Justin Robinson's Blog, page 7

Tread Perilously — Doctor Who: The Web Planet

Tread Perilously continues its return to Doctor Who as Erik and Justin face the First Doctor’s six-part adventure “The Web Planet” and almost crack under the pressure. The Doctor, Barbara, Ian and Vicki arrive on Vortis, a planet overrun by the ant-like Zarbi. There is also an invading force of bee people known as the Menoptera, but who are the real rulers of the planet? And why does it take so long for anything to happen?

Justin and Erik discuss the problems of the six-part story, William Hartnell‘s extra-strength flubbing and the way everyone seems to let the show down during this story. It’s an extra dose of difficult black & white Doctor Who that cannot transcend the era in which it was made.

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Filed under: Transmissions Tagged: doctor who, podcast, tread perilously, william hartnell

Now Fear This: Raze

She seems angry.

So much virtual ink has been spilled over the true meaning of the term “strong female character, that the only thing I’m one hundred percent convinced of is that the last thing anyone needs is another guy opining on what it means. Even that the standard bearers of the conversation are inevitably male (if ultimately well-meaning) tells you everything you need to know about the state of representation and why these characters are needed in the first place.

There is something weirdly predatory, though, even in the best representations. Joss Whedon is usually saluted as the pioneer, though JJ Abrams has had a long history of doing the same, from Alias all the way to his Star Wars remix. While these men proudly put women front and center in their action stories, asking gorgeous actresses to carry stories that would have once been anchored by twitching piles of testosterone, beneath the rah-rah girl-power fantasies is something darker. Because these are also two straight guys, and men will gaze.

No matter how many times Sidney Bristow was saving the world, she was doing it in a variety of bizarre wigs and fetish gear, and occasionally the show would stop cold for fanservice. Buffy was far more up front about its feminist agenda (and was justifiably praised for doing so), but at the same token it was difficult to watch and not get the precise dimensions of Joss Whedon’s particular feet-focused peccadilloes. Even as Buffy was proudly informing young women that punching was a solution to their problems just as it was for young men, a persistent undercurrent of the male gaze somewhat muddled the rhetorical waters.

This is often the devil’s bargain at the heart of women-focused action stories. They’re allowed to kick ass, contractually obligated to run like a buzz saw through the largely male opposition, but they’re going to do it while looking fabulous. Oftentimes, though not always, they’re going to be dressed in improbable and skintight outfits, and will be played not just by beautiful actresses, but actresses whose beauty is highly feminine. It’s worth mentioning that of all the female-led action movies (many of which are SF and fantasy as well, and reading too much into that is going to make me sad), only Fury Road did not appear to have any desire to making its lead at all feminine or attractive.

This weird double-edged interest, a holding up of women as warriors while imprisoning them in boxes of the male gaze, gets a disturbing exploration with the spare 2013 action-horror exploitation flick Raze. The heroines of the film are a group of women, shanghaied and imprisoned in a hellish underground dungeon and then forced to fight in bareknuckle brawls to the death. If they don’t, their loved ones will be murdered by the shadowy cabal forcing this fate upon them, and when they inevitably lose, same deal. So every loss is a double tragedy, with not even the sweet release of death holding much promise.

Zoe Bell, the stuntwoman famously leveled up to lead actress by Quentin Tarantino, finds the perfect vehicle for her talents. Bell is a movie star in the making, and it unfortunate she’s still looking for her breakthrough, as this should have been it. While Raze leans hard on her Uma Thurman’s-troubled-sister vibe and her solid action chops, it’s not afraid to give her moments of vulnerability, which she inevitably nails. This is the movie you hope someone like Soderbergh sees when he wants to make a sequel to his criminally underrated Haywire. Bell has come miles from her first nervous role in Death Proof to embrace her destiny as the kind of action heroine we need now, with the grit of the ‘70s married to the technique of the ‘00s.

Professional creep Doug Jones plays Joseph, the man in charge of the whole thing. He wraps up his insanity in a creepy obsession with the power of femininity. He calls the unwilling gladiatrices “maenads,” and drawing on a (likely made up) thousand year history for his organization. Though men like Whedon and Abrams never meant their admiration in this way (and are probably good-hearted guys who really are trying to help representation), it’s tough not to see a bit of them in Joseph’s leering. Joseph is where they could wind up if they’re not careful, a pitfall to which they are almost willfully blind.

