Valient's Vloggg

Rocknowledgy episode 24 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!!

2012-01-26T15:25:00.001-05:00

One whole day of Rocknowledgy. Well, its actually about 25 hours when you add up all the minutes that go over every episode. But either way! 24! Fuck You Keifer Sutherland! Suck my fat one you cheap dime store hood! Works as good today as it did way back when! Hope you guys are ready for Freddie, cause this one's a scorcher. PACE.

Get the episode heeeeeerrrrreeee or later on iTunes jack!

Rocknowledgy Episode 24 playlist:

T-6000- intro,
Rory Gallagher- Sinner Boy,
They Might Be Giants- Boat of Car,
Randy California- I Don't Want Nobody,
NoMeansNo- Rags and Bones,
The Leaves- Too Many People,
Butthole Surfers- The Wooden Song,
Townes Van Zandt- Mr Mudd and Mr Gold,
Widow- Come To The Sabbat,
The Specials- Racist Friend,
Jimi Hendrix- Beginning,
Pennywise- Dying To Know,
The Sea And Cake- Afternoon Speaker,
(Smog)- Song,
T-6000- outro,
English Beat- March Of The Swivelheads

bad/awesome flixxx review: The Punisher (1989)

2012-01-22T16:57:00.004-05:00

"Come on god, answer me. for years I'm asking why, why are the innocent dead and the guilty alive? Where is justice? Where is punishment? Or have you already answered, have you already said to the world here is justice, here is punishment, here, in me." - The Punisher

"We are Yakuza. When your ancestors were shepherds still screwing sheep on the Mediterranean coast, ours were the crime lords of Asia. " - Lady Tanaka

"There's a limit to revenge, you know." - Gianni Franco
"I guess I just haven't reached mine yet." - The Punisher

I don't care what anybody says. This movie is the SHIT. I remember watching it when it came out. It was never in the theaters, it just went straight to video. Same year as BATMAN. So parents all over let their kids rent this pretty dark, language heavy movie because they let them see OTHER comic book movies, how different could this one be? Speaking of Batman, I don't think its a coincidence that ol Frank Castle mentions him in a torture scene seeing as how one was a huge blockbuster and one couldn't even get shown in a theater in the states. Either way, this one has it all... The cop who's family gets murdered so he must get revenge a la WALKING TALL, MAD MAX, etc. But THIS ONE stars Dolph Lundgren, and Louis Gossett Jr... all in one of the first modern comic book flicks and one of the ONLY comic book flicks that doesn't bow to a PG audience...THE PUNISHER!!!

We all know the story of Frank Castle. If you don't, then a lot of shit probably goes over your head. Frank Castle is a cop who's wife and daughter are murdered by gangsters. He's become a full on vigilante intent on paying back those who wronged him, and since he has no life left and everyone assumes him dead as well, he just keeps on "punishing" bad guys. Punisher is also a term we came up with as a band in like 2005. We call them "Frank Castle's" to be polite. You know the type. "Hey, Frank Castle's here" or "Hey, who put Frank Castle on the list?". Oh, you mean the guy who won't shut up and is constantly talking, screaming or interrupting you and me and all of our friends all night? Yeah, that guy (or girl). Francis Castle. Anyway, that doesn't have shit to do with this flick.

This flick is the first of I'm pretty sure 3 different films that have given us a Punisher origin story. None of them have been spectacular, none of them have been blockbusters, but upon rewatching this one, I'm gonna say it was about as badass as it could have been. They didn't hold back. It's violent and full of "fuck you"'s and "oh shit!"'s. Dolph Lundgren is our hero and he's killed 125 gangsters in the last 5 years. He uses a drunk to get information, no idea where he gets his arsenal. He lives down in the sewers, and is chasing down the last of the gangsters who were actually involved in his personal case. In the beginning he blows up the house of one of the last top head dudes who just got out of jail.

With his latest move, the Punisher has forced the top mobster Franco back home to regain control over his mafia before everything falls apart. His idea is to bring the mafia together. After Punisher throws a wrench in his plans, the leader of the Yakuza, Lady Tanaka comes in and says she'll help them put their mafia back together for 75% of their take. She basically kills a bunch of motherfuckers and then kidnaps the leaders that are still alives children. His drunk tells them that, but the Punisher is like who cares, except for he realizes he does, because his kids being hurt are what turned him into what he is.

So Frank, who this whole time is being chased down by Lou Gossett Jr and his new chick partner, goes after the kids. He steals a school bus and rescues all the kids but one, the main mafia guy Franco's kid. He takes the others though and theres a chase, and this one dude gets run over (and that's probably the best scene in the flick. I rewatched it about 15 times). Eventually theres a road block and Punisher pulls over and hands over the kids. But they arrest him and they're dropping him off to be executed, but the mafia wrecks the transport truck and kidnaps Frank. They tell him he has to help them rescue Franco's kid or he'll kill his old partner Lou Gossett Jr. Punisher agrees. Then they go and fuck up the Yakuza. I don't want to tell you the whole ending here, because you should definitely watch this one. Verily I say unto you- The criminals shall be punished!!!

bad/awesome flixxx review: Tales from Earthsea (2006)

2012-01-20T01:34:00.004-05:00

"This life that is both our torment and our treasure was never meant to endure for eternity. Life is a wave on the sea. Would you force the sea to grow still to save one wave? To save yourself? " - Sparrowhawk

"You think your life belongs to you? Tenar gave me my life. That's why I have to live, so that I can give life to someone else." - Theru

"Everything that exists has its true name. The power of magic is nothing more than the power to command based on the knowledge of a things true name." - Sparrowhawk

This is an incredibly beautiful movie, with a horribly discombobulated plot. I seriously think that something was lost in the translation, and upon reading the reviews by the lady who wrote the books that the film is based on, I'm not sure the director even grasped what he was trying to convey in the first place. It certainly wasn't what the author was trying to get across. BUT... the first time director was Goro, the son of famous Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki who's made tons of killer films. No doubt the kid has talent, but he may have bit off more than he could chew. Trying to piece together this plot will scramble your eggs. Timothy Dalton and Cheech Marin do American dubs in TALES FROM EARTHSEA!!!

This is a BEAUTIFUL flick. Like I said, it may be so gorgeous that the plot doesn't even matter. Fuck it, watch it for the art. BUT if you're like me, and you need brains with your good looks, you may be skeptical. The whole first ten minutes make no sense whatsoever with the rest of the flick. This is the main "lost in translation" part for me. And I guess "everything" doesn't HAVE to make sense all the time to enjoy something, this just SEEMS like there's something we are missing. When it starts out theres a storm brewing around a ship out in the sea. They call up this "master of storms" or "storm whisperer" guy who claims he forgot how to talk to the sea. Before they have time to scream at him, 2 dragons fly out of nowhere and are ripping each other apart. Finally one dragon kills the other which falls into the ocean. Cut to a roundtable meeting of a king and a bunch of bearded and mustachioed guys talking about a disruption in the "balance" of nature. When they hear the story of the dragon sightings, one old guy explains that once men and dragons lived together, but dragons chose freedom, & men chose possessions, so they split into different worlds. Then this kid comes out of no where, and kills the king while he's walking by himself.

The kid was the king's son, and he takes this sword from the king. Then he runs off into the desert and almost gets eaten by wolves because he says he doesn't give a fuck, but he's saved by this scarfaced wizard named Sparrowhawk. No other mention of the king ever happens except for when the kid admits that he killed his dad to this young chick, but they never give a reason that he did it. There's my big beef. Why did this kid do that? What the fuck was that about? Ok, so the wizard takes the kid to a beautiful city. He leaves him to explore and the kid freaks out that he's being followed. About that time, a dude tries to sell him some drugs, but he is convinced not to by Sparrowhawk. Again Sparrowhawk leaves. This time Arren (the kid) rescues some chick from getting raped by the slave captains who ride in town on bulls. The chick is not psyched on Arren even tho he saved her because she values life, and he doesn't give a shit. He is obviously confused. The captain comes back, kicks his ass and takes him to be a slave. Sparrowhawk rescues him from the slave wagon by flying on a mystical light. He tries to tell Arren some mumbo jumbo about the balance of the world, and that he is trying to find out why something is "off" out there. And also he starts talking about eternal life and shit like that.

Sparrowhawk takes Arren to his old girlfriend (Tenar)'s house and surprise, she's taken in an orphan chick Therru (the chick Arren saved). Therru is still pissed at Arren for a while. Sparrowhawk goes to seek out his metrosexual arch nemesis Lord Cob, who is the head cheese in charge of the captain of the slaves and probably a lot of other bad stuff. While he's gone, we have a game of back and forth, as Arren wins over Therru by confessing his crime and deciding to split to help Sparrowhawk. Sparrowhawk meanwhile figures out how he'll "get" Lord Cob, but misses Arren on his way back. The bumbling captain is always trying to have his way, riding up and talking shit to Tenar and finally kidnapping her in place of Sparrowhawk. Lord Cob catches up with Arren who falls into a lake to drown after being chased by his own shadow, or what I think they were trying to convince us was his "good" side. I think maybe they were trying to say: Arren's own "balance" or dark and light side split when he killed his father. And he was really a good kid, so it was trying to get back to him, but he was still filled with his darkness so he was scared of being killed for what he did. Lord Cob tells him that Sparrowhawk is trying to use him because he "is" the key to eternal life. So he's brainwashed. Lord Cob pits him against Sparrowhawk, but Sparrowhawk is like, "look man, no one can live forever." Oh yeah, Lord Cob controlled Arren because he told him his "real" name- Lebennon. Back then, no one could mind control you unless they knew your "true" name. So everyone went by fakes. I like that part.

So with the spell broken but his light still missing, Arren just goes to hang in his room in the top of the castle bummed that he tried to kill his friend. DEPRESSION. But Therru is busy trying to take Arren's sword back to him and she meets his light half. He says to go find Arren and speak his true name to him. Sparrowhawk saves Tenar I think, and finally Therru meets up with Arren, tells him whats up and he goes to fight Lord Cob. Finally Arren can use his magic sword and he cuts off Cob's hand. Cob turns into a creepy fucking old man that can turn into that black jello pudding virus shit that surrounds the possessed giant pig in PRINCESS MONONOKE. He's all flying around and he grabs Therru. Arren goes to save her but Cob chokes her to death, and the castle starts to crumble and Arren starts to fall, but somehow THERRU TURNS INTO A FUCKING DRAGON, KILLS COB AND CATCHES ARREN AND THEY FLY OFF INTO THE COUNTRYSIDE!!! Then she turns back into a little girl and I guess the end? Weird shit. Should you watch it? Well, as a fan of most everything this studio has produced, I'd say yes, its not like the story is terrible, and it is stunningly drawn. Some of the wide shots of the cities they created are some of the best cartoon city drawing I've ever seen. So go for it, but if you're confused, don't even trip. I think everyone that watches it feels that way.

Rocknowledgy episode 23 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!!

2012-01-18T17:26:00.002-05:00

yo yo yo bo bo. Alahoyus once again and welcome to the 23rd episode of Valient Himself's Rocknowledgy. We are well on our way now ladies and gents. Now its time to get weird. Thanx for your patronage. Keep circling the tapes.

Go here here here here here to get the mp3, and/or check iTunes later for it to upload. werd berd.

Rocknowledgy Episode 23 playlist:
Intro by T-6000,
Red Fang- Wires,
Big Star- O My Soul,
Ghost- Ritual,
The Attack- Feel Like Flying,
Stephen Moore (Marvin The Martian)- Reason's To Be Miserable,
WAX- Who Is Next?,
Arlo Guthrie- Motorcycle Song,
The Dwarves- I Will Deny,
Billy Bragg- A New England,
Funkadelic- Baby I Owe You Something Good,
Paul Giovanni- Maypole Song,
Jerry Reed- Tupelo Mississippi Flash,
Anvil- Mothra,
Food And Shelter- Surveillance,
T-6000 outro,
(the) Melvins- The Water Glass

Bad/awesome flixxx review/theater: Creepozoids (1987)

2012-01-16T12:48:00.003-05:00

"Real water?? If this works.... C'mon, gimme a break, its not contaminated! If this is poison, GIVE ME MORE!" - Bianca

"This soldier's optioning herself into a shower, for a couple hundred light years." - Bianca

"Amino Acids... they're building blocks of human life. Those are the ones the human body can't make by itself." - Jake

WOW. What a piece of shit. We all know how I feel about bad flicks. I of course love them, along with pretty much everything that entails. The bad acting, dialogue, lighting, set dressing, complete lack of plot, etc. I can sit through and have sat through some HEAVY SHIT. BUT... this is one of those flicks that seems like no matter how I look at it, there just isn't hardly any way to save it from being completely bad (WHICH IS STILL GOOD TO ME). Way more bad than awesome. Not even scream queen Linnea Quigley's tits could save this one. And that is just about its only redeeming quality. What you have here is a pretty bad ALIENS rip off. The tag line was, "YOUR FLESH WILL CRAWL RIGHT OFF YOUR BONES!!", when it should have been- "YOUR BRAINS WILL MELT RIGHT OUT OF YOUR HEAD IF YOU HAVE ANY AT ALL LEFT AFTER WATCHING THIS." Starring Linnea Quigley, AN UNBELIEVABLE SOUNDTRACK! and a cast of unknowns in CREEPOZOIDS!!!

Five young AWOL soldiers are running through a nuke ravaged abandoned city in 1998, 6 years after a nuclear war that reduced the Earth to super bad movie sets including darkened warehouses, garages, and office building's storage closets. The five are seeking shelter from an acid rain storm that is about to descend upon them and suddenly they stumble across a warehouse that was once used a team of scientists. The scientists were doing experiments on humans in hopes of making the human body not need amino acids so it could live for longer on less food- therefore fixing a food shortage/ world hunger problem.

There's one dude who is an ex bio chem major who can at least figure out how to work the Apple II/DOS computer in the office. He figures out that the place is an old lab facility. Linnea Quigley finds a shower and goes right to it grabbing the one meathead and ripping her shirt off, and losing no time getting naked and wet for everyone. The nerd finds a cage under the computer, crawls in it by himself, and this dude in a really REALLY bad fat rubber Alien suit bites him or pushes him or something. Something happened in there.... but it was dark. Anyway, they go to find him and he's...... in his bed and ok? But then, over brunch, his hand swells up and he starts puking blood out of his eye sockets. Everyone is rightfully upset.

The two dudes who are left are macho and they wanna go after what got their buddy. So they try to figure out the computer and one of them spots the cage door under the computer. The main macho man goes in, they can't stop him! They're women! He's a man! He's tough! He's- screaming like a baby and getting chased for the rest of the movie. There really isn't too much else that goes on in the flick. The monster chases them, they chase the monster, people split up, another one dies. The shower meathead goes into a room to cut the power back on that mysteriously went off, and A GIANT RAT COMES TO EAT HIS HAND!! These rats prove to be some relentless little mothers for the rest of the flick.

I would finish giving you the end of the thing, but if you're up for some torture, you can view the whole movie on youtube- right here, right now below this paragraph---- 2 words. shit sandwich... NO- 2 words: Alien baby.
Go for it, you've been warned.

FULL MOVIE HERE! CLICK BELOW TO WATCH!!

bad/awesome flixxx review: Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

2012-01-12T02:37:00.007-05:00

"How would you like to bite that in the butt, develop lockjaw, and be dragged to death? " - Dakota

"I understand you're very good with your hands and feet." - Rawley

"Kid get out of here. And forget that partner crap." - McQuade

This is a bad ass Chuck Norris/ David Carradine flick that I must've watched a half a dozen times growing up with my old man. Its full of loner cop, new partner, and chief "who's had it up to here" type cliches'. It also pits Chuck F'n Norris against David "Grasshopper" Carradine. Basically nuff said. Need more? This is the flick that hatched the WALKER TEXAS RANGER franchise ten years later. Want you mind blown? Chuck Norris is 72 years old!!! NO SHIT!!! But he was only 43 when he made this bad/awesome jam called LONE WOLF MCQUADE!!!

This one starts out sort of like BILLY JACK. Except Chuck is the law. Norris plays JJ McQuade, a texas ranger spying on some amigos who have just hijacked a huge gang of horses. He watches from afar as the local yocal county mounties bung everything up, and then snipes a dude from 300 yards. Averting a major fiasco, he splits back to town in time for his buddies retirement party, and long enough to get chewed out by his chief for not having enough "style". He assigns him a partner, which is one of the latino cops' ass he saved back in the desert. He tells him to fuck off and bails home to drink some Pearl beer.

McQuade lives on a ranch with a pet wolf and loves to drink Pearl beer. Kayo his new "partner" comes to his house and gets a gun pointed in his face. Another unspoken of character in the movie comes in the form of McQuade's muddy white 81 Dodge Ramcharger with supercharger turbo on it. He hauls ass in it to leave his partner in the dust. Then he goes to hang with his daughter & picks her up from his ex wifes house. They go ride horses and the girls horse runs off as a car backfires, and this hot chick runs the horse down and saves the girl from danger. We are then introduced to a mysterious midget in a wheelchair and his business partner David Carradine (Rowley). The chick is Rowley's girl but her panties are clearly dripping wet when she meets McQuade. She invites them to a party later at Rowley's where he intends to do a karate display or something. McQuade's daughter goes on a date and witnesses a truck of weapons being hijacked off the highway in the desert. Rowley kicks a bunch of dudes asses at the fight and challenges McQuade, but he says he doesn't fight for sport. Then the chick takes him off and bangs him. Some lawman. Banging other dude's wives. I guess everyone has the weaknesses.

McQuade's daughter goes on a date and witnesses a truck of weapons being hijacked off the highway in the desert. They get caught and the boyfriend gets murdered, and she gets pushed over a cliff in a car but doesn't die. The feds take over the case and McQuade says bullshit. McQuade and his partner bond over the partner "hacking" into his Apple II computer to find some information about what was in the stolen army rigs. They find out it was guns, so McQuade follows this dude Snow then kidnaps him. They interrogate him and find out that its the midget who's stolen the guns and that Rowley is the distributor or something like that. Either way they are both in trouble. McQuade goes to get answers but they kill the witness and McQuade is dismissed from the case and put on unpaid leave since he investigated a case he wasn't on. He goes home to drink some Pearl beer, and the chick has thrown it all out and is cleaning his house. He gets mad, makes her cry, drinks a beer, and then they have sex in a mud puddle with a hose going off in slow motion. TIGHT.

One of the feds, Agent Jackson comes to help McQuade and his partner after the bad guys kill his wolf and try to kill him and the chick in the bed. They helicopter out and find the weapons. The one fed is a prick and gets shot by jumping the gun and not listening to McQuade. Everyone gets caught. Rowley takes his ranger star. DISSED. And they bury McQuade in his Ram charger after beating him up. Kayo shoots a bunch of guys and Jackson isn't dead and they're fighting and meanwhile McQuade was conveniently driving with a SIX PACK on his console, and THEN HE CRACKS A BEER AND POURS IT ALL OVER HIMSELF, TURNS UP THE SUPERCHARGER TURBO ON HIGH, FLOORS IT AND DRIVES THE MOTHERFUCKER STRAIGHT UP OUTTA THE GROUND, COMES OUT SCREAMING AND STARTS BEATING ASS. Powerful man shit right there. Anyway, the midget makes a deal with McQuade to show him where the weapons went in Mexico, and then McQuade goes in for the final showdown. I'm not gonna give away the ending on this one, because its essential. Should you watch this? You should have already fucking seen it. If you haven't, drop everything and make it happen. You'll be 10 times tougher than you were before.

Rocknowledgy episode 22 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!!

2012-01-10T16:03:00.001-05:00

Alahoyus once again true believers! Its ROCKNOWLEDGY deuce deuce! YA KNOW WHAT I'M TALKIN BOUT! We dug out some wild gems this week. Some PiL and some Pet Shop Boys, and an awesome track by a band called Room. Hope you dig it, as always, feel free to call us for weird requests, nerd shit, waxing philosophically, or just for advice. 850 583 6871. leave a message. OK, much to do, much to do said the white rabbit.

You can download this episode HEEEERRRRRREEEEEEE and also itll be on iTunes free later today. word.

Episode 22 playlist:
Intro by T-6000,
Weird War- Grand Fraud,
Public Image Ltd.- Public Image,
The Flying Burrito Brothers- Christine's Tune,
Pet Shop Boys- West End Girls,
Ricky Nelson- Travelin' Man,
John Cale & Lou Reed- Nobody But You,
Nig Heist- Balls of Fire,
Blue Oyster Cult- The Red And The Black,
Newcleus- Jam On It,
Slough Feg- High Passage/Low Passage,
Guided By Voices- Everywhere With Helicopter,
Frank Black- Two Reelers,
Room- Pre-Flights Parts I & II,
Outro by T-6000,
Motorhead- Lost Johnny

RALEIGH: TONIGHT AT NEPTUNE'S

2012-01-09T04:26:00.004-05:00

bad/awesome flixxx review: Robot Jox (1990)

2012-01-07T19:38:00.003-05:00

"He IS the best. It IS a big deal. That's why we're saving him. To fight for ALASKA! We CANNOT allow the Confederation to OCCUPY one square inch of American soil." - Commissioner Jamison

"Crash and burn." - everyone in the flick

"We are already dead. We are Robot Jox." - Alexander

I remembered seeing this late at night when I was younger on one of the "late night" movie lineups either on The Movie Channel with Joe Bob Briggs or maybe on USA Up All Night with Gilbert Godfried or Rhonda Shear. I didn't really remember anything about it, except for that it was cheesy as hell, and probably going to be super awesome and super bad upon rewatch. Well I was right. It was both. Produced by Charles Band of Full Moon Entertainment fame, this was sure to be a pleaser either way she fell. A bunch of unknowns star in ROBOT JOX!!!

This film begins in the future. A future so far "advanced" that there is no more war on the planet Earth. Two distinct massive "countries" came from all the conflicts and in the end, one represented the US superpower, and the "Confederation" was the country representing the Russian presence of the East. All major conflicts now are dealt with and settled by huge fights that the whole world watches with huge robots fighting for each country in hopes of winning the battle for their own side. Each country has a team and we our story starts out with one of the Confederation "robot jox" (Alexander) fighting and killing one of the last team members of the "USA" side. Even though the US dude yielded and Alexander was in the wrong, no one did shit about it. So this put Achilles (the last US guy) in a position where he would have to finally fight his tenth fight, to seal his contract, in a battle against Alexander. Achilles team consists of this redneck guy Tex, and this Hawaiian guy Dr. Matsumoto.

Achilles is the best fighter the US team ever had. No one else even made it close to their tenth fight. This was an important fight as well, because whoever won it would control Alaska which is deep in oil, trees, and tons of other natural resources. Alaska is up for grabs, you can't fuck this up, nahm sayn? So Achilles suits up, and they start battling it out. Somehow all the fighters have been getting killed, and the bad guys already know about all the "new" weapons that the US team is coming up with. That means somewhere there is leak. Someone is spying and telling the Confederation about their plans. Also there's a ton of test tube babies born and bread to fight that are making Achilles life difficult by trying to outdo him and basically making him feel like an old piece of shit.

Achilles fights Alexander but when Alexander blocks Achilles new weapon and then counters, it gives Achilles a concussion. As if that wasn't bad enough, when he finally wakes up and gets to his feet, he's blasted again and this time falls on a huge deck of bleachers and crushes like 300 people. So, they have a ruling to see who controls Alaska, and whoever the neutral party is in the world is like, "we don't give a fuck about the crushed people. AND we don't care that Achilles was trying to stop the weapon from killing them. We can't say who won. You have to fight again." RUTHLESS! But Achilles is like- BULLSHIT, and refuses to fight. Then a bunch of people say- It ain't over till its over jack. And they try to convince him to fight again. So he quits and people call him a pussy. But he's over it. Maybe its the fact that he just killed 300 people. OR maybe its the fact that chances are you'll NEVER survive this shit, and HE DID. Can't say I blame him.

OK, but the show must go on. Someone has to control Alaska, so they look to the test tube "tubies" to try to find a champion ready to face Alexander. There are two possible candidates. One is a wreckless loudmouth who gets his body broken in training. The other is this chick. The only female "jock" ever. Achilles kind of ends up falling for her, and when its announced that she'll face Alexander, he says fuck it, I'll fight. The tubies say he's just pulling shit to get more money, and they don't understand he wants to save the chick. Dr Matsumoto finds out who the spy is and its

**************SPOILER ALERT***********************

Tex the redneck... and he pulls a gun and kills the Doc. But the doc is smart enough to tape it on the weapons briefing that he's hidden until the fight. So the chick is super pissed cause she wants to fight so she goes and knocks Achilles out, suits up and hijacks the robot. The refs say she took the field so she has to fight. She's trying out the new weapons and they find out that Tex is a murderer. He says you'll never take me alive and jumps out of a super high elevator shaft and bites it. So then the chick (Athena) gets knocked out, & Achilles goes out to save her. He jumps in the robot and Alexander allows it because all he wants to do is kill Achilles. The refs disqualify Alexander for not stopping so Achilles has really won it for the team, but he says fuck it and they have a showdown. Finally they tear the robots up and start fighting on the field. In the end, Achilles convinces Alexander that they don't actually HAVE to die on the field. Then they bump fists. THE END. Should you see this? Yes, order it for like $1 on VHS on Amazon and get wild man! You NEED this cheese.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Hawk The Slayer (1981)

2012-01-05T16:31:00.004-05:00

"Now this must stay a secret between you and me. Not only will I bring back the head of this Hawk, but I'll have the gold as well. Then Voltan will see who is the lord of the dance." - Drogo

"I'd sooner eat cowdung." - Gort

"We have sat waiting like this many times before. Sometimes I tire... of the fighting and killing. At night, I can hear the call of my race. They wait for me. When I join them, we will be forgotten." - Crow

This is your typical sword and sorcery flick except for THIS one is starring JACK FUCKIN PALANCE and the main dude is the main character Jack's dad CHRISTIAN from LOST! But in this he's about as young as Jack is in LOST. For a good long while this one was a hard one to locate, but it has come out on DVD and if you search you can definitely find it for sale online now. Its pretty rad. I can see liking it a whole lot more if I saw it when I was younger. Not particularly great, and pretty low budge... but if you're a wizard junkie, you'll dig it. Jack Palance and John Terry star in HAWK THE SLAYER!!!

