, of course.

In fact, I'm on a Cheap-Ass Video Week. Thanks to Five-Flicks-for-Five-Bucks voucher, I've picked up a couple of films I've been meaning to see, one I've been intrigued by, and two that'll I probably get a few unintended laughs out of. So, let's get a few brief thoughts about my viewing choices, shall we?

Movie 1: Series 7

I'd heard a lot about this movie in the last year or so. It's a low-budget satire of reality TV, based on a Government-sanctioned TV show where randomly-chosen (?) citizens are picked to hunt each other down. (In effect, a Running Man-style plot, only seen from the other side of the camera lens.) There's probably dozens of on-line reviews of this film, so I won't bother with the details. Instead, here are my thoughts on the positive/negative aspects of the film.

Positives:

Solid Acting: Good performances all round from the core cast, especially with the off-beat subject material.

Excellent Parody of the Subject: This film truly captured the felling that you were really watching a Reality Show. (Especially during the wonderfully cheesy Bullshit Emotional Sequences.) On the small screen, these positives did veer into the negatives at times, though. Mainly because I became a little complacent, almost forgetting I was watching a movie. I laughed my ass off when the script suddenly became nothing but lines cribbed directly from "Worlds Wildest Police Chases", though... where was Sgt John Brunnell when we needed him?)

Some Good Black Humour: Ever watched a teenage temper tantrum end with a knifing? It's here, baby.

The Negatives:

Backstory?: We really had very little background on a society that condones on-air murder. (Which is appropriate, I suppose, as the "Show" is obviously meant to be seen as edited in a way that makes Fox News accuse them of being a shade biased.

Not Enough Franklin: Franklin James, the "Bat-shit Crazy" Conspiracy Theorist was one of the most interesting characters to me. The fact he's on the show makes me believe he was one of the few who actually DOES know the full story behind the show. Sadly, his screen-time was severely limited, and just as he starts to fill us in on his theory, he gets his ticket punched. Once again, in the context of the film, it's appropriate. (As anything he said on-air would surely have been edited out by the Oppressive, Yet Never-Mentioned Powers-That-Be.)

Skeeters Summary: Not bad. Not as good as I was expecting, but not bad.

Movie 2: The Living Dead Girl

This was the "intrigued" selection. Distributed by "Redemption Video", it caught my eye with its rear cover photo. (Showing the main character, dripping blood from her mouth and concealed with a badly airbrushed bikini... well, it's a French film from the late 60's, so there was bound the be full-frontal nudity at some stage, right?) I figured it was a vampire movie, and decided to give it a whirl.

Well, it's not a vampire flick. It's a zombie film... kind of. I think. The major problem with this film is... it's just too damn... French. Instead of explaining WHY our Doped-Looking Heroine had come back from the dead (Or DID she? Beats me...), the director insisted on being Mr. Artsy Fartsy. Which is fine, but when the plot is "Woman (possibly) returns from the dead, kills people with her over-long fingernails and eats them", we could probably have dispensed with the pretentiousness, yeah? I did learn a few things from this film, though.

French Cinematic Toxic Waste is as versatile as American Cinematic Toxic Waste. Kills living people, brings dead people back to life.

If you want your actors to pretend a barrel is really heavy, perhaps you should fill it with water or something. It kind of destroys the illusion when the barrel rolls like, well, a really light thing.

Third-degree facial burns are instantly fatal.

Bright red paint and blood are virtually identical. Not.

Editing a film coherently is a skill. Hiring someone with that skill was apparently optional in France in '68.

Adding an American may help your film sell in the States. Actually giving him something useful to do besides complain, whine, deny the obvious and eventually get a battle-axe haircut is also a good idea.

Real Estate agents who "Test the Furniture" with their boyfriends are probably not going to see out the flick.

French dance music kinda sucked in '68.

Zombies eating someone alive: Good Visual. Zombie eating someone alive for three-four minutes while the victim screams incessantly: Slight Overkill.

Y'know, an ending would have been nice.

Skeeters Summary: Look, either do an Art Film, or a Gore Film. Don't be wishy-washy, dude. Neeh.

Movie 3: The Blair Witch Project

Well, the hype that turned this into a massive worldwide hit and made several student film-makers exceedingly rich is long gone. And so I was able to watch this film on its own merits. Both of them, in fact.

1) It's realistically shot.
2) It has an eerie final shot.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film is simply a zero-budget student film with an improvised script. Improvised scripts can be a killer, in the wrong hands. This one quickly became a near-endless series of profanity, along with a near-endless argument about "The Map". (I capitalised the words, as we hear them more often than anything else in the film. In fact, you could conceivably re-market this as "The Blair Map Project", without changing a single frame.) Add to this a ridiculous plot-twist (Involving the Map, of course.) that comes sailing out of left field, almost as if he actor was as desperate as me to hear something new and ad-libbed at random. And the major flaw of this horror flick?

It ain't that scary. The legendary Blair Witch’s' tactics involve many things. Origami, native handicrafts, sound effects. But a small pile of rocks is hardly spine-chilling terror in my opinion. In fact, the most effective scenes for me were often the ones shot in complete darkness. Which would be good if this was a radio play. Too bad film is an intrinsically visual medium.

Plus, the motion-sickness camera didn't help. One of the "scary gifts" was what appeared to be a bundle of twigs wrapped around a blood-soaked scrap of t-shirt. But as the camera wavered all over the show, never centring on the object for a second, my wife snapped "Hold the bloody thing still!" in frustration... and she'd only arrived home to watch the last 45 minutes of the film.

Skeeters Summary: Great marketing. Average film.

Movie 4: American Ninja

Ahh, Golan-Globus Productions... we meet again, at last. Well, I sat through [B]Breakdance[/B] recently, I can handle a rushed-to-production ninja flick. Pretty laughable, this one, with a plot that just makes less sense the more you think about it. To sum up, our Hero ("Joe") is a U.S soldier with no memory, no past, and, since he's played by Michael Dudikoff, no discernable personality. He rescues his Colonels unbearably bitchy daughter from an attack by a group I dubbed "The Podgy Militia", who manage to violate Ken Beggs Rule of Guns in fine style. (Those things actually work best if you DON'T hold them 1/16th of an inch from your targets head.) In the midst of the fistfighting, a group of extremely-lost ninjas show up, and any sense of logic gets tossed out the window. (Unless ninjas are routinely sighted in what appears to be the Philippines.) I actually took a page of notes, intending this to be a full-length review. Instead, I'll just list the things that I'll remember from the flick.

Ultra-Bitchy Daughter mouths off to a Rebel armed with a machine gun and DOESN'T get her damn fool head blown off.

Ninjas able to bounce around on a truck like it's loaded with a consignment of trampolines.

"Joe" able to ninjitsu armed men to death without any one of them thinking to, y'know, fire the guns they're holding.

My Pun Circuits going into overdrive as Joe Tool-Fu's guys to death. "You're screwed! See ya, Jack! He's barred!".

80's film-makers were not above using "Film-Run-in-Reverse-to-Make-Ninja-Jump-Backwards" trick.

Bitchy Daughter becomes instant love interest, rather than getting a well-deserved slap in the mouth. My note read "Oh, fuck off!".

The wide variety of VERY non-regulation haircuts among the soldiers.'

The "WWII Japanese soldier not realising war is over" sub-plot.

Why was the Japanese ex-soldier wearing a Chinese coolie hat.

The sudden outbreaks of Ninja Gymnastics.

Red Ninja! Blue Ninja! Yellow Ninja!

For bad guys, Inspired Leadership always seems to involve snapping some guys neck during a training bout.

The best way to avoid a court-martial is to have a Commanding Officer who's as corrupt as a Bolivian politician.

For good guys, Inspired Leadership always seems to involve a brief brawl, followed by a manly handshake.

The fact that pretty much everyone in the U.S Srmy is corrupt, incompetant, or both.

Shadow Ninjas!

The character of Johnson, or as I called him, "Rambro". Yes, you’re ripped. I still think you should be on a charge for your improper uniform standards, pal.

Crashing cars always explode in a huge fireball, even after trundling slowly down a 20 degree slope and tapping a tree lightly.

The bad guys lack of survival instincts. Standing and watching as ninjas fight, instead of escaping in your nearby helicopter, seemed a bad strategy.

That ninja strategy is just as bad. Attack him one at a time, men! By the way, did any one you bring a gun? Nope? Good, just charge in and get killed, then.

Ninja Magic just gets you killed in the end.

Ninjas will ALWAYS run through swinging obstacles, even when they could save a hell of a lot of time but running AROUND said obstacles.

Toy helicopters never really look convincing when they explode.

Skeeters Summary: No boobs, no blood. I feel cheated. Mindless fun, though.

Movie 5: The Punisher

Dolph Lundgren, actor.

I can barely type that with a straight face. (In fact, my spellchecker advised me to "consider revising" that statement.) I hired this as a comparison to the recent remake. God-DAMN, did it suck a mountain of suck the size of Mt. Saint Suckmore. Insanely, pontlessly violent, a script so thin you could read a paper through it, and Dolph in the lead role. (Even though he did vanish from the screen for large chunks of the film.) Poor old Lou Gosset, Jr. From Oscar winner to Mr. Monotone's second banana. What the hell happened there?

I'm not venturing on a lengthy review, due in part to a VERY degraded tape that turned large parts of the film into an overexposed wobble-fest. (Stupid videotapes got thinner and cheaper as the years went by... I've seen early 80's-era tapes that have held up better than late 90's ones.) But, here's a brief summing up.

Crap.

Brief enough for you?

I never read the Punisher comic... but I can imagine how badly the fanboys took this film. Imagine if MY comic hero had been played by a monotonic semi-actor, had the premise mutilated, and the heart and should of the comic ripped out in bleeding chunks...

Oh, wait, I'm describing Judge Dredd, aren't I? I empathise completely, Punisher fans.

Skeeters Summary: If the guilty are punished, the producers of this film should be on bread and water to this day.

Well, that should have been it right there. Instead, Video Week became Video Fortnight, thanks to a newly opened video store and another "5 DVD's for 5 Bucks" coupon. I refreshed myself between crap with Family Guy: Season 1 and Billy Connelly, Live in Dublin. Then, back into the B-grade I charged.

I'm a schmuck.

