TED DANSON ON THE CEILING

THE GIRL SLAVES OF MORGANA LE FAY (1971)

2011-05-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

VERY NICE PERIOD COSTUMES. AND BY PERIOD COSTUMES I MEAN TITS.

Ask yourself before renting this one - why do I wanna watch this? For the hot swingin' 70's action? There ain't none. This thing crawls like a baby on fly paper. For the groovy 70's backdrops? Go rent "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" instead, it's a much more entertaining film. And sorry, if you're just here to check out the ample T&A, that's Strike 3 - there ain't that much, and what there is ain't worth it. Imagine the worst Skinemax After Dark movie from 1975 and then take out the hardcore (if they haven't already). Morgana Le Fay now hawks Wrinkle Cream on QVC at 3 in the morning, and her Girl Slaves now tour with Englebert Humperdinck. They were both good career moves.

ODD THAT CPR SHOULD GIVE ME A BONER.

LATHE OF HEAVEN (1980)

2011-04-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry, LeGuin fans. It ain't the lack of special effects that destroy this one. It's the lack of coherent thought. Every time this guy dreams of something (and his dreams come true, you see, now there's a novel idea), he screws it up! You'd think he'd be just a tad more careful what he dreams about after, oh, the third or fourth screwup, but he's not, and neither is the doofus scientist who's controlling the experiment. So things just get worse and worse until Professor Brainless decides to harness Dreamboy's power for himself, and golly gee I wonder what's gonna happen next? I like Ursula LeGuin. She seems like a sweet old lady. But if this is her finest hour, she better look into getting a show on the Cooking Channel or something.

FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE (1977)

2011-04-07T17:28:00.000-07:00

I'LL ASK YOU ONE MORE TIME. WHERE DID YOU HIDE THE FURBIES?

Hey, a cross between Funny Games and All In The Family! William Sanderson reads from the Racial Epithet Thesaurus while his genuinely crazed Asian friend rips a blouse off a white girl and takes a brick to the head of a young boy, and some Latino dude panics alot and wears authentic 70's pimp shirts. This is a film made in a time when men were men, goddammit. They drove Mercurys with 8-cylinder engines. They smoked cigarettes proudly and blew smoke in the face of any pansy ass who dared to object. And they lusted after full-bodied women like Lynda Carter and Raquel Welch and Pam Grier - little crack whores like Natalie Portman and Bijou Philips and Sela Ward just won't cut it for these men. Sure, the racial slurs are meant to offend, but if anyone out there thinks the violence toward children, women and old people in this movie was also designed to get a reaction, you missed the point. That's just the way we rolled back in 1977.

LOOK (2007)

2011-03-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

HEATHER HOGAN ON THE RIGHT. ASHLEY "MACHO MAN" SAVAGE ON THE LEFT. I THINK.

I liked it. A lot of different, seemingly unrelated stories that do eventually tie in together in a Gus Van Sant Elephant-like way. Some stories are played for laughs and don't get much screen time, others are deadly serious (and ultimately devastingly tragic) and make up the bulk of the film. Like real life, there aren't always happy endings to these stories, and the absence of any Hollywood stars makes you believe these characters are real. Well, no stars yet. But let me be the first to start an appreciation society for Heather Hogan, who starts the film off with a bang (no pun intended) and I pray isn't at all related to Brooke and the Hulkster.

BABY BLOOD (1990)

2011-03-17T18:58:00.000-07:00

AND YOU THOUGHT THAT BIG DUMP YOU TOOK LAST NIGHT WAS ROUGH!

BABY BLOOD, quite simply, is so bad, it's good. Woman with David Letterman teeth goes on murderous rampage because her squid-baby needs blood, attacks driver who picked her up hitch-hiking and crashes Benny Hill-style into a wall. Mom follows goopy trail of Baby Calamari into a bus of soccer hooligans, COVERED IN BLOOD AND GRUE FROM THE CRASH. Bus driver doesn't seem to notice and welcomes strange girl onto bus, but warns her not to wake the soccer punks because they tend to get "rowdy" around women. Bus driver never questions why mom's drenched in human carnage. Needless to say, soccer boys wake up, get instantly aroused by the sight of a bloody mama with a dental gap the size of Cleveland, while Octobaby attacks driver in what might be the single most hilarious baby attack since the plastic hand puppet in ITS ALIVE. Really, this movie is so inexplicable that you stop looking for plot holes 30 minutes in and start questioning why you're watching this fucking thing sober. A half dozen Black Russians and I'm sure BABY BLOOD looks like BLADE RUNNER. And it might even start to make sense.

HOW THE HELL DID THEY GET RAE DAWN CHONG IN THIS MOVIE?

IT'S ALIVE! (1974)

2010-12-10T19:33:00.000-08:00

CHANCES ARE IF YOU SPENT GOOD MONEY ON THIS FILM, YOU DID WATCH IT ALONE.

Elisabeth Hasselback is pregnant again. Now that's a baby that scares me a thousand times more than the sock puppet in ITS ALIVE. Not a good sign when the DVD cover is scarier than the actual movie. Followed quickly by ITS ALIVE 2 - PLACENTA OF DEATH.

JESUS CHRIST, ANOTHER FUCKING KARDASHIAN?!?

CANNIBAL FEROX (1981)

2010-11-15T18:40:00.001-08:00

NOT NEARLY AS SEXY AS IT SHOULD BE.

Umberto Lenzi must HATE New York. Or New Yorkers, I should say. Here are four and a half of the most reprehensible, self-absorbed and downright STUPID people you've ever seen outside of a Pauly Shore movie, and they're all "New Yorkers" (though they sure don't LOOK like it, with their mullets and bad perms). Needless to say, these Sarah Palin wannabees pretty much have to PROVOKE the cannibals into doing what they do, and it all really makes NO sense at all. They HANG OUT in the cannibal village, forgodsake, and then act SHOCKED when the men return. If you like gore, there's plenty of it here, though most of the violence and dismemberment toward the humans is very fake looking (freeze frame the castration scene - whatever latex was used looks NOTHING like what it's meant to be). But yes, like the other reviewers said, there are several animal deaths, some very cruelly staged and THOSE are hard to watch if you like small woodland creatures. I do, but at the same time, I REALLY hate stupid people, so CANNIBAL FEROX was kind of a toss-up. Animal killings bad, stupid people dismemberments really satisfying. Some decent nudity by the blonde, and thank God the brunette keeps her clothes on. Three stars then, right down the middle. With a MACHETE.

HEY, CAN I GET A HAND HERE? NO, I MEAN LITERALLY.

ULTRAMAN TIGA (2000)

2010-10-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

ONE STEP CLOSER, ULTRAMAN, AND I WILL SHOP-VAC YOU, I SWEAR!

My God, 30 years later you'd-a thunk this "new" Ultraman would've been able to improve on the original 1960's version. You thought men in rubber suits was cheesy? Well fuck, just wait'll you see the awful CGI effects that absolutely ruin Ultraman Tiga! Everything about Ultraman Tiga suggests it was filmed with a budget of $20.87 per show. And that's after taxes. This doesn't compare to the original Ultraman, or Johnny Sokko or Space Giants even. What it does compare to is Power Rangers and Teletubbies. Granted, most of the monsters in Tiga look better than the ones in the original series, but what's so sorely lacking here is creativity. There's no giant oil-sucking starfish bat here, or a mummy-loving winged dragon horse, or even a giant Abominable Snowgirl ghost, so clearly the makers of Ultraman Tiga weren't licking acid tabs as much as the creators of Ultraman 1960s. They were probably mainlining saccharine, from the looks of this.

THE KILLING OF SATAN (1983)

2010-09-15T17:55:00.000-07:00

"Satan, where are you? Come out and fight! You're yellow, Satan!" No wonder the Prince of Darkness takes time off his busy schedule to star in this Filipino schlock film - who could possibly resist a challenge like that? I swear, they spent less money on this movie than Rush Limbaugh spends on diet pills, and yet, even if the special effects are laughably bad and the editor looks like he spliced the film with a lumberjack's axe, still - you gotta love the ambitiousness and inexplicability (if that's a word) of it all. A man runs directly in front of a slow-moving styrofoam boulder and instantly becomes a bloody pancake, and yet his head (which curiously did not get flattened) is still able to warn the hero, "Stop that boulder!" And don't let that Frank Frazetta fanclub cover art fool ya either - the hero of the film looks more like a balding forklift driver, and Satan looks more like a guy who got turned down by the traveling production of Mummenschantz. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Because now they got things like, I don't know, cash. And technique. And plots. Does that really say this was filmed in 1983? Sweet Baby Jesus, it looks ten years older even by third world standards! This is freeform Filipino cinema at its finest. Satan, where are you? Come out and FIGHT!!!

CUT HIMSELF SHAVING. WITH A CIRCULAR SAW.

SATAN'S MINION? OR A RARE EARLY PRESS PHOTO OF GILBERT GOTTFRIED?

NO NO, YOU TWO GO TO LUNCH WITHOUT ME. I'M KINDA WATCHING MY WEIGHT.

DONKEY PUNCH (2008)

2010-08-20T19:08:00.000-07:00

KIDS TODAY ARE SO DARN SERIOUS!

Call it The Real World: Death Yacht, I like that. That's about right too - a bunch of semi-hot spoiled British brats go out on a boat and frolic and make out and force you to activate your subtitles option just to make out what they're mumbling. Then something bad happens centered around the titular "donkey punch," a quick shot to the back of the head during anal sex for those of you who don't know (and God bless you), and suddenly the kids turn on each other, because, hey, that's what spoiled kids do. And if you thought Paris and Nicole had a falling out, you ain't seen nothing til you've seen Nigel and Ian and Emma going at it here. Comparisons to KNIFE IN THE WATER, DEAD CALM or, jeesus, any good movie are completely unjustified - this is basically THE RULES OF ATTRACTION crossed with BATTLE ROYALE if MTV filmed it. But hey, the cast is pretty and they get naked, so if you don't expect Sir John Gielgud and Kate Winslet to show up with an axe, you should have a good time for an hour and a half. If only the cast of Jersey Shore would start killing each other off like this...

SHE'S UP FOR A LITTLE DONKEY PUNCH OR TWO.

HAND IN GLOVE, THE SUN SHINES OUT OF OUR BEHINDS...

THE CRAWLERS (1990)

2010-08-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

TROLL 2 fans, listen up! THE CRAWLERS was originally known as TROLL 3, and if you thought TROLL 2 had nothing to do with trolls, well, TROLL 3 has even less. At least TROLL 2 had goblins, or shitty goblin-like puppets. TROLL 3’s got roots and trees. Seriously. That’s what we’re up against here. It’s like M. Night Shamalyan’s THE HAPPENING only without Zooey Deschanel. Waitaminnit, that’s an improvement, right?

JUST CALM DOWN THERE, JUNIOR. NOBODY GETS NEKKID IN THE CRAWLERS.

Let’s be honest. THE CRAWLERS sucks. Hard. But so did TROLL 2, and that’s got something of a cult following now BECAUSE of its hard suckiness. So where’s the love for THE CRAWLERS? Well I, for one, bet it would get a lot more attention – and a DVD release – if it were actually called TROLL 3 to capitalize on the fans of 1 and 2. Or maybe they could market it as "THE HAPPENING without Zooey Deschanel.” Either way, you just KNOW this movie’s gonna be fun when its default internet synopsis goes like this:

“Evil nuclear power plant manager is dumping nuclear waste in a forest. People start getting killed. Drunken PhD in power plant starts tracking radiation in the forest. More people killed. Newspaper reporter and local boy and girl start investigating. Still more people killed. Townspeople try to remove nuclear waste. Yet more people killed. EPA cleans up the mess with bulldozers.”

Really? Is it THAT simple? No trolls, no goblins, no Nilbogs, and not even things that fucking crawl? And it’s all cleaned up by the EPA with bulldozers? How can you possibly fill 90 minutes with THAT? Well shit, if Dana Carvey can make a full-length film, then surely these kids can stretch out this air-thin plot for an hour and a half, right? Well now, let’s see how they did it…

It helps that the first death in the film doesn’t take place until 17 minutes in. Something slithers and, well, CRAWLS through the grass and somehow manages to knock out a girl by grabbing her ankles. Which, if you think about it, probably explains how Vern Troyer gets laid. Mind you, the movie never tells you how these tiny fuckers KILL, but in the movie all the trees started spinning around a lot, so maybe they make their victims so dizzy they pass out. They certainly don’t HARM their victims much, because after Victim 1 falls, she's seen being dragged away without so much as a scratch on her body. Dude, I got two words that would make this all a LOT easier. Form, and Chloro, and not necessarily in that order.

GRANNY JUST HAD TO GO AND FUCK WITH THE FAMILY TREE AGAIN.

Okay, so the IMDB spoiler synopsis has already clued you in as to who is behind these killings – tree roots – and why – evil nuclear power plant droppings are changing the trees into bloodthirsty killers craving human flesh. All that’s left for you is to, y'know, actually buy into this bullshit. In the meantime, you can enjoy the crack makeup department’s gore FX, and the kind of epic bad acting that made TROLL 2 such a hoot. There’s a great sheriff in THE CRAWLERS who’s REAL voice musta sucked so bad because EVERY one of his lines is overdubbed. And that includes such gems as “Ahhh, you kids, you get my GOAT!” Then there’s the evil power plant director himself, who seems to spend his entire day on the phone and, for some reason, can’t seem to stop bobbing up and down every time he delivers a line. I mean, this dude is a living, breathing bobblehead doll.

Thankfully, even plant roots know a shit actor when they see one, so they eventually go after the sheriff, who starts screaming like a schoolgirl when he’s attacked. And for all we know, they might BE the screams of a schoolgirl overdubbed on the audio track. Then we get a low-budget but still pretty damn effective FX shot of a root pushing THROUGH HIS FACE that’s one for the gore hounds. A grandmother gets killed a few minutes later (her screams are overdubbed too), and finally the forest ranger or somebody comes by in a helicopter. And what has to be one of the most outlandish scenes in the entire TROLL trilogy (and if you’ve seen 1 and 2, you KNOW that’s saying something), the plant roots actually ATTACK the helicopter and BRING THE FUCKING HELICOPTER DOWN! Great. Just what we needed. JAWS for the horticulture set.

THERE'S A FUCKING HALF MAN HALF TREE LYING ON THE LAB TABLE, AND THE DUDE IN THE BACK IS MORE INTERESTED IN FINDING PERCOCET IN THE MEDICINE CABINET!

Amazingly enough, the giant radioactive bloodthirsty flesh-craving girl-dragging granny-munching tree roots from Hell are brought to a rather anticlimactic demise when a trio of bulldozers suddenly appears on the scene and simply starts plowing down the forest. So yeah, the threat of complete and total human destruction via plant life is thwarted by a fucking road crew. As to exactly WHY Satan’s root farm is able to drag down a helicopter in flight but turns into Glee Club pansies at the sight of a John Deere remains as much a mystery as why any straight man would ever buy a She and Him CD.

Thankful that the roots have finally been vanquished and peace has been restored to the tiny town despite the death of the sheriff who never used his own voice, our heroine grabs a phone and starts making calls to boys she hasn’t been able to hang out with while all this radioactive plant murder stuff’s been going on. But while she’s chatting on the phone, her Christmas tree, on its own, suddenly begins to shake…

IS THAT A PLANT ROOT IN YOUR EYE OR ARE YOU JUST GLAD TO SEE ME, HEH HEH? OH, IT IS A PLANT ROOT...

Sadly for the world, there wasn’t to be a CRAWLERS 2: AWAY IN A MANGLER or even a TROLL 4 for that matter. But then again, in keeping with the spirit of the series, it wouldn’t HAVE to be about trees. It could be about killer spatulas. Or radioactive adult diapers. Whatever, I’d still rent it because it would be a guaranteed good time. Unless Zooey Deschanel was in it. Thank God they haven’t gone THERE yet.

If you’ve seen TROLLS 1 and 2, you owe it to yourself to pick up THE CRAWLERS and fire up that old Hitachi VCR once more. Good crappy B-movie fun with some well-meaning gore, actors deemed too sucky to be in TROLL 2, and a tree taking down a fucking HELICOPTER forgodsake! For that alone, I give it three Kari’s.

FAST FORWARDING TO THE GOOD PARTS

00:17 – Herve Villechaize’s first kill! Death by ankle grab!

00:30 – What happens when you get killed by radioactive tree roots. You become a radioactive girl with skin like tree bark. In other words, Heidi Fleiss.

00:43 – More death by tree root. Or, in this case, overacting.

1:02 – The gore shot. Or what it would look like if a root tried to PUSH its way THROUGH your head. In other words, like Heidi Fleiss.

1:07 – The radioactive roots kill a helpless old grandmother. “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get out of this movie!”

1:22 – The old trite Hollywood cliché scene where a bunch of giant snakelike radioactive completely mobile tree roots grab hold of a helicopter and bring it crashing down to Earth. Really, how many TIMES do we have to see this?

HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981)

2010-08-09T15:23:00.000-07:00

LET'S SEE...HOUSE...CHECK. CEMETERY...WELL, NOT SO MUCH.

When stupid people do stupid things and wind up dead because of it, I don't consider that horror. Is there a genre called "Satisfying Darwinism?" Because this film qualifies. This family is so dumb, they make the Palin family reunion look a Mensa convention. There's one scene where the dad tells his son to get away from the door so he can chop it down with an axe. He takes three big swings, lifts back the axe and suddenly finds there's blood on the end of it. So what does he do? Starts furiously chopping at the door even more! Gee, thanks, Dad!

SHE'S GOT A VERY SHARP SENSE OF HUMOR, THAT ONE.

Even by Fulci standards, this blows - nothing really even starts happening until after an hour (and it's 1:27 long so go figure). Even for gorehounds, there's a ton of red syrup but precious little grue. Even the title's wrong. One family tombstone does not a cemetery make. Look, if you want a really scary movie, rent something with Pauly Shore in it.

SUCKS WHEN THE MAKEUP DEPARTMENT RUNS OUT OF MONEY MID-FILM.

WAY SCARIER THAN ANY ZOMBIE.

GOT THERE LONG BEFORE TRUE BLOOD, THANK YOU.

CLASS REUNION MASSACRE (1978)

2010-08-02T19:31:00.000-07:00

THE BOX MAKES IT LOOK BLOODY. AND SCARY. AND GORY.

ART DEPARTMENT - 1, VIEWERS - 0.

I never attended any of my own high school reunions. Partially because I moved out of the area as soon as they handed me that diploma, and partially because I had no friends. It’s a good thing I didn’t, too, because shit like this happens more often than you know. You go because you’re curious to find out if the head cheerleader turned out to be a corporate lawyer, a stripper or a mother of three (it was always the latter), but you end up being murdered by a puppet in the gymnasium. Don’t believe me? Watch Class Reunion Massacre.

Go on, just try to. I dare you. It’s a work of cinematic genius, I tell you. Remember how all those obnoxious film students in college couldn’t stop talking shit about that long continuous opening tracking shot in Touch of Evil? Well fuck them, because Class Reunion Massacre has an opening shot just as long. Okay, technically it doesn’t really “track” per se, it just kinda hangs. On a fucking river. Yeah, that’s right, it’s three fucking minutes of footage of a river. Good thing Mr. Welles didn’t live long enough to see it. “This is a lot of shit, you know that,” he’d say, wiping the dribble off his four chins with a Brillo pad. “It’s very unrewarding.”

Finally, after three minutes of Rio Dullo, we get a quote superimposed on the screen. “From out of the darkness, the hand of the redeemer shall appear to punish those who have lived in sin…” and yes, it ends with the ellipsis, as if they couldn’t afford the typesetting needed to finish it. Meanwhile, Keith Emerson’s retarded little brother diddles around on a synthesizer. Suddenly some Butch Patrick wannabe starts walking OUT of the river, and for the first time in five minutes we’ve got ACTION baby. Not much action, mind you, but at this point, we’ll take what we can get. Shit, this movie’s already less interesting than a REAL high school reunion, and that’s saying something.

TWO ELLIPSES BACK TO BACK! FUCK! ART DEPARTMENT - 1. PROOFREADING DEPARTMENT - MINUS 3.

Butchie walks out of the river, gets on a bus, and goes to some religious school where he’s a choir boy or something. As he changes into his choir boy uniform in the boys locker room – relax, girls, this ain’t Porky’s – his classmates start telling a joke about a sailor and a whore but we never get to hear the punch line because somewhere else someone’s just shot the pool boy. Are you following all this? Is it gonna be on the test?

Okay, good, now put all that in the back of your mind, because you’ll never need it again. Seriously. For the next 30 minutes, we follow a small group of alumni preparing for their reunion. Hence the title of the movie, finally. There’s the spoiled thespian, the serious scholar, there’s even a lesbian. Meanwhile, some unknown killer type is cutting all their photos from a yearbook and making clay masks of their faces. Hey, is this gonna be like that old Twilight Zone episode? Finally, the alums show up at the old school itself, and the strange janitor who answers the doors doesn’t seem to know there’s gonna be a reunion at all. Despite the MASSIVE FUCKING BANNER that says “Welcome Class of 1967” hanging over the entryway. And the HUGE FUCKING PARTY TABLE decked out in orange and red ribbons. Nope, sorry, didn’t get the email. Or however they communicated back then. Still, there are only six alums who show up for this reunion, and they have no idea who invited them. But that doesn’t seem to bother ‘em much, so they do what classmates who haven’t seen each other in 20 years should do. They start fucking. “Nothing changes,” one suave dude says and plants a wet one on some dumb blonde who was in his science class once. You think we were horny back then? Just wait’ll you see what 20 years and a life of staring at a river will do to a man.

AWW HELL YA, BABY! YA'LL KNOW WHAT'S ABOUT TO GO DOWN HERE, YO!

It ain’t long before things start getting all wonky, and I don’t mean sexual. The dumb blonde finds the first victim, a former janitor who’s been dead so long a family of maggots is making a new home in his neck. In a rare moment of horror film lucidity, they actually DO try to immediately leave, but in a not-so-rare moment of horror film cliché, all the windows and doors are suddenly barred shut and locked, obviously by someone who managed to do all that construction and welding work in a few short minutes without so much as a sound. Oh yeah, and now there’s some creepy guy outside dressed like the K-Mart Halloween Department version of Death harassing them through the fence with a big plastic sickle. Oh, the horror! Still, I’d take this over more footage of that fucking river.