This one starts off with a bang as evil Voltan (Palance) stalks into a throne room and challenges what looks to be a younger man, but calls him father. That part made me realize this was gonna be a bad one. They didn't even care that they cast a younger man to play Palance's father. But fuck it whatever. So he kills his own father because he won't give him some secret power he has. Then Voltan splits. Enter Voltan's brother Hawk. His father is about to bite the big one (he's not dead yet) and he gives him a sword off the wall with a fist in the hilt. Then he says some magic words and tells him to take this green rock out of a leather pouch hung around his neck. Hawk does it, and then the rock glows and floats and the hand on the sword grabs it. The king dad tells Hawk that this is the legendary Mind Sword and it would always leap into his hand if he just thought about it. SCORE. So before his old man croaks, Hawk promises to kill his brother.

Ok, so this Voltan is a dick. He beats the shit out of this guy, and the guy has to get his hand removed by these nuns. The guy is hell with a crossbow tho. So Voltan comes and kidnaps the head nun for a ransom of 2000 bucks or gold or whatever. The nuns send a message to some monks with the one handed man. Meanwhile Hawk rescues some witch from some hicks in the woods. She becomes his friend. The monks send a message to Hawk to help the nun. The one handed man meets up with Hawk who takes him to the witch so he can magically teleport and get his boys to help him fight Voltan and his army.

His boys each have their own little thing they are in trouble for, but Hawk helps a dwarf, a giant, and an elf telport to help him fight Voltan and rescue the chick. We find out that Hawk and Voltan hate each other because Hawk stole Voltan's chick and then Voltan killed that chick. Hawk and his boys head to the convent and then go steal the 2000 bucks from the slavedriver dude. Then Voltan comes to fight him but they lose, and Voltan sneaks up on him. But then Hawk kills Voltan's son Drogo, and even tho Voltan himself threatened to kill Drogo like 2 scenes back, he was pretty pissed. So they all prepare for the final battle.

I forgot to tell you that Voltan got acid poured into his face by his ex chick and that's why he hates everyone so much. Somehow it was magic acid, and it never heals, and Voltan goes to see his own black magic witch chick every few days so she can rub it with magic salve and stop the hurting for only a little while. Anyway, Hawk ends up having to sick his witch on all of them and they fight it out, and Voltan is killed, but as this thing goes on and on, we realize they are setting us up for a sequel which has never been made. Voltan is most def getting rezerected, but its seriously been 30 years last year, so don't look for it anytime soon. The made a website for HAWK THE HUNTER, but nothing has happened on it in two years. Should you watch this? Well, if you can find yourself a copy, I'd say go for it. The elf shooting arrows and the one handed man shooting the crossbow over and over and over every scene is hilarious because of how fast they shoot. That was my favorite part. Hope ya dig it.

VALIENT THORR US SPRING 2012 & EUROPE 2012 POSTERS.

2012-01-03T18:22:00.002-05:00

US SPRING TOUR W/ COC AND TORCHE. FUCKIN A.

Rocknowledgy episode 21 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!!

2012-01-03T16:38:00.001-05:00

Alahoyus brollums y broskeetas around the world! It's 2 Thorrsand 12! let's get ready to pump this motherfucker up with whatever life is left in it! A lot of people think this may be the end of the world, but for most of us, we believe that it could be the beginning of something beautiful. Open up your nose and let the air breathe in. Oxygen to tha brain jack.

In the recording I refer to the Little Willie and the Adolescents cover by the Dwarves as by Little Willie and the "Alexanders". I don't know where that came from. Rambling I guess....

EPISODE CAN BE DOWNLOADED FOR FREEEEE HEEEERRRRREEEEEE and on itunes later today... HURRAH!

Rocknowledgy 21 playlist:

Intro by T-6000,
Golden- Feel This Flow,
Syd Barrett- Octopus,
Junior Brown- Darlin' I'll Do Anything You Say,
Kut U Up- S&M Dens,
Thrills- Hey! (Not Another Face In The Crowd),
Lee Fields & The Expressions- Money I$ King,
Lungfish- Sex War,
Public Enemy- I Ain't Mad At All,
Dwarves- Get Outta My Life (Little Willie and the Adolescents cover),
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band- Too Much Time,
Bloodlet- Shell,
Young Marble Giants- N.I.T.A.,
Avail- New #2,
Excelsior- Midnight Rendezvous,
Alice Cooper- Shoe Salesman,
T-6000 outro,
The Walker Brothers- The Electrician

bad/awesome flixxx review: The Omega Man (1971)

2012-01-02T01:15:00.004-05:00

"Definition of a scientist - a man who understands nothing until there was nothing left to understand." - Matthias

"Don't screw up. I know how to roll, but it's hard on the elbows. And if you just have to play James Bond, I'll bust your ass. " - Lisa

"You know the old song? If you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy, well, okay, but until then, don't bother me? Well, I guess I'm the only boy..." - Neville

A classic Charlton Heston sci fi. Along with PLANET OF THE APES and SOYLENT GREEN, these were the movies that framed my sci fi childhood. If you took these end of the world sagas, maybe throw in LOGAN'S RUN, and the KAMANDI (LAST BOY ON EARTH) comics, something about that end of the world stuff always interested me. Heston landed roles in all of these powerful "ender" sci fi gems. This one in particular being a remake of 1964's THE LAST MAN ON EARTH starring Vincent Price, and was remade again in 2007 with Will Smith (ugh) as I AM LEGEND. Here we go with Chuck Heston in THE OMEGA MAN!!!!

This flick starts out with Colonel Neville (Heston) as a scientist who worked for the military on an antidote that would have helped save the rest of the world's population from the fallout of a chemical weapon used in a war between China and Russia.
It's 1977 and everyone else on Earth has perished... or so he believes. Neville lives in a bigass fortified mansion in downtown San Francisco, and drives whatever car he can find until he wrecks it or the gas runs out or whatever. He speeds around town and watches movies during the day. As he goes in to watch it again, he says he's watched "Woodstock" several times over the last few years.

So Neville is kind of going crazy being all alone. He hears phone's ringing, and talks to his only companion, a bust of Caesar. But, Neville himself knows he's not alone. Even though after three years he hasn't found any human survivors, he's had trouble with plenty of "victims" of the chemical warfare. These ex-humans call themselves "the family". They have weeping sores, and can't see, and can't handle themselves in the sunlight. So in essence they have become pseudo-vampires. The family believes that Neville is the one who caused them to be the way they are, but an enemy and a relic to them. Part of the "old way" that led to the wars and killing in the first place. Neville just wants them to leave him the fuck alone.

One night Neville believes he sees a black chick running around in a department store, so instead of spitting back to his apartment, he camps out for the night. The family catches him down in a wine cellar and takes him back to their lair to put him on trial for his sins. We find out in flashbacks that the head family dude used to be the main news anchor back before the shit went down. His name is Matthius. Matthius sentences Neville to death for his crimes (which are living in the old ways that humans used to before the fallout). They plan to burn him at the stake in Dodger stadium, but Neville is rescued by the black chick and some kids.

They drive out to the boondocks, and Neville sees that there's a group of survivors including a dude who was working on getting his doctorate in biological medicine which is what Neville studied. Neville starts banging the chick. Oh yeah, Neville is ammune because he was in a helicopter crash trying to deliver the antidote. When the pilot got sick and bit the big one, Neville survived the crash and jabbed the antidote (untested) into his leg. Lucky for him it saved him. Ok, so he sees that the kids are unmutated, and that some of them have blood that may resist the virus. So he decides to make a serum from his blood. He tests it on the chicks brother who is sick and cures him. The brother wants to save everyone after that. Neville plans to get them all the fuck outta there, but the kid brother gets grabbed by the family. Neville goes to save him and the chick gets infected. He tries to rescue them both, but gets a spear through the chest in a fountain. The kids come to pick everyone up to leave, and Neville is alive long enough to hand over the antidote serum. Then he croaks, and the kids split to start a new tomorrow. Should you watch this? Fuck yes, especially if you've never seen it, but have seen I AM LEGEND. word up.

Rocknowledgy episode 20 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!

2011-12-28T16:24:00.005-05:00

Alahoyus to all! Happy New Year! Valient and the T-6000 back with their 20th Episode! Get ready for some killer jams. Pop some bottles yall.

Go download the episode HEEEEEEERRREEEEE now. It'll be free on iTunes later today.

Episode 20 playlist:
Intro by T-6000,
Comets On Fire- Dogwood Rust,
Death- Keep On Knocking,
Annihilation Time- Get A Job,
Zior- Entrance Of The Devil,
Captain Beyond- Dancing Madly Backwards (On A Sea Of Air),
Caltrop- Ancient, Suicide- Wrong Decisions,
The Dead Milkmen- Meaningless Upbeat Happy Song,
The Dead Milkmen- Or Maybe It Is,
The Dismemberment Plan- The Ice Of Boston,
Funkadelic- I Got a Thing, You Got a Thing, Everybody's Got a Thing,
The Flaming Lips- With You,
Willie Nelson- Me And Paul,
Ghostface Killah- Back Like That,
Outro by T-6000,
Kolpakov Trio- Starrushka

Rocknowledgy episode 19 is up now!! XMAS SPECIAL!!

2011-12-23T04:21:00.004-05:00

alahoyus to all and to all a good night! Tired of your boring old Xmas party mix. Me and the T-6000 are here to help. I almost didn't do a holiday show, because most of my friends hate Xmas music.... BUT I think it's because everyone usually plays the same old shit. Just like we always do, Rocknowledgy digs deep in the cracks of chrimbus to bring you the best of the unknown or rare in everything, including season's greetings. So download, load it up, crank it up, and turn up the eggnog. Happy Holidays.

This episode is available for free download HERRRRRRRREEEEE and later it'll be on iTunes (for free).
PS- BONUS VALIENT HIMSELF & T-6000 ACAPELLA HOLIDAY CAROL MEGAMIX AT THE END. ENJOY.

Episode 19 Holiday Playlist:
Intro by T-6000,
Dies Irea- Silent Night,
Squirrel Nut Zippers- Santa Claus is Smoking Reefer,
The Sonics- Don't Believe in Christmas,
King Diamond- No Presents For Christmas,
James Brown- Go Power At Christmas Time,
Jethro Tull- A Christmas Song,
Eek-A-Mouse- Christmas A Come,
Wesley Willis- Merry Christmas,
Merle Haggard- If We Make It Through December,
Sparks- Thank God Its Not Christmas,
Hasil Adkins- Santa Claus Boogie,
Fat Daddy- Fat Daddy,
Lemmy Kilmister/ Billy Gibbons/ Dave Grohl- Run Run Rudolph (Chuck Berry Cover),
Spinal Tap- Christmas With The Devil,
The Who- Christmas,
VALIENT HIMSELF/ T-6000- ACAPELLA HOLIDAY CAROL MEGAMIX,
Outro by T-6000,
Ramones- Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)

I got "Alahoyus" added to the URBAN DICTIONARY!!!!

2011-12-16T13:18:00.003-05:00

!!! THORRIORS!!! I got "Alahoyus" added to the Urban Dictionary!!!

Go HEEEEEEERRRRRRREEEEEE to see the definition of a greeting brought from our world to yours, and NOW added into your lexicon.

#Thorriorsunite

THAT'S WHAT I CALL "EFFORTS REALIZED" JACK!!

bad/awesome flixxx review: Johnny Suede (1991)

2011-12-15T17:17:00.004-05:00

"Deke- turn on the tv- there's a old cowboy movie on with nothing but midgets. Yeah midgets- even the horses are midgets." - Johnny Suede

"She's not a schoolteacher! She works with retarded kids and shit, and I mean that's a big difference." - Johnny Suede

"I wrote a song once...It's called "The Rent Song". Did you ever hear "The Rent Song"? It goes like this: hey, hey, -today is the day- those that pay- will get to stay. Those that don't,- I hate to say,- they got to pack their shit..and move, move away...Practice that, Caruso." - Landlord

This is a helluva flick. I hadn't seen it since around the time it came out. I probably saw it in like 92 for the first time. It left an impression on me. I remembered it being somewhat strange but quirky. Going back now, it makes sense that the director Tom Dicillo had worked on numerous projects with Jim Jarmusch. It has a very Jarmusch feel to it. Johnny Suede is a misunderstood crooner who just wants to put a band together and doesn't really understand anything about women. Brad Pitt, Nick Cave, Catherine Keener & (a tiny cameo by a man who'd become a megastar that same year with PULP FICTION) Samuel Jackson star in JOHNNY SUEDE!!!

This is a crazy lil flick about a guy named Johnny. Not sure if his last name is Caruso of if that was some vague reference his landlord was making. Either way, he goes by Johnny Suede and he's a big liar with a huge pompadour that really wants to start a band. He idolizes Ricky Nelson and thinks that he has it all except for a pair of suede shoes. There's a revival of rockabilly type shit in Brooklyn where he apparently lives, led by a guy called Freak Storm (Nick Cave). Johnny just wants to get a band together but his buddy keeps trying to get him out to the club scene. When he splits for home one night after hanging for a while at a club, he sees a woman being raped (even though she's not complaining and a dude says she's game for it). He goes to call the police and a huge box crashes down on the phone booth he's in. When he checks it out, theres a pair of diamond encrusted black suede shoes inside of it.

The shoes immediately give Johnny confidence and he hits on this chick Darlette who's dating a weird photographer in town named Flip Doubt. He keeps seeing her even though she's dating the other guy, continually fueling his own ego. But Johnny is broke and- even though he doesn't want to- takes a job as a painter with Deke (his bud). Darlette complains of abuse by the boyfriend but he has a gun so Johnny can't get him. Then one day, Darlette just dumps Johnny. He finally gets his band together, pisses off a midget, and meets a weird chick who's nothing like anyone he's ever met.

Johnny meets Freak Storm who's kind of a crook/junkie. He gives him his tape and $20, and Freak Storm gives him a song. The tape was supposed to go to a producer, but we never learn if it ends up there. Johnny actually turns the song into a better song. He ends up digging the new chick, they become involved, and she asks him to move in with her. Johnny contemplates the move with Deke one day, but decides against it. Naturally he ends up moving in with her anyway. But Johnny is a dude, and he's a flawed character at that. He has bad dreams about the midget getting him, and he ends up following some chick home from the subway. He actually just goes into her apartment and tells her some tale, and they end up fucking. Johnny returns home and lies to his girl about where he's been, but somehow, the subway ladie's panties were stuck to his pants or his jacket, or in his pocket or something. BUSTED.

So Johnny fucked up. She kicks him out, throws a shoe out the window at him and he can't find it. He told her not to throw shoes at him, and so he ends up slugging her in the belly. Then he splits. He's been through the ringer. Oh yeah, it was his birthday too. Forgot about that. He can't find his shoe. He goes out, sees Darlette, and she's with.... you guessed it- Freak Storm. So its the next morning, and Johnny makes his way back to Yvonne's (his chick- Keener). She hands him his shoe. But then the movie ends, and we see a cab drive off, with a shoe on its roof. Fucking weird. The whole thing has a weird indie feel to it. And seeing it now is weird because you know Brad Pitt as this huge star, but the only thing he'd done before this was THELMA AND LOUISE and it hadn't even been edited yet. So this was one of his first deals. He knocks it out of the fucking park if you ask me. Should you see this? If you're a Jarmusch fan, absolutely. If you like weird shit, totally. If you appreciate a good surreal dark comedy. Yes. Check it.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Never Too Young To Die (1986)

2011-12-15T15:11:00.003-05:00

"I'm gonna poison their water supply! For gold! For ransom! For jewels! For money! AHHHHHahahahahahahahah!!!" - Velvet Von Ragnar

"I've figured out how to access their computers to re-channel radioactive waste so it goes from Diablo Canyon... into their *drinking water*. " - Ragnar

"What kind of designer-drug are you on? How is Lance mixed up in all this? " - Drew Stargrove

Talk about an action packed turd of a flick! This was suggested to me long ago by readers, and I finally found a copy in the last few weeks... however, I've been buying so many, I couldn't tell you where I bought it. Maybe in New Orleans. Either way, FUCKING MONEY'S WORTH!! James Bond spy set up with "son of" inclinations. Starring a very young John Stamos (about a year before FULL HOUSE started), Vanity (from THE LAST DRAGON fame), and Gene Simmons as a hermaphrodite!!!! You can't miss NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE!!!!

*****(I did today's bad/awesome movie review in conjunction with the SHOW SHOW podcast hosted by Miles and Katie- I don't think this episode we taped is up yet, but when it is, it can be found HEEEEEEEEERRRREEEEEE.)*****

First off, this movie was distributed by the fine folks at CHARTER Entertainment. A few weeks back I reviewed another flick distro'ed by them from the same year called WHAT COMES AROUND (a Jerry Reed flick). I looked everywhere for the trailer for WHAT COMES AROUND on the internet, but the best I could come up with was a song that Jerry performed under his character's name (Joe Hawkins). But lo and behold, the first trailer that comes up on the VHS is for WHAT COMES AROUND. I'm going to video it with my phone and post it up for all the world to see. Its the little things in life that count. OK- back to this one... This flick starts off with a young Stamos getting ready for his big day training as a gymnast in his high school. It seems to be a private high school because all of his friends live in dorms. His roommate is a dude that plays the "Data" role a la "Data" from THE GOONIES. Its the old 'young Asian super smart inventor' cliche. If he looks familiar, its because he was in everything (THE GOLDEN CHILD, MACGYVER, 227, MIAMI VICE, THE A-TEAM, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, BRAINSMASHER, GLEAMING THE CUBE...tons of shit). There's so much build up with the gymnastics that I thought we were gonna get a little GYMKATA action. But no luck. What we do get is Gene Simmons as a bad guy leader living in a rock quarry with a buncha desert biker gang tweekers, who just so happens to be a burlesque jiving hermaphrodite. Did I mention he's looking for a disc to help him poison the city's water supply? Oh, well he is.

You see Stamos is Lance Hargrove and unbeknownst to Lance his dad just so happens to be Drew Stargrove, one of the governments top secret agents. There's even a "Stargrove" theme in the beginning of the flick. Strange details make this flick worth it. Somehow, in the beginning, Ragnar (Simmons)'s assistant Riley (Fucking Robert "Freddie Kruger" Englund) has lost the "disc" that will allow them to poison the city. And it's super confusing as to whether Stargrove is a secret agent, or some kind of super thief when we first see him, because it looks as if he's breaking into a bank underground. Either way, he's betrayed and taken to face Ragnar. Somehow he smuggled the disc away and mailed it off to his son in a care package. So Stargrove is killed by Ragnar. Lance goes to his funeral and notices this bangin chick crying over by the other mourners. When he goes to see meet his dad's assistant Corruthers, he finds out he's inherited some farm upstate.

So Lance decides to go up to the farm. When he gets there, he sees the chick Danja Deering (Vanity- what kind of name is that?!) and she gets ambushed by a bunch of those MAD MAX biker goons. She immediately begins capping dudes and then has to take her shirt off. ARE WE GOING TO SEE THOSE BOOBS SO DESPERATELY PONDERED UPON THROUGHOUT THE DURATION OF THE LAST DRAGON?? We shall see. For now though she teases up shooting dudes in a big grandma brassiere for like 5 minutes. After this scene, Lance says something to the effect of her being one of his dad's "pieces" and she smacks the shit out of him. Lance wonders why all this is happening, and Danja tells him his dad was a spy, and might have been killed by a burlesque dancer. Then he finds an underground lair under his old man's bed. Then he follows Danja to a club. Then we see the most disturbing burlesque show that has probaby EVER been recorded by anyone ever. Gene Simmons is especially creepy when he keeps yelling, "YEEE-AH!" At this club he uses one of "Data's" chewing gum "bugs" to bug Ragnar's room. Ragnar quickly finds it and throws it in a toilet. But then they blow up his motorcycle. He escapes, and borrows Data's bike. Then he hauls ass to catch up with Danja.

They play some cat and mouse games, kill some more bad guys, and then the head of the agency or whatever and Carruthers want to lure Ragnar out to get the disc. So they post Lance and Danja at the house and put them under surveillance. Danja is thankful for Lance saving her, so she puts on a bathing suit and starts hosing herself off. Lance tries to stop his sexual urges by eating an apple, and pacing around. But this girl is ready to pounce. You wouldn't have had to ask any other man alive twice. She's so dirty hot, and he's acting like a total kook. She takes her top off, and he's like FUCK IT. SO THEN BANG!! THERE THEY ARE. Vanity totally bares it all in the "D" grade flick. Totally awesome. It gets hot and heavy, but then Carruthers sends a helicopter in to "check" on them. Turns out Carruthers is really RAGNAR! WHOOPS! How could they not tell through that "really great" fake orange wig and mustache/beard combo?? Anyway, Ragnar gets them, and finds the disc in the motorcycle and then there's a big fight, Ragnar kisses Danja (YEAH), tries to kiss Lance (BOGUS), and then Lance decides that even though he has no training whatsoever, he's going to be the hero. So he fights the big goon, and Ragnar splits to poison the water supply (finally). Does he do it??? I'll not ruin the end of this one for ya, but I will say this- Vanity's titties aren't the only titties you get to see by the end of this flick!! GROSS!!! BIG FINISH! Should you see this? ABSOLUTELY if you can find a copy. Make it happen. Pure cheese at its best. Word.

PLEASE HELP STOP SOPA/PIPA NOW! TOMORROW IS THE VOTE

2011-12-14T12:48:00.003-05:00

Please take a few moments (took me 2 minutes) to call your rep and tell them NOT to censor the internet. The Stop Online Piracy Act seems like it would be a good thing for artists, but in reality it gives the government full on power to block websites and prosecute/fine them. THIS WILL AFFECT YOU. THIS WILL CHANGE THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT. We use the net now for commerce, communication, and in ways we all take for granite. Please don't sleep on this. Call them and tell them its crazy and will block your freedom at home and abroad.

Rocknowledgy episode 18 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!! CONTEST WINNER!

2011-12-13T00:28:00.005-05:00

Hello everyone! A la peanut butter SANDwiches! That's what the Amazing Mumford used to say. He had some sweet eyebrows, and a sweet stache too if you wanna go there. Have no idea who I'm speaking of? Well you may just want to google him. He was.... amazing. This week we crush the hopes and dreams of everyone else who even THINKS of making podcasts. That's how good this is. Well, maybe. Ok, let's be serious, there's probably like maybe one or two other ones that come close. THANKX FER LISTENIN.... "TELL EM ALL"

Episode 18 is available for download HERRRRRRRRRRRRE right now! and later today on iTunes. It's free, check it out. Subscribe and tell yer boys. Bumbaclot.

*********ALSO****************
IF YOU'RE A FREQUENT LISTENER OF ROCKNOWLEDGY YOU MAY HAVE HEARD THE T-6000 EXPLAIN A CONTEST OVER THE OUTRO THE LAST TWO WEEKS. WELL WE HAVE OUR WINNER OF THE "DRAW WHAT YOU THINK THE T-6000 LOOKS LIKE" CONTEST AND HIS NAME IS COCK ROBINSON. HE DREW THE T-6000 AS SORT OF A CROSS BETWEEN DEBBIE HARRY AND H.A.L. FROM 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. VERY COOL. HE WINS THE PRIZE PACK. COCK ROBINSON, CALL THE HOTLINE AND LEAVE ME SOME SHIPPING INFO. EVERYONE ELSE, ENJOY HIS PIC OF THE T-6000.

Episode 18 playlist:
T-6000 intro,
Diamond Head- The Prince,
The Lyres- I Wanna Help You Ann,
Violent Femmes- Dance Motherfucker Dance!,
Status Quo- Caroline,
Descendants- My World,
Make-Up- Born On The Floor,
Destroyer- The Sublimation Hour,
Golden- Ma Petite Est Mariée,
(Smog)- Bloodflow,
The Flying Burrito Brothers- Can't Ya Hear Me Calling,
Mercyful Fate- Charon,
The Specials- Do Nothing,
T-6000- Outro,
Joey Ramone- Stop Thinking About It

Rocknowledgy episode 17 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!!

2011-12-05T16:01:00.004-05:00

Alahoyus YALLLL. This is episode 17. Feeling like an animal and laying around on a heating pad all week after getting in a wreck, Valient decides to wreck your ears with some crushing jams this week. He is good, his back and neckbone have been better. But he will LIVE to rock again!! Posi vibes to you guys from Valient and the T-6000. Here we go!

Rocknowledgy is available NOW RIGHT HERE!! and later today on iTunes!!!

Episode 17 Playlist:
intro by T-6000,
Budgie- Breadfan,
The Soft Boys- Insanely Jealous,
Bad Brains- Stay Close To Me,
Radio Birdman- Aloha Steve and Danno,
Jimmy and Johnny- I Can't Find The Doorknob,
Deadguy- Pins and Needles,
Honey & The Bees- Love Addict,
Ram Jam- Let It All Out,
Blonde Redhead- Chi e' e non e',
Devo- Buttered Beauties,
We Ragazzi- I Forever Surrender 2 U,
T2- In Circles,
Standstill- Ride Down The Slope,
T-6000 outro,
Judas Priest- One For The Road

bad/awesome flixxx review: Barbarella (1968)

2011-12-04T12:56:00.007-05:00

"And our password will be... Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch." - Dildano

"Then you're a dead duck. - Guards! To the Mathmos with this winged fruitcake." - the Great Tyrant

"An angel does not make love, an angel *is* love." - Pygar

"This is a much too poetic way to die." - Barbarella

Unbewievable. Jane Fonda was a goddamn fox in this. This is an irrefutable fact. Pretty much there isn't anything else to say. Its basically all about how fucking hot she is. Like twenty other chicks turned this role down. And I'm SO glad they did. I'm not sure any of them could have played this as well. Fonda has oft been quoted as wishing she didn't do it only because she turned down roles in Rosemary's Baby and something else that were hits, while this flopped. But fuck that. If this was the only flick she ever made, it would've went down in history. Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, and a ton of French dudes in BARBARELLA!!!

Imagine Heavy Metal (the animated movie) coming to life. Well it did. Sort of. Barbarella was a French comic strip that came way before Heavy Metal. Jane Fonda just so happened to be married to director Roger Vadim, so after Brigette Bardot (his wife before her) turned it down, I guess he talked her into it. And guess who produced it? That's right! Probably the baddest ass producer of all time! Dino De Laurentiis. Barbarella is pretty much like a female version of Flash Gordon. Funnily enought Dino ended up directing a cinematic version of Flash Gordon about 15 years later as well. BINGO! So Barbarella is some kind of space agent or intergalactic ambassador from Earth dispatched to do a bit of dirty business. And NO not that kind of dirty business. Even though she ends up doing that kind. She never even had before if I understand it correctly. Well not like our dirty minds think of it anyway. Let me start over.

