Justin Robinson's Blog, page 27

Rules of Writing: The Big Red Button

Not long ago, I watched The Cabin in the Woods for the first time. It came highly recommended, with both friends and critics (and critical friends) praising its innovative deconstruction of survival horror tropes. And, for the most part, that’s exactly what it was. I was enjoying it until the beginning of the third act where a gigantic blemish appeared right in the middle of the screen: The Big Red Button.

Press in case of narrative difficulties.

Any story of struggle has to be an underdog story. When the hero triumphs over the villain no one cares unless the hero was outgunned, outmatched, and outnumbered. Well, unless you’re talking about The Avengers, which was two and a half hours of six jocks kicking the special kid’s ass and taking his lunch money, with the only real threat coming courtesy of the U.S. government (thanks a lot, Obama!). The hero has to overcome some long odds or there’s no suspense. So the writer packs obstacle upon obstacle in front of the protagonist until it seems like there’s literally no way the poor bastard will ever survive, let alone triumph. Look at Die Hard, not only the greatest action movie ever made, but a step-by-step manual on how to navigate office buildings and murder foreign nationals. John McClane is trapped by thirteen guys with machine guns, and all he has is a pistol. His vulnerability is telegraphed in his lack of shoes. His only ally is the fat dad from Family Matters. The only way shit could be worse is if he were married to Bonnie Bedelia or something.

This is where things get a little difficult. If the bad guys are so bad ass and the hero is so fucked, then how does he win? Oftentimes, this comes down to the one thing the bad guys over looked, a Big Red Button that, when pushed, causes the entire evil scheme to come crashing down. The rules to using the Big Red Button correctly are ultimately subjective, but following them will insure that you don’t need Robert Downey Jr. deploying his charisma to obfuscate massive logic gaps.

Maybe the most famous Big Red Button in the history of storytelling belongs to the Death Star. See, the GALACTIC EMPIRE (sue me, that’s how it’s written in the crawl), created a space station that was, in the sneering words of Admiral Chokeabitch, “the ultimate power in the universe.” It flew around at a stately pace and could blow up planets with a bizarre cannon that seemed to fire from several thousand miles next to it. The secret plans to the station revealed a weakness (the Big Red Button): a little exhaust port. Shoot the thing and a chain reaction gets set off reducing the entire station into light, particles, and a CGI ring. As much fun as pop culture nerds make of the Death’s Star’s fatal flaw, it is a case of the Big Red Button being employed correctly.

For one, the exhaust port isn’t an automatic “I win!” button. No, just to get there you have to fly along a trench through laser fire thick enough to walk on while TIE fighters swarm around you like angry bees. Then the shot has to be exactly right or the Death Star shrugs it off, sends a letter home to the wife of the one Stormtrooper who got killed by sparks, and blows up your fucking planet. Additionally, the weak point is described as an “exhaust port” and thus presumably serves some kind of a function. It’s there for a solid reason, or solid enough to excuse its presence. And lastly, the whole point is that is represents the arrogance of the Empire. It’s there because they can’t conceive of something as small as a single man being a threat to their moon-sized planet killer. So while the Death Star’s Big Red Button might be a little silly after a generation of snarky fan articles, it works as effective, relatively logical storytelling.

The Big Red Button in Cabin in the Woods does not. For those who haven’t seen it, the film posits every survival horror film about a bunch of kids going off to a secluded cabin and being hunted by some monster as the fault of a shadowy government installation beneath. The cabin contains a way to summon any number of bogeyman and the teens pick the method of their demise when they inevitably rummage through Satan’s basement for the right artifact to tickle. It’s like summoning Gozer, but there are no hilarious options. The best sequence in the film occurs at the end of the second act when the surviving teenagers discover the secret base under the titular cabin and take an elevator ride down. The elevator formerly housed the Redneck Torture Zombies the teens inadvertently chose as their executioner, and our heroes repurpose it as an entry into the secret base. As they descend into the earth they pass other clear elevator cages containing the different creatures they could have chosen. Each bogeyman is an inspired redesign of a recognizable monsters from film history. The scene itself is both chilling and lyrical, for a moment elevating Cabin in the Woods to art.

Once inside the base, the teens find a literal Big Red Button and press it. At that moment, all of the cubes housing every monster open into the base itself and proceed to slaughter the people that work there. All I could think of when this happened was what possible function could that button have served? Its only possible function would be to kill every single person in the base (a base, incidentally, that the operators believe is the only thing standing against the apocalypse). Why would that ever be on the building’s schematics? And while we’re at it, why would the elevators housing the monsters even open into the base itself? Did they need easy access for a veterinarian in case one of the Cenobites got worms or something?

The simple answer is this: the elevators only open into the building because the screenwriters needed a way for the teens to get into the base. The button is there to allow them to win against impossible odds. There is no logical reason for such a thing to exist, and it acts as an instant (literal) “I win” button. There is no struggle. Find the button, press it, and the bad guys have been defeated. Easy peasy.

It’s writing at its absolute laziest, marring an otherwise fun film about the horror genre. The hilarious thing, from an outsider’s perspective is this: okay, so maybe they have some reason to install a button whose only purpose is to horribly kill the very people whose existence keeps the world turning. Wouldn’t you, you know, install some password protection? A key maybe? Hell, even James Bond villains will put a covering on it.

Cabin in the Woods hinges on the Big Red Button and provides us with the clearest case of the trope being used to rob a film of its tension. Kind of makes me long for the days of the exhaust port barely smaller than a womp rat.

Filed under: I'm Just Sayin, Level Up, Moment of Excellence, Puffery Tagged: Cabin in the Woods, Die Hard, Rules of Writing, star wars, the big red button

The Hophead’s Lament

Satan does not appear in this film.

Reefer Madness is the gold standard of Depression-era anti-drug hysteria. In the years since its debut, it has become an unintentional cult classic. Combining a grade-schooler’s understanding of marijuana with delightfully unhinged performances, it casts pot as a demon weed with all the power of crystal meth, PCP, and Wolverine when he has amnesia. Other movies tried to do the same thing, and though they are not classics, they fail just as spectacularly, like this week’s Yakmala entry, 1935’s The Cocaine Fiends a.k.a. The Pace That Kills.

Tagline: The white dust from hell!

More Accurate Tagline: The white dust from Walgreens!

Guilty Party: Normally when it comes to this section, I blame the film’s director. Sometimes I blame the writer, occasionally the producer, possibly a lead actor, if it’s obvious who greenlit the film in question. For The Cocaine Fiends I’m forced to go farther afield and blame William Randolph Hearst and the British East India Company. The former gets the blame for using yellow journalism to kick off the same hysteria that birthed these films (solely to protect his personal fortune in timber) and the latter for addicting all of China to opium to get at the sweet, sweet tea they were hiding. Thanks, you rich fuckwads. You screwed up the scope of history for the sake of a buck.

Synopsis: The film wastes no time in laying out its thesis, namely that cocaine is bad. It does so with a misspelled and poorly-formatted opening crawl begging for “an aroused and educated public awareness.” I suggest stroking the public’s awareness until it grows turgid, but to stop before it loses control and sprays educational pamphlets all over everything.

A couple gangsters want to get to a nearby town to start selling the Bolivian marching powder they have in the back of their car. The fuzz is after them, so one guy, Nick the Pusher, gets out with the product and hides in a diner while the driver keeps going. I have no idea how they manage the drop without the cops seeing. Nick flirts with Jane, who appears to be the only employee in this diner. He says she belongs in the city and he knows a fella who could put her in a show right away! She has a headache, and what luck, he has the grandest headache medicine in the world! He teaches her how to snort it, just like a good father showing his son how to get a squirmy nightcrawler on a hook, or how to shoot up between the toes so no one notices the needle tracks. He promises to come back and see her.

Through the magic of smash cuts, he’s doing just that, trying to get her to come to town with him. He gives her more booger sugar and she agrees to marry him. She’ll stay with friends of his until the wedding, since living together would be indecent. Turns out, these “friends” are just this one older lady who holds Jane prisoner. Nick fills Jane full of drugs, takes her out every now and again, and will eventually kick her to the curb when she’s all used up. Jane asks for some headache powder. The older woman laughs, and informs her that it’s actually dope, cocaine, the kid-catcher. And just… wow. I guess that last one meant something before perverts were invented.