Well, I think you can guess how the rest of this movie goes. Like Ten Little Indians only four short, each of our alums gets picked off one by one in clever ways. One girl gets killed in super slo-mo by a crazed hunter who looks like the bastard son of Brad Dourif and the bassist from Black Oak Arkansas. The former high school quarterback gets offed by a Bunsen burner and a remote controlled Howdy Doody puppet. And then there’s the killer himself, obviously a failed drama student whose put on a few pounds in those unkind post-graduation twenty years, who dresses like Bozo the Clown and acts like Nicolas Cage on a heroin binge. “The time has come to serve yourself!” he emotes while disposing of the class bimbo by drowning her in a sink, but not before giving us some completely unnecessary (but always welcome) wet T-shirt action. Seriously, though, this chick has GOT to be the single weakest girl ever killed in a horror film. Not only did she get killed by a clown, she got killed in a fucking SINK by an overweight, effeminate, OVERACTING clown. That’s just embarrassing.

Y’know, now that I think about it, if I ever start a rock band, I think I’m going to call it Death By Clown. It’s got a nice ring to it.

IT'S NOT THE CLOWN MAKEUP THAT'S SCARY. IT'S THAT MYSTERIOUS BLUE SPOT ON HIS CHIN. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

More death ensue, some by remote-controlled puppets, and every time someone gets killed, Keith Emerson has an epileptic fit on the soundtrack. By the time this film ends, the opening quote is finished, and we finally understand why the kid came out of the river thanks to a strange, spiritual conclusion which tries hard to turn this brave little slasher into something far, far more meaningful. Does it succeed? Depends on what you’re looking for. There’s very little blood in Class Reunion Massacre, and not one tit despite two semi-hot and very ditzy blondes that should’ve given up the goods like immediately. The death traps themselves are pretty ingenious, though, in a bloodless Saw kinda way, and some are so ridiculous you swear the filmmakers were so hopped up on Night Train, they make Orson Welles look like a fucking teetotaler on the set of his frozen food commercials. “What is it you want, in the depths of your ignorance?” he’d shout to the overweight, overacting killer clown, before hissing in anger “You are such PESTS!” And any film that can piss off Citizen Kane is okay in my book. Two and a half Kari Wuhrers.

FAST FORWARDING TO THE GOOD PARTS –

00:38 – Ditzy blonde finds dead janitor whose neck is a housing project for maggots. Which means the killer struck last around, oh say, 1973?

00:42 – Death by radio-controlled Howdy Doody puppet with built in Bunsen burner! Memo to Jigsaw and your fancy schmancy Saw death contraptions: Let me know when you wanna play with the big boys.

WHEN THIS KILLS YOU, YOU TRULY SUCK.

00:51 – Why they tell high school quarterbacks to pay attention in science class. And why they tell film score composers not to listen to Emerson Lake and Palmer.

00:54 – Great, the killer in this film is Truman fucking Capote!

1:01 – Death by Clown.

1:12 – Death by Puppet.

1:18 - Death by Llama. Just kidding. Woulda been cool though.

POSSESSION: UNTIL DEATH DO YOU PART (1987)

2010-07-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

“The sensuality of BODY HEAT and JAGGED EDGE…the psychological terror of PSYCHO!” So claims the videotape box of 1987’s POSSESSION: UNTIL DEATH DO YOU PART (yeah, it ain’t on DVD yet, so climb up in the attic and borrow Mom’s VHS player). Well, not quite. Would you believe “The sensuality of SCREWBALLS and the psychological terror of PUPPET MASTER II?” I didn’t think so. Just being honest here.

FILMS LIKE THIS EITHER HAVE GREAT SPECIAL EFFECTS OR LOTS OF TITTIES. GUESS WHICH THIS ONE HAS?

Remember that psycho killer in Lucio Fulci’s way-past-his-prime gorefest NEW YORK RIPPER who actually quacked like a fucking duck when making a kill? Well, here in POSSESSION, we got a guy who likes to cackle like Crispin Glover on helium and make Marty Feldman faces. Lots of ‘em. In fact, that’s all this guy really does – dresses in camouflage, cackles like Robin Quivers on crack, and worships at the altar of Marty Feldman. Oh yeah, and there’s lots of nudity in this one, male and female, so you can kinda consider it SEX WITH A SMILE crossed with I DISMEMBER MAMA. BODY HEAT never came to mind.

THE KILLER. ONLY SLIGHTLY SCARIER THAN COREY FELDMAN.

Things immediately start off on the right foot – we’re not one full minute into the film when we see an unconscious girl being dragged across the lawn wearing only a skimpy nightgown, which doesn’t exactly cover her up if’n ya know what I mean (and I know you do). 9 minutes later, our killer's forcing a hot blonde to strip and wear his mother’s red dress, and the poor actress obliges. Yeah, he refers to his Mom a lot in this movie, so that might be where casual viewers and Leonard Maltin get their PSYCHO comparisons from. It doesn’t help that our killer sounds like a young Fred Schneider from the B-52s and looks like the bastard son of John Turturro and Joacquin Phoenix. It’s enough to make any young boy turn into a murderous, bloodthirsty cackling camouflaged Marty Feldman-loving psychopath. Or worse yet, John Malkovich.

DOES THIS DRESS MAKE ME LOOK FAT?

Turns out our killer’s just looking for a girlfriend, and none of the girls are living up to Mother’s standards. So he kills ‘em. If that were me, I’d have to dispatch every girl in the tri-state area who wasn’t Cindy Crawford or Lisa Robertson from QVC. Because those are my mom’s standards. So I can kinda, you know, relate to this guy. I’m not saying I would go around smearing camouflage on my face and doing facial expressions from YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, but you get the idea. Anyway, he chases a few girls back to their Jeep Cherokee early on, and even though it’s wintertime, they conveniently keep their windows down so he can grab them as they try to pull away. When a cop just happens to be walking by (apparently they still ‘walked the beat’ back in 1987), the killer stabs him viciously, while his partner shoots four times blindly down the street. So much for public safety, huh?

THAT'S A NICE VIEW. ER, OUTSIDE THE WINDOW I MEAN.

Meanwhile, some Charlie Spradling wannabee is lying face down on the bed in a skimpy white teddy, just waiting for her boyfriend to arrive. When our killer walks in instead (don’t ask how, just accept) and starts rubbing her leg, she moans in ecstasy. Little does she know, it’s Marty Feldman as Norman Bates giving her the rubdown. But instead of, y’know, fucking her or something, he quickly stabs her in the back, then spears her pansy-ass boyfriend when he shows up 30 seconds later, finishing him off with the Freddy Kreuger-like punchline of “You’re late!” Yeah, but you’re gay, dude, for not banging that piece of ass on the bed. Even Marty Feldman would've helped himself to some of that.

TURNS OUT THE CARPET MATCHES THE MUTTONCHOPS.

Meanwhile, another group of liquored-up young things are partying down with some Chippendale dancers (yes, folks, the skin in POSSESSION isn’t solely for the guys). There’s also a really really shitty country song playing, with a chorus of “doing it right on the wrong side of town,” which somehow manages to make Rascal Flatts sound like literary scholars. The killer, meanwhile, is smart enough to stay away from Chippendale parties and country music, and continues to drown hot girls without fucking them and, in one particularly gruesome scene, pushes a guy’s face down into a spinning fan belt while he’s checking his car engine. Then he takes a baseball bat to his friend, all the while remembering to make a different Marty Feldman face in between each swing of the bat!

ONE FOR THE LADIES.

He chases another girl into the woods, where he suddenly stops in front of a tree, cackles for a few seconds and then starts licking his knife. Two minutes later he inexplicably jumps froggie-style into a girls’ shower and does something to a nude Jamie Lee Curtis lookalike that causes red paint to splash up on the shower wall and run slowly down the drain. After another soliluquoy to Mom and more priceless Marty Feldman faces, he steps over the hot, wet, completely nude co-ed on the shower floor and never even touches her. Now I don’t consider myself a freak by any stretch of the imagination, but if I ever found myself in a shower stall with a nude and unconscious Jamie Lee Curtis stunt double, you’d seriously have to turn off the cameras for an hour or two. Seriously. Nobody films that shit.

NICE, EVEN WITH THE BAD EIGHTIES HAIR.

And, by the way, what message does all of this send to us? I mean, isn’t it a slasher film rule that only the girls who fuck get killed? All this one did was sleep late and take a nice long shower. Is that reason enough to slash her throat? Oh right. I’m looking for sense in a film with a camouflaged cackling knife-licking Fred Schneider doppelganger with a Jones for THE LAST REMAKE OF BEAU GESTE. Fuck me already.

ONE FOR THE DOGGIES. WHAT?

So what we gots here is a lot of babes getting all nekkid but nobody to take advantage of ‘em, plot holes big enough to drive Hummers through, some inventive kills but no real gore to speak of (and almost all the killings take place offscreen due to budgetary concerns), and one seriously fucked up momma’s boy doing the killing. I say buy it and have fun with it, but not while sober, and rewatch it for the babes. And if you’re a Marty Feldman fan, this is a whole hell of a lot better than YELLOWBEARD.

I GIVE IT TWO OUT OF FOUR KARI WUHRERS.

FAST FORWARDING TO THE GOOD PARTS –

00 MINUTES – Right off the bat, we get a nip slip while dragging a dead girl across the lawn. Hotcha!

9 MINUTES – Forces a blonde to put on his mom’s red dress. Issues, man, issues.

OH TO BE REINCARNATED AS LIPSTICK...

28 MINUTES – Teen sex interrupted by what has to be the single WORST impression of a little teenage sister ever committed to film.

30 MINUTES – A Chippendale dancer in a skimpy thong gyrates for the ladies out there. Bummer for me.

I CUT YOU WITH MY KNIFE OF IMPOTENCY!

36 MINUTES – Fully nude shower scene from a smoking hot babe who’s got a body that’s almost as good as Charlie Spradling’s! And you don’t have to sit through PUPPET MASTER II just to see it!

A TWO STRIPE ASS IF THERE EVER WAS ONE.

44 MINUTES – Another hottie in the bathtub this time. But what’s with the CARE BEARS bubble bath? No, seriously. What’s WITH that?

NOPE, NO FREDDIE KRUEGER HAND HERE.

1:06 – Jamie Lee Curtis stand-in shows the whole goods in the shower, including a rather nice breast mole, but something tells me she ain’t gonna last long. Hey, I was right!

MUST BE THIS TALL TO GET KNIVED IN THE SHOWER.

LOOKS LIKE ANOTHER BROWN TROUSER JOB (1988)

2010-07-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

I gave this an extra star because 1) Graham Chapman, at the top of his game, was hilarious and 2) I was lucky enough to see Graham speak during this college tour. Back in the mid-80s I was excited to go see him, but I do remember leaving a little disappointed. 20 years later, I'm even more disappointed, because Graham's forte was essentially slapstick, and this is just him sitting and talking about extreme sports (really!). Video quality is not good (and 80's fashion quality from the kids in the audience is far worse), but that's not important considering it's really just Graham sitting and talking and occasionally getting up and walking around the stage (sorry, no silly walks). Bottom line: BROWN TROUSER JOB is just dull. Don't remember him this way.

SURE, SHE RUINED BUFFY, BUT SHE'S TRYING TO MAKE UP FOR IT...

2010-07-10T01:21:00.000-07:00

CAT IN THE BRAIN (1990)

2010-07-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

HEH HEH, SHE'S GOT A PEARL (AND BLOOD) NECKLACE, HEH HEH. OH. YUCK.

Some snot-nosed kid on Amazon called Lucio Fulci's 1990 gorefest CAT IN THE BRAIN "sloppy." Well, kid, sloppy ain't the half of it. There's a scene where somebody gets attacked with a chainsaw in the house and there's a splitsecond shot of someone picking up the saw FROM THE GRASS OUTDOORS! But God love him, little Lucio's having a ball with this film, he's like a kid in a meathook market. There's more gore here than at a Global Warming Seminar (that's a bad Al Gore joke), and even though it looks kinda fake by today's standards, the sheer joy and exuberance Lucio exhibits in his handling of it is hard to resist. If only today's bloodbaths (SAW and HOSTEL, I'm looking at you) were this much fun, kids today wouldn't be so screwed up. Oh that wacky Lucio Fulci!

TRAVEL SIZE REVIEW: VIVA (2007)

2010-07-02T18:12:00.000-07:00

MY STARS, THAT NEW LEMON PIPERS SONG IS DREAMY!

People are right. This is a visually stunning cross between Boogie Nights, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and every porn tape your dad has stashed in the basement. But read that running time again. 120 minutes. That's TWO FRIGGIN' HOURS. For what would be a hilarious SNL skit. I mean, imagine if Bill Murray's Italian Hercules sketch was made into a feature length film by Peter Jackson. Not so funny by the time minute 49 rolls around, is it? So yeah, I give Anna Biller props for a dead-on recreation of Cinemax After Dark 1973, but Anna, you need to remember that no bad movies ran over 80 minutes back then. Not to mention Anna's landing strip bush is a glaring anachronism. Grow it out, girl. It's 1973!

IF THIS WERE REALLY 1973, THAT BUSH WOULD BE HALF WAY UP HER STOMACH.

TRAVEL-SIZE REVIEW: THE STUFF (1985)

2010-06-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

FLUFFERBLOODER.

"Garrett Morris lampoons Famous Amos"? What? You still haven't rented this yet? It's got killer ice cream forgodsake! And Michael Moriarty, who can't possibly be sober. And hey, I think I counted two or three times where there may have been a gory special effect - that's about 30 seconds out of 90 minutes - and I didn't count the times when the yogurt chases someone or Garrett Morris's head explodes, because they're actually funny. Now if they would've burst open Dan Aykroyd's fat melon, I might've actually cheered. God, I know Larry Cohen's a hack, but THE STUFF somehow even made Q: THE WINGED SERPENT look good. Did I mention Garrett Morris lampoons Famous Amos?

GARRETT MORRIS GETS MORE FACE TIME HERE THAN IN THE FIRST THREE SEASONS OF SNL.

BUT BROOKE, THIS IS A FAMILY FILM.

RITUAL OF DEATH (1990)

2010-06-07T14:29:00.000-07:00

WORST HICKEY OF HIS LIFE.

RITUAL OF DEATH. Well now, that's a pretty generic title. What exactly is a "ritual of death"? Some would say that's marriage. I wouldn't disagree. Some would say that's autoerotic asphyxiation. David Carradine and Michael Hutchence would agree. Truth is, RITUAL OF DEATH isn't about either marriage or autoerotic asphyxiation. So then, what is it about? Fuck if I know. But it's a ton of fun nonetheless. Filled with nekkid Brazilian babes, green pus, goats head soup and one or two genuinely repulsive gooey FX that make you wonder if they weren't on loan from some early Peter Jackson film, if I had to sum up RITUAL OF DEATH in three words, I'd probably go with this: What the fuck?

DOES THIS BOTHER YOU?

As I watched this film, I noticed several things. First of all, no one seemed to be reading their lines right. I’m not talking about bad acting – shit, every low budget horror film has their fair share of bad acting. No, in RITUAL OF DEATH it sounds like no one understands English – the inflections are off, there are odd pauses where they don’t belong, and accentuated words are always the wrong ones. “That’s what everybody says, around here.” “Well, at least we were able to get through…the whole piece today.” Those are just two examples, but pretty much every line in the movie is spoken like that. You wanna have fun? Play a drinking game where you down a shot every time someone takes an odd pause where...there shouldn’t be one or accentuates the wrong word. You’ll be drunk...before the half hour mark.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION YET?

The second thing I noticed is that there are quite a lot of abnormally hot young girls in RITUAL OF DEATH. And they like to get all nacky nacky and shit. That’s unusual for really really low budget films like this, where the roles of “college girls” are usually filled with 38-year-old strippers from the local Cupcakes Lounge. Or the director’s chubby tattooed friend. Or Shannon Tweed. So when hottie after hottie start parading their well-toned bodies across my little Zenith Trinitron, I start to wonder just how the fuck someone pulled this one off.

THE DASHING YOUNG BRAD. HE'S A LADYKILLER.

The answer to both questions is simple. RITUAL OF DEATH was filmed by one of Brazil’s most infamous pornographers, Fauzi Mansur. So yeah, the dude probably just thumbed through his rolodex and picked out the best-looking ten names – and in the land of Adriana Lima, you can’t go wrong even with porn stars. That would also explain each character’s endless trouble with the English language. Oddly enough, it sounds like everyone’s lines were recorded separately, in the middle of an empty B-52 aircraft hangar, then dubbed back in later, giving the film a feel not unlike those old Italian Hercules films. It’s a fucking lexographer’s wet dream. Literally.

ANGIE, YOU CAN'T SAY WE NEVER TRI-I-IED.

The story, by the way, what little there is, concerns a boy named Brad, who starts having hallucinations about ancient Egyptian/Indian Satanic rituals, where a dapper British looking gent who got kicked off the set of the Avengers gives him a hairy book while his decaying hands drip strawberry milk. Brad’s friend, meanwhile, looks like a Magic: The Gathering fan who scoffs at Brad’s hallucinations and instead reminds him that Brent Spiner will be appearing at next month’s Comic Con so they better get tickets now.

It’s too bad no one believes Brad, because soon he’s rubbing raw bloody goat liver on his chest in his bedroom while his semi-drunk and fully-retarded Granny (just wait till you her how much trouble she has with the English language) starts cackling like a banshee with Downs syndrome. Next thing you know, a buxom Brazilian hottie is taking a bath with a bloody goats head while someone is yelling really fucking annoyingly in the background. It’s hot in a really confusing fucked-up Satanic way, but if you’re turned on by that kinda stuff, better rub one out quick because Comic Con dude shows up with his flabby man-ass not long after to join her for a little double Goats Head Soup. You have been warned.

AW SHIT, THAT JUST CHANGED THE MPAA RATING.

Meanwhile, Comic Con dude has figured out that Brad might be possessed by the spirit of an ancient priest, and while he’s explaining it to Brad at the breakfast table, a girl in a red dress suddenly walks into the room, picks up a portrait of said Satanic preacher, and props it conveniently between the two guys for the camera to linger on. Exposition on a budget, you can’t beat that with a stick. Then Brad’s troubles really start.

POPPA ZIT.

It all starts when he gets up in the middle of the night to pop a really big zit, which explodes disgustingly on the bathroom mirror in a torrent of butterscotch pudding. But soon after, he’s literally peeling off the side of his face in a scene that’s even more nasty than the scene in Poltergeist, ripping off skin while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle green goop runs down the side of his neck. It’s truly gruesome stuff, very effective for such a low-budget film. And a bummer if you were digging the Brazilian porn.

FUCK, AND THE PROM IS TOMORROW NIGHT!

Now possessed, Brad goes on a killing spree, ripping out hot young Brazilian girls’ intestines with a claw hammer while his body count rises dramatically. Which kinda sucks actually, because this freak is wasting some seriously hot Victoria’s Secret ass, and in my country, that doesn’t come along every day. It does for Brad, though, and amazingly enough, even though he’s still oozing day-glo green slime and looks like shit, these South American hotties are still offering their meat balloons to him at the drop of a hat (or body part in this case). Jesus, back when I was in high school, all it took was a big whitehead to make you an anathema to every chick in the building. Again, I ask. What the fuck?

DUDE'S STILL GOT IT GOIN' ON.

Yet the Brazilian babes keep coming, and keep taking off their shirts willy nilly for this emotionless, frail fuckface. But the worst part about it by far – he doesn’t even take advantage of it! Every time he’s faced with a half-naked babe, he kills her. Right away too. It’s not like he’s a necrophiliac either, ‘cuz as soon as they’re dead, he walks away. This dude throws away more teen poontang than Scott Baio and Pauly Shore combined. Only one babe in the entire fucking film seems to realize he’s messed up, and that's the best line in the movie. There she is, face to face with Brad, who’s now dressed in a Dollar Tree Mr. Executioner sub-Renaissance Faire costume, covered in blood from the neck down, his melting, decayed, green-pustuled hands carrying bloody chains, and she actually, swear to God, says – “Something’s wrong here!” Yes, oh yes there is honey. Your shirt’s still on.

I'VE GOT A HEADACHE AND I DON'T WEAR PANTS.

Meanwhile, in another classic bit of dialogue, Brazilian’s finest are finally closing in on Brad. Bimbo 1: “One of the policemen made a drawing based on the description.” Teen 2 (after looking at it): “It’s awful!” Teen 3: “We think it’s Brad!” Thanks, guys. No wonder this kid’s killing you off. Meanwhile, Brad’s now backstage at some playhouse, now killing dudes this time, because hey, what the hell, what does it matter if you’re not gonna fuck ‘em? Brad, still dressed like a bad WWF wrestler, pushes a big spinning stage fan toward one stupid frat boy, who literally lays on the floor screaming “No! No! It’s not safe!” for what feels like three fucking minutes while Brad slo-o-o-wly pushes the spinning blades at him. Only this time, in an unexpected and inspired moment of wry comedy (aw, who are we fooling, it was probably just a mistake), it’s not the blades that get him, it’s the tiny little fucking lawnmower tires that squash him like a ripe pomegranate until his small intestine spills out on the stage floor. And that, in a nutshell, is why you should find a copy of RITUAL OF DEATH at all costs. Because there’s lots of gore. Good, gooey, drippy, oozing pustules of disgusting gore, and the effects still stand up fairly well today. In fact, they might be better, being of the prosthetic appliance and real animal guts variety versus today’s shitty computer generated crap. Yes, the acting sucks. Yes, the dialogue sucks. And yes, swear to God, a black cop actually says “What are you jiving at?” in this movie.

I'M AN INTERIOR DECORATOR. AND I DON'T WEAR PANTS.

But despite its shortcomings and its stream-of-conscious Satanic plotline (if there even is one), it’s got sex and it’s got violence. And it’s got one of the world’s most hilariously inept screeching female death metal tribal fuck theme songs with lyrics about weasels and Satan and Satanic weasels. The kids around town tell me there used to be an alternative rock band called Screeching Weasel. Well, these girls are the real deal. And it’s the only possible way to end a big steaming, dripping cesspool of demonic filth like RITUAL OF DEATH. And that, in case you didn’t know, was a ringing endorsement.

FOUR OUT OF FIVE KARIS.

FAST FORWARDING TO THE GOOD PARTS:

23 minutes – Topless babe takes bath with bleeding goats head. Nice swirling MTV camera style. Who the fuck is screaming in the background though? Be quick, buzzkill approaching with sudden man ass.

25 minutes – Hey, it’s the Egyptian/Brazilian high school stage rendition of Barbarella!

GOD, I USED TO LOVE DURAN DURAN VIDEOS!