In the future, A drop dead gorgeous space ranger named Barbarella does a strip tease and then gets a call from the space president of Earth. He says, listen, go to the city of SoGo (I guess a reference to Sodom/Gomorra) where everyone is wicked and bring back this dude named Duran Duran (no shit). Duran Duran has built some kind of space laser, which surprises Barbarella because apparently in the year 40,000 AD they haven't used weapons in a long time. Also they haven't used sex. Which brings me to the dirty stuff. Apparently on Earth now they eat a pill and place hands together and somehow psychically bang each other. So Barbarella flies her spaceship to some planet called Tau Ceti. It kind of looks like Hoth with all the ice and snow. Two creepy twins hit her on the head with an ice snowball and take her to a place where other kids are. The kids try to sic their biting dolls on her but luckily she's rescued by this dude named Mark Hand "The Catchman". The Catchman is this tough dude who goes around collecting bad kids I guess. The name would have scared the shit out of me as a kid. "Watch out for the Catchman!" Anyway, he talks Barbarella into fucking him the ol fashioned way as a reward. TIGHT!! Then he fixes her ship and she splits.

Then Barbarella's ship drills into the planet like in the old cartoons. But then it breaks down again near some kind of underground labyrinth. Then she gets knocked out by a landslide. Then a blind angel named Pygar finds her. Pygar has lost his will to fly. His boss, some old wizard Professor Ping promises to fix Barbarella's ship. Then some Black Guards try to kill her. Pygar saves her, and then she bangs him. She digs him you can tell. So when she wakes up in his nest, he's all flying around because her vagina gave him the will to LIVE (and to fly)! So she talks him into flying them out of the labyrinth which is like a prison of punishment for people who are cast out of the wicked city. Which I don't understand. If you're supposed to be wicked, does that mean those who are cast out are all good? It seems that way. Anyway, they have to destroy the Black Guards in these funny spaceships with weapons the president sent Barbarella from the weapons archive. So they get there, and these rapers wanna rape Barbarella (rapers wanna rape, ha!) but she's saved by this hot one-eyed chick who calls her "pretty pretty", which I think is a great thing to call chicks. Then Barbarella saves Pygar from some thugs. Then this dude named the Concierge traps them and takes them to meet the ruler of SoGo who is called the Great Tyrant. Turns out the Great Tyrant is the same one eyed chick, except she has 2 eyes. And she's bangin. She wants to fuck either of them, but they turn her down. SoGo is set atop a weird sentient lake called the Mathmos which is alive and feeds on evil. Barbarella is sent to die by birds, and Pygar is sent to the Mathmos. Barbarella is rescued by a front of dudes (a rebellion) headed by a guy named DILDANO (!) Ol Dildano wants a reward, but HE actually wants to bang with the pill like the Earthlings do. Barbarella splits to try to help the rebellion and is caught by the Concierge again while she is smoking some 'ESSENCE OF MAN' (yeah seriously).

The Concierge tries to play a piano that actually fucks Barbarella to death, but her love-making is so good that she burns the machine out. The Concierge is so pissed that he reveals he is Duran Duran aged over 25 years by the Mathmos. That means he's FULL of evil. Dildano gave Barbarella an invisible key to get in the chamber of dreams to kill her which is the only time she is vulnerable. Duran Duran fakes allegiance to get access to the chamber and then locks Barbarella in with the Tyrant and goes to take over SoGo for himself. Then the rebellion happens, but Duran Duran uses his Positronic Ray to blast everyone. But unluckily for him, the Great Tyrant releases the Mathmos from inside the chamber and all of SoGo is swallowed up forever... except Barbarella and the immediate things around her. They are vomited up by the Mathmos because of her inherent goodness. Ditto for Pygar. And then Pygar flies both chicks out of there. Barbarella asks him why he saves the Tyrant, and he SAYS its because "angels have no memory" but really, I think he wasn't blind at all, and just wanted to bang both of them at the same time. You know the Tyrant was down. Should you watch this? If you are a lover of women and science fiction, you should own this. Are you a man or a mouse?

bad/awesome flixxx review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

2011-12-03T20:58:00.003-05:00

"You are here because the outside world rejects you. THIS is your family. *I* am your father. I want you all to become full members of the Foot. There is a new enemy: freaks of nature who interfere with our business. You are my eyes and ears; find them. Together we will punish these creatures. These... turtles." - Shredder

"This is great. First it was The Farm That Time Forgot and now this. Why don't I ever fall in with people who own condos? Probably hard to get good maid service in a sewer. Maybe you guys should try Roto Rooter, huh? " - Casey Jones

"Wise man say forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza." - Michaelangelo

I don't know about you guys, but this flick holds up. Who doesn't like ninjas, and pizza? Those 2 things alone as a premise have held together lesser movies. But this one has that and much more. Not mere ninjas, but young ones, young mutated ninja ones, young mutated ninja turtle ones. Beat that, and you're just slinging adjectives together. This movie may only be topped by its own first sequel TMNT 2: SECRET OF THE OOZE (which hopefully we'll be discussing soon enough). Clearly because that one has something this one doesn't: Vanilla Ice. But this one does have Casey Jones and April O'Neil and Splinter and the boys, and ol Oroku Saki himself, the Shredder. Sit back, order some pie, and check out TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES!!!

How appropriate that my roommates are building a patio outback and cranking what seems to be the greatest alternative radiohits of the 90s on a Jango station (Pandora clone). I've been sitting here laying on the heating pad all afternoon reliving some of the worst jams that I'd NEVER admit to having listened to back then beginning around the time this movie came out, when I was in the 5th grade. I'm laying on said heating pad because some asshole rear-ended me and totally totaled my Jeep 2 nights ago as I was leaving the Hurricanes game. BUMMER. But anyway, at least I have stacks and stacks of VHS to keep me happy. Also a very clean pair of sweatpants. But... I'm revealing too much. For my first feature-length fiasco I chose TMNT. This one was always near and dear to me. Straight from the pages of the Eastman and Laird comics, to the cartoon, to saying "DAMN" on the big screen, these turtles were the first comic/cartoon/movie guys I'd seen that got to say "DAMN" since Ultra Magnus on the 1st cartoon TRANSFORMERS THE MOVIE. That in itself made some moms reluctant to let their sons go see it, but having a dad that "spun webs of profanity that may still be lingering in some kind of giant web over the greater metropolitan area of Charlotte, North Carolina", this seemed like a harmless attribute.

Reporter April O'Neil starts telling tales of a gang of baddies stealing all the tv's and radio's and other good stuff from 1990 NYC. The leader of the gang of young runaway boys is a mean dude named Shredder. He decides to shut her up for good. But a turtle with a red bandana on his eyes rescues her to recover his weapon he lost the night before saving her. He takes her back to his "lair" where all his buds, the teenage mutant ninja turtles live. They are ruled by a giant rat named Splinter. The rat found them in the sewer where some nuclear waste was falling on their heads and it got on him too. So then they grew into funny looking puppets, and learned to dance, and eat pizza and jinjitsu. They are followed by a gang member. So the turtles take April back to her house, but when they get back home, Splinter has been kidnapped. They also meet this dude who beats people up with sporting goods named Casey Jones.

So the son of April boss is one of the bad guy teens, but he feels remorse and actually sees one of the turtles. When he runs away again, he meets Splinter in the bad guy hideout which looked cool as hell really. If I was a teen, I would've hung there. They had an arcade version of NARC and a bunch of other classic video games, and a skatepark that had a weird loop that went around through the whole place. There are tons of those now, but not back in 1990. Anyway, Splinter tells him that when he was a little rat, he sliced up Oroku Saki's face and that's why he became the Shredder. He also says Shredder killed his master. Meanwhile, the turtles get ambushed and the building is caught on fire so they escape to a farm that April's family must have owned upstate, and Raphael is in a coma for a while.

Ok, so April wants to bang Casey Jones (can you blame him for doing it?) Raphael snaps out of it. April gets fired. The turtles trip in the woods and see a vision of Splinter. They head back to town to whoop Shredder's ass. They fight the foot clan throughout their lair, then all the way through town til they find Shredder. Then they can't seem to win even though they are giving it their all. Then Splinter shows up, talks shit to Shredder and Shredder gets pissed and runs at him. Splinter grabs some nunchuks and makes Shredder fall off and hang by a thread, and then fall into a trash compactor. Then the turtles dance some more. Should you see this? Fuck yes, if you haven't EVER seen it, then go find a copy. You probably can find one for 50 cents in a thrift shop. There are more copies of this on vhs than copies of Star Trek the movie, and if you're an avid thrift shopper you know that's about the most findable movie of all time. TWO FUNNY THINGS: Corey Feldman did the voice of Donatello- which is awesome cuz of his line in THE 'BURBS ("Hey Pizza Dude!"), and Sam Rockwell makes a weird cameo as a young leader of the foot clan kids. Weird shit.

Rocknowledgy episode 16 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!!

2011-11-28T17:17:00.004-05:00

Happy Post Turkey Day jubilations Thorriors and Rocknowledgists! Valient Himself and the T-6000 have cooked up a big fucking bird of a show and we're about to stuff it in yer inbox (if you know what we're talking about)! Gather to together and give thanx for heavy jams. Across the board- we love you. your best friend, Valient Himself

This episode can be downloaded HEEEEEEEERRRRRE and later today on iTunes!!! thanx!

Episode 16 Playlist:

Intro by T-6000,
Ten Years After- Speed Kills,
Imperial State Electric- Deja Vu,
The Atlantics- Lonelyhearts,
Master's Apprentices- Barefoot When I Saw Her,
The Third Power- Persecution,
Gentle Giant- Wreck,
Cyril Neville- Gossip,
Frank Black- The Vanishing Spies,
Ray Wylie Hubbard- (Up Against the Wall) Redneck Mother,
Sacred Steel- Stormhammer,
Pleasure Seekers- What A Way To Die,
Rollins Band- Volume 4,
RKL- Beautiful Feeling part 3,
Bang- The Queen,
outro by T-6000,
Tones On Tail- Go! (club mix)

Bad/awesome flixxx review: What Comes Around (1986)

2011-11-26T19:29:00.007-05:00

"I told you! It was little. It was green, and it was ugly! I'm gonna change my shoes." - Big Jay.
"You better change your pants." - Tom

"It ain't hid Joe. You think I stole this money? I ain't my money. I ain't your money either. It's... It's OUR money, Joe." - Leon

"So Leon has been stealin' from me. I believe that means I've got one comin' ain't it big 'en?" - Joe

Well, its no secret, I've always loved Jerry Reed. From his appearance on Scooby Doo that I saw when I was maybe 5 years old, to SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, to his music, to all the other later flicks he was involved with. This one however was a weird one. Its probably not that well known because he made and funded it himself. Wrote it, produced it, and what have you. Or maybe its not that well known because its not very good. That's not to say that its horrible. Its just instead of the yuck em up country comedies that he's known for, this could potentially have been like a dude version of a Lifetime movie about an alcoholic singer who's been bamboozled by his shady manager for 25 years. Jerry Reed, Bo Hopkins, and Barry Corbin in WHAT COMES AROUND!!!

**********UPDATE*************
I FOUND A TRAILER FOR "WHAT COMES AROUND" ON ANOTHER CHARTER ENTERTAINMENT MOVIE ENTITLED "NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE", AND THEN I RECORDED IT WITH MY PHONE AND UPLOADED IT, SO HERE YA GO, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, THE VERY RARE TRAILER FOR "WHAT COMES AROUND".

There's a handful of really bad things Jerry Reed did there around the mid 80s that didn't get the funding it really needed. One that comes to mind is CONCRETE COWBOYS that was released as RAMBLING MAN with Tom Selleck. This was a few years later, but looks like about the same budget. LOW. Anyway, WHAT COMES AROUND is the story of Joe Hawkins. The flick starts out in 1954 at a little country bar, and the band playing is trying to swing a little more bread out of the manager who is killing it at the door and the bar, because the place is slammed. The sleazeball greasy manager asks the owner for some more bread and gets it. He tells the band that he didn't get anything and a knockdown dragout ensues betwixt all the patrons, emptying out the joint and even knocking the new sign out front down onto someone's sweet (what looks to be) 1953 Buick. The sleazy manager Leon (Corbin) then heads to the sticks and tells this country family that he's got a record contract for their oldest son in Nashville. The little brother is sad that his brother is leaving.

Fast forward to 1979, the 25th anniversary of Joe Hawkins career. Whatever swindling Leon did must have paid off, because Joe is flown in by private jet to Nashville and its quickly put out there that he is overworked and sticks to a heavy regiment of drugs and alcohol. But Leon keeps pushing even at the concern of everyone around him. After his brother Tom sees him flop on national television on a talk show, Tom's wife urges Tom to do something about the condition of his big brother. Tom runs a race car team and garage. Apparently over the years Joe lent him the money, but Tom has done good for himself and paid him back. After it weighs on his mind for a bit, Tom decides to go check on his big bro. When he gets there, Joe is taping his 25th anniversary special. He's nailing the songs, but blowing the "lines" that he was supposed to learn. He is on the brink of exhaustion, but happy to see his lil bro. On the way back to the stage, he collapses, and Tom cusses Leon out before splitting so that he doesn't freak and beat the shit out of him.

At this point, Tom devises a plan to get their buddy Big Jay who works on an ambulance to help him kidnap Joe by blackmailing Jay. Jay is on probation but is a bookie out at the tracks, which violates his probation and probably numerous other laws. So Jay does all this against his will, and gets tricked into staying out and helping rehabilitate Joe. Leon gets pissed and hires a PI to try and find Joe. Tom does some investigating of his own and finds out that Leon has been using Joe and snaking his bread for years including putting 8 mil into an off shore account in his own name. BOGUS.

So the movie wraps up after Joe is pissed and goes through all kinds of withdrawal and denial and slaps his lil bro, and then feels bad about it, and feels bad for himself, and then finally snaps out of it, and does some running out in the woods. Then they catch the PI, throw him in the latrine (shitter) and then they basically get revenge on the manager by boozing him up, and throwing pills all over the car and crashing it into his restaurant. I'm gonna call out WEAK ENDING. For some reason I wanted Joe to get his money back. But whatever, you do get some cool Jerry Reed footage jamming on a big stage. It's 80s footage of a guy doing some weird material, but if you're a fan, you'll dig it.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Stone Cold (1991)

2011-11-25T22:13:00.004-05:00

"This may be a rag to the walking dead out there, but *this* is my flag, my cross, my church. And these colors don't run... If they hit the ground even in a fight, I will peel your skin off with a knife dipped in shit." - Chains

"The devil was a rebel angel. If you want to fuck with the living, you'll have to learn to fuck with the dead!" - Chains

"Imagine the future, Chains, 'cause you're not in it." - John Stone

Now THIS is more like it! In the "tough cop" action genre a la COBRA, we have ex football player Brian Bosworth in his first (and last) starring role. The Boz is a great cheezeball action hero and the flick has an amazing supporting cast. William Forsythe and Lance Henrikson! Also Sam Macmurray (who was in RAISING ARIZONA with Forsythe) plays the Boz's partner. This movie is significant to me for a few reasons: #1, I've never seen Lance Henrikson smile in any other movie. He does in this one, until he shaves his mustache off, and then its back to snarling and frowning. And #2, while watching, I realized even though it's not mentioned at all on the IMDB or the Wiki page for this movie, its a direct remake of the Australian movie STONE (1974). Its rewritten a bit, but it is totally a remake. Undercover cop named Stone infiltrates motorcycle gang. In this one he's trying to nail the gang who may kill a politician, in the original he's trying to save the gang from someone who killed a politician. So- all of that and more in STONE COLD!!!

Just like Stallone in COBRA, this one starts out with a robbery in a grocery store. And just like Stallone, the Boz delivers punishment and has to face a mad sergeant after its over and there's tons of damage, to which he replies: "cleanup on aisle 4." Cute. There are certain rules you should follow when robbing a place of business. #1 LOCK THE FUCKING DOORS. If you aren't going to keep a lookout up front so that unsuspecting badass off duty cops can just roll right in, you may wanna lock the doors, and pretend like they're closed. #2 DON'T CALL EACH OTHER BY YOUR REAL NAMES. Yelling out "hey charlie, go see what's up!" isn't doing anything to protect your identity. Make up a code name or something. Like the dudes in the motorcycle gang. CHAINS! Are you serious? When I was in middle school, we used to laugh about what the best jail name would be. "Snake" would be the obvious choice, but what about "Knife"? Maybe with no "k". Just "Nife". I remember my buddy Myron used to say his would be "Chains", and we would laugh uncontrollably. But I guess that is a viable option. The first thing you see is the robbers looking into the video camera that is watching them and one (the leader) yells "YEAH, LET'S GO!!" And then he starts machine gunning an end cap of Ritz crackers! That's how you start a movie!

He's just machine-gunning away and then he yells "I LOVE IT!!", and his buddy yells, "YEAH! BIG FUN!!" HA! No shit! That is seriously what came out of his mouth. Ok, so totally oblivious to what is going on, the Boz rolls in and starts eating chocolate off the shelf. When one of the robbers sticks a shotgun up to his temple, he fucking elbows him and blows him away. Then he blows another one away, and then the last guy slips on some syrup and flies upside down back first into a huge display of cans. Awesome. Then the Boz splits after taking them out. He's already on suspension for using to much force or destroying too much shit a la DIRTY HARRY. But the feds make him an offer that they won't let him refuse. Yep- blackmail. If he doesn't infiltrate a local Mississippi motorcycle mob that reportedly killed a preacher they'll turn his 2 week paid suspension into a 6 month suspension with no pay. Bummer. So he bites.

The Boz invents John Stone and befriends the head of the gang Chains (Henrikson) much to the dismay of untrusting Ice (Forsythe). The gang is wild as Hell and they have wild motorcycle gang parties that look like they're more out of the 60s than now. The titty bar they hang at is called Tit For Tat. I don't know why I thought that was relevant. Stone goes through initiation in the gang by "murdering" someone that betrayed the "Brotherhood". Instead of really killing him, they just ship him off to wherever he's from and tattoo his ear tat on a fake ear. Then they steal a bunch of drugs that Stone hooks them up with to gain their trust. Ice figures out Stone is a cop and that gets him "iced". Yeah. Then Stone convinces Nancy- his bitch that was given to him by Chains- to turn evidence on the gang. The goal that the Brotherhood has in mind is to get their buddy off of death row and kill the governor who is seeking the death penalty against their boy.

In the end, the og guy Stone was supposed to kill shows back up, rats Stone out, and then they kill Nancy to hurt Stone. Then they plan to strap a bomb to Stone and drop him into the courthouse during the trial to blow it up by helicopter. Stone escapes though and fights the pilot and gets the chopper low enough to jump out. Chains dressed like a priest knifes someone and starts a ruckus in the courtroom. In the scuffle the governor is killed. But then Stone starts killing everyone. He lets a motorcycle charge him, then pulls a matador and the motorcycle flies out the window and lands inside the helicopter blowing it all the Hell. Stone then beats up Chains, and he's taken into custody, but he gets a cops pistol and almost kills Stone til his pussy-ass partner pulls a gun and blows Chains away. End of story. Should you? Hell yeah. Its a great, cheesy, action sandwich.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Super Mario Bros. (1993)

2011-11-23T17:38:00.004-05:00

"Do you know what I love about mud? It's clean and it's dirty at the same time." - King Koopa

"Hand out the devolution guns! Prepare for destiny!... Where's my pizza?" - Koopa

"Oh, Daniella! I promised to take her to Wrestlemania." - Mario

OH MAN. WOW. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. Look, I know a few weeks back, I watched MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, and proclaimed it was THE most godawful movie that had come out perhaps in my lifetime here on Earth. Well, I was SORELY mistaken. I'm not sure I can COUNT how many ridiculous things are totally and completely wrong with this flick. Let's just take the MOST obvious- Bob FUCKING Hoskins is ENGLISH! And John Leguizamo is COLUMBIAN!!! I know they're actors, but could we have at least gotten ITALIANS?? Or even Italian Americans?? I just don't understand it. I mean, really when it comes down to it, it had a pretty insane cast. DENNIS HOPPER as KING KOOPA???? No WAY! He fucking BLEW it! All of those dudes and a small cameo role by Lance Henrikson as the Mushroom King in SUPER MARIO BROS.!!!!

I wanted to leave the SPINAL TAP-esque two word review: Shit Sandwich. But that wouldn't even do it justice on how bad this is. I LOVE bad movies. But for some reason, the choices made on this flick look like they were made by someone who had NEVER even played the games once. So a long time ago a meteor hit the Earth and split it into two mirrored dimensions. All the dinosaurs went into one dimension and evolved, and we lived here and evolved up from apes and simians. Fast forward to the late 70s, and this chick is running through the rain and she leaves a baby with a crystal around its neck on some nun's doorstep. Then she climb into the sewer and dies in a time warp or something.

Fast forward to now, and we have two "down on their luck" plumbers in New York. As Luigi explains it, Mario adopted him when he was little, and their names are Mario Mario, and Luigi Mario. They keep getting their jobs snaked by this guy Scappelli. Luigi is fascinated with conspiracy shows and tabloid rags that talk about aliens and shit. They lose a job but Luigi scopes this chick who is protesting a Scappelli job that's digging near where her college is digging for rare dino bones. Luigi gets some balls together and asks her out. They double date with Mario and then they split off. She takes him to see the sight and they catch some Scappelli goons digging around and sabotaging her work. They run back to get Mario to rescue them. Mario comes and makes it happen for them and they go deep into the excavation work. Then they get knocked out by these 2 goons named Iggy and Spike (who are supposed to be Koopa's sons, but they call them "cousins"). The cousins kidnap Daisy. Ok, then Mario and Luigi wake up and here Daisy screaming from inside a wall. Luigi dives into it because the wall looks like you could dive into it like water. Then Mario basically is forced to follow even though he is reluctant.

When they get to the other dimension, they see all manner of weird shit. The streets are packed with people who are growling at them, and these huge dudes in red coats with small heads. I guess these are supposed to be the turtles? Even though they say "goomba" which is a different bad guy all together. These guys look like they were made from the movie. Mojo Nixon has a cameo as "Toad" (who is an extremely short mushroom guy in the games, but a giant rockabilly dude turned red coat small head in the flick. BOGUS). These guys are turned into their forms by being "devolved" by some Koopa's technology. That's the only cool part of the flick. The Devolution. Iggy and Spike take Daisy to Koopa who asks where's the crystal around her neck. They being idiots, lost it. Koopa needs it to merch both worlds so he can take over. Everything about his world has been built to promote him. He turned "Princess" Daisy's father into a fungus that grows all over their world and hands out Bob-ombs to people and tries to give them mushrooms. Mario got one AND HE DIDN'T EVEN EAT IT!!! Wouldn't it have made sense to make him grow giant in size like in the goddamn games??? Why the fuck would you leave that part out?!?! My little brother could have made this movie better and he's 10. He could've made it better when he was 7!!

Ok, so I'm not going to bother to tell you what happens, because it doesn't even fucking matter. Yoshi makes a cameo as his small little dino self. There is one more part that really bothers me. There was this chick hanging out with King Koopa. They never even really say what her name is. They tried to, but you couldn't make it out. And she was supposed to be in charge. She was like Koopa's right hand, and he left her in charge of Daisy and everything. Then she got fucked up or eaten or who cares, but really: WHO THE FUCK WAS SHE? They don't even list her in the cast on the wiki. But she had a significant part in the movie. She had a ton of speaking lines. Look- even if you told me her name, SHE WASN'T IN THE VIDEO GAMES. None of them. Not a one. Why would you just make up some no name character?? Why was this film even made? Also- the soundtrack? Divinyls, Roxette, and MEGADETH. But could you pick out their song? Nope. Should you watch this? That depends... Do I hate you? If yes, then yes. Are you my friend? If yes, then stay away. Stay very away. (I mean) very far away.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Death Wish II (1982)

2011-11-23T15:54:00.004-05:00

"You believe in Jesus?...Well, you're gonna meet him." - Paul Kersey

"I read about that... I'll give you three minutes before I sound the alarm... You're wasting time." - Orderly

"He saved our lives dammit! Where were you, giving out parking tickets?" - Rescued citizen

He's back. With a vengeance. Paul Kersey is living in Los Angeles five years after being run out of New York City when it was discovered he'd been conducting business as a badass vigilante. He wasn't prosecuted because the DA of NYC considered what he did a good thing. But sometimes bad things just keep on happening to good people. Paul Kersey is just about the unluckiest sonofabitch there ever was. with a cameo by a young Lawrence Fishburne (similar to the cameo of Jeff Goldblum in the original) its back to business as usual in DEATH WISH II!!!!

So this time Paul Kersey is hanging out with this reporter chick in Los Angeles. His daughter has been receiving some successful rehabilitation here and she is managing to request food for the first time in five years. Kersey still thinks that this is little progress, but is happy to have his little girl back as she is released into his custody in the beginning of the flick. Paul, his daughter and his girl go to a carnival. Paul goes to get the girls some ice cream but is mugged by 5 gang dudes. He chases one down and demands his wallet, but the guy doesn't have it. He lies to the girls and says he forgot his wallet, but his girl knows he's full of shit. He just didn't want to upset his daughter.

So the reporter girl goes to interview the governor or something about the death penalty, and Paul and his daughter take a boat ride. The gang members get his address from his wallet and go to rob his house. They gang rape his housekeeper and when he comes home, they knock him out, kill the maid, and kidnap his daughter. One of the gang dudes rapes his daughter and when he gets up, she jumps up, runs past them all, jumps out of a window and falls to her death becoming impaled on a sharp fence down below. HEINOUS!! Its one of those moments where you yell out, "OH SHIT!!" or "FUCKIN SHIT!!" or something like that. The cops tell Paul about his daughter but he says it'll be no use. He turns down one of the cops offers to come down and try to identify some perps, feigning super bummedoutness (to which he may actually be). He digs his pistol out of his closet and there's where we know shit is about to get good.