Meanwhile, Nick keeps Jane controlled with, um, kid-catcher, and finally gives her that stage show she was promised, at a dive called the Dead Rat Cafe. One day, while Nick drops off some headache powder at a drive-in restaurant (to be distributed by carhop and Sergeant Pepper lookalike Fanny), Jane recognizes the other carhop working there: It’s Eddie, her brother come to the big city to look for his runaway sister. Another character, wealthy socialite Dorothy, is introduced here, and she has the hots for Eddie. Fanny asks Eddie on a date, but he’s too tired. Kid-catcher to the rescue! Oh, man. He’d just be the worst pulp hero ever.

Kid-Catcher poses for his Justice League ID.

Eddie and Jane run into each other that night at the club. Jane pretends not to know him, and sends him packing with her catchphrase: “Beat it, you!” Dorothy, also at the Dead Rat that night, gets scolded later at home by her wealthy father for hanging out with a bad element. Eddie and Fanny sink further into the drug scene and get fired for being hopheads. A time jump later, and Fanny has a part time job and Eddie is sleeping in the park. He moves in, which is so scandalous, even Nick the Pusher refused to do it.

Eddie, hooked bad, begs for dope. Fanny, though broke, goes out and gets it somehow. The movie never really says. Fanny later runs into Dorothy outside the Dead Rat Cafe, and Dorothy gives the woman some money. Fanny comes home and gives Eddie the money, asking if they might quit the dope. Eddie refuses and leaves. Fanny stares at the stove, and it is later revealed that she killed herself.

Meanwhile, at the Dead Rat Cafe, there’s a diversion and Nick kidnaps Dorothy. He leaves her in the same place he initially took Jane. Jane, suddenly remembering she was in the movie, finds Eddie in a racist, old-timey opium den. Jane tells him he’s only a first stage hophead, and he can still go home if he has a little money.

Fun fact! Third Stage Hopheads get to be Guild Navigator.

Desperate for cash, Jane goes to the rape house to extort some cash from Nick. Instead, she finds Dorothy, who is there for “the boss” who likes cute little blondes. So that’s nice. Anyway, Jane calls the cops, but Nick shows up first. She kills Nick, and then the boss shows up. Turns out it’s Dorothy’s dad! So, that was going to be an awkward sex slave gift. Well, you know. More awkward than most.

Still, all’s well that ends well!  Dorothy gets herself a cop husband.  Who knows what happens to Jane and Eddie?  Wasn’t like they were the main characters or anything.

Life-Changing Subtext: Drugs ruin women, but men have a shot at redemption.

Defining Quote: Eddie, subtly explaining his problem to Fanny: “I’ve gotta have dope! I’m a hophead! I’d sell my soul for just one shot!”

Standout Performance: Lois January as Jane is so recognizable as a trope in ‘30s acting to have slipped into unfortunate and hilarious self-parody. And she has a catchphrase! “Beat it, you!”

What’s Wrong: An anti-drug cheapie from the Depression probably wasn’t going to be good no matter what, but some basic understanding of what cocaine is might have been nice. I’m not asking them to predict the ‘80s or anything, but don’t confuse it with opium.

Flash of Competence: The plot twist with Dorothy’s dad has just enough noirish insanity to be appealing.

Best Scenes: In the film’s single bid to provide some kind of temporal context, we periodically cut back to Jane and Eddie’s widowed mom. The scene is always the weird tubby mailman telling her there’s no mail for her. The best part is the performance of the mailman, who infuses every line with a leer, so that the act of getting a letter from one’s estranged offspring comes off feeling smutty.

This is apropos of nothing, but this line is amazing: “Dames don’t tip like men. They pay off in smiles!”

Transcendent Moment: There’s nothing quite so funny as the junkie breakdown in the climax of any anti-drug entertainment. From the escalating insanity of the party in Reefer Madness to Jessie Spano singing “I’m so exciiiited!” it’s tough to match the hilarity of such earnest material employed for melodramatic means. In this case, Eddie begs for coke (in the film’s Defining Quote), before slipping into wheedling. It’s implied Fanny goes out and whores herself out for the drug, but you know what might have been effective in scaring people? Someone shown whoring themselves for drugs!

I’m not saying we need a tossed salad joke or anything.

The Cocaine Fiends is a relic of a more innocent time. A more hilarious one, too.

For another film from this same collection, check out my review of the Melville-penned Omoo-Omoo the Shark God!

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion, Yakmala! Tagged: accidental incest, anti-drug, drugs, gangsters, prostitution, PSA, The Cocaine Fiends, The Pace That Kills, Yakmala!

Now Fear This: Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed

Aw, she’s so pretty.

You’re not going to believe it, but werewolves used to be scary. No, seriously. There was a time before they were cuddly shapeshifters obsessed with ab workouts and photogenic brooding. The rise of urban fantasy and paranormal romance has stripped the menace out of many classic bogeymen, forcing horror writers to become more creative in the birth of new monsters or mining classic beasties for those last few nuggets of fear. Other than the poor, defanged vampire, werewolves have suffered the most under the new regime of sexy creatures, so it’s nice to find a film unapologetically reaching for the root of the legend and surrounding it with rich meaning and disturbing scares. That film is Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, the second film in the Canadian werewolf trilogy.

Ginger Snaps was very clear, some might even say heavy-handed, in its treatment of lycanthropy as a thinly-disguised metaphor for puberty in the double-X chromosome set. Its sequel isn’t as focused, but is a more compelling experience for it. By exploring multiple themes within its simple narrative, it creates a dense, interesting story that breezes by like the best creature features.

The film picks up some time after the original. Brigette, after killing her elder sister-turned-werewolf Ginger, is on the run. During her final battle, Brigette exposed herself to lycanthropy and has adopted a rigorous and disturbing regimen to keep from falling to the wolf. She cuts her arms, chronicling how long it takes for the cuts to heal. She shaves the rapidly encroaching hair from her body. She shoots poisonous monkshood into her veins, provoking agonizing allergic reactions that only serve to delay the change. To make matters worse, she’s being pursued by another werewolf whose identity is never confirmed, but whose motives are disturbing. She lives the life of a nomadic junkie fleeing an abusive boyfriend.

After a bad reaction to her anti-lycanthropy injection and a werewolf attack, Brigette gets thrown into a long-term care and rehab center. The staff ranges from the predatory orderly Tyler who trades sexual favors for the patients’ highs to the well-meaning Alice whose experience has not prepared her for someone with Brigette’s condition. Brigette befriends Ghost, a young girl who is staying with her grandmother, covered head-to-toe in bandages after a house fire. Eventually, the werewolf finds Brigette, and breaks into the asylum to get what he wants. Meanwhile, the interruption of her monkshood treatments has caused the lycathropy to progress. She and Ghost flee to Ghost’s house, where they are later joined by Tyler, and wait for the monster to arrive. As they do, Brigette discovers something far darker, which is mostly surprising since she figured she already topped out on that particular scale. Without spoiling anything, the film ends on a pitch black note perfectly uniting the disparate themes within.

I’ve mentioned theme several times in relation to Ginger Snaps 2, which is odd considering the ridiculous title. A title like that, you figure maybe maybe it’s a fun little werewolf romp, and it definitely has boobs. Sorry, no. Instead you get these pansy-ass intellectual themes that are crack to a horror fan like me. The first is the concept of innocence. Brigette was an innocent in the first film by every definition of the word. This continues through this one, both in the sense of innocence equating to sexual inexperience (though Tyler periodically gives Brigette her monkshood, she never reciprocates as the other girls do) and in the sense of being innocent of a crime. She’s initially found at a bloody crime scene and Ghost accuses her of killing the center’s dog. There are other instances that unfortunately stray into spoiler territory, but rest assured they throw the plot into stark relief. Lastly, as though to signal the audience of its importance, a single shot of a nurse completing a word search, she circles the word “INNOCENT.”

Appropriately, Ginger Snaps 2 extends the feminist metaphor of the first film, but for another phase of a young woman’s life. The first was about puberty, and this is about college. A young woman is forced to live with a bunch of strangers, integrate into a new social order, and is exposed to the manifold dangers that come with it. College was the first time I was cognizant of the rampant danger of sexual assault for women. Maybe it was the progressive school, maybe it was the time I went, but rape went from never being talked about to the top thing on everyone’s mind. College heralds the end of constant parental oversight, and where there is freedom, perverts will exploit it.