37 minutes – The blueprint of bad acting, an incredible non-stop string of bad actors and actresses exchange the worst readings in the history of cinema, ending with the should-be-cult-classic line “Brad, you asshole!” (Shaking fist in the air defiantly)

39 minutes – More topless Goats Head Soup.

40 minutes – The disgusting zit pop/face rip scene. Nothing a half gallon of Clearasil couldn’t solve.

48 minutes – Full-frontal Devil sex, Skinemax-style. With Eighties bush! How retro!

51 minutes – Another Brazilian hottie doffs her top willingly for Pustule Man. And yes, her breasts are as fantastic as her acting is terrible.

53 minutes – A black cop says “What are you jiving at?” Racial relations in Brazil take one giant step backwards.

56 minutes – Another hottie hangs up painting with no pants on.

57 minutes – Her reward? A knife in the mouth. The ENTIRE knife.

NOPE. NOT GOOD.

TRAVEL SIZE REVIEW: AFTER HOURS (1985)

2010-05-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

Scorsese's finest moment. Forget Taxi Driver (overrated), forget Raging Bull (black and white) and forget Bringing Out the Dead (please). AFTER HOURS is the man at his peak, weaving a black comedy spiralling deeper out of control as one particularly bad night in Manhattan winds its way slowly toward dawn. Teri Garr extols the virtues of the Monkees, Rosanna Arquette shows off her ample curves, and Cheech and Chong do not smoke weed. And Robert DeNiro is nowhere to be found. Did I hear you say "masterpiece"?

ROSANNA ARQUETTE. TOTO WROTE A SONG ABOUT HER. THEY ALSO WROTE ONE ABOUT AFRIKA BAMBAATAA TOO, DIDN'T THEY?

DEMONWARP (1988)

2010-05-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

YOU WANT A MOVIE THAT’S 1/3 ACID TRIP, 1/3 SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED AND 1/3 OF THE FREAKIEST SCI-FI ZOMBIE ALIEN LIFEFORCE MEETS Q THE WINGED SERPENT MINDFUCK YOU’VE EVER SEEN IN YOUR LIFE? WELL, BOYS AND GIRLS, IT’S DEMONWARP. AND IF YOU'RE UP FOR THE CHALLENGE, IT’LL EVEN THROW IN OSCAR WINNER GEORGE KENNEDY AND THAT KID FROM SILVER SPOONS WHO ISN’T RICKY SCHROEDER JUST FOR THE SHEER BLOODY HELL OF IT. SO WHADDYA SAY? WANNA PIECE OF THIS ONE?

PSST, HEY! THAT FAMOUS SHOT OF ME RUNNING THROUGH THE FOREST? NOT MY BEST ANGLE.

WHY NOT, THAT’S WHAT I SAID. THIS ONE’S GOT IT ALL. IT’S A BIG HONKIN’ FUCKFEST OF BAD ACTING, BIGFOOT COSTUMES, DRIPPY ALIEN GOOP, ZOMBIES IN SPENCER’S GIFTS HALLOWEEN MASKS, AND B-MOVIE BOMBSHELL TITTIES FOR NO DAMN REASON! AW, BUT I’M GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF. LET’S TAKE THIS ONE SLOWER. LIKE, SAY, THE FIRST FUCKING HOUR OF THIS FILM! YEAH, THAT’S THE PENALTY TO GET TO THE PAYOFF IN DEMONWARP. THE FIRST HOUR OF THIS RAGGED LITTLE GEM PLAYS ALMOST EXACTLY LIKE THE WORST BIGFOOT IN THE WOODS MID-70’S SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED/CURSE OF BIGFOOT MEETS GRIZZLY SUMMER ROMP YOU CAN REMEMBER, WITH GRIZZLED OLD GEORGE KENNEDY PLAYING THE VENGEFUL OLD FOREST DWELLER TYPE, AND A PICKUP-FULL OF YOUNG, PRECOCIOUS SEXUALLY-PROMISCUOUS TEENS PROVIDING THE GUPPY FOOD. AND LOOKY HERE, ONE OF THE GUYS IS THAT KID FROM SILVER SPOONS, BILLY JACOBY, ALSO KNOWN AMONGST 80’S TEEN MOVIE BUFFS AS BUDDY GRIFFITH FROM JUST ONE OF THE GUYS! NOW HOW COOL IS THAT? ANOTHER ONE OF THESE KIDS, THE ONE THEY CALL FRED, GREW UP TO APPEAR IN A FEW EPISODES OF DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, ALTHOUGH MY GIRLFRIEND DOESN’T REMEMBER HIM AT ALL, AND SHE WATCHED THAT SHIT RELIGIOUSLY. SO THERE YOU HAVE IT.

HE'S HUNG WITH RICKY SCHROEDER AND SEEN JOYCE HYSER'S TITS. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

WELL, THE STORY BEHIND DEMONWARP, AND IT’S A DOOZY, STARTS IN THE 1800’S, WHEN A METEOR CRASHES NEXT TO A BABBLING PRIEST AND HIS HORSE. NEXT THING WE KNOW, GEORGE KENNEDY’S DAUGHTER’S BEING DRAGGED OUT OF THE HOUSE BY A SHAGGY BIGFOOT MONSTER, AND OL’ GEORGE GETS BEANED ON THE NOGGIN’ AND GOES A-SLEEPIN’ FOR A WHILE. NOW THAT’S A LEAP OF ONE HUNDRED FUCKIN’ YEARS THERE IN A FEW SECONDS. ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DRAW A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TWO EVENTS OR WHAT? IS THERE ENOUGH BEER IN THE FRIDGE TO GET MY BRAIN THROUGH THE REST OF THIS FILM?

LUCKY FOR US, THERE’S A STRETCH RUN COMING UP OF NON-STOP GRATUITOUS NUDITY, FROM 20 MINUTES TO 25 MINUTES, AND WE EVEN GET A QUICK MUFF SHOT ("MUFF" IS A TERM WE USED TO USE WHEN GIRLS HAD PUBIC HAIR, FOR THOSE OF YOU BORN AFTER 1995.) WHEN BUDDY GRIFFITH GRABS A GIRL RUNNING OUT OF THE SHOWER. THAT’S A FAR CRY FROM RICKY SCHROEDER, MY FRIEND. ALL THIS BUDDING YOUNG PULCRITUDE KINDA MAKES YOU FORGET ABOUT THE STAR OF OUR SHOW, THE MONSTER, SO AT 28 MINUTES IN, HE CRASHES THE TOGA PARTY AND, PRETTY STUPIDLY I MIGHT ADD, KILLS THE ONLY STAR OF THE FILM, BUDDY FUCKING GRIFFITH! FOR THE FIRST TIME TOO, WE GET A GOOD LOOK AT THE RAMPAGING SPACE YETI – AND YEAH, HE KINDA LOOKS LIKE BIGFOOT. OR A DRUNKEN GARY BUSEY. NEITHER OF WHICH IS A GOOD LOOK, BY THE WAY.

ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT, I'LL PRETEND I'M RICKY SCHROEDER!

CUT TO MORE NUDITY (AND QUICK!), THANKS TO B-MOVIE QUEEN MICHELLE BAUER, WHO GOOD-NATUREDLY TAKES HER SHIRT OFF FOR NO REASON IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WOODS WHILE A SNICKERING GARY BUSEY MONKEY WATCHES FROM THE BUSHES. SHE AND HER GIRLFRIEND ENGAGE IN SOME SUNBATHING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FOREST – WHICH IS PRETTY SMART REALLY WHEN ONE OF YOUR BUDDIES JUST HAD HIS HEAD CRUSHED NOT EVEN TEN MINUTES EARLIER – AND NEEDLESS TO SAY, THE ABOMINABLE HORNDOG STOPS BY AND TWISTS THE HEAD OFF THE GIRL WHO ISN’T MICHELLE BAUER, WHILE MICHELLE RUNS FOR THE SAFETY OF HER JEEP. IN AN AMAZING MOMENT OF INSANITY, MICHELLE ACTUALLY RUNS PAST HER JEEP – MAYBE SHE REALIZED SHE CAN’T DRIVE WITHOUT HER BRA – AND CONTINUES INTO THE FOREST BEFORE WEEPING OPENLY THAT SHE’S LOST. OH YEAH, AND STILL TOPLESS TOO. OR MAYBE THAT’S ONE AND THE SAME.

WHY, NO, OF COURSE THEY'RE REAL. ISH.

EVENTUALLY, OUR HERO JACK (WE FIND OUT HE'S THE HERO BECAUSE HE’S THE LAST KID ALIVE) CATCHES UP WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND CINDY, WHO’S KINDA WALKING FUNNILY THROUGH THE WOODS. WE KNOW SOMETHING’S UP BECAUSE SHE DOES ONE OF THOSE RE-A-A-A-L SL-O-O-OW TURNS TOWARD THE CAMERA, AND SHO’ NUFF WE FIND OUT BIGFOOT AND WILD BUSEY’S ALREADY GOTTEN TO HER, AND HER LEFT EYE IS NOW DANGLING FROM THE OPTIC NERVE AND GETTING BLOOD AND SHIT ALL OVER HER NICE NEW SHIRT. NEEDLESS TO SAY, JACK’S KINDA BUMMED BECAUSE THAT DANGLING EYEBALL THING ISN’T EXACTLY A TURN-ON, SO HE BACKS OFF WHILE CINDY GOES STUMBLING INTO A CAVE. JACK EVENTUALLY RECOVERS AND FOLLOWS HER IN, HOPING TO GET ONE LAST MERCY BOINK, ONLY INSTEAD HE FINDS THE BIGFOOT MONSTER AND SEEMS TO SHOOT IT DEAD. BUT AS IT DIES (AND BELIEVE ME, IT TAKES A WHILE), THE THING STARTS MORPHING BACK INTO A HUMAN – WITH SOME PRETTY COOL SPECIAL EFFECTS FOR THE TIME, I MIGHT ADD – AND THEN, AS THE KIDS SAY, THINGS REALLY START GETTING WEIRD.

WATCH OUT, BUDDY, I'VE GOT MY EYE ON YOU!

IF YOU’VE GOT A BONG, IT MIGHT BE TIME TO FIRE IT UP RIGHT ABOUT HERE, BECAUSE THE LAST HALF HOUR OF DEMONWARP’S LIKE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MOVIE. IT'S LIKE THIS MOVIE'S A RED FERRARI, AND UP TO NOW GEORGE KENNEDY'S BEEN DRIVING IT TEN MILES BELOW THE SPEED LIMIT WITH THE LEFT BLINKER ON. AND NOW FINALLY SOMEONE’S PUSHED HIM OUT THE SIDE DOOR AND SHIFTED INTO FIFTH. HANG ON, IF YOU CAN…

AFTER THE MORPHING YETI SCENE, JACK VENTURES FURTHER INTO THIS MYSTERIOUS CAVE, WHERE HE ENCOUNTERS A BUNCH OF DECAYING ZOMBIES IN THRIFT STORE HALLOWEEN MASKS AND A SPACESHIP. OR, RATHER, I SHOULD SAY THE FRONT OF WHAT APPEARS TO BE A SPACESHIP, BECAUSE THE BUDGET AIN’T SO BIG ON THIS ONE, AND THE ENTIRE CAVE SCENES FROM THIS POINT ON WERE PROBABLY FILMED USING LEFTOVER BACKDROPS FROM THE STAR TREK EPISODE WITH THE HORTA. OH YEAH, AND BUDDY GRIFFITH’S BACK, NOW HALF-DECAYED AND DOING A REALLY SHITTY JACK NICHOLSON IMPERSONATION. GOD DAMN, WHY AIN’T I EVEN GETTING A BUZZ YET?

HEY, HOW'D HELENA BONHAM CARTER GET IN HERE?

OKAY, SO, LIKE, THE ZOMBIES START ATTACKING JACK, BUT HE’S A GOOD SHOT, AND HE STARTS PICKIN’ ‘EM OFF ONE BY ONE, EVEN THOUGH THEY HISS JUST LIKE SLEESTAKS (WELL, THEY ARE IN A CAVE WITH A SHITTY STYROFOAM PYLON) AND ONE OF ‘EM IS EVEN WEARING A RESIDENTS T-SHIRT! PERSONALLY, ANY KID WHO PRETENDS TO LIKE THE RESIDENTS DESERVES TO BE A DECAYING ZOMBIE, IF YOU ASK ME.

OH SO THAT'S WHO'S BUYING RESIDENTS ALBUMS!

MEANWHILE, INSIDE THE SPACECRAFT, THERE’S AN ICKY DRIPPY SPACE DEMON OVERLORD WHO’S WATCHING HIS ZOMBIE FLUNKIES BRING IN A (STILL) TOPLESS MICHELLE BAUER TO BE BOUND AND SACRIFICED ON THE ALTAR BY…ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?...THE 19TH CENTURY PRIEST FROM THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES OF THE FILM! AHH, SO THAT’S WHERE HE’S BEEN! THEY BIND HER ON THE TABLE – NOW THIS FILM IS REALLY GETTING GOOD! – AND SOMEHOW THE CREEPY PRIEST MANAGES TO STAB THROUGH ALL THAT SILICONE TO GET TO HER HEART. QUITE AMAZINGLY, EVEN AFTER THE PRIEST REMOVES HER HEART FROM HER CHEST AND HOLDS IT UP FOR THE DEMON SPACE BUG, MICHELLE STILL MANAGES TO MOVE HER HEAD! NOW THAT'S TALENT! COULD BRINKE STEVENS DO THAT?

OH GOD NO, NOT THE RESTRICTIVE CLOTHING! ANYTHING BUT THAT!

SO OKAY, THE DRIPPY DEMON LORD EATS HER HEART, WHICH IS NOT WHERE I WOULD’VE STARTED BUT HEY. ODDLY, THE PRIEST KEEPS MUMBLING “THERE IS MORE…THERE IS MORE” SO I’M GUESSING THE HEART WAS JUST AN APPETIZER. BUT INSTEAD, THEY BRING IN ANOTHER TOPLESS BABE AND BIND HER TO THE TABLE TOO! THIS IS THE BEST ALIEN RACE IN THE FUCKING UNIVERSE, MAN! TOO BAD JACK BREAKS UP THE PARTY THIS TIME (SOMEWHERE MICHELLE BAUER IS HEARD MUTTERING “THANKS FOR YOUR TIMING, ASSHOLE!”), SHOOTS OVERLORD POST-NASAL DRIP IN HIS CHAIR (HE CAN’T SEEM TO GET OUT OF IT FOR SOME REASON – HOW DID THIS DUMB FUCK GET TO BE A SPACE CAPTAIN?), BUT NOT BEFORE CAPTAIN DRIPPY HAS ALREADY STABBED HIS BEST FRIEND FRED AND INJECTED HIM WITH SOME URINE-COLORED SPACE PISS! ONCE AGAIN, YOU GOTTA WORK ON THAT TIMING THERE, JACK! HOW IS FRED GONNA EXPLAIN THAT TO THE PRODUCERS OF DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES?

HIGHLIGHT FROM THE STAR TREK OUTTAKES REEL

WELL NOW, IT SEEMS LIKE JACK MIGHT’VE SAVED THE DAY, BUT FRED’S ALREADY TURNING INTO A GARY BUSEY STUNT DOUBLE, AND DESPITE JACK’S INSISTENCE THAT HE LEAVE, FRED KNOWS THE ONLY THING HE CAN DO NOW IS STAY BEHIND AND SACRIFICE HIMSELF BY IGNITING THE CONVENIENT BUNDLE OF DYNAMITE HE’S GOT STRAPPED AROUND HIS WAIST. “THIS IS FOR JOYCE HYSER’S TITS!” HE’S HEARD SCREAMING AS THE ENTIRE CAVE AND THE ZOMBIES AND THE MUCUS-FILLED ALIEN OVERLORD GO UP IN A BIG, FIERY, POORLY-ADDED-IN-POST-PRODUCTION EXPLOSION. THE WORLD IS SAVED, JACK’S GOT AT LEAST ONE GIRL LEFT TO BOINK, AND WHAT THE FUCK, DID GEORGE KENNEDY DECIDE TO TAKE THE REST OF THIS MOVIE OFF? “FUCK THIS SHIT,” HE CAN BE HEARD SAYING OVER THE CLOSING CREDITS, “NAKED GUN CAN’T BE MORE THAN A FEW YEARS AWAY, RIGHT?”

FUCK YOU, GWAR! I'LL SEE YOU IN COURT!

OKAY, SO WHAT STARTED OUT LOOKING LIKE ONE OF THE WORST HACK JOBS IN BIGFOOT CINEMA HISTORY TURNED OUT TO BE THE WACKIEST HALF HOUR I’VE SEEN ON VIDEOTAPE IN THE LAST YEAR – A GLORIOUS MIX OF BREEDERS, MUTANT AND FORBIDDEN PLANET ON BROWN ACID, AND THAT KINDA MADE MY DAY. THE CHICKS WEREN’T THE BEST LOOKING ON THE PLANET, BUT THEY GAVE UP THEIR TOPS AND THEIR EYEBALLS FOR NEXT TO NOTHING, AND WE NOW HAVE PROOF THAT MICHELLE BAUER, LIKE ANY MEMBER OF THE CHEYNEY FAMILY, CAN STILL FUNCTION WITHOUT HER HEART. AHH, BUT TAKE AWAY THOSE SILICON PUPPIES AND SHE’D BE DEADER THAN A DOORNAIL IN A SECOND. 4 OUT OF 5 KARIS. AND THE FASTEST THIRTY MINUTES IN CINEMA HISTORY.

FAST FORWARDING TO THE GOOD PARTS:

20 MINUTES – SEX AND…
24 MINUTES - …A SHOWER, AND NOT EVEN THE SAME GIRL!

I SAID MMMMPPHHH I'M BEST FRIENDS MMMPPGGGLLPHHH WITH RICKY MMGGPPFF SCHROEDER...

28 MINUTES – OUR FIRST SIGHT OF THE MONSTER, AND IT’S A WINNER! JAKE, DADDY’S GOTTA GO OUT TONIGHT…

41 MINUTES – MICHELLE BAUER THINKS IT’S TOO HOT WITH A SHIRT.

43 MINUTES - …AND IT’S THE GIRL WITH THE SHIRT ON THAT GETS KILLED. WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE ARE WE SENDING OUR KIDS HERE?

52 MINUTES – CHECK OUT GEORGE KENNEDY’S STATE-OF-THE-ART 1988 CALCU-WATCH! I BET HE GOES HOME AND PLAYS ASTEROIDS IN COLOR ON HIS COMMODORE 64 TOO!

AND I'VE GOT TECMO BOWL TOO!

53 MINUTES – GARY BUSEY MONKEY SNAGS ANOTHER VICTIM IN WHAT IS ACTUALLY A VERY BRUTAL DEATH BY BEAR TRAP AND POINTY STICK. OUCH! THE ONLY THING MORE PAINFUL THAN THIS WOULD BE WATCHING “THE GINGERDEAD MAN”.

1:06 – HEY CINDY, WHY THE LONG EYEBAL…I MEAN, FACE?

1:19 – MICHELLE BAUER’S TOPLESS BONDAGE SACRIFICE SCENE. I HEAR SHE DIES IN THIS SCENE, BUT I DIDN’T MAKE IT THAT FAR…

1:23 – ANOTHER TOPLESS BONDAGE SACRIFICE BABE! IS THIS THE HORNIEST ALIEN SUPER-RACE IN THE UNIVERSE?

EVERY GIRL'S CRAZY 'BOUT A SHARP-DRESSED MAN.

TRAVEL SIZE REVIEW: BILL HICKS LIVE (2004)

2010-05-13T18:54:00.000-07:00

I don't idolize Bill Hicks, but I do find him interesting. Anyone dying at 31 is a tragedy, really, and if Bill lived on, I'm sure by the content on these 3 live shows he'd be merely adding to his fairly consistent repertoire and not changing the world. Although he would've rid it of Denis Leary, and we can only hope Bill would've never starred in crappy comedies with Kevin Spacey. Don't get me wrong, I found Bill's comedy routines very funny and his don't-give-a-shit persona fascinating, but here's some food for thought for all those who thought he revolutionized comedy: Bill Hicks was supposedly angry with Dennis Leary for what he felt was a theft of his act. But in watching Bill, I see an awful lot of Sam Kinison, another renegade comedian/drug abuser who died way way too young (and around the same time too if I'm not mistaken). So just a thought - Bill Hicks was a great stand-up comedian, but neither his act nor his demeanor were entirely new. And if you want visual proof of what cancer can do to a man, on his final Letterman appearance, he turned into Martin Mull.

TRAVEL SIZE REVIEW: CHARLIE VARRICK (1973)

2010-05-05T17:19:00.000-07:00

DOES WALTER REALLY NEED MAKEUP TO MAKE HIM LOOK OLDER?

Tarantino's dad directed. Walter Matthau was excellent, and he and Jack Lemmon did nothing but gripe throughout. Sheree North is always hot. And Norman Fell plays a tough guy, and does a great job until his wife appears at a crime scene and starts yelling "STAN-LEE! I'M HORNY!" Then Chrissy Snow pulls up in a '69 Camaro and guns everyone down. Oh, did I spoil the plot? My bad.

DEADLY DREAMS (1988)

2010-04-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

WELL NOW, A TITLE LIKE THAT JUST BEGS TO BE TAMPERED WITH, AND IF YOU’RE NOT A FAN OF THIS NOT-YET-NOR-EVER-WILL-BE-ON-DVD HORROR FILM, IT WON’T TAKE MUCH SKILL TO REPLACE “DREAMS” WITH “DULL” AND CALL YOURSELF CLEVER. JUST LIKE MOVIEOVERLORD73 ON IMDB DID. BUT, WHILE DEADLY DREAMS DOESN’T EXACTLY MOVE AT LIGHTNING SPEED, IT’S GOT ENOUGH TWISTS AND TURNS AND FREAKY DREAM SCENES TO KEEP YOU INTERESTED UNTIL THE FULL-ON TWILIGHT ZONE TWIST ENDING COMES. AND THE KILLER WEARS A WOLF MASK. OR MAYBE IT’S AN OPOSSUM. OR MAYBE IT’S FOX MULDER…

GREAT. THE FIRST HORROR MOVIE VILLAIN WHO LICKS HIS OWN ASSHOLE.