After the funeral he rents an apartment downtown under a false name. He then hunts down and spots one of the muggers going to a drug deal. He kills a guy, tells the others to split and then cold murders the guy "Stomper". No idea how he really just runs up on this dude. I guess is a bit lucky after all. Then miraculously the next day when he's out and about patrolling the city, he hears some dudes fucking with a lady. He kills 2 of the 4 and wounds another which is the guy he chased after for his wallet that day. Then he chases them to a warehouse and kills that guy too. The cops start to suspect they have a vigilante on their hands. They reach out to other cities that have had similar problems because some guy trying to get reelected wants the citizens to feel safe. So they call up old Lt Frank from the first movie to go in and look for Kersey, almost blackmailing him into doing the work. They do that because they don't want him to reveal that he'd already been caught and let go by NYC years before cuz that would look bad on them. So Frank has to go in.

Frank breaks into Paul's girl's pad and spills the beans on him. Paul discounts all of it, and says Frank is crazy. Paul spots the last 3 muggers in the park. Frank follows him. Paul is about to kill them, but then is almost killed. Frank shouts out to help and is gunned down by the muggers. Paul kills 2 of them but one gets away, and then he kills some other gun runner dude. He asks Frank why he helped him, and he says better you than them. He then makes Paul promise to kill the son of a bitch and then he croaks. Paul splits, badly injured Fishburne rats out the mugger who looks like John C. Reilly. Paul's girlfriend tells him that the cops are about to go get the JCReilly lookalike and mentions the location. He goes to try to get him first but is unsuccessful. The dude goes all Lou Ferigano on them and I joke and say he's on PCP, and it ends up that I was right. He's just lifting pigs off the ground left and right. NUTS! He is sent to a psycho tank, and Paul's girl goes to interview him, she's denied but Paul is able to steal a doctor's ID. He asks the chick to marry him, and then goes to kill the last guy. He goes in, fights and is stabbed a shitload of times, but in the end, JCReilly lookalike punches a shock treatment machine and Kersey turns up the juice electrocuting him. He's then busted, but the orderly "gives him three steps" before he ringing the alarm. Unluckily for him (or an easy way out, no telling what he really wanted) his old lady sees a scanned copy of the ID and hears a radio bulletin about the murder of the inmate. She leaves the engagement ring and splits. A few months later his boss invites him to a party or something after work asking if he can come, to which he replies, "what else would I be doing?" Same big smile. I think this was a pretty great sequel, seeing as how it took them 8 years to make it. Might have been better without the HUGE break in between, but still pretty good.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Death Wish (1974)

2011-11-21T17:29:00.004-05:00

"I mean, if we're not pioneers, what have we become? What do you call people who, when they're faced with a condition or fear, do nothing about it, they just run and hide?" - Paul Kersey

"The underprivileged are beating our goddamned brains out. You know what I say? Stick them in concentration camps, that's what I say." - Ames Jainchill

"GODDAMN BOY. You... You just hit that thing right on the bullseye! - Ames Jainchill

Now we're talking. I don't know how many times you guys have seen this flick, or how many of the sequels you ever watched, but they're worth it. Charles Bronson is one of THE American cinema badasses. Maybe my favorite. He was sort of typecast as a killer, but it never seemed to get old, because he seemed to BE a killer. I remember a story from like 05, or 06 where somebody we met had dated his daughter. Imagine that shit. Having to go "meet the parents" and the dad being Chuck B!! Come to think of it, that may have made the movie MEET THE PARENTS a whole lot heavier! Anyway, this is the same story you get in a lot of vigilante folk tales: THE PUNISHER (Frank Castle), WALKING TALL (Buford Pusser), LETHAL WEAPON, & even BATMAN, THE CROW, & MAX PAYNE. Most of these guys have someone in their families raped and/or murdered, and then they go to get revenge. Well DEATH WISH is the story of Paul Kersey, and its no different. People like it because people want justice, and A LOT of the time, we don't get that with the police and/or the courts. Produced by (badass in his own right) Dino De Laurentiis and starring Charles Bronson and in his first on screen appearance, a cameo by Jeff Goldblum in DEATH WISH!!!

Paul Kersey is an architect. A man who is not necessarily "1% rich", but definitely more well off than the average citizen. That was true in the 70s, and is definitely true today. The film starts of while Paul and his wife are on vacation. When they return home, while Paul is at work, his wife and daughter go to the supermarket and buy some groceries. They give their address to the clerk to deliver the groceries, and 3 hooligans (one of them a young Jeff Goldblum) overhear the address and follow them home. Thinking that its the delivery man with their groceries, the daughter lets them in and they go apeshit demanding money. When they only find 7 bucks, they get pissed and beat and rape them both. Its a disturbing scene. Paul gets a call at work from his son and rushes to the hospital.

When he gets there, they say the daughter is in shock, and she's been sedated, and his wife has passed away. They tell him there's little chance they'll find the crooks. His boss sends him on vacation to hang out with a client in Tuscon. The guy is a real shitkicker who has a movie set down there where they reenact old cowboy shenanigans. I guess Kersey is inspired by what he sees. He reveals nothing for a time to the client who thinks him a bleeding heart liberal. Kersey doesn't disagree. The client jabs him this way and that and claims to be really tough. He takes Paul to a gun range and he blasts a bullseye with his first bullet and the guy almost shits himself. Then he tries other guns. When he splits back to NYC, the guy slips a pistol in his bag as a little southwest meets northeast aggression present... and because he probably sympathizes with him.

When he gets back, his lil girl is so faded they basically have to put her in a home. Paul finds the revolver and goes for a walk out in the night almost going to a shady place on purpose. A mugger goes after him, and pulls a .38 on him, but Paul pulls the trigger first and kills the guy. He's so freaked out that he splits fast, heads for his house and pukes when the realization of what he's done sinks in. But it must have gotten good to him, because he pulls the same shit the next night, blowing away 3 muggers who are after an old lady in an alley. The media catch onto the vigilante and the cops have no idea where to look. But one dude is really smart and starts the investigation looking for someone who lost someone and narrows it down to a certain area. Meanwhile Kersey keeps killing. Some dudes on the subway, and he gets away scot-free. Then he starts baiting muggers in a coffee shop and when a few take that bait, he goes for them in a subway again, but one knifes him in the shoulder.

The Lt figures out that Paul is the killer, but the DA tells him that crime is down and citizens are happy. So they say to watch him and tell him to leave and not come back. So he starts trying to scare Kersey but it doesn't work. He keeps tabs on him though. He goes after 3 more muggers, and one of them shoots him and he wakes up in the hospital. He wakes up to the Lt, telling him he's gotta "get outta town", to which Kersey replies, "by sundown?" He then splits and gets his job to transfer him to Chicago. When he gets there, in the train station he notices some thugs fucking with this chick. He goes to help her, and the thugs gesture like "fuck you" to him, and he just points his finger at them like a gun with a huge smile on his face. CLASSIC! Watching the second one next. Highly recommended. One of those must see deals.

Rocknowledgy episode 15 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!!

2011-11-21T16:47:00.001-05:00

Valient Himself and the T-6000 rock you once again. This week, Valient throws out some peeps you can follow on twitter to keep up with newsworthy events, and dedicates some tracks to freedom upholders. Keep dreaming the dream yall.
Episode 15 can be downloaded here NOW, and iTunes later today....

Episode 15 Playlist:
intro by T-6000,
Cherry Valence- Two Headed Woman,
Rose Tattoo- Astra Wally,
Midnight Circus- Get It,
Morly Grey- Peace Officer,
Single Frame Ashtray- The Slip,
Fela Kuti- Sorrow, Tears, & Blood,
Doug Sahm- (Is Anybody Goin to) San Antone,
The Eyes- Man with Money (Everly Brothers cover),
Roky Erickson- Clear Night For Love,
Funkadelic- Music for My Mother,
Party of Helicopters- The Toucher,
Circle Jerks- I Wanna Destroy You (Soft Boys cover),
outro by T-6000,
Chain and the Gang- Reparations

bad/awesome flixxx review: Repo Men (2010)

2011-11-19T21:01:00.006-05:00

"At the end, a job is not just a job, is who you are, and if wanna change who you are, you have to change what you do..." - Remy

"My job is simple. Can't pay for your car, the bank takes it back. Can't pay for your house, the bank takes it back. Can't pay for your liver, well, that's where I come in." - Remy

"Almost every job I do ends the exact same way. Some whimper. Some cry. Some even laugh. But in the end, they all do the same horizontal mambo, twitching and thrusting their way into the great beyond." - Remy

I had no desire to see this flick, but upon watching a few scenes on a friend's computer, I decided it was totally worth it, based on the premise. Pretty simple plot, but put together complexly enough. Personally I figured out what was going to happen about 5 minutes into only because I've read a ton of Philip K. Dick books, and it also had a MINORITY REPORT feel (also written by Dick). Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Liev Schreiber, and cameos by John Leguizamo & the RZA in REPO MEN!!!

Its the year 2525, and Jude Law works for this company who will replace your liver, lungs, pancreas, eyes, kidneys, heart, and basically whatever else- for a price. Then they wait 90 days, and they have a little timer inside of them, and if you can't pay. Bang, they come back and "repo" the replacement parts from you. He grew up with Forest Whitaker and they used to fight each other, and actually STILL fuck with each other. But they are best homies. Jude Law's wife hates his job and she's always busting his balls to take a desk job instead of basically murdering people everyday. He doesn't want to do that, and neither does Forest. Forest wants them to take over infiltrating big "nests" of people hiding out who have "overdue" parts so they can rake in loads of cash at once.

So Jude Law decides to save his marriage since he has this kid, and he's going to take a desk job, but he has one last job to do, repoing the RZA's heart. But something goes wrong and he's knocked out by the defibulator. When he comes to, he's in the hospital and realizes they've given him a new heart. He's super pissed. He tries a desk job, but quickly comes to the conclusion that he's not fit to lie to these people, he can only offer them the grim truth. So he goes out to repo again, but find that he doesn't have the "heart" for it... GET IT?? Ok, so a dude beats the shit out of him, but Forest Whitaker is like, no way man, you HAVE to do this. His wife divorces him and he moves in with Forest. He meets this junkie singer chick after getting beat up, and he keeps fucking off and his payments become overdue. Basically he decides to help this chick. But she is majorly fucked up! She's got fake everything, except her lips- WHOAAAAA!

Jude Law tries to clear their "artiforgs" but its a no go. He burns his shit and they hole up in a hotel. He finds a typewriter and writes his life story in a few days. Then they come after them. He kills a repo man then takes his ride back to the hq and steals some jammers, and then they head to the airport, but they get stopped cause her leg is bleeding everywhere. Jude Law beats the shit out of the TSA, and then they escape while Forest Whitaker watches from the other side of a glass security gate. The chick takes them to John Leguizamo who gets a 9 year old kid to give the chick knee surgery. Then Forest Whitaker catches up to them, and they find out he rigged the defibulator so that Jude Law would keep working with him. Man he FUCKED UP! Then they have a big fight and Jude Law is knocked out, and so is Forest Whitaker.

Then the chick wakes up Jude Law and they split and hide, and find out that tons of "overdue" people were slain in the nest they were hiding in. They decide to fix everything by wiping the system clean. He meets up with his kid and gives him his manuscript and then goes to the main HQ of the whole repo men corporation. He goes to find the "pink door", and has to fight his way through a dozen or so repo men and women. He kicks their asses and its pretty good as far as action sequences go. They all use knives because they all have them to cut out organs. Pretty tough. Then he uses the chicks eye to scan them in. Then they see there is no computer, so they have to scan their own organs. She reaches in his guts and scans his heart, and then he reaches all over her and scans all her shit. Forest Whitaker and the shitty boss finally get in as Jude Law is scanning her last artiforg. Forest asked if she is worth it, and Jude Law is like "hell yes". So Forest kills the boss, and then puts some bombs in the drawer asking for the artiforg deposits. That seemed too easy to me. The place blows up and all is well. They are on a beach somewhere and Forest is holding Jude Law's book. The kid had is published. All is well... Right? Wrong. Flashback to when Forest knocks Jude Law out with that chain. Everything after that was in Jude Law's head. Forest paid for him to have a brain implant that allows him to live dreaming for the rest of his life. BOGUS!!! Neat twist at the end, but it sucks for old Jude Law. That means the system just keeps on thriving and his little life didn't mean shit. Pretty heavy realization. Pretty heavy shit to lay on us at the end. Should you watch it? Yeah go for it. Eat some doughnuts or some cookies.

bad/awesome flixxx review: The Substitute (1996)

2011-11-15T13:46:00.005-05:00

"I'm in charge of this classroom. I'm the warrior chief, the merciless god who stirs anything in its path. You fuck with me, and you will suffer my wrath." - Shale

"Cuba wimped you out. You lost your mind and now you lost your balls.....FUCK YOU. Fucking queers." - Hollan

"You don't teach history anymore Smith. You ARE history!" - Rolle

Wow. What a piece. This is bad, like never need to see it bad. But let's focus on what is worthy about it. Its got a SWEET cameo by William Forsyth. He's the dude that's the other escaped con with John Goodman in RAISING ARIZONA, and he's the cop in THE DEVIL'S REJECTS. Best line in the movie goes to him. A couple other laugh out loud moments, but that's about it. Tom Berenger, Luis Guzman (from BOOGIE NIGHTS) & Ernie Hudson in THE SUBSTITUTE!!!

So what happens here is, we have a team of mercenaries, the dudes they call "Black Ops" soldiers nowadays, and there were 9 of them that went in and did a secret mission in Cuba. But they fucked it up. And because they fucked it up, only 6 of them returned home on a raft. So, the main guy, who was in 'Nam apparently and probably got him started merc'ing in the first place, goes to look for him and his other boys some jobs. But first off, he stops off to see his girl.

His girl works in this high school that is totally fucked up, with kids dancing on the tables, and threatening teachers, and basically not doing shit besides hanging out and cussing teachers out. I wonder if there are actually schools like this. I'm sure there probably are. Or at least there probably were at one time. They made tons of movies like this: DANGEROUS MINDS, STAND AND DELIVER, LEAN ON ME, THE PRINCIPAL, BAND OF THE HAND, the list goes on. Anyway, kids are fucked up, and a gang member threatens a teacher. She tries to rat him out, but the principal (hudson) won't do anything because its not a direct threat. So the gang hires a HUGE native american dude to take the teacher out Tonya Harding style. This lays her up in hospital for days. WHICH IS CRAZY! How many times have you hurt your leg and needed percaset? I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but it seems like she would've been out of the hospital the next day. Anyway, Shale (Berenger) comes to the rescue.

So Shale DOES NOT do drugs. He went over to this dude's house to get a job and it ended up being about running dope, and Shale beat the shit out of him. Then he goes and has his boys make him a fake id so he can pretend to be a sub so he can infiltrate the gang. Then he asks his boys to team up with him and they think its stupid, especially Hollen, who cusses a lot. But most of them help him anyway. He goes in and takes over the class, giving them all some tough love. Of course he digs some of the good students, and gets ready to fuck up the bad kids. The main bad kid is the head of the KOD (the Kings of Destruction). He tries to fuck up Shale a few times, cornering him in the library, but Shale throws all his boys out of a 4 story window.

Ok, so one of his students and another teacher see the principal and the gangs unloading a shitload of cocaine into a pit out of the school bus in the basement of the school. They try to run, but the principal catches the teacher and assassinates his ass. The girl escapes to tell Shale. Shale goes and fucks up the one drug dealer and finds out the original job offerer guy is the one who is behind the whole thing. He fucks him up, then they steal the money, and then they fuck up Johnny Everglades or whatever his name is, and then he goes after the gang and the principal. HUGE SHOOTOUT. Bad guys lose, good guys win. Hip hop soundtrack. THE END. Should you watch it? nah brah.

Rocknowledgy episode 14 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!!

2011-11-14T16:14:00.003-05:00

Alahoyus Thorriors and Rocknowledgists! We here at Rocknowledgy (which is basically just me and the T-6000) hope you are all great and excited to participate in the listening of jams today. Thanx for your support. your best friend, Valient Himself.

YOU CAN FIND THE EPISODE ON ITUNES AND HEEEEEEEEEEERE AT ROCKNOWLEDGY HOMEBASE DOWNLOAD CENTER

Episode 14 Playlist: intro by T-6000,
Taiconderoga- Speakin' My Mind,
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band- Crazy Little Thing,
Wayne County- Stick It In Me,
Desperate Bicycles- Holidays,
D.I.- Youth In Asia,
Curly Davis and the Uniques- Black Cobra part 1,
Joy Division- No Love Lost,
Dianogah- Eating Cake,
Scorpions- Sails of Charon,
Jerry Reed- The Likes of Me,
Antelope- Game Over,
The Flying Burrito Brothers- Ain't That A Lot Of Love (live),
Brainstorm- Signed (live),
Chuck Berry- Nadine,
outro by T-6000,
Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force- Frantic Situation

bad/awesome flixxx review/theater: Fantastic Planet (1973)

2011-11-11T17:19:00.004-05:00

"After a while, I lost my intimacy with Tiva. As she grew up and neared adolescence, she gave up her playthings." - Terr

"We'll have to give him a collar. But you'll have to learn how to use it. Now put him down and ... watch." - Traag dad.

"That's no name for an Om. You must call him Fido, or Trusty. Look how he squirms. He's a real terror." - Traag dad.

DAMN RIGHT! This is one fucked up movie! Every single thing about it is AWESOME. The animation is amazing, the music and soundtrack is fantastic, the drawings are incredible, the creatures are very weird, the social commentary is biting, and the ideas are spot on. It's just great. There is definitely a mood that it put you in. Maybe that's why so many consider it a classic movie to trip to. It's a early 70's French Sci Fi film by Rene Laloux. It deals with the life of a young (human descendant) Om, and his people's struggle on the planet Ygam with the native Traags. Now you can read my description or say fuck it, scroll to the bottom and just watch for yourself- the FANTASTIC PLANET!!!

Ok, so in the future sometime, these giant blue aliens came to Earth after the Apocalypse and gathered up some wild Earthlings and started calling them Oms. Some escaped and live like dogs or rats in the woods. The rest were given to the Traag kids for pets. The Traags have crazy technology and weird ass creatures on their planet. Their time also passes more slowly because they are giants. One Traag week is an Earth (Om) year. When this starts, some Traag kids are fucking with this Om and her baby. They kill the lady, and are scared off by a Traag adult and his kid. His kid (Tiva) sees the baby and asks if she can keep it. Her dad says ok. But then he gets pissed when it comes in the house and interrupts his wife's meditation.

Traags sit around stoned all day and meditate. When they do, their eyes roll back in their head and they project themselves into a red bubble and float out of their chimneys and into the sky. When the dad sees that the Om is going to be a nuisance, he makes a collar for it that Tiva can control it with. She names him Terr. Terr fucking hates the Traags, and always tries to escape but he has to be smooth so because that collar can be a bitch. Tiva learns everything from these headphones and she holds Terr in her hands when she's learning so Terr starts listening and learning himself.

Pretty soon Tiva starts getting older and Terr sees that she doesn't play with her "toys" that much anymore. He decides to escape and steal her headphones. He splits and she notices that he's gone and tries to suck him back with the bracelet. But he gets stuck and this Om chick tears his collar off for him. Then she takes him to her tribe of wild Oms that live in a tree in a park. The Traags exterminate the Oms 3 times every "year" i guess, but they decide they need to increase that because the Oms are reproducing super fast. Terr's new tribe are fascinated by his knowledge of the Traag language and he shows them him headphones. The leader is cool with him, the wizard is not. So they ducttape some lizards with teeth to their bellies and make them fight to the death. Terr eventually wins. The Oms start learning fast. They eventually have to escape so they're not exterminated.

Their were warring tribes of Oms but after the extermination they join forces and head to a base where the Traags used to build rockets. They keep learning from the headphones and build a nice little city for themselves, but they know they'll all be in danger as long as the Traags keep trying to kill them. So they decide to build rockets to take them to this "fantastic planet" the headphones tell them about. They escape in the rockets at the last minute before being killed by the Traags new technology. When they get there, they see the coupled headless statues. Then they figure out that the Traags meditate and float their bodies to land as heads on the statues and they meet with other blue meditation heads from another planet and they dance, and then they FUCK!! And that's how they reproduce. But Terr is like, "let's not get stepped on", so he gets in his ship and started laser blasting the statues which basically kills off the Traags back on their planet forever blinded and stuck in meditation. Then the narrator sort of cuts everything short and says- They must learn to work together so they don't kill each other. And then he says, that's what they did. The Oms built another "moon" for themselves, and they didn't kill each other. THE END. Weird ending, but the movie is seriously- for lack of a better word- FANTASTIC. just watch it here:

bad/awesome flixxx review: Cool As Ice (1991)

2011-11-09T14:16:00.005-05:00

"Chillin' wit Kat. You know, that chick who drives the horse. " - Johnny

"Yup-yup." - Johnny

"You're not wasting my time, I'm just cooling." - Johnny

"I'm gonna go across the street and, uh, schling a schlong." - Johnny

"Drop that zero and get with the hero!" - Johnny

Yeah, whackhead tried to play baseball with my homeboy's bike!" - Johnny

This movie rules. I don't care what the haters say. Vanilla Ice is a product of late 80s/ early 90s hiphop marketing... But that doesn't mean that it didn't work, and it wasn't hilarious. There are so many one liners in this flick that just so happens to be so bad that it ends up being fantastic. There is so much wrong with this movie that it's just right. I'm so excited about it and the nostalgia that it brought back that I'm finding it hard to type it all out cohesively. You have a fashion-obsessed hip hop date movie that almost qualifies to be a romantic comedy- except that its just a love story hidden in a hip hop comedy. Fuck it, lemme just do the run down- Vanilla Ice is COOL AS ICE!!!

This is a super hard flick to pin down. First of all, it really makes no sense. It seems like they were trying to just cash in on Vanilla's fame at the time. Now, let's talk about this for a minute. A LOT of peeps would straight dismiss this flick strictly because Vanilla's rapping was whack. I'll ask those people to watch TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 2: SECRET OF THE OOZE and ask them if that's whack! (Go ninja, go ninja, go!) HA! But seriously, Vanilla was a pop rapper. Most pop rappers suck. They did then, and they do now. Vanilla was much in line with many of the pop rappers of the time. Now, underground hip hop was bangin then. Take a look at Public Enemy's APOCALYPSE 91: THE ENEMY STRIKES BLACK. That's one of my favorite hip hop albums, and it came out the same year as this flick. Yet Vanilla's jams are no where near as good. Doesn't matter, it wasn't for the same people. So- to start over, let's pretend that Vanilla is just some actor guy. Ok, now we'll judge the movie on how bad it is, and not how bad Vanilla is overall.

This flick starts out with Vanilla essentially playing himself, some white rapper guy with an entourage of black friends. They are playing a show or recording a video (because their are no fans, just a bunch of people dancing in an old barn). And then when its over, they high five each other, and Vanilla (or Johnny) and his 3 friends jump on their crotch rockets and just take off WITH NO DESTINATION TO SPEAK OF. They just ride off into the sticks, or really like the farms of Idaho and surrounding it looks like. But they never say why, they are just riding, which is fine, but they seem to have no where to be, and no real stress on getting out of there except that they don't really wanna be stuck there. I'm getting ahead of myself. They ride out to the boondocks, and Vanilla jumps over a fence to flirt with a girl on a horse and the horse throws the girl. Yeah, she's really impressed. Then Vanilla's "homeboy's" bike starts acting funny.

So they go to get his homeboy Jazz's bike fixed and they take it to this crazy old dude and his crazier mechanic wife. They take the whole bike apart which gives us more time for the movie. It just so happens that Kat "the chick that drives the horse" lives across the street. So Johnny starts flirting with her right in the face of her redneck boyfriend. She's like a champion horse rider and is on TV for it. The dad is spotted on TV with her by some cops. It turns out that her dad and mom were in the witness protection program for skimping out on some corrupt cops years ago after they tried to swindle some bread or something. They go after him and his family saying he owes them a debt. Meanwhile Vanilla and his crew rock the shit out of the hick school dance and Kat falls for him.

So the crooked cops kidnap Kat's lil bro and her dad and the ex boyfriend pin it on Vanilla cause he's always in the wrong place at the wrong time. PLUS VANILLA KNOWS KARATE!! And then Kat goes against her will to Vanilla and gets his boys to go after the cops and help save the day. Luckily Jazz's bike is fixed. I skipped all the parts where they are kissing. You don't need to know all the "mushy stuff". You like that Fred Savage/PRINCESS BRIDE reference? Anyway, alls well that ends well. I liked this flick because Vanilla Ice had balls. Balls enough to sew two halves of different suits together and wear them like he was Two-Face from fucking Batman comics! The dude oozes steez. I MAY get my hair cut like that if I ever cut it again, and if anyone knows where I can get a jacket like that, holla. WORD TO YER MUTHA.

bad/awesome flixxx review: John Carpenter's The Ward (2011)

2011-11-09T01:54:00.003-05:00

"Sorry, I don't converse with loonies." - Sarah

"Those orderlies caught me... and they hurt my arms." - Emily

"We have to get out of here." - Kristen

Yeah- no shit Kristen. Yer in a psycho tank with some kind of ghost girl who's face is pretty much melted off and she's already murdered a few hot chicks and assaulted you while you were naked in the shower, what makes you guys any different? Hello again everyone! I watched this horror flick the other night from my favorite director John Carpenter. I was up for anything seeing as how it has been 9 or 10 years since GHOST OF MARS (which I don't even remember really except for it not being very good). Well... How do you want it? The good news or the bad news? The bad news is, its not his best work... but we all figured that before we even heard of it. The good news is, its not THAT bad, and the cast is almost entirely made up of super amazingly hot chicks. Well, maybe it IS that bad, but still- super hot chicks. Which begs the question- how in the fuck is there a mental hospital in Northern Bend, Oregon with only 6 or 7 SUPER HOT chicks living there, and how did they end up on- THE WARD???

More bad news- NO NUDITY. With all of these hot ass chicks in the cast, you would think that ol JC would've opted for a few models who didn't mind showing off some skin. BUT I guess when you're John Carpenter, you have this legacy and all, PLUS the NEED to see these chicks naked is whats driving you to watch the thing pretty much throughout the first hour anyway. So I guess its a well played trick. We start out with some girl getting iced in the dark by a face outside her cell door in the dark. Then we cut to a scene in the mid 60s with an old Andy Griffith cop car chasing this chick through the woods and she's all dirty and she sets this house on fire, and then she just sits in front of it and watches it burn. AND THEN she's pissed when they come and grab her! You shouldn't have been sitting on your ass girl! Now your gonna be charged with arson.

