Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; Truck Turner isn’t just what we call Brian when Tacos-On-Wheels runs out of Baja sauce. Welcome back suckas, to the Internet’s freshest bad movie column; this month featuring a funky twist. This is Blaxploitation History Month: Sequel Edition. Every week in February, we’ll be rolling out another super bad blaxploitation sequel that’s so whack we can’t help but dig it. We’ll lay down some cold-blooded mockery on said film, going upside its head with its own numerous faults, but then will jump back, kiss ourselves, and get hip to all the reasons we think these movies are dy-no-mite. To top it off, we’ll serve you with a badass, and bad for you, snack food item themed to the movie.

Today’s jive turkey: The Human Tornado.

What Makes It Bad?

The Human Tornado is the sequel to Dolemite. How that sentence isn’t scribbled on some Mayan temple wall next to references of fallen empires and circling comets is beyond me. But as it is 2012, it seemed all-the-more appropriate to crack the seal on this doomsday capsule. Dolemite, as you recall (because your therapy clearly isn’t working), is the story (read: slapped-together case of visual Tourettes) of a lovable pimp sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Upon release, he takes his revenge through a series of half-finished scenes, costume changes, and lyrical freestyle sessions in which he proceeds to tie us all up and mercilessly rap us…rap us right in the ears. But clearly, this is a man whose ineffable charm and epic heroic qualities could not be contained in just one movie. Enter The Human Tornado…exit your will to live.

The movie kicks off with one of the most spastic, nonsensical title sequences history of spastic, nonsensical title sequences; a history encompassing nearly 300 years if I’m not lying. Every person credited is bestowed their own individual font style and color; choking up the screen with silly and giving the distinct impression that The Human Tornado is set on the rough Streets of Sesame. The film sees the flabtastic hero Dolemite working as a nightclub comedian by evening and an expensive manwhore by day. True to the spirit of what really sets the Dolemite franchise apart from, you know, real movies, the “writer” of The Human Tornado both celebrates the familiar ways in which Rudy Ray Moore was ill-equipped for stardom and creates entirely new mediums to further explore his untalentedness. Turns out he’s just as inept at stand-up comedy as he is at being naked. So he’s hired by the desperate(ly unattractive) wife of the local sheriff for clumsy, well-feed sexulations. The sheriff, whose racial sensitivity makes Buford T. Justice look Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, is alerted that a party of non-whites is occurring and rallies a posse of plain-clothes clansmen to break it up. He finds his hatchet-faced beloved in bed with a far-more-nude-than-any-of-us-needed-to-see Dolemite and shoots her in the upper face. Dolemite is of course framed for the shooting, and blamed (arguably rightfully) for the guy he totally does shoot, and must go on the run; hijacking a flamboyantly gay man’s car and heading to California to meet up with his old ally Queen Bee. You know, hero stuff.

This represents the closest The Human Tornado ever comes to having a plot. Let me be clear, I’ve seen plenty of non-movies in my time, films that abandon the tedious, mainstream constraint of a narrative throughline in favor of a pastiche of formless visual ejaculations. The first film is a great example of this, in particular the moment wherein the film grinds to halt in order to give Rudy Ray Moore a pulpit from which to deliver his hip-hop sermon from the Book of Jo-Mama. What I’ve never seen is several non-films crammed within one singular non-film. The Human Tornado plays out less like a movie and more like a variety show, featuring extended sequences of Broadway dancers, lounge singers, comedians, and Central American nunchuckers; no part of that sentence is a joke. It was as if the director thought, “if we load up the movie with people who are good at things that have nothing to do with the film, subconsciously the audience will be fooled into thinking we’re good at making movies!” There is also a subplot about an old witch woman who operates a torture chamber in which two unfortunate ladies find themselves trapped. Apparently the filmmakers were very concerned that the one demographic this franchise had not yet catered to was burgeoning serial killers.  Poking its head through the thicket of nonsense is some shoehorned story about Dolemite taking down the mob, but only because the writer was required by blaxploitation law to include it.

The showcasing of people who are all very skilled at things that don’t belong in this movie is aligned with scenes of things that make no sense regardless of context; all them proving that The Human Tornado is sexually charged…or rather should be charged under a number of sex crimes statutes. The police chief in L.A., where Dolemite is hiding out, calls in his “best man” to track him down. When he calls this “best man,” the detective in question is engaged in what appears to be the rape of a female officer. He pauses to take the call before returning to his twisted application of law enforcedsex. And then of course, there’s the scene in which we see Dolemite seduce a woman, watch as she gets undressed, and then get down to some real dirty exercise. No that’s not a euphemism, they actually get very nude and take in a few reps with the Nordic track apparatus hanging above the bed. In addition to illustrating the writer’s unresolved body issues, scientists now credit this scene with the discovery of the cure for sex addiction.

But the weirdest thing in the movie, and high in the running for the single weirdest eyeball intrusion to which I’ve ever subjected myself, is the point at which The Human Tornado splits off into this tangential dream sequence/sex-terrogation scene. It’s downright arthouse, and by that I mean it’s initiated by hideous ART and looks like it takes place in a carnival funHOUSE. Dolemite arrives at the home of the mob boss’ wife with the intention of humping some information out of her as to the location of the missing girls (the ones being imprisoned in the torture chamber of JiggaSaw. He masquerades as an artist and shows her a velvet painting of an interracial couple embracing. As he anticipates, this of course sends her into an uncontrollable sexual frenzy that causes her to not only bang Dolemite, but all the while fantasize about a circus stage in which she lies on three giant wooden blocks that spell out the word bed as a bevvy of black Adonises file out of a trunk marked “toy box.” I really do wish I was making this up because it means I wouldn’t have had to actually witness it on screen. I’m not going to touch the sociopolitical implications of a white woman keeping several black men in a box, but these men then take turns hurling themselves wang-first down a slide and onto the eager woman’s naked body. It’s either the most avant-garde or absolute worst porn you’ve ever seen depending on how drunk/horny/self-loathing you feel.

Why I Love It!

The Human Tornado‘s function as a film is clear to me now, to make Dolemite look like Citizen Goddamn Kane. The filmmakers must have taken stock of the bad sound and even worse martial arts of Dolemite, because they strive to fashion ways to correct both issues…failing spectacularly at doing so. To correct the nearly inaudible line delivery of Dolemite, they decided to ADR nearly every single line of dialogue in The Human Tornado and lay it over footage shot like a home movie. What this leads to is a film that seems like a documentary about mentally disturbed people. We get scenes like the one wherein Dolemite comes out of a shoe store, clearly not moving his lips, and the ADR has him saying, “great new shoes for my feet…now I can get me something sweet to eat.” It happens all through the movie and reminds me of those segments on Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood where he would tour a cheese factory or get a root canal and would then narrate his own adventure after-the-fact. I know it’s been said by every respected film historian you’ve ever read, but I’ll go ahead and reiterate that The Human Tornado is even more hysterical to watch if you image that he’s one of Mr. Rodgers’ neighbors. “I’m comin’ for ya, Mr. MuthaFUCKin’ McFeeley.”

As to the martial arts in The Human Tornado, it isn’t so much that the fight sequences are “better”as much as they are “considerably sped up so you don’t notice how bad they are.” Rudy Ray Moore didn’t get any more skillful at throwing a punch and making it look remotely believable so they just had him do it slower and then went back and hit the fast-forward button in the editing booth. This not-so-brilliant cheat ends up defining the whole damn movie; the “speed” with which Dolemite “strikes” is what “earns” him the nickname the “human” tornado. The result is that we, the audience, are left to conclude that that he learned his ancient fighting style from revered kung-fu master Benny Hill. Despite Human Tornado‘s best efforts to make its fight scenes unwatchable, they are actually a lot of fun; aided in no small way by Rudy Ray Moore’s combat grunts…or rather his impressions of Bruce Lee possessed by the demon Pazuzu. I also find it hilarious that, realizing that they still had that mixing board anyway, the editors actually pause the film, rewind it, and replay certain scenes. My favorite of these being the one wherein they replay a stunt in which Rudy Ray Moore jumps head-first down a hill. During the replay, he espouses in voice-over, “y’all don’t believe I jumped, so watch this good shit!” Unfortunately we see the shot again from the same obscuring distance, providing no further evidence that the person jumping is actually Rudy Ray Moore.

Once again, a blaxploitation movie as bad as The Human Tornado finds one level on which to excel: the theme song. It’s basically just a constant restating of the film’s title over and over, with a few absrud lyrics mumbled in between, but if you’re going to be the personification of a natural disaster, there are only like four of five better choices than the tornado. I’m sorry, but if you listen to the opening song here and don’t aspire to be a human tornado yourself, or at the very least a “bad motor scooter,” I’m not sure we can be friends anymore. Also, listen very closely for the line in the song that sounds an awful lot like Rudy Ray declaring himself to be a “notarizer.” He actually says that he’s been “known to rise up,” but it took me several viewings to realize he wasn’t actually letting me know he was available to sign off on these alterations to my will. I’m leaving everything to the Dolemite Foundation for Talent-Challenged Actors.

Junkfood Pairing: Texas Tornado Cake

As I currently live in Texas, and this movie is called The Human Tornado, my first choice for the junkfood pairing was of course creme brulee, but then I remembered that I’m still not quite sure what creme brulee is so instead I fell back on the slightly less on-the-nose Texas Tornado Cake. Sorry, I know it makes no sense. As Rudy Ray would say, “spin this cake around inside your mouth, before Dolemite makes you laugh so hard you spit it out…th.”

Rot your teeth with more Junkfood Cinema

Leo (Channing Tatum) and Paige (Rachel McAdams), in many ways, have the ideal life. They are hopelessly in love, happily married, and living in an urban, pseudo-bohemian hipster paradise. She’s an artist, and he runs his own recording studio. One romantically snowy night, the two share a moment in a parked car…an ill-advised decision. A truck plows into them and sends Paige into a coma. When she awakes, she finds her anxiety-riddled husband sitting at her bedside. The trouble is that she can’t remember that they are married or even who he is at all. She is suffering from a severe form of retrograde amnesia in which she can only remember events up the point shortly before she moved to the big city and met Leo. Suddenly her parents, with whom she hadn’t spoken during the course of her relationship with Leo, show up, insisting to take her back home. Leo hopes against hope that his wife will regain her memory of him, their love, and their life together before it all disappears for good.

No critic should ever close his mind to any film simply on the principle that it resides outside of their particular tastes. However, in the interest of full disclosure, romance films (of both the r0m-com and rom-dram varieties) are far from my preferred genre. What tends to balance the scales of objectivity is that I recognize my bias and endeavor to therefore cut these films an added measure of slack as a result.  All I really ask is that the film to at least earnestly attempt to connect with me emotionally without pandering to my tear ducts. For most of its run, Michael Sucsy‘s The Vow did exactly what I asked of it. It was surprisingly heartfelt and emotionally weighty…before it slowly remembered it was a Hollywood rom-dram and reverted to the woeful tropes there contained.

Essentially what The Vow does is to take Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and run it through the studio machine in order to unburden it of much of its complexity. However, it does find a kernel of undeniable sincerity in its stripped down, slightly rearranged form. Instead of a film about two people at the end of a cancerous relationship that started off well willingly removing the memory of said relationship from their consciousness (a la Eternal Sunshine), we get the  arguably more tragic depiction of a blossoming, almost unnaturally strong relationship besieged by cruel fate. It doesn’t force you to digest the more complex questions about the nature of love and predestination, but it does present one very tragic story, based on actual events, that plays like a love-sick version of the tale of Job.

Tatum plays a man experiencing his own personal hell. He’s had the great fortune of finding a true love that completely defines and fulfills him only to have it ripped away from him. Every day he has to try to convince his own wife that she, at one time, loved him all the while existing with a woman who now sees him as a stranger and avoids his touch at every turn. He tries every trigger he can think of, recreating every previously endearing facet of their relationship, in the hopes that the haze will lift and she will be the woman he married again. He has to watch helplessly as she is emotionally manipulated by her parents who are using her amnesia as an opportunity to gloss over the incident that made her come to the city in the first place. And through all of it, he must reconcile his desperation and pain with the fact that this is not her fault and that he must be supportive.

My heart ached for this guy, and much of the credit for that emotional resonance is due to Tatum himself. I can’t say this guy has ever ranked among my favorite actors, or even among actors I particularly enjoy, but I was thoroughly impressed with him in The Vow. He occupies the role with such quiet agony and genuine passion. He manages to sell us on his everyday Joe persona, despite the numerous superfluous shots of his Ken doll abdomen, and yet he displays a disciplined actor’s understanding of goals and expectations, navigating the various levels of the role with great skill. He sits in every emotionally vital moment and fights for every inch of ground he gains with his amnesic beloved. It may just because I am also happily married, and the thought of my wife forgetting me entirely is too much for me to bear, but it crushed me to watch him clutch desperately to his feelings for her even as they ravaged him inside.

Where the movie started to lose me however, and where I feel much of its potential is squandered, is in McAdams’ character. I completely understand that someone suffering from a memory loss such as hers would be living in their own nightmarish situation, constantly confused and even frightened of the foreign people, places, and routines that used to define who they were. I get that this story is as emotionally decimating for her as it is for him. What I don’t understand is why she actively resists Tatum as if he were some sort of troll. They work into the script that she used to be an entirely different person before she met him, and before a certain event changed her perception of her family and her own identity. But until we find out what that event is, we are left with the staggering, black-and-white personality about-face which she seems all too happy to embrace. It makes us wonder how one event could have made her voluntarily leave this life in the first place and whether the car accident at the beginning of the film was the first she had survived. Her grasp of her own self-concept seems so tenuous that we wonder how long it would have been before she had simply lost interest in Leo and forgot about him even without the accident. I mean for crying out loud, she is afraid to go into her own art studio, to acknowledge that could have ever wanted to be an artist at any point in her life. She seems so disgusted by everything to which she used to be attracted as a result of only losing four years of her memory that it muddies the character.

I could have, however, forgiven this issue of character definition if that were The Vow‘s only problem. But as the film moves into its final two acts, all the popular conventions start cropping up like weeds in a garden. There is a love triangle involving Paige’s ex-fiance, there is a scene of Leo playing the guitar to show he’s sad and one of him taking in a stray cat to show that he’s lonely, and there is the pointed condemnation of the upper-class (rich guys = jerks). None of these things feel especially well-earned, in particular the “softer side of Leo” moments which only reiterated what Tatum’s performance had already clearly communicated. Not only that, but we’d also gotten a ham-fisted voice-over narration at the beginning, and again at the end, spelling out exactly how we should be feeling about what we were already seeing on screen. It’s something I really hate in movies of all genres; thanks Mr. Screenwriter, but I don’t need emotional subtitling.

***SPOILER ALERT***

But the worst contrivance is the plot device about the menus on which the couple wrote their titular vows; the reading of which finally makes Paige realize she really did love her husband once. Never mind the mountains of evidence in support of that hypothesis littering the film. The vows are written on the menu for a place called, and I shit you not, Cafe Mnemonic. Yup, as in Cafe Thing That Helps You Remember Stuff. Forget the fact that it’s a terrible, terrible name for an actual cafe, unless the owner were a die-hard Keanu Reeves fan, it’s a plot device so convenient it should be open 24/7 and offer unleaded as well as diesel.

***END SPOILER***

The Upside: All in all, The Vow is a decent rom-dram that could have been exceptional if not for its reliance on convention and weak story elements. Tatum gives one of the best performances of his career, which is not a sentence I expected to write.

The Downside: It shoots itself in the foot with overbearing super-text and uncomfortably familiar tropes.

On the Side: The woman on which this story is based never regained her memory, but remained with her husband.

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; the jiveness of our turkey is a byproduct of its being deep-vat chocolate-fried. Welcome friends, to the mean streets of Schlocksburgh. Every week, we pick on some fast-talking, upstart bad movie out to make a name for himself, roughing him up with sucka punches of merciless mockery. But then, just when we think we’ve won, that movie kicks in the doors of our gentlemen’s club, The Cynical Shit Heel, and proceeds to blow us away with two well-aimed barrels of undeniable amiability. Then, in acknowledgment that this brash movie from the block now unquestionably owns our territory (and our hearts), we humbly offer a tribute in the form of a funky, themed snack food item.

It’s finally February again…is a sentence few people are wont to utter. But here at Junkfood Cinema, February means one thing and one thing only: Blaxploitation History Month. That’s right, it’s a grand tradition that, to this day, has somehow failed to get us banned from the Internet forever. Some might charge that our adoration for this controversial subgenre reeks of poor taste. I for one resent the implication that we here at JFC have any taste whatsoever. I won’t go into the sociopolitical critiques of blaxploitation because, well frankly it’s boring. But I can tell you that I legitimately love these films and I am so grateful for the actors and characters to which they’ve introduced me. Given that this is our third annual celebration of blaxploitation, I’d say we’ve effectively established this feature as its own franchise. Therefore, for the rest of the month, we will be paying homage to blaxploitation sequels; to the cult titles who experienced a longevity as inexplicable as…the fact that this is our 3rd Annual Blaxploitation History Month.

This week’s fine foxy mess: Scream Blacula Scream.

What Makes It Bad?

As you may recall, Blacula was the blaxploitation version of the popular horror icon Scott Bakcula. Wait a minute, I think I may have that wrong. Quick, everyone leap back to just before I said that and I’ll try again. Quantum Leap jokes are to topical comedy as tapioca pudding is to toothpaste. Blacula is of course the creative recasting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Because let’s face it, Stoker was a stuffy old honky. In the first film, an African prince was cursed by the original, cracker Drac with his own thirst for human blood. Unfortunately, where Dracula got to live in a castle and have many sexy gothic encounters (sort of a male Elvira, or Malevira, but without the comedy or boobs), Blacula was confined to his coffin until a pair of flamboyantly gay antique dealers released him; slightly less grandiose a story. Blah blah blah, blood rage through the streets of L.A., blah blah melted by sunlight.

But then, thanks to a combination of mystic rituals and box office witchcraft, the super smooth, bad muthasucka returns. The story goes that there’s a feud within an L.A. voodoo sect, because we all know you can’t throw a headless chicken in L.A. without hitting a feuding voodoo sect. So, the  queen of this sect dies and plumb forgets to name a successor. Her son therefore declares himself the rightful heir to her kingdom, but the voodoo counsel thinks him too ambitious and seeks to install more reasonable leadership. It’s like Game of Thrones except it’s blaxploitation and nothing like Game of Thrones. So the son, his juju underoos all in a bunch, does what any power-hungry vengeance-seeking man would do…purchase a bag of bones from a shack-dwelling magical hobo. In his palatial mansion, he performs one of the sillier black magic (which in this movie is just called magic) rituals I’ve ever seen. The ritual involves fire, chanting, and a common dove poorly painted blue to make it look tropical; the actual effect is that the dove looks like a rabid college football fan on his way to a CooCLA game. Overall, it’s so silly as to barely qualify as voodoo, it’s more like voo-don’t.