OUR HEART-WARMING STORY BEGINS WITH THE MURDER OF ALEX’S PARENTS, WHEN WOLFPOSSUM HUFFS AND PUFFS AND BLOWS DOWN THE FRONT DOOR OF THEIR POSH LITTLE SUBURBAN MANSION WITH A .22 CALIBER RIFLE ON CHRISTMAS EVE. WOLFIE THEN CHASES LITTLE ALEX (WHO’S ONLY TEN AT THIS POINT) THROUGH THE FOREST, AND JUST WHEN HE’S ABOUT TO CATCH HIM…BAM! THE NOW 25-YEAR-OLD ALEX WAKES UP FROM A BAD DREAM. GET USED TO THIS. YOU’LL SEE IT APPROXIMATELY 20 OR 30 TIMES MORE BEFORE THESE 79 MINUTES ARE UP.

CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHY GETTING STRANGLED BY A WOLFMAN WOULD GIVE YOU A CHUBBY?

ACTUALLY, FUCK THAT, YOU’LL SEE IT OFTEN ENOUGH JUST IN THE NEXT 10 MINUTES, AS WOLFMAN JACKOFF KILLS PRETTY MUCH EVERY FRIEND POOR ALEX HANGS WITH. OF COURSE, THEY’RE JUST NIGHTMARE VISIONS REALLY. OR ARE THEY? BUT WHEN OUR SILVER-TONGUED CASANOVA BANGS A HOT LIMBER FLASHDANCER NAMED MAGGIE THE FIRST NIGHT HE MEETS HER, OLD WOLFIE BOY LEAVES HER ALONE. THANK GOD TOO, BECAUSE IT GIVES US OUR FIRST NUDE SCENE OF THE FILM. TRY NOT TO LAUGH WHEN THE ENTIRE BED SPINS AROUND LIKE IT’S SOME BAD TRYST FROM RED SHOE DIARIES RUNNING AT 2 AM ON SKINEMAX. BUT IT’S OKAY TO LAUGH WHEN ALEX THROWS A SHIRT OVER A DEER HEAD MID-COITUS. ‘CUZ, Y’KNOW, HE’S SPOOKED BY ANIMAL HEADS, HEH HEH. OH, AND WAY TO CONCENTRATE ON HER NEEDS, DUDE.

THIS IS THE ONLY HOTTIE IN THE FILM. FROM NOW ON, PHOTOS WILL CONCENTRATE ON HER.

AS ALEX’S BIGFOOT AND WILDBOY NIGHTMARES MOUNT, HE FINALLY TELLS HIS OLDER BROTHER JACK, WHO EXPRESSES SYMPATHY BY PUTTING HIM IN A HEADLOCK, THEN HE TELLS HIS BEST BUDDY DANNY, WHO POINTS A LOADED SNIPER RIFLE AT THIS HEAD. IT DOESN’T HELP THAT DANNY’S GOT A SHELF FULL OF STUFFED PENGUINS IN HIS BEDROOM AND…HEY, WHAT’S THAT? A WOLF/FOX/POSSUM MASK UNDER HIS HAMPER OF SOILED UNDIES? NOW HOW’D THAT GET THERE?

HEY, I'D SHOOT SOMEONE WITH HAIR LIKE THAT TOO.

WHO THE FUCK KNOWS? WE NEVER DO FIND OUT. AS A MATTER OF FACT, YOU’LL FIND MORE ANSWERS IN AN EPISODE OF “LOST” THAN IN DEADLY DREAMS. HERE, REALITY AND DREAMS HUMP EACH OTHER LIKE THE CAST OF “REAL WORLD” ON ECSTASY. ANY TIME SOMETHING INTERESTING HAPPENS ON SCREEN, YOU’RE JUST WAITING FOR SOME FUCKER TO WAKE UP. BESIDES, NONE OF THESE KIDS IS VERY SYMPATHETIC ANYWAY – ALEX LOOKS LIKE A SIMPERING BRAT WITH THAT FLAPPY 80’S HAIR, AND HIS BROTHER JACK’S AN OUTRIGHT DICK. WHICH IS KINDA WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SUDDENLY INHERIT YOUR PARENTS’ MONEY AND BUSINESS AFTER THEY’RE SHOT TO DEATH ON CHRISTMAS EVE BY AN EVIL POSSUM RAT. EXAMPLE: WHEN ALEX INTRODUCES HIS NEW ROOM-SPINNING, DEERHUNTING PIECE OF MICHAEL SEMBELLO ASS MAGGIE TO HIS BROTHER JACK, JACK RESPONDS BY ASKING HER IF SHE’S EVER WORKED WITH “SAM WEINBERG” IN NEW YORK. WHEN SHE ANSWERS YES, HE SNORTS AND SAYS “THERE IS NO SAM WEINBERG” AND CALLS HER A GOLD DIGGER. NOW, I’M NO OFF-BROADWAY EXPERT, AND I HAVEN’T BEEN TO A MUSICAL IN NEW YORK SINCE THE DAYS OF “YOUR ARMS TOO SHORT TO BOX WITH GOD,” BUT I GOTTA TELL YOU – IF THERE AIN’T AT LEAST ONE GUY WORKING IN NEW YORK THEATRE BY THE NAME OF SAM WEINBERG, I’D BE PRETTY FUCKING SHOCKED.

BABY, YOU'RE SO HOT THE ROOM IS SPINNING! OH, IT REALLY IS SPINNING?

WELL, THE RED HERRINGS AND WOLF FANTASIES CONTINUE, AS ALEX FINDS A DEAD DEER IN HIS BATHTUB WITH HIS NAME SCRAWLED IN BLOOD ABOVE IT. LATER, WHEN HE GETS THE SHERIFF TO INVESTIGATE, ALL THE BLOOD AND DEER PARTS ARE, STRANGELY ENOUGH, GONE. DON’T LOOK FOR ANY ANSWERS TO THAT LITTLE POSER EITHER. THE SHERIFF, MEANWHILE, IS AS FED UP AS THE REST OF US, AND CHASTISES THE RICH YOUNG HEIRS WITH WHAT MIGHT BE THE BEST LINE OF THE MOVIE: “I’VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH YOU GODDAMN COLLEGE KIDS AND YOUR GODDAMN DRUGS AND YOUR GODDAMN BULLSHIT! (LONG PAUSE) GOOD NIGHT!” YEP, HE’S SPEAKING FOR ALL OF US.

CROTCHETY SHERIFF PLAYED BY ELMER CANDY, JOHN'S LESS FAMOUS LITTLE BROTHER.

DRUGS AND BULLSHIT INDEED. HOW ELSE CAN YOU EXPLAIN A SCENE WHERE ALEX MYSTERIOUSLY RUNS INTO HIS FRIEND DANNY IN A GRAVEYARD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, DRESSED IN CAMOUFLAGE AND HOLDING THAT FAVORITE RIFLE OF HIS. DANNY’S EXPLANATION? “I’VE BEEN OUT HUNTING ALL DAY.” YEAH, BUT IT’S NIGHT. AND YOU’RE IN A GRAVEYARD. ALEX, THOUGH, HE SEEMS OKAY WITH THIS ALIBI. ME, I SAY “GODDAMN COLLEGE KIDS AND THEIR GODDAMN DRUGS AND GODDAMN BULLSHIT! GOOD NIGHT SIR!”

YEP. ROOM STILL SPINNING.

SEE, THE WHOLE THING KINDA PLAYS OUT LIKE THAT “HARPER’S ISLAND” TV MINI-SERIES. THE ORIGINAL MAN IN THE WOLF MASK – THE ONE THAT SHOT ALEX’S PARENTS WHEN HE WAS TEN – TURNS OUT THAT WAS A GUY NAMED NORMAN PERKINS (HMM…WONDER WHERE THEY GOT THAT NAME FROM? WAS IT TOO LATE TO ADD A DEPUTY NAMED ANTHONY BATES?). NORMAN SUPPOSEDLY KILLED HIMSELF AFTER THE HOMICIDE…OR DID HE? AND JUST LIKE WE DID FOR JOHN WAKEFIELD, WE’RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE DOUBTS ABOUT THIS FOR 79 MINUTES. WHICH, THANKFULLY, IS A LOT LESS THAN 14 EPISODES SPREAD OUT OVER 4 MONTHS ON A SHITTY TV NETWORK WITH A PAYOFF THAT SUCKS BALLS. YEAH, “HARPER’S ISLAND” TOOK A LOT OF VALUABLE TIME OUT OF MY LIFE, AND I’M STILL GETTING OVER THAT.

YEP. SHE'S A REDHEAD.

WELL, WITH BAGGAGE LIKE THAT, HOW CAN I RECOMMEND DEADLY DREAMS? WELL, FOR ONE, IT’S GOT WOLFBOY. AND IT’S GOT THAT WHOLE DREAM/REALITY THING THAT STARTS OUT ANNOYING AND THEN JUST GETS FUNNY. AND IT’S GOT A PISSED OFF SCOTT SALEM FUCK-EVERYBODY CROTCHETY SHERIFF WHO SAYS EXACTLY WHAT I’M THINKING. AND IT’S GOT JULIETTE CUMMINS AS MAGGIE, WHO MAKES THE ROOM SPIN AROUND THE FIRST TIME SHE BANGS, AND DOES IT DOGGIE STYLE THE SECOND TIME! OR, SHOULD I SAY, WOLFIE STYLE? OOPS, DID I SAY THAT OUT LOUD?

AND ONE FOR THE LADIES...

YES, THERE’S A TWIST ENDING, AND YOU MIGHT’VE SEEN IT COMING IF YOU WATCHED “HARPER’S ISLAND” AND GOD HELP YOU IF YOU DID. ACTUALLY, THE MORE I THINK ABOUT IT, I BET THE CREATORS OF “HARPER’S ISLAND” STOLE THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF DEADLY DREAMS, PROBABLY KNOWING THAT THE FUCKER WOULD NEVER BE OUT ON DVD SO ONLY HARDCORE VHS NERDS LIKE US WOULD EVER KNOW. BUT WE GOT BLOGS. AND WE’RE SPREADING THE NEWS. AND GODDAMMIT, DEADLY DREAMS IS BETTER THAN “HARPER’S ISLAND” BECAUSE IT’S GOT DANCER TITS AND WOLF MASKS AND CREEPY GUYS NAMED NORMAN PERKINS. AND I JUST BET ONE OF THE GUYS WHO WORKED ON “HARPER’S ISLAND” WAS NAMED SAM WEINBERG. FUCK SAM WEINBERG. DEADLY DREAMS GETS 3 OUT OF 5 KARIS.

FAST FORWARDING TO THE GOOD PARTS:

26 MINUTES – WE WEREN’T ALL LUCKY ENOUGH TO LAND A FLASHDANCER BACK IN THE LATE 80’S, NOR WERE WE LUCKY ENOUGH TO BANG HER ON THE FIRST NIGHT! ALEX WAS. ALEX IS THE MAN.

42 MINUTES – THE DEAD DEER IN THE BATHTUB SCENE. IT’S LIKE “THE GODFATHER” FOR THE FIELD AND STREAM CROWD.

57 MINUTES – FULL-ON WOLFIE STYLE DANCER SEX FROM BEHIND! JULIETTE CUMMINS, I KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU THAN I SHOULD.

OOH BABY, YOU'RE HUNG LIKE A POSSUM!

BLOOD TRACKS (1986)

2010-04-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

“Wherever we turn, there ain’t no way back
From the final burn, to the final attack!
Blood tra-a-a-a-cks!”

Pardon me, if you will, for rocking like nobody’s business there, but I just can’t help myself after watching 1986’s cannibal-cavemen-on-the-ski-slopes no-budget no-brains horror fest BLOOD TRACKS, which is so bad, boys and girls, it’s not even out on DVD. Keep in mind, they're re-releasing every Jess Franco movie they can get their paws on. Shit, even Pauly Shore movies are on DVD. So just how bad can BLOOD TRACKS be then? So bad, it’s good. That’s a cliché. There’ll be plenty more where that came from.

EASY ACTION. THEY MAY NOT ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE, BUT WOULD YOU SETTLE FOR A STIFF WINTER BREEZE?

Really, you’d be hard-pressed to find a movie that’s more locked in its year than this one. BLOOD TRACKS screams 1986 more than a Sheila E video. From the bad hair metal band Easy Action – obviously not named after the groovy Alice Cooper album – who hair-flip and air-guitar their way through the theme song like Ronnie James Dio being strangled by a Yeti (and don’t think I haven’t prayed for that). To the band of Haysi Fantayzee extras posing as groupies who look more faux new wave than a Liquid Sky convention. And either I got confused or fell asleep early in this one, because it sounds like the groupies have their own pop band, or go by the name of Solid Gold, since the minute they set foot on the ski slopes the crowd goes positively apeshit, chanting “Solid Gold! Solid Gold! Solid Gold!” until Marilyn McCoo herself claws her way out of the snow and tells them to shut the fuck up already. As the girls in Montel’s audience used to say, “They ain’t all that!”

DID SOMEBODY ORDER A DALE BOZZIO WET DREAM?

Trouble’s a-brewin’ in BLOOD TRACKS right off the bat. Our beloved and bubblegum-chewing Dale Bozzios are having none of this snow shit. “I’m gonna freeze my tits off!” one of ‘em yells right after getting off her rock and roll Roadmaster, to which the video director replies, “Who told you snow was warm?” Too-shay, Mr. Doo-shay, it’s bon mots like these I’ve been craving ever since Meatballs 3 went out of print. But before you can roll on the floor laughing your ass off, Easy Action suddenly appears on a snowbank and starts rocking like no one’s ever rocked before (in the history of rockin’) with that godawful shitty sub-Goth metal fuck song they call “Blood Tracks.” “Wherever we turn, there ain’t no way back! From the final burn, to the final attack! Blood tra-a-a-a-acks!” And if you think that sounds a little like Europe’s “Final Countdown,” wait’ll you hear the music. Never in my life did I think a band could make Winger look tough, but these snow pansies do just that.

EVERYTHING THAT COULD EVER BE WRONG WITH MUSIC.

Needless to say, their excessive rocking causes a sudden avalanche, and now our heroes are trapped in the slopes with their 80’s selves for a long time like some endless Square Pegs marathon in Antarctica. To cut a long story short (and I wish the makers of BLOOD TRACKS had), the group get killed off one by one by a freakish family of decaying cavemen who throw big steel girders in the air and buy their clothes from the Goodwill shop without washing them first. If you’re looking for gore, forget it – the killings and impalings in BLOOD TRACKS are too dark to see, and there’s probably a good reason for that. If you’re looking for sex, there’s some of that, but it’s filmed in that super-extre-e-e-m closeup MTV quick-cut crap style so you don’t get to actually see much of the good pink stuff, and again, there’s probably a good reason for that too. I swear the punkish blonde who gets banged early on is the same one in the 1986 cheapie Pod People ripoff BREEDERS, but don’t quote me on that. And don’t tell anyone I actually watched both movies.

BRETT MICHAELS WITH YOUR LITTLE SISTER.

Here’s the good news. Easy Action never play again. But by now you’ve sat through the theme song twice, so the producers are obviously showing you some mercy. Amazingly, our Winger wannabees don’t even get to play over the end credits – instead we get some weak Celtic new wave band like the Pogues or the Boomtown Rats going Adult Contemporary. No avalanche here, kids. These guys couldn’t even put a crack in an ice pond.

EITHER THIS IS ONE OF THE CREEPY CAVE CLAN TERRORIZING OUR 80'S SKIERS, OR IT'S COREY FELDMAN. I FORGET WHICH.

So yeah, I wanted to like BLOOD TRACKS because, despite what you may think, the 80’s were actually kinda cool when you think about it - I mean, they gave us MTV, Wall of Voodoo and Kari Wuhrer. But like the 80’s, BLOOD TRACKS is all superficial – the hair, the fashion and the eye shadow are there, but there’s no heart. No good sex. And no scares. And by anchoring their film with bad hair metal rather than a semi-decent synth pop new wave band, the makers of BLOOD TRACKS tell you exactly where their movie’s heading. Yep. This one sucks you like a hurricane.

WHY IS IT THAT JAPANESE SUBTITLES ALWAYS SEEM TO BE IN THE WRONG PLACE?

The 80's cheeze is peaking in the red on this one. Bad hair metal. Bad hair. Bad makeup. In a way, this is better than going to a Thor concert. Good for all the wrong reasons and endlessly entertaining. Just wish there were more tits. I'll go right up the middle with this one. 2 and a half Karis. Don't watch it alone, or sober.

DEADLY FRIEND (1986)

2010-04-21T18:25:00.000-07:00

THIS IS WHY THEY TELL YOU TO LET YOUR PLAYSTATION 3 COOL DOWN

DEADLY FRIEND is so rooted in the 80's, it's funny. Well, it's not funny actually, nor is it scary. Unless you think the old deformed crotchety lady from THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN is scary, and you're right. I watched this while napping and was about to call it a cross between REVENGE OF THE NERDS and SHORT CIRCUIT when a basketball suddenly crushed a head like a blood-filled melon and made me momentarily say "Totally cool!" (I guess I got into the 80's frame of mind).

NOW THAT'S A BUZZER BEATER!

A few more bloody killings and I wondered why this so-called "horror" film took over an hour to get to the horror. What's really scary is what I wanted to do to Kristy Swanson and I'm not even sure she was legal when this was made. Deadly dull, until the last 20 minutes, and I apologize for the cheap cliche. But Kristy Swanson remained clothed, and even a man-eating robot couldn't save it. This is why they divide DVDs into chapters.

SHE LOOKED BETTER AFTER TAKING A BASKETBALL

...AND GOD SPOKE (1994)

2010-04-14T16:17:00.000-07:00

This 1994 film is the WAITING FOR GUFFMAN of independent filmmaking, but unlike Christopher Guest's films, you don't know these guys (except for the inspired cameos), which makes it even more believable. This time you're not watching characters played by Parker Posey and Harry Shearer and Fred Willard (as great as they are) - so you get the idea that ...AND GOD SPOKE might actually be real. You'll notice some future stars among the cast (Parker's husband in BEST IN SHOW, a future SNL cast member) which just goes to show you how strong an improv cast is behind this unknown little film. And in the filmmakers minds, it all makes perfect sense – after casting a complete unknown in the role of the somewhat important Biblical part of God, Stephen Rappaport remarks “You won’t recognize God.” Which is as it should be, right? The few past stars that are here are so “past” that you might not even consider them stars anymore, unless you frequent biannual Fright Fests in Parsippany New Jersey – Eve Plumb (TV’s Jan Brady) as Mrs. Noah, Lou Ferrigno as Cain and Andy Dick as Abel, and the venerable Soupy Sales as Moses who, much like Soupy Sales, knows the value of good product placement. Which makes me think - I wonder if the bit where Soupy Sales pushes his sons' Tin Machine album was actually scripted. I really do.

DUMB DORA IS SO DUMB, SHE WANTED TO MAKE BACON SO SHE FUCKED A BLANK. GOOD ANSWER, SOUPY! TOO BAD THE CONTESTANT SAID "OPRAH WINFREY."

BLEEDERS (1997)

2010-04-10T14:34:00.000-07:00

KIDS WOULD OFTEN TEASE THE BLEEDERS IN GRADE SCHOOL, CALLING THEM "THREE EYES" AND SHIT. GRADE SCHOOL KIDS ARE ROUGH.

Man, did I get suckered into this one. And I’ve got a fucking marketing degree! If I were Japanese, I’d be shamed enough to run a sword through my abdomen. But hey, my hat’s off to whoever designed the videobox art on BLEEDERS, they got me fair and square. And if I’d have paid one more penny for this thing, I might actually get upset. But $2.48 on Ebay isn’t so much to pay for a good lesson now, is it?

I remember the old days when Blockbuster Video shelves were lined with both VHS boxes and DVD cases. I know, I know, I'm dating myself. Not so much by mentioning VHS tapes, but by mentioning Blockbuster Video! BLEEDERS always stood out from the pack, what with that awesome plastic pouch filled with fake blood. The fucker actually bled, just like they said it would. Not only that, those horrifying little deformed creatures that occasionally poked their pig snouts out from under the blood - Were they the so-called bleeders? Or did they cause others to bleed? Or was this just a Japanese version of BREEDERS? Sorry, bad racial slur there. My 14-year-old horror-seeking heart pounded at the possibilities inside this cool as fuck blood pack box. This couldn't be any less than awesome, could it?

THE BLEEDERS PROMO BLOOD PACK, IN ALL ITS PROMO BLOOD PACK FUCK GLORY.

Well, turns out I never rented BLEEDERS back in the day, because my parents had the card and probably picked something shitty like WINGS OF THE DOVE or MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING or BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL instead. So a decade and a half later, I'm all grown up and now actually have the money to buy the fucker, groovy bleeding sac of hemoglobin intact (although no longer as fluid as it was back in 1997, oh well), and sat back finally to watch this veritable Plasma-Thon in all its gory glory.

And you know what? It sucks.

ERNEST BORGNINE IS NOT LOOKING WELL THESE DAYS.

Not even Rutger Hauer can save this one. That’s right, Rutger Fucking Hauer – Roy Batty himself – somehow got conned into starring in BLEEDERS. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. There’s also a crazy granny with a rifle (always a good thing), a nigh-albino lead actor who looks like a reject from LOST BOYS II, and a leading lady who’s actually kinda hot in a Faith Ford meets Ilsa the Wicked Warden way, although it takes forever for her to show the goods. In fact, that’s the problem with BLEEDERS in a nutshell. It takes forever for anything to happen. The actual Bleeders themselves, if that’s what the fuck they are, don’t show up until 56 minutes in, and even that one’s dead on a slabheap getting autopsied by Roy Batty. And if it ain’t bad enough Rutger’s gotta be in this crapheap, he’s gotta say things like “this thing’s got three stomachs,” or, worse yet, stick his Replicant fucking arm elbow-deep into a rubber monster and say “It’s a fully formed vagina!” Swear to God, that's an actual quote. And lemme tell you, that’s one hell of a long way away from “like tears…in the rain.”

I SAID TAPIOCA, MOTHERFUCKER!

Okay, so what I’m saying is, if you wanna go and just fast forward 55 and a half minutes in, feel free to do that. Because absolutely nothing happens before that. Seriously. At 1:06, an actual living, breathing, moving Bleeder kicks the living shit out of that overacting NRA rifle-toting Granny, so right off the bat, you kinda like the little guys. And the action – if you can call it that – literally all happens in the last ten minutes, when Rutger Fucking Hauer and Keifer Sutherland’s anorexic cousin and Faith Ford the Dominatrix all flee to a lighthouse while the Bleeders scramble up the rocks. Okay, “scramble” is a strong word here. The Bleeders, now clad in thrift store chic, kinda shuffle toward the lighthouse, and move so slow they kinda remind me of the Skeksis in DARK CRYSTAL. I mean, if this dumbass cast really wanted to get away from the Bleeders, a simple brisk walking pace would do. No, these guys decide to hole themselves inside a lighthouse, but even still they’re pretty easy targets for Rutger’s rifle or the giant lighthouse lantern (much like Crispin Glover, the Bleeders don’t seem to like light). But, as luck would have it, Rutger runs out of shells and a giant lightning bolt from fucking nowhere suddenly strikes the lighthouse and cuts all power. A sign from an angry God, who also purchased the blood pack VHS copy from Ebay for the BuyItNow price of $29.99, and is pissed like the rest of us. Rutger Hauer put it best when he once said, in a slightly better film, "Time to die."