But no- they don't rush her to juvie- instead, they rush her to the neighborhood psycho tank. Apparently this isn't a flashback and this pretty blond is replacing the girl who bit the dust last night or whenever it was. This girl is Kristen and she has no idea why she is here. She's smart enough to not eat the pills they give her, but immediately she begins to notice something awry at the hospital. She wakes up upon her first night there with her covers hidden under the bed and a bracelet with some letters laying there. So she sleeps on the floor, obviously! YEAH RIGHT! Plus she didn't just go- "who the fuck is Alice?" right from the get-go. She just hides the letters in her pillow case with all those pills. I like to think she's going to try and sell them when she gets out. She's in Bend in the late 60s. She could make a fortune on those things hitching down to Portland.

So, there's a young doctor trying to "cure" her, with no answers to give, a crabby nurse, 2 bumbling orderlies, and a gaggle of hot patients: the bitch/slut, the koo-koo bird, the innocent artist, and the cry-baby. The doc asks her why she burned down the house. She also constantly sees a little girl tied up in a room. Then she starts seeing this ghost girl with a ravaged face. Then she tries to escape several times and they end up giving her some "intense" shock therapy. So they have a big therapy meeting and they mention Tammy. Then the artist says she's getting out because she's cured. Then she has a private sesh with the doc. Then the ghost chick kidnaps and kills her. Now the girls are freaking out but no one else is. And here is why this is pretty good: The whole time I'm sitting there thinking- What the fuck!? Why is this crabby old nurse and these orderlies not doing shit about this girl going missing? Are they covering it up? All the while, I'm forgetting- oh yeah- they're in a psycho tank. This shit MIGHT not even be happening. But the whole time we are seeing through Kristen's eyes. Her point of view becomes our own, so we miss a few things here and there.

So, there's another 45 minutes of ghost killing off girls one by one. Cry baby tells Kristen that they killed Alice (the ghost) because she bullied them and now she is getting them back. Kristen is like, yeah but why the fuck is she after me? Then there's a big reveal and a little plot twist that makes you take a look at the whole movie differently. Nice trick - except one final scene. The whole ending is easy enough to buy. But then at the end he does a little "old school" horror move that we've definitely seen before in horror movies, but its one of those moves that MAKES NO SENSE. So the rest of it does, except for this little, very small final scene. I think he may have put it there to confuse us. Or it may turn out that there were alternate scenes, and he just went with this. Either way, he may have just needed to fit one last "jump" in there. I don't know. Was it worth it? Sure, I guess. But I'm a JC fan. If his name wasn't attached to it, would I dig it? Probably not, I don't really like newer horror flicks, and this one is a bit like an old school horror but made now. Even all the know how in the world can't bring back that film stock or the way people dressed or looked in the 80s. It somehow seems less than authentic. BUT- its set in the 60s so. I don't know. I'd watch it. I did. So there.

Rocknowledgy episode 13 is up now!! on iTunes & elsewhere!!

2011-11-08T14:46:00.003-05:00

Alahoyus everyone! Fresh from his trip to Austin Texas for FUNFUNFUNFEST, Valient & the T-6000 serve up some tasty dishes for your pleasure.
It can be downloaded for free on iTunes and/or here on the Rocknowledgy site

ENJOY!! and call the Rocknowledgy Hotline to request or ask questions....

Episode 13 playlist:
intro by T-6000
George Brigman & Split- Blowin' Smoke
The Underground Railroad to Candyland- My Number's on the Stall
The Dictators- The Minnesota Strip
Junior Brown- Sugar Foot Rag
Gary Wilson- Cindy
Slayer- Expendable Youth
Toots and the Maytals- Monkey Man
Sonic's Rendezvous Band- Electrophonic Tonic
Kraan- Sarah's Ritt Durch Den Schwarzwald
Kill the Hippies- I'm Not Living in the Real World (Blondie Cover)
The Chocolate Watchband- Are You Gonna Be There? (At the Love-In)
Chi-lites- I Wanna Pay You Back
Battalion of Saints- My Mind's Diseased
Golden- Records is for Assholes
Camper Van Beethoven- The Day Lassie Went to the Moon
Guided By Voices- Wire Greyhounds
outro by T-6000
Future Bible Heroes- Losing My Affection

Rocknowledgy episode 12 is up now!! on iTunes & other!

2011-10-31T14:56:00.006-04:00

Valient Himself and the T-6000 go deep for all Hallow's eve. Pretty great mix this week folks, if I do type so myself...
Get it on iTunes or HEEEEEEEEERE.

AND LISTEN FOR NEW ROCKNOWLEDGY HOTLINE!!!

Playlist of episode 12:
intro by T-6000,
Epitaph- Reflexion,
Raw Power- State Oppression,
Brownie McGhee- Back Door Stranger,
Cactus- Evil,
Children- Power Spirit,
Reigning Sound- I'd Much Rather Be with the Boys (Rolling Stones cover),
Beans- Mutescreamer (El-P remix),
Silver Jews- Random Rules,
Treepeople- Something Vicious for Tomorrow,
Winchester Widowmakers- Patient,
Zolar X- I Pulled My Helmet Off (I'm Going to Love Her),
RKL- We're Back, We're Pissed,
James Brown- You Can Have Watergate, Just Gimme Some Bucks and I'll Be Straight,
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion- High Gear,
Gary Wilson- Dream(s),
Simply Saucer- Low Profile,
Gaetano Belgium Vsakoaani Orkestar Fabri- Siki Siki Baba

Rocknowledgy episode 11 is up now!! on iTunes and other!

2011-10-24T12:55:00.004-04:00

Rocknowledgy 11 is up Jack. on iTunes and Here.

Also- Rocknowledgy has a new request/bullshittin line. you can call or txt. Ill give it on the next podcast- or email valientthorr at gmail dot com

Valient Himself and the T-6000 Rule.

Playlist for 11:
T-6000 intro,
The Starlite Desperation- Let it Burn,
The Soft Boys- Positive Vibrations,
Gogogo Airheart- Mifi,
Pere Ubu- Final Solution,
Wimple Witch- Save My Soul,
Roger C. Reale & Rue Morgue- I Can't Control Myself (Troggs cover),
Ben Hewitt- Border City Call Girl,
Status Quo- Umleitung,
Sinkcharmer- As Nevada Burns,
Direct Control- Hollywood Secrets,
Vera Hamilton- But I Ain't No More,
NoMeansNo- All Lies,
Bush Tetras- Can't Be Funky,
Death- Pull the Plug,
T-6000- outro,
Sigue Sigue Sputnick- Love Missile F1-11

bad/awesome flixxx review: Cyber Ninja (1988)

2011-10-20T00:29:00.004-04:00

"Do not stand in my way. I have come to take back my body and soul." - Cyber Ninja

"I admire your courage- however- the ancestors of our enemy also engaged in blood sacrifice. We've tried to deal with them, but now the stakes are too high. The Subwabi clan is very clever. They are ruled by ambition and are not to be trusted." - Bishop of Darkness

"You do not have to preach to me the treachery of the Suwabi. But I- the great Sogi- know all of the Dark Overlord's mechaninja tear with exhilaration at the coming of our master" - Sogi

Wow. This is really bad. You can always tell the ones that are really bad by how they put you to sleep immediately. If it takes you three tries to get through a movie, then its fucking awful... or you work a lot and try to watch flicks when you're dead. Either way, this one is garbage. HOWEVER, it does have its charm. Unbelievably hard to follow- even though the plot is as simple as learning the alphabet. The villains' convoluted speeches are to blame. The amazing thing here is that driven by special effects (which are pretty impressive I'll add) they were charging $89.99 for a copy! BUT IF YOU CALL NOW... you get a second copy FREE!! Are you shitting me?? Watch the trailer and you'll see what I'm talking about. Were they trying to finance the film after it was made?? WTF?? Anyway, actors you've never heard of, in a film you've probably never heard of, that is like a sci fi/ western/ samurai/ fantasy/ occult movie rolled into one. Space witches and robot ninjas in CYBER NINJA!!

In the beginning there's a huge battle between this evil force with crazy advanced technology like heavily armed floating hover rafts and flying castles who employ a legion of mecha ninjas (which I guess are ninja robots) and a super old Japanese clan called the Suwabeh. The Suwabeh have a princess, an old master guy, and a bunch of young recruits with laser-firing swords who basically get slaughtered in the first battle. Even their main hero guy gets killed. His little brother is sad. Then there is a whole unspoken part that you are supposed to decipher from the convoluted speeches the bad guys give each other. Apparently- a bunch of time has passed (or not)(according to how you view the ending) and there's going to be big solar eclipse the next day that will fuel this huge tree inside of this living castle where the evil master is trying to be resurrected.

We don't know how he died, we just know that the bad guys, led by the arch bishop of darkness, who has a red spider thing on his back, and Shogi, a warlord with a removable face and white dreadlock whips are sucking all the blood from their enemies and putting it into this living tree inside the living castle. At the exact moment of the eclipse, they hope that the magnetic forces of the universe will somehow diddle the sensations already growing deep inside of them, and somehow cause their lord and master to be resurrected through that tree (with the help of the blood, and the soul of the strong warrior guy, and also the virgin princess {who they capture in a hover raft}).

OK, so while all of this is going on, the body of the warrior guy (SUPPOSEDLY, OR WE ARE SUPPOSED TO GATHER...MAYBE) has been resurrected by the arch bishop of darkness (who against his lord and master's will wants to turn to the side of darkness as a birthday present for the lord and master) into this super badass ninja that everyone calls the Cyber Ninja. They call him that because he is no ordinary Mecha-ninja. He's super rough and tough, and the bishop guy wants to harness his power for the side of evil. Too late, because the magnetic forces in the sky have seen fit to restore the Cyber Ninja's memory, and he knows that those guys are full of shit, and he's coming for his fucking soul back. The main Suwabeh master guy hires this sellsword samurai who asks for 5 volunteers of the Suwabeh clan to go on a rescue mission to save the Princess.

He picks 4 dudes, and the little brother of the main warrior who died asks if he can go to avenge his brother. The samurai tells him no way, but then he gets pissed and his little LED ear piece thing shows that he has no fear or something like that, because he gets picked (I don't know what it says, I can't read Japanese). So they head out, armed with these crazy, almost steampunk looking guns. And then when they get to the fortress, the 4 first Suwabeh are killed by Mecha-ninja pretty fast. But little brother does ok, and then they meet up with Cyber Ninja who is obviously on their side now. Those 3 storm the castle, and then there's the battle between them and Shogi. And they kill his ass, and then they steal a hover raft and crash it into the top of the castle. And then there's a battle between them and the dark bishop. And they kill his ass, but not before little brother is killed. And then they prevent the lord and master bad guy from appearing and they grab the princess and take off, just as the Suwabeh fire their newly developed Cannon technology. As they are flying home, the samurai kind of convinces the Cyber Ninja that HE was the little brother's big brother. And after being convinced, he JUMPS OUT OF THE FUCKING FLYING RAFT THOUSANDS OF FEET IN THE AIR, only to land like a cat on his feet, living to fight another day. Then the princess looks at the samurai and says, "there's no way that he could be the big brother", and the samurai says, "leave it be." I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO MEAN. Like why did he want him to think that if it wasn't true. So that he would have some kind of purpose in life? To protect the Suwabeh? I don't know, that shit went over my head. Or under my butt. Should you see this? I guess if you have insomnia.

Rocknowledgy episode 10 is up now!! w/ Neil Fallon of Clutch!

2011-10-17T10:08:00.004-04:00

This week we have a very special guest. Neil Fallon from Clutch answers all my questions about his own personal rocknroll history. Hope you guys are great. I'm great. Thanx for your continued patronage. Tell 'em all!

AND REMEMBER, EPISODE 9 WAS LATE LAST WEEK, SO GET IT TOO IF YOU MISSED IT!

Episode 10 playlist:

T-6000 intro
Clutch- Freakonomics
Valient Himself interviews Neil Fallon (spread out between songs)
Roy Orbison- In Dreams
Fleetwood Mac- The Green Manalishi (w/ the Two Pronged Crown)
West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band- Help I'm a Rock (Frank Zappa cover)
Blondie- Tide is High
Prong- Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck
Cro-Mags- Don't Tread on Me
Fugazi- Bed for the Scraping
Aka- Do What You Like
Willie Nelson- You Wouldn't Cross the Street to Say Goodbye
Dwarves- Motherfucker
Devo- Auto Modown
Excelsior- Uncommonly Smooth
Frijid Pink- Crying Shame
T-6000 outro
Turbonegro- Wipe It Till It Bleeds

bad/awesome flixxx review: Arena (1989)

2011-10-14T02:24:00.004-04:00

"Oh, I could stay all night, folks, but I gotta go. A hand for the boys in the band, and remember, I hate your guts!" - Space comic

"I had this dream that one day I could come up here and fight in the Arena. There's just no room for real fighters up here anymore, at least not for humans." - Steve

""I've only got four hands!"" - Shorty

YES! Here we have another flick executive produced by Charles Band. Usually when you see his name attached to something, you can bet its gonna be pretty good/bad. OR if you see a movie about monsters fighting in space, you can pretty much guarantee I'm gonna be into it. This is pretty much like ROCKY- if all the cast members were out of the cantina in STAR WARS. So, yeah- it fucking rules. A cast of mostly unknowns (5 of which who went on to be in STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE & BABYLON 5) in ARENA!!!

Our story begins with a big match going down between current intergalactic space champ "Horn" and top contender yet out of date old fighter "Spinner" on a space station arena floating somewhere in the galaxy. Fry cook Steve Armstrong saved up all his life to go on the space station and get a job. Unlucky for him- he sucks as a fry cook. These 2 little fish dudes are trying to order a number 3, a number 5, and a number 7, and ITS TAKING FOREVER! His four armed boss Shorty is yelling for him to hurry up, but he just keeps fucking up. Horn slaughters Spinner. The fish kids start mouthing off and then Steve tells them to basically eat shit. The fish kids dad comes in and starts mouthing off, and then Steve comes out and he's like 7 feet tall. And they go toe to toe, and Steve throws him through a plate glass window. Turns out, the fish dad was a bigtime fighter himself named Fang, but Steve beat the shit out of him. Steve and Shorty get canned from the burger joint for fighting and Steve loses his room on the space station because he doesn't have a job.

Shorty is like, don't even trip, we're gonna get you all taken care of. So he takes him to an underground hide out with a bunch of homeless space colonists including the very last human contender/champ who is also now homeless. Another part of the story is that there are 2 rival space boxer managers: Quinn and Rogor. Quinn is the chick who managed Spinner and Fang. Now both of her fighters are out, and she wants to meet the human who beat one of them up. Steve is disillusioned by the whole space boxing scene now and wants nothing to do with it, so he turns her down. Rogor is Horn's manager. He is crooked as Hell, runs illegal gambling on the ship, and gives Horn special space steroid shots that make him ravage his opponents. He has an ugly assistant named Weasel, and a hot chick girlfriend named Jade who's a singer.

So, Shorty tries to gamble to win enough money to buy Steve a ticket back home to Earth, but loses terribly. But when the space cops come in to break up the gambling, Shorty grabs 15 large from the vault and buys Steve's ticket after they escape. Weasel tracks them down & takes them to Rogor. Steve takes a job with Quinn to get the money to pay Rogor back. Next day he fights some big ass grasshopper looking alien. He wins and then all the humans are psyched cause no human has one in like 50 years (even though the poster says a thousand). Steve quickly kicks all the aliens asses and then becomes the top contender.

So finally Rogor sends his chick Jade to bang Steve. And he does. And she drugs him and almost costs him the fight, but luckily they get him the antidote just in time. So even though the championship match is postponed for like an hour, it finally happens. So Rogor can't believe it and he calls Weasel to get his friend Skull to jack his head into the computer mainframe and mess with the "handicapper" system. Steve wins the first round even after being groggy from the drugs. But then they juice the handicapper against him. Then Shorty smells a rat ("or a weasel"). And he goes to take care of him. He throws Weasel off the catwalk to his death and frys Skull's skull, brains and all. With nothing to hold him back, Steve kicks Horn's ass even after Horn gets a steroid injection. Steve becomes the champ, Jade leaves Rogor, Quinn knocks Jade out. The End. If you like really bad space movies, this one is for you. Because even though its bad, its still good bad. It didn't make me pass out 10 minutes into it, if that's what you wanna know. Check it out!

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Willow (1988)

2011-10-13T02:36:00.008-04:00

"Don't I know you? I stole the baby from you, Daikini! While you were taking a peepee!" - Franjean (Brownie)

"Burglekutt, you're troll dung!" - Willow

"Ooh, I'm really scared. No! Don't! There's a- a peck here with an acorn pointed at me!" - Madmartigan

THIS is a great movie. I'm sure a lot of you remember this one, and probably even remember liking it, BUT if you haven't seen it in years and years, you should go back and give it another shot! It's incredible! Written by none other than George Lucas, and (I had know idea that it was) directed by (lil Opie Griffith) Ron Howard! Starring Warwick Davis (Wicket the Ewok) and Val Kilmer in a fantasy/sword/sorcerer flick entitled WILLOW!!!!

So right away the action begins when knowing there is a prophesy that says a girl baby will bring apart her downfall, evil sorceress Bavmorda commands all pregnant chicks be thrown into her dungeon in the land of Nockmaar. The girl baby is born in the dungeons identified by a birthmark on her arm. The midwife smuggles her out just before they are about to get her and kill her. Bavmorda freaks out and sends her hot redheaded daughter Sorsha and her chief security skull guy and guards after the midwife and the child. The midwife is able to hide for a while in the woods, til Bavmorda's weird dog monsters catch up with her in the woods and devour her. Luckily she found a floating patch of dirt to lay the baby on right before the hounds ate her up.

Two midget kids from a midget town find the baby by the river. The midgets are called Newlyns by themselves and Pecs by everyone else as a derogatory term. There's this farmer Newlyn named Willow who wishes he was a magician/sorcerer. His kids found the baby in between him getting chewed out by this jerk Newlyn named Burglekutt who's trying to get Willow's land. He told them to keep quiet but- too late, his old lady decides they have to keep the baby. So then it just so happens that the next day is the day where the head midget honcho wizard picks an apprentice. But all 3 applicants fail the test. Then the hounds come and ravage some cribs. Willow knows he must bring the baby to the council. The council says he must take the baby away from the town to a town with Dakinis (regular sized people). So Willow volunteers and gets a group of Newlyn warriors to go with him. They find this dude Madmartigan (Kilmer) in a crow's nest style cage left to die. No other soldiers will take the baby. Madmartigan promises he'll protect the baby. So they give it to him. On the way home, Willow sees a Brownie (like a woods gremlin) flying on an owl with the baby he stole from Madmartigan.

The queen of the brownies- Cherlindrea tells Willow that the baby (whose name is Elora Danan btw) has told her that she chose Willow to be her guardian. She gives him the sorceresses named Fin Raziel's magic wand (which is just an old stick) and tells him to go find her, and she sends 2 brownies to accompany him and show him the way. The brownies never shut up and like to get drunk. So they go on this long journey to find Fin Raziel. They find her but she's been turned into some kind of marsupial. Then they get caught by Sorsha. Willow tries to turn Fin Raziel back into a woman but she turns into a raven. Then the brownies spill love dust on Madmartigan and he falls for Sorsha. And then, Madmartigan escapes with Willow & Elora on a shield sled a la CHRISTMAS VACATION. "cereal varnish".

Ok, they hole up in this abandoned castle, and Madmartigan goes wild preparing to fight all the badguys basically by himself. He is preparing the battlements and all that, and then some trolls show up. Willow turns Fin Raziel into a goat. Then he accidentally turns one of the trolls into a goddamned 2 headed water leviathan, as big as shit. The battle starts goin off, and Madmartigan is killing motherfuckers left and right. Madmartigan's old buddy Arich shows up with reinforcements. Willow is holding his own too, eventually setting one of the heads of the creature on fire, finally killing it. Sorsha shows up and witnesses Madmartigan's display of badassery and falls for him. But alas, Elora Danen is kidnapped by the Skull faced knight badguy. They go to fight Bavmorda & get back the baby, but Bavmorda turns them all into pigs. Willow finally turns Fin Raziel into a woman again and she helps turn the troops back into humans. Willow & Fin Raziel go and challenge the bad guys at the gates and they order them killed. When knights ride out to do the deed, Madmartigan and the rest storm the castle and win their way inside. Fin Raziel then challenges Bavmorda to a duel, but in the end its Willow who uses a slight of hand trick to defeat Bavmorda. Then he gives the kid to Madmartigan and Shorsha and splits back home to midgetville to get laid by his wife. I highly highly highly recommend this one. I wish that this one did better at the theaters, because it was going to be a lot longer story. If it was made now, they'd probably have done all of them. But as it stands, there are at least 3 sequel books about Elora Danen as a teenager. They are called the Chronicles of the Shadow War series written by George Lucas and Chris Claremont. I'm ordering them off Amazon as I type. Word up.

I wrote an article on Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-13T02:31:00.002-04:00

I couldn't sleep the other night, so I stayed up and put my thoughts together and wrote an article. It got posted today over at Metalsucks.net. Check it out right here, and sound off if you feel like you need to. I know I did. Thanks so much for checking it out: http://www.metalsucks.net/2011/10/12/you-know-what-im-talkin-about-valient-thorrs-valient-himself-on-the-occupy-wall-street-protests/

RoCKNOWLEDGY episode 9 is up on ITunes, & elsewhere

2011-10-13T02:21:00.002-04:00

Rocknowledgy episode 9 is up finally! Its free on iTunes and also for direct download here: http://rocknowledgy.libsyn.com/

Sorry for this one being late everyone! Because I uploaded the first 5 at one time, it filled up my space last month. It shouldn't happen again! Thanks for listening!!

Its frustrating how amazing these shows are compared to how short they are. One hour a week? Come on, I could do this shit for hours without taking a break! I have before! (and someday, I will again.) In the meantime, here's your weekly dose of everything that is good in the world of music.

Rocknowledgy Episode 9 Playlist:

T-6000 intro
Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation- Watch 'N' Chain
Socrates Drank the Conium- Who is to Blame
Libyans- Blood and Rust
Frank Black- Speedy Marie
The Adventures of Robert Savage- Road Apples
Death in Action- Perfect and Beautiful
Kiddus I- Graduation in Zion
Mastodon- Black Tongue
Blonde Redhead- Melody of a Certain Three
The Stanley Brothers- Rabbit in a Log
Bill Callahan- Eid Ma Clack Shaw
RTX- Nature's Way (Spirit Cover)
Gram Parsons- Big Mouth Blues
The Minutemen- Party with Me Punker
Piedmont Charisma- The First Time is Yours
Yellow Magic Orchestra- Behind the Mask
T-6000 outro
Kiss- Hard Luck Woman

bad/awesome flixxx review: Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)

2011-10-08T14:55:00.008-04:00

"I wanna buy a gun... Keep talkin' white trash, but I'm more interested in something that'll take the head off a honky at 20 paces!" - Mama Washington

"Taste some of Mama's home cookin', Adolf!" - Mama Washington

"Slime-sucking Neanderthal! How dare you question my loyalty?" - Eva

You guys are messing with a tried and true Troma fan here. I have always loved Troma movies whether it was staying up late to watch THE TOXIC AVENGER on USA's "UP ALL NIGHT" with Rhonda Shear (or maybe Gilbert Godfried) or watching CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH on Joe Bob Brigg's DRIVE-IN THEATER on The Movie Channel as a young dude. Either way, this is one of those Troma flicks that fell by the wayside for me. I never saw it until recently, and while my love for Troma hasn't faltered, I believe this flick to be somewhat of a let down. It's not THAT bad, but its not THAT good either. A host of terrible unknowns in a boring flick known as SURF NAZIS MUST DIE!!!

I guess they can't all be winners. This one begins with a terrible earthquake that rocks the California coastline. We are informed that the devastation is unbelievable. Surf gangs on the beach begin dividing up the coastline to decide who's turf is who's. Its pretty confusing as to what is going on a for a little while. And there is a lot of stock footage of dudes surfing some amazing waves. Most of these waves look big enough to be like North Shore waves in Hawaii. BUT... I guess if a crazy earthquake happens, no one really knows how big they'll be along the coastlines of the US.

We immediately find out this asshole guy who calls himself Adolf is getting his gang together and forming them like a new reich movement. He's enlisting young ass kids, lil skate rats, and dumb high school guys like Smeg. He has a very ugly inventor guy on his team named Mendala, his ugly girlfriend Eva, a mercenary tuff guy, and some rouge guy named Hook. They're all dicks, and they have something going on with a biker gang. The main biker is named WHEELS!! HA! And I have no idea what they were doing with him. Maybe buying supplies? Anyway, there's also this old lady who gets put in a home by here son Leroy. She doesn't want to follow the rules and she starts gambling with the old ladies in her nursing home. We are led to believe she's way tougher than she seems.

Ok, at some point the nazis kill Leroy and then the shit is on. Whatever pact they have with the other 3 surf gangs has been annulled. So they kill the Asian gang, and they kill the preppy gang, and they kill whatever the other gang is. More stock footage of surfers. There's no real murders that actually happen out on the surfboards. The guy Mendala built this switchblade surfboard, but they don't even use it. It was a 15 second sight prop!!! BOGUS! Anyway, Leroy's mom is super bummed. She goes to the funeral and then she vows revenge. Now truly- the surf nazis MUST DIE.

So Smeg's mom won't let him leave, but he's got information. He is flirting with two chicks on the beach and Leroy's mom is staking out the beaches where old ladies have been getting their purses snatched. She here's Smeg say the N-word. Then she slams him up against a wall where (interestingly enough) a King Crimson album cover is painted like graffiti. Eventually she arms herself with a gun and a grenade and takes out the neo-nazis one by one. She gets down to Adolf and Eva, and she basically kidnaps a dude in a boat and makes him go after them on their surfboards. She runs over Eva's head. DECAPITATION! and then Adolf kills the boat captain. When she turns around to get him, he jumps aboard and she- quick as a cat- sticks the gun into his mouth and pulls the trigger. Then she rides off on a motorcycle cackling like a maniac. The only thing I really like about this movie is the weird menacing keyboard soundtrack that repeats over and over again. Its the only thing that really sticks. I'd say skip this one because, really, there's only thousands of other movies that are a better investment of time. Excelsior!

bad/awesome flixxx review: Dead Alive (1992)

2011-10-06T13:31:00.006-04:00

"Story goes, these great big rats come scuttling off the slave ships and raped all the little tree monkeys. The natives use them in black magic rituals. Don't ask me how, probably suck the blood of virgins, eh, eh?" - Zookeeper

"The Devil's among us! Stand back boy! This calls for divine intervention! I kick ass ...for the Lord!" - Father McGruder

"Ahhh, so you found your father's old stag movies, didn't ya? Is that the one with the donkey and the chambermaid?" - Uncle Les

Considered one of the goriest and bloodiest movies of all time, Dead Alive is a New Zealand comedy/horror masterpiece. Its worth owning the flick for the last 15 minutes alone. Originally titled BRAINDEAD, and directed by Peter Jackson (LORD OF THE RINGS, MEET THE FEEBLES) this is one of the best zombie movies that exists. I like it because they never really specifically call them zombies, and its never discussed as a zombie movie, its usually discussed as a gore flick. There's SO MUCH blood that it makes maids blush and weak men's bellies gurgle. A cast of unknowns (at least here in the states) star in DEAD ALIVE!!!