Former star of Twin Peaks and woman everyone was in love with in 1990 Sherilyn Fenn plays Joseph’s wife Elizabeth. It’s heavily implied she was a former champion of the arena, driven mad and come out the other side as one of the exploiters. The story of an abused person becoming an abuser is far from a unique tale, but that is what gives it heft. It’s nearly an inevitability in the minds of many, a tragedy all the more awful because it was inevitable.

The film is structured with simple titles telling us who is fighting. Sabrina vs. Jamie, or Brenda vs. Nancy. This leads to the final title promising us the thrilling fight we didn’t even know we wanted since the beginning. It’s a moment of catharsis much larger movies have had trouble duplicating, turning the back half into a gritty bone-crunching action sequence that doubles as a compelling argument for Bell getting numerous other low to mid-budget action vehicles for her formidable skills.

Quieter scenes punctuate the fights, giving them the dramatic heft they need. So that when the women fight, they’re not mere ciphers but real thinking, breathing characters. Friendships forming in the dungeon also heighten the stakes of the inevitable showdowns. There’s no escape because for these women, they’re not just fighting for themselves. They’re fighting for the innocents on the outside. Even the fights are used to reveal character, as some of the women are insane, others gleefully brutal, while still others are fragile survivors. Our heroine is introduced preying on the better nature of the woman she fights, a bold decision in letting us potentially dislike the woman we’re going to be cheering for over the next ninety minutes.

Raze is the perfect exploitation movie: low budget and high concept, with great fight scenes and innovative direction. It should have been a star-making turn for Bell, but she’s still out there, looking for her big breakthrough. Based on this one, it can’t come soon enough.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: deathmatch, exploitation, kung fu, Now Fear This, Raze, Zoe Bell

Tread Perilously — Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor

Tread Perilously returns to Doctor Who! But to begin another set of episodes with the famous Time Lord, Erik presents Justin with the 50th anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor.” Intended as an example of treading safely, the episode may not have been a complete success.

The Doctor must face his past (literally) when his incarnation from the Time War debates the ultimate choice to end the war and destroy his home planet. Also, David Tennant‘s Doctor joins in as he remembers that terrible day.

Justin and Erik discuss its suitability for new viewers, the presence of John Hurt as the War Doctor and the Tenth Doctor’s ego. They also consider the problem of the Time Lords as a story concept, the nature of time travel and the strange predicament of regeneration. Christopher Eccleston and Paul McGann are missed.

Click here or subscribe to The Satellite Show on iTunes.

Filed under: Transmissions Tagged: christopher eccleston, david tennat, doctor who, john hurt, podcast, tread perilously

Yakmala: Revenge of the Red Baron

Don’t know who that kid is supposed to be.

Certain Yakmala films take on outsized importance to members of the group. Instead of any sort of sane mark of quality, this is inevitably because one or more people had an extreme reaction to the film in question. Intense revulsion, quivering rage, or an unshakable desire to just drown all memories of the movie in a sea of whiskey and alkaloids. Revenge of the Red Baron is one such film.

Tagline: None

More Accurate Tagline: It’s Never Over

Guilty Party: The first thing you notice about this cinematic war crime is that it features a bizarrely recognizable cast: Tobey Maguire, Mickey Rooney, Laraine Newman and Cliff De Young all show up, so you think maybe one of them was the impetus behind unleashing this upon us. But Maguire was right on the cusp of his doll-eyed stardom, Rooney is clearly only vaguely aware of what’s going on around him, Newman hasn’t done much since her tenure on SNL, and no one is greenlighting a film because De Young agreed to be in it. This suggests that director Robert Gordon has photographs of them all doing something so horrifying that not only would their careers be over, but there’s a good chance they’d get tried in the Hague. This is one of the few movies where a mass grave in Tobey Maguire’s backyard would go a long way toward explaining its existence.

Synopsis: France, 1918. The Red Baron, who looks pretty much exactly like late ‘90s professional attention whore Tom Green, is unmatched in the skies until Grandpa Spencer (Tobey Maguire) gives him a little shot of what I like to call freedom beans. Bullets. Freedom beans are bullets.