Which brings us to another important theme in the film: the masculine psyche. Brigette is surrounded at all times by avatars of Freudian psychic apparatus. The werewolf pursuing her does so with the goal of mating and he has no compunctions against the fact that this would not be consensual. Nope, he generally breaks into wherever Brigette is (clear rape imagery), kills the living fuck out of anyone with her (usually, though not always perceived rivals), and tries to get to work. The werewolf kills a librarian early on, who had flirted with Brigette and then followed her home. Creep behavior to be sure, but when he sees her allergic reaction to the monkshood, he leaps into action to get her some help, clear action of the super-ego. Meanwhile, Tyler, with his predatory economy, functions as the ego, the realist getting what he can from life. He shows flashes of both id and even super-ego with the hints of a conscience we see throughout. It is appropriate that in the pitch black world of Ginger Snaps, ego and super-ego are helpless against the rapacious id.

Birthing imagery plays a large part in tying together the twin themes of innocence and the destructive power of the male. Brigette crawls through tunnels at several points, and in one case escapes through a crematorium oven. This ties the idea of rebirth with death, which many a fortune teller has used to calm a jumpy patron at the sight of the Death card. Twice in the film, industrial plastic wrap, used in construction, is employed to separate one of the female characters from the werewolf. It looks like a birthing caul, and is a strong physical reminder that the bite of the lycanthrope can give either death or monstrous rebirth.

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed is the best kind of sequel: one that takes the story in an exciting new direction while staying true to the characters, story, and central metaphor. Whenever a conversation begins about sequels surpassing originals, this is one that pops instantly into my mind.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: feminism, Ginger Snaps, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, horror movie, werewolf, werewolves

The Best Movies Never Made: Brometheus

Director

Ridley Scott

Writer

Ridley Scott, Damon Lindelof, and Jeff Probst

Starring

Josh Brolin, Pierce Brosnan, Emily Browning, Brock Lesnar

Synopsis

A hovering spacecraft that looks almost exactly like a luxury Hummer leaves Earth. A single humanoid alien (Brock Lesnar) wearing big shorts, an open shirt, and a backwards baseball cap pounds from a beer bong and totally barfs into the primordial soup. Then, like, some science shit happens or whatever.

Like a million years later, a pair of archaeologists (Josh Brolin and Emily Browning) find writing in various cave paintings all over the world, but mostly in places like Fort Lauderdale and Ibiza. They determine that these are advertisements for Axe Body Spray created tens of thousands of years before that product was ever invented. After huffing three barrels of Axe, they figure out a map to a distant planet.

Using a gross old rich guy (Rico Rodriguez) they assemble a team of guys who claim to be scientists but turn out to be that year’s pledge class of Phi Zeta. They have to go on a space mission to get in, so they blast off in the U.S.S. Cabo, a spaceship/pool party/dance club, for a distant planet.. They pretty much instantly turn out to be completely incompetent at their jobs, fundamentally misunderstanding not only the particulars of their alleged specialties but science itself as a heuristic.

They land on a barren, rocky planet. The entire crew is instantly depressed that it isn’t the nonstop party that was described in the cave paintings. They explore the ruins of the ancient civilization, marveling at highly advanced gymnasia, sports bars, and Abercrombie and Fitch outlets. Unfortunately, because most of the crew are men, the alien ruins decide they are fucking up the ratio, and sets about destroying them. The men don’t help their cause by instantly getting drunk and attempting to chug or fuck the variety of goo or monsters the planet jizzes at them.

For no reason ever explained in the script, the ship’s mandroid, Brobot (Pierce Brosnan), rufies the lead archaeologist and the planet totally date rapes her. None of the ship’s medical devices are equipped for treating women because no homo, am I right? She has a giant monster baby called the Broliath.

Brobot and the gross old rich guy (on the ship for no adequately explained reason), wake the final alien, known as the Mengineer (Brock Lesnar). Things are going well until Brobot implies that the Mengineer looks a little gay in his board shorts and no shirt. The Mengineer just goes nuts on everyone. He has an showdown with the Broliath, and both are killed.

Brobot and the surviving female archaeolgist fly off into space.

Trivia

Rico Rodriguez, chiefly known for his role as a child on Modern Family, performed the part of Gross Old Rich Guy in extensive old age makeup. Though his character is never shown young (and thus out of makeup), the director reportedly called old people “gross” and insisted on a child actor.

Though there are several female characters, none of them are ever identified by name.

The phrase “no homo” appears 634 times in the script.

The filmmakers wanted Matthew McConaughey to portray both the Mengineers and himself in a bizarre dual role, but scheduling proved impossible.

There were so many high fives exchanged in various scenes in the film, both Josh Brolin and Pierce Brosnan had to get palm transplant surgery.

The little red cups the Mengineers drink from resemble the commercially available beverage cup, but are in fact replicas costing five hundred dollars each.

The beer on the ship was real, and the director encouraged the cast to drink even when not on camera. Because of the drinking, Emily Browning had to have her stomach pumped, Josh Brolin married a local stripper, and Pierce Brosnan got a butterfly tattooed on the small of his back.

The dialogue for this film is nearly identical to Prometheus, but translated for bros by noted manthropologist Dr. Leonard “Broadzilla” Thorson.

Goofs

Factual error (possibly deliberate error by filmmakers): The sky isn’t constant. A star map would not still work thousands of years after it was originally made.

Boom mic visible: During the “Mengineers Gone Wild” scene

Factual error (possibly deliberate error by filmmakers): Science is in no way faith-based.

Factual error (possibly deliberate error by filmmakers): The archaeologists don’t seem to understand their field of study exclusively focuses on dead things.

Errors in geography: Santa Monica is not Downtown.

Plot holes: Please see related page for a full list of plot holes

Memorable Quotes

Female Archaeologist: You’re wasted. This place isn’t awesome like we thought. Charlie barfed all those shots. We gotta get to Havasu!

Gross Old Rich Guy: And would Charlie want you to bitch out? You wanna leave before Happy Hour? Or have you lost your roll?

Gross Old Rich Guy’s Daughter: If you’re really going down there, you’re gonna yak.

Gross Old Rich Guy: Is there sand in your vagina? Haters gonna hate.

Gross Old Rich Guy’s Daughter: Did you think I was gonna do all your work while you went on spring break without me? Presidents graduate or flunk out.

Gross Old Rich Guy (on recording): ‘Sup, bros and hos. I am the man. It’s, like, June or something and I think it’s 2090. Wait, 2091? Are you sure, Hoagie? Whatever. If you’re watching this, you don’t know that Oona Chaplin totally showed her boobs on Game of Thrones last week, which is an awesome show, even though it has elves and D&D and shit. Epic. Also, I’m dead. May I rest in peace. (pauses) It’s so sad I’m dead. (wipes away tears) I was always the best, you know? If you were too drunk to drive, I’d put you in a cab. I’d always take you to Cabo (no homo). I was awesome. I used to always play that DMB song. Remember that? (sings “Crash Into Me” badly. Gets really into it).

(stops crying, turns serious) So, anyway, there’s this totally chill bro with you. Brobot, stand up and show them guns. Anyway, Brobot is my bro, and a clutch dude. He will never get old and gross like me. Brobot doesn’t understand how awesome he is, because he has no heart.

When I wasn’t up at Vail shredding fresh powder or banging drunk chicks in Fort Lauderdale, I thought bout some deep shit. What happens after Spring Break? Is there a Havasu, like, after this one? Anyway, these other two bros, even though one is a chick, are here to figure that out. (gestures at archaeologists) These two are are the man, even though one is a chick, like I said.

The Titan Brometheus wanted bros to be as awesome as gods, so he brought us beer pong and Funyuns, and he got put on academic probation for it. It’s time that motherfucker graduates.

Selected Reviews

“Shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific method. But at least has a better command of it than Prometheus.” — Stephen Hawking

“Phi Zeta!” — the actual Phi Zeta pledge class

“Huh?” — Richard Roeper

Thanks to Clint. The title came from him during a fast and furious volley of bro-puns we were throwing back and forth. Or check out another one of the Best Movies Never Made.

Filed under: Moment of Excellence, Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: Brometheus, bros, Damon Lindelof, prometheus, ridley scott, the Best Movies Never Made

Bo Knows Yakmala

That is an undoctored photo of Megatron’s anus. True story.