Movie 6: Beyond Re-Animator

I loved Re-Animator. I even loved Bride of Re-Animator, even though it's been years since I last saw it, and might hate it now. (Internal Memo: Look for THAT film next time I'm at the video store.) This much-belated sequel? Hadn't heard much about it, decided to complete the "trilogy". ("Trilogy" in the loosest possible sense of the word, of course.) What did I think of it?

Well, let's lay the cards on the table. There's a ton of reasons I could have hated this flick.

In no particular order:

The bollixed time-frame. I'm SURE the first two flicks were set in at least the 40's or 50's, if not earlier, although that may be my fading synapses lying to me. (See Internal Memo above.) This one's set squarely in the modern day, which kind of negates the whole "Gothic Horror" thing.

The rather one-note performace from Jeffery Combs as Dr. Herbert West. I'm aware he's played this role twice before, and should know better than I how best to approach it. However, he firmly maintains just one expression in the film, that of tight-lipped disdain for his fellow man. I did get one genuine laugh from his straight-faced "Interesting" line. He needed a few more reaction shots like that, I feel.

The horrendous score. It started with "We're hoping Bernard Hermann doesn't get re-animated, because he'll come looking for revenge" music, an almost note-for-note steal from Pyscho. (Shrieking violins included.) Then segued into a less blatant rip-off, but one with what sounded like badly-placed amplifier feedback, which rapidly became annoying as all get out.

The thrown-in-for-no-reason boobie shot.

The disappointing lack of gore. (On the DVD, the director Brian Yuzna informs us it was a concious descion, wanting more horror and less blood. Which brings me to my next point...)

It isn't scary.

The leading lady and her mysterious floating accent. Looking at the cheap-ish production, I was expecting a crew list full of people named "...ov", but this film was NOT in fact shot in Bulgaria. Instead, it was lensed in Valencia, Spain. And apart from the two leading men, pretty much every actor was Spanish, speaking their dialogue in English. The female lead's name sounded European, though. As the film started, she affected a passable American accent, but as the film progressed, it gradually floated East, becoming more Hungarian-sounding (I think,at least... Bela Lugosi is my only linguistic guide.) by the scene. By the end, I was begging her to yell "Pull der schtring!". Most distracting.

Logic, Coherant Plotting and Why You Don't Need Either: An Essay. My wife wandered in and watched a few minutes of the flick around the 65 minute mark. "This looks like crap." she noted. I was quick to leap to the films defense with "Yeah, I think the thing just choked on it's own stupidity.". Okay, not so much a defense as a summing up for the prosecution. Idiotic characters doing idiotic things, for idiotic reasons. Mad scientist accidently caused the death of your sister? Makes perfect sense to find him 13 years later and help him create more mayhem. (I originally thought the Young Doctor might have kept his sister on ice somewhere, and was looking to make Dr. West jump-start her. (Which would have been idiotic, but no more than the plot they actually used.) Find a massive syringe full of neon green liquid? Inject yourself! (Even REAL junkies might balk at that.)

Fake-looking CGI Torso-Man! (See Braindead (AKA Dead Alive) for how a REAL living torso should look.)

Fake-Looking CGI Torso-Mans' "George of the Jungle"-like swinging ability. Where the hell was he getting the leverage from? (Also applies to his ability to leap 20 feet across the room and choke someone.)

Overacting that made Fatty Arbuckle look like the model of restraint.

Zombie Attacks that could only be effective if everyone in the film was an idiot.

Everyone in the film was an idiot.

The fakest-looking rubber weiner in movie history. (Okay, it's a slim field, but it was ridiculously rubber-looking.)

So, that's the reasons I should have hated it. But in the end...

Skeeters Summary: Yeah, I hated it. The only bit I actually liked came in the end credits, a brief "gag reel" fight between an animated schlong and a rat. Apart from that, let us never speak of this piece of crap again.

Movie 7: Ju-On: The Grudge

This was an unexpected one, as I watched it over at my father-in-laws place after dinner. (I returned the favour by showing him Head. Japnese horror and The Monkees... what a combo.) I didn't have a lot of previous experience with Japanese horror films, even though I've been meaning to dig up Ringu for some time now. After seeing this one, I'm wondering if I might give it a miss.

No, it's not that I didn't like it. It's just I've heard Ringu is scarier. And Ju-On is scarier than a barrelful of undead monkeys. Scarier than a Tom Green film festival. Scarier than Paris Hilton without forty pounds of makeup. You get the idea. (And after TWICE writing "This isn't scary" in these reviews, this was a welcome breath of fresh air. Or, putrid stinking air, if you prefer. It is a horror movie, after all.)

The only quibble I had with the flick was its narrative structure, a very Pulp Fiction "Wait, is this BEFORE that last scene or AFTER?" style of film. I usually have no problem with this, but this film had its' own unique complication.

I couldn't tell two of the actresses apart. Yep, it's a cliche that all Asian paople look alike to Westerners, and propbably the reverse is true... but there's a reason it became a cliche, after all. (And this coming from a man who's dealt baccarat and spent six years as a tour guide at the Auckland Skytower... I occasionally feel like I've met every Japanese person who has walked the face of the Earth. And more than once I've started to say the words "Back again?" before realising it's not the guy I sold a ticket to an hour ago.)

But apart from that, this was a really good pychological thriller. Unlike 98.8% of Hollywood horrors, there was almost no blood until the last few minutes, no ominous thunderstorms or spring-loaded domestic animals for cheap scares. Just an unrelenting sense of creepyness and tension, some remarkably subtle scare tactics, and some of the most disturbing, hackle-raising sound effects I've ever heard.

Now, is it worth going to see the remake? I have a sneaking suspicion I might be wisest not too. Just call it a hunch.

Skeeters' Summary: When I arrived home afterwards, I was alone in the house for an hour. I didn't venture into the bedroom (Down the short, but darkened hallway) to close the curtains until my wife came home. Now THAT'S a scary movie! Two lightly blood-stained thumbs up!

Movie 8: A Mighty Wind

I rounded out the video binge with one movie chosen on the strength of it's ancestry. A Mighty Wind is of course the from the "folks" (Ba-doom-ching!) who brought you Spinal Tap. Centering around a reunion concert featuring three folk music groups, I found plenty to like in the film. It's not as consistantly funny as Spinal Tap, although I was amazed at how many simple, almost throwaway, scene-ending lines had me laughing.

It's also an excellent musical, with most of the songs sounding incredibly authentic. They're a parody, of course, but it's an affectionate parody, a parody you can hum along to. The central ballad "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" is good enough to get stuck in your head for days afterwards, the title track a perfectly straight folk song with a hilarious final line that had me snorting coffee out my nose.

Skeeters' Summary: Plenty of laughs, and toe-tapping music. All in all, a good end to proceedings.

And so, my marathon o' movies was at an end. I could drop off the discs, head home, rest up and think about maybe getting some sun.

Then of course, I grabbed It's Alive and It Lives Again on the way out the door. I'm a schmuck.

FILM OF THE FORTNIGHT: Ju-On: The Grudge.

FLUB OF THE FORTNIGHT: Beyond Re-Animator.

REVIEW: Gone in Sixty Seconds (1974)

2006-04-10T11:27:00.000+12:00

Two years or so ago, the B-Movie Board held one of it's periodic Movie Swap challenges. The premise was simple. You were designated a partner, and got to choose a movie for them to view and review. My victim... sorry, happy recipient... was Son of Spam. The flick I chose for him? The original

Gone in Sixty Seconds.

He still hasn't forgiven me.

And so, in a gesture of peace and reconciliation, I'm now about to embark on a Skeeter Double Feature. Three hours of squealing tyres, twisted metal, cringe-inducing dialogue and eye-maiming fashion mistakes. The H.B Halicki masterworks that are Gone in Sixty Seconds and The Junkman. I'll probably only review the first flick, unless I get really, REALY inspired though. (How many ways can I say "A car crashes. Boom."?)

Buckle up... it's time to head out on the highway.

The Highway to Hell, if Son of Spam is to be believed.

GONE IN 60 SECONDS (1974)

Welcome to L.A, let's drive: We open (abrubtly) with driving footage. Guess you have to cater to your target audience. There's a little bit of scene-setting thanks to a helpful radio D.J as we watch from the drivers POV. (Giving me flashbacks to the opening scene of The Creeping Terror. The most interesting thing I noted about the shot was the fact that Our Presumed Hero has a real fetish for sunglasses... there's like, five pairs lined up on the dashboard. As we hear a brief snippet of the Gone in Sixty Seconds country-ish theme song, the creidts appear. (Including the writing, acting, producing and directing nods to H.B Halicki, of course.) One credit was fairly noteworthy.

Starring "Eleanor": Just "Eleanor"? Eleanor who? Eleanor Rigby? Eleanor Roosevelt? It would become clear eventually, though. (Well, as clear as any plot point was in this film, anyway.)

Off the tracks already: Our film proper begins with the sight of police investigating a derailed train. (And after watching news reports of train derailments in both England and Australia in the last week, that probably had a little more dramatic impact on me than it might have had previously.) Dialogue kind-of clues us in on one of the characters being an insurance investigator. Although it's not really obvious as to who it is, due to the movies recurring theme of over-dubbing the dialogue over the action, without a single closeup to point out who the hell is speaking at any given time. After a minute or two of confusing me, the film cuts to...

Trashed Cars 'R' Us: I think this was some sort of police auction, but once again, it's difficult to tell. (H.B Halicki: Coherant Narrative Structure is my Flaming Albino Heffalump.) Someone, possibly one of the films characters, buys a dented-to-hell car, license plate 000-GAL. The Big Zoom on the plate informs us this is important. Somehow. If I sound slightly confused at this early stage, it's probably because... well, I am.

Overdubbed Exposition: For the next few minutes, we watch a bunch of greasemonkeys in a garage, stripping down Triple-O Gal. (Great, I sound like I'm reviewing bad James Bond-Parody Porn.) We're informed that the garage buys trashed cars, then removes and the serial numbers, transferring them into stolen cars. Stolen BY the mechanics, in fact. Talk about cutting out the middleman. As the new car is re-assmbled, there's a long, slow zoom in on the 000-GAL plate. I guess it's still important. [B}The Beginners Guide to Grand Theft Auto: And so, we watch as a car is removed from a parking lot, well inside of sixty seconds. In fact, we watch so closely, I think I could potentially boost a motor myself. It's the Reefer Madness of car theft movies! Afterwards, we introduce...