The Red Baron is on his way to crashing when lightning strikes him and he explodes. Fast forward to 1994. Now Tobey Maguire is Jimmy Spencer, a hoodlum known mostly for pulling a knife on a teacher. Maguire doesn’t have the volcanic temper necessary to make this remotely believable. Then again, Maguire doesn’t have the volcanic temper necessary to get mildly annoyed when the people at Starbucks call him “Kobe.”

His mom (Newman) packs him up to live with his dad (De Young) and Grandpa (Rooney), where young Jimmy can get a little discipline. This might be effective if his dad treated him as anything more than a home invader who can do some cheap labor. Dad’s open contempt for everyone and everything extends to Grandpa as well, which is probably why the doddering old man is so psyched to show off his model planes to someone who won’t call him an asshole.

These model planes are replicas of his and the Red Baron’s WWI-era biplanes, and the Red Baron’s includes some actual pieces from the real Red Baron’s plane. When the model gets struck by lightning, by the scientific laws inherent in shitty movies, the plane is now possessed. The Red Baron wants his titular revenge, which he gets by killing De Young (which, frankly is the nicest thing he could do for literally everyone in the film), causing a near fatal heart attack in Grandpa, and successfully framing Jimmy for the whole thing.

And you thought he was just a fighter pilot.

Jimmy gets thrown into a mental hospital that makes you long for the professionalism and commitment to healing of the Cuckoo’s Nest, leaving mom to pick up the pieces. Well, the Baron’s not done yet. He really wants to kill Jimmy for some reason, and hey, mom’s here, so might as well. At this point, he gets bullets for the machine guns on his model biplane because they somehow use the same caliber as the assorted pistols, rifles, and shotguns dad had. Sure. Why not.

In a scene that’s like that similar one in Terminator 2, except terrible, Jimmy breaks out of the hospital right as mom shows up. They grab Grandpa out of the regular hospital as well, and make it back to Dad’s house because that’s the one set they still have access to. They have a showdown with the Red Baron that lasts about three days. Not in the movie. In your life. If you watch this thing, you will discover a new form of time travel powered exclusively by the sounds your brain cells make when they hang themselves.

Anyway, Jimmy somehow manages to trick the Red Baron into running into some power lines, which Grandpa then plugs in (shocking himself badly in the process, and no way that’s fatal for a man in his nineties with a bum ticker). And just because this movie needs a final way to say fuck you, the final shot is the Baron’s parachute. The little fucker bailed out.

Life-Changing Subtext: Schadenfreude is the only universal concept in the world.

Defining Quote: Pretty much anything out of the Red Baron’s mouth. He’s supposed to be a Freddy Krueger-style villain who kills and quips, like James Bond if he were a psychopath. So, like James Bond, I guess.

Only these things qualify as quips the way a baby’s funeral is technically a buffet. There’s food there, but that’s probably not why you’re attending. They are to comedy like a black hole, absorbing light, life, and probably filled with a bunch of sodomy demons.

Think I’m exaggerating? Here are a couple:

“We love to fly and it shows.”
“These high gas prices really burn me up.”
“The ladies always flip for me.”

That last one. What the fuck was that even supposed to be? That’s not an idiom. That’s how Scrabble tiles tell you when they’re being used for something unholy.

Standout Performance: Nothing beats screenwriter and Mad TV alum Michael McDonald as Jimmy’s shrink. He openly antagonizes Jimmy, trying to trick him into a recorded confession. He’s like some weird combination of Vic Mackey and the bad guy in Deadpool. This bizarre characterization points to one of the more baffling aspects of the movie, which we’ll get to in the Transcendent Moment.

What’s Wrong: Okay, there’s nothing wrong with having a movie about a killer doll. Brad Dourif has probably purchased multiple cabanas or quarries or whatever it is rich people buy, off the cash from the Child’s Play franchise. That Zulu doll sequence in Trilogy of Terror is pretty much the only reason to watch that one (and a good reason at that). So, on the face of it, sure. Just make sure it moves along pretty briskly, and it might not hurt to acknowledge how ridiculous it is.

This thing is paced like Schindler’s List and is somehow not as funny.

Flash of Competence: The car chase between Laraine Newman, the cops, and the Red Baron (never thought I’d write that), features a decent car flip at the end.