But wouldn’t you know it, the bones belonged to Blacula and he returns to life much to everyone’s surprise, including the man preforming the ritual. So now that he’s back, what is Blacula’s ultimate plan for world domination? How will he take his revenge on the cold new world that orchestrated his demise? Brace yourself for this because he’s gonna…relax in this mansion for the foreseeable future. All he does is hang around that house and build an army of vampire followers; an army he intends to use for the big nothing he has planned. I’m not saying Scream Blacula Scream is too self-contained, what I am saying is that it’s like watching The Real World Snoozeville. He ventures outdoors a couple of times, to be accosted by pimps and fundamentally fail to grasp the concept of prostitution, but other than that he’s a bit of a homebody. It’s truly unfortunate that he chose for his headquarters the one house in L.A. that happens to to have ready supply of perfectly-cut wooden stakes piled up outside just waiting to be discovered by the invading police force. It’s oddly reminiscent of the time Wolfman bought that charming English cottage…next to a silver mine. Nards! Somewhere around the hour mark, he finally reveals that his grand design is to use a voodoo priestess to remove all traces of vampirism from his body so he can return to his African nation where his people will then embrace him. I guess I’m just not seeing how his people are more likely to accept a century-old undead Prince than they would be to accept a century-old undead prince who could transform into a bat using terrible special effects.

Luckily, while cooking up this scheme, Blacula encounters plenty of genre conventions. At one point, a completely superfluous dance party, replete with awfully so-so soul music and supposedly hot booty, takes place in his honor. There is also a racist policeman that shows up at one point, though I have to admire the bold decision to cast a black actor as the obligatory white racist police officer. There are of course the jive-talking pimps to which I previously alluded, whose fashion is inspired by the excrement of Rerun from What’s Happening. And the mutton chops are back! Oh my Sam Jackson, if these aren’t the most epic mutton chops in cinema. The demarcation between Blacula’s calm public guise and his meaner blood-sucking side is that his mutton chops suddenly extend from his cheeks to his eye sockets; reclassifying them as murder chops. And one of my favorite era-inspired absurdities is that his first follower, the man who brought him back to life in the first place, more upset that he can no longer see his reflection in the mirror than he is about being a vampire. “A man’s GOT to see himself!” Yeah, clearly you’re the biggest problem, Carly Simon.

But where Scream Blacula Scream really shits the coffin is in its bookends. The first film had a wild, animated opening title sequence that, while costing them all of twelve dollars, discoed us into the right mindset for the film. The sequel however opts for a much blander approach. They zoom in to Blacula’s face and do that technicolor photo-sketch imagry that epitomized 70s television. Between that and the recorded-at-the-last-minute opening song, I either expected to hear a voice-over stating “This week, on Blacula…” or witness him introduced as a member of The Partridge Family. But at least the ending is good, right? Ha, I laugh at you. The ending involves a few murky alterations to both voodoo and vampire mythos and then it ends…just ends. Blacula does his titular scream as he looks to the ceiling, and the film, in keeping with its odd TV theme, actually concludes with a goddamn freeze frame. Looks like the A-Team wins again…if the “A” stands for “abrupt” and “astoundingly unsatisfying.”

Why I Love It!

In Scream Blacula Scream (at one point titled Blacula II: The Blackening…in my mind), the world’s foremost blood brutha is once again played by William Marshall. Marshall, who would go on to portray the King of Cartoons on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, is even more badass in the sequel if that’s conceivable. His return is actually handled with creepy seriousness that strives to build upon the character’s mythology. We first see his profile in shadow, and we are immediately aware of his legacy; sort of the black vampire version of Alfred Hitchcock. His dedication to carrying himself with old-world esteem and distinguished charm not only makes the character impossibly likable, but also allows him to serve as a satirical juxtaposition to the 70s caricatures that canonized the genre. When the uppity pimp asks for all his bread or else he’ll kick his ass, Blacula calmly explains that he carries no bread with him and that the pimp should carefully consider the consequences of said kick to the posterior. Take that, rudeness!

In the sequel, Blacula tangles with the likes of the one and only Pam Grier. Grier plays the voodoo priestess tasked with crafting a ceremony to exorcise the vampirism from his body. She is sexy as ever, but she’s much softer and more vulnerable in this film than she is in Coffy or Foxy Brown. I don’t mean soft as in weak, I mean she is chiefly responsible for taking Blacula down, but she’s lovely and sweet and you fall in love with her for entirely different reasons. Plus, if you ever make the mistake of calling Pam Grier weak, she shows up in your home like Bloody Mary and puts two in your chest, and I am not about to invite that wrath upon me; fool me twice, shame on me. She’s really one of the selling points of the film. So, two of my favorite blaxploitation icons in one film? Do I really need to explain why this makes me love Scream Blacula Scream?

Where the original was a more traditional blaxploitation gimmick in which Dracula is merely thrown into an urban setting mostly for laughs, Scream Blacula Scream feels like a blaxploitation Hammer film. Blacula sets up his grand, pastoral domicile, even in the middle of the big city and seems to wait for his evil deeds to attract the attention of the villagers (i.e., the cops), which it eventually does. The police, stakes in hand, storm the castle mansion and Justin (the boyfriend of Pam Grier’s character) becomes the de facto Van Helsing. He busts in there like afroed Peter Cushing and dispatches the legion of the undead with a goddamn crossbow. Hammer time! And don’t forget about the army of busty female vampires…I know I won’t.

Junkfood Pairing: Cookies and Scream

This discontinued Halloween candy may be hard to get your hands on, but amounts to the best possible accompaniment for Scream Blacula Scream. Apart from the sharing of a pivotal word with the film’s title, Cookies and Scream combines candy and cookies for a eerily delicious symphony of sugary goodness. The combination of blaxploitation and horror, of William Marshall and Pam Grier, creates a similarly delicious symphony for our eyeballs.

Go suck the blood out of more Junkfood Cinema

Do you like insane spaghetti Westerns? Of course you do, your eyeballs work. But I can personally guarantee that you have not seen anything until you seen an insane spaghetti Western…in 3D! During last year’s Fantastic Fest, our ocular cavities were lovingly assaulted by the tidal wave of extra-dimensional madness of 1981′s Comin’ at Ya!

The film, which was made at the dawn of, and credited with contributing to, the resurgence of studio-released 3D films, is a nasty, gritty revenge story that works in a number of hilarious gimmicks designed to force-feed imagines from the screen into your consciousness. The film made such an impression that it was picked up for distribution by the young, but formidable, Drafthouse Films. Yes, as in The Alamo Drafthouse. Drafthouse Films has already helped spread the good news of Christopher Morris’ Four Lions and their recent acquisition Bullhead is nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Now they’ve given this little indie absurdity a fancy digital restoration for its Texas theatrical launch.

Need more convincing to see Comin’ at Ya? What’s wrong with you? In any event, we’ve included the trailer to help prepare your brains for the visual roundhouse kick of pure cinema magic that is Ferdinando Baldi‘s Comin’ at Ya! And we’ve also listed the cities and theaters below that will be playing this amazing gem, one of my favorite entries from Fantastic Fest 2011, starting February 24th.

AUSTIN
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Alamo Drafthouse Village
Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek

BEDFORD
Bedford Movie Tavern

DALLAS/FT. WORTH
Hulen Movie Tavern
Rave Cinemas Hickory Creek
Rave Cinemas Ridgemar

DENTON
Denton Movie Tavern

HOUSTON
Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park
Willowbrook Movie Tavern
Rave Cinemas Yorktown 15

HURST
Rave Cinemas Northeast Mall 18

SAN ANTONIO
Alamo Drafthouse Park North

Editor’s note: This review was originally published as part of our SXSW 2011 coverage on March 17, 2011. We’re bumping this baby back up to remind all of you dear readers that the film is finally hitting limited theaters this Friday, February 3.

Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) do not have what you might call glamorous jobs. They manage the front desk at the oldest hotel in town that just happens to be closing its doors forever. These unflappable, amateur paranormal investigators decide that their last hurrah will involve drinking beer and capturing definitive proof that this tiny little inn is indeed haunted. But when a washed up actress-turned psychic checks into the hotel, she becomes convinced that the novel little pastime these two share may end up being their undoing. I don’t know, I’ve had worse jobs.

I really enjoyed The Innkeepers. It’s a very basic horror film that actually benefits as much from its comedic elements as it does its frights. The crux of the film is the relationship between Sara Paxton and Pat Healy who play the desk clerks at the failed Yankee Peddler Inn. I had a blast with these two wannabe ghost hunters. Their dry back-and-forth fosters some fantastic laughs. The dialogue batted between them is very genuine which is both a compliment and a criticism; it’s genuine to a fault. Occasionally, though not often, the lines ring true but un-cinematic in a way that makes them flat and dull. It’s a strange thing for which to fault a writer but it gave the film an almost made-for-TV quality at times that undermines both the effective comedic moments and the horrific moments.

What I appreciated wholeheartedly about the horror elements of the film is the antithetical position taken toward jump scares. There are some surprising moments that catch you off guard, but no frame is constructed in such a way as to allow specters to leap between you and the action on screen in a cheap effort to confuse or startle with legitimate fright. Director Ti West wears his sardonic perspective on jump scares on his sleeve as he incorporates playful jabs at the horrendously trite convention. The final shot of the movie is not only a call back to an earlier gag, but rather a mouthpiece for West’s firm position against jump scares. On the contrary, the scares in The Innkeepers are rooted in visually haunting imagery that is thankfully on screen long enough to be appreciated and not coupled with clangs, bangs, and shrieks. There are images that will unnerve you in both their content and the time they are allowed to occupy your perception. I won’t say more for fear of spoilers.

The one carryover from House of the Devil that manages to find purchase in The Innkeepers is the extensive manner in which Ti West photographs his sets. Much like the house in House of the Devil, the inn in The Innkeepers seems to expand ad infinitum as every hallway, every closed door, and every tunnel in the basement becomes its own apparition. The cinematography, much like in House of the Devil, adopts methods to keep the inn itself visually interesting. One particular shot that worked remarkably well involved a girl running from the start of one hallway to the end of another. With the way in which it’s framed, it looks like she’s running along the edge of an enormous ‘V’ and is wonderfully disorienting.

The one qualm I have with the way The Innkeepers is shot is the lighting. It’s almost as if the lighting designer cranked up the set lights in order to replicate the appearance of fluorescent bulbs. It makes the film look washed out and contributes to that previously mentioned made-for-TV quality. What was so phenomenal about House of the Devil is the way in which the house felt sinister from the moment she walked in, which is what garnered a sense of foreboding that carried the audience through a minimalist plot. Much of that was due to how it was shot, but also how it was lit; shadowy and mysterious. And while I’m aware that a good portion of The Innkeepers takes place during the day whereas House of the Devil was almost entirely shot at night, I just wish the daylight scenes didn’t look so bland.

The Upside: Genuinely funny at times, terribly frightening when it needs to be and bold enough to reject jump scares.

The Downside: Some of the dialogue is naturalistic to the point of being overly ordinary and the lighting design leaves much to be desired.

In 1995, HBO produced a film called The Tuskegee Airmen chronicling the heroic story of the first squadron of African-American fighter pilots during WWII. The HBO version stars Laurence Fishburne, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, John Lithgow, and Cuba Gooding Jr. I don’t mention this film because of its obscurity, or to thereby prove my film knowledge by pointing it out. I offer this film as favorable alternative to wasting two hours of time on the irrecoverable nosedive that is Red Tails.

I’ll say it again, the story of the Tuskegee Airmen is beyond heroic and deserves multiple competent cinematic revisits. These were men who fervently, and with their very lives, defended a country that made policy of oppressing and mistreating them. Not only that, but they also proved to be one of the most effective and successful fighter battalions of the entire war. The larger themes of honor, duty, and sacrifice so inherent and alive in their story are reduced to After School Special platitudes in the George Lucas-produced and Anthony Hemingway-directed Red Tails. Instead of genuine traits, all of the characters occupy loosely-fitting archetypes mined from the most trite of “guys on a mission” tropes. That guy is the hot-headed glory hound, that guy is the goofy one, that guy has a drinking problem, that guy is in love, that guy looks like Denzel Washington. Okay, that last one is actually specific to Red Tails but it no less proves to be that actor’s only marketable skill.

Cuba Gooding Jr. (yes, he’s in this one too), as rusty as one would expect from a barely passable actor relegated to direct-to-video cinema for the last five years, distinguishes himself by…chomping on a pipe throughout the film; distilling his character’s entire personality into an oral fixation. And then of course, there is obligatory evil German, replete with scar, whose dialogue (which mind you is subtitled and could have easily been changed after the first edit) is not only contrived, mustache-twirly villainisms, but also often times counter to reason. “Those pilots are rookies” he quips inaccurately, somehow believing himself able to deduce this by looking at their planes from a distance.

It isn’t bad enough that the lines of dialogue being delivered by nearly every actor in this film is basic Point-A-To-Point-B Screenwriting 101 nonsense, as if all the dialogue for the principal characters was culled from the throwaway, barely audible drivel usually assigned to extras, but the staggering lack of emotional resonance with which each is uttered is jaw-dropping. Some of the worst examples came from the white pilots of the bombers who would see the Tuskegee Airmen and say, as coldly and as flatly as it appears in this text, “I sure hope we get their help again.” For their part, the Airmen drop punchlines as stale and flavorless as military rations with conviction that would deeply trouble a first-year community theater director; at one point cutting to a pilot just so he could mouth-fart “damn.” But perhaps this is just my ignorance at play, I guess I didn’t realize the Tuskegee Airmen were also known as the 332nd Flying Table Reads.

And speaking of reading the script, I feel I must pose the question as to whether anyone actually did so before shooting began. There are so many logical errors at work here you’ll want to claw your eyes out. Firstly, the whole film is supposed to be about how the Tuskegee Airmen had to fight against racist bureaucracy in order to earn the right to fly in important missions as opposed to just scouting territory already long-cleared of enemy presence. And yet, once they do earn that right, there is never a sense of completion to any of their missions. There’s a ham-fisted point made in the opening about how most fighter pilots abandon their convoys, which they are tasked with protecting, to chase the glory of shooting down German fighters. So to establish themselves in their first convoy mission, the airmen of Red Tails…abandon their bombers to chase the glory of shooting down enemy bombers.

This becomes the standard for every subsequent mission, and all the while they run into previously bigoted white pilots who are now treating them like equals and thanking them for getting their bombers home safely. EVEN THOUGH THEY NEVER DID THIS ONCE! This flimsy logic is apparently not confined to the Allies. At one point, during a vital bombing campaign over Berlin, the German squad commander, Colonel Scars Von BaddenDuden, calls off his fighters stating of the bombers, “we’ll get them on the way back.” THE WAY BACK? As in, AFTER THEY’VE BOMBED BERLIN?! What sort of strategy is that? “We’ll lose the war through laziness, but they’ll sure pay for it later.”

I won’t waste time pointing out every logical fallacy, as this review would be a near line-for-line deconstruction, but one other moment really bothered me. When the general tells them to paint the tails of their new planes red, so they stand out, one of the airmen proudly exclaims, “like the Red Barron!” Yes, like the Red Barron, the GERMAN fighter pilot! No one bothers to correct him nor does it ever even register to anyone as an odd comment. Face. Palm.

The other major problem with this film, and one only augmented by the numerous problems heretofore mentioned, is its clunky pacing. Red Tails is a film that apparently took twenty-three years to produce, and seemingly just slightly longer to sit through. Every glimmer of momentum that springs through the mire is thoroughly and mercilessly stomped out by maddeningly superfluous secondary storylines. I am willing to forgive unnecessary romantic subplots in any script as there is always a faction of your audience that craves it. However, when that romance is between two people who do not speak the same language and spend nearly all of their time on screen sighing in frustration that they can’t speak to one another and looking at the floor, it seems doubly primed for the cutting room floor. Oh, and take a wild guess what happens to lover boy when he puts a picture of his lost-in-translation girlfriend in his cockpit. Incoming cliches at twelve o’clock high! And then there’s the airmen who gets shot down, captured, and helps a group of undeveloped, barely introduced, POW characters escape. This again would have been forgivable if the end of this story wasn’t a “next week on Red Tails” fade out and a neck-breaking cut to the next seen. We’re, of course, later regaled with the story of what happened to him through exposition, but only so it can set up a hackneyed, wholly unearned moment of forced heroism at the end.

So all in all, no ,I didn’t care much for Red Tails. The story of the Tuskegee Airmen deserves more than the incendiary lip service paid here. Ultimately, even the important through-line subplot of America working through its racist past was touched upon just enough to free Anthony Hemingway, or much more likely Lucas, of accusations of completely ignoring it while simultaneously glossing over it with the broadest possible strokes to ensure that no one is offended. Yes, because that is how you tell a story of the triumph of great men over adversity…water down the adversity. Also, if ever a George Lucas project needed John Williams, it was Red Tails. If the score had featured Williams’ typically rousing themes, perhaps the aerial battles would not have induced so many yawns. Hell, I would have even taken the android ejaculate that is the dubstep in the trailer over the somatic tones of the ABC movie-of-the-week soundtrack.

The Upside: There are WWII planes involved.

The Dowside: Pretty much everything else.

On the Side: Lucas directed all the reshoots of Red Tails when Hemingway was busy with the HBO series Treme. I’m not saying this explains all of Red Tails’ problems, but it explains a lot of Red Tails’ problems.

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; if it wasn’t for bad luck, we’d have won that chicken-fried cake eating contest. You have walked under the ladder of decent web content, smashing a few mirrors on your way, and have crossed paths with the black cat of bad movie columns. Every week we step on the cracks of a schlocky film, breaking its back and spilling salt into its wounds. But then, as we’re spinning around three times like boozed-up dreidels, we offer the film the better part of a wishbone with our genuine love and affection. To put a fourth leaf on this clover, we will suggest a themed snack food item that is sure to hex your digestive track as badly as the movie hexes your IQ.

This week’s unlucky charm: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.

What Makes It Bad?

Jason Takes Manhattan is the heartwarming story of a sad, but sweet little lake mutant who, despite the fact that his face looks like soggy, unstirred oatmeal, travels to New York City to pursue his dream of becoming a singing, dancing Broadway star. At least, that’s what it should have been about. Instead it’s just the seventh time nobody learned a damn thing from the slaughtering of an entire summer camp in New Jersey. This eighth installment in the Tolkien-esque saga of Jason Voorhees proves that the deciduous forests surrounding Crystal Lake can no longer contain the masked maniac. He therefore boards a floating high school, kills nearly everyone on board, and ends up in New York City where, like Woody Allen and The Muppets before him, he stakes a rather presumptuous claim to the island of Manhattan. However, his escapades in this famed burrow would leave a trail of blood-splash and destruction the likes of which would not be seen again until Sex and the City 2. Funny thing about Jason’s taking of Manhattan, which mind you is only the title of the goddamn film: he doesn’t get there until the movie is more than halfway over. Perhaps the film should have been called Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes His Sweet Ass Time Getting To Manhattan.