Senor Vila... um, where is he?: In another scene where the dialogue appears to have been lopped over random footage, we meet the mysterious Mr. Villa. Mysterious in a "Who the hell is he, and what is he doing in our movie?" kind of way. I THINK he's the out-of-focus guy in the bright jumpsuit during the unexpected "flying boat arrival" scene. Anyway, (I'm going to be using that word a LOT, I can tell.) he appears to be a "Mr Big" type, delivering a list of high-performance cars he wants our Kinda-Heroes to boost and deliver. Finally, we arrive at a scene in which the characters are actually visible while they deliver the dialogue. Including the major player, Maindrian Pace. (Played by H.B. Halicki himself, of course.) He also wrote the script, meaning we get to see him...

Stumbling over his own dialogue!: Whoa, not one but TWO bungled lines in close sucession. Well, maybe he was going for a documentary-style approach to the film. Or more likely, just didn't have the time and budget for a re-shoot. Abrubtly, we cut to a wedding. And not just a wedding. it's a...

Wedding of Exposition!: Try to picture this. Footage of a lavish wedding, with all our Felonious Mechanics as groomsmen. Now remove the sound normally associated with a wedding, and insert a huge chunk of expositionary dialog over the top. The effect is somewhat disconcerting. Especially when you take into account that it's a German-themed wedding. Leading to a rather sarcastic comment in my notes.

German people ROCK!: Ahh, leiderhosen, silly dancing and huge beer steins. Two out of three of those things are not really my bag, y'know? Anyway, (Told ya.) the gist of the conversation tells us that the gang has to steal, strip and deliver better than 40 high-performance cars in three days. This leads to friction as the Blushing Groom is told to postpone his honeymoon and get back to the garage to help out. (Yeah, you'd think he'd have better things to tinker about with than cars for a while.)

Pimpin' in the Park: After much wedding footage, we cut to a park. Here we see two people wandering around in clothes that would be terrifying, if Mr. Halicki hadn't decided to shoot the entire scene out-of-focus. As it is, they're only mildly horrific. The one I'm guessing is Maindrian looks like he's heading downtown to pimp his hos. (I was hoping they'd stop for a rest, letting me use the pun "Pimp-nic". No such luck, sadly.) This pointless scene over, we head out to LAX.

No dialogue in the White Zone!: *sigh* First the film has me complaining about over-dubbed dialogue. Now they decide to record the dialogue while filming in the street outside an International Airport. With the one microphone seemingly placed in the neighbouring county. Great, it's a silent movie all of a sudden. (Although the sound of departing planes and the PA announcements come through loud and clear.) Using my lip-reading skills and extensive mime-training (Okay, not really.) I tried to make some sense of the scene. Basically, the crew see off the happy couple, then steal a few cars from right in front of the terminal. One of the lads makes a Car Thief Faux Pas, however, trying to steal a car with someone still in it. That's got to lose him points for style. About now I glanced at the video case. Hmmm, originally relased in 1984. Wait a second?

This is the 80'S??!!: Huge afros, ties you could serve a three-course meal on, plaid pants you could play checkers on? Slight typo, Kineski Kult Video. Try 1974.

Pumpkin: Maindrian s' main... well, something-or-other is introduced about here. Pumpkin is the only female member of the vehicular heist crew. There was also a female present in the park, but with Blur-O-Vision in full effect, it could have been anyone. There's a ton of yakity-yak as we pad out the running time a little. (Somehow neglecting to clue us in on one important detail... the fact that the cars are codenamed with girls names. This was made a hell of a lot clearer in the recent remake. Too bad the remake somehow re-made the film without ever realising it was a car-chase flick. One brief car chase in the dying minutes? A token effort, in my book.)

CB's and Stock (Car) Footage: Yep, it's the 70's all right. More cars are jacked, although not until we've watched a bunch of midget cars sliding around the speedway. This scene does prove the fact that 1974 was...

A very Goodyear: ...as we get a couple of shots of the Goodyear Blimp. In a funny bit, its scrolling sign is giving the stock-car fans a warning about locking their cars. (Or else it'll be "...gone in sixty seconds") Methinks Mr Halicki has friends in the blimping industry. (And as we all know, blimpin' ain't easy.)

The Uglymooners: That night (Possibly, as the somewhat muddled storyline makes the timeline dificult to tie down.) we join a bickering married couple. (Man, even hair curlers were ugly in the 70's!) After a little marital screeching, hubby gets off his duff to kick the mutt out. And looking down his driveway, he notices that...

They got Eleanor!: Yes, "Eleanor" is the codename for his car. (A canary-yellow '73 Ford Mustang) The outraged Mustang-owner quickly grabs the keys to his OTHER car and gives chase. (One reason this movie coulnd't have been made in a Communist country. USA! USA! Etc.) And our Big Chase begins... oh, wait, this is just a mini-chase to whet our appetite for the vehicular mayhem to come.

Cops!: Bad boys, bad boys... whatca gonna do? Well, they're going to give chase, naturally enough. It's your typical late-night suburban chase scene. (As seen on every episode of "Worlds Scariest Police Chases vol I-XXIV".) There's some minor crashage as Mr. Uglymooner gets the right-of-way rules all screwed up. The cops quickly pull him over and slap the ol' wrist-jewelry on him, allowing our hero to...

Doubleback again.: So that when the cops return to the house to check up on his "stolen" Mustang, it's parked back in rhe garage. The scene fades out after a shot of the guys oblivious wife. I think that was for Comedic Effect. Or something. We cut to the next morning, and get a way-too-close-closeup of Pumpkins'...

B-52 Hair!: Now THAT's a 'do! There's primitive tribes that are probably still worshipping that hairstyle! Anyway, we stay with Pumpkin for a bit, as the gang steals limosines. (Through the tactic of ordering cars, then swiping them while the drivers look for their passengers.) This was obviously before the police could trace calls. (AKA: The Pre-Cellphone Era.) There's also another reason to try to forget the 1970's in this sequence.

UGLY '70's Limos!: Well, thats chunky as hell, and that's a lovely shade of powder blue. And there's asomething that looks like a stretched hearse. Was there ANYTHING that wasn't a freaking eyesore between 1959 and 1990? Oh, that's right, there was. Christie Brinkley, circa 1987. Mmmmm. Unfortunately, this movie drags me kicking and screaming back to '74 with...

Crochet Boobie Sacks?: Geez, that womans going to catch pnuemonia of the breasts in that ugly-fuck outfit!

Tiger in your tank?: We pause for some comic relief as the token Black Mechanic tries to rip off a car from an exclusive club... only to find out the rich white lady has a young tiger in the backseat.(??) Geez, and I jump when a pitbull starts barking at me in the supermarket carpark. One quick Jesse Owens impression later, we move from the hilarity to...

Car Theft for Dummies: Okay, someone get me a bent piece of metal, and a screwdriver... This movie has given me a new career path.

Triple-O Gals' Last Ride!: Back at the ol' Ranch... okay, garage... there's a Drama brewing. It turns out the stripped-down stolen car we saw at the start of the flick has been spotted on a car lot. In kind of a boneheaded move for a professional car-theft ring, someone left the original license plate on the car. (Someone dock that guy a weeks illeagally untaxed pay!) But, never fear, Maindrian has a plan! Since it involves stealing the car with a towtruck under cover of broad daylight, I'm wondering whether they should have gone with Plan B.

Stealth Truck: Hmm, either the sound went out again, or that guy has Whisper Mode on his vehicle. Meanwhile, a Security Guard arrives and tries to block the towtruck in. The Greasemonkey hits the gas and it's a...

CHASE SCENE!: They try to up the ante on this chase. First off, its car vs.towtruck this time around. And secondly, 000-Gal is hitched to the back of the towtruck, careening all over the road as the driver corners. And thirdly, they start throwing in the Classic Chase Scene Staple Elements.

Oil Barrel Cliche!: Well, it's not quite a fruit cart, but those empty oil drums sure go a'flying when you hit them, don't they? They continue on a-ways. (C'mon, YOU try reviewing a car chase! It'd be like reviewing the action in a Rambo movie. "Things blow up, go Boom".) Eventually the Security Guards' car comes to a sudden stop, courtesy of...

More barrels!: As the left-in-the-dust flatfoot watches his quarry drive off, we get our first good look at him. My first thought was "Whoa, Randy Quaid lost weight!". But I'm sure the resembelance was just a wacky coincidence.

Bye-bye, 000-GAL!: And so we watch as 000-GAL gets trashed and compacted at the local junkyard. So does this mean this film (Which is kind of like Petrolhead Pornography.) just turned into a Vehicular Snuff Film? At the very least this means that this plot cul-de-sac has been resolved and we can get back to the main business at hand. Eleanor is still proving difficult to aquire, despite the crew spotting yellow Mustangs all over the city. But suddenly, the plot (And that's a lose interpretation of the word.) gets rudely derailed by a Celebrity Cameo Appearance!

Parnelli Jones!: WHO? I initally could only draw one conclusion about Parnelli.

Mr. Jones is not an actor, I think.: Who's your drama coach, Linnea Quigley? EMOTE, dude! Once we move into Parnellis place of business, things become clearer... he's a race car driver. A real one. At this stage, we also got our first full-length shot of him.

PLAIDelli!: Arrrgh! Baby Blue plaid flares? Screw you, 1974! After much banter between Parnelli (Who has had a car stolen) and "insurance investigator" Maindrian (Who stole it.), the cameo is over. I think the scene was supposed to be comic, but the lack of a wah-wah-wah score confused me. Either that or I was supposed to yell "It's Parnelli Jones, yeeha." and then flip the channel back to the NASCAR Left-Turn 500 while scarfing Cheetos. No, I'm not from America, thanks for asking. Our next vignette concerns...

Lyle Waggoner and the Comic Relief Stoner: Okay, not exactly. In fact it's Lyle Waggoners' CAR and the comic Relief Stoner. Lyles car joins the MIA list for L.A's motor vehicles, while the Stoner gets about a minute to try to amuse us with his heart-warming "Got any reds?" catchphrase. Okay, your Sixty Seconds is up. You're Gone!

Manta!: That note was subtitled 'Th' Hell", as a "Manta" was a bizarre-looking supercar that appeared to have been moulded out of plastic. (A full-sized Matchbox Car was my first impression.) One quick test-drive drive-off later, the Manta is secured. God, this is enthralling viewing. I mean it, I can hardly tear my eyes away from the screen... ooh, look, I found a fifty-cent piece under the sofa cushions!