GRANNY TAKES A TRIP. "I'VE FALLEN, AND I WON'T BE GETTING UP!"

If you’re still awake, or sober, you’ll notice the first Bleeder to get to the lighthouse door actually knocks – they’re polite little shits apparently. But no one answers so they kinda bust in anyway, and then the top floor of the lighthouse where everyone’s hiding kinda just conveniently caves in because, well, because otherwise it would take five fucking years for those slowpoke carnival freaks to waddle up the staircase for Christ’s sake. The Bleeders immediately make off with the annoying kid, then start pawing at the blonde, and those two things make ‘em heroes in my book so yeah, I’m rooting for them even more than I'm rooting for Rutger Fucking Hauer.

SHE'S HOT, AND SHE'S ABOUT TO TAKE OFF THAT SWEATER...

But before the blonde can get killed, or at least justifiably molested, some heretofore completely unseen mean ass lesbian chick jumps down into the fray and screams “No FUCKING WAY!” I don’t know who she is, where she came from, or why her only three words in the whole film don’t even make sense, but luckily she gets killed right away by the Bleeders, who I’m now openly cheering for. More fighting ensues, some people get away and others don’t, and then something else happens and the credits roll. Really, does it even matter?

THIS IS WHAT I IMAGINE THE LEAD SINGER OF DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL LOOKS LIKE.

As a thirty-minute episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE or the long-lost Sci-Fi (sorry, it’s SyFy now right?) Channel series MONSTERS, BLEEDERS would’ve been pretty good, if somewhat vapid and non-eventful. As a 90-minute film, it blows big chunks of Skeksis feces, because a) it’s never scary, b) the blonde waits almost 80 minutes to show the goods, and c) it’s not even bloody. And it’s called BLEEDERS for fucks sake! If you do go out anyway and buy this videotape (it’s not on DVD), make sure you get the fancy limited-edition plastic blood pack version, because that’s the ONLY FUCKING BLOOD YOU’LL EVER SEE!

YOUR ONLY REWARD FOR SITTING THROUGH 90 MINUTES OF BLOODLESS HELL. STILL, KINDA WORTH IT.

In short, rent. Fast forward. Fast forward again. Drink a bottle of vodka and enjoy. It’s like Rutger Fucking Hauer once said, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments…will be lost in time…like tears…in rain…Hey, it’s a fully-formed vagina!”

One out of five Kari's.
FAST FORWARDING TO THE GOOD PARTS:
0 – 56: Nothing. I already warned ya.

:56 – Doctor Rutger autopsies a Bleeder. It still doesn’t bleed.
1:06 – The most annoying Granny in modern cinema gets offed by a Bleeder. That Bleeder is now my favorite thing in life.

1:12 – Some toplessness, but it’s on a dead girl hanging upside down. Still, if that’s your thing…

1:20 – Our dominatrix blonde finally loses her shirt. Jesus, I’ve waited 80 fucking minutes for this gravity-defying moment of sheer awesomeness? Yeah, worth it.

CORKY, WHAT YOU BEEN DOIN' SINCE THEY TOOK "LIFE GOES ON" OFF THE AIR?

ALLEY CAT (1984)

2010-04-08T15:11:00.000-07:00

THE REAL STARS OF ALLEY CAT

I kinda feel bad reviewing films like ALLEY CAT. I mean, we all know why films like this were made. Sure, you can say it’s a low-budget feminist take on DEATH WISH, or a non-existent-budget take on THE TERMINATOR, but I doubt this was movie was marketed to feminists or sci-fi purists. Like SAVAGE STREETS (featuring the suddenly-grown-up-in-a-D-cup-way Linda Blair), ALLEY CAT was only on videostore shelves for one target audience – namely the little boys who couldn’t push their way through the back room curtains yet. So instead of watching season pros like Traci Lords or Amber Lynn, the little boys here get Karen Mani, who you’ve never heard of before for a reason. With a face like Pat Benatar and a voice like Lily Tomlin during her I HEART HUCKABEES tirade, she’s only in ALLEY CAT for one reason. Okay, two reasons. Okay, three reasons. And only two are above the waist (at least in 1984 they were, nowadays they might extend a little lower). And lemme tell you something, for little boys in the black hole of sex we called 1984, Karen doesn’t disappoint.

HEY, WHAT'S THAT DOWN THERE...OH RIGHT, IT WAS 1984.

Karen’s previous acting experience included the role of Bina in the “Raj Moves Out” episode of the hit 80’s TV show What’s Happenin’ (I ain’t makin’ this shit up), so anyone expecting the thespian moves of a young Kate Winslett will be slightly disappointed. But go in expecting an actress whose direct competition includes Wendy Jo Sperber and Mindy Cohn and you’ll be happy to learn that Karen holds her own, bringing all three emotions she learned from 80’s TV (pouting, flirting and…er, pouting in a flirty way) to her role as “Belinda Clarke.” Which, by the way, sounds frighteningly close to another film babe, Melinda Clarke, who absolutely rocked Return of the Living Dead 3 and Return to Two Moon Junction and every other film that started with “Return To”…sorry, I’m getting way off topic here. The long and short of it is, Karen Mani can’t act worth a damn, but she wasn’t hired for that. She’s got a wonderful full frontal shower scene early on, and another hot prison shower scene later where she gets hit on by a leering hot lesbian. So if you’ve ever wondered what Pat Benatar would look like in the shower if she had much bigger meat balloons and a voice like Lily Tomlin after two cartons of Pall-Malls, then brother, ALLEY CAT is your own personal CITIZEN KANE.

SHE'S GOT A GOLD TOOTH, YOU KNOW SHE'S HARDCORE

Okay, so even two great fully frontal shower scenes can’t carry an entire film (well, for me they can), so now we get to the weak part of ALLEY CAT. In other words, everything else. The basic premise here is that a bunch of street thugs mug Karen’s grandparents, and I use the term “thugs” loosely here because these guys look like they’d have trouble taking the cast of MAMMA MIA in a backyard brawl. Yet in the confusion of figuring out how to hold a switchblade without looking too much like an Alvin Ailey dancer, the Off-Broadway thugs somehow end up stabbing Grandma and killing her. This doesn’t sit well with Big Titty Benatar, who screams out “Love is a battlefield!” before vowing to personally see that every one of the street mime/thugs is brought to justice. At first, she goes through the proper channels, bringing them before a judge. But the judge is corrupt, or beholden to the Mummenschantz lobby group, so he lets the thugs off with merely a wrist slap. Then, when Karen protests vehemently, he throws her in prison!!! Looks like our little Pat Benatar stunt double has learned a valuable lesson - In real life, Hell is not only for children.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF TERI NUNN, BITCH!

Well now, that’s gotta be one of the most shocking scenes in ALLEY CAT that doesn’t involve Karen’s tits, but we soon realize why it had to happen - it’s just a set-up, of course, for her obligatory prison shower scene, which again doesn’t disappoint. And it also lets us see how tough Karen really is – at least tough enough to beat up a couple of slightly hardened lesbian fashion models behind bars. So when she finally gets her freedom back, now she can go all I Spit On Your Grave on the thugs, one by one. I don’t think there’s actually a castration scene in ALLEY CAT, but every time Karen opened her mouth and spoke, my dick disappeared anyway.

Y'KNOW BABY, I USED TO BE A ROADIE FOR KAJAGOOGOO BACK IN THE DAY...

Fortunately for Karen, none of the thugs weigh in over 130 pounds, and they're more concerned with landing that plum supporting role in RENT, so she dispatches them pretty easily with her clumsy karate and even clumsier gunplay. For those she really hates, she gives copies of her 1991 jump blues CD True Love and lets them live. This continues until she finally meets the Lead Thug (played by Tom Bismarck, whose done NOTHING else), whose given an unexplained scar on his face that’s supposed to make him look hardened and tough but really only makes him look like he hasn’t quite gotten out of makeup yet from the last Pirates of Penzance performance. During the “big fight,” Karen gets the best of Lead Thug by swinging weakly from a rope while wearing a nice fuzzy red sweater, which knocks down a bunch of Styrofoam crates and forces the bad guy up to the roof. The rooftop battle is even more amazing, since Karen gets off a massive roundhouse kick to the thug’s face, which sends him reeling backward…oh, only a few inches in the shot. But luckily, through the magic of a horrible edit, he’s suddenly shown mid-scream falling off the edge of the roof to his death!! And that’s that. Karen goes off to look for a voice coach, while the rest of us pray she lets those sweater melons loose one more time. She doesn’t.

YOU CAN TELL HE'S TOUGH 'CUZ HE'S GOT A SCAR...AND HIS SHADES AREN'T PULLED DOWN STRAIGHT...UH, AND HE'S GOTTA PUT ONE OF THOSE MAKESHIFT THINGS IN HIS WINDOW FOR THE AIR CONDITIONER...

And yes, the film really DOES end with one of those freeze-frame comedy ha-ha moments straight out of Police Squad. Swear to God. It’s wonderful. Stick around for the credits, too, where third billing after “Billie” and “Johnny” goes to the character of “Hooker.” And no, that doesn’t mean William Shatner.

Karen Mani made one more film, a cameo in Avenging Angel starring Betsy Russell, another babe who got me through some lean weeks in high school. In that film, Karen took off all her clothes without speaking one word, so it looks like someone learned a valuable lesson from ALLEY CAT. I, on the other hand, prefer to remember her this way. In all her bucktooth-poutin’, Tomlin-shriekin’, shower-latherin’, karate-kickin’, street-mime-shreddin’ glory. Karen Mani, next to Betsy Russell, Melinda Clarke and Chuckie Spradling, you are my Z-movie babe. I wonder if Shirley Hemphill ever got a piece of that.

A first here at Ted Danson on the Ceiling. A perfect 5 out of 5 Kari's. Find it.

ALL GUSCHI FOR USCHI

2010-04-02T18:43:00.000-07:00

Just a few words here for the delectable 60's German icon Uschi Obermaier, subject of 2007's "sweetened" biopic DAS WILDE LEBEN, aka EIGHT MILES HIGH for the English speaking Blockbuster customers. She was played by Natalia Avelon in the film, whose beauty was so breathtaking it led me to do some research on Uschi to find out if she was as striking as her film portrayal. Turns out she was, and is - a current interview with Uschi tucked away in the DVD bonus features finds her pushing 60 and living in Topanga Canyon and looking as amazing as ever. Really.

ONE WITH DRESS...

For those unhip to the wiles of Uschi, her resume is impressive too. She started out as a fashion model and actress, then became a member of a radical German left-wing party, then joined German freak-rock band Amon Duul for 2 albums, where she played maraccas (and if you've heard Amon Duul, you'll know that's as important a role as any). She was spotted by the Stones and invited along for their late 60's tours, where she did coke and the band, and also Jimi Hendrix it's rumored.

...AND ONE WITHOUT.

In short, Uschi was a model/actress who loved to jam with German musicians, fucked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and looked fabulous in a dress. Damn, the only other person I know who did all that was David Bowie.

USCHI, PLEASE, IF YOU'RE OUT THERE...CALL ME.

NIGHT OF THE COMET (1984)

2010-03-31T16:53:00.000-07:00

AM I BUGGIN' YA? DIDN'T MEAN TO BUG YA...

I wanted to like this again, I really did, because back in 1984 I really loved it. But then again, I tucked my shirt in and listened to Devo records. Truthfully, NIGHT OF THE COMET bites and bites HARD by today's standards - it's not scary, the makeup is dreadful, and the 80's fashions (particularly the all-boy mall gang) are downright embarrassing.

EVERYONE WANTED TO BE TONI BASIL BACK IN THE EIGHTIES

The end of the world is depicted with a red sky and a lot of human dust, and for a few minutes, it's actually kind of chilling even if it comes nowhere near as close as 28 DAYS. But then a zombie shows up in a Spencer's Gifts latex mask and bad 80's plaid, and the mood's shot to hell.

SERIOUSLY DUDE, I'VE SEEN SCARIER FACES ON CELEBRITY REHAB!

Okay, I know I'm pissing on a cult classic here, and I guess if you're really REALLY drunk and still fantasize about boffing Pet Benatar while Molly Ringwald watches, I guess you could have some fun with NIGHT OF THE COMET. But otherwise, some memories are better left alone. Oh, and Kelli Maroney as a high school kid is about as convincing as Oprah Winfrey as an anorexic.

AW SHIT, J.J., DADDY'S GONNA WHUP YO' ASS NOW!

NIGHT OF THE COMET's as good as any time to introduce my new rating system, and what better way to rate B-movies than on a scale of 1 to 5 Kari Wuhrers (Five Kari's being the best, as well as a good way to die). And so, like Razzles and Pop Rocks, the memories of NIGHT OF THE COMET are far better than, y'know, actually watching the damned thing today, I give it a rather generous 2 and a half Karis. In other words, still a good time, but it ain't gonna kill ya.

HOW DO YOU SAY "GO FISH" IN FRENCH?

2010-03-25T18:55:00.001-07:00

Someone asked me the other day if I could be anywhere in the world, at any time, with anyone, and I replied "Naked on the floor playing gin rummy with Brigitte Bardot circa 1963." No sooner had I said that, he wheeled out this giant Wish Maker Photo Machine thing and pressed a blinking red button and I'll be damned if this photograph didn't pop out. Then he charged me five bucks for the photo. Why don't they tell you about these "hidden charges" before you make your Giant Photo Wish?

FEMALE VAMPIRE (1973)

2010-03-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT? IS THERE A STAIN ON MY...OH, SHIT!

There are some who call this Jess Franco's finest moment. And then there are some who swear the unshaven look is coming back in style. Anyone who gives this film more than one star clearly believes BOTH of those statements, and probably still lives at home with Mom. To say "this is Jess Franco's finest moment" is like saying "this is Pauly Shore's greatest performance" or "this is Ewe Boll's greatest triumph" - and parents, listen up: this movie is NOT for the kiddies. Seriously. The sight of a butt-ugly cellulite-ridden pasty-white Lina Romay wriggling uncomfortably on top of some hairy Dirk Diggler lookalike will almost certainly turn your children OFF to sex for the rest of their miserable life. You have been warned.

GOOD FOR THE PORES.

WHY ARE YOU STILL LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT? I PUT ON A SHIRT...OH, SHIT.

ALLEGRO NON TROPPO (1977)

2010-03-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

UH-OH, LOOKS LIKE OPRAH'S HUNGRY AGAIN.

Carl Palmer of Emerson, Lake and Palmer was once asked why his band felt the need to do hamfisted rock versions of classical pieces, and he said "Hey, if it gets kids who wouldn't normally listen to classical music to hear a few of the masters, then why knock it?" Well, that's not a direct quote because I don't actually have the beat-up 1976 issue of CREEM to transcribe from, but you get the idea. And hey, if it takes a bunch of wacky Marx Brothers slapstick skits and some animated tits and ass to get Italian men interested in Sibelius, then why knock ALLEGRO NON TROPPO either? I mean, the film knocks itself before anyone else can anyway - no sooner do they start filming when the narrator gets a phone call from a lawyer representing "Prisney" or "Bisney" in Hollywood who claim "they've already done something like this."

HOPE THEY HAVE CONDOMS ON THE YELLOW SUBMARINE.

Prisneyland's got nothing to worry about. The animation in Bruno Bozetto's ALLEGRO NON TROPPO is much closer to FRITZ THE CAT and HEAVY METAL anyway. But I liked both those movies, and I liked ALLEGRO NON TROPPO too - if the animation's not as polished as Prisney Studios, it's also not as sterile. There's a loose, unfinished and deeply disturbed feel to these cartoons. I wouldn't be surprised if the animators weren't using some chemical substances to enhance their work - these were the late 70's after all.

DON'T EAT THE BROWN ACID, MAN!

The Evolution/Ascent of Man segment is one long acid trip, and there's another segment involving a stray cat and an abandoned building that had to have been created on the most powerful downers ever made. It's a powerful piece alright, but Jesus, this segment's more depressing than a LEAVING LAS VEGAS marathon.

DON'T WORRY, THERE'S A HAPPY ENDING. OH WAIT, NO THERE'S NOT.

So if you compare ALLEGRO NON TROPPO side by side with FANTASIA, it just doesn't match up. The budgets aren't the same, the slapstick live action segments nearly sink this one, and besides, the two films feel completely different. But dare I say ALLEGRO seems to stick with you longer, somewhere deep in your gut, that is, if you make it through the whole thing without taking an Atra blade to your wrists. And if it got the Italian kiddies of the Seventies to listen to Sibelius more than a shitty Emerson Lake and Palmer triple live record, then I'd say it's done its job admirably. Hey Bruno Bozetto, you've just created a FANTASIA for pill-poppers and acid freaks! What are you gonna do next? I'm going to Prisneyworld!

WELCOME BACK, MY FRIENDS, TO THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS. NO, I'M SERIOUS, IT REALLY NEVER ENDS.

TOKYO GORE POLICE (2008)

2010-03-09T18:31:00.000-08:00

YEP, LOOKS LIKE A SNAPPER.

There's no question the Japanese are messed up, but just HOW messed up, well, that's still open for debate. Take TOKYO GORE POLICE. Please. It's got cute schoolgirls with giant alligator jaws for legs, key-shaped tumors that split apart on your arms when they're inserted into a flesh keyhole, and dominatrix Gimp dogs who walk on legs made of samurai blades. If all this sounds a little...well, weird, let's face it, you gotta try really hard to shock people in a country where can still buy used panties in a sandwich bag in the back of your local grocery store.

SHE'S HOT, BUT SHE TAKES FOREVER TO GET READY IN THE MORNING.

Remember that fat kid in the 8th grade who tried way too hard to be your friend? He might've been a decent friend if he didn't try too hard. Well, TOKYO GORE POLICE is that fat kid. This film tries real hard to gross you out - the only problem is - the gore is so fake, it makes BLOODSUCKING FREAKS look like an autopsy film.

MY KINDA GIRLS.

TOKYO GORE POLICE is neither creepy nor repellant like AUTOPSY or OLDBOY, but it's also not as bad as MEATBALL MACHINE or MACHINE GIRL. It's also not nearly as fun as VERSUS or STORY OF RIKKI-OH, even though these photos might make you think otherwise. It's sorta like a Ren and Stimpy live action film, a Saturday morning cartoon for kids who like to torture small animals. Or grown-ups who still buy soiled underwear in Zip-Loc baggies.

SUBTLETY IS NOT THIS FILM'S STRONG POINT.

HOUSE OF YES (1997)

2010-03-03T18:04:00.000-08:00

FEEL HER QUIET BURN.

This is Parker Posey's show all the way, and anybody who's ever seen her hilarious and all-too-short performances in those Christopher Guest flicks (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman) will already know that the lady can outright CARRY a film with her deadpan brilliance. Every SECOND she's on screen is a riot, full of quotable lines and memorable putdowns (and I'm from Pennsylvania, although not the Alabama part). But the REAL surprise here is that Freddie Prinze Jr. (Freddie from SCOOBY DOO) and Tori Spelling (from the tabloid of your choice) are also hilariously funny. Josh Hamilton is great too, and I don't even know who he is.

RACHAEL LEIGH COOK AND PARKER POSEY. WOULD YOU RATHER?

And watch for a young (and cute - she WAS only 17) Rachael Leigh Cook as the teenage Parker Posey. I had a feeling this was a former stage production when I was watching it - there are only 5 characters and the setting never changes. But all five actors give their absolute BEST comedic performances, and at 85 minutes, it's much better...and much FUNNIER...than JFK. Heck, I didn't laugh ONCE during THAT film!

MOUNTAINS COME OUT OF THE SKY AND THEY STAND THERE. HEY, WRONG HOUSE OF YES!

BAD DREAMS (1988)

2010-02-25T15:41:00.000-08:00

I'M THINKING OF STARTING AN EVANGELINE LILLY BLOG. WHADDYA THINK?

BAD DREAMS is a derivative 80s slasher that offers nothing new and probably couldn't scare my grandmother's bingo club. It's a shame too, because I REMEMBERED this as being one of the better ones out of those fertile pre-CGI Eighties, but watching it today merely elicited lots of (unintentional, I think) laughs.

OH DEAR GOD, NOT ANOTHER TRIPLE LIVE DAVE MATTHEWS CD!!!

Horror film characters traditionally aren't known for their brains (unless something's eating them), but nearly everyone in BAD DREAMS is beyond stupid, so I guess they all get what they deserve, except for the DUMB AS A ROCK young doctor who somehow makes Pauly Shore look like a Mensa candidate. What fucking mental hospital lets their patients walk freely in the halls, even using the elevators unchaperoned? Why is there a bone-crunching, razor-sharp exhaust fan (which doesn't seem to be spinning at a decapitating velocity anyway) kept behind an UNLOCKED iron gate AND an UNLOCKED maintenance door on the same floor as those free-wandering and oh-so-curious mental patients? What hospital leaves full bottles of steaming instant death formaldehyde on the table next to your bed (even if they're marked with those cool skull and crossbones labels that you see everywhere at pharmacies these days)? Since when does pulling a fire alarm suddenly cause all the doors to the dangerous solitary confinement rooms to suddenly SWING WIDE OPEN? And why doesn't Jennifer Rubin ever show the goods (when she couldn't keep her clothes ON in subsequent films)? These are just a FEW of the brain-rattling questions you'll ask when watching BAD DREAMS.

BAD DREAMS? MORE LIKE NIGHTMARES OF MY ART HISTORY CLASS!

I guess in a cheezy kind of Freddy Krueger/Night of the Comet 80's horror way, BAD DREAMS isn't as bad as it feels watching it today. Let's face it - Richard Lynch looks like a charred zombie even before the makeup department gets hold of him, and Dean Cameron's eyebrows and chin cleft are always more interesting than his acting. And Jennifer Rubin, God bless Jennifer Rubin, got me through many a lonely night in 1988. But BAD DREAMS fails to deliver the fright, and that's why you rented it. It won't give you bad dreams, but it may put you to sleep before its 84 minutes are up.