So prior to his arrival in the Big Apple, what’s Jason up to? What is his travel itinerary? Well, first he has to be jump-started back to life like a Dodge Dart via an underwater powerline ripped apart by two horny teens who – despite knowing they are sailing along the shores of the site of a mass murder where COUNTLESS horny teens have been soundly dispatched – see no problem stopping for some ill-advised nook. So then he’s free and, according to one character, swims up river to the ocean. So yes, he begins his swim from Crystal LAKE…up RIVER (?)…to the…ocean. He then boards an ugly, rusted out Panamanian industrial freighter days away from being decommissioned. Did I say an ugly, rusted out Panamanian industrial freighter days away from being decommissioned? I meant a luxurious cruise ship apparently. This “cruise ship” is packed from stem to stern with “American” “high school” “teens” on their senior class trip. Evidently in order to afford the trip, Lakeview High (which don’t forget is on the river that leads to the ocean) had to share their cruise ship with a consignment of machine parts and a jovial cache of coke dealers eluding prosecution. This retro-fitted frigate could not be more alarmingly unfit for teen partying; the galley/dance floor featuring ceilings no more than 5ft in height and representing the first time a dancer was in real danger of headbutting a disco ball since our last Bring Your Favorite Gheorghe Muresan To The Party party.

So who does our weary traveler encounter on this ship? Only probably the worst collection of irritating youths who couldn’t even spell interesting if you spelled it for them. Our lead female is purportedly a writer, and yet through the entire movie the biggest word she uses is “experience.” Oh, yes, I kept track. In fact, it’s unfair to the denotation of the word to say that she ever has a conversation with any other character in the film, as that would suggest the involvement of two functioning brain stems. Her crippling inability to muster any audible responses makes nearly every  inviting statement a waste of breath and every direct question a rhetorical. Pretty much the exact opposite quality of what you should be looking for  in a movie heroine. She has this exceedingly silly extrasensory connection with Jason Voorhees, or at least little boy Jason Voorhees, which she apparently earned when she almost drowned in Crystal Lake. Two things. One, I don’t believe that anyone can have extrasensory anything until they demonstrates basic operational understanding of their regular human senses. And two, the reason she almost drowned was that the ghost of Jason pulled her under so obviously she already had this connection prior to earning it by almost drow…*chews off own foot to escape plot trap.*

We also have a “rocker” girl who “rocks” by playing “rock music” on a stereo and stabbing her chubby fingers at the strings on her guitar without making any sound while she whips her awful Joan Jett wig around like her head’s sole desire was to gain independence from her spine. Congratulations, you have effectively failed at grasping the core concept of both actual guitar-playing AND air-guitar-playing. Adding to the confederacy of doorknobs is the bitchy blond who tries to blackmail the teacher by revealing that her “biology project” is nothing more than her drawing body parts on her half-naked frame while another student videotapes it. “I want to make sure I’ve labeled all my organs correctly,” are the words that coyly fart from her stupid mouth. Well, sweetie, considering you only labeled the heart and the stomach I’d say you’re either bollocks with biology or you are a goddamn medical marvel. Oh, and don’t forget the boxer guy who dashes at blistering speed between being a stereotypical 80s black guy and being the worst 80s black guy since Philip Michael Thomas. I’ve never heard anyone flounder so spectacularly at uttering the word “motherfucker.”

So after Jason works his way through this boat of high school travesties – casting the deciding vote on who’ll be voted Most Likely To Be Electrocuted and Best Chest…For Housing A Smoldering Sauna Rock – he follows a dinghy-full of the last remaining survivors (a dinghy of dinghies if you will, or even if you won’t) to the shores of one the greatest cities in the world. And what does he find? An unwashed jungle of filthy filth-covered filth. You could watch a Troma Team film directed by Abel Ferrara and DPed by a crack-addicted prostitute who, ironically, specializes in DP, and you still wouldn’t end up with a sleazier portrait of Manhattan than that in the last act of Friday the 13th Part VIII. I’m not even sure Jason would want to take this city, he’d end up spending a fortune on machete-sized prophylactics. This is a place where the public works department just accepts it as a given that the entire sewer system is flooded with toxic waste every night at midnight and mohawked punks listen to awful, just awful, 80s soft rock; equally disgusting. Oh, and at one point our heroine is kidnapped by a couple of hoods who inject her with heroin from an old needle. At that point even if she were to survive Jason’s rampage, I’m pretty sure the AIDS will finish what he started.

In the end, after this long, arduous journey to see The Big Apple before he dies (for the umpteenth time) what is Jason’s reward? To be transformed into a quivering fat kid by a tidal wave of toxic sludge and left for dead by two asshole teens. I’m sorry, I don’t care what his grown-up version did to you, how bastardly do you have to be to leave a kid dying in a New York City sewer? So yeah, after he has suffered the killing blows of makeshift weaponry from desperate camp counselors and sinning teens across the tri-state area, Jason is foiled by a half-assed plot twist. You’d think a story device this bereft of thinkfullness would require a secondary story device (an amulet, ancient incantation, amnesia bullet, real bullet to mercifully end the life of anyone who paid to see this in theaters) to lend at least some measure of forced validity to it, right? Nope, we’re just supposed to take it on faith that despite the fact that there have been no shortage of aquatic resurrections and even littoral kills throughout this franchise, it turns out Jason’s fear of drowning will transform him into a piss-ant little chub bucket. Thanks, writers of Jason Takes Manhattan. Hey, I’m actually writing a script called Brian Takes A Chunk of Skull with a Sledgehammer. Spoiler: it’s filming at your house.

Why I Love It!

As a die-hard Voorheesian, who owes a great deal of his horrorphile status to this schlock-and-chop franchise, I can’t help but adore this most absurd entry. It was the first time Jason was taken out of the woods and allowed to wreak his special breed of havoc upon even those who were wise enough to stay the hell away from Camp Crystal Lake. If nothing else, it opened the door for his eventual trip to space in Jason X so I don’t think it’s overstatement to note that all human life on this planet owes a life-debt to these filmmakers. Seeing Jason tromping through Times Square, and actually having to divert his shark-like eyes from his prey to take in the spectacle, is an image that, for me, canonizes the allure of B-movies. Is it a cheesy and desperate gimmick? Of course, fool. But that doesn’t make it any less of a selling point for those of us who delight at seeing a concept, and a tired trope or franchise, live beyond its means.

Also people die…like a lot of people. By the time you get past the first Friday the 13th…’s opening credits, you have to admit that you are watching these movies almost exclusively for the kills. In Friday the 13th Part VIII, they know you’ve had seven courses of murder and seem intent on busting your gut with an all-you-can-eat sundae cart of carnage for dessert. It’s not simply the quantity of homicide here, but the quality as well. Kane Hodder’s Jason is angry, and these people are sinners in the hands of this vengeful dark deity. He bashes them with guitars, stabs them through the chest with dirty syringes, drowns them in sewage, and literally punches a man’s head clean off. I am convinced that once he had finished with his initial quarry, Jason would have proceeded to slaughter every citizen of NYC; stacking bodies into towers that rival the city’s iconic skyscrapers.

Yet despite the film’s mean streak (read: apparent hatred for all mankind), there is a pronounced measure of humor running through Jason Takes Manhattan. The first thing Jason sees when he reaches the New York docks is a giant billboard for hockey (no specific team mind you, just hockey in general) in which a player is wearing the exact same mask as the one he wears. Sports jokes! There is also the moment wherein Jason, when accosted by a group of dishwater dull punks, opts to simply lift his mask and frighten them away over butchering them; probably seeing it as pointless as they would be dead in a few years anyway of drugs, skateboarding accidents, or incidents involving Roman candles and their private parts. And then of course there is the ten minute pummeling Jason takes from the ethnically-confused pugilist that ends with Jason decapitating him with one punch; his head then falling from the roof and landing perfectly in an open dumpster. Touchdown, Jason! Three points! Icing! Collective Bargaining! (I don’t know sports). But I think the thing that had me most in stitches, the thing too ridiculous not to be intonational, was this exchange between said doomed boxer and his nerdy compatriot after they’d gathered weapons to fight Jason:

Nerd: What weapon are you taking, Julius?

Julius: Nothing…(LONG PAUSE)…but this gun.

Junkfood Pairing: New York Style Pizza

Embark on your own flavor trip to Manhattan by devouring a hockey-mask-sized piece of New York style pie. This delicacy is often served by the slice…just as Jason serves his annoyance that people dare to breathe oxygen without his express written consent. For most appropriate results, tell yourself all day that this is what you’ll be eating for dinner and then don’t eat it until five minutes before you go to bed.

More hot, delicious Junkfood Cinema

When we at Junkfood Cinema heard that we had somehow again avoided outright cancellation, clearly an oversight on the part of hectically busy and woefully unobservant management, we decided to celebrate with another installment of the Junkfood Cinema Awards, affectionately known (read “irresponsibly abbreviated”) as The Junkies. Since this was our sophomore effort, we really wanted to flaunt our year-long incompetence with plenty of pomp and circumstance. We therefore hired a big time Hollywood director, one who had similarly proven his commitment to terrible films, to produce a garish, way-too-expensive, online awards ceremony. But then we had to fire him over some incredibly unsavory comments he made; something about rehearsals being for fatties. So instead, we’re just going to do the exact same crap we did last year. Enjoy.

The Junkiest Prime Number of 2011: 2

What the hell does that mean? First of all, just assume I’ve anticipated your asking that question of every single category or you may very well pass out from confounded sighing. 2011 was a big year for sequels here at JFC, with 8 total followups being canonized. We labored over this category for literally days on end; neglecting sleep, but never food. At first we seemed pretty keen on the number 3 (as in Scream 3, Final Destination 3, and Jurassic Park 3–all featured this year), but it lacked the paradoxical irony of also being an even number; not to mention the political implications. Also, and much more likely the reason than that thing I just said, we actually covered five different part 2′s this year: Death Wish 2, Stepfather 2, Home Alone 2, Conan the Destroyer, and U.S. Marshals. Thank you, number 2.

Grossest Misuse of the Entire Screen Actors Guild: Dick Tracy

Seriously, there are more clueless, direction-free actors in this film than at a political rally and/or benefit concert for third-world countries in which they own beachfront property. Watching Dick Tracy is tantamount to attending one of those Eyes Wide Shut orgies (except way filthier) wherein every single attendee is riddled with shame and hiding their true faces under copious piles of makeup. Except Madonna of course, who is doing all she can to keep her face perfectly in frame…as well as her frame perfectly in your face.

Worst Understanding of the Basic Tenets of Law: Sylvester Stallone (Over the Top)

Stallone is a regular guest of our relentless mockery. In fact, his frequency of appearances saw him sharing 2010′s coveted Musclehead of the Year award with equally repeatedly mocked Austrian half-goon action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger. But in 2011, he opted for (lack of) quality over (embarrassing) quantity, appearing in the column only twice. However, in Over the Top, he exhibits enough brazen stupidity in one sitting to last through even the brainiest of winters. Not only does he subscribe to the concept that custody of his son can be obtained via the winning of an arm-wrestling contest, but he pursues this course in spite of the fact that he LEGALLY HAS CUSTODY THE ENTIRE TIME!!! *Face* *Palm*

Best Ambassador of Blaxploitation: Sho’nuff (The Last Dragon)

Here at JFC, we take blaxploitation very seriously, too seriously, and then uncomfortably seriously. Every year we designate February as Blaxploitation History Month, showcasing some of the best of this controversial b-movie genre as well as simultaneously proving just how white we really are. And yet, even with the likes of Slaughter, Coffy, Black Belt Jones, and Dolemite turning up in February, our selection for the person most representative of the spirit of the subversive subgenre was featured in a movie written into the annals of our cyber tome of misery by guest author Adam Charles. The Last Dragon‘s Sho’nuff, the self-proclaimed Shogun of Harlem, is a modern day (and by modern day, I of course mean the 80s) version of Dolemite: a lyrical loudmouth with a fashion that can only be described as…visible.

Most Inane Phobia: The Color White (Blackjack)

Every hero needs a weakness, something to keep him (or her) grounded and vulnerable so that the audience can relate. For Superman it was kryptonite, for Magneto it was plastics, and for The Green Lantern it was evidently pacing and plot structure. So what was hero Dolph Lundgren’s Achilles Heel in John Woo’s Blackjack? The color white. That’s right, this Swedish man mountain is routinely foiled by…the presence of all chroma in the light spectrum. Classical conditioning notwithstanding, unless of course Jack was violated with a milk bottle by the Abominable Snowman, this seems a hilariously absurd choice for a foible.

Guest Contributor of the Year: Luke Mullen

As much as my heart, and my aversion to sleeping on the couch, tells me to go with my lovely wife who wrote not one, but two pieces this year, the numbers do not lie (except the ones on that bastard bathroom scale). Therefore, the clear winner this year is Luke Drago Mullen. Luke turned in a whopping six entries this year covering the greasy gamut from Pitch Black to The Mummy (daring choices, considering how easily sand gets stuck in his beard). Luke preformed more than admirably and proved without a shadow of a doubt that I am 100% obsolete. Honorable Mentions: Mrs. Junkfood, Adam Charles, and Kate Erbland. Photo courtesy of John Gholson’s Taking Requests.

Worst Indictment of Heavy Metal: Black Roses

Look, we are all well aware that heavy metal music is the dark lord’s most insidious weapon against the innocent followers of the Almighty. Well no, I take that back; it’s actually Angry Birds. But heavy metal is still pretty evil. And yet even I have trouble swallowing the anti-metal (so, pro-wood?) propaganda of 1988′s Black Roses. They actually insinuate that attending one heavy metal concert will make American teenagers (American teenagers who are Canadian, no less) fight, smoke, and have plenty of the sex; plugging their ears and singing as the world tries to remind them that these teenage indiscretions are also known side effects of…being teenagers. Thankfully, they also throw in as evidence rubber-boobed demon puppets and devil worshipers who use Yankee Candles in their dark, but pleasantly scented, consorts with Lucifer.

Best Represented Mythical Creature: The Dragon

In our ongoing efforts to each year have the federal government to certify one mythical creature as real, we’ve again failed. However, 2011 turned out to be a great year for dragons both cinema figuratively and cinema literally. We clocked a grand total of four dragon-related pieces. What’s more, we had a different author contribute each of the four dragon pieces…sounds like the plot of some terrible Shaw Brothers movie. Dragonslayer (by moi) and DragonHeart (by the lovely Mrs. Junkfood) featured “actual” dragons while The Last Dragon (by Adam Charles) and Kiss of the Dragon (via Luke Mullen) featured characters, of varying levels of Asian descent, nicknamed Dragon. It’s such a shame that we still live in a society under the control of a mythist government. Occupy Reality!

Most Apathetic Hero: Dan Haggerty (Elves)

“Grizzly” Dan “Grizzly Adams” Haggerty  “Adams,” at some point after the cancellation of his television series about a man-ursine love affair, developed a terminal case of the DontGiveAShits. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of put-upon cinematic “lifers” who stop giving each and every role their all. But there’s not busting your ass, and then there’s refusing to take the cigarette out of your mouth long enough to fight the gun-toting Nazi cultists trying to use an evil elf to spawn a race of supermen. So not only does Haggerty look like a homeless person they found at the bus stop minutes before shooting, but apparently his approach to the role was to embody a homeless person found at a bus stop minutes before shooting.

The Most Disgusting Junkfood Pairing Stuffed Inside The 2nd Most Disgusting Junkfood Pairing: A Ryan’s Buffet Stuffed Inside a Marshmallow Peep (Deep Blue Sea, U.S. Marshals)

It’s a good thing this category speaks for itself, because I have a serious challenge ahead of me. We’re gonna need a really, really…tiny Ryan’s Buffet.

There’s always more helpings of Junkfood Cinema

As we all sit here at Reject HQ, gathered around an absurdly long, but incredibly imposing, table discussing what to do with the nuclear missiles we just “creatively appropriated” from a breakaway Russian republic, it occurs to us that 2011 was a great year to be bad. For every boring, dopey, goody-good hero that popped up on the silver screen, there was a brilliant, super cool, woefully misunderstood villain doing everything he/she/it could to thwart the zero hero at every turn.

So when Supreme Commander #1, better known to the world (and those pesky Avengers so they’ll stop blasting our lair) as Neil Miller, issued an official order (delivered by a specially-trained, fire-breathing, gun-toting alligator who lives in the moat) to construct a supersonic death ray…that assignment went to Kate “Femme Fatale” Erbland. But then I got asked to do this list of the 20 Best Villains of 2011, a decided promotion from my usual position as sinister cocktail-fetcher and cleaner of the diabolical gutters.

Voldemort (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2)

*SPOILER ALERT* The ultimate lizard-faced, petulant man-child, Tom Riddle, had his final showdown with little Harry Potter this year. That Voldemort just got exponentially more dickish as the franchise drew to a close, as he destroyed a goodly portion of Hogwarts, killed nearly all your favorite ancillary characters, and even took down Hans Gruber. Hans. Gruber!

Professor Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows)

Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty are as inextricable as fried food platters and heartburn. In Guy Ritchie’s mildly-anticipated sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Jared Harris stepped into the shoes of this classic foil and absolutely nailed it. It takes a great deal of skill to put cocksure cocky cock Robert Downey, Jr. in his place.

Red Skull (Captain America: The First Avenger)

You have to admire Red Skull. On top of plotting his own world domination under the nose of, and then in fearless defiance of, Adolf Hitler’s quest for world domination, he also manages to battle Marvel’s most jingoistic pretty boy and look damn fine in a suit all despite suffering from the worst sunburn anyone has ever known.

Loki (Thor)

There was once a time when the greatest crime Loki, the Norse god of mischief, ever committed was supplying rubber-faced Jim Carrey with a wooden mask and subjecting all of us to one of the worst films of the 90s; no small trespass to be sure. But when Marvel finally produced a big-budget, big-screen version of Thor, Loki proved he could wreak havoc with the best of them. He proved it so well that the good folks at the Society for the Prevention of Diminishing Returns invited him back to be the villain in The Avengers.

Shen (Kung Fu Panda 2)

Gary Oldman is one of those actors who, for many years, was utterly chameleon-like in his complete submersion into his various colorful roles. In fact, there are people to this day who have no idea what Gary Oldman actually looks like. Thankfully, Kung Fu Panda 2 finally cleared up the speculation when they boldly revealed that Gary Oldman is in fact a CG peacock. As the sinister Shen, he helped Kung Fu Panda 2 excel not only as a family film, but as an action movie as well.

Goddamn Aliens (Super 8, Attack the Block, Battle L.A., Transformers 3, The Thing, The Darkest Hour, Cowboys & Aliens)

2011 was a tremendously bad year for intergalactic diplomatic relations. We could not go a month without our planet being besieged, attacked, or otherwise picked on by goddamn aliens. They tried killing us in the 70s (Super 8) and they tried killing us in the old west (Cowboys & Aliens). They tried destroying the London projects (Attack the Block) and they tried to level L.A. They sent giant, obnoxious robots, shape-shifting insidious CG blobs, and even invisible, wattage-sucking absurdities. Seriously, whoever has been flaming The Rest of the Universe on their blog, please apologize.

Sex (Shame)

Not all villains are tangible beings. Michael Fassbender proved that sex addition and the subsequent feelings of, wait for it, shame it fosters are just as crippling as having Magneto punch you in the balls while you’re trying to get your rocks off. Also, Fassbender played Magneto…we’ll get there.