Best Scenes: Let’s talk about how everyone in this movie is an asshole. First off, dad has a neighbor, Lou, but it’s unclear if Lou actually lives in the house next door or merely lurks next to the fence on the property line. Lou is a colossal asshole. He titters to himself like a demented goblin after every exchange, including one where he gleefully shouts to his unseen wife (who, let’s face it, is probably a collection of sheets he drew a sad face on) that “The kid’s killing him!” And yes, this is the scene where De Young’s character dies.

Later, a cab driver with a “hilarious” foreign accent rips Jimmy and mom off for no reason. Brings the plot to a halt while they haggle with him, and then he just drives off with the mom’s watch. Joke’s on the shady immigrant, though, because mom’s watch isn’t worth anything.

Transcendent Moment: My favorite Yakmala films are always those when the filmmakers obviously have some kind of bone to pick. The best of those is when the target is something completely unworthy of such vitriol. Now, with Red Baron, you’re probably thinking there’s some German racism here. You would be mostly wrong. No, what Robert Gordon and Michael McDonald fucking hate with the blinding intensity of a million exploding galaxies, is the medical profession.

Anyone in the medical profession.

I talked a bit about McDonald’s psychologist character who lies to and badgers Jimmy. Well, the orderly who works there admits nonchalantly to being an arsonist. Seriously, that’s just tossed off, and if you’re hoping this is some kind of Chekhov’s Firebug situation, you are giving McDonald way too much credit as a writer. The doctors in the hospital ignore Grandpa while the nurse treats him with the kind of contempt that up until now was the purview of Cliff De Young. Even the two paramedics stop to joke rather than drive the ninety-three year old heart attack victim to the hospital.

I don’t know what doctors, nurses, paramedics, and psychologists did to Gordon and McDonald. In this universe, any kind of medical degree means you are, at best, a feckless sociopath, and at worst some kind of genocidal madman. I’m pretty sure McDonald wrote this one after his first prostate exam.

You said you loved me!

Revenge of the Red Baron is a truly dire film. While its brief running time might seduce you, remember, there are nicer ways to spend ninety minutes. Like taking a shovel and hitting yourself in the groin over and over again.

 

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion, Yakmala! Tagged: Cliff De Young, Laraine Newman, Mickey Rooney, Revenge of the Red Baron, the Red Baron, Tobey Maguire, Yakmala!

Lifetime Theater: Into Dangerous Territory

If you listen to the weekly podcast I co-host (blatant plug!), you’ve probably heard me harping on pacing. It’s one of the most important skills in writing, and in a cruel twist of fate worthy of O Henry and Oh God, You Devil, one of the hardest. Basically, this is the ability to have your story move along at roughly the right clip, so the audience is never bored or overwhelmed. By far the most common problem is when there just isn’t enough story to justify the running time, and the few events get stretched out like taffy, or the screaming worker who just fell into the machinery at a taffy factory.

This, of course, all depends on whether or not you have the same story in mind as the creators. This week’s Lifetime movie, Into Dangerous Territory, was part of Lifetime’s Halloween-themed programming. That’s right, I’m only just getting around to stuff I recorded last Halloween. This is part of my ongoing thesis that Lifetime is actually a horror network with the audacity to craft programming for women ages 35-70 in clear defiance of God’s law. The problem is, as soon as I craft a rule, such as my much-lauded Insane Foreign Businessman Auteur Theory, I will inevitably find a baffling exception that should not exist, like a refrigerator full of spare clown parts.

The synopsis of Into Dangerous Territory, suggested one of those Man vs. Nature films where aging stars pit themselves against the wilderness, usually in the form of an aggressive bear. They spend the bulk of the running time trekking across unforgiving but lush pine forests, and slowly discovering things about themselves. There’s usually a little bit of moralizing about how people who live in nature are somehow more pure than the Baal-worshiping Sodomites who infest every city. For this movie, I was promised a man and a woman journeying across nature, pursued by a hungry bear and a team of drug smugglers.

The whole thing started like gangbusters. Two minutes in, and I was convinced I’d found another classic on the level of Jodi Arias or Talhotblond . Some guy wanders through the woods, stops to look at some dog food on the ground, and gets surprised by a bear. The refreshing part is that they never decide on one way to make the FX terrible. In some shots, the bear looks like an elderly puppet on his way to wherever it is they euthanize muppets. I’m not even joking here, the goddamn real bear looked fake. Then there’s a combat bear, whose trick is to stand up and roar, displaying canines that have been filed down to nubs. In most of these, the bear is composited into the shot with actors with the same amount of skill as those faked family photos in your standard procedural show. But who cares, because this Lifetime movie opens with a fucking bear mauling a guy to death.