Junk in the Trunk In yet another barely-necessary plot twist, the gang boost a car with a trunk full of heroin. (Identified as such by the only black guy after one quick taste. Samuel L. Jacksons' character in Die Hard: With a Vengance would NOT be pleased.) There's a lively debate as the gang decides what to do with what's later described as "...a million dollars worth of heroin!". Or possibly, eleven dollars worth of high-grade flour. Suddenly, there's a knock at the door. Oh no, it's the pigs!

Inopportune Raid! Sgt Hawkins: Man, isn't that just typical? The cops ALWAYS show up mere moments after I drop a huge bag of smack on the floor. I was fairly confused about this scene for a while, as all the mechanics greet Sgt. Hawkins like an old friend. I originally noted "Sgt. Hawkins, Dirty Cop." Then, as the greasemonkeys scramble to cover the pile of incriminating evidence, I scrubbed that out and wrote "Sgt Hawknis, Incompentant Cop". I mean, just because your'e busy with a car-theft crime wave, it doesn't make you incapable of spotting half a kilo of horse lying on the floor of a relativly clean garage. (Complete with plastic bag sticking out the top.) After the Sarge leaves, Maindrian kicks the rest of the crew out and decides how to best deal with the drugs. His solution?

Viking Longcar?: Yes, it's a Buick Barbie! So long, one million dollars!

Eleanors' a bitch!: Returning to our story in progress, the crew have assembled all the cars bar one. Eleanor remains at large, however. So it's time for a CHASE SC... oh, wait, no it's not. It's time for a...

Musical Interlude: Oh, joy. Country music. My favourite. And we're going to get to listen to pretty much every single note of "Lois Lanes' Blues". (Which is NOT a blues song.) And what happens during this song? Well, what DOESN'T happen? (Action, that's what.) In fact, all that really happens is that Pumpkin smokes and Maindrian walks. I'm serious, it's three minutes of Maindrian walking along a row of cars, intercut with Pumpkin smoking while looking pensive. ("Pensive" is a synonym for "Bored", right?) Once again, the film confused me. At first I thought Maindrian was casing a garage, looking for an "Eleanor". (And taking his damn fool time about it, too!) And then the Manta hove into view. Ahh, so he's in his OWN garage, thinking about... things. In reality, it's actually a show-off shot, designed to showcase all the expensive cars at once. The Manta still looks like someone melted a yellow Lamborghini, though.

Doublecross! After the semi-melodic twiddling that is "Lois Lane' Blues", we cut to one of the mechanics. (He's the one who wanted to sell the smack, and went ballistic when he found out it had been burnt. I'd call him "Sore Loser Guy", but as this is his final appearance in the film, there's not much point, really.) He's still pretty miffed about the whole affair, and vents by siccing the cops on Maindrian , letting them know about the final attempt to boost an Eleanor. And so the LAPD set up a...

Rapid Stakeout!: Who knew you could arrange stakeouts on twenty minutes notice? Me neither. Regardless, a pair of undercover cops spot Maindrian enter a parking building. At least, I figured out at length it was Maindrian , as for some reason he pulls off this heist in a disguise. (And after nearly an hour of un-connected dialgue, I wasn't sure if the grey-haired guy with the porno moustache was just one of the other mechanics i'd fprgotten, or Our Hero with talc in his 'do.) Anway, (There's that word again.) he eventually emerges in a brand-new Mustang. Seconds before the car alarm he wasn't aware it had goes off. The cops call for backup, Maindrian sees them coming...

AND WE'RE OFF!: It's time for the Money Sequence, folks! For the remaining forty minutes we're going to watch the Ultimate Chase Scene rip through five cities.. (Or what H.B. Halicki probably intended to be the Ultimate Chase Scene, anyway.) My remaining review could simply read "Screech. Crash. Vroom." But in the interests of completeness, I'll soldier on, listing the Major Events and Chase Scene Cliches as they come to hand. And the first event that happens is...

Sofa!: What the HELL does that mean? I assume Maindrian hit a sofa, but why I added the emphatic exclamation mark is anyone's guess. Maybe it ran out in front of his car like a startled deer, or something.

Dents go in, dents go out!: Maindrian dings his Mustang pretty early in the chase, and for the most part it's consistent in how much damage it's sustained. However, at the very start of the chase there's a huge rent in the car that appears and vanishes at will. I guess he carjacked Christine.

Pre-anti lock brakes: We get a display of Synchronised Donut-Pulling as Maindrian and the cops swerve all over the damn place for awhile. Traction control was obviously a decade or so away, too. (Fishtail City, folks.)

Sidewalk Cliche!: Well, if you dont want to get run down, stay off the sidewalk during the chase scene, pedestrians! As they burn rubber down the pavement, they meet L.A's...

Crazy Old Lady!: She proceeds to bash each car as it passes with her umbrella. Well, glad someone's doing something proactive instead of just fleeing like a chicken. The chase suddenly seems to come to an unexpectedly quick ending as Maindrian is forced to...

Park it in the Park: There's a tense-ish standoff as the cops pull their guns on Maindrian . (Yep, it's L.A, all right!) Luckily for our hero, the one pedrestrain blocking his exit loses his nerve and bails. And we're off again! About now we start cutting to on-the-street news reports and interviews. (Quick work by the press in those pre-cellphone days.) One witness tells the TV guy there was...

20-30 cars? BS!: Way to count, two-eyes! At this stage, there's been three cars in the chase, tops. (A fact demonstrated by a wide shot showing all three cop cars at once.) It's about here that I started formulating a theory about the film. I'll sum it up at the end of the review. But anyway, throught the rest of the chase we'll be cutting back and forth, showing the consequences of the various crash-ees. Points for realism, but it did get a shade distracting after a while.

Nose-to-tail-to-tail-to...: We celebrate the chase leaving one city by witnessing a multi-car fender-bender on a major bridge. That's going to cause a tailback.

Car decap!: Remember that James Bond flick where Roger Moore keeps driving even after his car gets cut in half after a collision? Same here, except the car is (more logically) non-mobile after Maindrian bisects it. Also taken out are a couple taking the...

Testdrive from hell!: "I changed my mind, honey, let's NOT buy what's left of this car."

Reason for pursuit... Unknown.": This line was repeated twice during the film. You'd think the cops who initiated the chase might have reported the reason WHY at some stage. Then again, by this stage there's about 147 charges of dangerous driving that could be leveled against Maindrian . As the chase enters a construction zone, we meet for the first time a carload of...

Bruthas! (But why?): This group of guys show up several times in the chase. At first, they seem totally unconnected to anything that's happening, and since their dialogue is B)Seemingly improvised, B) Constant overlapping each others and C) Seems to consist soley of the word "Man", their comedic(?) potential quickly faded.

Driving in circles: The chase scene kind of stalls at this juncture, with endless shots of Eleanor and Co. doing wheelies in the dusty construction zone. Man, this is going to be a dull review if I dont speed things up. Okay, hold tight, I'm hitting Fast Forward Mode.

Parked Car Abuse: DING!

Unexpected Traffic Accident SCREECHTHUD!:

Dumptruck Dodgems: BANGCLONGDING!

Door-Ectomy Cliche!: "Don't open the d..."CRASH! "..oor."

The Bruthas Return: "Yo man, great party last night, man. Man, that was great, man. Man."

Fruit.. Uh, Shopping Cart Cliche: Well, it LOOKED like there was fruit in it, at least.

All That buildup for that? : The Carload of Bros finally meets up with Maindrian ... and is instantly knocked off the road, hitting a parked car. Well, that was an anticlimax. Directly after comes one of the strangest moments of the film.

We pause for a word from our sponser: Suddenly, we're at a building dedication in Carson City. The MC proceeds to do a quick Tourist Board-type advert for Carson City, even going so far as to quote it's economic figures at us.(!) Man, the things you have to do to get permission to crash cars in Carson City, huh? There's even a brief appearance by the (then) actual Mayor of Carson City. Maindrian barrels on by, and the whole incident is quickly forgotten. Onwards!

Balsa wood Barrier Cliche!: SMASH! CLATTER!

Caddy Demolition Derby!: CLANG! DENT!

Showroom Showdown!: It finally looks as though it's all over for Maindrian , cornered in a caryard. (Who gets his sign on-screen for an extended shot AND a "Thanks To..." credit at the end.) It's curtains for our hero! There's no escape! There's... HOW DID HE ESCAPE? I'm serious, they just suddenly cut to him driving away from the previously-surrounded carlot. Continuity errors I can hadle. Blatant cheating pisses me off, I'm afraid. Just for that... and to save my sanity of trying to recap this flick... I'm cutting to the Big Finale.

Slow-Mo Stuntage!/Eleanor II/The End, apparently: The HUGE STUNT OF SLOW-MOTION GLORY occurs as Maindrian happens on a major traffic accident. (Oddly, not one that he's caused himself. What are the odds of that?) Amazingly all four cars involved in the accident have arranged themselves across the road in single file. (Again, what are the odds?) Maindrian guns it, aiming for a car so compacted the driver would have had have been Billy Barty to avoid getting killed. I guess he collided with a mobile car-crusher. The resulting flying car is filmed from three different angles, and we watch 2 in slow-mo and one at full speed. I'm a litle underwhelmed, quite frankly. Good height, plenty of distance and a nice straight flight... but he really butchered the landing, hitting nose-down at a forty-degree angle. Ouch. The stunt driver's lucky his balls didn't end up halfway back inside his body from that impact. But at long last, this signals an end to the Ultimate Chase. Ditching the cops, Maindrian pulls a quick Eleanor-Switcheroo at a car wash. ("The 1973 Ford Mustang! Comes in any colour, so long as it's yellow!") As a middle-aged car-wash guy gets arrested in his place, Our Hero drives off past the Bruthas, whose car engine has comically(?) caught fire. And so we fade out. Eventually. After watching the Bruthas say things like "Oh, MANNNNN!" for like, an hour or two. (Or so it seemed at the time.)

And so we dissolve to the credits and another country-tinged song. And in a moment of true professionalism, IT'S NOT LONG ENOUGH! It fades out, and the remaining few minutes of credits are in an eerie silnce. Mr Halicki, I slaute your bold, artistic statement on... uh, human futility and stuff.