Albert Brooks (Drive)

Ryan Gosling may have been the hipster hero of the year in the, admittedly sensational, Drive, but his skills behind the wheel, his proficiency for choosing super cool jackets, and his mastering of looking hot while chewing on a toothpick were matched beautifully by Albert Brooks’ pesky inclination toward vicious murdering. The final showdown of the two is an epic struggle of bloodletting and wills worthy of Akira Kurosawa. Still not as funny as his dad.

The Accountant (Drive Angry)

Is there anything not to like about Drive Angry? Shut up, internet, I wasn’t asking you. As Nicolas Cage hilariously sleepwalks through another whacked-out script he clearly didn’t read, William Fichtner has the audacity to wholeheartedly commit to an even more ridiculous role. As “The Accountant” he keeps turning up on Cage’s trail spouting staccato quips of brillance and moving like he’s contanstly on the verge of a Saturday Night Fever dance number.

Rose McGowan (Conan the Barbarian)

To be fair, Rose McGowan has never had to travel very far to land smack dab in the middle of Creepytown, but in this year’s remake of Conan the Barbarian, she takes it to a whole new, shower-requiring level. Not only does she boast the fairest complexion since Powder became a fulltime blogger, but her normally charming bloodlust is elevated to a degree completely beyond the pale (as again is her skin), and she has this suggested propensity toward incest. She should change her name to Rose McEWWWan.

To classic horror fans, the word “hammer” does not simply denote a tool or a now defunct 80s rapper, it is a six-letter seal of excellence. For years, Hammer Studios reached into the cache of our collective nightmares; resurrecting boogeymen theretofore romanticized in black and white and splashing them onto our eyes in savage, gorgeous technicolor. Their treatment of the likes Dracula, the Mummy, and Frankenstein’s monster not only reacquainted us with monsters, but introduced us to silver screen legends such as Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. After experiencing a popularity that made them a powerhouse, the studio seemed to have whispered meekly out of existence after a short-lived television swan song in the 1980s. But now Hammer Studios is poised, like so many of its signature villains, to rise from the dead with several new films released in the last few years and others currently in production; the newest being the upcoming The Woman in Black starring Daniel Radcliffe.

In apparent celebration of this resurgence, the official Hammer historian Marcus Hearn has plundered the hallowed Hammer archives and come out with “The Hammer Vault.” This book is an epic, glorious catalog of some of the studio’s greatest marketing materials, behind-the-scenes photos, film props, and other artifacts of enormous cinematic significance. It turns out the only thing that ever managed to rival the dark beauty and grandiose gothic tone of Hammer’s films was its marketing for those films. The book is an absolute triumph not only for fans of the classic studio, but also those who revel in pictorial film history. We were fortunate enough to sit down with good Mr. Hearn, a man worthy of knighthood in our humble, geeky estimation, to discuss the book. Not only does he lend even more insight into the Hammer archives, but also lets slip his opinions of the upcoming Woman in Black.

Grab your wooden stakes, unburden your bosom of those top blouse buttons, and prepare to take a perilous journey into “The Hammer Vault.”

As a huge fan of Hammer myself, I have to know, how did you rise to the ranks of official Hammer historian?

It all happened by accident really. I started working with Hammer in 1994, when I was an editor at Marvel Comics. I was given the job of editing Hammer’s official magazine, and this led to laserdisc commentaries, DVD commentaries and, most notably, the chance to write “The Hammer Story” with Alan Barnes. That book was the company’s authorized history, and it’s since led to “Hammer Glamour,” “The Art of Hammer” and now “The Hammer Vault.”

When you made the decision to take on this daunting project, what was your first step in acquiring all these incredible pieces?

Well I feel as if I’ve been rehearsing for this one since 1994. It’s the culmination of all my research into Hammer’s archive, although I’m also grateful to the private collectors who have helped to plug the gaps.

Despite being a Hammer historian, did it still give you chills to see and/or touch certain artifacts from the archives such as, say, Christopher Lee’s first Hammer contract for The Curse of Frankenstein?

Oh yes, of course. Hammer has preserved all its artist and writers’ contracts, and it’s astonishing to see how much (and how little!) some people were paid. These are the kinds of details that I wouldn’t feel comfortable about including in a book, even 50 years after the event, but I know that Christopher has never made a secret about what he earned for The Curse of Frankenstein so I hope he’s okay about me reproducing his contract for that film. I’m sure he earns a bit more nowadays!

In your opinion, what was it about Hammer’s advertising ideology that allowed them to stand apart even from other British studios or horror studios?

Hammer’s marketing campaigns were very aggressive and, unlike many of their contemporaries in the British film industry, were aimed at an international audience. This aligns them more closely with the James Bond films than the Carry Ons or the Ealing comedies.

In conducting your research, what were some facts you uncovered that genuinely surprised you?

Sometimes I unearthed things that I couldn’t include in the book because the illustrations or artifacts relating to the story weren’t in the archive. For example, in May 1958 the Blood Transfusion Service in England mounted an exhibition to coincide with the release of Dracula. They recruited quite a few volunteers as a result, but the exhibition was withdrawn after just one week on the grounds that it was in poor taste. I would love to find something relating to that exhibition, but sadly there’s nothing in the archive.

Were there any pieces that you uncovered in the archives that its administrators did not want featured in the book?

One of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed working with Hammer so much is that they’re always been quite relaxed about criticism of the old films. When you’ve made more than 200 films, which they have, they know as well as I do that they can’t all be classics. So I feel as though I’ve got the best of both worlds with Hammer – access to some wonderful material, and relative freedom in the way I write about it.

I have to say, I love the photo from Nightmare of Clytie Jessop casually reading Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye” on set with a prop knife stuck in her chest. Can you talk about some of your favorite candid photo discoveries?

There have now been so many books about Hammer that it’s getting quite difficult to come up with something unusual. Some of my favorites in The Hammer Vault include the shot of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee with the Queen’s Award to Industry and Ursula Andress feeding the camel during the making of She, but really I like anything that tells a story from a behind the scenes point of view. I especially like the shot of Martine Beswick and Michael Carreras on the set of Slave Girls, and I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about what they’re doing with that rhino horn.

Who is your favorite Hammer beauty?

I think I’d incriminate myself by answering that question. Most of the Hammer ladies I’ve met have been lovely, and some of them are beautiful people as well.

Can you explain for our American readers what a campaign book is and how a front of house still compares to the more commonly used lobby cards here in the states?

There are numerous examples of campaign books in The Hammer Vault. They were issued to cinema managers and publicists, and served as a guide to how to run a publicity campaign on a local level. As well as essential information they included ideas for publicity gimmicks and details of the posters and stills that could be purchased to decorate cinema foyers. Front of house stills are just like lobby cards, but smaller.

Something I’ve always wondered, why are British quads so named and what was the reasoning behind their being horizontal where American posters are traditionally vertical?

Quad is short for Quad Crown, and to be honest I don’t know why we went for the landscape format in the UK while in the US you’ve generally preferred the portrait one-sheet format. It’s still the same today.

Something I’ve always enjoyed on a base level is Hammer’s use of cleavage in their posters. However, I know the studio drew quite a bit of ire from critics over this. In your view, was there ever a point wherein Hammer’s utilization of ample bosoms in their advertising began to go a bit too far? If so, to you, which film’s marketing represents their first steps over the line?

I don’t think any of the published posters crossed the line, but in the book you’ll see several examples of pre-production posters – created purely to entice potential distributors – that are quite explicit in the way they mix sex and violence. Hands of the Ripper is one example of an illustration that would not be considered acceptable on a publicly exhibited poster, even today.

Why do you think contemporary film marketing in general has lost the grandeur and artistry that once characterized it?

The advent of Photoshop spelled the demise of the painted film poster, and as much as I love Photoshop I think that’s a great shame. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg still commission painted film posters, and Hammer has just commissioned one for their next film, The Woman in Black, but it’s very rare these days.

Obviously Hammer has a special meaning for you, can you tell us about your first experience with the studio?

I’m too young to have seen the original films at the cinema. My introduction to Hammer was through late night double-bills on the British television channel BBC2. I think many fans of classic horror in this country fondly recall those double-bills, which were a crash course in Hammer, Universal, Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur and so on. These days it’s increasingly rare to see any black and white films on network television.

What are your favorite Hammer films?

My favorite Gothic horror is The Brides of Dracula, my favorite science fiction film is Quatermass 2 and my favorite thriller is Cash On Demand.

Have you been fortunate enough to meet any of the Hammer legends?

I didn’t meet Peter Cushing, sadly, but we corresponded when I was a teenager. I got to know Christopher quite well. In fact I published his authorized biography about ten years ago.

What are your thoughts on the resurgence of Hammer and their stylish new onscreen logo?

I’m delighted that Hammer is back, because the films they’re making are so good. The next one, The Woman in Black, is the best yet. For those who haven’t seen it, the animated logo comprises images from classic posters which solidify into the word ‘Hammer.’ For an old timer like me, seeing that on the big screen is genuinely thrilling.

Buy “The Hammer Vault” over at Amazon

And now we present, before this stops being funny, a disaster called Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny.

What Makes It Bad?

To properly lampoon Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, I must resort to tactic heretofore unseen in this column. (Humor?) Shut up, self! For the next few sentences, I will not make a single joke. I need this abdication of puns, quips, and gags to be absolutely clear so that the absurdity of this film’s actual plot strikes you upside the head like a lead candy cane. I will caution you to move any breakable objects out from directly beneath you as they are now in the jaw drop zone. Okay, here goes…no jokes…whew…no jokes…here goes…

Santa’s sleigh drops out of the sky and lands smack dab in the middle of a sandy beach in Florida. Good so far? Oh, just wait. No jokes. His reindeer have run off and he is sweltering in the hot Floridian sun. He sends out a thunderous call to all the children in the area, calling all of them by name except for two girls whom he just calls, “girls.”  The children come running to his aid, passing Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn on a raft as they do. No jokes…head starting to hurt. They trod out a menagerie of animals to serve as potential replacements for the wayward reindeer (including a cow, a sheep, and a dog) to no avail. In an effort to raise the spirits of the children, who he’s already disheartened by telling them they won’t be getting any gifts that year, Santa tells the children the story of…Thumbelina. Actually, he tells them the story of a little girl who goes to a theme park and who is told the story of Thumbelina by a loudspeaker as she watches the tale unfold in a magical diorama at the Thumbelina exhibit. Yeah, ok, so that happens. Then, when the story is completed, the children hear a siren and, lo and behold, here comes…The Ice Cream Bunny…driving a fire engine…to save the day? No jokes, just a twitch that I’m fairly certain is the early stages of a stroke.

Yes, that is the plot of this lost, rightly, 70s holiday non-classic. The elements of this film are like massive tectonic plates of crazy floating on batshit magma on the gonzo crust of this mad mad mad world. As you would expect, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny was not produced by a major studio. In fact, the film was produced by a failing theme park in Florida. That’s right, the not-at-all-famous-to-anyone Pirate’s World, the very same park that provided the setting for what has to be one of the most uncomfortable retellings of Thumbelina ever conceived by supposed human beings. But yes, Pirate’s World. It’s not a world for “Pirates” in general nor is it a world belonging to all “Pirates’.” Instead it is apparently a park owned by one random individual pirate. So as you walk shuffle monotonously from the rusted Ferris Wheel to the Tilt-a-Whirl that neither tilts nor whirls, you could at any point be tossed out of the park by its rightful owner: Long John Silver or Blackbeard or…Roberto Clemente.

Therein lies the problem with Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, apart from the producers’ dreadful mistake of actually producing it. If the issue were simply a disharmonious combination of very different elements, that would be one thing; a shit stew of sorts. But instead what we have is more akin to a shit salad, with all the individual ingredients proving just as rotten individually as they are together. It’s like a garbage sculpture of a pile of garbage. Let’s break this down like an improper fraction…

The pairing of Santa Claus and Thumbelina is as appropriate as the pairing of fried chicken and nail guns. So right off the bat, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny has an uphill battle to sell this distinctly non-Christmasy concept. But the manner in which the film includes Thumbelina’s tragic, and oddly misogynistic, tale is downright baffling. Santa is telling the kids the story of a girl being told the story of Thumbelina as she watches the story unfold, a story that she is also a part of, as the loudspeaker narrator changes from someone outside the story to a character within the story. So Santa is basically trying to relay…to children…a story with more levels than a Mega Man NES game designed by Christopher Nolan; now facing Inception Man! But get past all that, I know you won’t, and what you have is the story of a woman who learns that she can only be happy with “her own kind” and only then if she is married to a man and serving his every whim. Gee, great choice for story time, Santa. This movie makes me want to burn the bra I promise I don’t wear.

Only slightly less inexplicable in its moronitude is the pairing of Santa with…The Ice Cream Bunny. If you recall your Mother Goose, Aesop fables, Grimm’s fairy tales, Disney flicks, 80s children’s television, and fast food spokespersons, you’ll be keenly aware that this character DOESN’T EXIST ANYWHERE! The reason for his absence from any preexisting material is most likely his total and willfully insulting lack of definition. Why the hell is he called the Ice Cream Bunny? He isn’t made of ice cream, he doesn’t eat ice cream, and he doesn’t distribute ice cream either by hand or from any orifice. In fact, this flop job doesn’t even mention the words “ice cream” once in his very limited screen time. Is he called the Ice Cream Bunny because he is white and some ice cream is also white? That seems pretty flimsy. If that’s the case, why isn’t Santa called The Bloated Tick Man? So the Ice Cream Bunny shows up driving a woefully out-of-date fire engine, not that driving a fancy modern fire engine would have fallen within the realm of reason, just in time to save Santa. Was this Pirate’s World’s mascot or something, I guess I could understand if that were the–hey wait, neither ice cream nor bunnies have anything to do with pirates either! Damn you, Roberto Clemente!

So the whole time these kids are trying to save Santa’s bacon, ironically proposing a pig as the beast of burden at one point, all the old fat guy does is sit in his sleigh and complain about the heat. Funny thing about sitting directly in the blistering sunlight, it tends to get a little warm. But it never dawns on pathetic old St. Nicolas to get his chubby posterior up out of the sleigh and, I don’t know, seek shelter perhaps? I get that you’re from the North Pole, Santa, but you do know how the sun works, yes? You don’t actually believe that it is a sentient being that will follow you wherever you go as if you’ve made it to World 2 in Super Mario Brothers 3, right? The hapless putz doesn’t even think to take off his enormous winter coat until about thirty minutes into the film. I hate to say it, but perhaps this is an unfortunately festive example of natural selection; deck the halls with Darwinism. Am I being too cruel to Santa? At the risk of receiving nothing but coal this year, hell to the no! Because after we go through all this grief to get Santa’s sleigh out of the…shallow sand, listening to his entirely-too-complicated rendition of Thumbelina and calling in pallid, lactophiliac mascots for help, the sleigh disappears! So Santa drives off with the Ice Cream Bunny as the children, who have worked themselves half to death trying to get the sleigh unstuck, wave goodbye, we find out the goddamn sleigh could have teleported out at any time? I’m gonna say it, Santa’s kind of a dick.

And let us not forget about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn…as clearly the screenwriter did. They show up for a moment at the beginning and then again at the end, having not moved from the bushes on the bank of what they claim is the Mississippi River. I’m going to go ahead and ignore the fact that no other representatives of the literary world traverse the boundaries of time, space, and being inescapably fictional to help Santa in his time of need. I have to ignore it because otherwise my head fold in on itself fifty times like Cronenberg origami. Instead I want to note the fact that the Mississippi River is 100 miles from the nearest Florida beach, so these corny bumpkins are out and out wrong. But I suppose if you carelessly play leap frog with planes of existence, the laws of simple geography need not apply to you.

Why I Love It!

Quite simply, and because at this point I have lost the ability to conjure words of any greater significance, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny exists. That in and of itself is a monumental achievement for both Pirate’s World and the entire human race. It is like an experiment in self-imposed obscurity. It’s clear that not a single person who worked on this film, or had the dubious distinction of “starring” in it, believed it would ever see the light of day outside the hallowed walls of that “amusement” park, which subsequently-and without the slightest hint of shock–closed three years after the release of this film. To their credit, and perhaps in calculated defense of their collective pride, for years the film failed to graduate beyond one sorry VHS release.

However, the film’s reputation for extraordinary levels of nonsense caught the attention of the gents over at Rifftrax. The former quip-slingers, the b-movie Gielguds, of Mystery Science Theater 3000 have since made available for sale their irreverent musings on all manner of new films as well as “classic” “cinema” fare that was sadly overlooked during the series’ run. The siren call of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny‘s beautiful abomination was too much for them to ignore and they have released a side-splitting Rifftrax commentary for the film. Also provided on the DVD is the film itself so, against all odds and in clear defiance of legislation against the purveyance of black magic, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is available on DVD.

Making it through the entirety of this film’s runtime is the pinnacle of cinematic endurance tests. You will be tempted, in the moments when the air is wholesale let out of the already vacuous plot, that you will not only want to turn it off, you’ll also be tempted to pray to whatever most convenient god can promise immediate snowfall so that you have the ability to experience the far more rapid release of hypothermia. If nothing else, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny makes you appreciate even the heretofore perceived lamest of holiday films.

Junkfood Pairing: Blue Bunny Ice Cream

As you watch this confounding combination of Santa, bunnies, and ice cream, try to cool the hot, feverish flashes of frustrated rage with this frigid, delicious, and far more practical pairing of rabbits and frozen freezer treats. Happy Holidays from all of me here at Junkfood Cinema!

Today’s figgy pudding of shame: Elves.

What Makes It Bad?

What do we know about elves? Traditionally, these minuscule denizens of the North Pole have defined their entire existence laboring in Santa’s workshop; being bred into a bizarre form of indentured servitude. They suffer daily the oppressive whip of a bearded, rotund Über-capitalist with no outlet for their seething, but impotent rage. Like many of you, I have spent literally hours lying awake thinking about these beleaguered minions of the jolly old overlord, fearing the day that they would inevitably rise up and take their revenge upon the human race who refused to come to their aid. Enter 1989′s Elves…exit sanity.

In this film, elves are not cutesy, pointy-eared cherubs. Nor are these elves tall, silver-haired Adonises who know their way around a bow and arrow and cause very difficult-to-process urges in purportedly straight film bloggers who are totally not me. Point of fact this film does not feature elves at all, because that would imply some sort of multitude. Instead we have just one gaped-mouthed hand puppet who bears a horrifyingly striking resemblance to a shaved and genetically-altered chimpanzee. Part of me wants to laugh derisively at this cast of cardboard human likenesses in terrible attire, but part of me is genuinely moved by their plight of being chased hither and thither by half a wax stuffed animal attached to the lens of a camera to obscure both its diminutive size and lack of mobility. I also love that as the elf is following our heroine–or more accurately our named dishcloth–through the department store, not one person notices a bipedal naked mole rat saunter down the aisles or fleeing out of the store after it repeatedly crotch-stabs Santa Claus.  And so begins running joke of this article: having to insert very few actual jokes because, believe it or else, most of these things happen exactly as I describe them.