Unfortunately, Lifetime movies are made with whatever money the network found collectively at the bottom of its purses and pockets at the end of the month. They’re not springing for the kinds of outdoor stunts and animal wrangling necessary to create something as instantly forgettable as the Anthony Hopkins/Alec Baldwin vehicle The Edge. Hell, they weren’t even springing for travel expenses, shooting what was supposed to be Alaska in what was instantly obvious as Big Bear, California.

Yeah, it was that obvious. They didn’t even bother changing the license plates on the trucks.

So what I thought was going to be action/horror actually turned into romance. Reid, a thirtyish manly outdoorsy type comes down to LA to help his college pal Carlos pick out an engagement ring. There he meets Mia, who along with her parents, runs a jewelry store on Rodeo Drive. The two have a quick romance that gets cut short when Reid who is a park ranger or something, goes back to check on that bear attack. Mia decides to follow him up to Alaska, and they have exactly the kind of sleepy, well-lit romance you think they will.

Here’s the weird stuff. The actress who plays Mia is clearly in her forties, but she’s treated by her parents (and largely, the script) like she’s 26. It’s possible the role was written for a younger woman, or the writers were making a clever point about the infantilization of adult women in culture. Who am I kidding? This was a bit of a fantasy: the mid-forties woman hooking up with a younger man. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, either. Although them having a kid at the end… well, if you’re going wish-fulfillment, might as well go nuts with it.

And then she fights metroids.

There are three roadblocks to the romance. The first are the local creeps. There’s Adrian, who meets Mia at the airport. He’s dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit and a gold medallion, like he’s some weird combination of a convict and a backwoods porn star. Izzy is far more menacing, who lurks around in his aging rocker gear, alternately threatening and harassing Mia. The second is that bear. I had hopes that the combination of overly-aggressive bear and drug smugglers would mean bear cocaine, but sadly no. Izzy has been feeding the bear (that’s the dog food from the beginning) and then using a cattleprod on it to create the perfect security system. You can probably see where this is a terrible idea.

The last roadblock is Pam, and this is where that whole wish-fulfillment hypothesis gets some more legs. Pam is a local park ranger type too, and she used to date Reid. Now that he’s with someone else, she’s kind of into him again. This is a perfect reason for why she might not like our perfect heroine. But no, since she’s hostile, there has to be another, darker reason behind it all. She’s in league with Izzy and Adrian.

In the last fifteen minutes, Mia stumbles across the underground pot bunker, and Izzy decides they have to kill her. His plan involves getting her stuck in a bear trap and letting the bear eat her, because, you know, accident. Three guesses as to what happens to Izzy. Reid and Pam are also out looking for Mia and everyone gets to fight. Pam shoots Reid in the leg, Mia hits Pam with bear mace, Izzy shoots Adrian (after he has an attack of conscience and tried to help Mia escape), and the bear eats Izzy.

So the last few minutes is what I thought the entire movie was going to be. The injured outdoorsman has to be carried by the city girl over miles of rough terrain while they’re pursued by armed humans and an angry bear. They end up getting caught by Pam, who is still having trouble what with getting bear mace in your eye, which is probably the second worse place to get bear maced. Mia does some hilarious bullet dodging, and wins the day. For an outdoor adventure, it was paced abominably. For a low-key romance? Actually, it was kind of paced badly for that too.

So what did we learn? Wild bears are notoriously unreliable security. When in doubt, follow the guy you met up into the Alaskan wilderness. And that woman who kind of doesn’t like you is probably involved in a murderous criminal cartel.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: Alaska, bears, Into Dangerous Territory, Lifetime Theater, outdoors, weird survivalists

New Satellite Show Episode 31: More of the Best Worst Movie You’ve Never Heard Of

Recorded live at Long Beach Comic Expo! The Panel of Experts convenes to talk about some of the best worst movies around. This time, they took a look at what happens when the director of a classic martial arts film, a Realtor, a guy who really wants to see his kid in the pictures and a cable channel stumble over their intents. The group also discusses the origin of the term “Yakmala” and what makes for a Yakmala moment in a terrible-yet-entertaining movie. The movies reviewed include Gymkata, Double Down, Time Master and Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret. Moderator: Erik. Panel: Louis, Sarah, Clint, Justin.