Skeeters Summary: I mentioned my theory on this film earlier. Basically, it states that H.B Halicki was aiming to create the Ultimate Chase Film. But along the way, limitations of his technical skill and budget kind of stifled his creative vision. Quite often the dialogue hinted at events that were bigger and more spectacular than we were actually witnessing. (The 20-30 cop cars, for instance. At the end of the chase, there was 20+ cars involved, but for the majority the number averaged around 5 at the most.) I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Halicki was a shade disappointed with the final product. (Resulting in his bigger, badder, crash-ier follow-up The Junkman, which was even billed on the video I hired as "Gone in Sixty Seconds II". Storywise, there's only a token resembelance, as H.B Halicki now plays not Maindrian, but the actual director of the first film. (Whoa, there's a stretch.) On the other hand, he followed his dream and got both films made. Kudos, dude. On the whole the movie delivered exactly what it promised. A slender plot, some amatuer-hour film-making, and shitloads of petrol-fueled action. At times it was confusing, irritating and laughable... but I think I got through it a lot easier than Son of Spam seemed to. Possibly due to the amount of mid-80's-early 90's "Turbo-Charged Travelogue" movies made in New Zealand I watched as a kid. (Goodbye Pork Pie, Never Say Die, Shaker Run etc.) Each of those films followed the formula of being a ninety-minute chase movie, designed to showcase of as much of New Zealands magnificant scenery as possible. Gone in Sixty Seconds was a bit of a flashback experience for me. Would I watch it again? Probably not. But if you're after some mindless escapism and really (I mean REALLY) like chase scenes, you could do a lot worse than checking it out. You could watch The Fast and the Furious instead. Now THERE'S an IQ-lowering flick if ever I saw one.

REVIEW: Knights

2006-04-10T11:18:00.000+12:00

Man vs. Machine. Seemed a simple enough premise for a review roundtable. And so I trekked to the video store, intent on picking up Stephen Kings' ill-fated foray into the directors chair, Maximum Overdrive. I was to be denied, of course... the tape had been added to the $4.95 Ex-Rental Sale table and sold off to some Movie Masochist. (There's a another one in my suburb? We should meet for coffee and DTV crap sometime...) And so, I checked out the sci-fi shelves. I contemplated, then rejected a video box which promised "In the future, the machines rule!" as the back didn't appear to mention machines in any way shape or form... Although any film starring Frank Stallone and Joe Estevez and featuring post-apocalyptic roller-bladers (The Rollerblade Seven) is probably worth a watch. I considered a "Spaceship struck by computer virus on a collision course with Earth" film... but as it starred Sandra Bernhardt(!!), I gave it a miss.

Finally, I thought I found the perfect choice. The tagline... "Warrior vs. Cyborg... In the futuristic showdown to end them all!". Hmm, reading the back of the box, I learnt I'd be watching a young warrior battle rebel cyborgs that feed on human blood. It was definitely (Wo)Man vs. Machine. I grabbed it. Later, I realized I should have read the box more carefully... namely the words "From the director of Cyborg and Kickboxer 2".

Oh, good God.

I just hired an Albert Pyun movie.

Wish me luck...

KNIGHTS (1992)
(Or possibly '93, according to the IMDB.)

Preview Time!: We're off and running with the most naked rip-off of Die Hard I've ever seen. Bad guys being taunted by the hero on walkie-talkies, explosions in lift shafts, the whole nine yards. Jeff Wincott stars in Open Fire. Bleeh. Next a super-brief promo for a "True Story" thriller, Terror in the Night, starring Justine Bateman. (!) Next.. Hey, Chuck Norris! In a comedy. Kind of. Make that a Karate Kid clone called Sidekicks. I'll take a pass. More chop-socky action with the next preview... and there's Eric Roberts! Wondered when he'd show up... Best of the Best 2, huh? Looks pretty lame. An actual, honest-to-God, released-in-theaters film is up next. Too bad it's The Good Son, starring the Evil Macauly Culkin and... Elijah Wood! (With throe huge eyes, shouldn't HE have been the psycho kid?). The previews try to one-up themselves with a Good Son rip-off, The Paperboy. (Starring Alexandra Paul and William Katt.) Bonus points for the uber-cheesy tagline... "He's Bad News!". And finally Mrs. Doubtfire... which is hardly a surprise, as that trailer was on 99.75% of all video tapes from the moment the film was released.

Kings Road Entertainment: Well, we're off and running now! To mis-quote MST3K... 'They're promising us entertainment, but frankly I have my doubts.". The films soundtrack kicks off with that godsend for low-budget movie-makers, the synthesizer theme. (It's nice to be able to hire one man to play all the music for the flick... in this case, "Tony Riparetti". Yo, Tony... ahhh, fuggeddaboudit!)

Butt-Ugly Desert!: We fade up on the typical Post-Apocalyptic landscape... as played by Utah. To be fair to Utah, I'm sure it's a nice, scenic desert in real life. But throughout the film, the landscape gets filmed in such a way as to make it the least attractive patch of dirt possible. (Mainly by the use of coloured filters to give that whole "War-torn wasteland" feel... Which would be fine if Albert stayed consistent. But more on that later.) Meanwhile, we get a helpful Expository Voice-Over from our heroine.

"It was another age.... another place. Here, time had long emptied the world, and in it's place, came the cyborgs. Powerful, invincible... and we humans became the victims of their hunger."

Where to start? Another age, and another place, huh? From what perspective is she talking about this? If it's her story, it'd be HER age and place, surely? Next, time had apparently emptied the world (And yep, that's all the explanation we get for the post-apocalyptic nature of things.) and THEN the cyborgs arrived? Who built them? With what technology, seeing as how the apocalypse already occurred? And, wouldn't "Powerful" and "Invincible"pretty much equate to the same thing in the end? Whatever, let's move on.

Sepia-tones! The Metal Monk: Cue the Flashback as we check out our heroines childhood. Seems her family was traveling with some "farmers"... what were they farming, rocks? And then, riding out of the shadows arrive... well, a bunch of guys in faux-Arabic robes. Yep, there's nothing scarier than men in burquas! They're led by Lance Henriksen, who we later (Much, MUCH later) discover to be named "Job". Job is obviously the leader, as he's the only guy with visible cybernetic parts. Namely, a stonking great cybernetic arm. Which proves to come in useful for... well, bugger all, really. He politely asks the farmers to either join their army, or throw down their weapons and die so his cyber-goons can feed. While the farmers ponder their choice, we meet Nea, our soon-to-be leading lady, as a scruffy young girl. Her mother gives Nea her baby brother (PLOT POINT!) and tells her to...

RUN!: At which point, she kind of wanders away. "Running" involves a little more speed than that, Nea. (In fact how did she manage to escape, seeing as she appears to be in full view of the cyborgs the whole time?) Perhaps they were distracted by...

Micheal Jackson, Traitor!: Sure, this curly-haired dude doesn't LOOK like M.J...but when he opens his mouth to become a Cyborg Army Volunteer... high-pitched perfection! Job wants a demonstration of MJ's loyalty, of course... by helping to herd up the "Pumpkin-heads". (His phrase, not mine.) Where the heck did THAT expression come from? I mean, it's a war-blasted desert landscape... what's the chance he's even SEEN a pumpkin? All hell breaks loose... possibly. (In fact, make that "All hell is implied to break loose"... And if it does, we never get to see it.)

Cheap-ass Massacre!: As we abruptly cut to the aftermath of the battle. Cyborgs win! Cyborgs win! There's a close-up shot of the baby boys wrist at this stage... ooh, a crescent-shaped birthmark! (PLOT POINT!)

KNIGHTS!: After the credits, we meet some more farmers. Maybe the film should have been called 'FARMERS!"? These farmers have some expository dialogue to spout, turning the scene into a meeting of...

Bad Actors' Anonymous!: Okay, everyone pick a silly accent and have fun! Irish Guy, roll the "r"s some more. Wolfman, over-act more! Grown-Up Nea makes her appearance here... She's played by Kathy Long, who has Chyna-like arms on the video box. Man, if she's half the actress Chyna is... we'll, that's nigh-near impossible without inventing Quantum Bad Acting.

The Batty Medium: Nea gets some advice from this cackling old biddy. She's destined for greatness! So long as they mean, "Great at arm-wrestling", she's got a shot. So we don't forget who the cyborgs are, we check out what they've achieved in the last decade.

Army of 20?: Not a lot, as it turns out. In fact, there's just 20 of them left. Not that this has stopped them maintaining their human army, or explains why they need "...the blood of 10, 000 humans!". Seems excessive, if you ask me. Oddly, despite roughly 40% of the entire Cyborg Army sitting in the same tent, Job decides not to pass on this information verbally. Instead he uses a Telepathic Rotating Adult Pleasure Device to do the job. (Not to "Do the Job", though... that would be perverted.) He also demonstrates his strangest character trait here... spitting out a mouthful of water whenever he gets worked up. Our villain's a compulsive drooler? Terrifying. Outside the tent, Job and a couple of other cyborgs have a brief philosophical conversation.

Cybor---ing!: Okay, not nearly brief enough. Guys, I don't care if you're alive or not. Make with the killing and mayhem already!

Suck down a warm one!: That's better... Job whips out his Spiky Needles of Death to suck the blood of a random human. Now, if the cyborgs live on human blood, shouldn't they ALL have honking great cybernetic arms with needles attached? Oh well, it's a low-budget universe, I suppose.

Abu to the rescue!: The unwilling blood donor is kind-of saved by a young boy (PLOT POINT!) dressed like a grade-school Aladdin. (I say "kind-of", because he acts like he's dead anyway. Too little, too late kid...) Job contemplates offing the kid, but decides he likes the kids "Moxie". Man, who activated his Cliché Circuits? The kid drags off his buddy as Job lays out his battle plan. He uses the phrase "Terminate us" at this stage. Penalty Flag! Referencing a better movie! Five yards, repeat first down!

Afternoon for night?: The heavy blue filter gets a workout as Job divides his forces (All 20 of them) to attack two settlements at once. Yep, there's a plan... and so the...

Ten Man Army?: ...Rides into battle. Well, ride into a shanty town to knock out our Heroine, then make the same feeble demands Jobs been making for a decade, actually. One of the humans shows some moxie (See, I can do it too!), throwing his...

Bouncy Spear!: "Ha, I am a Cyborg! Your spear bounces off me like it was rubber! Oh, wait... it IS rubber!"