The real “star” of the “movie” is Dan Haggerty, better known as Grizzly Adams; currently best known as “Who The Hell Is Grizzly Adams?” At one point in my life, I thought City of the Living Dead‘s/Day of the Animals‘ Christopher George was cinema’s most apathetic hero. I thought to myself, “gee self, I don’t think any actor could possibly put less effort into headlining a film if they tried…which they wouldn’t because they don’t care.” Dan Haggerty–and his lush, untamed face carpet–hath once again made fools of us all. Haggerty plays a former detective thrown off the force for his drinking, or so the painfully overstated exposition would have us believe…that we were too stupid to figure out ourselves. He cares so little about this film that the pendulum actually swings the other way to the point where he’s pissed off he has to do the movie and actively, though his inactivity, seeks to further derail it. He sleepwalks through each and every scene, mumbling his lines with learned incoherence, and–I shit you not–dangling a lit cigarette from his lips during even the most supposedly exciting scenes. It’s as if they were crafting an early, reverse version of Speed wherein if Haggerty gives more than one shit in any given scene, his gut will explode. It’s hard to believe this sack of man lumps is legitimately interested in saving the heroine when he can’t park his Camel Ultra Light for five minutes in order to stop the Nazis from shooting her.

Oh, did I mention there were Nazis in this film? Because there are totally Nazis in this film. I feel their storyline was a concerted effort to allow Elves to stand apart from all the other Dan Haggerty evil Christmas elf movies. So you remember how Raiders of the Lost Ark informed us that the Nazis were obsessed with the occult and using mystical and religious powers to take over the world? DOCUMENTARY BY COMPARISON TO ELVES. The Third Grade Reich described in this film decided that elves were the supreme power in the supernatural world and constructed two potential schemes for exploiting them. The first was to use elves as assassins because of their size, strength, and killing prowess. This carefully conceived plan was apparently thwarted when they ultimately realized there were no such things as elves. That is not a joke, a professor of “history” within the film tells us of this. So they wasted what I’m sure were years of research and millions of ill-gotten dollars only to discover imaginary things are imaginary, the Nazis sought to fulfill an ancient prophecy in which a pure blood virgin descendant would get boinked by an elf and give birth to a race of supermen…Elf+Pure Blood Virgin=SuperMEN? The thing is, this backup plan still relies heavily on the existence of imaginary elves! They make up some crap about an ancient rune that, along with the virgin’s blood, can conjure one elf who can then fill her with Elf/Superman babies. This movie is actually the story of how composer Danny Elfman was conceived.

What you would expect by this point is that our heroine, who lives with her mom and Nazi grandfather, is the pure blood virgin. It’s predicable, but operates within the measures of the film’s logic…until we find out why she’s the pure blood. Apparently, in a stunning twist befitting of Sir Jerry of Springer, her grandfather IS ALSO her father. He knocked up the girl’s mother, who is also his own daughter, in order to birth his grand-daughter daughter. If you aren’t feeling desperately in need of a shower right now, then you are filthy and desperately in need of a shower right now. It’s as if the screen”writer” decided that the one thing missing from this Christmas killer elf movie with Grizzly Adams and Nazis was incest. The elf therefore spends the rest of the movie killing everyone around Incest Baby Protagonist in order to hump Incest Baby Protagonist and bring about the end of the world. The writer of this film would himself later go on to…be exorcised out of the body of a poor, innocent girl he was possessing…in my mind.

Why I Love It?

I’m a sucker for bad Christmas horror. They are so deliciously mean-spirited in their marring and warping what is supposed to be an untouchable, joyous time of year. When a film like Elves goes the extra mile to mar and warp something that is marring and warping something good and pure, it’s an exponentially more bizarre experience. Elves is easily the worst Christmas horror film I’ve ever seen, it’s position however admittedly precarious given the existence of Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 and The Christmas Shoes. Watch The Christmas Shoes again and tell me I’m NOT supposed to be terrified. The only thing that could have possibly sullied the holiday more than seeing Santa get his pelvic stocking sliced up or an elf brandishing the carcass of a dead cat who was drowned in a toilet by an evil bitch (also actually happens) would be…cripes, I’ve got nothing. I can literally think of no comically outrageous image that would be worse than the verifiable content of this film. You cannot understand how to effectively quantify the boundaries of terrible cinema unless you constantly redefine for yourself where those boundaries are. In that way, and I must stress solely in that way, Elves is a pioneering film.

Elves is not available on DVD and it’s dubious that it was ever shown on movie screens besides those made of stone in the solitary confinement cells of certain mental asylums for the criminally insane. We therefore had to watch Elves on VHS which was then projected onto the screen at the Alamo Drafthouse in a room full of what can only be described as…former inmates of certain mental asylums for the criminally insane. This night exemplified everything I love about VHS. Without a lunatic-like refusal to abandon this obviously dead format, films like Elves would be lost to the ages and the breadth of its incompetence would go uncelebrated, unmocked, and unlaughed at. It is a film that demands to be seen with a room full of, hopefully, imbibing masochists who ultimately see their own lack of cinematic taste as a form of gluttony and seek to punish themselves for their mortal sin. Elves is basically ocular flagellation and we are all better people for having subjected ourselves to it.

Junkfood Pairing: E.L. Fudge

A few of Santa’s elves did manage to escape with the assistance of nefarious criminals known as “Cookie Coyotes,” who promised them freedom and a better life. But sadly they were sold into the Nabisco white slave trade wherein the laziest among them were killed, stacked, and then separated by a layer of delicious fudge. I would urge you not to support this debased practice…if the end result weren’t so damn tasty. Grab a bag of E.L. Fudge cookies, dust off the VCR, and fire up the movie that celebrates the true meaning of Christmas: Nazi incest.

Stop wondering what Spanish cookies have to do with Elves, and go read more Junkfood Cinema

UPDATED: Dear Commenter Jhester24, you have won with your entry “Mission: Impossible — Women.” Please email the editors to claim your prize! 

Good day, Mr. FSR Readership. Just in time for the release of Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, we have a pair of stylish boots from Giorgio Brutini as featured in the film. These men’s boots are plain-toed, six inch calf leather and are generally damn sexy. Take a good look at this slick pair below.

Your mission, should you wish to win the boots, is to complete the post-colon, secondary title to the next Mission: Impossible film. What we’re looking for is the funniest, cleverest, most laugh-inducingest title continuation. For example… MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – PICKLE JAR. Does that one suck? Absolutely! So come up with a better one and post it in the comment section on this piece. We’ll choose a winner on Monday who will be stylin’ like a bad IMF’er. This post will self-destruct…never.

Feel free to peruse more incredible footwear designs from Giorgio Brutini

This week’s flimsy gingerbread house: Home Alone 2.

Earlier this week, I pointed about some of the genuine flaws running rampant throughout the holiday classic Home Alone. I was dutifully informed, first via email and then by means of a flaming bag of what I assume was once pickled herring crashing through my living room window, that perhaps I was too harsh on this apparently “untouchable” film. I will concede that where I find fault with the film, others may find my finding fault with the film unfounded. So I wondered, how could I deconstruct the problems of Home Alone in such a way as to allow fans to remain objective? How can I review the exact same movie again without it being the exact same movie? Oh, I know, I’ll deconstruct Home Alone 2. After all, Home Alone 2 uses a cookie cutter formula identical to that of the first film, but with a lobotomized script that comparatively makes the script of Home Alone seem more layered than a Charlie Kaufman parfait.

 What Makes It Bad?

So remember our discussion of how Home Alone took careful, exacting steps to tie up every loose end in terms of how Kevin gets left at home? The logic in Home Alone 2 is slightly less concerned with your acceptance of its logic from the get-go. The tumorous pieces of this crap puzzle fail to join in any discernible fashion. First, they try to pull that “parents slept in, everyone’s in a frenzied rush” card again, but in a fashion that shows their half-assery hand early. In the first installment, a wind storm knocks the power out for the whole house. It therefore makes sense that no one was roused by their electric alarms at the appropriate hour; thus the tizzy. But in the sequel, the power remains on and only the dimwitted McCallister parents’ alarm is disconnected. So why is that still not one person in the house got up on time? Did they all assume their game of Nyquil Pong was a safe venture because one alarm in the house was set? As they dash through the airport, Kevin lags behind searching for batteries in his father’s bag. Now given the fact that just one year before Kevin was put into a dangerous situation due to his family’s negligence, any reasonable parent would install a Lojack on their previously abandoned child or, at the very least, attach one of those super-not-humiliating-at-all kid leashes to him.

But no, Kevin stops for a moment, gets separated, and then proceeds to follow a man wearing his father’s same coat to the wrong terminal, then to the wrong gate. He thinks nothing of the fact that “his father” walks right down the ramp and doesn’t even glance back to ensure Kevin gets on the plane. Kevin plows into the ticket agent and loses his ticket in the scattering stack she was formerly holding. He assures her that his boarding pass is somewhere among the mess. She allows him to board SANS TICKET and then leaves him to end up in an alien city sans family. Forget the fact that Kevin’s “I’m In NYC” montage ends with him atop the World Trade Center, THIS is the real reason Home Alone 2 could not be replicated in a post-9/11 America. Well, that and the advent of cell phones; maybe that would have encouraged Kev to call and let ANYONE know where he was. But once again, as soon as Kevin realizes he’s separated from his parents, he immediately assumes he’s made them disappear. Nevermind the fact that you are obviously in New York, you’ve been through this same scenario before in which your squishy “magic powers” theory was debunked, and that YOU KNOW YOUR FAMILY IS IN FLORIDA, you go own believing that you are the David Copperfield of empty-headed sprat dolts.

So now the Swiss cheese exposition is behind us, let’s dig into the meat of the film; apparently in this metaphor Home Alone 2 is a tasty chicken cordon bleu. I guess we’re just going to go ahead and accept the fact that Kevin is not HOME alone in Home Alone 2: Lost Not At Home. I understand the necessity to retain the title for franchise recognizability (a word I’m almost completely sure I did not make up), but it seems to negate the central conceit. It would be like setting House Party 5 at Burning Man. Speaking of House Party, when Kevin reaches New York City, this KID don’t PLAY around. Despite the fact that he’s never been to NYC before, we don’t see him purchase a map until day 2 of his trip. Yet somehow, as soon as he steps off the plane he immediately knows the city and, presumably, the public transit system well enough to efficiently get from landmark to landmark in a few hours. Now granted, we do see him utilizing the New York City Montage Cab Co., but it still seems a bit of a stretch. And I’ve only been to New York once so forgive my ignorance, but is it really possible for a child to purchase a knife at a toy store? Kevin walks up to the counter with a NY map, a tube of Monster Soap (Charlize Theron’s bubble bath brand), and what looks to be a Swiss-made Leatherman. Apparently it was on the shelf between the Nerf balls and the Johnny Spaceman Surface-To-Air Missile Launcher. And I must say Kevin’s improvisation skills (read: super power to slow the passage of time) have greatly improved. He’s able to blow up a six foot inflatable clown (made by Nightmare Toys Incorporated), rig it to a complex, makeshift marionette system, and fill a bathtub in the time it takes one reprehensible concierge to creep from the suite’s front door, to the bathroom. Seriously, stop spending your dad’s money and go fight crime, you’re in New York, for Peter Parker’s sake!

The biggest logical fallacy of Home Alone 2 is once again to be found in the involvement of law enforcement. Whereas in the first film Child Protective Services could not be bothered with the triviality of protecting children, especially when there were donuts to be eaten, the Miami PD from whom the McCallisters seek help in Home Alone 2 follow procedure a little too well. Upon finding out that Kevin has his dad’s credit card, they decide to cancel the card. Wait, what? Why cancel the card? You know your son is alone in New York City, right? Do you not want him to have funds for food and a place to stay? Their concern for their son’s well-being apparently only extends to lengths that don’t dampen their credit score. When the McCallisters get to New York, Kevin’s mom, who somewhere between films found time to become a wholly unlikeable shrew, is actually indignant toward the staff of the Plaza Hotel for letting her child check in alone. Silence, Harpy! Would you have preferred they turn your son away; forcing him into vagrancy and doing things for money that even 2011 Macaulay Culkin would…have to seriously think twice before agreeing to do?

There is a complete tonal shift between original and sequel; the emotional crux of the story taking a bath in the black bile of human baseness. So in Home Alone, even at this most selfish, Kevin just wanted to be alone in his own house having his own Christmas. It’s a movie about the natural childhood conflict of independence vs. the need for family. This is why the film ends with a lighthearted, impish brother’s quarrel; Buzz shouting, “Kevin, what did you do to my room?” In Home Alone 2, the minute Kevin again achieves accidental autonomy (and apparently alliteration), his budding talent for the long con leaps immediately to the surface. He checks into the swankiest hotel in town using fake phone calls, his father’s credit card, and a story of epic flimflamery (still almost no way I made that word up). He runs up an enormous room service bill ordering indulgent junk food, which I realize is not for us to judge here; like the pot calling the kettle fat. He then uses another con to finagle himself a limousine and a, you guessed it, cheese pizza. So where Home Alone was about discovering the importance of familial bonds, Home Alone 2 is about excess, materialism, and identity theft. This actually explains why a chief piece of the film’s merchandising, the Talkboy, occupies a major plot point of the film itself. The sequel’s insipid emphasis on the greed and the consumerism of Christmas made me feel like I was watching Jingle All The Way 2: Lost In Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.

In last week’s entry, we (meaning me) talked (wait, me talked?–Tarzan?) about the fact that the Wet Bandits probably would not have survived some of the traps Kevin set for them in Home Alone. If there was a slight chance that Kev could have accidentally brought about their demise in part one, his sole intent in the sequel is to reek savage murder upon his enemies so brutally as to serve as a warning to any who might cross him in the future. There’s not even any build up to deadly intent either. Kevin’s first, and arguably least innovative trap is simply hurling bricks down onto Marv’s head from atop a three story building. Even if you are a card-carrying member of The Royal Order of Home Alone 2 Apologists and want to argue that it isn’t outside the realm of possibility for a man to survive one three-story brick-to-the-head, Kevin lands four to Marv’s skull. Unless Marv is actually living tissue over a metal exoskeleton, and was sent back in time to kill Kevin before he grew into the future leader of the human resistance, he would be a grease spot on that sidewalk. The bricks are just for openers, then we have the electrocution, 100 lb. objects dropped from three stories onto skulls, and the full on cranial combustion. Pesci and Stern survive so many events that would pulverize an actual human being that the film begins to adopt the physical laws of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon; replete with pseudo sentient lit fuse gag. This is a much healthier assessment of what’s happening than the far more painfully obvious scenario that Kevin is a vengeful, tow-headed angel of death.

Why I Love It?

As much as I have a big gooey, spongy soft spot for Home Alone, I have an even bigger, gooier, spongier soft spot for the sequel. When it came out, I was just at the right age that new movies in the theater were still wonderful spectacles of dream-like proportions. I remember going to see Home Alone 2: Lost In New York with my childhood friend Paul and coming out giggling like a couple of little girls over the various misfortunes that befell the bandits; something I now suspect is in the DSM-IV as a potential early warning sign for sociopathy. I also had a Home Alone 2 poster in my room as a kid, the one with the Statue of Liberty locked in Kevin’s signature pose, and by “signature” I mean “stolen from Edvard Munch.” So, like many of the films that earn entry into the Junkfood Cinema archives, nostalgia plays a major role in my appreciation for this film. I was also the victim of a terrible, fiery View-Master accident as a child that caused my rose-colored glasses to be permanently affixed to my face.

I don’t care how you feel toward the rest of the film, because clearly I am no longer the barometer of good taste, you’ve got to love Tim Curry in Home Alone 2. He brings that same brand of slimy, conniving, slightly closeted, charm to the role of the Plaza Hotel’s most evil, and curious-as-a-cartoon-chimp, concierge. You’ve got to admire his misplaced tenacity as he sneaks into a guest’s room just because he thinks a child is guilty of credit card fraud. This is almost as incendiary and hard to swallow as the fact that, well, a child commits credit card fraud in this film. I love the transition, as Kevin watches the holiday classic from his (sigh) limo, from the the Grinch’s impossibly wide grin to Tim Curry’s…equally wide, supposedly human grin.

We don’t watch Home Alone movies for their deep, philosophical deconstruction of the human condition, nor do we watch them for their dialogue…which becomes seared in our brains like brands upon cattle. We watch the Home Alones for the traps. The disquieting thing about this commonality is that it is also the reason we watch Saw movies and the second act of First Blood. But in spite of these films implanting the seed of inventive homicide in our adolescent brains, ignoring the appeal of the traps in Home Alone would be like denying that people watch auto races for the crashes, hockey for the fights, or professional basketball for…the fights. As someone who grew up to be a horror fan, I love that the traps are far more brutal in Home Alone 2. It really does abandon all delusions of being taken seriously the moment Daniel Stern gets brick-kissed on his forehead. To his credit, Stern’s desperate moaning, flailing, and falsettoing illicit genuine laughs from me to this day. In fact both Stern and Pesci seem to be inhabiting the Three (Two?) Stooges with their intensely overblown physical performances. And true to his character, and his raging rage issues of rage, Pesci returns to his litany of pseudo swears all throughout the film; often calling Kevin a “fargin’ fricka’ fatchadul”…even to his face!

I also love that Kevin is, what, nine years old and he already has mortal nemeses? I mean their feud has reached the point where the Bandits talk casually about, and even attempt to, kill a child! Weren’t you guys just burglars in the last film?  This may account for why it’s so much fun to watch these two get their faces trounced and their insides scrambled by Kev’s various do-it-yourself torture devices. Basically this is a revenge movie wherein the revenger is subjected to revenge from the revengee. Mock its simple family film trappings and its porous plot if you must, which I did because I musted, but this is actually the Inception of revenge films. The Talkboy is actually Kevin’s totem! Also, I’m drunk!

Junkfood Pairing: Fruit Stripe Gum

Delicious Fruit Stripe Gum is delicious. It is so good that apparently it is also a system of currency. Kevin offers the bellboy at the hotel Fruit Stripe Gum as gratuity; the bellboy played by Rob Schneider in a remarkably prescient nod to the new career to which this “career” was leading him, pieces of. This seems really cute and innocent until later in the film when he tricks the bellboy into declining a sizable cash tip in order to torment him. He’s in New York, right? Can we go occupy (read: ransack and steal from) this little shit’s hotel room? The original title of this 1%-minded sequel was Home Alone: With All This Goddamn Money, Bitches.

This week’s sugar plum: Home Alone.

What Makes It Bad?