Click here or subscribe to The Satellite Show on iTunes.

Filed under: Transmissions Tagged: Double Down, Gymkata, Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret, podcast, time master

Now Fear This: Feast

Spitting into a monster’s mouth is how you establish dominance.

Perhaps more so than any other genre, the rules of horror are well known to audiences. Some of the most influential horror films out there are built entirely on the backs of outlining the tropes upon which they function, and unfortunately, just as many movies consider the highlighting of these tropes as a substitute for wit. Far more satisfying is when a movie plays with expectations without first holding the audience’s hand through an explanation of what’s going on beforehand. Better still to trust them, understanding that while casual fans might be alienated, the serious genre junkies will get served with some red meat.

2005’s Feast, the product of Affleck and Damon’s Project Greenlight, is one such movie.  It introduces its characters in the apotheosis of a short-lived trend in horror/comedy cinema of introducing its characters with their names splashed over the screen. Feast, as will become its hallmark, gleefully overdoes it, not only listing the character’s name, but their job, occupation (sometimes both), a fun fact, and their life expectancy. The character’s names are almost always simple descriptors, too, like Tuffy, Harley Mom, Bossman, Bartender, and so on.

The film also wastes no time in showing that these life expectancies really only apply to other horror films these characters might find themselves in. When a muscly shotgun-toting badass named “Hero” shows up, or there’s the cute and precocious elementary-aged kid of a good-looking single mom, we figure those are going to be two of the survivors, battered but unbroken, greeting the dawn in the end. We certainly aren’t expecting both to be messily devoured within moments of meeting them. Similarly, when Tuffy is introduced having disinterested sex with Bossman, she’s instantly marked for death because of horror’s weirdly conservative sexual mores. When she takes charge and even receives a new name, she’s subverting just as many tropes. The audacity of the early deaths gives Feast something so few movies have: the livewire sense that literally anyone can die at any time.

The movie opens in a roadhouse in the ass end of nowhere at night. We’re introduced to the walking chum that will eventually be painting the walls red, when Hero comes in. He’s bloody, he’s carrying a shotgun, and he has the kind of square-jawed good looks that say “Don’t worry, ladies, I got this Necronomicon thing handled.” Then the monsters attack, killing the people in bright, ridiculous sprays of gore and viscera. The movie turns into a siege survival horror picture, saving money on locations even as it uses the claustrophobic environs to enhance the tension.

The characters continue to subvert expectations, even beyond when they’re messily killed. No matter how silly Feast gets, and it is intended as a splatter-comedy in the vein of Tucker and Dale , the characters react with impeccable logic. If one of them thinks they can escape the horror, they’re going to give it a shot, teamwork be damned. This isn’t a group. This is a collection of individuals doing some very cold math on whether or not they’ll survive the night even relatively intact.

The FX are perhaps the best part of the movie. Though it’s a mid-‘00s film, the makers eschewed CGI in favor of the practical. The blood sprays have a pleasing juicy quality to them, the skinned faces, dismemberments, and other mutilations carrying a satisfying weight. By the end of the movie, the roadhouse is absolutely soaked in the insides of the people there. The blood is so thick, there is almost a scent to it.

The monsters are even better, a triumph of latex and puppeteering. They wisely shoot around the limitations, hiding the false notes with dark sets and quick cuts. This creates solid characters for the actors to play off of. There’s no guesswork, and the reactions feel far more genuine. And there is just no substitute for a good puppet when it comes to physical interactions. In a stroke of inspiration, there’s even layers to the creature design, as they wear costumes of fur and cow skulls. It allows a dual reveal, first of the monster’s clothing, then of the monster itself.

Feast is dismissed by its detractors as juvenile. They’re not wrong. This is a bit more of a feature than a bug, as it’s clear the defiantly elementary-school sense of humor is part of the package. This is not a place to go for a highbrow deconstruction of Wittgenstein, this is a place where monsters get castrated. For the most part, the humor lands (with a car-alarm joke being the most inspired gag in the bunch). An oral rape falls flat for me, despite how over-the-top it is. I think some of this is the changing landscape of the discussion, which I’m going to call a good thing. Call that moment a remnant of mid-‘00s insensitivity. And, to be fair, if the victim were a man, I’d likely be fine with it and thus be a big ol’ hypocrite.