Low-Budget Mayhem!: And so a mild rumble breaks out. Oh, the excitement. The cyborgs are under orders to...

Bring 'em back alive... oh, bugger.: But when Jobs' second-in-command (Eventually named "Simon") rides in, he finds all the humans have been slaughtered by his...

Hench-stupids: Including one who, on seeing Nea trying to flee, fires an arrow into her, then "co medically" mumbles "Sorry"... Oh, my aching sides. No, I'm wrong, this film is a pain in my ass, not my sides. Simon is none too pleased, as evidenced by the fact he screams the end of EVERY LINE! Yep, kind of LIKE THIS! Neas' only wounded by the arrow, though, allowing Simon to corner her in a lean-to and kill her, thus ending the movie. What? Oh, damn, I was projecting my wishes onto the screen again... what he actually does is corner her, then waste time making mincing threats. In fact, he wastes so much time he's eventually interrupted by...

Kristofferson of Arabia!: Although taking a second look at his outfit, which includes a brown, hooded robe, I'm guessing we were meant to get more of an Obi-Wan Ken-obi vibe. He's quickly revealed as being the..

Kristerminator!: Yep, old Kris is a Cyborg, too! A cyborg designed to kill other cyborgs. Penalty Flag! Stealing the premise of "Terminator 2", released a year before this was made! Ten Yards, still second down! Kris and Screamin' Simon face off, exchanging some expository dialogue. (There's a ton of exposition for this film, despite the plot being simple enough to fit on a matchbook cover.) Kris's character continues the biblical motif, of course.

Gabriel, Deus ex Cyborgia: He trades bon mots with Simon, who initiates his Bitchy Chip. And the fight begins! Suffice it to say, it doesn't erase memories of the lightsaber duels from the Star Wars movies, although is does suddenly get a HUGE Penalty Flag!

The Princess Bride?: They are SO ripping-off the Cliffs of Insanity duel! Right down to the "witticisms" (Which aren't witty) they trade between blows. A strange aspect of Cyborg warfare comes in here... the fact that any blow can make them fly forty feet in the air and execute a triple twisting somersault on the way.

Bouncy Castle Rumble?: I'm not kidding! It's like they stumbled across an unemployed troupe of circus acrobats and offered them a part in the film! Much flipping and flopping later, Simon calls for a...

Timeout! Eyeball on the field!: Yo, Gabe... You just ripped his eye out. Don't stand there and look at him while he replaces it... seize the advantage, dude. *sigh* Fine, stand there like a dummy, then. More brawling later (In which our drippy heroine FINALLY tries to get involved... unsuccessfully, I might add.) Gabe takes out Simon.

Fire in the Head!: Excellent, you immolated the Bitchy Badguy. Is the movie over yet? Simon tries for one last piece of 'comedy", with the line. "Oh, great... Am I on fire now?" before expiring. In the hands of the right director, that could have been a funny line. Need I mention who directed this tripe?

I'm getting bogged down. To steal a trick from Ken Begg, let's go to the bullet-point treatment until something interesting happens. Or until the movie ends. Whichever comes first.

Nice shot of the guy abseiling off the rock, Albert. Was there a point to that?

Oh, he was a "lookout". So they've invented cyborgs, but haven't re-invented a walkie talkie so he doesn't have to report to Job in person?

Ahhhgh! Tilt-a-cam! Stop giving me Battlefield Earth flashbacks, movie!

Why is that Cyborg talking like a London wide-boy?

Man, Kris Kristofferson needs a cellphone... because he's really phoning in his performance.

Unless he figured a Cyborg should talk robotically. In which case, why was Simon such a screamer?

The Cyborgs are heading for Taos! And suddenly Nea knows that, even though she's miles away. Our heroine just turned psychic on us!

Oh, good. Gabriel's going to train Nea to fight Cyborgs. I feel a montage coming on...

Wait, they have a "month" to train? We just saw Jobs army setting out! Are they seriously going to force-march humans for 30 days and expect them to be able to fight?

Gabe and Nea have time to train, as she knows a "shortcut" to Taos. Considering how much traveling the Cyborgs seem to take, it's one hell of a shortcut, all right.

Okay, we've had blue-tinted desert and orange-tinted desert... why the heck has the horizon gone neon green all of a sudden?

What the FUCK? The Cyborgs just found Simon... in the village he was sent to... and the month is over already? So 1) The Cyborgs would suck at Hide-and-Seek. And 2) The time-frame has gotten horribly screwed.

They've camped at Giant Seed Bell Rock!

"When do we start training?" Well, according to that last line of dialogue, a month ago, Nea.

My wife wondered why I started laughing. It was because Nea was standing next to the rear end of her horse. I wrote 'A horses ass' on my notes, then wondered if it was a cameo from the director.

Blue! Orange! Blue! Orange! Orange with green! PICK ONE, MOTHERFUCKER!

The cyborgs are still riding. I assume they're in Bolivia by now.

Training Montage! Well, if having Gabriel hit you repeatedly counts as training.

In an effort to move the plot along, we find out that Nea ditched her brother eight years back, leaving him in a village later wiped out by the cyborgs. I still think it's probably too later to be having issues over it now. Can we move on, please?

Hmm, the Cyborgs found their campfire... "Five days old" is the Lead Cyborgs opinion. In this movie, that could mean they were there five minutes ago, or June of last year.

WHOA, is that a bright orange filter! Where are they, the Microwaved Desert?

Okay, this training has gone from "painful' to "sadistic". Stop hitting her, Gabe!

Oh, great... the 'What is...love?" scene.

Gabriel's made of "spare parts"? He should have been in Raptor... that MOVIE was made of spare parts!

Okay, the last thing this movie needs is a Romantic Montage. But if you insist, Mr. Pyun.

Talk, talk, talk, talk... DO SOMETHING! (The middle third of this movie was not the most interesting 30 minutes of my life.)

Shit, they took a shortcut through Canada!

In fact, if there's still parts of the world covered in lush, green forest, why the hell are all the farmers hanging out in the parched desert? Stupid farmers.

What did that tree-stump do to Nea to deserve this sort of punishment? Or is it the post-apocalyptic equivalent of a Thigh master?

Taos is just another days ride away. They should be there by Christmas, in this films' time-frame.

Boy, this unlikely romantic subplot is getting more unlikely by the second.

Post-Apocalyptic Hissy Fit!

They're being attacked by Gay Druids!

Can I lend you a "Hand", pal? After Gabriel "disarmed" you and all.

Nea, Gabriel's fighting for his life. Stop giving him that pouty look and help!

Whoa, he's being attacked by the drummer from Poison!

Hair Metal Cyborgs head sounds like it's made from mahogany.

Fun Fact: Cyborgs weak spots are in their foreheads. I wonder if they can be noogied to death?

Machete-on-a-Wire!

One positive note... the music, while weedy and derivative, is at least appropriate. Later on, Mr. Riparetti mistakes the "Sappy Love Theme" button on his synth for the "Exciting Battle Theme".

Oh no! The blew up our Weenie Hero! (My notes just read "Bishop!".)

You know, having a built-in "Kill Zone" in your cyborgs could be considered a minor design flaw.

"Ha! We have captured you! Now stay here with out inefficient Hench-Humans and escape in your own time."

Total time of being captured. 58 seconds. Cyborgs are idiots.

Was that guys neck full of Rice Krispies?

It's the Love Theme Massacre!

Job has a parrot on his shoulder... what is this, Cyborgs of Penzance?

The "Master Builder" in on his way! Probably to complain about the cheap, shoddy sets.

Lance, what was with the clicking sounds at the end of each sentence? Is Jobs' fan belt coming loose?

Quit spitting, Fountain Boy, you're going to drown someone in dribble!

You know, if you can't spot a six-foot tall chick sneaking up on you from the featureless desert, you shouldn't really be on guard duty.

She did cheat by hiding in a scene clipped from the "forest" section of the film, I'll admit.

AND she kicked him in the nuts while he was down! Penalty! Two minutes for roughing!

Yeah, put on his clothes... that'll fool 'em for about nine seconds.

She's at Woodstock!

Either that or there's still sporting goods stores open in the Post-Apocalyptic Future...

I shouldn't mock... the cast and crew probably had to sleep in those tents.

So we're down to 17 Cyborgs... and according to these establishing shots, an army of maybe 2 dozen humans. I bet the 10,000 people in Taos are just petrified.

Lance Henriksen appears to be trying to balance out Kris Kristoffersons under-acting with his over-acting.

All right, a Pit Fight! Too bad there was no budget for a Pit. Dirt Fighting just seems so less interesting.

M.J is about to prove himself worthy to be in the Cyborgs! Dude, you joined EIGHT YEARS AGO! What have you been doing all this time?

These are some really weird reaction shots from Job. It's like they just filmed him making odd faces and then edited them into the scene at random intervals.

Nea gets a slight groping from the guys watching the fight and starts handing out the whoop-ass! Great undercover work, girl.

"I wave my knee in your general direction! How many fingers am I holding up?"

New Challenger!

Whoa, that's a weird cut! From Job chuckling evilly to two Cyborgs wandering through Tent City having a conversation. Are we still watching the same movie?

David! Paul! Micheal! Where's the cyborg called "Judas" we can root for?

He, there's that kid we last saw an hour ago! And he's helping his sister.. uh, Nea... get ready for her fight. (Damn I gave away the big twist we all saw coming 58 minutes ago.)

Okay, so MJ is still going to have his fight against the Wussiest-Looking Guy in camp before facing Nea? After she challenged him to save his life? This alien logic escapes me.

Nea walks in slow-mo. The fight happens in real-time. Which means the Wussy Guy is dead before she's covered ten yards. Nice going, girl.

The kick is up... No good! Wide right! (Insert gratuitous "Head" joke here.)

Stall

Lame fight!

Stall. Who taught these guys their offense, "Big Lazy" Kevin Nash?

Strangest reaction shot yet. Job laughs, then looks out into the middle distance. Was Lance Henriksen even THERE when this fight was shot?

I guess not. Any time he shares the same shot with the other actors, he's way off in the background. Like, far enough away for a body double.

Lame Fight!

Exeunt MJ. Hooray!

Ooh, arrow right in the drive shaft for Job!

"I fling myself at you!" "I hop around like a moron!"

Lame Fight!