I can already hear the dissent and consternation from the readership at the very idea that Home Alone, a beloved classic, is somehow less than perfect. First of all, I want to thank you. Your constant doubt and wafer-thin support are the perfect prelude to my going home for Christmas. Secondly, shut up. Thirdly, I share your affinity for this film and revisit it at this time every year. That being said, if you can shake off the snowy, drunken daze of the holidays and take a good gander under the wrapping paper, you’ll find a regifted box of silliness. For starters, it doesn’t simply ask you to suspend your disbelief, it demands that you leave your pesky sense of logic and your troublesome ability to reason behind while you go on a trip to Paris without one of your children. How dare I, you ask? I dare thusly…

As far-fetched as it may seem that a mother would leave her son home alone while the family went on an international trip, John Hughes’ script actually goes to great lengths to tie up almost every conceivable loose end and pave every plot hole as to how Kevin gets left at home. I only wish a modicum of that same effort had been dedicated to the rest of the film. It’s as if Hughes, in a bizarre turn of events not seen since Coleridge penned Kubla Khan, finished the first third of the script, fell asleep, and woke up without the ability to fathom reasonable outcomes for any given situation. For example, what’s with the apathetic police force?

I think we can all agree that leaving an eight-year-old kid by himself with an ocean separating he and his parents is a crisis. But when Mrs. McCallister calls her local police department and they connect her with a department called Family Crisis Intervention, they can’t understand why she’s so upset and they don’t know what to make of her request to send someone to the house to check on him. When they finally relent, grudgingly agreeing to do their damn job, Kevin is too scared to come to the door. So what does the intrepid officer do? He tells dispatch to have Mrs. McCallister to count her kids again. Yes, because it’s entirely likely that she’s freaking out and calling from thousands of miles away to send regrettably incompetent police officers to her home simply because she has miscounted her kids and doesn’t notice Kevin standing right next to her. Did these people get their badges from Cracker Jack boxes? My guess is she then tried to call the local branch of Child Protective Services, but they were out stealing orphans to make decorative handbags. Given how quickly the police respond to Kevin’s call at the end of the film, maybe Mrs. McCallister should have said her house was being robbed instead of her trifling complaint about her young son being alone.

Or how about the fact that a small child would rather dig in and face down dangerous burglars than, I don’t know, hide out somewhere during the time he knows they will be robbing his house? When they say 9pm, they mean they will show up AT 9pm; world’s most punctual thieves. And apparently for Kevin, this is a quest so personal that he won’t even seek assistance from the kindly old man with whom he speaks just before running home to hatch his plan. Suddenly he turns into a little Charles Bronson with a serious grudge against crime. He decides to construct a series of traps designed to pummel, set ablaze, and shoot in the face the audience’s common sense. First of all, for most of these traps to spring the way they were intended, an incredibly specific series of circumstances has to unfold in exact succession. Not only does Daniel Stern have to find the open window AFTER having his shoes and socks stricken from him by the tar-covered steps in the basement, but he must refuse to look down as he climbs through the window into an unfamiliar room and then slam his feet down as if he’s claiming the room for Spain in order that the ornaments inflict harm upon him. In fact, the success of every single trap requires Kevin to have at least some prescient knowledge of the future and the every movement these two crook would make. This would also mean he should really be fighting crime on a much larger scale, or winning chess tournaments against those smug computers. Yeah, I’m looking at you Deep Blue, you 0101100110!

And let’s talk about the complexity and severity of these traps for a moment. Early on in the film it is established that Kevin is a perpetual screw-up, incapable of even simple tasks such as putting clothes into a suitcase. Additionally, this is the same kid that, even though he knows full well they were leaving for Paris the next day, believes he has wished his family away and therefore asks Santa to bring them back instead of picking up a goddamn phone and calling them. Yet when push comes to shove, this relentless little paste-eater is able to perfectly install swinging paint cans, tar a set of basement steps, and rig a flamethrower to a door frame. I also love that Pesci just stands there as his head is being burned because he’s evidently the one human being born without the evolutionary instinct to instantly pull away from hot things. You know, like when you accidentally put your hand on the stove and instead of pulling it back you stand there screaming, “OH MY GOD, THIS IS SO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!”

But I could possibly forgive the sinfully convenient plotting of the film’s climax if it weren’t for the fact that these burglars not only march senselessly to the beat of the script in full defiance of rationale, but are also apparently superhuman. While revisiting Home Alone recently, my wife and I actually started playing a drinking game in which we took a shot each and every time one of the Wet Bandits was subjected to what should have been–by all rights–fatal head trauma, or managed to otherwise survive a trap that would have killed or at least severely incapacitated a mortal man. If I didn’t know better, and I often don’t, I would say Kevin was actually trying to murder these guys. What the film doesn’t make clear however is that Pesci and Stern aren’t playing burglars, but protesters seeking to more fairly distribute America’s wealth. Take a look at the size of that house and consider that Kevin’s father is paying for his entire extended family to fly to Paris for Christmas. Kevin’s dad is a Burberry-coat-wearing member of the 1%. The Wet Bandits were staging their Occupy The McCallister House protest when Kevin, who has been brainwashed into believing material possessions are more important than human life, seeks to inflict his own brand of brutality on them. What we don’t see is years later when Kevin, dripping with abandonment issues after being left by his family not once, but twice (the second time in New York City no less), grows up to be an angry, cancer-ridden serial killer seeking to punish all criminals for their base deeds with a series of elaborate traps. Home Alone 5: This Time It’s Saw 8.

Why I Love It!

Home Alone is one of those movies that defined the holiday season for me growing up, and might actually operate within that same capacity even more so now. As a kid, it represented my pre-pubescent id. Were I to be left to my own eight-year-old devices, I would have run screaming around the house for no reason, watched movies I was expressly forbidden to watch, and eaten enough, duh, junk food to make my heart explode like a hotdog in the microwave; also I would have blown up hotdogs in the microwave for fun (This is Mrs. Junkfood. He still does all of those things). I used to watch it religiously and quote every line until my parents would actually want to ditch me at home and leave the country. As an adult, I love the fact that it’s a siege movie for kids. Kevin struggles fearlessly to keep his enemies out of his fortified base with every weapon at his disposal. It’s like Assault on Precinct 13…or Assault Tamer Than PG-13. I also have to admit that it still fills me with the warm and the fuzzies seeing Kevin and his family reunite to the tune of a swelling emotional score. Home Alone takes the classic maxim of “be careful what you wish for” and adapts it to the perspective of a little boy on Christmas learning how important family is. It’s hard to be completely cynical toward this film.

Home Alone is one of those dream team collaborations that we rarely see nowadays. It was directed by Chris Columbus, who has gone on to direct the first two Harry Potter films and, prior to Home Alone, wrote one of my other favorite holiday films: Gremlins. The script was, as I previously mentioned, written by John Hughes which not only accounts for the prevalence of Chicago accents, but also explains the tightness of the plot…at least for a while. I mock the absurdity of the second and third acts of the film, because they are absurd, but Hughes really does craft some great little touches to explain how Kevin got left behind: the neighbor kid in the van during head count, his ticket and passport accidentally getting thrown away, the fact that there are two vans so the people in one van would assume he was in the other, and the power outage causing everyone to rush around in Benny Hill vision and therefore not be super attentive. I also think Macaulay Culkin was one of the best child actors of all time. He had this ability to deliver lines with a maturity that belied his years and therefore, in opposition to many contemporary family films, we were able to easily tolerate spending time with this kid for the length of an entire movie. Top that off with a terrific score by John Williams and that 500 million dollar total gross starts to make sense.

As a fan of gangster cinema, and short, angry people in general, I love that Joe Pesci plays one of the bumbling bad guys in Home Alone. It’s such a weird piece of casting, considering he normally plays expletive-spewing thugs who stab people to death with knives, pens, remote controls, mittens, etc. What’s so hysterical about seeing him in Home Alone is that he desperately wants to be dropping f-bombs like Tony Montana in a rap battle, but he’s gagged by the PG rating. He was told by Chris Columbus to say the word “fridge” and variations thereof whenever he wanted to say “fuck.”  This is the reason Pesci sounds like a stroke victim each and every time he falls into one of Kevin’s trap. He makes noises that make it seem as if his brain motor is having trouble turning over. I franging fridging frocka fotching love watching him struggle valiantly against his own rancid mouth.

Junkfood Pairing: An Extra Large Cheese Pizza

The scuffle that lead to Kevin being sequestered on the third floor–which played a huge role in his being left behind–was ignited when he learned no one left him any cheese pizza; his favorite. When he is left to his own devices, he orders an extra large cheese pizza to eat all by himself. This unrepentant act of selfishness and gluttony really just makes all of us here at Junkfood Cinema so proud. Order yourself a massive pie du fromage, pop in your copy of Home Alone (or Angels with Filthy Souls), and eat it devoid of any topping…other than loneliness.

If the Alamo Drafthouse were a bar, directors Adam Green and Joe Lynch would be the salty regulars whose names everyone knew – pictures of their debauched antics would proudly adorn the walls. These filmmakers cut their teeth to the sounds of cheering genre fans in the hallowed arena of Fantastic Fest; Lynch with Wrong Turn 2, Green with Hatchet. Ever since their Fantastic Fest premieres, the Drafthouse doors have been open arms to these two passionate and insanely creative geeks. Without venturing too closely to the vocabulary of cults, Green and Lynch are our kind of people.

To wit, the Drafthouse invited them to host an evening of cinematic mayhem dubbed A Very Green & Lynch Christmas. Our duly appointed masters of ceremonies would be presenting a showcase of their early work, current collaborations, and hints and teases at their upcoming projects. All through the night, they would be answering questions and providing humorous anecdotes about long, long ago and behind-the-scenes shenanigans. They would be giving away fabulous prizes and auctioning off still other prizes of even higher calibers of fabulousness; a date with Adam Green himself was even on the block! All proceeds from the evening would go to the American Legion Hall in order that they may install an elevator for disabled veterans. Here’s a breakdown of what we saw…

Road to FrightFest – Favorite Horror Themes

The evening began with a short spoof of Twilight Zone: The Movie. This represented one in a series of short parodies made by Green and Lynch leading up to 2008′s UK Fright Fest. While on a road trip, the two play a name-that-tune game with famous horror themes that devolves into a pit stop and an immensely unsettling transformation. It perfectly set the tone for the evening.

Trailer & Additional Clip from Knights of Badassdom

Next up was the trailer and a single clip from Lynch’s upcoming sophomore film, or at least sophomore solo film, Knights of Badassdom. Knights of Badassdom is about a group of live-action role players (or LARPers) who manage to accidentally conjure a real-life demon. The film boasts a cast that includes Trueblood‘s Ryan Kwanten, Firefly‘s Summer Glau, Community‘s Danny Pudi, Steve Zhan, and Game of Throne‘s Peter Dinklage back in medieval, if homemade, attire. The trailer was exciting, charming, and made us all want to don capes and take up plastic swords against our ancient foes.

Chillerama – “Zom-B-Movie” and “The Diary of Anne Frankenstein”

Next were selections from the anthology horror film Chillerama in which Adam and Joe, along with Adam Rifkin and Tim Sullivan, crafted neo B-movies woven together into a story about the last night of a old school drive-in theater specializing in schlock. We watched Lynch’s offering “Zom-B-Movie” and Green’s “The Diary of Anne Frankenstein.” Lynch’s segment is the wrap-around story that connects all the others. Green’s “Diary of Anne Frankenstein” presents a decidedly different view of a familiar tragedy. These are not vignettes for the faint of heart, but the Drafthouse audience devoured every second.

Holliston

Adam Green and Joe Lynch are currently working on a sitcom (??) for FEARnet called Holliston in which they will star. The series follows a pair of aspiring filmmakers stuck in a small town, and even smaller lives, on the east coast. The show pokes just as much sitcom convention as it does steadfastly uphold them. Funny stuff.

Jack-O Commentary Snippet

The evening ended on a high note that could not possibly be more appropriate for the Alamo Drafthouse. The guys brought a long-forgotten slasher film from the mid-90s called Jack-O to share with us just before we departed. Why would anyone subject themselves to this stinkburger? Two words: audio commentary. Jack-O features what will most likely go down in history as the most hysterically uncomfortable audio commentaries every recorded. Director Jack Latshaw is in a constant combative state with producer Fred Olen Ray who recognizes how bad the film is and decides to make the commentary his own personal Mystery Science Theater track. In the film’s last few minutes, the two get into a heated argument that results in Latshaw storming out. The spark that ignites the powder keg? Two more words: shit pickle. I was in tears laughing at this most special of special features.

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Before the event got started, I had the good fortune of speaking with Adam and Joe. Sitting in the empty theater, as sound cues and projectors were being tested, I asked them about the event, the Alamo, and what’s on deck for these two next-wave horror luminaries. It was like having a conversation with old friends, so much so that I’m fairly certain Joe would probably mock me for using the word “luminaries.”

Considering you guys have had some of your warmest receptions here at the Alamo, how does it feel to be back?

Adam: Fucking amazing

Joe: It feels like family, it does. When I started working on Knights [of Badassdom] I thought, “this is the ultimate Fantastic Fest movie; the ultimate Drafthouse movie.” Everything I do is just an excuse to come back to Austin and hang out at the Alamo. It’s just such a wonderful communal experience. You can go to a movie on a Sunday night, like we did, and every show is sold out and the crowd is great. Everyone loves film and they’re all there to experience it together…and eat potato skins.

Adam: And they want to see the movies. Just last night, the excitement in the line about whatever is was the people were going to see, you don’t get that everywhere. What I love about Fantastic Fest especially is that sometimes you go to these festivals – even the bigger ones like Sundance – and they put you in this room, you go out and do your thing, and then they give you maybe five minutes to do autographs and stuff. They keep you so separate, whereas here, as soon as your thing is done you’re sitting in the audience making friends and talking to people. They treat you like a normal person. Once your bit is done, you get to go be a fan too. It’s not always like that. And just the honesty you get from people; the immediate feedback, the comments you get. The questions you get here are usually really smart. Normally with Q&As, the questions are like, “what was the budget?,” “how many days did it take to shoot the movie?” But here you’ll get really specific and really interesting stuff, which is what I’m most looking forward to tonight. Normally you’re here to show a specific movie and talk about that movie. We’re showing a bunch of different stuff, but also just sharing stories about how we got started, our careers, funny stories. It’s a very unique. If wasn’t us, I would love to come and see this with someone else.

Joe: I’d love that, that would be nice.

Adam: Well, we get to do it sometimes, with the DGA or the WGA. We just went to one that was Spielberg, Abrams, and Cameron.

Joe: And it was Abrams and Cameron doing the moderating. It was a Spielberg tribute, but they were there to show their favorite clips of Spielberg movies and go, “tell us about it a little bit.” It was amazing because it was like watching a master class between these three guys who are obviously very big in the industry right now, and they’re very inspirational both past and present, and they’re all just up there shooting the shit. It was the first time I ever heard Spielberg say “fuck.”

Wow, that would blow my mind.

Joe: It punched me in the gut. We looked at each other like, “did Spielberg just say clusterfuck?”

Adam: But it was so normal, and where it would get the most interesting was when they would just get caught up in conversations with each other.

Joe: They were just geeking out.

Adam: That’s when you learned the most, that’s when you got the most interesting information. Whereas when it’s a festival, and you’re there to promote a specific movie, there’s an agenda you have to follow and talk about. So what we’re hoping to accomplish tonight, on a much smaller filmmaker level, is to bring those same types of personal and off-the-cuff stories that you don’t normally get to hear. So hopefully people leave feeling good about giving to the American Legion Hall, which is the main thing. But also, there are so many aspiring writers, filmmakers, and artists who come to things like this so you always want them to leave feeling good about it and not so beaten down.

Joe: Even if it’s just like, “if those two schmoes can do it, so can we.” Because Adam is right, the DGA does a lot of these Q&A things. I was at one were they did Hugo with Scorsese and Cameron and it was just…[makes geekgasm sound]. It was so inspiring just to see these two guys shooting the shit talking about depth of field and what lens they used.

Adam: We don’t know what that stuff means so we won’t be talking about that.

Joe: Not at all. But hearing Scorsese going like, “man, that was really tough,” and you’re like, Scorsese thinks that’s tough? When you see a good movie you’re inspired, but when you hear a little about the process of it, as a filmmaker or an aspiring filmmaker, it gets you excited to get behind the camera.

It sort of humanizes the gods and makes it not seem like such an impossible task.

Joe: Yeah. And it’s like what Adam was saying before, the Drafthouse loves making the communal experience in such as way as to include the filmmaker. The fact that we’re all in this together tonight means that hopefully, aside from the fact that there’s a really cool stage up here [at the Ritz], there won’t be too much of a boundary between us and the fans, the family, and the friends that have come out here. Yes it’s for a good cause, but to me I feel it’s one big family gathering. We all get to sit around and talk about our favorite movies.

That’s what the Drafthouse is all about. So let’s talk about some of the stuff we’re going to be seeing tonight, starting with Chillerama. Obviously you guys are fans of anthology horror films.

Joe: What’s an anthology?

It’s basically when you film a bunch of random shit and then host a screening of it at the Drafthouse.

Adam: [To Joe] Oh, like how you made Wrong Turn 2.

Joe: Ah, good point. And everything you’ve done.

Adam: Hey, one of my things had a script, ok?

Joe: Yeah great, the one you didn’t direct.

It was my intention to inspire a fist fight between you two.

Joe: Oh it’ll happen, don’t worry. By the end of the night we’ll probably have our own Fantastic Debate.

If we’re lucky. So tell me a little about the origin of Chillerama.

Adam: Well, it started about 12 years ago. When Adam Rifkin was making Detroit Rock City, Tim Sullivan was one of the producers on that. The two of them started talking about their love of monsters, B-movies, and Famous Monsters of Filmland. It really started with, “what if we made the movie version of Famous Monsters of Filmland.” And then they promptly forgot about it for a decade. And then, there are these Masters of Horror dinners that they hold every couple months in L.A., which for the past few years Joe and I have been lucky enough to be invited to those. It’s still the weirdest thing.

Joe: You sit there like a total fanboy. I mean I look around and I’m surrounded by Guillermo del Toro, Joe Dante, John Landis, Wes Craven, and, wait, why is Michael Mann here? Doesn’t matter, this is awesome. But Rifkin was there and Sullivan, the guys who had gone before us. For us it was, we were the guys on the one end of the table who couldn’t fucking believe we were there. We were more the Masturbaters of Horror. But we got to know them. I’d always been a huge fan of Rifkin’s work and they asked us to hang out one night. We started commiserating about all of our favorite b-movies, why we love going to the movies, and the drive-in culture that seems to be dissipating. We all realized there were a lot of creative juices flowing at that table. That’s when they presented to us the old Famous Monsters of Filmland idea that developed into Chillerama. Rifkin had all these different scenarios that he had kind of plotted out with Tim. Almost like doing things the Corman way, we were then assigned our projects.

The Corman way? So in other words, the posters were already there, you guys just had to come in and create the movie?

Joe: That’s exactly it. Rifkin actually had posters for each one. So he says, “Green, you’re doing [The Diary of Anne Frankenstein] because you’re Jewish. Sullivan, you’re doing the gay one because you’re gay. Rifkin you’re doing Wadzilla because,well, you want to do a giant sperm movie. Lynch, you gotta do everything else.”

So your task is just creating the wrap-around story? That’s not important at all to an anthology film, right?