The cast is an odd but often inspired collection of familiar faces from that era. Balthazar Getty plays Bozo, a character who often flirts with heroism but whose incompetence keeps biting him in the ass. National treasure Henry Rollins is Coach, a Tony Robbins-like motivational speaker who isn’t nearly as inspiring as he believes himself to be. Judah Friedlander of 30 Rock is Beer Guy, who gets puked on by a monster and spends the rest of the film rotting. Other familiar faces include Clu Gulager, Krista Allen, Jenny Wade, and Jason Mewes (playing a version of himself).

No one is going to put Feast on any best-of lists, but there’s a lot to like about this plucky little gore fest. In its compulsive desire to offend, it’s almost sweetly endearing, and the throwback FX are such a welcome sight in the modern digital landscape. If you’re in the mood for an over-the-top gorefest, Feast will treat you right.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: Balthazar Getty, Feast, Henry Rollins, Judah Friedlander, Kirsta Allen, Now Fear This, Project Greenlight

Tread Perilously — Star Trek TNG: Genesis

Tread Perilously responds to its first listener request! Back when Erik and Justin took on the second season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Royale,” several Bleeding Cool readers suggested the late seventh season episode “Genesis.” Boy, did it turn out to be a worthy episode for review…

Barclay’s hypochondria leads to a virus on board the Enterprise which causes the crew to devolve. Data and Picard, safely off-ship when the outbreak occurred, must find a solution before a primitive Worf tries to mate with an amphibious Troi and Picard turns into a marmoset.

Erik and Justin revel in Worf’s lack of basic competence in the first act and the extreme senioritis present throughout the episode. They also consider the lasting influence of Ronald D. Moore, Riker’s sex-offender status, Troi’s position as a bridge officer and the difficult time Gene Roddenberry had in introducing an executive officer character. Also, writer Brannon Braga may not have understood Star Trek.

Click here or subscribe to The Satellite Show on iTunes.

Filed under: Transmissions Tagged: brannon braga, gene roddenberry, ronald d. moore, star trek the next generation, tread perilously

Yakmala: Delinquent Daughters

That’s right, it’s the unchecked star power of… Teala Loring

Sometimes it’s fun to play in the hinterlands of exploitation cinema. The kinds of movies that were meant to be featured in cannibal drive-ins in the back roads of Oklahoma, and only the cannibal drive-ins in the back roads of Oklahoma. With that in mind, I’ve unearthed the black-and-white shoestring nightmare Delinquent Daughters.

Tagline: YOUTH RUNNING WILD! UNHEEDED…UNCHECKED!

More Accurate Tagline: YOUTH RUNNING MILD! UNSEEN…UNLIT!

Guilty Party: Albert Herman has made more movies in his life than you will make mistakes. Which is good, because judging purely by the titles, every last one of his movies was a mistake. The kind of mistake that eventually leads to a vengeful deity swallowing the world in floodwaters, the undead, and mediocre frozen dinners.

Synopsis: This movie has the storytelling skills of an active crime scene at the bottom of a well. You have to put together what happened from the bloodstains, a few half-glimpsed images of the crime itself, and maybe a couple muddy echoes from the possibly helpful gnomes that live down here. What I’m trying to say is, I only have the vaguest idea what’s going on.

Okay, so this (I think) high school girl Lucille killed herself. She was running with a bad crowd or something, and her friends June the blonde everygirl, Sally the brunette bad girl, Betty the clearly developmentally disabled girl, and Francine the out-of-focus girl aren’t too broken up about it. They get questioned by dogged cop Lt. Hanahan in the principal’s office, and Sally refuses to talk, despite getting enough noir slang thrown at her to open a detective agency.

Sally’s dating Jerry, and he’s a no-account hoodlum. Or else he has a weird idea of what constitutes a date. He knocks over a liquor store, gets chased by a cop, then runs down a pedestrian outside a local nightclub. He then drops Sally off at the same nightclub, because hey, might as well make an evening of it. Yes, this whole scene was supposed to be a date.

Jerry’s idea of a wedding.