The wonderfully misguided 2004 revenge flick Paparazzi was one of those movies I’ve backed for official Yakmala status for a long time. It’s time to make my case with a whole lot of outdated references to a defunct ad campaign.

Tagline: One good shot deserves another

More Accurate Tagline: Bo knows homicide

Guilty Party: The creative team behind Paparazzi sounds made up. The director, Paul Abascal, is a former hairstylist making his debut as a feature film director. Before this, the only cinematic crime on his record was Mel Gibson’s mullet in Lethal Weapon 3. The writer, Forry Smith, has written one thing. This. So who would have the hubris to grab a first-time writer in one hand, and the guy who made his hair look like a cautionary tale on the dangers of Whitesnake addiction? Mel Gibson! Everyone’s favorite drunk, anti-semitic uncle decided to draw upon his deep and abiding love of Christ’s teachings, and give us a revenge flick we could all relate to. You know, if we were rich and famous movie stars.

Synopsis: Bo Laramie (Cole Hauser) is a newly minted action star. He also has a perfect family: married to Abby, his sweetheart from back home (a nearly comatose Robin Tunney) with a little Aryan moppet named Zach. Bo has it all. He’s also awesome, because he hasn’t let the fame go to his head. Bo knows humility.

He gets his first bitter taste of fame when a woman asks him to sign the cover of the National Inquirer stand-in, the eponymous Paparazzi. That’s a bit like calling a book “Novelist” but whatever. Shortly afterwards at Zach’s soccer game, sleazy paparazzo Rex Harper (a supremely sweaty Tom Sizemore) snaps pictures of the boy. Bo asks him to stop, and though Rex initially complies, he’s back at it later. Bo decks him, and Rex reveals his equally sweaty partners were filming the whole thing. Rex proceeds to sue the living shit out of Bo. Bo knows litigation.

Bo pays up and goes to anger management, but also tells his side of the story on Access Hollywood. This enrages Rex, who pledges to destroy Bo. He gathers his crew together, including Wendell Stokes (Daniel Baldwin, perpetually looking like he just ate a big bowl of chili), Leonard Clark (British), and Kevin Rosner (a biker for some reason), to get some payback. Rex, while on a date because we need a convenient third act witness, causes Bo to get into a bad accident. He then proceeds to take pictures of the horribly injured bodies of Bo, Abby, and Zach. Bo is a little banged up, Abby is badly hurt but conscious, and Zach is in a coma. Bo knows trauma.

Detective Burton (Dennis Farina) is on the case. The paparazzi spin a fake story about happening upon the accident, and Rex keeps his date quiet with a little rape and blackmail, just in case you were worried about nuance. While Bo innocently comforts the local grocery store girl over Zach’s coma, Kevin the biker gets a shot of it. Bo freaks out, and then accidentally runs Kevin off the road. He makes an effort to rescue the guy, but Kevin’s evil can’t be turned off by something as petty as staying alive. He shit-talks Bo in the middle of the rescue, leading to Bo dropping Kevin off a goddamn cliff. Bo knows gravity.

Detective Burton gives Bo the rundown on what scumbags these paparazzi are. Leonard would be a disgraced lawyer if he had the capacity to feel shame, while Rex is an accused rapist. Burton also warns Bo that he shouldn’t use a cell phone, since it’s easy to listen in. Armed with this knowledge (and information on Leonard’s past illegal weapons charges), Bo lures Leonard to the set, plants a prop gun on him, and calls the cops. Leonard foolishly investigates what the gun-shaped bulge in his jacket is while a bunch of cops have him dead to rights. Bo knows subtlety.

Rex and Wendell (panicking at the recent deaths of Kevin and Leonard) break into Bo’s place to plant cameras, only to catch Abby at home. Wendell beats up Abby and threatens Zach. After that, the cops park outside Bo’s place, forcing Bo to concoct a pointlessly elaborate way to get out. He then beats Wendell to death with a baseball bat and sneaks home. Bo knows justice.

Detective Farina suddenly remembers that red light cameras exist, and gets an image of Rex’s date. She immediately sells Rex out as having caused the accident. When Burton dispatches cops to Rex and Wendell’s homes, he finds out they’re already en route, sent by anonymous calls. Rex discovers Wendell’s corpse on the guy’s floor, and breaks in to smell him or something. He returns home to find blood and the bat planted there (and has just placed his own blood and fingerprints at Wendell’s place), and flees a few moments before the police arrive. He goes to Bo’s house, where the movie star proceeds to beat him mercilessly. Burton arrives and arrests Rex. The paparazzo is taken out in cuffs while other paparazzi get pictures of his bloody face. Bo knows irony.

Life-Changing Subtext: Celebrities are like normal people, except they can murder whoever they like.

Defining Quote: Rex: “Laramie, I’m going to destroy your life and eat your soul. And I can’t. Wait. To do it.” He makes this pledge while watching Access Hollywood, before shit has gotten even remotely real. Rex has all the nuance of a chimpanzee smelling his own ass.

Standout Performance: This film has a quartet of bizarre cameos no doubt roped in by (at that time) Gibson’s solid reputation. Gibson himself, in an unintentionally revealing choice, plays a patient in the therapist’s waiting room where Bo must unfairly receive anger management treatment. Vince Vaughn, sporting a biker mustache, grills Bo about rumors of penile enlargement. Chris Rock plays a thrilled pizza delivery guy who politely requests some “fine bitches” from Bo. And lastly, Matthew McConaughey plays himself, because you really can’t trust him to do anything else.

What’s Wrong: To make a revenge movie palatable it needs two things: crimes commensurate to the hero’s righteous fury and a star with enough charisma to keep the audience on his side. No matter how cartoonishly evil the paparazzi become, they never tip over the balance into out-and-out monsters. And, this bears repeating, Bo beats one to death with a baseball bat.

On the second point, George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Kurt Russell, and Vince Vaughn were all asked to play Bo (probably in that order). No one wanted anywhere near this script, except Vaughn, who I’m assuming was paid in Rogaine and Cheetohs. They were forced to settle for the reptilian Cole Hauser. With that guy’s toxic anti-charisma, it’s a good thing he didn’t play Private Ryan or all of America would have cheered for Hitler.

Flash of Competence: A modern, slickly-made, and high-budget film, Paparazzi rarely drags.

Best Scenes: Right after Bo attends the premiere of his new action blockbuster Adrenaline Force (apparently, Bo is making movies in 1986 or something), he runs along the beach in Malibu. In the film’s first bizarre miscalculation, Bo slips into amazed voiceover. This is the only instance of voiceover in the entire film. It comes out of nowhere, heralding its arrival with a gobsmacked “Whew!” like Cole Hauser had to first beat the voiceover at tennis before recording it. There’s a weird little coda about how “primitive tribes” (which to Gibson probably means Methodists) believe the camera steals your soul. This places the blame squarely on the paparazzi for any horrible thing Bo will do. “Hey, you didn’t want me to bat-rape you? Shouldn’t have taken that photo, chuckles!” And in case you’re wondering, the voiceover never returns.

The plan to kill Leonard Clark is actually pretty good. Bo cleverly uses some information imparted in the previous scene (the bad guys can listen in on cell phone calls), plants a weapon on a guy with a gun charge, then calls the cops. You could say there was no way he could have guessed Clark would be dumb enough to pull that gun-shaped thing out of his pocket while all the LAPD had weapons trained on him, but it’s possible Bo only wanted to get the guy busted and was pleasantly surprised. Anyway, good job, movie.

Bo’s plan to break out of his house falls on the other end of the spectrum. He calls a pizza delivery guy (Chris Rock, who overplays the whole scene, acting like he got invited to Jesus Christ’s pad), and then hides in the guy’s trunk to get past the police watching the house. How does he get out of the trunk without the driver noticing or pulling over? Never shown. He does, going to a car stashed in the woods, which is also never established. Later, he has to sneak back in, which he does through the back of the property. So… why didn’t he do that the night before? Maybe that motherfucker really wanted pizza.

Transcendent Moment: In the end, Detective Burton loads a bloody and beaten Rex Harper into his police car, ready to cart him off to jail on Wendell Stokes’s murder. As he does, he looks back up at Bo, and a tiny smile plays on Burton’s lips. He knows. He fucking knows Bo was involved in three murders and a frame job. He even has solid evidence to tie Bo to the scene of Kevin’s crash. But he doesn’t say anything, because Bo is a celebrity, and they’re totally allowed to do this.