Joe: I could have just slapped something together that would have been half the length, which I’m sure some people would’ve been very thrilled with that. But because we’re such big fans of the anthology horror genre, a great anthology has a wrap-around that invests you all the way to the end. I always think back to the Creepshow one. Even though you don’t have much with Tom Atkins and the kid, and it’s mostly the comic book, it’s the comic book that started the thing off. At the end, obviously Tom Atkins gets his comeuppance, but it’s earned because you’ve been following what the kid has loved for all these years and now you’re like, “stick it to the man!” But it had a coda to it. So in doing this drive-in zombie thing, I can’t just at the very last second have three minutes of zombie chaos and then no one gives a shit. By having the wrap-arounds have a little more weight to them, it’s that very sneaky way to make the audience care a little bit about the people watching these movies. They’re watching the movies that you are, we’re all in it together; again the communal experience. Now you take those people whom you related to and throw them into the worst scenario possible, and hopefully the audience prays that they make it out alive. Having that coda felt like a great way of being a little bit more unique with the anthology horror genre, but also being able to allow it as a device to propel Green, Sullivan, and Rifkin to do whatever they wanted. If you go to the Alamo Drafthouse, you’re going to be able to go to a double or triple feature that the programmer has designed. The movies may not have a lot in common, but they have some kind of throughline. So being able to have my segment as a connective structure to allow these guys to do whatever they want was the most freeing part.

So Adam, your thoughts on being assigned The Diary of Anne Frankenstein because you’re Jewish?

Joe: That’s racist!

Adam: Originally, when they brought this up, Joe and I both said “no, thank you.” Right now in Hollywood, there are 500 people talking about making an anthology together. Every five minutes someone says, “we’ll make the next Creepshow.” Look, you’re never gonna make the next Creepshow and, what’s different about this anthology? The first time we talked about it, I was just leaving to start Hatchet 2 so I didn’t have time. But the idea of it being a celebration of a century of cinema and doing a noir movie, that’s what started to make it seem different. And I do short films all the time so I didn’t think it would be that big of a time commitment. Cut to two years later and it was not easy at all.

I gather that’s more of a commitment than you had anticipated.

Definitely. So they brought me the title, The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, I thought, “who the fuck is ever gonna wanna touch that title.” I said to them, “well, what is it?” They responded, “we don’t know, that’s your job.” Then I began to embrace the idea of it being my own Universal monster movie, but the version that never came out…for good reason. I contextualized it as if they had a great actor to play Hitler and he got sick or died right before the shoot, and they just grabbed the gaffer and told him to play Hitler even though he couldn’t speak German. And once the whole thing became about doing a Mel Brooks type thing and making fun of Hitler the whole time, I was much more comfortable with it. There’s no concentration camps, there’s no serious subject matter about the war at all. It’s funny because, on the page, everyone expects that one to be the most offensive and it’s probably the tamest out of all of them. It’s total straight comedy which is what I started doing and what I was really happy to get back into. On a more personal note, when I shot Diary of Anne Frankenstein, I had just come off of Hatchet 2 which was supposed to be the victory lap for myself and my crew. The first one had turned into this big thing and now we could go do the sequel that we’d always talked about when we made the first one; it was going to be fun. But it wasn’t fun at all, it was the most brutal awful shoot.

Joe: I was on set one day for a slight little cameo I did. Walking on that set, not only was everybody sick and walking around like zombies, but there was this tension in the air. I was like, “wow, I thought this was supposed to be fun.” I mean it was great because Adam got it all done in the very small amount of time he did, but it was obvious that it was a grueling process.

Adam: Yeah, it was really hard. So I was coming off of that and I was really disenchanted with directing in general. Usually that happens the first time you see a cut of any movie you make. I thought I was going to die at that point. I had been going so strong since [Hatchet], it had been one movie into another one. I needed a break, but now I had already enlisted in doing this stupid fucking Diary of Anne Frankenstein thing. But five minutes into shooting that I realized, “oh my god, that’s why I like doing this.” It was the most fun, rewarding experience. Joe would get texts at like one in the afternoon saying: hey, we’re done for the day.

Joe: I hated those texts. Originally, it was supposed to be five days of shooting for you, right?

Adam: It was supposed to be five twelve-hour days, and we ended up doing four half days. It was going so fast and it was so fun.

Joe: I was getting all these texts like, “oh, we’re having a great time,” and “I think we’re going be done by one” so I would just text back, “fuck you, asshole.” But I will say, and I can say this for the entire production, having ArieScope on this and to watch the family spirit that ran rampant through Adam’s productions now on my segments as well, there was just a shorthand that everybody had that was so gratifying. It was long hours, the food sucked, and barely anybody got paid, but everybody was having a great time doing it. After doing Knights of Badassdom, which is a much bigger movie, to hang out with your friends and make something we’d never seen before with no rules to govern us was so gratifying. It made me realize again that I love making movies. Yes, this content might not be for everybody, and my grandmother will probably never seen it, but you can tell just by watching it that there is a joy to the process. Because the movie is about movies. Cecil Kaufman (played by Richard Riehle) in beginning talks about the love of cinema and why everybody goes to the movies, and the characters in the movie are talking in movie quotes. That’s how we do it, we talk in the language of cinema. So to get that on screen, as difficult as this side project was, it was still so much fun to do and we’re so proud of what we did with what little we had.

That’s the passion that’s allowed you guys to resonate so deeply with Drafthouse audiences. So now that Chillerama is in the can, let’s talk about some things you guys have coming up. Adam, you’re doing a documentary?

Adam: Yes, Digging Up The Marrow. We’re making that right now, but it’s going to be a long process. Alex Pardee, who I think is the greatest living urban artist out there, he came up to me at a convention and handed me a pamphlet with a note that just said, “thank you for the inspiration.” I didn’t know it was him. I didn’t know what he looked like, I’d only seen his art. I ended up reaching out to him and we just starting talking about our love of monsters. We talked about where the ideas for monsters come from; people who claim they’ve really seen monsters and things like that. We didn’t know what we were going to do, but slowly we started putting it together. In particular, one person reached out to us who we both thought was crazy and we thought about the possibility of centering it around this guy. So it’s been a very experimental thing. My original goal was to have a cut of it done by summer, but then [Holliston] got picked up and that’s been very involved. Then I gotta get shooting on Hatchet 3 started in April and then I’ve got Killer Pizza which I’m doing for Chris Columbus. So Digging Up The Marrow is a side project that Alex and I have been working on together. The greatest thing about where I’m at in my career is that I don’t have to chase projects anymore. I’ve been offered things I don’t want to do, and the fact that I have my own company that can get stuff made means I can experiment and have fun. Chillerama was definitely an experiment. But now I’m making a sitcom which is what I came here to do originally, I came here to make this TV show. It’s funny that now everyone knows me as the horror director and now I’m starring in a sitcom, but that’s what I got into this to do. And then to do something like Digging Up The Marrow, I’m very lucky that I get to do that. There are other people out there pounding the pavement just trying to get a fucking job. They don’t know what the movie is, they may not want to do it, but they just need that next job. So I’m very lucky. I’m really excited about Digging Up The Marrow, but what’s cool is that I don’t really know what it’s going to be yet. That’s sort of the joy of making it.

I can’t wait to see what that turns out to be. Joe, I’d like to get an update and some insights on Knights of Badassdom if you’d be so kind.

Joe: Sure! We’re finishing film now, and the Drafthouse has been nice enough to let us show some clips. We’re actually showing one clip tonight, we don’t want to give too much away. When we went to Comic-Con with it, we were trying to figure out what we wanted to show. But everybody knows it’s about LARPing.

It’s a documentary as well, right?

Joe: (laughs) Yeah, it’s Darkon 2, just with a much bigger cast doing dramatic recreations of it. We’re in post now and hopefully it’ll be done very soon and we’ll be out by early-mid next year.

Adam: I’ve seen it. Well, I haven’t seen the completed movie as it’s not completed yet. Obviously I’m biased because I want to see him succeed, but what they did right was that they’re not making fun of LARPing. They fucking loved it, owned it, and believed in it. That’s why the movie works so well. You’re not on the outside laughing at people, you actually get it, see the joy in it, and kind of want to do it yourself. Then the whole thing takes a crazy turn into this fantastical fun thing, and it’s been great that they’ve been holding back on that.

Joe: Yeah it’s like Spielberg with Jaws, you don’t want to let Bruce out too early. I’m not saying there’s a giant shark in the woods killing LARPers.

Adam: It’s a Sharktopus.

Exclusive!

Joe: Yeah, it’s a (stops mid-joke), oh, God, that’s awful. I wanted to make The Goonies for grownups. I know Amblin is a really hot thing to tag onto your movie right now, but those were the movies we watched other than Excalibur, and Conan the Barbarian, Chimes at Midnight, and The Lion in Winter.  We didn’t want to make a flat out comedy, we wanted to make something akin to what Ghostbusters did. They shot a film that looks like a serious drama, or a thriller, or a horror movie.

It’s a movie about entrepreneurial businessmen…with ghosts.

Joe: Exactly! But even though you have really funny people in it, you treat everything around them as real. That’s what makes the difference.

A hodgepodge of Goonies, Ghostbusters, Excalibur, and live-action role play? Sounds pretty badass indeed.

Today’s Reheated Nugget: Deep Blue Sea.

What Makes It Bad?

Deep Blue Sea is a killer shark movie much like Jaws. Well, point of fact, it’s almost nothing like Jaws. Jaws is a film about exploring the universal, and deep-seeded fear of the unknown. Deep Blue Sea has genetically altered CG fish. Jaws was an experiment in low budget filmmaking that furthered the idea of creating atmosphere through clever withholding in service of its overlying theme. Deep Blue Sea has people gettin’ et up. And boy do they get et up epically. Some producer, who now likely works exclusively for the SyFy channel, was apparently quite miffed by the relative lack of explicit violence in Jaws. So now, armed with awkward, rubbery CG that wouldn’t fool Ray Charles’ even blinder grandson, he punishes the cast of this film by ripping their Sims avatars to bloody bits in savage shark attacks. An emotional gravitas you may be tricked into perceiving upon the death of any given character is ripped to shreds as we watch that character crassly…ripped to shreds. Only Lucio Fulci seems to hate his actors as much as does Renny Harlin; they are sinners in the mouth of an angry, shark-shaped God.

There’s a painful irony in the fact that a movie featuring a major plot device involving genetically enhanced brains is so irresponsibly idiotic. Disagree? Well put down that tub of dry Play-Doh you’re eating for a second while I break it down like a fraction. How did none of the other scientists figure out that crazy boss bitch had tampered with the sharks’ genes? Did they think it was natural for a mako shark to grow to the size of a U-boat? Had any of these moron biologists ever seen a goddamn shark before? And then there’s inconceivably imbecilic moment just after the sharks utilize Stellan Skarsgård as a battering ram, that is a real sentence that really describes a real scene in this film. As this glass, apparently rated for the water pressure of deep sea exploration but not for the impact of one Swedes face, begins to slowly crack, our heroes simply stand around and stare at for a solid minute. Evidently not one of these scientists got their degree in Recognizing Stuff That Will Kill You…ology.

Just when you thought it was safe to only commit one paragraph to the stupidity of Deep Blue Sea, you remember Renny Harlin was involved. So let’s quickly recount what this film taught me about sharks. My preexisting knowledge of sharks, feeble though Deep Blue Sea proved it to be, included understanding that sharks can detect blood in water from great distances which allows them to track their prey. What I didn’t know is that this hypersensitivity is not specific to blood. Sharks actually have a gland that secretes heavy doses of LSD into their system. Like ball-tripping club kids, this allows sharks to smell colors…or at least that’s the only explanation I could muster for why the shark in the opening of Deep Blue Sea is attracted to the red wine that drops from the boat party into the water. Also, sharks have the evolutionarily advantageous ability to change size to conform with whatever hallway or vent shaft they happen to be trapped in. Despite the fact that you could build an aquarium inside one of these supersharks, in which you could then house several regular sharks, they manage to fit into whatever smaller and smaller places are needed to create dopey action sequences. They’re Latin name is Carcharodon Accordion. That’s kind of stuff you learn from Shark Weak programing.

L.L. Cool J’s character is a screenwriting facepalm. He plays a cook who rises to the occasion when called upon to fight. Because if there is one cinematic exemplar to which one should aspire…it’s Steven Seagal in Under Siege. Ironically, L.L.’s character is like a tray of muffins taken out of the oven before they were completely done. He is obnoxiously religious throughout the whole film, but then randomly glibly utters the line, “all death is pointless”? I thought if you were a Christian death meant you got to go to that place, oh what’s it called, heaven! At one point near the end, L.L. refers to the last shark as “the devil.” Really L²? Don’t get me wrong, this is exactly the type of arrogance I’d expect from someone with such a romantically self-assured nom-de-plume, but let’s try and look at this from the shark’s perspective shall we? Was it the shark that plucked you out of the water and starting messing with your midbrain? Was it the shark that stabbed you in the eye with a crucifix making him permanently cross-eyed? And was it the shark that recorded a rap song with the lyrics “deepest, bluest, my hat is like a shark’s fin?” No, because sharks have a much stronger grasp of lyrical structure according to recent data I may or may not have made up.

And how about that ending, huh? Filled with drama, excitement, and scienceIguess. The trio of ungobbled heroes has reached the surface pursued by the one remaining shark. They are completely free of the water and are positioned on the battlements atop the facility. Game over, right? As long as they don’t go back in the water, they just have to wait to be rescued and they are home free! But wait, what’s this? The shark is trying to escape the holding pen? Suddenly our heroes look at each other, all of them sensing the turn of the tables. “Guys, we can’t let this shark leave the facility. WHAT WILL WE DO IF THIS SHARK REACHES THE OCEAN! OH UNKNOWABLE UNIVERSE!” Why if he were to do that, he could potentially…be a shark in his natural habit slightly better equipped to do what sharks already do. He could disappear into the vastness of the ocean and never bother us again! Yup, totally worth sacrificing your life to prevent.

Why I Love It!

If you’re going to make a mindless neo-exploitation film, your best bet is to craft something in the elegant monster-eats-a-smorgasbord-of-people genre. Whenever the audience begins to pick up on your flimsy narrative of paper-thin characters, you can send along your agent of distraction to devour those concerns in a stunning display of nature versus standards. Revisiting Deep Blue Sea reminded me of how much I loved Shark Night 3D.  The two films actually have the same root concept, shark attacks that achieves the staggering biological accuracy of recognizing that sharks eat things and have teeth, but approach it from two hilariously divergent angles. Where Shark Night 3D was a self-aware over-the-top action film, Deep Blue Sea actually thinks it’s a legitimate sci-fi monster epic. They believe so wholeheartedly that we will believe their bullshit science wholeheartedly. The score tries to create human drama and tragedy when in fact we are watching this movie with the same unspoken contract by which we view NASCAR or professional hockey; ignoring the immeasureable boredom and self-diluted, manufactured spectacle for the momentary thrill of crashes and fights. L.L. Cool J’s character is the one element of the film that creates a case for it not taking itself ridiculously seriously, but unfortunately no one bothered to tell him that.

***SPOILERS IN THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH***

Speaking of watching Deep Blue Sea for the tawdriest of reasons, it would be categorically impossible to write about this film without mentioning Sam L. Jackson’s death. Now we all know that Samuel L. Jackson is not a man, but rather a thunder-voiced Afro titan spawned of the ancient gods of Badassery and Impeccable Style. It is therefore appropriate to assume that his character will survive any supernatural or otherwise dangerous situation in any film; Jurassic Park notwithstanding as palentologists have incontrovertibly proven that raptors are racist lizards. But unfortunately Sir Sam L was not informed of the similarly recent ichthyological finding that sharks hate monologues. Just after his rousing and hysterically far-fetched account of how he survived an avalanche, he assures the team that their escape is certain as long as they believe in it. He is then snacked upon by a shark who somehow leaps into the room via an observation pool. It’s like my grandfather always used to say, “Bartleby, if you go around telling fish stories all the time, Samuel L. Jackson will get eaten by a shark leaping into the room via an observation pool.” Sage words indeed.

Deep Blue Sea is only a killer shark movie if you look at it from the water. They villainize the ancient predators as if they were in anyway responsible for their own actions. Personally, I find Deep Blue Sea to be considerably improved if thought of as a shark prison break movie. Having committed no crime, these majestic beasts are locked into cages and subjected to inhumane experiments by the evil wardens. When they finally break free, they must tunnel through environments unknown to them, thwarting (read: eating) their captors in the hopes of regaining their freedom. Just as the last surviving escapee reaches the final gate, he is struck down by a cold-hearted, emotionless brick pile played by Thomas Jane. But in their quest for liberty, they completely change the system. I therefore humbly suggest they retitle the film The Sharktank Redemption.

Junkfood Pairing: Ryan’s Buffet

Much like the nautical predators of Deep Blue Sea had a veritable actor buffet at their fin-gertips, so shall you be treated to another day of gorging yourself flabby. But since you’ll be eating Thanksgiving leftovers from now until New Years Eve, why not go out for change to the temple of obesity that is the Ryan’s Buffet. Once you’ve gobbled down sixteen plates of what, by all reports, is apparently edible food. Make your way over to the dessert buffet and grab yourself a Micheal RapaTORT topped with some Saffron (Borrows) and a dollop of L.L. Cool Whip. But be mindful of the Stellan Sneezegård and…Samuel L. Jackson.

Continue your binge with more in the Junkfood Cinema archive.

Editor’s Note: If you don’t want some of the finer points of The Muppets spoiled for you (uh, including the ending), maybe sit this one out (on a boat somewhere, possibly? with an attractive lady pig and a nearby rainbow?). However, if you’re more concerned with spoilers regarding the film’s copious cameos, you’ve got the frog-green light to read this one.

I am a cynic. That’s not so much a startling admission as it is recognition of the ugly little monster that sits on my shoulder every time I go into any given screening these days. This monster whispers in my ear the titles of all the Hollywood films over the last few years that have displayed a lack of originality, poor acting, and a general lack of heart. It tempts me to predispose myself toward negativity and force the movie to win me over. That same monster was sitting on my shoulder even as I sat down to see The Muppets, a film to which I had very much been looking forward. That monster was there despite how much I loved The Muppet Show when I saw it in rerun as a kid and despite my having worn out my VHS copy of The Muppet Movie many years ago.

Ultimately, this film not only silenced that little monster, but it clobbered it with one of Miss Piggy’s left hooks and replaced it with a familiar singing frog whom I had forgotten how much I truly missed. As it turns out, The Muppets is the cure for the common cynic.

I will say that The Muppets had the advantage of opening with a Pixar short, a Toy Story Pixar short no less. Small Fry showcased Pixar’s signature wit and comedic timing as it tackled the one facet of the toy universe not addressed in any of the three Toy Story films: fast food kids meal prizes. It proved to be another feather in their already-garish cap. But it also meant that, by the time the Disney logo appeared on screen, that familiar castle heralded by fireworks the orchestral reminder of Jiminy Cricket’s timeless song, I was already smiling from ear to ear.