JENNIFER RUBIN. REMEMBER HER THIS WAY.

THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (1976)

2010-02-20T15:37:00.000-08:00

Not a horror film by any stretch of the imagination, LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE is a promising little thriller about a precocious young girl with crooked teeth who seemingly lives all by herself in a big house with no parental guidance. So what? That's EVERY kid nowadays, right? Ahh, but hold on - there's a creepy Martin Sheen who wants to get in her Garanimals, an even creepier magician kid who wouldn't know what to do if he did, and a school board member who actually HITS Jodie Foster - so much for PC films in the mid-70s!

HEY, MY SON CHARLIE'S SINGLE THIS WEEK. WHADDYA SAY?

The film looks like a Made-for-TV job (and might be, I'm just too lazy to check), and its promise of a really big payoff never delivers. The only "horror" element comes late, and would be a shock only if you were raised like a veal and have never seen another horror movie in your life. And speaking of horror, yes, little Jodie does have a nude scene - but don't get too excited. At this early age, she's still got the body of a pit bull. Hey, look, in 1976, I'm sure this film was scary as fuck. I mean, we shit our pants watching THE MANITOU, forgodsake! But in 2010, it's only of interest to pedophiles and Jodie Foster fans. So if you aren't John Hinckley Jr. or R. Kelly, keep moving...

JODIE FOSTER'S FIRST NUDE SCENE. HOTCHA!

AMATEUR (1994)

2010-02-17T16:40:00.000-08:00

1994'S AMATEUR is a brilliant little dark comedy that has some of the funniest writing this side of an (older) Coen Brothers flick. Yeah, the writing and acting is mannered, but it's supposed to be. AMATEUR is 10,000 times funnier than your average Will Ferrell movie because all the actors and actresses play it deadpan straight, which makes their lines even funnier. Someone should teach Jim Carrey about that. Watch for cameos by Parker Posey and Michael Imperioli (Christophuh from the Sopranos) - Parker in particular is hysterical and definitely gets the tone of the film. Isabelle Huppert is wonderfully detached (if only ex-nuns were half as hot), Elina Lowensohn makes great eye candy (if only ex-porn stars were half as hot), and "Martin Donovan" is probably an indiefilm pseudonym used by Andrew McCarthy (they look identical).

THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN ST. ELMO'S FIRE, INNIT?

Also watch the scene between the two hitmen (who are hysterical) comparing cellphones and TELL me if Hal Hartley wasn't taking notes for his adaptation of AMERICAN PSYCHO, released 6 years later. Docked one star because the DVD I got looked like it was dubbed off a second-generation VHS tape left out in the sun in an old VIDEO PLAYLAND store, and it weren't widescreen at all. In fact, I have the original VHS tape and it looks BETTER. Someone REALLY needs to clean this up and give it a proper DVD release - it's an incredibly overlooked film. And it's better than TALADEGA NIGHTS: THE STORY OF RICKY BOBBY!

KISS ME IF YOU THINK I'M CHRISTOPHER LLOYD.

SHE'S A NUN. YOU CAN TELL BY THE CROSS ON HER CHEST.

BUTCHER BOY (1997)

2010-02-13T14:10:00.000-08:00

PLEASE, GOD, PLEASE MAKE TERRY GILLIAM'S NEXT MOVIE GOOD.

This is what Terry Gilliam ASPIRED to recreate when making the (awful) TIDELAND. BUTCHER BOY did it much better a decade earlier. This is the tragicomic loss of innocence as viewed through the eyes of a 12-year-old. Much of it makes little sense logically, because (duh!) much of LIFE makes little sense to a 12-year old. As if! (Do kids still say that?) So watch as a precocious Irish boy experiences his mother's suicide, his father's slow drunken death, lecherous boy-loving clergymen, and the heartbreaking realization that close friends eventually do drift apart. Are we having fun yet?

MODERN CINEMA'S REPRESENTATION OF A BUTCHER BOY. CUTE, HUH?

A REAL BUTCHER BOY. REAL LIFE AIN'T SO HUGGABLE, IS IT?

LADY SNOWBLOOD (1973)

2010-02-05T15:42:00.000-08:00

DON'T MESS.

Well yeah, Quentin Tarantino stole plot points and images from "Lady Snowblood," but what people don't mention is that he vastly IMPROVED on it, quadrupling the action even if he ignored much of the back story. So "Kill Bill" fans will be mildly disappointed, because the gushing blood and giant martial arts battles don't happen nearly as often in "Lady Snowblood," which is a much quieter, more emotionally intense film. Its importance should be measured in far MORE than just "Kill Bill" - the Japanese have had a female revenge Jones for the past 35 years since "Lady Snowblood" - Female Convict Scorpion, Zero Woman, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Battle Royale, Machine Girl and just about any "Pinky Violence" movie - so really, when it comes right down to it, Quentin got to the party really, really late.

OH LOOK, THEY'VE MADE A CUTE LITTLE POSTCARD OUT OF IT ALREADY!

"Lady Snowblood" isn't a 5-star movie by any means, and it wasn't meant to be. Japan was cranking these movies out like SAW sequels back in the early 70's (Sex and Fury, Female Yakuza Tale and Female Scorpion 701: Beast Stable (huh?) all came out the same year), so go rent 'em all but don't treat any one of them like they're masterpieces. They got no Chiaki Kuriyama, and no 5.6.7.8.s. You WILL miss them both.

She's not in LADY SNOWBLOOD. That's bad for LADY SNOWBLOOD. No GoGo, no go.

HEY, WHO PUKED ON MY ALBUM COVER?

2009-06-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

Dick Domane's daughter adds her own touch to the final album cover design.

DICK DOMANE, Dick Domane LP (1970, Map City)

Ignore the horrible cover, which looks like half the cast of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters threw up on it. And ignore Dick’s muttonchops, which beat up Mike Nesmith’s in a fistfight. It might not look like its got anything going for it (which is probably why it’s been ignored for nearly 40 years), but Dick Domane’s 1970 LP on the Map City label is actually a pretty nifty little slice of sunshine pop psych, if you can believe it. Your first clue is that label – Map City, home of such well-regarded (and rare) albums by the Yesterday’s Children, the Purple Image and the Blue Jays - who, by the way, back Dick up on this one. Yet those albums have been reissued, while poor Dick himself has gotten…well, Dick. Only one of his songs, “Bad Dreams,” made a compilation (Mystic Males), and that ain’t even his best song. Yet everyone who’s heard his album compares it favorably to other big orchestrated baroque popsike solo masterpieces like Del Shannon’s Adventures of Charles Westover, which, by the way, has also been reissued. So why is everyone Dicking around on Dick Domane?

Maybe it’s the green jello mold cover. Or the Mike Nesmith-on-steroids muttonchops. But it ain’t the music, that’s for sure. “Hey Don’t You Know” is a killer catchy pop song riding a whirlybird calliope rhythm, much like Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy,” and that was a big hit. “Sane One” is the kind of slinky soul pop number that would work magic on a dancefloor, while the orchestrated ballad “I’m Only Dreaming” sounds like a cross between a big Bee Gees number and a 1967 single by British freakbeat champs the Creation, thanks to a half-asleep swaying fuzz guitar which adds a bit of credence to the title. Let’s face it - the boy really does do a lot of dreaming.

So the next time you get up in front of the crowd at the Des Moine Bowl-a-Rama and someone yells out, “You’re a Dick!” – say thank you. And tell them if you can be only half as good as Dick, you’d consider that a compliment. Then, as you’re leaving the stage, dump a bright green Grasshopper on him, smack him on the head with a Mike Nesmith album and say, “Hey! Now who’s the Dick?”

SQUID POP METER SEZ: A somewhat queasy 6 out 10.
BEST TAKEN WITH: Pepto-Bismol, Dramamine and Two Catholic Priests from Brooklyn

MY BRAIN HURTS TOO

2009-06-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

This isn't Alvin Parks. But I think it should be.

ALVIN PARKS, "Jumpin' Jack Flash" b/w "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" (Early 70's single on the Bedlam label)

Phoned in from another GALAXY altogether comes this completely INSANE rant of a single which makes Lord Sutch seem subtle and the Shaggs seem polished. I don’t know WHO exactly Alvin Parks is – the only other Alvin I know is a chipmunk (and equally untrainable too, by the way) – but the tiny subtitle under his name tells you all you really need to know about this galactic primal scream. It says “backing by BEDLAM.” And after listening to both sides, I honestly don’t think Bedlam is a band. I think they meant, literally, that Alvin Parks is backed on these songs by a whirlwind of complete and utter chaos. That would at least explain some of the backing vocals.

This shit is so over-the-top, it must’ve been created in a universe where the word “subtle” doesn’t even exist. Alvin’s take on the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” is simply to BURY the song in a flurry of reverb and delay, and reduce it to the simplest staccato guitar riff and metronomic Chambers Brothers drumbeat. After an opening drum roll reminiscent of the firing squad Alvin somehow avoided, Mr. Parks shouts out “Rock and Roll!” as if he’d already tried the Lounge and Zydeco versions in previous takes. Why he didn’t also yell out “Hello Cleveland!” remains a mystery. But just the way Alvin spits and strangles lines like “I was raised by a toothless bearded hag” leads me to believe that he might be speaking from experience. Meanwhile, the guy singing backing vocals, who sounds a bit like Professor Gumby from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, has absolutely NO idea what key the song is in, but really, does it even matter when you’re Bedlam incarnate? And when the words die out, like they always do, Alvin lets it be known how he REALLY speaks when he wants to be heard, letting loose an inspired Hendrix-worshipping buzzsaw FUZZ solo that’s absolutely LETHAL, even if he doesn’t actually remember to step on the wah wah pedal until the song’s already starting to fade. Back in the control booth, David Seville, now deaf, keeps shouting “Alvin! Alvin!!! AL-VIN!!!” while the crackling hot fire of molten bedlam envelops him and his sweater and his little furry chipmunks in the flames of hellfire and damnation.

Alvin's backup singer.

Oh, but if you thought that was great, just wait’ll you hear Alvin’s take on the Otis Redding chestnut “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay!” Now this, my friends, is a veritable Mona Lisa of real music. Like Hearing Impaired Night at the Karaoke Bar, or the Shaggs’ demo tapes, or the latest Rush album – it transcends both music AND comedy in the most ingenious way possible. He even manages to get in a couple of shout-outs to his homies back in Cali, changing the line to “just to make Long Beach my home” as thousands of Long Beach residents march like crazed lemmings straight off the dock and into the calm serenity of the Pacific Ocean, where Alvin’s music can’t reach ‘em. Planet Earth, meet Alvin Parks. And his recording buddies Bedlam, Chaos and Total Dementia. The Apocalypse now has a soundtrack.

THE SQUID INSANITY METER SEZ: Off the fucking charts.
BEST TAKEN WITH: Tap Water, Salmon Mousse and a Brick to the Side of the Head

BUT THE LITTLE CZECH GIRLS UNDERSTAND

2009-05-30T13:58:00.000-07:00

Don't cry, Anicka. The Hoffster doesn't sign for anybody.

ILLES, Ne Sirjatok Lanyok (Don't Cry, Girls) (Hungarian LP from 1973)

For crate diggers and the more adventurous psych funksters, the wonderful world of Hungarian rock has always been a daunting venture, kinda like renting a David Lynch movie. There are moments of pure brilliance; the trouble is wading through all the garbage to find ‘em. Illes has always been Hungary’s most rewarding band, probably because they were like big rock stars back home, the Budapest Beatles. They even released a White Album (technically called Human Rights), although they did it in 1971, long after the Beatles had ceased to be a working entity. And while none of Illes’ albums are as great as the REAL White Album, or even Rubber Soul for that matter, there are a handful of psych funk breakbeat gems on each one of ‘em. And since, through the magic of Ebay, you no longer have to book a flight to Budapest to rifle through Laci Bacsi’s smoke-filled vinyl storeroom just to find ‘em, it’s easier than ever to start diggin’.

This is Illes’ final album, 1973’s Ne Sirjatok, Lanyok (Don’t Cry, Girls). They’ve added synthesizer on this one, and finally turned to the funk (presumably to attract some young Lanyok), so there are some dancefloor-ready funk MONSTERS on here, along with some occasionally surprising robotic krautrock moves that we’ve never heard from these guys before. And if Illes’ earlier albums found them looking backward a lot, trying to catch up to what was done years before, Don’t Cry, Girls actually shows them to be ahead of the curve, at least when you consider the rest of Europe was busy making Jethro Tull and Emerson Lake & Palmer rich. The minimal robot-like funk dance beat of “Say What You Want” will remind you a lot of Kraftwerk, and you might even mistake the wriggly synth accents in the trippy minor-key psycho freakout “Yes” to be the work of some 60’s-obsessed neo-psych group like Bevis Frond.

But the best thing here by FAR is the utterly AMAZING “Crazy Girl.” It’s a blisteringly fast-paced freak funk breakbeat mother with fire-alarm synth and rolling T. Rex/Steve Peregrine Took hand drums, a big old fat chocolate sundae for percussion fans. Imagine an early 70’s Giorgio Moroder single mixed with the Normal’s “Warm Leatherette” and sprinkled with some Gap Band, and yeah, two of those references actually came later on the musical timeline! So how could a band trapped in the creative wilderness of Eastern Europe manage to be both behind the times and well ahead of them? Maybe because, in those years between 1971 and 1973, Illes stopped emulating their older heroes and started listening to their younger fans. It’s like the Knack once said. The old-heads might not like it. But the little Lanyok understand.

THE SQUID POP METER SEZ: A good solid KILENC
BEST SERVED WITH: Goulash and Elsa Pataky. Or, better yet, Goulash ON Elsa Pataky.

A BOY AND HIS DOG

2009-05-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

Robert Smith...

THE CURE, "A Few Hours After This..." (1985 B-side)

As promised, another Cure B-side from the "Inbetween Days" single, and another lost jewel that probably should have made it on to an album. This one finds Robert Smith jettisoning his entire band and working with only a string section, as an experiment that he later claimed "wasn't entirely successful." Well, I think it was. And it makes me wish he'd re-record "Disintegration" with the London Symphony Orchestra. Well, Robert, how 'bout it?

...and his dog.

Incidentally, with lyrics like "We can roll around and find out upside down" and "Squeeze me till I'm dry," not only is our boy Robby still happy, but downright FRISKY, if'n ya know what I mean. It's the 80's Goth equivalent of Robert Plant's "Squeeze my lemon baby, till the juice runs down my leg," although the thought of Robert Smith barechested in a leopard skin codpiece just made me dry heave. But hey, they're both Roberts, and they both had a pretty substantial mane of hair. And one of 'em once said "Does anyone remember laughter?" although it really applies to the other. Go figure.

THE SQUID POP METER SEZ: Another 10 out 10
BEST SERVED WITH: Chardonay and Anti-Depressants. Or maybe a mud shark and a groupie.

THE HAPPY GOTH AND THE EXPLODING BOY

2009-05-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

A REAL exploding boy. No wonder it's such a feel-good song.

THE CURE, "THE EXPLODING BOY" (1985 B-SIDE)
I wasn’t a nice person when I was a kid. I’ll be honest. I went to TWO Cure concerts back in the late 80’s and early 90’s (the Disintegration tour and the Wish tour) not so much because I loved the band, but moreso to make fun of all the freaky Living Dead Dolls who got dressed up in their black eyeliner Subbacultcha finest to be in the presence of the mummified corpse of their hero, Robert Smith (who, by that time, looked like he’d been feeding off several of his morguemates for a half dozen years). They put on a good show, sleepwalking through endless Kraftwerk trances like “Pictures of You” and “A Forest,” and Robert didn’t move much so he didn’t break a sweat. I think I wore a bright yellow shirt that day just to be different.

It wasn’t always that way with the Cure. For a period of about five years, somewhere between the bottomless suicide pit of “Pornography” and the creeping malaise of “Disintegration,” Robert Smith was downright happy. He wore fuzzy bear suits, glow in the dark paint, and sang practically giddy songs about cats, caterpillars and even going to bed with another HUMAN BEING! Our little Hot Topic boy was growing up, and even starting to mingle. Could a roller skating party be that far off?

Somewhere during Robert’s happy period, there also came an abundance of songwriting, where suddenly Cure singles came equipped with not one but two or even THREE B-sides, and they were even starting to put some thought into ‘em. “The Exploding Boy” comes from 1985’s “Inbetween Days” single, and you can tell – the similarity’s obvious. Both have the same strumming Spanish guitar rhythm, both have short, choppy verses with repeating lines, and both deal with leaving someone. (compare “Knew if I turned, I’d turn away from you, and I couldn’t look back” with “Go on, go on, just walk away”). Yet as good as “Inbetween Days” is (and for years it was my favorite Cure song – how imaginative, right?), “The Exploding Boy” is even BETTER – and that’s because of that warped, distorted, fucked up drunken saxophone that weaves in and out of the song like a psychedelic hornets nest. You can tell Robert’s happy – he even gets off a few grunts after each chorus – which, for him, is the equivalent of Howard Dean’s infamous campaign-ending shriek. “The Exploding Boy” is pretty much “Inbetween Days” on acid, which is always an improvement where music’s concerned (how do you think we got through Doors albums?), and not only is it the Cure’s BEST B-side, it damn well might be their best fucking SONG ever, and hardly anyone but the most die-hard Cure fans and Hot Topic Club members have even HEARD the damn thing. I don’t think they’ve ever played it live – nor do I think they even COULD – and it would’ve certainly livened up the proceedings on “Head on the Door” (“A nightmare of you, of death in the pool” – how’s about swapping THAT one for starters?). Here, for three minutes, the Cure put aside their “black is how I feel on the inside” persona and just sing for the sheer fucking joy of it. For three minutes, “The Exploding Boy” is the closest the Cure gets to unbridled, mind-altering bliss. Why, I betcha Robert was so happy during the recording session, he changed into a dark brown shirt.

SQUID POP METER SEZ: A perfect 10 out of 10
BEST SERVED WITH: That's easy. Pop Rocks and Coke. Bingo!

THE STRANGE SAGA OF LUCIFER'S FRIEND

2009-05-06T13:44:00.000-07:00

This is NOT Lucifer's friend. It is, however, Lucifer's really REALLY annoying wing man.

LUCIFER'S FRIEND, "Ride the Sky"/"Horla" (German Vertigo label, 1970)
Between the screaming Valkyrie battle cry that opens this little black slab of insanity and the mastodon-in-heat mating call synthesizer shrieks that circle above, "Ride the Sky" has often been cited as the inspiration for Led Zeppelin's Valhallan epic "Immigrant Song." The two of 'em certainly SOUND like they could both summon up their own personal Ragnarok easily enough, but musically, I gotta admit - I hear more of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" or early Deep Purple in THESE punishing psych metal grooves. The non-LP "Horla," meanwhile (not a tribute to the giant carpet-munching pinball-spewing mine demon from Star Trek's "Devil in the Dark"), is simply a good excuse to summon up a big ol' demon-worshipping guitar riff that's hairier than Fergie's armpits and then jam the living daylights out of it. Those searching for breaks will probably get some mileage out of a very cool bass and drum breakdown. Those searching for a cheap and easy way to peel the paint off your walls will find two sides of crushing hard rock that could only come from Satan's REAL friend. That sound you hear is the sound of Jimmy Page weeping.

SQUID AIR GUITAR METER SEZ: 10 out of 10
BEST SERVED WITH: Andechser Doppelbock Dunkel and a shot of Jagermeister, sipped from inside a pentagram drawn with the blood of Abe Vigoda.

BUT REALLY, HE'S CRYING ON THE INSIDE

2009-04-27T18:45:00.000-07:00

Well, okay, technically the kid he ate this morning is crying. But it's the same thing.

GEORGIE LEONARD, One Man Band (US Private Label LP, 1971)

It’s been called “twisted folk psych” by many dealers, and that’s a good start. But Georgie Leonard’s 1971 homemade album One Man Band is much more than that – it’s twisted, alright, and if clowns give you nightmares, I’d stay away. Georgie’s a mix of Syd Barrett, Kim Fowley and John Wayne Gacy, all wrapped in one creepy little package. That’s not a BAD thing, mind you – I kinda like him. But yeah, clowns DO freak me out.

Of course, Georgie’s take on “The Clown” doesn’t help. He starts out by singing “I am the clown who will make you laugh,” but if that’s true, it’s the uncomfortable kind of laughter you have right before a giant meat cleaver comes slashing through the circus tent. In Georgie’s carnival, Bozo comes equipped with a red polka-dotted fuzz guitar, which he unholsters at the end of each verse with some LETHAL ripping fuzzed-out licks, spitting hot flames of cotton candy distortion at the kids in the front row, while his backing band of Killer Klowns provide the demented calliope theme music. He continues to sing “Don’t worry, people” over and over again, as if the throngs of panicking blood-caked Cub Scouts streaming through the back of the Big Top should just be ignored, but your feelings of unease are finally validated a the end of the song, when Georgie the Ritalin-Fueled Psycho Clown unleashes his final proclamation to the people in the cheap seats:

“Step right up! See the elephant fall down and break its neck, ho ho ho!
Step right up! And for the same admission price, you too will see the world blown to pieces!”

Great, but does it come with a trapeze act? And some sea lions, I LOVE me some sea lions. It shouldn’t surprise you, then, when Georgie later sings about “The Lake,” the first thing that comes to mind is Camp Crystal Lake. And yeah, it’s another dark song – a moody head trip similar to Pink Floyd’s “Set the Controls” with more of an actual song structure. Which sets the stage nicely for some simmering, undead Curved Air style violin to battle to the death with a great echoed-out teen prom queen guitar, most likely wearing a hockey mask like the cover of John Cale’s Guts. One wonders why this album wasn’t produced by Lucio Fulci.

“Ernie the Nark,” recorded in 1974 and included here as a bonus 7”, is a big-double-fisted-FUZZ-saturated garage psych BEAST that sounds a lot like Kim Fowley’s demented late 60’s rants. “Hi, I’m Ernie and I’m a Nark. Y’know, kids, smoking dope leads to heroin.” Sure thing, Georgie. Just like laughing at circus clowns leads to evisceration. We got ya. Now we’re just backing away, slowly.

Georgie claims that Weather Report bassist Jaco Pastorius plays on “Ernie the Nark,” but Jaco fans disagree. I’m not one of ‘em, so I just throw that out there. But a Jaco fan who also happened to KNOW Georgie Leonard (who apparently went by the name Georgie Porgie in his stage shows) claims that Mr. Leonard lived with his sister in a creepy old grey castle in Hollywood, Florida. And THAT I believe. And judging by what I hear on One Man Band, that’s one house my Girl Scouts will NOT be selling cookies to.