The story begins with a dude on Skull Island capturing a Sumatran Rat-monkey (born from tree monkeys raped by plague rats). He outwits the natives and ditches his guide on the way out of the wild. But hitting a rock, he falls back into the jeep and is scratched by the monkey. The other dudes cut off his arm, then his other one and then just kick his ass out of the jeep. The disease carrying monkey makes it overseas tho, and is taken to a zoo in New Zealand. Meanwhile our protagonist Lionel has the very shitty job of caring for his widowed mother who has the shittiest attitude ever. He meets this Latin lady (Paquita) who falls for him because her grandmother read her some tarot cards.

Lionel is burdened by tasks his mother gives him to do. She's a very shitty person, and we don't like her right away. Lionel takes Paquita on a trip to the zoo and his mom comes to spy on them. She leans back too far and is bitten by the rat-monkey. She screams and then squashes the monkey's head. Here is one of our first displays of ramped up gore. They take her home, but she is really mean to Paquita, and so Lionel starts giving Paquita the cold shoulder so he doesn't upset his mother. Man his mom had him so whipped! GROSS! Ok, so then, his mom starts spurting gross fluids and her skin is peeling off, and she's basically dying. He calls a nurse and the mom tries to kill her. He's hiding all this shit from Paquita. Mom escapes and his hit by a bus. Everyone thinks she's dead now, so they are going to have a funeral for her. Lionel has been shooting her up with tranquilizers and tries to do so when she's in her coffin. He ends up rolling with her on the floor during the funeral service. Then he has to dig her up after she's buried to give her more tranqs. A gang of thugs come calling and are bitten by mother. The priest is some kind of fucking karate champ, and basically they all end up zombies that Lionel has to take care of.

Lionel's shady scheming uncle comes by and is only interested in trim. Well that, and shitting Lionel out of his mother's house and fortune. Once he sees stiffs in the basement he tries to blackmail Lionel into giving him everything. Lionel goes to speak with Paquita's grandmother. She gives him a necklace to ward off evil. Paquita and Lionel have a falling out because he keeps dodging her to conceal his actions. She starts dating the milkman. Lionel by now has a whole collection of zombies in his basement. The preacher and nurse fucked and within a day (somehow) made a zombie baby. There's a very cool scene where Lionel is walking the baby in the park trying to see how other ladies take care of them. The baby makes a fool of him tho, escaping and he has to beat the baby to get him back under control. The looks he gets from the ladies are hilarious. Finally Lionel thinks its time to kill them all, and his uncle Les tells him to bury them or else. So Lionel shoots them all up with poison. But it turns out to be animal stimulant. The bite was from a rat-monkey initially so it only gives the zombies more power.

Just as all this is going down, Uncle Les and all his greaser mod friends show up for a rager party he's throwing. Paquita walks by and bails on the milkman to see what up with Lionel's party. Then finally Paquita learns what happened. The zombies all escape the basement and attack the guests creating hundreds of zombies. Paquita, Les, some chick with glasses, and Lionel have to battle the zombies in the bloodiest finale of all time. Lionel and Paquita kill all the zombies except one, and then Lionel must face his GIGANTIC mother, call her out of her secret bullshit, and then literally be "reborn". Lawnmowers, a living endocrin system, gallons of blood and more make this a classic beyond classic of the genre. These pics are only a taste of the madness. This is a MUST SEE. Do yourself a favor. Go for it.

new Wired magazine reflects CARNOSAUR plot

2011-10-05T02:43:00.003-04:00

I was pissing at a cookout the other day at my friend's house and I saw the new Wired magazine on the back of his toilet. Normally I wouldn't really give too much of a shit unless I was actually TAKING a shit, BUT something caught my eye. The cover of this reads: "Scientists know how to turn a chicken into a dinosaur. What could possibly go wrong?" Well- I've got one word for ya- CARNOSAUR!! Didn't they learn anything from Doc and that hippie chick and fucking Clint Howard? Diane Ladd is a madman or a madWOman! DO NOT SEEK THE TREASURE!! ABORT MISSION! I'm sorry, but you need only watch as the T REX runs rampant and the heroes are killed in the end anyway to stop the virus from spreading to the rest of the populace. I thought these dudes over at WIRED magazine were smart. I guess I'll have to watch the sequels now to find out what to do next. Oh, well...

ROCKNOWLEDGY episode 8 is up on ITunes!

2011-10-02T22:51:00.002-04:00

Valient Himself and the T-6000 crank jams from all lands. 2nd month anniversary. Things are rolling. Episode Dedicated to protestors on Wall Street. #OccupyWallStreet

Playlist for Episode 8:

T-6000 intro
Sir Lord Baltimore- Hard Rain Fallin'
Cherry Vanilla- I Know How to Hook
Agent Orange- Bloodstains
Monotonix- Body Language
Iota- R.I.P.
Funkadelic- Standin' on the Verge of Gettin' It On
The Neon Boys- Time
Bad Brains- I and I Survive
Jerry Reed- The Claw
The Muslims- My Flash On You (Love/Arthur Lee cover)
Country Joe & The Fish- Super Bird
Wild Flag- Future Crimes
Testament- The Haunting
Goons of Doom- Fingered
ESG- Erase You
The Eyes- When the Night Falls
Valient/T-6000 outro
Timbuk 3- My Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades

ROCKNOWLEDGY episode 7 is up on ITunes!

2011-09-26T10:21:00.005-04:00

This week Valient digs deep into the depths to delve out a dastardly dose of killer jams.

Rocknowledgy Episode 7 Playlist:

T-6000 intro
Glory- Who Do You Love? (Bo Diddley cover)
Mahavishnu Orchestra- Eternity's Breath parts 1 & 2
Tygers of Pan Tang- Euthanasia
The Birds- No Good Without You Baby
Stalk-Forrest Group- Gil Blanco County
Neon Christ- Ashes to Ashes
Crucial Conflict- Desperado
Wynn Stewart- I'm Gonna Kill You
Wipers- Mystery
Rory Gallagher- I Fall Apart
Lillian Hale- Don't Boom Boom
Frank Zappa- Village of the Sun
Mercyful Fate- A Corpse Without a Soul
Wayne/Jayne County- Mean Mutherfuckin' Man
Valient/T-6000 outro
Spinal Tap- Gimme Some Money

bad/awesome flixxx review: Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983)

2011-09-23T17:27:00.002-04:00

"I should have known...it's a storage crystal." - Zax

"I pray we never meet on the same battlefield " - Hurok

"I pray exactly the same. Believe me I do... I... exactly" - Rhodes

This was a film that I had been familiar with since high school. I looked it up and tried forever to find it. Then when the internet was invented, and I figured out how to download songs and things, I eventually found a site that had some cartoons and things on it. This flick had been long forgotten, and then I saw it on the list. I was so excited to get it, it must've taken a week to download it, and after I did, I was so disappointed. I thought it sucked so bad. And it kind of does. To tell you the truth, all of these movies that are ROAD WARRIOR rip offs, could be about the same character. This looks like the further adventures of SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE. Or any number of those. They could all be sequels of one another according to which one you saw first. Main character guy is scruffy and in black leather. Carries a lazer gun. Drives a weird looking off road vehicle. Traverses the desert fighting alien badguys or various stormtrooper types. This one is no exception. Bull Shannon from NIGHT COURT as a cyclops prince, Tim Thomerson as a burnt out "tracker" or "finder", and a cast of unknowns in METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN. (I've still never seen it in 3D).

This one starts out with a black clad "finder" named Dogen who is out to track down a space outlaw named Jared-Syn. He is spotted driving through the desert by one of Jared-Syn's cyclopedian warrior clan on a flying space motorcycle. The cyclops in this movie all have half of their faces disfigured and wear shaved sculled pulled into a high ponytail. He gives chase and shoots the gun off the top of Dogen's vehicle. Dogen makes him smash into a mountain though and finds a weird red crystal on his person. Then we see a chick and her dad mining for some crystals. This dude rolls up who looks suspiciously like Trap-Jaw from He-Man (Why didn't they use this guy and his make up for MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE? We'll never know) named Baal. He commands a gang of cyclops and stormtrooper dude for his dad, Jared-Syn. Jared-Syn shows up and sucks out this dudes life force into the crystal. Dogen shows up later, and consoles the chick and they take the crystal he found to a little fat guy named Zax. Zax tells them what it is, and what they have to do to find someone who can take them to the Lost City to find Jared-Syn.

Ok, so Dogen and the chick have to fight Baal and his minions and then Baal's robot arm extends and sprays this green shit on Dogen's pants. It freaks him out but at least the chick starts blasting and scares them off. Jared-Syn comes to Dogen in a fever dream and tells him he's gonna get him. He wakes up in the chicks arms. They make out and then Jared-Syn knows they are "too strong" together so he vaporizes "Daphne" to his hideout and vapes a fucking glowing ice cyclops monster to fight Dogen. Dogen beats him and goes to find Roades, the old tracker dude who is supposed to help him find the lost city. Roades turns out to be a burned out Tim Thomerson! Yeah! He says no way, but then when Dogen gets in trouble, he blasts some dudes and goes with him anyway.

So Dogen and Rhodes drive all the way to the lost city and into cyclopedian territory past the signs that say, "you pass, you die." They come to this insect looking cyclops statue and Dogen steals a clear mask from it. Then Bull Shannon busts out of nowhere and asks who took it. Roades sells him out immediately, but it turns out they wanna kill who didn't take it. Dogen talks him out of killing him. But he still has to battle Bull "Hurok" Shannon in the pits. They fight with sais and Dogen wins, not only the fight, but the cyclops respect. Then Hurok tells them they are going to find Jared-Syn too. He points them out where to find him only they can't take the same road. So Dogen and Roades take a trecherous path to get there, fighting Baal and the boys along the way.

Ok, so it comes down to the end and Dogen and Roades have fought their way to the city, and Jared-Syn is preparing this huge crystal to enslave the world so that he can rule it. He's sucked up so many souls in those crystals that his power would be limitless. But Dogen has a badass mask that deflects the lasers from the giant crystal. Hurok lets Dogen speak and convinces the amassed legion of cyclops that Jared-Syn is the bad guy. For some reason Dogen starts running for a flying motorcycle and takes off, then we see that apparently Jared-Syn had already gotten on one (even though we don't see that at all). Dogen gives chase, and then they go into some psychedelic space time warp and Jared-Syn disappears. Dogen comes out in the desert and that's how they end it! No explanation. No death, no capture, no way of knowing what happens. I guess they wanted to make a sequel, but they never did. Millions have been on their toes for years wondering what became of old Jared-Syn. Was he "destructed"? The title implies that, but we have no goddamned proof. Anyway, this is a Charles Band production. He made a lot of the Full Moon titles like TRANCERS and EVIL BONG. Should you watch this? If desert wasteland end of the world badassery is your bag, then by all means. Hop to it.

ROCKNOWLEDGY episode 6 is up on ITunes!

2011-09-23T14:46:00.003-04:00

Alahoyus everyone- ROCKNOWLEDGY episode 6 is up on ITunes w/ special guest Greg Hetson from Bad Religion/Circle Jerks and I introduce the T-6000, my robot super computer. Go download for free, and tell everyone!

Playlist for episode 6:

T-6000/Valient intro
Circle Jerks- Killing for Jesus
Interview w/ Greg Hetson
Creedence Clearwater Revival- Up Around the Bend
The Guess Who- It's My Pride
No Friends- Set in Your Ways
The Fall- DIY Meat
Oneida- Cold Rain & Snow (Grateful Dead cover)
Sparks- Angst in my Pants
Curved Air- Backstreet Luv
Silkworm- Couldn't You Wait?
Guided By Voices- Storm Vibrations
Leroy and the Drivers- The Sad Chicken
The Dillards (as the Darlins' w/ Andy Griffith)- Whoa Mule
Unsane- Against the Grain
Down By Law- Finally Here
The Kinks- So Long

bad/awesome flixxx review: Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

2011-09-21T15:12:00.006-04:00

"I hear a mountain lion! I gotta get back to my house and you better get to your car!" - Tom Hill

"I just got so tired of all the fucking deaths in Iraq. I just thought- why not give peace a chance?" - Ramsey

"She's taking a shit. Natalie is watching her back." - Rod

Wow. This was a fucking CHORE. I've had people tell me about this flick for about a year now. People were dropboxing it to me, emailing it to me, anything they could do to get me to feel as bad as they felt about watching this piece of shit. Now, as always, just because its a piece of shit, doesn't mean its not entertaining. But, seriously, there are 3 and a half minute sections where this dude is DRIVING TO WORK!!! A cast of unknowns in a first timer's first delusion as a filmmaker, I present BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR!!!

The great thing about this movie is that it gives other aspiring filmmakers hope, that all you really have to have is a camera, some friends, and some spare time and you can make a feature length production. You don't even have to EDIT! HA! Yeah, my biggest problem here, and probably the reason Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim chose to host a screening of this in Hollywood is that its pretty much edited exactly like their show. Which isn't bad if you are trying to be funny for 15 minutes. This movie has FORTY SIX MINUTES of set up before anything actually happens!!! Then FINALLY in the last half of the movie, you get to the actual Birdemic. I love Tim and Eric's style of editing humor, but this is an exercise in patience. They had nothing to do with this by the way, It just reminds me of them, and why they dig things like this and THE ROOM. Our film begins with a young software salesman who spies a hot ass chick from high school one morning in a diner.

No way in the world his lame attempt to get her number would have ever flown in real life. Its like they were actually robots, and not real people. These people had no acting experience whatsoever. The funny thing is if instead of trying to say lines that they've memorized, they probably would have been more convincing if they'd have just tried to act like humans. So he gets the girls number, goes back to work. Similar to the scene where he's getting ready, and driving to work, and getting in and out of his car, and stopping for gas and all these mundane (real) but not necessary things that are usually skipped in the storytelling process, when he gets back to work, his bosses have sold the company and its gone public or something. So they are all rich. They then clap for a solid minute and a half. It is like chinese water torture. Ok, now, in some sort of effort to make a statement about global warming, Rod attempts to sell his idea of cheap solar panels to some big wigs. They bite and he's even richer. So he asks the girl out on a date. They fall for each other, he meets her mom. This is all still the set up by the way. Everything's fine in silicon valley. This is supposed to be in San Fran, but it looks more like Irvine.

Ok, so they've seen a dead bird on the beach and somehow 45 minutes have gone by, and we think the movie has got to be almost over, it seems like its been two hours. Nope, we haven't even begun yet! They rent a hotel to bang each other to celebrate his good fortune and hers (she landed a "victoria secret" gig as a "fashion model") and then we see a serene landscape. Actually a montage of serene landscapes. Early morning. All is well... until: EEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRGGGCCCH! Thousands of eagles and vultures lay waste to the towns. They are forced to stay in their hotel room until late in the day. Then they leave and find another couple. The dude suggests they grab hangers to defend themselves... Then they jump in his shitty van and head north. They find two kids on the side of the road whose parents are dead. They just pretend tons of cars aren't going by them, and people aren't in the background on the beach when they're shooting. You have to pretend with them or you'll go insane yelling at your screen. OK, but somehow, after suggesting they use hangers, this guy Ramsey has machine guns in his ride. WHAT???? Why would you even fuck with hangers when you had an M-16 in the Astrovan? So lots of people are murdered by birds.

Throughout the next 45 minutes, we witness the worst computer effects ever put to screen (and some of the most annoying screeching sounds over and over and over). There is an attempt to make a statement about the Iraq war, global warming, and other social world crushing topics as they encounter doctors, hippies and outlaws on the road. "Gas, $100 a gallon? what a ripoff!" Dude, you just became a billionaire, who gives a shit how much gas costs?! Then theres a statement about spoiled kids when the 2 kids won't eat the fish he caught for them and ask for a "happy meal". Fucking little assholes. Don't they see the world is ending? Then all of a sudden for no reason at all, the birds just fly away. Rod and Natalie, and the 2 kids stare out at the ocean for a full 4 minutes before the credits start, and then stay that way through the entire credits. No explanation, the waves just rolling in and out. Birds just becoming smaller and smaller in the distance. Some call it art. I call it shit. Those birds are quitters. Or maybe the writer quit. Either way, the ending wasn't written, it just manifested itself. Should you watch it? Maybe. Are you a horrible person? Yes, then, you should watch it, over and over. And you should cry.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Neon Maniacs (1986)

2011-09-21T12:31:00.006-04:00

"Yeah, it was creepy. Probably your mom howling out her anti-sex warning." - teenager

"Now let me get this straight. You're telling me that these, these things are inside the Golden Gate Bridge, one. Two, that they only come out at night. And three, that they're responsible for the death of fifteen or more kids and three of my police officers? " - Cop

"When the world is ruled by violence and the soul of mankind fades, the children's path shall be darkened by the shadows of the NEON MANIACS." - Announcer

This is one of the better finds I've come across recently. I visited the very first thrift store I ever went into a few weeks ago back in my hometown and found a stack of VHS and a copy of this on DVD. Where or who that lived around there was genius enough to pick it up and dumb enough to let it go is beyond me. This is quality trash! Mid-80s monster story set in San Fran with some of the coolest looking baddies (12 of them!), 2 super shitty bands, one amazing creepy synth soundtrack, and a cast of unknowns in NEON MANIACS!!!

Our tale begins with a very quick murder of an old man on the docks. Someone or SOME THING grabs him outta the darkness. Cue creepy soundtrack and the credits. Then we have a good ol fashioned 80s teenagers buying beers and partying in the park story. How did they acquire the beers? Fake IDs I guess... they didn't show that part. But they did introduce the main characters of dork guy that the jocks make fun of, and the only girl without a boyfriend in the band full of partyers. As soon as everyone starts breaking off to fuck, sure enough, monsters come out of the dark. A Hangman, a really cool looking archer, a monkeyman w/ blond hair that seriously will haunt my dreams for weeks to come, an indian, and some other dudes roll up and wreak havoc on all of these kids. The only one they didn't get? The single chick, Natalie. She's a pretty decent looking blondie who's upset, but nobody believes once the pigs start sorting everything out.

Her classmates don't believe her either and one of the missing kids sister's tries to start a fight. They send her home til the heat dies down. This gives dork guy a chance to come over and console her. During the day he's a grocery delivery man, so he brings the stuff in, and she offers him a beer. He scores in a number of ways, #1 being that she is LAYING BY THE POOL IN A BIKINI when he comes over, because we all know, when our close friends are slaughtered, that's what we do, go chill out by the pool. #2 He scores a date with her as well. What I don't get is how the monsters got this chick's address.

Ok, so there's another character, some little nerd girl who's really into monster movies and shit like that. One of the cops investigating the scene has a son that's her classmate/amateur film crew guy. The cops found glowing slime "gook" at the scene of the crime. His dad relayed info to him, and he relays the info to her, and she (with her little hat turned sideways) turns into little monster sleuth girl. She actually goes down and video tapes the monsters, but they don't show up on her camera. So she goes and tries to reason with Natalie, but Natalie isn't having it, she just tells the girl to kick rocks. Ok, so Natalie and dorkus go on their date, but they have to take the subway home cuz his van broke down. Ape man, indian, samurai, and one of the other ones give chase and almost catch them but luckily they escape or it wouldn't have been much of a movie.

One of the monsters follows the little girl home and she shoots him with a water gun and he freaks out. She backs him into the bathroom and knocks him into the tub and melts his ass. Then she takes this new information that she's privy to and successfully convinces dork and Natalie that water is the answer to their problems. Turns out dork guy is the singer in a really hilarious sax heavy new wave band called The Outlaws. They just so happen to be in a battle of the bands against another heavy metal hair band called Genius (I think). Both of them suck in the BEST way possible. The songs are hilarious. The monsters show up along with a doctor one and a soldier one and wreak havoc on the party. A few of them are killed in the battle, but most of them get away. Then the pigs interrogate the kids. Then they go look for the monsters only to find nothing. Then the main cop who doesn't believe shit dismisses the other cops, but then gets eaten himself by the one eyed green monster guy. Killer! This is one I had no idea about, but I can't believe more people haven't seen. It is super fun and I highly recommend. CHECK it out.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Slaughter High (1986)

2011-09-18T18:18:00.006-04:00

"We'll take my car... it starts every time..." - Carol

"Let's drink some beer!" - Skip

"Um... fuck. Ah, tits. Screw. Um... tits." - Frank

I first saw this film probably when I was in fourth or fifth grade on the saturday or sunday matinee movie on what became the local fox affiliate before they even did that. I used to watch all sorts of matinees or black belt theater, or mega monster theater. I wish they still did that kind of thing. I'd love to host a midnight theater on some station somewhere. That's like a dreamer job. This seemed like a very typical slasher film, complete with a nerd getting picked on and him exacting his revenge. But little did I know at the weird mystery surrounding the cast that happened soon after the film was completed. A cast of late twentysomethings and a few mid thirtysomething unknowns somehow star as teenagers in SLAUGHTER HIGH!!!

Initially this film was supposed to be called "April Fool's Day", until the producers learned that Paramount was coming out with a film called that later in the year. The film was shot in England with English actors, but set somewhere in the states. The plot revolves around a nerd dude named Marty who is being tricked in the beginning of the movie by the hot popular chick at school named Carol. There's some kind of ball game going on (I wasn't paying attention because I kept thinking they were about to show Carol's boobs) and Carol told Marty to come with her down to the girls locker room to bang. Marty is skeptical, but isn't about to pass up a chance to lay Carol down. She suggests they first take a shower. Little does Marty know but Carol has all the popular kids with a full fucking film crew waiting while he gets undressed in the shower. She gets him to come out and upon the big reveal (no prob with full frontal nudity in this one) (and on a dude too, you'd think we'd at least got to see Carol's boobs once. whatever) they start jabbing at him with a pole vaulting pole and then they shock him with something and then they give him a swirlie in the toilet. After being busted by the janitor, the coach comes down to chew everyone out.

I feel like if this really happened these assholes would've gotten more than after school detention. Anyway, they all go for their punishment except the one stoner dude and his buddy hang back and give Marty a joint full of seeds. And then while he's smoking it, the other dude who was the ring leader guy sneaks in the lab where Marty is and puts some chemical in some container. When Marty comes back, the whole thing blows up creating a lab fire. Freaking out and trying to clean up the fire, Marty accidentally knocks into a shelf where a whole gallon of acid falls on his face melting it off and making him look hideous. The kids watch in horror as he's carted out, Carol in particular feeling remorse. As she tries to tell him she's sorry, he jumps up and tries to rip her face off.

Fast forward ten years (I guess) and Carol is like a porn chick, and her and the others are invited back to the high school for a reunion. They all either have car trouble on the way or end up giving each other rides (similar to plots in a lot of slasher films) and finally they all arrive at the school but wonder whats going on, because only 8 of them have shown up. They all think they can't be on the wrong day, but then they all suspect that it was Skip who invited them because he's a prick that's always up to no good. For some reason they decide to go into the old school that has CLEARLY been shut down for a few years. Two go around back to find a way in while the rest sit out front. Finally they get in, and decide to party. Drinks and streamers and shit are all set up. I would've been out of there, no, I never would have even gone in in the first place. They all notice their old lockers with their old shit still in it. Like no other students ever went there to school after that. They see Marty's locker and wonder what became of him. Skip starts joking about him. Pretty soon after that, Marty just starts murdering motherfuckers. One of them drinks some weird chemical in a beer and his guts explode all over this chick. She decides to get all the way naked and sit down in a bathtub (? where is there a bathtub in high schools?) instead of just washing her face and arms. And then the water is red and I guess that means its hot, because she doesn't get out, she just stays in it, and it burns her skin off and then her face melts off the skull! AWESOME SCENE!

Then another dude is cut up to death by a lawn mower/tractor/truck, and another is hung, but doesn't really die, but then DOES die because the hot chick hacks him in the face with an axe mistaking him for marty! Another chick is electrocuted, another drowned in a septic tank, the stoner dude is impaled in his car, and then the one chick decides to cheat on her hubby after two people have already been brutally murdered. I NEVER get that. Some people are dead, let's fuck! WHAT?!? So they get electrocuted too, and then finally in the end we are back in the girls locker room where the whole deal started. Carol has escaped Marty over and over again, but finally he fucking gets her. BUT THEN WAIT: The weirdest cop out ending I've seen in years happens. And I don't know if I'm mad about it or confused. Marty just suddenly wakes up. HA! Matty and me were watching this and he goes, "oh that old trick, eh?" HAHA! But WAIT- there's more: Then Marty is like so pissed that it wasn't real, that he grabs a needle, stabs it in the eye of the nurse and then looks dead in the camera and starts ripping the skin off of his own face?!?! WHAT? I was pulling for Marty for so long, and he just goes nutso on me. Well, I guess you'd have to be nutso anyway. And who says he can't go kill all these people with what was left of his face ripped off? Other murderers have done more with less. So should you see this? I say yes. Hit a big one and turn it on. If you dig slashers at all, you'll appreciate it. The moral of the story? Don't go to your high school reunion if you were a dick. Preesh.