The opening of the film is an endearing, sing-songy introduction to the newest Muppet: Walter. Walter happens to be the Muppets’ biggest fan. From this point forward, it becomes clear that this film is one fan’s personal journey from childhood infatuation to uncorrupted grownup adoration and finally to professional and artistic collaboration. That fan is The Muppets writer and co-star Jason Segel by way of his creation Walter. Segel’s love of the Muppets is well-documented, and his desire to make a Muppet movie first appeared in the press shortly after his film Forgetting Sarah Marshall ended with his own Dracula puppet musical. Segel is so elated to finally get to realize his dream project that he documents his entire love affair within the script.

The prologue informs us of Walter’s discovery of the Muppets themselves, of a shy, awkward boy who was different and found solace in the magic of the Muppets. We see Jason Segel’s character growing up with the Muppets right next to Walter, but their stories are completely inextricable. Walter is almost the Tyler Durden to Segel’s Jack. The moment Segel fell in love with the Muppets is told through his subsequent song, one that espouses that everything is wonderful and perfect, a tribute to how the unflappable optimism of those beloved characters instills the audience with that same uplifting sense of comfort and joy. By the time we get to Kermit‘s song “Pictures in My Head,” Segel is addressing his sorrow over the decline in Muppet popularity and the long span of time since the last theatrical Muppet adventure. There is even a song in which he and Walter each ask themselves if they are man or Muppet; equating to Jack’s moment of realization in Fight Club. By the end, Segel’s character is encouraging Walter to go and be with the Muppets, to be a part of their show. He is lending that little part of himself forever to the Muppet legacy. It is a tender, beautiful moment that brings to poignant conclusion this long-held aspiration.

So if this is all about Segel, why doesn’t the movie feel saddled by ego? Because Segel understands every iota of what made us all fall in love with the Muppets and allows us to do so again. He understands every facet, every joke, every fiber (no pun intended) of their appeal. We’re not watching an artist pat himself on the back for the fine job he’s done, we’re watching a fan give entirely of himself in worship of something that has inspired him his whole life. He creates a film that reboots the franchise without neglecting its roots. First and foremost, the creation of Walter as Segel’s human character’s brother is testament to the transcendent quality of the Muppets. They exist in a world wherein their function as entertainers, their long illustrious history and The Muppet Show from when we knew them as kids, is acknowledged. But this is also a world wherein they are not seen as puppets but rather as their own race. As the audience, our history with these characters – our deep-seated connection with them – allows us to fully accept this weird discrepancy. There are also little in-jokes about montages and traveling by “map” that speak to their own past as well as play into the current narrative. Segel allows the preexisting tone and spirit of the Muppets to shine and take the lead, playing along with every unapologetically silly beat without a scrap of ego.

Even the music, possibly even especially the music, in The Muppets is informed by their legacy. Going back to Kermit’s song, it isn’t just Segel lamenting the fact that we haven’t seen a Muppet film in ages. Much like any other song from any other Muppet film, it’s a pretty melody that communicates a simple, universal theme. In the case of “Pictures in My Head,” the theme is the pain of growing apart from good friends. This is the moment I found most touching and where I am not ashamed to say I teared up in much the same way I do now whenever I hear the surprisingly haunting “Rainbow Connection,” which played like a giant, warm embrace when it appeared near the end of the film. Kermit’s speech just before the finale reminds us all that whether or not this particular film achieves critical or box office success, the Muppets and their storied, largely unaltered identity will persevere; waiting for the chance to make us laugh again. This declaration, a renewed commitment to their celebrated optimism, then greatly invigorates and makes triumphant the climactic reprise of the opening song. By the end, I didn’t feel like this was Jason Segel’s Muppet Movie, I just felt fortunate to, like him, have had a personal relationship with these characters since childhood and enjoyed getting reacquainted with them.

I will admit that not everything in The Muppets worked for me. Amy Adams, adorable and in keeping with the spirit of the Muppets as she was, did the film no favors with her song “Me Party.” Granted, this wasn’t her fault, as she did not write the song into the film, but it just feels like filler; a tenuous bridge to her already well-established emotional state. It actually runs counter, tonally, to the rest of the film. She complains about being alone and then celebrates her isolation from her boyfriend who she then wants to marry? I also thought the second act dragged a bit with not enough Muppetocity for my taste. At first, I also wanted to chastise the film for its musical renditions of current songs and the inclusion of cameos by contemporary television stars and pop singers. Surely, I thought, this will inexcusably date the film. But then I remembered the original Muppet Movie and its inclusion of a guest appearance by Paul Williams. Touche, The Muppets, touche.

The Upside: A loving, personal tribute to all things Muppets that celebrates the longevity and emotional relevance of the characters.

The Downside: A song or two may not work for you and it drags just a bit near the middle.

On the Side: The 80s robot character is actually a reference to Segel’s hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother.

This week’s didgeri-don’t: BMX Bandits. 

What Makes It Bad?

BMX Bandits is an adventure film from Australia. Now I know what you’re thinking, what the hell is an “Australia” and aren’t BMX bikes only for children? Like you, I can only glean what little knowledge is available about this uncharted land  from the popular documentary The Road Warrior. BMX Bandits, though supposedly fictional, is a further depiction of life after the Aussiepocalypse. What we learn from BMX Bandits is that the crippling gas shortage documented in The Road Warrior lead to an unsurprising decline in automobile sales. In response, Australia saw a dramatic upswing in BMX bike ownership. The childishness of BMX is a common misconception, but the truth is that this is an incredibly grownup sport. In fact, the abbreviation BMX actually stands for Business Management Xecutive. BMX Bandits is therefore one of the few films that recognizes the incontrovertible fact that the word “dude” is merely a bastardization of “adultitude.” Were this a kiddie sport, the film’s theme song would not begin with the line, “we’re ready to die,” because that would be weird. But it totally does, and it totally isn’t.

The misconception is furthered by the fact that upon first glance, the casual observer may mistake the bike riders in the film for children. This too can be explained. Lingering radiation in the air after the atomic fallout of the Koala Wars caused stunted growth in some of the citizenry, making it appear as if these BMX riders are children. Even the statuesque escaped kangaroo that is Nicole Kidman appears downright adolescent. But clearly with their entrepreneurial and crime-fighting skills, coupled with their propensity for Vaudevillian jokes, these are in fact adults. This is made all the more clear when Kidman transforms into what is clearly a full-grown male during the film whenever performing wide-shot stunts on her bike. She’s so adult she’s actually two of them at once! I mean come on, if these were kids, don’t you think we’d see one parent at some point during the film?

Speaking of attachment issues, it seems as if the protagonists of this film are unable to be apart from their bikes for any length of time. At one point, they decide that the thievery is so rampant in their town that they can nary afford to leave their bikes unattended, even for the span of time it takes to travel down a water slide. The irony, of course, is that they themselves are the greatest thieves in their town. So in spite of the overwhelming risk of rust, these three go barreling down the slippery slides with their BMX bikes out in front of them like ten-speed life preservers. They also refuse to wear anything but BMX racing attire throughout the film. With their chromatically mish-mashed assortment of helmets, striped pants, and shirts bearing the name of the film, they succeed in resembling colorful, candy-coated mental patients from start to finish. But I suppose their obsessive addiction is somewhat warranted given that these are no ordinary bikes. These bikes make the sound of shooting lasers as they fly past stationary cameras and actually have the ability to alternately outrun and catch up to speeding cars and trucks. This has to have something to do with the cars and trucks trying to conserve precious gasoline because otherwise this would just be the product of a mindless script.

The plot of BMX Bandits may seem overly simplistic, and that’s because it is. But again, it is an expression of life in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is Australia. Be not fooled by the shots of gorgeous blue skies and clear ocean waters, this is a lawless land. After all, the film isn’t called BMX Upstanding Members of Society. Hearkening back to its roots as a prison colony, this straightforward story centers on a trio of bandits who happen across a hidden cache of walkie-talkies (the new Australian currency after the “Gibson Incident”) and immediately sell them to their friends for ill-gotten profit. This wanton lawlessness is met by even more lawlessness as thugs pursue our “heroes” at every turn, seeking to reclaim their precious communication devices. When one of their rank is kidnapped by the thugs, the two remaining BMXers gather an entire tribe of little bicycling wallabies and mount a viciously silly attack on those transgressors. But that’s pretty much all we have to go on; the movie is unencumbered by subtext or even secondary plotlines.

As if the unrepentant theft of walkies not enough, the lawlessness of these riders is further illustrated by their brazen disruption of basic commerce as they ride through shopping malls and restaurants. Is there no end to their devious criminality? Although, the infrastructure of their town is doing little to curb their misdeeds: constructing ramps out of all manner of otherwise useful objects and carelessly scattering them about in locations most facilitating of super rad jumps. That same lackluster infrastructure is also what allows the riders to become vigilantes. These bandits basically do all the town’s police work, bringing in bank robbers the police are helpless to apprehend. Their mercenary tendencies will not be sated until they are given their own BMX park. Through completely underhanded means, they secure their prize in a deal with corrupt government officials so shady it’s details are shrouded in secrecy even from the audience.

Why I Love It!

BMX Bandits is but one of many fantastic offerings from the great Brian Trenchard-Smith. BTS has become one of my favorite cult film directors since being introduced to him two years ago by my good friend Brian Kelley (whose twitter handle is @BTSjunkie). This is not the first BTS film to be featured in Junkfood Cinema; his man-hunting opus Turkey Shoot was one of the first JFC alums. With his affinity for wild genre fare and his ability to produce films at often unwisely brisk speeds, Brian Trenchard-Smith has earned a reputation as Australia’s Roger Corman. Like Corman, he has some stinkers that are fun despite themselves and some legitimately quality films as well. Whichever breed of BTS you happen to be watching, you can be certain that the stuntwork will be outstanding. And even though BMX Bandits is cast with mostly children, the clever costuming often obscures the age of the stunt performer on screen and therefore BTS creates, mostly effectively, the illusion that these young kids are climbing atop moving trucks and dodging traffic on their bikes.

Like the best Ozploitation films, BMX Bandits features Aussie bullies. A disturbingly frequent trend in Australian b-movies is the presence of a crude, buffoonish character who understands only violence and crime; these are the bullies. Typically they roam the roadways waiting to torture innocent motorists. But BMX Bandits isn’t satisfied being a typical Ozploitation film. They have TWO Aussie bullies. They got David Argue, the bully from Razorback, and John Ley, the bully from Turkey Shoot, and combined them to form one epic bully conglomerate. But somewhere in the bully gene splicing process, they came up with two barely-functioning oafs who only understand how to inflict pain on themselves for comedic effect. Nevertheless, it serves the film well and represents the Aussie bully equivalent of the 92 NBA Dream Team.

I really do enjoy the juvenile cast here. Normally the thing that irritates me most about kids’ movies is…the kids. They are usually so incessantly precious or, worse, lacking in anything resembling acting talent that I end up wanting to claw my eyes out before the first refrain of the emotionally manipulative score. But this motley crew is geeky, funny, and just crude enough to be both entertaining and genuine. Even Nicole Kidman, the adult version of whom I don’t count myself a fan, is charming and feisty. In addition, the fatty fat rich kid is also quite funny if only because he’s the worst antagonist in recent memory. He’s fooled by the simplest grift, he slips on discarded ice cream falling flat on his back, and his greatest feat of mischief involves detaching a segment of shopping carts in a grocery store parking lot. He’s basically Dennis The Slightly Inconvenient.

Junkfood Pairing: Bloomin’ Onion

You may think me a dingo for selecting this snack for this film because, while a staple of a certain Australian-themed steakhouse, the bloomin’ onion has a multitude of layers, whereas BMX Bandits does not. But if you’ll kind stop thinking faster than me for a moment, smarty smartertons, you’ll take note of the fact that a bloomin’ onion doesn’t so much have layers as it has one thing presented over and over again in succession. Replace onions with BMX bikes, and you’ve got the perfect summation of BMX Bandits. Just be happy I didn’t insist you eat Vegemite. I said g’day mate!

If you’ve got a taste for more, there’s always another helping in the Junkfood Cinema Archive.

I will then buy a beer and a disgustingly awesome snack food for the film as we stand as friends at the bar singing our gang’s…theme song (?).

This week’s punk: Never Too Young to Die

What Makes It Bad?

Never Too Young to Die existed in this very brief span of time in which Hollywood, well not Hollywood but someone with a movie studio and few hundred dollars, thought it would be a great idea to turn young John Stamos into a movie star. Apparently the thought process was that if much bigger studios had success with Emilio Estevez, then surely another vaguely ethnic pretty boy was a surefire win…especially if he’d work for a fraction of Estevez’s asking price. I mean, how could they possibly afford the future star of Free Jack? Stamos, for all his giant hair and muscleheadedness, is quite flat and dull. He seems as if he rolled out of bed and directly onto set without having read a single page of the script. He delivers his lines with a conviction that absolutely screams, “won’t someone please hurry up and invent Full House already?”

Stamos plays Lance Stargrove, the son of master spy Drew Stargrove. Only, get this, he has no idea his dad is a spy. So we get to see Lance whine about his daddy not being there for him while the old man is busy, you know, saving the planet. We get scenes of dad taking care of espionage business set against angst-ridden cavorting on Olympic rings as if those two events hold exactly the same amount of excitement. Or maybe not. There’s probably someone who will watch this movie and think, “Gee, I wish someone would get all these pesky gun battles out of the way so we could focus on this wicked thrilling gymnastics meet.” Drew Stargrove is played by George Lazenby, but as it turns out, his appearance in this film is as brief as his time as James Bond, and just as effective. So naturally, little Lance becomes a spy too, what with his all-too-vital abilities like…jumping on trampolines, mumbling, and achieving victory over his adversaries by throwing shit into the air.

And what an adversary this kid goes up against! He must do battle with the tornado of gender confusion that is Velvet Von Ragner who wants to contaminate the country’s water supply. Ragner is played by, I can’t believe this isn’t a joke, KISS frontman Gene Simmons. Simmons, wearing what is clearly his weekend gardening attire, may not be recognizable without his makeup; or rather in his more differenter makeup and his Cher wig…and Cher wardrobe. From the moment he utters his first line, “Hello turd nuggets,” it’s clear that he lacks the subtlety and quiet dignity of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Ragner’s favorite means of killing involves one hideously long, and desperately obviously plastic, finger nail. It’s every bit as intimidating as being stabbed with a Bugle corn chip or a dull pen cap. Ragner performs burlesque in front of an army of biker punks haughtily singing, “what you see is what you get.” Considering the source, that lyric seems like flagrant false advertising.  If Simmons is not the greatest hermaphrodite archvillain, s/he is definitely in the top 25.

Teaming up with Stamos is honest-to-goodness female agent Danja; or at least I think that’s what she was called, but then people may have just been sneezing at her a lot. Danja is played by 80s flash in the pan Vanity, an actress with as many names as she has dimensions. If you aren’t familiar with Vanity, that’s ok, really. She was brought in as the vaguely Candian love interest to Stamos’s vaguely ethic teen heartthrob. She really delivers–mediocrity–as the agent so badass that she has to take off her shirt to apply a tiny band aid…to her arm. Her love scene with Stamos is among the most awkward mating displays not to be narrated by David Attenborough. She is coming on to him as if his naked body is constructed of more acting work and he is resisting for reasons only he knows and he feels are too personal to share with the audience. So what is his response to her getting progressively more nude on his patio in an act of seduction? He compulsively eats. First he sucks down a Perrier, then he rushes inside for an apple, and then another apple. They finally do end up awkwardly boinking, I’d don’t think anything has so spectacularly lost its sexiness over the last twenty years like the sexy saxophone, but not before Stamos reveals his sexual bulimia.

Along with Vanity (such a ridiculous name) Stamos is also aided by his token best Asian friend who is a veritable convenient store of techno plot devices. Cliff, as he is so called, is somehow able to create flamethrowers and gadget-laden motorcycles in his dorm room without anyone noticing or offering him something better than community college. He is a strange cross between Q and Data from The Goonies..if either or both of those characters ever dressed like a Devo cosmonaut. The existence of Cliff does call into question Stamos’s later “insult” of Ragner as a “Japanese fruit fly.” Not that we didn’t already call it into question as a suitable slam, but maybe don’t use thinly-veiled, and poorly constructed, derogatory Asian slurs considering Cliff is the one saving your ass every ten minutes.

Never Too Young to Die is another movie featuring a depiction of punk culture so accurate it borders on documentary. For one thing, and this is something most people don’t know, punks run in packs with an age range of 18-45. They love to deck out their motorcycles like horses; not fire-breathing hell stallions as one would expect, but rather dainty little carousel ponies. They dress in post-apocalyptic attire because no one in mainstream society bothered to tell them that there was in fact no apocalypse. This is why we get villains like Green Skunk, Step-Dad Biker, and Chaka Khan the Barbarian who was never afforded the education necessary to come up with threats better than, “we’re going to tenderize your butt.” But where Never Too Young to Die really nails punk culture is its depiction of their worship of transsexual terrorists. If I had a nickel for every…you know what, I can’t even finish that joke. This movie harbors as much understanding of punks as I have of balanced diets.

Why I Love It!

This is the kind of film that could only exist in the 80s. In addition to the hockey-haired hero, the Casio-heavy soundtrack, and the plucky Asian friend, this film is firmly rooted in its decade of release. Watching the army of villainous henchmen, all I kept thinking was, “hey, you got Road Warrior on my teen spy flick…no, you got teen spy flick on my Road Warrior.” Finally I just gobbled up the whole thing and realized that the two great tastes went deliciously awry together. Sure, they could make–and unfortunately have made–teen spy flicks nowadays. But I can almost guarantee you Nick Cannon or Zack Efron or Jersey Twitterplanking would not be going up against hermaphroditic supervillains to the sounds of syntho-electric guitar and a theme song comprised almost solely of the character’s last name. Plus, if modernized, the action sequences in Never Too Young to Die would lose their we-had-to-shoot-this-in-a-day aesthetic. And as underwhelming as he is, Stamos’s 80s despite-his-best-efforts charisma really does make the film…an ill-advised novelty.

Never Too Young to Die is not available on DVD, and rightfully so. It is not the sort of film that demands of a wide viewership, or any viewership composed of people who like themselves, their eyeballs, and their precious time. It is however, to freaks like me, a VHS gem of the highest caliber. This sort of cinematic zeppelin is precisely why we collect VHS in the first place, and just having proof that this film exists justifies the outrageous expense of purchasing it. Oh it was only $1, but much of my little-remaining dignity was forfeit.

In addition to Gene Simmons’ insane-but-somehow-captivating-in-a-way-that-will-cost-my-therapist-thousands-of-hours-of-his-life performance, there is also a cameo from a horror icon that makes Never Too Young to Die worth…this sentence. Robert Englund appears as a nerdy computer technician first seen in a smart varsity sweater. This, of course, marking possibly the only time Englund has appeared wearing a sweater in a film and didn’t end up killing people in their dreams.

Junkfood Pairing: Lady Fingers

In honor of Ragner’s method of dispatch, and bold fence-ridding about his/her own sex, I highly suggest devouring as many of these “upscale” pastries as you view this decidedly “working for scale” action film. Maybe if you eat enough ladyfingers, dipped in copious amounts of rum, Stamos’s homophobic statements during the climactic fight scene will actually be funny…instead of wildly uncomfortable.

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