SQUID POP METER SEZ: 7 out of 10
BEST TAKEN WITH: A Joy Buzzer and a Lemon Meringue Pie to the Face

COME PLAY GUITAR WITH US, DANNY

2009-04-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

If you think every all-girl band is cute, well my friend, guess again.

THE MYSTIC ZEPHYRS 4, "Oh...My Hands"/"Youth Quake" (US Two:Dot label, 1972)

AMAZING garage pop single for all those who thought the SHAGGS were crude. They ain't got nothin' on the mighty Mystic Zephyrs 4 - this all-girl garage band make those chicks sound like the Yardbirds, if'n ya know what I mean. This is absolutely stone-cold BRILLIANT stuff here, a bunch of Dazed and Confused rock babes trying desperately to stay in tune (they don't) while someone bangs on a defective department store organ and their 85-year-old grandmother tries to keep up on drums (I guessed on that one, at least that's what it SOUNDS like to me). Amazingly, the girls sing en masse ALL THE TIME, which, besides being fucking creepy, meant that if they all sang each note at the same time, there was a greater chance that one of the four might actually hit it. If it weren't already drowned out by Mildred behind the Ludwigs, who lays down some of the most INSANE drum fills of all time! I mean, they carried Keith Moon off the stage for less.

So what's a song with a great title like "Oh...My Hands" about anyway? Well, you see, someone in the Mystic Zephyrs 4 has blisters on her hands from playing this song so much, because it's the only way she (they?) can cope with the loss off her (their?) ex-boyfriend. So she goes to the doctor and he gives her relationship advice (as many surgeons are wont to do), to which she replies (and justifiably so) "Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo." Now this was still a year away from the Stones "Heartbreaker," so the love doctor had every right to commit the young lady right there on the spot, but he didn't, instead probably wondering why all four Mystic Zephyrs talk simultaneously EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME like creeped-out Village of the Damned sisters with guitars which is actually kinda hot now that I think about it especially if they're all dating the SAME LUCKY DUDE. Anyway, to wrap this up because I can see you're drifting off, her (their) hands now feel a lot better but her (their) heart ain't healing so she can only come to the conclusion that the doctor gave her bad advice. Luckily, the song ends before she can file a malpractice suit, or before all four Mystic Zephyrs descend on the Doctor with hypodermic needles like those freaky Little Sisters at the end of Bioshock. Oh...my...hands! They're...covered...in...blood!
As for "Youth Quake," just remember the chorus. "We're a Youth Quake! We're a Youth Quake, yeah!" Now imagine four girls singing it in unison in the hallways of the Overlook Hotel. Pleasant dreams, everyone.

THE SQUID POP METER SEZ: Redrum, redrum.
BEST TAKEN WITH: Sleeping pills and a momentary loss of muscular coordination.

WELCOME TO MY HEAD.

2009-04-18T17:34:00.000-07:00

My head would have a few more cheerleaders in it.

ZOOT MONEY "WELCOME TO MY HEAD" (Capitol, 1969)

Zoot marches on, as the liner notes to his 1969 album Welcome to My Head proclaim. He started out as leader of the Zoot Money Big Roll Band, which became “a rut” in 1967, so he got a new band, legendary British psychsters Dantalion’s Chariot, better known as Police guitarist Andy Summer’s first band. They were “innovate, psychedelic and together,” the liner notes claim. “So was Zoot.” When the Chariot failed to catch fire, Zoot once again left – this time joining up with the psychedelic late Sixties Animals. “Only a Zoot Money could out-charisma an Eric Burdon,” say the less-than-humble notes again, but neglect to mention that only an Eric Burdon could decide to break up his white psych rock band in search of something much funkier (War). Oh well. As they say, “Zoot marches on.” And this is Zoot on his own. Welcome to his head, man.

Okay, not completely alone - he brought along Vic Briggs from the Animals to produce and arrange, and that, it turns out, was a wise decision. Together, Zoot and Vic created a dreamy orchestrated popsike MASTERPIECE that, amazingly, still hasn’t been reissued. Yet if you hold this album up to any of the more beloved, revered British popsike records of the late 60’s – World of Oz, Skip Bifferty, Pretty Things – it’ll hold its own, thank you very much. It’s more sweeping, grand and majestic than the Chariot or the Animals – thanks to Vic’s string arrangements – whether Zoot’s creating big orchestrated pop moments or overpowering heavy guitar riffs.

So what exactly WAS bouncing off Zoot’s cerebellum in 1969, you ask? The grand British dreampop of “The Man Who Rides the Wind” recalls the World of Oz, Peter Lee Stirling or the early Bee Gees, and is supposedly dedicated to either Tibetan Yogi Jetsun Milarepa or Jimi Hendrix, depending on who you ask. Just don’t ask me - I always get those two mixed up. “You’ve Got to Believe It” is a memorable slice of catchy brass pop with a positively soaring chorus that rises up about a foot off the surface of the black grooves each time it plays. And the absolutely PERFECT lounge jazz freakbeat pop of “The Decision Hour” is a quintessentially Austin Powers slice of British soundtrack grooviness, baby, a long-lost outtake from the sessions to Bedazzled, complete with dolly bird backing vocals from mini-skirt thigh-high-boot heaven. It should come with its own liquid slides.

But the real highlight of Zoot’s psychedelic medulla oblongata has to be the punishing “Eight is the Color,” an absolute MONSTER of a jagged freakbeat guitar riff that takes its cues from George’s “Taxman” and then plays it with the fierce, double-and-triple tracked speaker-shredding abandon of 1970 King Crimson. It’s heavy enough to make Cream sound like the Critters, or the Jetsun Milarepa Experience sound like Spanky and Our Gang. And this right after a soothing slice of soft pop. Must be a left brain/right brain kinda thing.

Sadly, Welcome to My Head, despite its brilliance, didn’t make Zoot into an international pop star, and so his solo career went on hold until 1980’s Mr. Money. But in between, Zoot kept himself busy with various projects, including Centipede, Kevin Coyne and Kevin Ayers. He’s even got an acting career on the side. Zoot marches on.

SQUID POP METER SEZ: 7 out of 10
BEST SERVED WITH: Ritalin, Potassium and Head Cheese

OKAY, I TAKE THAT BACK. THIS IS FUNNY, AND IT'S BRITISH.

2009-04-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

It's a strange walking man. That'll make sense later...

THE MANDRAKE PADDLESTEAMER, "OVERSPILL" (BOOTLEG ALBUM)

Parlophone dropped the ball on these guys. Big time. If there were ever a band who WOULD have released a KILLER album but never got the chance, it was Mandrake Paddlesteamer. The evidence is all here, in the form of demos, acetates and blistering John Peel sessions. Unfortunately, only one single got an official release – “Strange Walking Man” b/w “Steam,” one of the first releases recorded at Abbey Road Studios. Both of those songs have been well-comped, and rightfully so, but what the rest of world HASN’T heard is the rest of this band’s mighty output. If you close your eyes and imagine what Abbey Road Studios could have done with the rest of the demos on Overspill, you’ll have to agree that Mandrake Paddlesteamer’s album would have been one of the pinnacles of British popsike. Oh, and in case you were wondering which albums Parlophone DID release in 1969 (instead of Mandrake Paddlesteamer), how does Bill Coleman’s A Paris 1936-1938 grab ya?

The band’s website points out that Mandrake Paddlesteamer were one of the few bands explicitly formed to “create an English version of the total music/lifestyle trip then being espoused by the California scene,” and if you understand that, then you probably still have a half dozen blacklight posters of topless afro goddesses hanging on your bedroom wall. In other words, while most of the British psychedelic bands – Pink Floyd, Wimple Winch, the Pretty Things, Tomorrow, the Koobas – started out as R&B, jazz or blues bands, the Manrake Paddlesteamer was specifically created to be a psychedelic rock band from the start. Whether that affected their ability to swing, rock or groove like an old R&B, jazz or blues band I don’t know. But judging from what I hear in THESE grooves, it wasn’t a problem.

If anything, the only frustration you’ll feel listening to Overspill is wondering just how AMAZING a song like “Cooger and Dark” could’ve been had the band been given a chance to flesh it out with some Abbey Road production tricks. As it stands, it’s still a MONUMENTAL slab of blistering heavy freakbeat psych that sounds just like primetime Cream. Even down to the Jack Bruce-alike vocals. Pre-anointed Eric Clapton would’ve KILLED for a power guitar riff like that one, and that great descending minor key hook in the chorus is pure Disraeli Gears. There’s also a live John Peel take on Side B, proving the band could nail this puppy down every chance they got. Maybe it’s fortuitous that “Cooger and Dark” never got a proper studio recording – perhaps the Abbey Road treatment would’ve tamed it. As it stands, both the demo and John Peel takes are two of the rawest, most primal slabs of heavy psychedelia you’ll ever hear. And I STILL don’t know what the title means.

Likewise, you can hear how the rough demo of “Overspill” could’ve easily become a British popsike rival to the Koobas’ classic “Barricades” with a little help from a mixing board. It’s 5:25 of acid-riddled ambition, a complex multi-part head trip that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Pretty Things’ “Defecting Grey,” Tomorrow’s “Revolution” or Wimple Winch’s “Rumble on Mersey Square South.” And if that don’t get ya, maybe the fuzzed-up Indian stomp of “Steam” will. I wonder if Hipgnosis would’ve designed their album cover.

Which brings us nicely to one of the most amazing Syd Barrett soundalikes ever created by a man whose last name isn’t Hitchcock – a song so unlike everything else on Overspill, you wonder if it’s even the same band. But “Easy Living” is an absolute masterpiece of acid-fried Pink Floyd toybox lunacy, the sound of a madcap laughing while madness slowly sets in. Only when the band erupts with a frenzied onslaught of ripping freakbeat fuzz does this even BEGIN to sound like the heavy Koobas-inspired band heard elsewhere on Overspill, and if you could imagine “Barricades” crossed with “Bike,” this is what you’d be humming while the men in the white suits set you up for another round of shock therapy. It’s another acetate-only track whose non-release should be viewed as a musical crime, but the sound quality’s really good. Hard to believe this, as well as the other songs on this rare album, have yet to see a proper release. In a year when Parlophone WAS able to rush out copies of the immortal Jazz in Britain – the 20’s. Boggles the mind.

So if you’re okay with acetate/demo fidelity, Mandrake Paddlesteamer’s Overspill is one of the most complete – okay, probably the ONLY complete collection of this band’s awesome output you’ll find. Heck, even the band’s website has only FOUR songs. Lucky you - here’s a whole album’s worth of late 60’s gems, rescued from oblivion because a stupid major label didn’t realize what they had. But Mrs. Mills’ timeless classic Back to the Roaring Twenties – Parlophone DID get that one out in 1969. It’s all about priorities, isn’t it?

CHECK OUT THE BEST TWO SONGS RIGHT HERE:

SQUID ACID METER SEZ: 9 OUT OF 10
BEST SERVED WITH: Hallucinogens and Miracle Ear

WHO SAYS BRITISH COMEDY ISN'T FUNNY? OH WAIT, I DID...

2009-04-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

Oh, I see. Her press badge is on her boob! And he wants to PRESS her BOOB! Oh what wacky linguistic hijinks!

THE GRUMBLEWEEDS, "IN A TEKNIKOLOR DREAM" (UK PHILIPS, 1972)

Not being British, I have no concept of how big the Grumbleweeds were back in the early to late 60’s. From what I’ve read, they were one of England’s most popular TV comedy troupes, which means they were probably good friends with other funny British acts of the 60’s and 70’s like Monty Python, Benny Hill and Emerson Lake & Palmer. But the Grumbleweeds were also musicians, which kinda separated them (at least from ELP), and in 1972 they were given the chance to record a full album of “serious” music. Which doesn’t mean this is some stuffy classical recording, it just means that In a Teknikolor Dream is an album of genuine popsike SONGS as opposed to comedy skits. So it won’t get as many laughs out of you as Matching Tie and Handkerchief, “Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West” or Tarkus. But then, how many records DO?

As good as In A Teknikolor Dream is – and it’s REALLY good, by the way, as in “you’d never know this was a comedy troupe” good – it’s still kinda funny that something this immersed in a color wheel of psychedelic Swinging London whimsy should get released as late as 1972, the year of Sweet and T. Rex and Bowie. I mean, this sounds like an unreleased Pretty Things album sandwiched somewhere in between S.F. Sorrow and Parachute, and with that day-glo flower power Happy Mr. Sun cover art, you might find yourself checking the credits again for any involvement by the World of Oz or the Brothers Gibb. If it is a parody of 1968 British psychedelia, it’s pretty good. A little late, perhaps, but hey, if Mel Brooks could release Spaceballs ten years after Star Wars, then give the Grumbleweeds a break already.

I mean, it HAS to be a parody, right? Just check out the title track – that big stompin’ heavy Chocolate Soup rhythm and gruff Arthur Brown vocals sounds like a perfect knockoff of the Pretties’ “Baron Saturday,” doesn’t it? And those falsetto harmonies all over “Fiona McLaughlin” just SCREAM Parachute, even if the beautiful baroque pop music itself sounds more like a Curt Boettcher production or something off Left Banke Too. “Never Before” starts out like a catchy pub singalong off the Kinks’ Something Else with some meatier Creation-esque freakbeat fuzz guitar thrown in, before giving way to a loungey verse that sounds like something Paul McCartney might’ve written during the White Album rehearsals. And the big ballad finale, “Lady,” is one of the best spoofs on Horizontal/Odessa-era Bee Gees I’ve heard in a LONG time. Shoulda wrapped this cover in red velvet flock, huh? Heh heh, okay see, NOW I’m laughing. This is supposed to be funny, right? Like when Benny Hill used to konk that little bald guy on the head all the time. I get it now.

Put it this way – whether or not you treat this as some pre-Dukes of Stratosphear psychedelic London spoof/tribute, or as a real legitimate album of songs put out by a group that also happened to be comedians on the side (like Black Sabbath, for example), the Grumbleweeds’ In A Teknikolor Dream is a big old Hapshash and the Coloured Coat poster of Swinging Sixties day-glo fun. Now if you’re expecting REAL comedy, may I interest you in Pictures at an Exhibition?

LISTEN TO IT RIGHT HERE:

SQUID POP METER SEZ: 6 out of 10
BEST SERVED WITH: Hash Brownies, Whoopie Cushions and those Godawful Kidney Pie Things they Serve in London

WILDE IN THE STREETS

2008-10-19T23:16:00.000-07:00

Sure, he was Kim Wilde's father. You gonna hold that against him?

MARTY WILDE, "DIVERSIONS" LP (UK PHILIPS 1969)

INCREDIBLY HARD TO FIND and AMAZING 1969 pop psych LP by Marty Wilde, “Diversions” on the UK Philips label. NEVER reissued, and that’s a right shame too, because this is one of the lost British popsike gems – a one-time burst of color-wheel mod freakbeat brilliance from an artist not always known for being “hip” (see Del Shannon/Charles Westover and Peter & Gordon’s “Hot Cold and Custard” for similar instances). But Marty, god bless ‘im, he pulls out ALL the stops on this one, and goes whole hog into the Swinging London scene (a year or two late, maybe, but still…). “Diversions” is FULL of brilliantly orchestrated Hollies-style pop that would fit nicely on a Fading Yellow or Great British Psychedelic Trip compilation. And hey, any artist who has the NERVE to call a song “Zobo (1871-1892)” deserves a big ol’ pat on the back just for that, and surprisingly, that particular song is a STUNNING dramatic orchestrated popsike track with some KILLER FUZZ guitar runs and pumpin’ stompin’ shakin’ rhythm section. “Zobo”’s got this cool pseudo-Spaghetti Western vibe to it (a la DDDBM&T’s “Don Juan” or Love’s “Alone Again Or”) and throws you for a loop with these SLASHING Pete Townshend drive-by fuzz power chords! Truly insane, and that’s not even including the inexplicable lion/dinosaur/indigestion growls that come in during the fade. And you thought Screaming Lord Sutch was out there! “Jesamine” is a fine cover of the Casuals track, a cool orchestrated classy popsike winner with soaring choruses and lush harmonies – like the best “Butterly”-era Hollies material. “Alice in Blue” lives up to its great title – it’s a beautiful baroque ballad with mandolin, soaring strings and a HUGE “Day in the Life” orchestrated ending. Superbly catchy melody too – again, imagine the Hollies at their most ornate – “Would You Believe”, “King Midas in Reverse” for example. Elsewhere, Marty covers the Status Quo’s “Ice in the Sun” and Lulu’s “I’m A Tiger” to show you how crazy his record collection was at the time. And check out that WILD psychedelic cover art, with Marty looking like some acid-fried incarnation of Elvis (not that there WAS such an incarnation, mind you!). An absolute stone-cold British pop hidden treasure, where you least expected it too. And aren’t those the BEST kind?

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SQUID POP METER SEZ: 8 out of 10
BEST SERVED WITH: Baileys Irish Creme, Kim Wilde and Edible Underwear

A PIECE OF KOLBER IN YOUR CHRISTMAS STOCKING

2008-09-27T20:21:00.000-07:00

LENNY STACK, SOUNDTRACK TO "C.C. AND COMPANY" (1970, AVCO EMBASSY)

Joe Namath and Ann Margret. Now if THAT ain’t a recipe for a good film, then I don’t know what is. You’d expect a cast like that to tackle some obscure William S. Burroughs novel, but surprise – here they’re just kinda slumming it in some movie called C.C. and Company, that apparently involves the desert, a motorcycle, and Ann’s crotch being as close to Joe’s face as possible. I can only hope there’s a scene where Joe gets drunk and tries to plant a big wet one on Ann Margrock’s cheek. “Y’know Ann, I jes’ really wanna kiss you…”

I can only hope, of course, because I’m not one of the seven living people who’ve actually seen the film, but I can tell you this much – the soundtrack sho’ is funky! But then again, how can it NOT be when the man responsible is named “Lenny Stack”? I mean, that name ALONE conjures up images of huge gold ’73 Impalas, giant afros and muttonchops the size of small ferrets, and a guy who, had he been on the sidelines that day, would’ve made sure Suzie Kolber was REALLY taken care of that evening.

So it’s no surprise then that Lenny gets down and dirty on this soundtrack album, with a heavy mix of funk and rock, especially the super funky blaxploitation groover “The Chase,” with its chuggin’ keys, rubber Bootsy bass and chukka chukka scratch blocks. As it always seems in these movies, the funkiest tracks are where someone’s being chased, and in this case, it sounds like C.C.’s making a beeline for the ESPN locker room. “Where are you, Miss Kolber? You can’t hide from C.C. baby!”

The other two indispensable monster funk jams are “The Duel (Part 1)” and “The Duel (Part 2).” Why they split ‘em up is anyone’s guess, since they’re both the same great fuzzed-out spy theme riff, screaming scuzzed-up inner city Peter Gunn rips spewing black clouds of burned Harley rubber amid the scattered pieces of lace and cotton from whatever Ann Margret was wearing underneath that pink dress. Part 2 has a blistering acid guitar solo, Part 1 has a skuzzy fuzz bass battling to the death with a squad of Baretta style inner city horns. Both of ‘em lay absolute WASTE to whatever they touch. And Suzy Kolber just stumbled into work an hour late, looking like hell, eyeliner running down her cheek and I swear to God I saw bite marks on her shoulder. CC, you devil. Looks like you got more than a kiss.

THE SQUID FUNK METER READS: Off The Chart
BEST TAKEN WITH: PBR, Old Spice and Chloroform

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HOLY GLUTIUS MAXIMUS, ROBIN! HAND ME A FISH STICK, WILL YA?

2008-09-22T18:57:00.000-07:00

THE 5TH AVENUE BUSES "A TRIP TO GOTHAM CITY" (ABC Movietone LP, late 60's)

Sure, the comic book world is filled with buxom, overaccentuated vixens that are, at least in the real world, physically impossible to replicate, even when Pam Anderson goes under the knife for the 17th time this month, or whatever Kardashian sister is popular at the moment tries desperately to get the attention of anyone bored enough to watch. So it isn’t surprising then that the literary medium most predatory on the prurient interests of still pre-pubescent little boys should translate into one sexy mindfuck of an album when it finally hits the record shops. And even though you wouldn’t think the Fifth Avenue Buses Trip to Gotham City could get you hard for a second with a Banana Splits in the Bowery cover sleeve like that, trust me, when it’s time for these skintight super goddesses to purr like the sex-crazed Marvel kittens they really are, you’ll be wishing you had Julie Newmar tied up and lapping cream off of the turntable in your bedroom.

The little boys understand. And so Trip to Gotham City works best when it’s the girls who are singing, or slinking, or purring in the background, which they do really really well. And even though “Joker” might get your attention with its masculine distorted wah wah guitar licks, it’s still the go-go girls who steal the show, scatting nonsense vocals over the jazzy shuffle beat like a bunch of horned up schoolgirls trying to get you out of the BatCave. Fuck Cesar Romero, “Joker”’s really about what you’d do to Harley Quinn if she ever passed out on your dorm room floor.

Likewise, when the girls purr “Go to sleep, go to sleep” over the big beat sounds of “Sandman,” you’re much more likely to think of them succumbing to chloroform than backing up some overgrown supervillain on yet another dumb crime spree. But the sexiest superhero of ‘em all, and the one that naturally gets the biggest bulge out of your corduroys here, is the AMAZING slinky sex and sax-fueled track devoted to “Catwoman,” the all-time number one greatest DC spank bank heroine bar none. Sporting a sensational Danger: Diabolik style melody with great mysterioso surf guitar licks, this is every bit as playfully sexy as Selina Kyle in her skintight black leather catsuit, catching a claw on skin every once in a while with those lethal fuzz guitar breaks. The go-go girls are practically inspired here, knowing that this time its their turn to shine, purring and mewling “Meow!” over and over again while turning around and lifting their tails high in the air. Go ahead and sniff, little boy. Because whether it’s cats or shapely go-go girls or that elusive download that lets you see Lara Croft's gravity-defying jumps and tits, we’re all just suckers for a little superhero ass.