Sally runs into her friends there, and June is worried that her dad is going to beat her if she stays out too late. Turns out, she had every reason to worry. When she does get home, she immediately has to flee to what I can only assume, based on the lighting, is a cave at the bottom of the ocean where light goes to kill itself. Her boyfriend Rocky runs into her, and thinking she’s going to kill herself, proposes. Considering what a twit Rocky, is, I’m shocked this didn’t push her over the edge.

Sally and Jerry embark on a crime spree, and then break up, which is exactly what Bonnie and Clyde assured me would never happen. Rocky hooks up with local crime boss Nick, and goes to knock over a payroll with Rocky’s dad’s gun (it’s a long, and let’s face it, stupid story). Jerry gets shot.

Nick flees as Lt. Hanahan chases him. Stupid fuck that he is, Rocky has to follow along to see what’s up. He ends up accidentally forcing Nick off the road, and in the crash, Nick is killed.

Then the town turns Nick’s seedy club into a wholesome place for teenagers to hang out.

Life-Changing Subtext: Only through murder can we attain Golf ‘N’ Stuff.

Defining Quote: Jerry: “She was no angel… she used to hang around the merry go round didn’t she?” This makes sense in context — the Merry Go Round is Nick’s seedy club. I prefer to think of it as a literal merry go round, though. You know those badass tough kids, always riding their favorite ceramic unicorn to the strains of “Music Box Dancer.”

Standout Performance: Mary Bovard plays Betty, who, as I mentioned, is clearly not all there. I suspect they were going for the kind of daffy blonde archetype, but they went too far, and wound up in the “How the fuck is this chimpanzee feeding herself?” archetype. Which is less funny and more sad.

What’s Wrong: This entire movie looks like it was shot at the bottom of an oil drum. A full oil drum. Full of oil, and the black hearts of a thousand demons condemned to a lightless abyss. Then with like, no flashlights, either.

Flash of Competence: From time to time, the dialogue rises to the level of noir camp. Lines like, “Listen, you!” and “Oh, a wiseguy, huh?” It’s not what you’d call good, but at least it’s fun.

Best Scenes: We need to talk about Hanahan. It’s not just the overly Oirish last name that sounds like it was come up with by a racist Cockney keyboard with only three keys. It’s more his unspoken superpowers. See, the thing about Hanahan is that motherfucker is everywhere. Seriously, in the middle of scenes, he’ll just wander out of the shadows, like a combination of Bob Hoskins and Edward Cullen acting like he’s been there the whole time and he wants to talk about Koopas and/or Bella’s panties.

The best teleportation scene is when June is looking at the water, and Rocky thinks she’s contemplating suicide. Mostly because he knows what a dipshit he is and is pretty sure this is June’s only way out. Then Hanahan staggers in (it’s tough to tell because of the Stygian lighting), and starts talking to them. Well, they throw him in the water, possibly confusing him for Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, and run.

Then they come back, fish him out of the drink, and he takes them to a judge’s house in the middle of the night for a lecture. Yes, this is a thing that happened, and not that Cockney keyboard getting its revenge.

Transcendent Moment: Hey, remember that suicide that kicks everything off? Remember how that sounded like what this whole thing was going to be about? Well, the movie sure doesn’t, and would much rather prefer you stopped bringing it up.

“Who the fuck is Lucille?”

Delinquent Daughters was made on the cheap as a way to titillate theatergoers. But then they forgot to titillate! It’s like trying to masturbate in oven mitts. Best case scenario, your next pot roast is going to taste a bit off.

 

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion, Yakmala! Tagged: Delinquent Daughters, exploitation, Yakmala!

Tread Perilously — The X-Files: Fight Club

Tread Perilously makes its first foray into that stalwart series of the supernatural — The X-Files. Erik and Justin take on the season seven episode “Fight Club,” featuring two Kathy Griffins, Sergeant Michaels from 7th Heaven and the belief that wrestling is real. Mulder and Scully get called to Kansas City when two field agents and a couple of Mormons (or Jehova’s Witnesses) inexplicably try to kill each other. It leads to ill-defined ideas about doppelgangers and fraternal siblings with psychic powers.

Erik and Justin recall what Fox looked like in its early years with its reliance on three good shows and many short-lived series featuring Paul Rudd. Both admit to being into the UFO phenomenon in their youths and while one likes The X-Files because of it, the other is rather lukewarm on the program.

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Filed under: Transmissions Tagged: fox, paul rudd, the x-files, tready perilously