********UPDATE*********
I forgot to add this part in there, but the whole mystery thing that surrounded the cast afterwards went like this: while they were waiting on the flick to come out, the actor who played Marty killed himself by purposefully overdosing. There's a ton of mystery surrounding his death. Like where, when, wrong dates and all that shit. Anyway. Yeah, bummer.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: The Secret of My Success (1987)

2011-09-15T19:05:00.009-04:00

"Look, I like you, I really like you, but I gotta tell you, I have become seriously and emotionally involved with someone who isn't my aunt." - Brantley

"My cousin Ellen married his half-sister's nephew, before she got bit by that dog and died." - Brantley's mother

"I was having fun on this job! You had all this energy, and all these crazy ideas... and you kept taking your pants off." - Jean

I remember watching the trailer for this as a little kid. BACK TO THE FUTURE had been out for a while and TEEN WOLF and FAMILY TIES had made Michael J. Fox a star. I thought I definitely needed to see this movie, but my Earth mother had other ideas. It was most assuredly about some sex stuff that she thought I probably didn't need to know about at 8. Either way, I had seen FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF and they had the same song by Yello in it (the one that goes "mmmmm chka chka, doo bow bow). So I thought it would probably be like that. I also remember the song "Walking on Sunshine" in the trailer as well that was a big hit that summer. I think I liked that song only because I associated it with Michael J. Fox. Anyway, this one also had a huge 80s crush of mine- Helen Slater from LEGEND OF BILLY JEAN and SUPERGIRL. Wow, she kind of looked like shit in this one, but hey, it was the 80s. Haircuts could really fuck you up. Both of them, a cameo from Herman Munster, and the dickhead cop from SOLARBABIES all star in THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS!!!

This film is the story of Brantley Foster, a pretty smart, well educated kid from the sticks in Kansas. He HAD to get outta there and move to the Big Apple to see if he could make it. He dreamed of coming back to Kansas in his own private jet and had "delusions of grandeur" as they say. But Brantley wasn't one to be denied. Upon arrival in NYC, he goes to his new job only to find out that 90% of the company has been shitcanned in a corporate takeover. He witnesses a robbery while in a telephone booth, and his apartment is a shithole that has his bed beside of a wall where his neighbors fuck constantly. So things aren't going so well off the bat. He remains positive. He tries to get a job everywhere, but no one needs him. Finally he remembers that his mom gave him his distant uncle's number and he goes there to try and score a gig.

His uncle is a bigshit dick exec type dude with no time for anyone but Brantley wins him over and lands a slot in the mailroom. Now the strange thing here is, I've been buying VHS like this for a long time and I just grab one and pop it in when I'm hanging with my Earth father. The two that I picked up had been purchased across the country from each other, and were completely picked at random, but BOTH starred this one rather rare dude in a (not leading but) prominent role. His name is Christopher Murney. Lately I've watched 3 flicks in which he's popped up. THE LAST DRAGON, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, and this one. In this one he's the mailroom boss. Brantley basically doesn't wanna be at the bottom, he wants to be at the top, so when a some dude is fired, he uses his mailroom gig to find out things about the business, assumes the fired guy's identity and starts making out like he's another guy named Carleton Whitfield. He also falls for this girl Christy (Slater). He also gets asked to drive home an executive's wife.

So, trying to impress the exec's wife, he tells her she is pretty and she's very impressed by him and obviously hates her cheating husband. He tells her a few other things that make her check him out, and immediately she takes him to the pool and then the pool house to bang. Moments later the husband shows up and turns out to be guess who? His uncle. So he banged his (very distant) aunt. She is still smitten with him and haunts him through the whole flick. He finally impresses the other girl Christy and they fall for each other while working on a project where he is trying to save the company from a hostile takeover by expanding when everyone else thinks they should fire people. Turns out though that his uncle has been cheating with Christy for a while as well.

Brantley amazing does an incredible job of living 2 seperate lives, quick changing in the elevator, and somehow pulling the wool over everyone's eyes for way way way way longer than he should have been able to. Everything comes to a head though when in fear of a hostile takeover, his uncle invites everyone to a big party over at their house, and Brantley is discovered after some SCOOBY-DOO-type-in-and-out-doors-almost-caught-but-not-yet-type-antics. Then when everything is discovered, at the last minute Herman Munster tries to buy the company, but Brantley buys it because he had help from the investor dudes that he wowed at the party they through. Its a little stretch, a lot of cheese, but its a pretty damn good 80s comedy. It's definitely probably one to watch with a lady. She would enjoy it. Word.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: The Last Dragon (1985)

2011-09-15T18:44:00.004-04:00

"Now, what did I tell em when they said, 'a black man with a pizza shop in Harlem?' 'Just direct-a your feets-a to Daddy Green's Pizza!'" - Daddy Green

"And in the end, Eddie, you know what? You're nothing but a misguided midget asshole with dreams of ruling the world. Yeah, also from Kew Gardens. And also getting by on my tits." - Angela

"Well, well, well. If it ain't the serious, elusive Leroy Green. I've been waiting a long time for this, Leroy. I am sick of hearing these bullshit Superman stories about the - Wassah! - legendary Bruce Leroy catching bullets with his teeth. Catches bullets with his teeth? Nigga please." - Sho'Nuff

I bought this on DVD a while back thinking I remembered seeing something about a Bruce Leroy blaxploitation movie from later in the '70s. I was a bit wrong. This was basically an attempt by Berry Gordy of Motown Records fame to sell records from some of his newer artists like De Barge with a long player music video. That's a super bastardized version of the tale tho. In actuality its a mid 80s version of a blaxploitation kung fu movie that DID use a good portion of the flick to help sell records. Doesn't mean its unwatchable though. As a matter of fact its pretty good. Directed by Michael Schultz who did CAR WASH, KRUSH GROOVE and DISORDERLIES(!), with a cameo by William H. Macy and starring a lot of unknowns I give you THE LAST DRAGON!!!!

Ok, so "Bruce Leroy" or Leroy Green is a black belt dude living in Harlem in the mid 80s. His family owns a pizza shop, and his lil brother thinks he's weird. His master has taught him all that he can teach him, so he starts his own dojo and trains a bunch of kids. One day he goes to see a viewing of ENTER THE DRAGON and this bad ass dude name Sho'Nuff busts in with his crew claiming he's the prettiest and the baddest dude around, the shogun of harlem. He challenges Leroy every chance he gets, but Leroy chooses the path of least resistance all Bruce Lee style and won't fight unless he absolutely has to, like if he needs to protect someone. Meanwhile everyone in town goes to these dances at night where local celeb Laura Charles hosts the best new dance videos around and Leroy's lil bro goes to party there.

This actor Christopher Murney (the bible salesman in MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE) (remember him for my next review as well, I've been speaking of WEIRD connecting coincidences lately and its BLOWING MY MIND) (my dad thought he was Squiggy from LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY but he isn't) plays a character named Eddie Arcadian. He's a video game entrepreneur that also tries to make money by exploiting other people's talents. Lately he's exploiting his current girlfriend Angela who is like a really bad Cyndi Lauper type character. He wants Laura Charles to play her video and he won't take no for an answer. When Laura refuses, he tries to have his goons kidnap her from the club. Leroy intervenes and disappears. BUT- he drops his amulet given to him by his master who told him the only way to reach the "final level" was to take the amulet and search the city for him.

Laura finds his amulet, Sho'Nuff comes to the dojo and embarrasses Leroy, but Leroy still won't fight him, Leroy tries to find the master at this fortune cookie factory, Eddie Arcadian keeps trying to get Laura to play the vid, and then keeps trying to kidnap her. Leroy keeps foiling his plans. He gets his amulet back. Laura asks him to be her bodyguard. She wants to bang, but he keeps getting pulled away. There are a whole lot of dance sequences. They pretty much play the whole song of "Rhythm of the Night" by De Barge. I KNOW you remember it if you grew up in the 80s. It was all over the radio. I think it may have went to #1. Anyway, Leroy finds out that the fortune cookie shop has no "master" and then he's pissed and confused. Sho'Nuff comes and tears up Daddy Green's pizza shop. Leroy goes to his master and asks him why he bullshitted him. His master says you needed something to push you because I cannot anymore. Leroy desperately wants the "glow" which is what happens when you are the best. Your hands when you are ONE of the best, your whole body when you are THE best.

So Eddie Arcadian in a last ditch effort recruits Sho'Nuff to fight Leroy because he foiled all his plans. He kidnaps Laura, and takes her to the club. Then theres a long scene where Leroy kung fu's everyone on the dance floor. Then Sho'Nuff shows up and they have the final showdown. Leroy is scared cuz Sho'Nuff's hands glow, but then he figures it out last minute and his whole being glows when he reaches the final level. Then he kicks his ass, then he catches a bullet in his teeth! Yeah! Then he learns to dance! ha. well, sort of. Ok, Lucian watched this when we were in Europe and he thought it was almost unwatchable. I say its NOT THAT BAD. I mean its bad, but its certainly watchable. Especially if you like kung fu, blaxploitation, parody, or soul hits from the 80s. I say do it!

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Carnosaur (1993)

2011-09-15T18:34:00.007-04:00

"You been watchin' too many of them I-talian zombie flicks." - waitress

"You know- a bobcat ate a fella when I was a little kid. It wasn't a local though, it was a hobo." - Friar

"Fryer- that is a 2 ton load of chickenshit- Hey Doc- you ever heard of a bobcat ate anybody's eyes? This was no bobcat. It sucked his eyes right outta his head" - cook

WOW. Perfect. This one is rough!! Another .80 cent Kansas City find, I've been looking for this one for a few years. I had only ever seen CARNOSAUR 3 on Syfy channel over the years, and its so ridiculous and awesome, I knew this one had to be just as good or better. I wasn't disappointed. In 1993 Roger Corman decided to usurp some of the Crighton/ JURASSIC PARK hype and come out with his own 'dinosaur in present day' flick. By this point, I'm thinking Corman was so old that they probably just go, "hey is this cool?" and he just nods his head yes, and they attach his name to it. But what do I know? Anyway, the clencher here for their classic "snaich"? They get Diane Ladd to play the lead since her daughter Laura Dern is one of the main characters in JPARK AND AND AND they rushed it out 2 weeks before JPARK's release. DOGGED. A very bad/good B pizza eating movie, Diane Ladd and Clint Howard star(?) in CARNOSAUR!!!

A weird thing happens throughout this movie where a paragraph in a small green font meant to give you some information concerning a contagious virus flashes on the screen every few scenes. Its super hard to read, but you can make out that they are trying to tell you that some virus is affecting a certain percentage of the population and as the movie goes on the virus seems to spread and infect more and more people. But they never really talk about it until the end of the movie. What does happen in the beginning is that in a chicken factory a rogue scientist lady has been tampering with the genetic code of these chickens and no one really knows what she is doing. A meeting is called by the government about this "known" rogue scientist lady and one of the head dudes asks which government contracted agency she is working for. One dude speaks up & claims she is working for them but they have no idea what she's up to because she gets a certain amount of time before she has to show them any results.

What IS happening is that she has successfully planted dinosaur DNA in chicken eggs. But these are bad dinosaurs, like aggressive carnivorous ones. And wouldn't you know it, One gets loaded into a chicken truck, gets through security JUST when they are closing it off, and hatches in the truck, escaping and killing the truck driver in the process. When word leaks, the head of the chicken farm wants answers and he's freaking out on the crazy scientist lady (Ladd). His daughter sneaks out to party with 2 dudes (kinky) and goes drinking and driving- out in a quarry - in a Jeep! (Coincidence that I just watched RAW DEAL? A few of these have been happening lately... more on that soon). They mysteriously get ravaged by what the cops think is a bobcat. Everyone thinks this crazy bobcat is tearing everyone to shreds, but leave it to a drunken night watchmen at the quarry to find out whats really goin' down.

'Doc' just happens to be a nightwatchman who likes to watch bad movies in his trailer. He's a fucking super alcoholic though, and always gets in fights with kids who come around drinking and screwing down in the quarry. One night he busts this pretty hot chick (the blond student from GHOSTBUSTERS) and holds her hostage til the black cowboy sheriff can pick her up. But he falls asleep and she escapes. The next morning when the sheriff takes him to the hippie commune to arrest the chick, Doc clams up and says he doesn't see her. She comes back to thank him, and they start up this unspoken flirting relationship. They run into a corpse one night and Doc starts to believe something more than bobcats are stalking this town. He goes to a diner and hangs out with Clint Howard who is funny as hell. More people keep getting killed, and those that don't get killed are getting this heavy virus that causes a fever. Clint Howard gets his head ripped off, and it pulls out his spinal cord (ALWAYS a good looking scene in a flick).

Hippie chick gets fever, Cowboy Curtis cop goes after dinosaur after he finds rotten eggs. Doc witnesses huge dino eating hippies in quarry. Somehow he knows to go to the chicken farm to confront Ladd. He gets her to explain the whole thing, then makes a joke poking fun at JPARK (which again wouldn't even hit theaters for 2 weeks. pretty cool). Then her secretary busts in and is sick and lays down a lays a fucking egg! A huge black dinosaur egg! Then she dies. Ladd explains she wants the dinosaurs to take over and she created the virus. Doc holds her hostage for the serum that can cure the fever, but not before blowing away some gooey eggs. Finally he gets it, and tries to split to save hippie girl. But Ladd sends him to a room where she has a full grown T REX hanging out with some lasers! He escapes somehow but so does the T REX. Ladd lays down to have an egg, but a fucking baby dinosaur busts out of her stomach! Awesome! Doc finally gets back to the quarry, but he knows that the T REX is on its way. So then there's a huge battle where him and the dying hippie girl fight the T REX with some backhoes! Finally after ripping the T REX's belly out with the shovel thing, Doc gives the hippie girl the serum hopefully keeping her from laying an egg. But just then, **************************HEAVY SPOILER WARNING************************

some government agents in full on Quarantine Nuke gear come in and shoot him and her to death in hopes of containing the virus. Then they burn the corpses!!! HA!!! fucking heavy!! I recommend getting a big thing of ice cream and some pizza and some burl sense buds for this one. Enjoy!

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Raw Deal (1986)

2011-09-13T18:44:00.006-04:00

"The only way you'll ever end up lying next to me, Max, is if we're run down by the same car." - Monique

"Joseph P. Brenner. What's the "P" stand for?" - Cop
"Pussy" - Kaminsky

"Max, if you're the best there is, the wheel would never have been invented." - Kaminsky

"You should not drink and bake!" - Kaminsky

Another $1 purchase in Kansas City, this one being a (somewhat?) rare Schwarzenegger flick heavily overshadowed by the flicks he did before and after this one (COMMANDO and PREDATOR). There is nothing really special at all about this flick, its just your typical action flick, however I really enjoy these overshadowed often forgotten ones more than those that get totally chopped up by network tv and shown a gajillion times. Also this one has Arnie playing a down and out ex FBI agent who has to settle as a sheriff in a hick NC town. Double plus it stars Ralphie's dad from A CHRISTMAS STORY. You know him, you love him (or hate him according to if we're talking about movies or politics or not) the last action hero himself stars in RAW DEAL!!!!

Lovable, huggable Arnie plays Mark Kaminsky, an FBI agent who got canned by this worm of a District Attorney type guy on a witchhunt to clear the department of "loose cannons". Kaminsky gets relocated to Bumfuck, NC where he spends his days chasing blue light bandits on motorcycles in his jeep cherokee. Also his wife is an alcoholic who berates him day in and day out for bringing her to the sticks. Luckily for him in the beginning of the movie there's some kind of stake out going on, but the bad guys know about it, bust in and fucking annihilate a bunch of feds. We're talking full on bloodpacks exploding from chests and legs and headshots. Its a pretty grim scene to begin with and sets dudes up to yell "YES!" a lot right off the bat. When I say "Luckily for him" I mean that his old boss (Ralphie's Dad) 's son gets blown away in the ordeal.

This is just the opportunity Kaminsky needs to get out of his shitty situation. Ralphie's dad asks him to pull off this mission secret style, meaning no help from the feds, the pigs, nobody. If he does this, then he'll hire him back to the FBI. BUT one other thing--- he has to kill himself off. So Arnie drives his rig into a oil plant and blows the whole thing sky high. Death of Kaminsky, Birth of "Joseph P. Brenner". So Kaminsky/Brenner goes straight into pissing off these Chicago mobster dudes. First by driving a backhoe into their meth lab or coke den and then by bigshotting it around in one of their casinos. He offers up his services and snide remarks their main bodyguard guy Max igniting a feud betwixt them that lasts the remainder of the flick.

He also semi-seduces Max's girlfriend Monique who in the beginning tries to get the dish on him for Max, but then sort of falls for him. The reason the feds can't get to these mobsters is that there is a leak in the system. The leak turns out to be the same scumbag who got Kaminsky canned in the first place. Kaminsky/Brenner/Arnie keeps working his way up the ladder of the mobsters sort of like the guy in WISEGUYS or DONNIE BRASCO. Max is never convinced and finds evidence from the og pig who caught the real Brenner down in Florida. So he tattletales on Brenner and sets him up for a hit at a cemetary. The hit turns out to be on Ralphie's dad, and Brenner yells out and blows his cover. At the last second they blow away Max but Ralphie's dad is wounded. Arnie wants to help, but Ralphie's dad is like, "get outta here, if I die, its gonna take you a year to explain all this shit." So Arnie goes for his guns.

Ha! This is the part everyone's been waiting for for over an hour. Arnie walks into his closet and grabs a huge bag of insane machine guns. These are all Ramboed out with HUGE shells and look like they were leftovers from the COMMANDO shoot. It really doesn't make any sense that he'd be allowed to own these guns. But its still awesome. So he drives to a quarry(?) and kicks the windshield out of this Buick Le Sabre and SERIOUSLY theres a close up where he pops a tape in the tape deck and "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones comes on. And he starts mowing everyone down. Just whipping doughnuts in the quarry and not even aiming. Just emptying full clips. Then he goes to a casino and the same thing. Mowing everyone down. Kind of like the 80s PUNISHER flick with Dolph Lundgren. Then he kills the one guy, and then the main guy. Then he sees the leak guy and tells him he has to resign or be arrested. Basically the same thing that guy told him so long ago. The guy tries to shoot him, and he mows him down too. Then he gives that chick a bunch of bread probably cause he felt bad that he couldn't bang her cause he was already married. YEAH RIGHT. Who know why he gave her that bread?? He didn't owe her shit really. What a dumbass. Anyway, fast forward a bit, and Kaminsky is visiting Ralphie's dad at physical therapy. Ralphie's dad is crippled and he'll walk again if he'll only try. But he's being a big baby, and here's the sappy touching moment: Kaminsky tells Ralphie's dad that he's gotta try hard for the love he had for his son. So he tries and takes a few baby steps and they hug. Freeze frame. The End. Was it bad? Yeah. Was it awesome? Yeah, but i like the rarer flicks. Its like THE EVIL THAT MEN DO with Charles Bronson. You've never heard of it, but its just as good or better than some of his more known stuff. Well, I don't know if I'd go that far with this one. But it's worth a stony afternoon for sure. Cheers.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: The Amazing Spider-Man (1977)

2011-09-13T17:44:00.004-04:00

Found a copy of this on VHS for a dollar in KCMO last weekend. I was a huge fan of this series when it ran in reruns when I was super young. I had done a little research on the show years ago, even captured some of the episodes when they ran on TNT or SCI FI or something like that back in high school over Thanksgiving when they used to show a lot of marathons. The thing was, this show didn't even have bad ratings. It only got cancelled because some dipshit at CBS didn't wanna be known as the super hero network. So they canned this and Wonder Woman, and kept The Incredible Hulk for a few more seasons. Bummer, there were only 14 episodes I believe counting this pilot/ feature length movie. Starring Nicholas Hammond (one of the kids in THE SOUND OF MUSIC) as Peter Parker, and the nosy neighbor from BEWITCHED as J. Jonah Jameson, AND Thayer David, the dude who was the Albino in THE EIGER SANCTION and the promoter in ROCKY as the bad guy, I present to you THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN!!!

We all know the story of Spider-Man by now. Even dudes and dudettes who have never even opened a comic book know the story. What's the special significance here? Why and what made this so good? Well for starters, its got a super funky 70s soundtrack that is hypnotic if not repetitive. A lot of people put this down as camp, but the 1966 BATMAN was camp, this was a full on action series. Sure its super funny in retrospect, but nothing was really being done like this at the time, and the stunts were incredible and difficult. It was definitely aimed at the same demographic as DUKES OF HAZZARD or the like, and suffered only because they either didn't get the rights to the villains or decided not to use them in favor of real life criminals a la the 50s SUPERMAN show.

This version of the story has Peter Parker as a lab assistant at college while trying to freelance as a photographer at the ol Daily Bugle. When Parker gets bitten, he automatically gets his powers super fast. The story here when it begins is that for some reason a lawyer and a doctor for no apparent reason leave work and rob a bank, then crash their car and some crooks run off with the dough. When Parker is trying to get a gig at the paper, the news comes on and says that some dude claims responsibility for the crimes by mind control, and if the mayor doesnt pay him half a mil by midweek, 10 prominent citizens will take their own lives. Up to you.

So when Peter is walking out of his lab after being bit, the 2nd robbery guy who is hypnotized almost runs him over, and he jumps like 15 feet in the air and climbs the building. When the cops come he kind of freaks and acts suspiciously. He goes home, passes out, climbs out onto his roof and climbs around the walls in the funniest way because the format that they achieved the effect with is so out of date. Peter then foils a purse snatcher and is spotted by citizens. JJJ chews him out for not getting pics of the "spiderman" and Peter, feeling confident brags that he did. So then he has to set up the whole deal and get pics for the paper. He busts out a costume like that night, no thought, no struggle to find the right design, bang he just has it. They are psyched, but as always, JJJ is skeptical and jerkish. So, Spidey foils the 3rd guys death, and then saves him from jumping out of a window. The daughter of that guy ( who I assume is supposed to be like Mary Jane Watson) wants to go to see some guru. This turns out to be the bad guy who is putting a button on everyone's jacket and brainwashing them.

So everyone knows about Spidey now and the cops and the bad guy and the paper all want to catch him. The bad guy tells them to place the money in a seaplane in the middle of New York harbor. And he stands somewhere and watches the plane with binocs. HA! Like they were ever gonna let him slide on this shit. Peter finds out that its microwaves that is mind controlling everyone but its too little too late, because he was brainwashed too when he went to confront the bad dude. Luckily for him right before he almost jumps off the Empire State Building the little hook grabs his button and he isn't under the influence anymore. Then he beats up 3 samurai dudes, blows up all the equipment and fries the brain of the bad guy who he tells to turn himself in. BANG. The day is saved thanks to everyone's favorite wall crawler. I love this old shit, and wish like hell the whole series would drop on DVD. See it if you can.

ROCKNOWLEDGY podcast is on ITunes!! Episode 5 is live!

2011-09-13T17:40:00.004-04:00

ok, finally finally finally, with much help and advice from Qwynneth Thorr, DawnOwar, and my good buddy Justin Little, I am psyched to announce that Rocknowledgy is up and ready to download and subscribe to on ITunes! Go there and get that shit and rate it, and tell everyone who loves podcasts everywhere! Thanx so much!

Rocknowledgy Episode 5 playlist:

Valient Intro
Hard Stuff- Jay Time
Troubled Horse- Shirleen
Dust- Pull Away- So Many Times
Just We- Something Like It
The Nationale Blue- Silver Alien Pajamas in II movements (I. the sleep, II. the wakening)
The Cramps- Garbageman
The Ultimate Warriors- untitled
Ruins- Komigriss
Karen Dalton- Katie Cruel
Big Star- Don't Lie To Me
Cryptic Slaughter- Money Talks
Conway Twitty- The Flame
Glass Candy- Fairy Fellers' Master Stroke (Queen cover)
The Smiths- A Rush and A Push and the Land is Ours
Voivod- The Unknown Knows
Gentleman's Pistols- Just a Fraction
Scott Walker- Track Three (the Dealer)

ROCKNOWLEDGY podcast update!!

2011-09-09T13:34:00.002-04:00

I finally figured this shit out! Ok, all episodes of ROCKNOWLEDGY are up now at http://www.valientthorr.com AND you can subscribe to the podcast there. PLUS you'll be able to subscribe to it starting next week at Itunes! very cool. Hope yall are digging it. More soon!

bad/awesome flixxx review: Gymkata (1985)

2011-09-07T18:30:00.004-04:00

"There are many sounds around us, each is slightly different. So small as to go un-noticed by the person who is unaware. Do not hear the wood split. Hear the only sound of axe, cutting air. Read the air itself. It has much say to you." - trainer

"Death becomes you." - Zamir

"I know, but the games are tomorrow. Put your hardware back in your pants." - Cabot

My buddy Raf gave me a copy of this flick to review over a year ago I think. Its been sitting in my bag just waiting, patiently getting ready to BLOW MY MIND. A movie with a plot that's very close to the same idea as ENTER THE DRAGON, we have real life olympic gold medalist in gymnastics Kurt Thomas playing Jonathan Cabot- a dude who invents a "new way to fight" against some baddies after being hired by the government to hook them up. This movie is pure shit, but pure enjoyment. I laughed out loud so many times with my pop watching this. Now, I love a good ninja movie, but this really isn't good or a ninja movie, but what it is, is bad and awesome. Set in the very racist sounding made up country of Parmistan, I bring to you GYMKATA!!!

The film actually starts out with Jonathan Cabot's dad Colonel Cabot running from some men on horseback. This footage is interspersed with images of Jonathan doing his gymnastics on the bar thing. It shows his dad being run down by this mustachioed creep named Zamir. When Col Cabot tries to cross this ravine by rope, Zamir shoots him with an arrow and Cabot falls seemingly to his death. Next scene we have J Cabot winning some medal and then being whisked off by some suit. The suit is from the SIA (special intelligence agency). They want him to go in and win this "game" in this crazy country called Parmistan ran by this king with a super hot daughter. If he wins, they win a favor, and the favor they'll ask is to build a "Star Wars"/ "HAARP" type facility in there to fuck over the Russians. This was some heavy shit in the 80s. So they bring in 3 trainers, an eastern trainer, a western guy, and the princess herself. Very quickly Johnathan falls for the princess. She is a bitch to him for about 10 minutes, then they bang.

One of the funniest things in the movie is the SIA dude sees that Cabot isn't paying him any attention & is only making eyes at the princess. So the dude asks him, "Cabot, do you even know the city you're going to?", to which he replies, "yes, we're going to Carabal, on the Caspian Sea." The very next scene shows a port city from the water and a caption comes up at the bottom that reads: CARABAL, ON THE CASPIAN SEA. Hahaha! It didn't say: Carabal, Parmistan, or Turkmenistan, or wherever, it just repeated him. I absolutely CAN'T tell if this was meant to be funny or is just unintentionally hilarious. Just now, rereading what I wrote, it doesn't seem very funny, but you haven't seen it, so fuck you. Anyway, he goes to meet the contact, the princess is kidnapped, he rescues her and realizes that the contact is double-crossing him but the SIA guy jumps out and blasts the bad guys and saves the day.