Huh? Whafuck?: Okay, I'll break out of Bullet Time to try and explain THAT note. Due to some insanely bad editing, I suddenly felt like we'd skipped to a completely different part of the film. Here's what happened. Nea leaps over a rock, cut to Job on top of a bigger rock. Cut to Nea, picking a skewer of roasting meat off a campfire. Before you can say "When did she have time to pitch camp and cook?", she leaps back over the rock and fires not one, but TWO flaming shisk-kabobs at Job. He gets one in the chest. (Yes, ONE... the earlier arrow has vaporised in a puff of bad continuity.) Cut to Jobs' slave-girl, chanting and babbling insanely over the smouldering corpse of Jobs' (Cybernetic) parrot.

It took a few rewinds, but I figured it out eventually. The skewers were on a small campfire, glimpsed briefly as she leapt the rocks. The cybernetic parrot confuses me... who'd want to cybernetically enhance something that does nothing but eat and crap? And the two missing arrows are back in Jobs body next time we see him. Albert Pyun remains at large.

Penalty Flag! Using Bishops distorted voice for the dismembered Gabriel! And since Lance Henriksens in the cast, I think that's a five-minute major.

Big Fight Scene! Nope, it's over in thirty seconds. Cyborgs suck at stick-fighting.

Nea thanks Little Bro for his "help", he responds with "It was nothing". I have to agree, as he didn't DO anything except watch the fight and cheer her on a little. Penalty Flag for Script Stupidity! This movies in foul trouble early! (Yep, football, hockey and now basketball. I love mixing my metaphors.)

Hey, he's got a tiny crescent-shaped scar! Cue the flashback so we understand how this intricately-woven plot works.Okay, he IS her brother. I get it now.

Geez, when did Nea turn into Buffy the Cyborg Slayer?

16! 15! 14!

Ooh, a Face Implody!

Human Prairie Dog Attack!

How WAS that guy breathing down there? Another triumph for "Cool Visual" over "Logical Script". It was neither, in the end.

SLO-MO MAYHEM!

She's running the Stupid Gauntlet!

Little Bro is still behind the same rock and watching the fight, even though Neas run like, three miles already. Good eyesight on the kid.

Fight, fight, fight! Fight.

You know, what this movie needs is more fighting.

Okay, so she strapped the remains of Gabriel on her back. This should make for an interesting fight scene.

Hey, they're changing the rules! Unless the Cyborgs have secondary Kill Zones in their abdomens.

Midget-Strapped-to-Your-Back Attack!

13! 12! 11!

Fun Fact: All Cyborgs are compatible with OTHER Cyborgs!

Yay, Gabriel is all man again! Is this movie over yet?

Jobs' got the kid!

Wait, who's the guy in the diving suit? Is that the Master Builder?

And why is he talking like Darth Vader?

In fact, is my wife right when she said he's talking in Lance Henriksens' voice? I hope you paid him twice, Albert! Cheap-ass.

Ride her down like grass, Job!

Okay, picture this... Nea runs toward a charging horse... leaps in the air, kicks the rider off... and ends up riding the horse... even facing the right way, even though that would have needed a mid-air 180. Horsewoman of the Year!

Okay, make that KNIFE-woman of the Year. I swear she hit Job between the eyes while standing in the next county!

Fly the Stupid Skies! (The Master Builder takes off on a hang-glider(!!) with Little Bro. Good riddance.)

Now Jobs' been dis-armed.

So long, Job. Thanks for telling us where the Master Builder is taking the kid to. Cyborg City, huh? So if there's a CITY full of cyborgs, why was Job wandering about with 20 guys all this time?

Nea: Queen Useless of the Dumbfuck Tribe!

SEQUEL?: And here's where my jaw dropped. Albert Pyun may be many things... but he's a man with gonads the size of grapefruits to get away with THIS ending. Here's a partial transcript of our heroines final Voice-Over.

"The search for my brother would lead us across time and space... far beyond Cyborg City.. (something incomprehensible).. and finally to the edge of the Universe itself."

Uh-huh.

Well, needless to say, this rather expensive-sounding sequel has yet to be made. And somehow, I'm pretty sure it never will be. This film however, ends with some blatant..

Padding: As each of the 4 leads (Job, Nea, Gabriel and even Simon) get 30-second clips of their fight scenes before the credits roll. As they show them in reverse order, it kind of appears that Scott Paulin, who plays Simon, is the leading man. But hey... it's over.

Skeeters Summary: Painfully inept, butt-clenchingly cheap. Man vs. Machine? We'll call it a goal-less tie for this film.

REVIEW: Spiders

2006-04-10T11:14:00.000+12:00

Nu Image: Laughably Cheap CGI Our Speciality.

I picked up this flick from the same shelf at the Video Shop that stocked other quality Nu Image fare, such as Blood Surf and Octopus... so I knew right off the bat what I was in for. And while I took copius notes, (Including one that simply read "Oh, get the fuck out of here!") I really feel this movie only deserves the bullet-point treatment. So, here we go.

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND THINGS I LEARNT ("TIL") FROM:

SPIDERS (2000)

("TIL" Concept stolen from Sgt. Andrew B.)

Preview Time... wait, these are the same previews as on "Octopus!". I feel cheated.

Nu Image Presents: There's words to make a sane person flip the channel.

Ooh, they used the Hairy Font™ for the title. Fuzzy.

Wow, it's a calvacade of nobodies in this one. Guess George Takai was busy.

SCIENCE! Or the cheapest equivalent, really.

The way she's holding that tarantula reminds me of something. Is the "Kingdom of the Spiders...IN SPAAAACE!"?

STOCK FOOTAGE! Thanks for the space shuttle footage, NASA!

Man, either there's a BUNCH of Space Shuttles up there, or this editing is just really confusing.

Hey, knock off the gratutious Canada-bashing, Space-Dink!

The Shuttle "Solaris", huh? Where's George Clooney when you need him?

TIL: NASA has invented "Gravity-On-Demand", allowing astronauts to uses eye-droppers in space.

TIL: NASA like to name it's top-secret science experiments things like "Project Mother-In-Law". Next month "Project Saucpan and Cup".

Are you injecting the spider, or attempting to stab it to death? Could we get a smaller syringe, please?

Attack of the 80's Music Video Effects! (okay, it was a 'solar flare", but it still looked like a bad A-Ha clip to me...)

The pilot's Mother-In-Law is loose! Panic! (See, THAT'S why you have to think carefully about when naming things.)

Dude, that's the worst pimple I've ever seen.

TIL: You can actually land an entire Space Shuttle on "Autopilot" these days.

Enter our Heroine, the Conspiricy Chick.

Oops, she spent so long reading her "Big Book O' Aliens", she's late for something. Quick, run through the campus... and try not to trigger a musical number. (I was getting Grease 2 flashbacks...)

If "Hampden College" is a real university, they must be SO proud to be associated with this masterpiece of cinema.

TIL: Newspaper Editors always yell at their staff, even if they're overweight nerdy guys in glasses.

TIL: Varsity newspapers have a staff larger than the "New York Times".

I've got five bucks that says the uber-nerd will use his computer skills sometime later in the flick.

TIL: Decorating your desk with 4,000 inflatable aliens and a poster of UFO's makes a real staement. The staement is "I'm an Idiot".

Boy, this scene where Conspiricy Chick interviews a pair of "Aliens" is really advancing the plot, huh?

The Aliens are conversing in Sweedish Chef-ese!

So the Conspiricy Chick is "Marci", Nerdy Longhair is "Jake" and the Too-Cool-For-School Guy Who Hangs Out With Them is "Slick". They're really only missing Velma and a dog to complete the set.(Although Marci wears glasses, so she's kind of a cross between Daphne and Velma. Chadzilla is probably breaking out in a cold sweat at THAT image,)

"Area 21"? Was the other place booked out?

Y'know, people shouldn't complain about not getting "hard stories", mere minutes after interview a wierdo who drinks non-dairy creamer.

Marci doesn't want to do a piece on the shuttle launch, because she's chasing her conspiricy theories. Oh, the irony is so... lazily written.

Hey, it's the Mystery Jeep! (Could we have found one in a BRIGHTER shade of red? They'll see that coming from the next state...)

So she's heading out to Area 21 after all. Lucky that, or the whole 'Spider' Plotline would have been wasted.

Yes, it's fascinating watching Jake and Slick bicker, movie. Could we get back to the story now?

Please?

Slick electrocuted himself! YAY!

Damn. Stop playing cruel tricks on me, Slick... I want to see you fry.

Oh no, Marcis' in trouble because she missed a "breaking story"! I thought she worked for a varsity paper, not CNN!

Space Shuttle Crash! Suddenly we're watching Armageddon! NOOOO... oh, wait, this crash was done with really CHEAP CGI. Nope, it's still Spiders.

Hmm, the shuttle has a gaping hole in it's side with "SOLA" on one side, and "RIS" on the other. Guess it's the Space Shuttle "SOLAAAAARIS", then.

TIL: Getting killed by a genetically-modified spider causes your rip-cage to explode outwards.

Either that or the shuttle was carrying an Alien, too.

Howdy, Pilot Latex-Face!

Men in Black, incoming! (Well, with this films budget, it's more like Men in Charcoal.)

That spider just hid a Tic-Tac in Pilot Lumpyfaces' belly-button.

Quick, Scooby Gang... escape in full view of everyone, that'll work!

Holy shit, it worked.

Oh, nice going, Agent Clumsy. That spider will NEVER come off your boot.

TIL: Government Sp00ks are entitled to shoot their own medical personel when they can't get their own way. Good negotiation tactics, Agent Grey.

I guess we'll take the "Shoot the Quack" scene as a "Sledgehammer of Evil" scene. (Term courtesy of the Agony Booth forums.)

TIL: One smoke grenade can blow up an entire Space Shuttle, provided you do the "Right Stuff" slow-mo walk away from it. ("Bay on a Budget", according to my notes. Very fake CGI explosion, too.)

Apparently the shuttle crews bodies turned into foam rubber on re-entry, the way those guys are tossing them about.

Well, you're in Area 21, Marci. Happy now? Sure, there's a dead guy lying on top on you, but you'll get your big story, right?

Whoa, a Turbo-Lift! (This would be the ONLY time that lift would travel that fast, however.)

TIL: Medical teams unload dead bodies using their sense of touch only.