“It’s okay. I was in Naked Gun.”

Paparazzi is the wonderful fallout of sheltered, entitled people trying to air their problems to the world. And these aren’t even First World Problems — these are something far beyond that. Something called Yakmala.

For the film that coined the phrase “Yakmala,” check out my review of Gykmata. Or check out another view of the press.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion, Yakmala! Tagged: Cole Hauser, insanity, mel gibson, no sense of scale, Paparazzi, revenge, Yakmala!

Now Fear This: The Thin Blue Line

Run! The eyes will get you!

I’m breaking a few rules with this week’s Now Fear This. The goal with this feature was to highlight relatively unknown films that, while not classics, are much better than their nonexistent reputations might indicate. This week’s pick, The Thin Blue Line is a legitimate classic. A landmark documentary, it’s the movie that announced to the world that Errol Morris was a filmmaker who would need to be watched closely, lest he subvert every last convention of the genre and simultaneously blow every mind in the theater with his keen understanding of the human condition. The reason it’s showing up here, where I mostly discuss horror films, is that The Thin Blue Line can be appreciated as one of the more terrifying horror movies ever made.

In a decision that jibes with its illustrious forward-thinking track record and in no way reveals them to be a bunch of narrow-minded Luddites, the Academy declined to nominate The Thin Blue Line as Best Documentary in 1989 for some of the same innovations that have made it a blueprint for films that came after. Specifically, Errol Morris used re-enactments and clips from other films to illuminate the testimony of his subjects, at the time a stunning advancement in the technique of documentary storytelling, which have since become the equivalent of the wrench in the documentarian’s toolbox. Though he had two prior films, the hilarious cult favorite Gates of Heaven and the bizarre Vernon, Florida, it was The Thin Blue Line that created the Errol Morris brand in the minds of most cinema nerds.

Not long ago, I had a conversation at a party with a friend about Morris. We’re both huge fans, and it was one of those debates where we were essentially only arguing the relative placement of greatness. He backed The Thin Blue Line both as Morris’s best film and the entry point into Morris’s oeuvre. Though I disagreed on the second point (Fast, Cheap, and Out-of-Control has a better range of subjects for the neophyte and I have a deep love for the gothic sleaze of Tabloid), it’s difficult to argue the first, especially because of all of Morris’s films, The Thin Blue Line has had the most concrete effect on the real world. It saved a man’s life.

On November 29, 1976, Dallas police officer Robert Wood was shot and killed at a traffic stop. Eager to make an arrest, the Dallas police located a resident of nearby Vidor, a juvenile delinquent named David Harris. He immediately fingered drifter Randall Adams for the crime. The cops collected some additional eyewitness testimony and built a case against Adams. Though it was a little shaky and Adams continually protested his innocence, he was sentenced to die.

Morris uses interviews with nearly everyone of significance in the case, including Adams, Harris, the Dallas police, several eyewitnesses, lawyers, and the judge to narrate each step of the story. He illuminates details of the crime with a detailed re-enactment, altering details as testimony changes between players and in some case as the players change their stories. It’s a fascinating visual device to illustrate the slippery nature of both truth and memory. Morris shows us the shooting as related by half a dozen people, the small details painting a picture that does not quite match.

One by one, Morris’s interviews pick each witness apart, exposing the inconsistencies and ulterior motives behind their testimony. Harris, who claims to have been in the car at the time of the shooting, has a long record of violent behavior and possible mental illness, and bragged to friends shortly after the crime about killing a cop. The eyewitnesses are far from reliable themselves. The most damaging testimony in the trial came from a married couple, who turn out to be a shady pair who allegedly told others they would be willing to say anything for the substantial reward money offered. The man later says he saw nothing, and the woman, a space cadet with delusions of Nancy Drew, just wanted to get involved. The partner of the officer killed told one story on the night of the murder and an entirely different one after being debriefed by Internal Affairs.

In the middle of everything is Randall Adams, stubbornly insisting on his innocence. His story, while strange to modern ears, lacks the holes marking the others. He claims to have run out of gas and was walking to a nearby station, which, I guess is something that used to happen. He was hitchhiking, something I have gone on record on as being a surefire ticket to an organ-harvesting, when Harris picked him up. Instead of going about the errand, exchanging a handshake and going their separate ways, Harris and Adams decided to hang out. They drank beer (despite Harris being sixteen at the time), and went to a drive in movie double bill that featured a softcore cheerleader movie. Am I crazy or does this sound like the set up to every horror film about overly-friendly drifters you’ve ever seen? Things start relatively normal, then they take a turn for the inappropriate, and pretty soon you’re running from some masked asshole with a chainsaw.

Not for Adams. He just got arrested for cop-killing in the execution-happy state of Texas.

It’s a more realistic end to the story, and a far more frightening one because of the feeling it could happen to anyone. Randall’s story about the frightening tactics employed by the Dallas police might have been shocking at the time, but after scandals like Rampart it’s easier to believe the police would do something like this just to close a case. The railroading continues with the testimony of Dr. James Grigson, a psychiatrist who has testified in more than a hundred death penalty trials and earned the nickname “Dr. Death” by recommending execution in nearly every one.

The film results in a stunning depiction of a system stacked to convict an innocent man almost solely on the testimony of a killer. If that’s not a chilling story, I don’t know what is.

I’ve broken the rules before with a profile of the romantic gem Joe Versus the Volcano . Clint talks about another legitimate classic, at least to me.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: Dallas police, Errol Morris, Now Fear This, Randall Adams, The Thin Blue Line, wrongfully convictied

Ecology of the Slayers

In 1983, by law every movie poster had to look like a heavy metal album cover.

Like so much of the ‘80s, the 1983 fantasy/sci-fi/adventure film Krull now exists only in the popular consciousness as a tossed off bit on Family Guy. The joke is that a movie called Krull could be a major release at one time, and you know what? They kind of have a point. But it was the early ‘80s, and George Lucas had just proven that hokey fantasy/sci-fi/adventure stories could get you like, all the cocaine. And that was pretty much what the ‘80s was: a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos, only instead of marbles, it was cocaine. And instead of a gameboard, it was cocaine. And instead of hippos, it was cocaine. Hang on, I think I’m lost here. Stupid cocaine.

Krull! Right. Okay, beyond the fact that, despite being insane, this was one of the most expensive productions at the time and was positioned as a studio tentpole film, the script leaves truck-sized holes in which professional nerds like myself like to fill with pointless speculation. I guarantee no one involved in the making of this movie put the amount of thought into Krull that I will, which is to say the equivalent of a listless shrug and a mumbled, “Yeah, I guess that sounds about right.”

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the odder excesses of ‘80s cinema, here’s a crash course on Krull. Krull is the name of a planet, one with two suns and moons, thus borrowing one of the best visual tricks in Star Wars to show the audience that this is not earth. At some point in the past, a giant alien, diffidently called the Beast, showed up in his spaceship/castle the Black Fortress and set about conquering Krull with his army of H.R. Giger leather daddies, the Slayers. The Beast is here specifically to stop the fulfillment of a prophecy that the child of Prince Colwyn and Princess Lyssa will rule the galaxy, which the Beast doesn’t like because he’s applying for the same job.

The planet Krull has some magic; there’s a guy who can turn into animals, more seers than should be legal, and a giant spider who can be kind of controlled with an hourglass. The Beast displays some abilities that seem like magic, but in fairness, they could be the products of advanced technology or his alien physiology. Even the spider could be understood as a form of technology, the sands of the hourglass serving as tiny sensors or something. Look, I’m not an expert on robot spiders here.

And if you ever find an expert on robot spiders, it’s already too late.

The Beast’s thought processes are murky, since his solution to the kwisatz haderach currently incubating in Colwyn and Lyssa’s ‘nads is to abduct the young lady and try to get her to marry him. Which… what? Why doesn’t he eat her? Or launch her out of a cannon? I don’t even know why I bring this up, except to establish that the Beast is a couple sandwiches short of a picnic, so his logic might not be the most airtight. What I actually want to talk about are the weird monsters the Beast uses as his army: the Slayers.

In fairness, they are much more effective than Imperial Stormtroopers.