THE SQUID POP METER SEZ: Nine Out of Ten
BEST TAKEN WITH: Rum and Coke, Vaseline and a Poster of Lynda Carter

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BILLION DOLLAR BOGIES (...or Alice Cooper Goes to Hull)

2008-09-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

ALICE COOPER "Easy Action" (1970, Straight)

There’s a theory called Quantum Physics that deals in alternate universes and potential realities. But I’m a record collector, not a quantum physicist, so you’ll have to excuse my very limited knowledge of the subject. But I have to think that somewhere, there’s a parallel universe where Alice Cooper went on to become the most creative, envelope-pushing recording artist in rock music history. We, of course, ain’t in that universe, but we can, through carbon-dating and vinyl-studying, pinpoint the EXACT moment where those two universes split apart. It was 1970, right after this, his second album Easy Action on Frank Zappa’s Straight label. In OUR universe, a major label signing would result in Alice’s slow but steady decline into sub-Gwar kiddie metal and a side career as a good, if somewhat skeletal, PGA golfer. In that OTHER universe, however, Alice continued to release twisted psych-prog gems like Easy Action all the way up until his death, a tragic beating at the hands of some jealous renegade Droogs. Turns out they were only preventing him from doing an ill-advised commercial for Staples. Something WE couldn’t do.

Thankfully, at least, Alice DID drop a handful of pre-Staples masterpieces in our world before picking up a golf club, and on Easy Action, you can see just how fucking BRILLIANT this band was. I mean, if ZAPPA liked him, that means SOMETHING, right? (Okay, it doesn’t explain Captain Beefheart, but still…) He looks toward his past on the blistering “Return of the Spiders,” a heavy acid garage psych barnstormer with steam locomotive rhythm, flying twin guitar attack and gruff snarling pre-punk, post-garage vocals, as if ol’ Vincent Furnier finally remembered his mid-60’s years cranking out zombie garage singles in his basement before he got momentarily sidetracked by the prissy Pretties For You. And as we’ll find out later, he did.

Several songs on Easy Action are Alice Cooper as psychedelic popsters, just as legit as the Electric Prunes and the Human Beinz, and worthy of as much adoration amongst the weed-smokin’ box-set-buying retro hipsters who scour Ebay for that original Music Machine vinyl album in MONO. “Shoe Salesman” is popsike brilliance, a trippy little number that tones down most of early Alice’s eccentricities for a short radio-friendly shot of electric kool-aid that SHOULD have marked the band’s entry into the Billboard charts, if this universe were as fair as that other one. And if not that one, what about “Refrigerator Heaven,” a damn-near BRILLIANT psychedelic mushroom cloud decked out in layers of phasing and processing and even some fake Johns Children crowd cheers? Or maybe they’re real, I don’t know. Or maybe Vince just sank a ten-foot putt on the back nine.

Either way, Alice was on a fucking ROLL here, and if you dug his homage to those pre-album days cranking out garage beat with the Spiders, then just wait’ll you hear what this lean and hungry freakpsych band does with Alice’s old 1967 garage punk nugget “Lay Down and Die, Goodbye” (when they were known as the Nazz). The original single was lucky if it ran 3 minutes, but here, the Easy Action Coopers down some mescaline and stretch the thing out to a mind-bending 7-and-a-half minutes, a post-Syd Barrett “Interstellar Overdrive” freakout that probably wasn’t being done anymore in 1970, but fuck everyone else, right? Those extra 5 or so minutes are spent shredding instruments in a genuine psych-o-delic extended midsection jam, smashing amps, bending strings and generally creating the kind of mythical inhuman noises that Syd Barrett used to get out of his guitar back when he was still able to play on stage. But, to his credit, Syd never went on to make Monster Dog.

It’s hard to believe that Easy Action isn’t viewed as the psychedelic benchmark it SHOULD be, a lunacy module for the ages. Perhaps if someone ELSE recorded it – and by that I mean someone whose career wasn’t tainted by “Only Women Bleed” – it would be better remembered. If this were a homemade one-off album by some unknown Gandalf the Grey Wizard type whose identity remains shrouded in mystery, you might be remortgaging your house right now to get it. And it would STILL be worth every penny. But Quantum Physics aside, in OUR universe, it remains simply an early album by a creepy-looking PGA golf pro. Still, I betcha Seve Ballesteros never recording anything THIS good.

THE SQUID POP METER SEZ: Ten Out of Ten
BEST TAKEN WITH: Acid, Hallucinogens, Ben-Gay and a -5 Handicap

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WANNA FOLK?

2008-09-06T16:04:00.000-07:00

THE NEWBURY PARK, "GREEN TAMBOURINE" (from the 1968 LP NEWBURY PARK, Cream)
Every so often, you come across an album that just kinda stops you in your tracks. Not because it’s great music or anything, but because there on the front cover, staring right at you, is an absolute total sixties BABE. One that you just KNOW you’re destined to meet, provided you could somehow muster up a word or two while in her presence. I mean, let’s be honest, you didn’t REALLY like the Shocking Blue THAT much, did you? But yet you bought every album you found because that smokin’ hot chick with the deadly eyeliner called to you from every album cover, practically begging you to take her home (in Dutch, probably, but you somehow understood). And hey, for $5.98, you didn’t have to listen to it – you just propped it up on your dresser and used it when necessary. Likewise those two babes in the Love Generation who looked like they’d rather be sauntering around the Playboy mansion in sheer pink teddies than singing – I’m sure their photo on the cover of every album didn’t hurt sales. And when we discovered that Ruth Copeland and Gal Costa actually put out some GREAT records, well, that was just a bonus. I mean, I had ‘em for three YEARS before I ever bothered to listen to ‘em.

Now, I’m not about to tell you that Newbury Park’s album is great. It’s good sunshine pop, full of breezy melodies and sumptuous girl-on-girl…er, I mean girl and boy harmonies. Or so I’ve been told. I still haven’t gotten past that cover. Speaking personally, and this is just my own opinion of course, but that right there is my 60’s dream come true. Two of the most AMAZING hotties in folk pop history, the perfect pair of hippie chicks – and if I were alive back then, I’d have gone to EVERY ONE of their concerts, even if they sang nothing but old sea shanties. I don’t know what’s BEST about this photo – the sexy come-hither look of the slightly-sluttier version of Michelle Phillips, the impossibly perky, gravity-defying shirt on the button-cute brunette, or the fact that these mega-babes are actually hanging out with two guys I KNOW I can take. I mean, LOOK at those guys! They HAVE to be the girls’ brothers, right? There’s no way in H*#@ a love goddess in tight striped pants would EVER hang out with Kevin Costner’s dad, right? Where’s my time machine, forgodsake?

Should you ever go so far as to actually PLAY this album (while staring at the cover), you’ll find some very pleasant gentle soft pop and breezy summershine grooves. But again, there’s four band members on the cover and one instrument – an acoustic guitar – so what were you expecting, speed metal? “Afternoon Sky” is a great calliope circus ride of soft pop, while “I Wanna Come Home” is a slightly drunken-sounding Mamas and Papas clone that tells the story of a soldier writing home to Mom. And Newbury Park’s cover of the Lemon Pipers’ “Green Tambourine” is breezy soft pop heaven – with four-part “ba ba ba” harmonies replacing the original sitar. It’s all deliriously happy, swinging sunshine pop bliss – just the kind of stuff you’d probably play if you were trying to get into a hot young brunette’s tight-fitting striped bellbottoms and you happened to look like Kevin Costner’s dad with a bad comb-over. Hey, don’t laugh – it looked like it worked.

Now, I’m not trying to reduce Newbury Park’s album to just another slab of T&A – okay, maybe I am – but look, this stuff’s just as good as any other soft pop coed harmony pop outfit – the Green Lyte Sunday, for example, or the Love Generation, or the Free Design, for that matter. But if you got two hot babes in your band, it’s just Smart Marketing 101 that you take advantage of it. But lemme just reiterate, Newbury Park is MORE than just T and A – even when the T is as mesmerizing as it is on the brunette – rest assured all you sunshine pop Fading Yellow Soft Sounds for Gentle People lovers will find a bounty of beautiful new tunes on this record. These ladies DESERVE to be taken seriously as musicians, and as talented vocalists who, together, create a sound that’s as smooth and breezy as a summer’s day in 1968. Now ladies, please. Give me a call sometime, okay?

SQUID POP METER SEZ: A Solid Ten (...he wishes)
BEST TAKEN WITH: Patchoulli, Weed and all the Rufies You Can Find

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DUMB DORA IS SO DUMB...

2008-08-23T18:36:00.000-07:00

B.C. Camplight “Richard Dawson” (from HIDE, RUN AWAY, 2005 One Little Indian)

Sure, this one swings like an old Burt Bacharach tune. And yeah, lead Camplight Brian Christinzio attacks his piano like Valerie Bertinelli attacking a side of beef, a slightly less precocious Ben Folds who doesn't always make you wanna take a swing at him. And absolutely, no doubt about it, this song benefits big-time from the sweet breathy vocals of Cynthia Mason, who sorta sounds like Suzanne Vega if she hung out more often with the French babes from Nouvelle Vague (and she should). But all that don’t add up to coolness on its own – for that, you gotta pick a good subject. And this one’s got it. The coolest motherfucking TV star in the history of TV star motherfuckers, Richard Dawson. A man who’s been in prime time television since 1965 and kissed more desperate housewives than Mike Delfino, thanks to shows like Family Feud and Match Game 73. I mean, go back and watch those shows – chicks LOVE Richard Dawson. And why not? He wins money for ‘em. “Pick any one of our celebrities for a chance to win $5,000” says a drunken Gene Rayburn, and 99 times out of a hundred that bottle blonde MILF picks Dawson. ‘Cuz he’s a WINNER. I’d be willing to bet every single female contestant on the Match Game had to pass an audition in Richard Dawson’s dressing room BEFORE even GETTING to the actual stage. Meanwhile, the male contestants got divvied up between Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly.

And for those of you who are REALLY old, you remember where Richard Dawson got his start. On Hogan’s Heroes. With fucking Bob Crane. And you know what kind of weird sexual shit THAT dude was into. And I don’t care what the film Auto Focus says, it mighta been John Carpenter holding the camera, but I betcha Richard Dawson was in that room prepping the girls. I just know it. And Werner Klemperer was standing guard outside the door. Not only that, Richard Dawson’s first wife was Diana Dors. Google her sometime if you don’t know who she is. She was like Marilyn Monroe with Jessica Alba’s lips and Rosario Dawson's breasts, and knew more sex positions than the three of ‘em combined. You HAD to be cool to climb into bed with that, my friend. We’re talkin’ Richard Dawson level cool.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. The song’s got nothing to do with Richard Dawson. Not that I can tell anyway. But what the hell, SOMEBODY had to name a song after TV’s coolest member of the Match Game. And “Nipsey Russell” just doesn’t have the same oomph.

SQUID SURVEY SEZ: 7 out of 10
SQUID COOLNESS QUOTIENT: A Ten, like Debralee Scott

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BEFORE YOU LEAVE, ADRIANA, I'D LIKE MY JACKET BACK

2008-08-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

IRVING “I Can’t Fall in Love” (from I HOPE YOU’RE FEELING BETTER EP, 2003 on Eenie Meenie Records – it’s 53 FUCKING CENTS on Amazon.com – GO BUY IT!!!)

Summer’s disappearing faster than a hypo of heroin in Artie Lange’s living room, so I figured it was as good a time as any to bring you this little feel-good sunshine pop ditty by L.A.’s Irving, off their 2003 EP “I Hope You’re Feeling Better.” My girlfriend says it sounds an awful lot like Wilco, and it does have Jeff Tweedy’s whole “I can barely stay awake long enough to get through this song” vibe, but it’s also a fuckload bouncier and happier than anything Wilco’s been foisting on us in the past 30-odd years. I know it doesn’t sound like they put a lot of effort into it, but sometimes the best pop songs come off the cuff like that. Just a simple little shuffling drumbeat, a couple acoustic guitars and a rapid-fire vocal delivery with more lyrics crammed into 4 minutes than a late 70’s Squeeze song. And that cheesy 80’s synth – they musta picked that up from a yard sale at Gary Numan’s house, right? But best of all, like Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” or the Police’s “Every Breath You Take,” this is not a song you wanna put on a mixed tape for your lady friend. Poor guy’s waking up in the morning, listening to the birds, the clock and the helicopters (?), and all he can think about is how, try as he might, he just can’t seem to fall in love with the girl sleeping in bed next to him. Normally, that kinda shit wouldn’t bother a rock star, but the last few lines - “the morning shave, the coffee cup, the kiss goodbye, I go to work and all I think is, I can’t fall in love” – suggest that this is a serious relationship, maybe even marriage. Add to that the fact that she’s probably a hot Brazilian model – “they’ll see her in a magazine they’ll buy on their way home and think of her on beaches as the snow comes down outside” – and this is one of the most fucking heartbreaking songs in recent history. It’s like waking up next to Adriana Lima and realizing she’s still a virgin. Fuck, now I’m really depressed. Feel good hit of the summer my ass.

SQUID POP METER SEZ: Ten Tentacles Out of Ten
BEST TAKEN WITH: Zoloft, Lexapro and St. Johns Wort

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ONE WARM PUPPY ON A STICK PLEASE...HOLD THE RELISH

2008-08-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

A Warm Puppy, Colorful Love/Around A Fountain, 1968 single on the Bullet label

They might be called A Warm Puppy, but this Massachusetts band’s got a nasty bite. And they might’ve been decades ahead of their time too, without even realizing it. No doubt their only single, 1968’s “Colorful Love” b/w “Around a Fountain” was clearly a product of its psychedelic times, but you don’t find too many songs from 1968 where the drums are mixed this loud. It’s almost as if they could see into the big-drum future of the 1980’s. And if so, couldn’t they have stopped Kajagoogoo?

Make no mistake, neither of A Warm Puppy’s two highly trippy singles sounds anything like the MTV playlist circa 1985. But for a generation that emphasized fuzz guitar and farfisa in the mix, it’s odd to hear drums this clear and upfront. Good thing, though, because they gotta be loud to be heard through the wall of psychedelic noise on “Colorful Love,” a monster heavy psych beast that tries to simultaneously blow your mind and split your skull in three quick minutes. This is what you get when you cross Vanilla Fudge with the Pink Floyd without putting a cap on the amount of decibels they can create. A Rick Wright organ swirls and wails continuously, while the lead vocals are drenched in so much echo and sung with such drama and intensity, Jim Morrison begins to sound subtle. And all the while, the drummer flails away furiously, pounding frantically on the skins because he’s thrilled to death to be in the only band in 1968 that’ll mix him up with the rest of the instruments. And they called this band A Warm Puppy? Yeah right, only if its mom were Cerebus.

Things get lighter and airier on the flipside, and “Around a Fountain” actually sounds just like its name – a groovy circular reel around a psychedelic fountain. Here, the song rides a playful, skipping cymbal rhythm, very close to Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow,” while the organ plays an appropriately dizzy melody. Gone are any Meatloaf aspirations this time, as the lead singer sounds mellow, relaxed, possibly even stoned. This is the calm after the storm; the morning after the explosion of the universe. Somebody give this puppy a tranquilizer.

SQUID POP METER SEZ: 7.5 Lava Lamps out of Ten (and a much-needed hit of Ecstasy)

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SHAKE YOUR BUTT (NOT TOO HARD)

2008-08-11T19:18:00.000-07:00

BUTTERSCOTT “Questionnaire” (from THROWING MEATLOAF AT THE SUN, Rev-Ola CD 2004)

Okay, so this little acoustic ditty isn’t all that special melody-wise (it’s pretty much the same riff over and over actually), but it’s the words that make it. If you’ve ever had to fill out a questionnaire just to get 10 percent off your next Borders Books purchase, you can probably sympathize with this song. Or if you just like an artist who’s not afraid to rhyme “Questionnaire, questionnaire” with “How old are the Jordainaires?” Me, I laughed out loud and spit up half a gallon of iced tea and Tasty-Kakes at that line about “the size of Frank Black’s derriere,” which, you gotta admit, is probably equal to about 7.3 Kim Deals at this point. And growing. Not that I’m checking him out or anything. But dude, really. You’re in a song with the Jordainaires. Someone’s gonna make the connection to Elvis sooner or later, right?

SQUID POP METER SEZ: Five Tentacles Out of Ten
SQUID LAFF METER SEZ: Ten Tentacles Out of Ten

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...AND I AM JUST AN ADJUSTABLE SOCKET WRENCH

2008-08-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

"Now lessee, is this considered DINNER PLATE or CASSEROLE?"

THE SOFTLIGHTES "The Microwave Song" (from SAY NO! TO BEING COOL, SAY YES TO BEING HAPPY, 2007 Modular)

I’m just a light boy looking for a lighter day
And it’s a cold, wet Wednesday.
We had days in the sun but they added up to none
It’s just the fate of the Atomic Age.

Yeah, I don’t get it either, to be honest, and that third line comes dangerously close to Terry Jacks territory for me. But that’s how San Diego’s Softlightes chose to start their poppiest pop ode to the microwave, called, oddly enough, “The Microwave Song.” Anyone looking for further enlightenment in the remaining lyrics will run up against lines like “There were lights in my head but they lost their place” and “I’m looking at you from your tennis shoe,” proving that there were still musicians dropping acid as late as 2007. But talking about this song in simple words is kinda like taking Route 76 into Philly – you may think you’re getting somewhere, but you’re not. So rather than dwell on the words, just click on the song, and listen to those beautiful REM/Robyn Hitchcock jangly chords, and that shimmering, chiming indie pop sound. And a chorus that will stick with you for the rest of your life, even though you’ll feel as dumb as a Hilton sister singing “I am just a microwave!” in the middle of a crowded shopping mall or rehab clinic. Here, the Softlightes have borrowed elements from the 60’s, 70’s and the 80’s to create a perfect little pop masterpiece. The trippy vibrato effect that dominates the first half is pure 60’s psychedelic grooviness, while the nifty little moog string section that pops in around 1:40 sounds like a sample from In the Court of the Crimson King or any one of the many interchangeable early 70’s Moody Blues albums. Then, to round out our quick tour of the decades, the lead vocals are strongly reminiscent of Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips or Tim DeLaughter from Tripping Daisy and (of late) the Polyphonic Spree. Put it all together and it’s one of the catchiest pop songs I’ve heard in a long time. The Softlightes used to be known as the Incredible Moses Leroy, whose songs were usually just as brilliant (and will undoubtedly show up in future posts). But alas, their name was apparently too confusing for some people, who thought Moses was a guy and not a band. Apparently the same bunch of fans who showed up during the 70’s asking to see Mr. Tull and Mr. Skynyrd. I’m not saying “Softlightes” is an improvement, but “The Microwave Song” is the closest either band has come to pure pop nirvana, and I haven’t got a fucking clue what they’re talking about. But next time I go to rehab, it’s what I’ll be singing.

THE SQUID POP METER SEZ: 9.5 Tentacles out of Ten

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Rock El Welsh

2008-08-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

I couldn’t think of a better way to begin our trip than with the signature track from one of the most criminally neglected (and sadly, now defunct) pop bands of all time, the great Gorkys Zygotic Mynci. Those who know Gorkys love ‘em – while those who’ve never heard of ‘em lead shallow empty lives filled with frequent visits to Urban Outfitters and breathless anticipation over what Taylor Swift will come out with next. If you’re curious, check out “Sweet Sweet Johnny,” the way these Welsh kids should be remembered, a veritable mini-opera of psychedelic moodswings wrapped up in 4 and a half sweet minutes, a “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the Elephant 6 crowd. Listen how a lovely folk ballad with fiddle and piano turns abruptly into some freakish fuzzed-out Jerry Lee Lewis rave-up on the chorus, with Euros Child’s demented squeals battling a big hairy MC5 riff as the whole song implodes in on itself at just past the 2-minute mark, culminating in what sounds like the destruction of a piano and a drum kit and the psyche of every little Indigo Girls fan who wandered into the crowd by mistake. If you’ve seen ‘em live, and God bless you if you have, you’ll know that this Jerry Lee Lewis-like piano disembowlment can continue for up to 10 solid minutes onstage, as Euros ramps himself up into a frenzy, 110 pounds of flying flesh and fingers and demonic shrieks that somehow make Damo Suzuki sound grounded. “I think I’ve got a blister on me finger,” he said after one such outburst, inadvertently becoming the first Welsh indie pop singer to quote Ringo Starr since Gruff Rhys once muttered “I get high with a little help from my friends” after another 46-minute electro-dub version of “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck.” Best of all, when this Category 5 hurricane finally passes, one of the most beautiful little fragile melodies comes crawling out from under the debris, anchored by only Megan Childs’ weepy violin and Euros’s haunting piano. As he sings “I’m feeling so alone tonight” (it’s tough to get a date when you have such violent moodswings), you can’t help but feel a lump in your throat, even if you have a hunch he’s getting buckets of cute but frail indie girls after every single show. But to quote the Knack, the little girls understand, and it’s easy to hear why. Because right after Euros sings “What a way to spend a Saturday night,” the rest of the band comes right back in, creating the most beautiful, sad, fucking brilliant codas in indie pop history, lifting you straight out of your beanbag chair and into the upper reaches of Welsh pop heaven, which probably has some unpronounceable name like Ylllwwaangfrogwynwynmwyng. The first 4 minutes of “Sweet Johnny” is an epic buildup of Page/Plant proportions, a “Stairway to Heaven” on speed. But those last 55 seconds – this is the sweetest music you’ve ever heard in your life. And then, like the crazy Welsh kids they are, they go and end the song on an unsettling little minor key. Sheer fucking pop brilliance is what this is, with a twisted black heart. Okay, Taylor Swift. Let’s see you top that.

THE SQUID POP METER SEZ: Ten Tentacles (out of Ten)

WHAT TO EXPECT

2008-08-04T15:30:00.000-07:00

Just good pop music. That's what I'm bringin' you kids here. So you damned well better appreciate it. I'm no music snob, so you won't find any hand-etched limited numbered experimental musique concrete cassette tapes from Bulgaria here (no offense to Bulgaria). And I've been collecting for longer than you've been around (your mother and I used to go to record shows together, that's how far I go back), so there's no sense for me to post anything by the Beatles or the Stones on this blog. You should already be familiar with that stuff. If not, then you need to go to bed right now. It's WAY past your bedtime.

In the weeks/months/years (I'm optimistic) to come, I'll be posting some pretty cool songs by current artists, indie bands past and present, and quite a few genuinely obscure, rare singles and albums by psychedelic bands from the late 60's and early 70's ('cuz that's how I make my living on the side). You won't find any brooding diatribes at how my friends left me stranded at Hot Topic or how the second season of HEROES didn't quite match up to the genius of the first. Just good pop music, and the men (and women) who created it. But I personally stake my reputation (I have none at the moment, so what the hell) that every time you click on a song on this site, you'll hear something that'll make you smile. Or dance. Or throw cutlery at your parents. They're all valid reactions, really. Oh, and be sure to leave some comments and let me know what you think. Because I care. I really do...