Note to the set decorator: Placing the same three Biohazard buckets in every set is economical, though slightly silly at times. (Like when all three were in a corridor, for instance. Awaiting the Biohazrd Trash Collector, maybe?)

Who's snoring? The movie isn't THAT boring! Just.

Oh, it was Pilot Prune-Face. So why could they hear his breathing when they were three rooms away?

Incidently, the pilot is now starting to resemble the big guy in The Goonies.

So, you find a barely-alive man with a face like a bowl of congealed oatmel hooked to a life-support machine, and your first reaction is "Let's get him out of here!". You're a fucking idiot, Slick.

Hey, this pilot must be Linda Blairs old man. Hope that washes off, Marci.

TIL: A two-foot long spider can crawl out of a mans' mouth.

Don't go in there, dcotor! You're an Ethnic Minority! Aww, crap, I warned you.

TIL: Giant Spider venom makes you vomit toothpaste.

COTTON CANDY ATTACK!

This film is pretty consistent, really. After all, the practical effects are just as crappy as the CGI effects.

Damn, it decided to chase the Nurse, while leaving Slick un-eaten. Stupid spider.

I had to pause the tape here, in order to stop laughing at the "Rubber Spider on a Stick" attack technique.

Enter the Disposable Miltary Guys!

Okay, Agent Clumsy gets to be the first to split off from the main group. (I noted "Split Up..and DIE!) no less than three times in my notes.) Yep, good strategy, Sarge. (Note: Agent Clumsy doesn't get killed. Phew.)

Oops, the Scoobies ran down one flight of stairs and got lost. How'd they even find their car today?

Oh, good, more bickering. "The Blair Witch Project... OF THE SPIDERS!"

Jake: "Let's see, we took three rights...". Really? Maybe that's in the deleted scenes. Or Jake's just a moron.

"All right gentlemen, let's divide our forces AGAIN! Johnson, go that way and scream if something eats you."

That is one EFFICIENT spider... alive for five minutes, and yet managed to cover the entire base in giant spiderwebs.

Yes, eat the Nerd! He's low-fat.

Good, you punched the spider in the mouth, Slick. Thanks for asserting your manliness.

TIL: People in Creature-Features ALWAYS assume the monster is dead, but never go to check.

Wait, I already knew that.

Ooh, Easy-Peel spider.

Hey, they found Astronaut-sicles! (Corpses from "Apollo 18". This possibly could have been an interesting plot twist. Too bad they used it as a meaningless time-filler scene, with no bearing on the story whatsoever.)

Oh look, it's the Laboratory of Plot Exposition Research!

TIL: Specimens are sometimes preserved in neon multi-coloured liquids these days.

TIL: When in need of insight, open the first dossier you see. There's ALWAYS something useful in it.

TIL: Top-Secret Government computer files can be hacked into by Nerdy varsity geeks in three minutes or less.

Okay, so Dairy-Creamer Guy WAS an Alien! That should impact on the plot! (NOTE: No, it doesn't. In fact, he's never mentioned again directly. This script needs to be taken out and flogged. Especially for an earlier line "It's like bad Sci-Fi!". Don't shoot yourself in the foot, movie.)

Admittedly, there's a mention of "Alien DNA", later on. But it's still desn't mean I needed to sit through that stupid "Interview" scene.

Aww, Jake just realised he's been poisoned and there's no cure. Bummer, dude. (His sudden outburst of colourful profanity was fairly amusing, though.)

Jake's Hulking up! Go get her, Jake-bo!

Wait a minute, why is he swelling up like a balloon? The Doctor didn't do that...

Something-in-Shot! (On rewinding three times, I decided it was a stray piece of "web". Either that or the boom is made of Silly String.)

Death by POV Shot!

Splitting up again, sir... ARGGGGH!

Hey, how many spiders are in this base, anyway? That critter's all OVER the place.

Although it is a plural-ised title, so maybe that's the secret. (Nice try, Skeeter, it's just the way they edited it.)

Where would low-budget film-makers be without power-plants for their actors to run around in?

Marci and Slick spend more time in a lift-shaft than the average Schindlers employee during this film.

That is one of the fakest-looking CGI lift shafts in cinematic history,

SPRING-LOADED GIANT VOLKSWAGEN-SIZED PLASTIC SPIDER!

And THAT is the single-worst CGI "falling down a fake-looking CGI lift shaft" effect in cinematic history. Yes, I know that's a fairly narrow field.

Okay, this needs some explaining. Marci and Slick leave a stalled elevator car, climb a ladder up to a door, open it to find the Giant Spider waiting for them. Startled, they fall backwards into the lift shaft, plummeting down for dozens of floors until they land... in a giant spider web. So, as best I can figure it, the spider waited until they started the climb, removed the entire elevator car, spun a huge web, then climbed out of the shaft and ran up ten flights of stairs to meet the pair. It's the Ernst Bloefeld of arachnids, folks.

Retrospectivly, I can't help but think that the CGI elevator shaft had NO CABLES! Some sort of clever anti-grav system, perhaps?

After the fall, Marci landed directly on Slick. Probably should have broken BOTH their spines, methinks.

And in between cuts, Marci has instantly turned 90 degrees from where we just saw her land. Good continuity, guys.

TIL: Spider webs are Selectivly Sticky. (Slick can't move a muscle, Marci crawls all over it. Weird.)

Bye, bye Slick. I'll miss... well, whatever it was you were in the movie for.

Who the hell is Marci listening to? (On re-winding an upping the volume, it was just her hearing Jake and Slicks dialogue in her head. Thus allowing us to watch Marci do bugger all for a few minutes. Padding, thy name is Nu Image.)

Area 21 really needs to get matinence to look at those pipes, or someone's going to get a severe steam-burn.

Actuualy, why exactly does this huge (CGI) base have no-one working in it? You'd think we'd at least see a cleaner or something.

Uhh, Agent Clumsy ust had your ass handed to you by a chick.

Twice!

Agent Grey on finding Sgt. Spiderchow lying in a corridor, bleeding from multiple wounds: "What are you doing?" Geez, he's Riverdancing, what does it look like?

Umm, Agent Grey. Could you stop shooting your own men, please? We've figured out how evil you are.

In fact, why did the U.S Government hire this insane, gun-happy lunatic... and NOT make him a Postal Worker?

Man, during the middle third of this film, Marci just turns into Whiny Hell-Bitch Girl...

Okay, what did that pipe do to deserve getting shot?

What the hell did Agent Clumsy and Marci just land in, the Area 21 Industriual-Sized Jacuzzi? (And if so, I think they need to add some chlorine to that water, it's turning green.)

Wet T-Shirt Rumble!

Just call him David Cop-a-Feel. Did Vince Russo write this movie while working for WCW?

Great, now Agent Pyscho has teleportational powers.

Oh, and he's been keeping tabs on Marci, because of her "accurate" reporting on UFO's. So I take it he spends every day going throuigh every student newspaper in the country , then?

Worst. CGI Effect. Ever. I mean it. I mean, I KNOW it's supposed to be webbing looping around Agent Grey, but there's no way in HELL you can make that effect any less believable, unless you got a stoned orangatan to act it out, whilst simultaneously holding up a sign saying "THIS IS WEBBING' behind him.

I mean it, it's that bad.

Seriously.

The spider's BEHIND! In FRONT! BEHIND! ("Plan 9... OF THE SPIDERS!")

Oh God, tell me it's not humping him to death.

"Okay, we have a lift and a giant creature charging us. Which one of us is Michael Biehn, again?"

TIL: Elevators in secret government facilities have floors made of balsa wood.

Hey, even the spider knows Kens' Rule of Guns!

"Bargin Basement! Mens underwear, books and splattered spider guts!"

Man, the movie appears to be over, and we're only at the 75 minute mark. Something smells fishy... (Although that just may be Buzz, our cat. Stupid sardine-flavoured cat-food.)

TIL: There are no classes at university in Southern California, as they just disrupt the students from sitting outside in the sun all day.

TIL: Even if there were, being on the staff of a varisty newspaper excludes you from having to attend classes anyway.

Oh, good, Agent Grey is still alive. And he had time to dryclean his suit, too.

So he shot the Shouty Editor, without a silencer and a room full of people never saw him enter, nor heard a thing. The future of news-reporting is in safe hands, folks.

It ain't Bad Sci-Fi without the "They'd make perfect weapons!" speech.

Wow, those legs sprouting out of his back remind me of the post-nookie scene in Species. Except these look REALLY fake.

Pop goes the Agent!

I think HERE was where I wrote "Oh, get the fuck out of here!". Either from the bloodless CGI Agent Explody, or the fact he hatched a spider the size of a Sherman tank from his sub-six foot frame.

TIL: Hampden College students panic like dorks.

TIL: Hampden College only has 25 students. Oops, make that 24. Ooh, that must hurt... 23.

Y'know, looking at this shiny, apperently weightless CGI Spider, I'm kind of yearning for a Fuzzy Volkswagen with Legs.

Not-Bad Car Stunt, runined by the Inclusion of a Crappy CGI Spider.

TIL: The U.S Government is now buying its armaments from Playskool.

NEON PLASTIC ROCKET ATTACK!

Great, the Spider is the size of two cross-town buses, and Agent Doofus missed it from thirty feet away. Our Hero, folks.

TIL: Parking an Evil Black Helicopter in the middle of a varsity carpark attracts ZERO attention from the students.

Well, the Spider's okay at smashing things, although I think Godzilla has more flair.

Although he's got the classics down pat... FRUIT CART!

There's good times to pad the running time and bad times. Watching Marci struggle with her seatbelt during the Dramatic Finale would be an example of BAD padding.

NEON PLASTIC ROCKET ATTAC... How could you MISS?

Oh, it's carapace is "Too strong" for the rocket, huh? Yeah, sure. (Incidently, it's really lucky the convention center the Spider is on wasn't damaged by the "blast", huh?)

Hey, using Marci as bait and going Archno-Fishing! I like these tactics.

Lame Bad-Ass Chick line? Check. Bad CGI Spider Explody? Check. Said explody shown four times from different angles? Check. Lame final line? Check. 50's Doo-Wop Music over the end credits? Unexpected.

Final TIL: If your the female lead and break your glasses half-way through the film, your vision automatically becomes 20/20 for the rest of the film.

And we be done. Adequate time-waster, with sub-par CGI. Worth a look if it's on cable, worth a rental if you're in the right mood. Better than Octopus, though. For whatever that's worth.