The Beast is a giant monster with superpowers, so what does he need an army for? Well, it’s possible he is the last of his kind, since he’s the only member of his species we ever see. It’s also possible his life energy is inexorably linked to the Black Fortress, since it immediately starts to crumble (SPOILER ALERT) as soon as he takes a flamethrower to the face. In any case, instead doing shit himself, he sends these obviously inhuman creatures to do his bidding. They’re humanoid, although their heads are bowling-ball-sized globes with a crest of curving spikes. The head shape bears more than a passing resemblance to both the Black Fortress itself and the crown the Beast tries to pawn off on his reluctant bride.

They first display an obviously inhuman ability during a siege, when they lightly run up the sheer sides of the castle wall. They seem to use a variation on this (and show that they either don’t breathe or can breathe underwater) when they rise from a swamp in ambush. And, most bizarrely, when killed, they let out an unholy shriek, the globe of their heads split open, and a large bloody worm thing dives into the earth (skip ahead to :42 in this clip to see what I mean). What the fuck is that worm thing? That’s one of the biggest questions of my youth right there. And it’s a question I’m going to attempt to answer in this article.

As tempting as it might be to dismiss Slayers as mindless drones, we can’t. In the clip above, one clearly demonstrates trepidation. There are other scenes of Slayers holding their spears and shouting like Hell’s Angels at last call. This isn’t the sort of behavior one would expect from a hive mind. They appear to be a relatively free-willed species who have chosen to serve the Beast and are pretty psyched about it.

The film explicitly states that the Beast has already conquered a variety of worlds, and despite the fact that we only ever see him take a single prisoner, there’s frequent talk of him enslaving people. The clue lies in the character of the cyclops. Oh yeah, there’s a cyclops character because fuck you cocaine is awesome. The Obi-Wan character (who I personally think is also from another world, but that’s just me reading too much into tossed-off bits of dialogue) explains that cyclopes were from another world that the Beast conquered and used to have “two eyes, like other men.” They made a bargain with the Beast, giving up an eye to see the future, but the Beast screwed them over and only gave them the ability to see their own deaths.

The interesting part of this is that it implies that human beings exist on a variety of worlds (possibly the result of colonization in the distant past but I need at least another couple beers to go down that path), and might be the only form of life out there except for the Beast and his servants. Setting aside the obvious question (does that mean the cyclopes have spaceships, and if so, where?), it does establish the Beast’s penchant for Faustian bargains, which brings us to the Slayers.

The Slayers seemed to have arrived on Krull in the Black Fortress with the Beast, and so are not a native species. they were likely beings conquered by the Beast early on. They were probably human at one time, entering into a bargain to be spared and possibly for some minor superpowers, including their limited aversion to gravity. The Beast screwed them over by turning them into hideous monsters condemned to serve him for all eternity. The worm thing is their brain, escaping from a doomed body to burrow home to the Black Fortress to be re-incarnated as another Slayer. Even death is no release.

The distinctive head shape is further evidence of the Beast’s design. The crown he presents to Lyssa has the same shape because it marks her as his servant while exalting her above the Slayers. The resemblance to the Black Fortress is also intentional: it’s his way of telling everyone what team he’s on. The fear of enslavement comes from this first deal with the Slayers: those the Beast does not kill are offered the opportunity to become his monstrous fighting slaves, and thus the cycle continues into infinity.

For another bit of unfounded speculation, check out my piece on Alien Nation.

Filed under: Nerd Alert, Puffery Tagged: alpha geek, Krull, pointless speculation, Slayers, the '80s

Girls, Guns, and G-Strings: Malibu Express

Nothing is more important to the concept of Yakmala than intention. Our most ironclad rule, the one that has not changed a single iota in our seven year lifespan is the Intention of Quality. This states that before a film can be included in the Yakmala canon, there must be some evidence that the filmmakers at least attempted to make a good movie. This is why Batman and Robin has been continually rejected for inclusion. Yes, it’s terrible and Governor Schwarzenegger is hilarious, but director Joel Schumacher has gone on record that the film was created only as a feature-length toy commercial. It’s this rule that keeps out the entire catalogue of Troma and Syfy out of our screenings as well. Intention is also important in that it defines what makes a bad movie in the first place. This can be somewhat difficult to determine, as directors have been known to retcon the purpose of their own films, claiming they were making an offbeat comedy when it’s plain they were doing nothing of the kind.

Exhibit A

This brings me to the subject of my brand new twelve part series on the films of Andy Sidaris. Though he started out directing television mainstays like Kojak and Monday Night Football, Sidaris is mostly known for the final thirteen-year stretch of his career from 1985-98, when he wrote and directed softcore action flicks. Any man who had cable during that period probably has hazy yet fond memories of at least one of them, most likely an impossibly gorgeous woman firing an automatic weapon at some guy driving a speedboat. Also, boobs. Boy howdy, were there boobs. Just… just everywhere.

Andy Sidaris more or less made exactly the kind of movies he was trying to make, which is why this is not a Yakmala review. He cast Playboy Playmates as a point of pride, even singling them out in the credits, so it’s tough to complain about their wooden acting, since he was after a different kind of wood. He wasn’t an unskilled director either, having won an Emmy for his work on the TV coverage of the 1960 Summer Olympics. Yet his movies aren’t what you’d really call “good,” unless you’re a teenaged boy who lived before the Internet (in which case, you wouldn’t call them “good,” you’d call them “HOLY LIVING FUCK THESE ARE AWESOME!”). I wouldn’t be talking about them at all, but my cousin bought me a DVD set of twelve Sidaris films, and since another such gift was responsible for my 10 part series on Very Special Blossoms, I figured why the hell not. Without further ado:

Malibu Express (1985)

Poster by Frank Frazetta.

Cast: Darby Hinton as Cody Abilene. With that pair of names, I assumed Darby Hinton to be one of the interchangeable nude models, b-movie nowhere girls, and fading stars for which Sidaris films are infamous. Nope, turns out he was just a working class actor and Lindsey Hunter All-Star. He seems to serve chiefly as the film’s main mustache vector.

Sybil Danning as Contessa Luciana. A Queen of the Bs already in her late thirties when starring in this one, Danning was that bizarre ‘80s ideal of fried blonde hair, leathery skin, and booming voice. Also, she was almost Octopussy. That’s a good movie. I must have seen it… twice?

Art Metrano as Matthew the heavy. If you remember him at all, it’s as Lieutenant/Captain/Commandant Mauser in the second and third Police Academy movies.

Playmate quotient: Lorraine Michaels as Liza Chamberlain, Lynda Wiesmeier as June Khnockers, Kimberly McArthur as Faye, Barbara Edwards as May. As you can probably guess, Faye and May are entirely throwaway roles. They’re two women who really want to have a threeway with Cody, but he reacts with confusion and annoyance every time they try. Maybe he thinks “threesome” is code for a tax audit? And yeah, there’s a character with the last name of Khnockers. She spends a lot of the movie topless, in a choice that surprises no one. Liza Chamberlain, though, is actually important to the plot! So her nudity is all… diagetic or whatever. I don’t know what that means. And yes, the credits list all four women proudly as Playboy Playmates, so I’m doing the same.

IMDB Plot Keywords: Blackmail, Palm Springs California, Lust, Thong Panties, Unwanted Kiss

IMDB User Lists Appearing On: Worst Movies of All Time, idiotic movies I enjoyed, Le Creme de la Sleaze, 80s Sex Comedies

Synopsis: As though to establish that yes, this is 1985, Sidaris introduces our hero as he pulls up in a cherry red Delorean and steps out of the gull wing door. He’s rocking a mustache that shouldn’t be attempted by anyone not involved in either the highway patrol or gay pornography. His high-waisted jeans show off a mighty moose knuckle. He carries a briefcase with a holstein cow coating, inside of which is a lovingly attended .44 magnum. He shoots at some targets, and it turns out he’s the worst shot ever, but he’s also a cocky asshole about it, so it’s all good.

He heads off to a speedway to bang the aforementioned June Khnockers, and goes home. Since it’s 1985, he lives in a yacht at the marina. The title of the film refers to a fake door he has mounted on the dock, making it look like the caboose of a train. Apparently his deceased mom liked trains or something. Faye and May come over to use Cody’s shower, which if you remember, is the exact same plot point Maude Lebowski would later term “ludicrous.”

Cody gets hired for a PI job, but it’s unclear as to why. I mean, he’s objectively bad at his job. The first stop is the Contessa Luciana, who dresses like an intergalactic prostitute. They have sex, and in a baffling moment (which later turns out to be a crucial plot point), he begs for some water like he’s been in the desert for a week.

Luciana takes him over to the Chamberlain residence in ritzy (but unfortunately Fresh Princeless) Bel Air. On the way, Cody veers into another movie briefly when he encounters a family of hillbillies who want to race him. It seems like they wanted to add a little Dukes of Hazzard to the Magnum P.I. proceedings.

Anyway, the Chamberlains are… I’m not really sure. Something’s going on. There’s Lady Lillian, nursing a broken leg, her relatively virtuous daughter Liza, her gay son Stuart, her daughter-in-law Anita, her sullen ex-con butler Shane, and her dimbulb maid Marian (Ha! Get it?). Shane is sleeping with Anita, implied to have slept with Stuart, and rapes Liza in the film’s only Peckinpah homage. Shane takes pictures and videos of each of his conquests for blackmail. Liza is dealing with this scumbag Jonathan Harper for some reason that I’m never entirely clear on. Harper has three thugs, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who turn into the film’s heavies, but their motives are murky at best.

Harper shakes Shane down for a gambling debt, and shortly thereafter Shane is murdered by a woman in a stocking mask, but not before Shane manages to take a photograph of his killer. Considering Shane raped Liza and attempted to blackmail Anita and Stuart (who makes a convincing woman when he’s in drag), there is no shortage of suspects. In one of the film’s many bizarre moments, when Cody finds the body, he doesn’t call the cops, but instead calls a phone sex line and tries to get them to call the police. This predictably causes problems, but eventually, the cops arrive. Cody’s pal Beverly, a nice lady cop with a glorious hockey mullet, is in charge of the investigation. They head over to the beach house, supposedly to look for clues, but instead just have sex, leaving DNA like, everywhere. On the upside, Cody discovers Shane’s hidden cameras and pieces together the blackmail scam.

Dingbat Marian tipped Harper off and he dispatches a couple thugs to intercept Cody at the beach house. Cody can’t hit the broadside of a barn, but fortunately Beverly is there to kill both guys. Harper, still hoping to get his hands on Shane’s undeveloped film (which Cody recovered from Shane’s room and later gets developed), sends Matthew, Mark, and Luke to the Malibu Express to get them back. This saves Cody from another possible threesome as he chases the goons off. The next morning, he calls the phone sex woman to get June Khnockers on the phone. Does Cody only know one telephone number?

At some point, Stuart was arrested for Shane’s murder. Cody heads out to the raceway, tailed by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They get in a shootout, and then a chase, which is an excuse for June to get topless yet again. The most confusing part is that Cody insists on driving, despite the fact that June is in the car and is a fucking race car driver. Matthew gets blown up due to some careless handling of grenades, and Cody finally gets to shoot a guy with the timely assistance of boobs.

They get a ride back to civilization from the director (in a cameo appearance) and Cody sends June to buy some hollowpoint rounds for the .44 magnum at an AM/PM. Look, I remember the ‘80s, and while you could get a wealth of terrifying food from the AM/PM, you could not purchase bullets.

Or plutonium, Doc.

Harper and Liza are arrested. It looks like Liza killed Shane. Good, says I. Nope! A little later, Cody has a get-together on the Malibu Express for a detective-style summing up. Turns out the killer in the picture isn’t Liza, since Liza’s a lefty and the killer is right-handed (in an unexpected bit of quality, the film then shows us a montage of Liza being left-handed). All the guys are over six feet tall, so the killer had to be a woman. Lillian has a broken leg, Marian is too dumb, and so it had to be Luciana. Cody went to talk to her, and found a tape confessing. Turns out that she’s in Hawaii. Wait, does she think Hawaii is a non-extradition country? She’s got an unpleasant surprise in store for her. And possibly a geography lesson.

Anyway, she had time to commit the murder, because that night, after sex with Cody, she spiked his water with sleeping powder. See? Total plot point. Anyway, she intentionally took the wrong camera from Shane’s drawer and jimmied the lock with her right hand, so Cody wouldn’t send an innocent woman to jail. Shane was selling secrets to Jonathan Harper, who was a spy for the Russians. Wait, what? Oh, who cares. Anyway, Luciana eliminated this threat to national security and was wearing a creepy Liza mask because though she didn’t want Liza to do a lot of time behind bars, she figured a night or two would be character-building.

Lillian praises Cody, saying he would help any woman in distress. There’s a montage of all his conquests, and a smug Cody says, “Yes, ma’am. Yes I would.”

Yakmala? No, not really. It runs a little long and has some slow patches that interfere with the fun. For softcore porn, the sex scenes are fairly tame and sparse, with the exception of the extremely troubling rape scene. The needlessly byzantine plot is enjoyable, though.

Lauri’s Thoughts: When I unwrapped this DVD, my lovely bride expressed her delight. She wanted to watch them with me. So I will be including a little bit from her with each of these.

“I can’t say that I went into this movie with high hopes for strong female characters – I knew it was going to be a cheesy action movie with terrible dialogue and a lot of groping. I was pleasantly surprised that one of the women was a race car driver. Of course, her name immediately reduced her to her boobs, but she at least drove the car. At least, she drove the race car until it was actually time for a car chase and then suddenly, she’s not the driver? What the hell? It’s her ONE JOB and she doesn’t get to do it. Okay, I was also annoyed by the woman sergeant who didn’t understand what investigating meant. She was like, “Why are we here?” at a possible crime scene.

To sum up, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, here’s how I rate it:

Girls = 3 (because their boobs were natural and I felt sorry for all the running they had to do braless; otherwise this would have gotten a 1 for them all being idiots)

Guns = 1 (there were not nearly enough guns fired in this movie)

G-Strings = 0 (there was only 1 thong, no actual g-strings)”

Lauri gives it a 4/15! Probably not the strongest recommendation there.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: action, and G-Strings, Andy Sidaris, b-movies, Girls, guns, Malibu Express, softcore, topless race car drivers

Grave Robbers from Outer Space

Words can’t express how much I love this poster.

Before modern contenders like The Room and Troll 2, 1959’s Plan 9 from Outer Space was considered to be the greatest bad movie of all time. Ironic love for it began in 1980, right when America would forget all about irony. How does it stack up against current anticlassics? Pretty damn well.

Tagline: Unspeakable Horrors from Outer Space Paralyze the Living and Resurrect the Dead!

More Accurate Tagline: Who Did What To the Who Now?

Guilty Party: The Hollywood Baptist Church that funded the film. I don’t normally blame the financiers of noted hacks (of which Wood is the high priest), but in this case I feel I have to. I mean, they had to know what they were getting into. Wood was a gifted flimflam man, even having number of the cast and crew baptized, but there was no way this would be a quality film. You’d think they would have known.

Synopsis: Somewhere in the San Fernando Valley (just north of Los Angeles proper to you non-natives) an old man’s wife dies, something about which the narrator seems oddly gleeful. At the same time, a plane passes overhead. The pilot, Jeff Trent, catches sight of a flying saucer landing in the cemetery where the old man is burying his wife. The old man’s wife comes out of her grave, and… well let’s just say the old guy was a bit of a pimp. She’s easily thirty years his junior, and is played by proto-Elvira Vampira. Anyway, she’s a zombie now, and kills both gravediggers.

Shortly thereafter, the old man (Bela Lugosi) gets hit by a car and buried in a cardboard crypt (that he’s in a crypt while his wife was in a normal plot is the one logic gap the film sees fit to address). Mourners discover the bodies of the gravediggers, calling in the cops, who are led by the marble-mouthed and disoriented Inspector Daniel Clay (Tor Johnson). Vampira ambushes and kills him.

Next door where Jeff Trent and his wife Paula live apparently, Jeff tells Paula all about the UFO and his subsequent debriefing by the military. There’s a short and bizarre montage of flying saucers in Hollywood and Washington, DC, and literally nowhere else, because if you’re aliens, where the hell else are you going?

Fuck Wyoming.

Anyway, the aliens return to base to talk to the Ruler of the Galaxy. Commander Eros says he was unsuccessful in his attempts to communicate with the governments of earth, and is going to implement Plan 9 to get their attention. This involves turning people into zombies, because people are never so reasonable after a fucking zombie outbreak.

The zombies (now including the old man and Inspector Clay) continue to bother the Trents. The military dispatches Colonel Edwards to the Valley to sort shit out. He fetches Lt. Harper (in charge now that Clay is a zombie) and they all go talk to the Trents. The old man shows up to bother everyone some more, but then gets turned into a skeleton, which was the aliens’ plan for some reason.

Leaving the timid Officer Kelton with Paula, the three he-men find the flying saucer and get on board. There, Eros and his assistant Tanna berate them for being an incredible danger to the galaxy. Eros is worried that humans will develop a “solarbonite bomb” which, if used, would cause a chain reaction and destroy the universe. Jeff Trent isn’t having this hippie peacenik malarkey, so he beats up Eros, damages the ship, and gets out. He finds the other zombies have turned into bones. The ship flies off and explodes.

Life-Changing Subtext: When diplomacy fails, zombies are the next logical step.

Defining Quote: This is a tough one to choose because so much of Wood’s “genius” lies in his peculiar dialogue. My favorite might be the Air Force Captain’s timeless line: “Visits? That would indicate visitors.” It’s this keen ability to define words to anyone within earshot that advanced him so far in the military.

Standout Performance: In a name rescued from a ‘90s-era gaybar, Dudley Manlove shines as the peevish Commander Eros, the alien in charge of implementing Plan 9. With snotty contempt for everyone around him (save the Ruler), Eros doesn’t see much hope in communicating with his assistant Tanna, let alone the people of earth. His shining moment comes in the delivery of his classic line to Jeff Trent, “Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!” That’s the kind of tact you want in a diplomat/zombie master.

What’s Wrong: Low budget filmmaking is an art. It involves hiding the financial shortcomings in creative ways and highlighting the best parts of the production, usually the writing and acting. Unfortunately, Wood’s infamous obliviousness to the details sabotages the first: we see the fishing lines supporting the UFOs, the cardboard headstones wobble and fall over, scenes move from day to night and back again without logic or warning, and the scar on Tor Johnson’s face moves in every scene. On the upside, Wood’s terrible writing and habit of casting oddballs rather than actors makes certain there’s no good writing or acting to be seen. So… win?

Flash of Competence: Wood, for all his faults, was not a bad editor.

Best Scenes: Perhaps the most famous element of this film’s production is the fact that, despite dying before shooting began, Bela Lugosi is the star. This is accomplished by using footage Wood had already shot, sticking some narration over it. When a double was needed, Wood brought in his wife’s chiropractor (who looked nothing like Lugosi) to prance around with a cape over his face.

Wood’s obliviousness was well known even to his actors. The man playing Lt. Harper decided to test his director. In his scenes as a hardened police lieutenant, Harper uses the barrel of his loaded gun to gesture at his men, poke the brim of his hat, and scratch his face. This is not recommended gun safety procedure.

Not quite a scene, but I had no idea where else it would go. Eros tells the Ruler that it’s time to implement Plan 9, and the Ruler’s like, “Oh yeah, the resurrection of the dead.” Which begs the question: what the fuck were the other plans? It took them eight before going for zombies, so I can’t help but think they were in order of escalating insanity. And once Plan 9 fails, are they going to send other aliens for Plans 10 and up? And what kind of batshittery do they have planned for those?

Oh. I’m sorry I asked.

The Inspector Clay zombie needs to incapacitate Officer Kelton. You’d think a blow to the head would be the best way to accomplish this. You’d be wrong. The Clay zombie executes a double-handed chop to Kelton’s shoulder like Sloth Fratelli attempting a hug.

Transcendent Moment: You know Plan 9 from Outer Space is special from the opening narration. Criswell, a television psychic by trade, summons all of his unearned gravitas to deliver a monologue that makes zero fucking sense. Let’s break it down point by point, shall we?

“Greetings my friend.”

So, what, there’s only one of us watching this movie at a time?

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

That level of stupidity makes my brain hurt.

“And remember, my friend, future events such as these will effect you in the future.”

We have to stop Skynet!

“You are interested in the unknown… the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing you the full story of what happened on that fateful day.”

Hang on, I thought we were talking about the future.

“We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep the secret any longer.”

Please stop calling me “my friend.” It’s making me uncomfortable.

“Let us punish the guilty.”

The aliens? Don’t they get blown up?

“Let us reward the innocent.”

I’m not sleeping with anyone on your say-so, Criswell.

“My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space?”

On second thought, no. It can’t. I’m out.

TAKE THE GIRL WITH YOU

Plan 9 from Outer Space remains the best kind of bad movie, whose manifold errors produce a gem of unintentional comedy. It’s not the legacy Wood wanted, but it’s the one he earned.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion, Yakmala! Tagged: Bela Lugosi, Ed Wood, Edward D. Wood Jr., Plan 9 from Outer Space, Tor Johnson, worst movie ever, Yakmala!

The J-Conn Rule

Guy culture operates on a variety of rules and regulations, much like a bureaucracy but with more wedgies. I could say this is for some elaborate reason like guys are really just dogs who wear pants, or that guys are all secret Nazis like Indiana Jones’s girlfriend in the third movie, but it’s really just that we have a lot of free time when we aren’t being actively distracted by boobs to worry about dumb shit. I have made one contribution to the guy culture in my local group, and it’s high time I shared it with the world: The J-Conn Rule.

When I first advanced it, I had bundled it into the farther-reaching Grandfather Clause, which might just be the greatest thing ever invented. Essentially, this clause allows someone to keep doing whatever insane thing he has been doing simply because he has always been doing it. When the NHL mandated that all players wear face masks, players who came up without them were allowed to keep playing without as they always had. Who cares if they ate a hundred MPH slap shot? They had always played with the danger of having a chunk of frozen rubber obliterating the bridge of their nose, and goddamn it, they couldn’t play hockey without that fear. However, calling it the Grandfather Clause was misleading, and Erik eventually mandated that I change it to reflect the true purpose, which was sixteen-year-old Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth.

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Her

Nathan Rabin once described twenty-year-old Jennifer Connelly as, “perhaps the most divine creature in the history of film.” While the most divine creature in the history of film is actually twenty-four-year old Audrey Hepburn (this is not up for debate), his use of “perhaps” does make him technically correct. Before wasting away into a hollow-eyed revenant suffering for all of our sins, Jennifer Connelly was without question one of the most beautiful women in history. I still find her heartbreakingly lovely in Labyrinth, and on the face of it, this is not okay, since I am now twenty years older than she was during the making of the film, and she is definitely not legal. And since I am not a vampire celebrating his centennial by breaking into her bedroom, I can’t even get the okay from the Twi-moms.

I was nine when Labyrinth came out in 1986. It’s impossible to truly explain what it was like seeing Jennifer Connelly onscreen back in the mid-‘80s. The standard of beauty back then was a little… off. Ellen Barkin, Kelly McGillis, and Brigitte Nielsen were sex symbols. Try to comprehend a world where that statement isn’t grounds for immediate incarceration in a mental hospital. It was almost as though beauty hadn’t been invented yet, but that’s not true. There was cocaine literally everywhere, so you’ll have to forgive us if we were too busy having pastel shootouts. Even Michelle Pfeiffer who really was gorgeous, was gorgeous in a funny way. Then, bam. Jennifer Connelly, a woman whose perfection transcends petty notions like “time,” “style,” and “eyebrow management.” I was smitten. I was also nine, so a big part of the attraction was hoping she might consent to babysit me.

Here’s where things start getting a little weird. When I watch Labyrinth now, I’m transported right back to when I was nine. The attraction returns as well. I can forget the emaciated J-Conn of today pining for a good man and probably a pizza, and go back to the fresh-faced goddess of the late-‘80s. My desperate attempt to justify this is the crux of the J-Conn Rule, which states that as long as the attraction was formed at an age-appropriate time, it is allowed to linger beyond that point. I mean, it’s not like I can go back in time and stalk teenaged J-Conn.

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“Doc, if we don’t get the Delorean to 88 miles per hour, we’ll never get to the set of Career Opportunities in time!”

The converse of the J-Conn Rule is this: If you didn’t see Labyrinth when you were under eighteen and you like J-Conn in that movie, you’re a creep. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. Actually, wait, I totally made this one. But it’s part of my local guy culture and it’s high time it reached a few more people.

Dante explores another rule, while Clint discusses the other most divine creature in cinema history.

Filed under: I'm Just Sayin, Puffery Tagged: Bureaucracy, don't judge me, guy stuff, J-Conn Rule, Labyrinth