So they finally make it to Parmistan & Jonathan is knocked out by some DEVO ninjas. They are ninjas with what looks like red DEVO hats (energy domes) on. He wakes up, is introduced to Zamir, has dinner, watches some inmates attempt the game only to die, has dinner with the other contestants, and then sneaks out to meet the princess after it is revealed that she is to marry Zamir at the conclusion of the game. Zamir is getting hot, he and Cabot have some very heated scenes together where the tension is thick. While out with the princess, Cabot learns that Zamir is trying to overthrow her father and if no one wins he'll sell the land or whatever to the US's enemy (Russia).

So the game starts, and Cabot's hero Thorg is playing too, but Thorg doesn't give a shit about Cabot and trips him at the start of the race. Already behind, shit gets even more dire for Cabot when Zamir defies the king and splits to give chase and kill Cabot before the king says he can leave. This finally makes the king suspicious and makes the princess plead for her father to realize that Zamir is bad and he's been duped. Cabot makes it through the cornfields, up the mountain, across the ravine and then further than anyone else. The only other contestant to not be killed is his Asian(?) buddy and Thorg. Thorg jumps out and tries to kill him, but one of the ninjas shoots an arrow through his chest. Cabot goes to the next part: a city of insane people. This scene lasts a good ten minutes of him just running from crazy people and Thorg making a return. The crazies kill Thorg, and they almost get Cabot, he starts tripping, but at the last minute a ninja helps him climb out. The ninja turns out to be ****************SPOILER ALERT************** his dad! So then 2 minutes later Zamir shoots another arrow through Col Cabot's back!!! That dude has NO LUCK! So then Jonathan takes off, ending up fighting a last battle with Zamir. He uses a special technique called GYMKATA to kick Zamir's ass. Then he rushes home to bang his princess. End of story? Not quite! In the prologue caption, we learn that in 1985 the US is the first country to install a HAARP system that probably controls most humans, the weather, satellite spying systems, probably causes cancer and basically everything that Tesla said it would do. So basically Jonathan Cabot helped screw up the world. But at least he screwed it up in the best way possible. The American way. Viva GYMKATA!!!!

bad/awesome flixxx review: Mechanical Violator Hakaider (1995)

2011-09-07T14:18:00.004-04:00

"Do you know why the flower is beautiful? Because they do not question their masters." - Gerjev

"Justice, this is what I do with it. I burn it." - Hakaider

"IF THIS PEACE IS FICTICIOUS, I SHALL DESTROY IT!" - Hakaider

A very strange Tokyo Shock flick indeed. Based on the old 70s Japanese Kikader series which is like a precursor to Power Rangers or Voltron, Hakaider was always the bad guy. Updated to reflect the mysterious nature of Hakaider's existence, this film begs us to ask, is Hakaider the bad guy or the misunderstood seeker of true justice? Originally titled Jinzô ningen Hakaidâ, and subsequently rereleased as Roboman Hakaider, I watched the 77 minute director's cut entitled MECHANICAL VIOLATOR HAKAIDER!!!

In the beginning of the movie, we have a band of robbers breaking into some old silo in hopes of cashing in on some treasure left there by people decades ago and sealed before some big war changed the outside world. They break into some sort of cell and come upon a man in chains. They are surprised when the man awakens, busts out of his chains, and in a mad rage, beats the shit out of them, transforms into some kind of robot man and jumps on a motorcycle and splits. On his motorcycle, this android dude contemplates, "who am i, where am i, where am i going?" So he's got amnesia.

So then, we see this utopian town (CALLED JESUS TOWN!!! SERIOUSLY!) where everything looks peaceful and everything is white, but things are not what they seem. Jesus Town is run by this very emo/ metrosexual dude named Gurjev who has his own personal stormtrooper army. Plus he has his own robot leader named Michael. Michael seems tough as shit, and he has a weird wing on his back and a hand that lights up before he stabs dudes with it. There's also a band of rebels who are robbing this place for some reason. One of the rebels is this girl named Kaoru. She is narcoleptic and dreams that she is a fairy and that a black knight keeps saving her from Death or some skeleton angel when she's tied to a tree. Meanwhile the robot android guy is flying toward Jesus Town on his chopper and starts shooting things with this badass sawed-off shotgun. Gurjev sees the android and goes, "oh no Hakaider!" So he knows who he is. Gurjev sends out some stormtroopers on motorcycles to take care of Hakaider, but Hakaider blows them away and asks them why they did it. One of them says he had to. Hakaider says, "what about free will?"

So Hakaider is pissed that robot dudes don't have free will, and he drives straight into Jesus Town blowing away anything in his path. Then he encounters the rebel thieves. Kaoru sees him and believes him to be the Black Knight coming to save her. Hakaider fights tons more stormtroopers finally killing most of them, but becoming hurt in the process. The rebels take him to their hideout and he heals up. Kaoru tells him the Gurjev is transforming disobedient citizens into mindless zombie stormtroopers. Hakaider doesn't like that at all. She pretty much has him convinced even if her rebel friends are just making fun of her. Right then, a bunch of stormtroopers bust in and annihilate the rebels except for Kaoru. They also think they kill Hakaider. Michael turns out to be a sadistic sonofabitch as well, smashing one of his own men's face in upon failure. Kaoru helps Hakaider once again and he hides her out in some dream landscape with huge religious statues with chunks taken out of their faces a la PLANET OF THE APES or LOGAN'S RUN. Pretty awesome scenery. Kaoru dreams again while Hakaider goes to work killing the false prophet Gurjev.

Hakaider makes it to the inner sanctum of Gurjev and Gurjev tells him he made him long ago, but he was flawed and that Michael is the perfected robot killer. Then Michael and Hakaider fight for like 20 minutes and destroy this huge room. The really cool thing here is that the room is white, and when they bust through it, the room becomes red like it's alive or bleeding. Michael is strong as hell, but ultimately no match for Hakaider who rips his fucking head off pulling a very red spinal column along with it. In one last ditch effort to beat Hakaider, Gurjev sics some giant claymation monster with a spinning mitre saw on his neck on Hakaider who gets thrown around a lot, but still fucks this beast up as well. If you dig Japanese fantasy flicks about kung fu or robots, I think you'll dig this one. It's pure punch/kick with little build up or real storytelling, but for a background stoner pizza movie, its perfection.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Masters of the Universe (1987)

2011-09-05T20:51:00.008-04:00

"Men who crave power look back on the mistakes of their lives, pile them all together and call it... destiny." - Sorceress

"I ache to SMASH YOU OUT OF EXISTENCE! To DRIVE your cursed face FROM MY MEMORIES FOREVER!" - Skeletor

"Good Journey. It is an old Eternian saying. Live the journey, for every destination is but a doorway to another." - Man-At-Arms

Welcome to the WORST FUCKING MOVIE THAT CAME OUT DURING MY LIFETIME. That is a bit extreme. Because, really, it CAN'T be the worst ever. And I've most definitely seen worse probably from the same year. So maybe, let me rephrase this and say THIS IS THE BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OF A MOVIE THAT HAD POTENTIAL TO BE ONE OF MY FAVORITES of ALL time (so far calculated). I was THE biggest He-Man/MOTU fan growing up. I (still) have every action figure & vehicle that came out except for a few weird things that were pulled right at the end when Loreal (the makeup company that bought Filmation) canned the whole series, effectively even shutting down the Mattel toy line. This movie was built up in my mind to make a reality of a world that I had dreamed about for a few years, and played and set up over and over again in my own house, pretending to be on another planet- Eternia. But what did they do in the film? They cheaped out on special effects and brought our hero TO EARTH!!!!??!? I actually had that moment that Ralphie from A CHRISTMAS STORY had when he's in the bathroom deciphering the Lil Orphan Annie decoder pin. "please remember to drink your -ovaltine? -SONOFABITCH!" In any case, Dolph Lundgren, Meg Foster, Courtney Cox, and the bald guy from Mallrats ruin MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE!!!!

Let me start off by pointing out why an 8 year old dude would have problems with his cartoon heroes come to life. First of all, let me begin with the women. Yes, even as an 8 year old, the women of cartoons have been an influence on young men's lives for years. Jane or Judy Jetson, Betty Rubble, Daphne from Scooby-Doo. Then we come to Teela and the Sorceress. In the cartoon, the Sorceress was a super hot young Wiccan chick who wore like a white eagle's pelt on her head and down her back. She basically had a low cut bathing suit on for an outfit. In the movie, she was an old crone, made even uglier when Skeletor started draining her power, but she should have been hot in the first place. She was basically powerless to do anything from keeping Skeletor at bay. He was more ruthless, self-centered & cunning and less bumbling in this flick. She instead had a weird ice capades crown on her old head that looked stupid. By the way, no mention of King Randor or Queen Marlena. Back to Teela. In the cartoon, Teela was a proud, headstrong redhead who wore a golden warrior bathing suit trimmed in white and showed a lot of leg. In the movie, she was a messy haired brunette who wore a grey body suit, that was, well, i guess it was okay. Man-At-Arms (Duncan) looked ok actually. He may have been one of the only ones. He-Man NEVER wore a cape in the cartoon, yet he wore one through most of the flick. I feel like this was super early in Dolph's career, as he could barely deliver these lines. He said, "I have the power", twice in the flick and the first time when he was fighting Skeletor, I swear I even thought as a little kid, "are you serious? Did they just go with the first take of that?" It sounded like some drunk uncle said it, or even better, Stallone as Rocky. "Adrian, Adrian- I have the power!"

Over on the other side, Skeletor looked pretty good. He could have laughed a more sinister laugh, but let's not split hairs. There were plenty worse things to point out. Beast-man didn't speak, Evil Lyn looked ok, and they invented the rest of the characters for the movie instead of using his usual henchmen. Blade, Saurod, and Karg?? Where was Trap-jaw, Cyclops, or Mer-man?? Must have been some copyright issues which is FUCKING BOGUS!!! If you couldn't get the goddamned rights to the characters, why make the fucking movie??? Then the biggest weird thing of all. Instead of Orko the space magician, we get Gwildor the orange haired midget. This guy is some kind of keymaster that brings everyone to Earth. And there you have the lame ass story. Which, being a bit forgiving could have ended up being ok, if all those other things hadn't been so blatantly wrong wrong wrong.

A quick plot summary: Skeletor steals a magic key from Gwildor giving him access to Castle Greyskull. He-Man goes to fight and win Eternia back before Skeletor is there when the moon rises and lines up with an eye in the throne room, bathing him in magic powers. They run into Gwildor who has a 2nd key, go into the Castle and try to fight, but they end up having to bail, and Gwildor's key takes them to guess where? Earth. On Earth we meet young Courtney Cox who's parents have been killed in a plane crash. She is saying goodbye to her musician boyfriend and moving cross country. They find the key that is separated from our heroes in the time portal. The dude turns it on, allowing Skeletor and his minions to track He-Man to Earth. There are so many subplots with a dumb cop named Lubick, a big concert the boyfriend is supposed to play, her parents coming back to life. Its ridiculous.

Finally Gwildor builds a new key after Skeletor comes and snatches the first one from Earth stranding them there and kidnapping He-Man. Skeletor becomes a golden god, and beckons He-Man to kneel. He-Man gets rescued. He-Man fights Skeletor, Skeletor falls into a pit. All is saved, the girl is healed, Lubick decides to stay in Eternia because he's such a dick, no one likes him on Earth. They send the couple back to Earth. Her parents are ok. None of this has anything to do with He-Man. Basically this movie ruined a lot of dude's childhoods. Its the perfect bad/awesome movie because it is for sure bad bad bad. But it IS about He-Man, and I guess even if it sucks, that's still pretty awesome.

**********UPDATE************** Also- Stormtroopers? This was a late thought here, but seriously? Skeletor never had Stormtroopers! What a lame way to fill out the cast man. BOGUS!

Valient Himself guests on Doug Benson's DLM podcast

2011-09-05T20:40:00.002-04:00

At Bumbershoot this weekend, I was a guest on Doug Benson's "DOUG LOVES MOVIES" podcast along with Scott Aukerman, Amy Schumer, Rory Scovel, Andy Daly, and Wayne Federman. You can download it for free on Itunes.....

OR.... go to this link and listen to it on your computer or whatever: http://twitthis.com/93jleg

I had a blast doing this. Thanx to Doug and everyone involved.

Valient Himself's ROCKNOWLEDGY Podcast Episode: 4

2011-09-05T20:28:00.003-04:00

Yo. It's Monday. Time for another episode of Rocknowledgy. I puked in front of the M&F bank the next morning halfway through this recording. Then we played in Portland and Seattle. Then i finished this in KCMO. I collected a LOT of air miles making this podcast. I hope you enjoy it. Here's the link:

http://bit.ly/qEbdrl

download link is on the left, streaming link is on the bottom right!!! Enjoy!!

And just in case you missed them:

Rocknowledgy Episode: 1 http://bit.ly/r5fbMD
Rocknowledgy Episode: 2 http://bit.ly/paADQ7
Rocknowledgy Episode: 3 http://bit.ly/pcK7GG

****************UPDATE*****************

Episode: 4- Playlist

Master's Apprentices- Catty
Liliput- Ain't You
Mikey Heppner- City of Tiny Lights (Frank Zappa cover)
Red Cross- Annette's Got the Hits
Greg Sage- Straight Ahead
Althea & Donna- Uptown Top Ranking
Captain Beefheart- White Jam
The Hellacopters- Throw Away Heroes
German Shepard- Arena Rock
Hasil Adkins- No More Hot Dogs
Love- A House is Not a Motel
Josef K- Sorry For Laughing
Humble Pie- the Sad Bag of Shakey Jake
Immortal Lee County Killers II- Nothing Hurts like My Back and Side
Flipper- Ever
Lou Reed- The Power of Positive Drinking
Alice Cooper- Beautiful Flyaway

bad/awesome flixxx review: Danger: Diabolik (1968)

2011-08-30T21:08:00.004-04:00

"I was expecting you, Inspector"- Eva

"Sure I do, who could forget what she looked like? The way she was decked out in red she looked like a mini cardinal. She had good legs."- whore

"Valmont, no this is just bad manners." - Diabolik

Another fucking epic film attached to Dino De Laurentiis. It seems like I've reviewed more films that he's produced than any other producer. Starring John Phillip Law, the angel dude from BARBARELLA, here we have the European comic book anti-hero/thief/killer in a swinging 60s romp that is part Bond part Austin Powers part Batman. Austin Powers was obviously influenced by this movie, as well as little known indie flick CQ. An Italian badguy wins tour de force, I highly recommend DANGER: DIABOLIK!!! (Check out both those awesome posters!)

One of my only beefs with this flick is half the soundtrack. If there is action going on, or like a car chase, we have this manic spy type music that fits perfectly. BUT if we have scenes of Diabolik with his beloved Eva, you have this very lame french pop song with this chick singing, "la, la, la" over and over and over again throughout the movie. That's about it, and its not that bad, just a little repetitive and grinding on the mental. Beyond that, this fancy gem of a flick starts out with Diabolik stealing 10 MILLION bucks from this dude Inspector Jeanco. Obviously Diabolik does this shit all the time, because Jeanco was stressing hard and had a full on escort trying to get the bread out of whatever country they were supposed to be in. I thought England, because they mention Parliament but it doesn't really matter. They sent out fake rigs with fake bread, and STILL Diabolik sniffed em out by the docks. He smokescreened them and split out in his sleek black Jaguar.

The cops give chase in water-style helichopters and Diabolik heads into a tunnel where he has his supermodel girlfriend Eva waiting in her WHITE Jaguar. They put a brick on the gas pedal or something and run the black one into the ocean, and double back heading down into a (very complex) secret underground HQ where instead of putting his loot into his safe, Diabolik spreads the 10 SUPERLARGE onto his revolving couch and fucks Eva all night. His underground lair is like something that Batman only wishes he had. I like the fact that Diabolik is basically a badguy that we are all pulling for to win and fuck the cops over. The next day, the Minister of the Interior is fired after holding a press conference that Diabolik disrupts by taking pics with laughing gas coming out of the camera and the whole thing is televised making the Minister look like a fool.

Jeanco knows he can never catch Diabolik so he blackmails known overlord Valmont into helping him catch Diabolik. Its Eva's bday, and Diabolik decides to rob this old lady of this famous Emerald necklace. He dons a white suit, scales a tower, steals the necklace and eludes the pigs by using an old catapult up on top of the tower. Later, a hooker spots Eva and she is kidnapped. They tell Diabolik to bring the bread and necklace to a spot and then take him up in a plane. They are about to make him jump out of the plane and be delivered to the cops, but he grabs Valmont at the last minute and throws out a capsule that makes the plane explode. Cornered with no means of escape, Diabolik uses the 11 emeralds as bullets and shoots them out of the shotgun into Valmont killing him, and then seemingly kills himself. Jeanco is pissed that Diabolik is dead, he can't believe it. Then when they are about to do the autopsy, BANG, he comes back alive. He had taken a pill that slows your heart and makes it look like you're dead. Escaping once again with Eva, Diabolik dresses like an old man and recovers the emeralds from the creamatorium where Valmont has been burned up. He thens dashes out to escape right before the pigs catch him again! Then he goes swimming with his babe!

Ok, finally, they offer up a million bucks to anyone bringing Diabolik in. He says fuck you and blows up all the government tax buildings. That's why I think I like him the best. A big FUCK YOU to the IRS for sending me ANOTHER bill for $8.03. STICK THAT 3 CENT UP YOUR ASS!!! He really stuck it to them. The the country is bad off, and they decide to sell off gold to buy some cold hard cash. They melt it into this huge ingot and try to transport it by train. Diabolik blocks the road and they have to back up and go across a bridge. HE BLOWS UP THE FUCKING BRIDGE!! HA! Then they have this rad yellow sub-boat thing and they use balloon ballast things to float the train car. They take it back to his hideout and he dons a fireproof suit to melt the shit down. Only here's where he fucked up: Jeanco used some radioactive stuff in case it got stolen, it would leave a trail back to his hideout so they'd be able to get all the goods back. It worked and they catch Diabolik with his pants down. There's a shootout, and the train car explodes showering Diabolik with hot molten gold. In the end, the suit saved his life, and he has this sinister ass laugh as the movie ends, with us wondering how the hell he's going to get out of this one. Very nice. From what I've heard, a great adaptation. But I can't tell, because I can't read German or Italian, and that's the only way I've ever seen the comics. I recommend. Dig it.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Knightriders (1981)

2011-08-30T20:17:00.005-04:00

"If I didn't believe in magic, I'd still be treating gall bladders, prostates and stuff like that. See, magic ain't got nothing to do with organs and glands and busted necks. Magic got to do with the soul, man. Only the soul's got destiny. It got wings. It's can fly. That's magic. The body? The body's just got a few minutes down here in the dirt with the rest of us." - Merlin

"Dammit, Billy, you're all stone-broke most of the time. And you take in every damn longhair that knows how to make a pair of sandals, and you wanna pick up the Blue Cross tab? Do you have the slightest idea what gas is selling for, or two-by-fours, or hamburger or anything else?" - Steve

"I'm not trying to be a hero! I'm fighting the dragon!" - King Billy

George Romero's next movie after he did Dawn of the Dead and right before he did Creepshow. A very different movie than what he is usually known for. Here we have a very strange tale of a group of Renaissance faire longhairs who take the whole deal very seriously at the beginning of the 80s. I don't know what to say about this one. It was just not what I expected I guess. Hard to say what Romero was trying to convey, but let's think about it and maybe we'll find out. Cameo by Stephen King, and starring Ed Harris and zombie B movie kind Tom Savini star in George Romero's KNIGHTRIDERS!!!

So, I guess the whole thing here is this dude, King William Billy is a motorcycle riding dude who somehow convinced a bunch of other motorcycle dudes and ladies into following him around Pennsylvania, and performing in a traveling Ren Faire troupe. The thing is though, throughout the movie, Billy is unconcerned with bread, and doesn't seem to want to really perform for anyone at all. He seems to just want his life to be lived like he was a king in charge of all his subjects, but doesn't really want to deal with hick cops or bigtime promoters or any of the like. The flick begins with him waking up beside his queen in the woods and then standing in the river whipping himself. Everyone else in the troupe is setting up for the day's performance when a couple of hick cops come by to try and squeeze them for bread.

They don't make much anyway, so one dude and Tom Savini (Morgan) are at odds on what to do. The one good guy dude rides out to get Billy while Morgan would just as soon payoff the cops who are shaking them down. Morgan stands to be the next king because he is the best jouster. Billy arrives, and tells the cops to fuck off. The day goes on. Some chick falls for the good guy bike leader. At the end of the joust, Billy decides to fight Morgan because Billy obviously has some kind of deathwish. Billy hurts his neck bad. That night the pigs come back and try to shake down the troupe by planting dope on a guy called BagMan. Billy says if Bagman is going to jail, so is he. The queen tells everyone what to do to get ready for the show in 2 days. Some leave, and some stay behind. They are to look for Steve their lawyer/ small time promoter dude. Bagman gets the hell beat out of him by the cops while Billy watches. When the head cop lets them out, Billy swears that he's gonna get the pig. All this whole while Billy keeps dreaming some blackbird is gonna get him in the end. Steve catches up with Merlin, Billy and Bagman, they camp out. Steve tells them that a bigshot promoter wants to throw some loot at them to perform all around the country. Billy freaks out because he says they aren't a sideshow. They are a lifestyle, a vision. He doesn't want to compromise his ideals. Everyone else thinks he's crazy. He splits in the middle of the night on Steve's bike to go confront the troupe b/c he knows some want to split.

Morgan is trying to convince some of the troupe to go with the new promoter. His girlfriend the mechanic gets pissed at him. Her friend the gay announcer finds himself a lover. He tells her to forget Morgan. She says he'll be back. Friar Tuck gets caught in Satan horns fucking this fat photographer chick. Morgan goes to screw the DC reporter chick. Billy shows up and chews everyone out. Morgan wins that day, and then a fight with the locals breaks out. Everyone thinks this is the end. A native american boy with blackbird armor shows up to fight. Billy fights and wins, but almost dies. Half the troupe splits. The good guy and his girl and best bud split to the mountains to chill and think for a minute. Morgan and Tuck are partyin in DC. The reporter tells Morgan she's married after they bang. The rogue faction get pics taken, then Morgan witnesses the husband. Then the good guy dude comes back and tells him he can't be king and bust everything up. Meanwhile the remaining troupe is hunkered down at the fairgrounds hopefully awaiting the others return.

Good guy convinced Morgan to come back with the other. They all ride back all styled out in their new ren fair duds. Everyone is super happy they came back. The promoter is like," you can't steal my clothes and then leave!" So they have a final battle royale. The dudes who didn't leave vs. the dudes in the new suits. good guy and Morgan battle side-hacker style. In the end Morgan wins. He tells the promoter to stuff it. Billy gives him the crown, says goodbye to everyone, hops on his bike and rides out. Blackbird guy follows him. He stops at McDonalds and beats the shit out of that cop. Then he rides to this school and gives a 7 year old boy that he told he wouldn't sign a poster for him a FUCKING LONGSWORD. AT SCHOOL. I MEAN ON SCHOOL GROUNDS. And the teacher just looks at him. So strange. Ok, so then he takes off again, with Blackbird still behind him, and he goes and goes and goes and goes and goes. Finally, he's looking so tired, and then he smiles, imagines himself on a horse galloping into the sun, and then BANG!!!! a fucking 18 wheeler SLAMS into him, scattering him and his armor all across the highway. FUCKING HEAVY. Then they have a funeral and then it shows Morgan heading the troupe to another town. The vision lives on. I guess this is about never compromising, and then if you have to , just killing yourself. HAHA. I don't know. This one was pretty good. pretty weird, but pretty good. See it if you can find it.

Valient Himself's ROCKNOWLEDGY Podcast Episode: 3

2011-08-29T12:29:00.003-04:00

alahoyus everyone, here is the 3rd episode of Rocknowledgy.
On this episode, I have a 15 minute interview with Bobby Liebling, lengendary frontman of Pentagram. We opened for them on this last tour, and they were celebrating their 40th anniversary. I thought it would be neat to ask him about his influences and favorite bands, and then cater the show to what we talked about.
hope you dig it! Here's the link!

Rocknowledgy Episode: 3 http://bit.ly/pcK7GG

download link is on the left, streaming link is on the bottom right!!! Enjoy!!

And just in case you missed them:

Rocknowledgy Episode: 1 http://bit.ly/r5fbMD
Rocknowledgy Episode: 2 http://bit.ly/paADQ7

*******Update*******

Playlist for Episode 3:
Pentagram- Be Forewarned
Interview w/ Bobby Liebling of Pentagram
Groundhogs- Black Diamond
Stray- Do You Miss Me?
The Stooges- Gimmie Danger
Wishbone Ash- Blind Eye
Pink Fairies- City Kids
Mountain- Don't Look Around
Blue Cheer- Doctor Please
Wayne Kramer & the Pink Fairies- The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff cover)
Pentagram- Treat Me Right
Krisiun- Diableros

bad/awesome flixxx review: The Fly (1986)

2011-08-28T17:16:00.004-04:00

"You're afraid to dive into the plasma pool, aren't you? You're afraid to be destroyed and recreated, aren't you? I'll bet you think that you woke me up about the flesh, don't you? But you only know society's straight line about the flesh. You can't penetrate beyond society's sick, gray, fear of the flesh. Drink deep, or taste not, the plasma spring! Y'see what I'm saying? And I'm not just talking about sex and penetration. I'm talking about penetration beyond the veil of the flesh! A deep penetrating dive into the plasma pool! "- Seth Brundle

"No, no I'm always like this it's um... motion sickness. When I was a kid, I uh... puked on my tricycle."- Seth

"ou have to leave now, and never come back here. Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects... don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first... insect politician. Y'see, I'd like to, but... I'm afraid, uh...I'm saying... I'm saying I - I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake. I'm saying... I'll hurt you if you stay."- Seth

Still one of the scariest, most disturbing movies I've ever seen. I rewatched this over the weekend and was blown away at how unbelievably gross this flick still is. Or how bad it still makes my skin crawl. A remake from the 1958 Vincent Price movie of the same name, Jeff Goldblum gives the performance of his career. Even Geena Davis looks cute as hell in this one, which is something that caught me off guard, because I don't really find her attractive usually. David Cronenberg pretty much had a masterpiece on his hands when he finished this piece of work. Come along and relive one of the greatest horror movies of all time, THE FLY!!!

So, Jeff Goldblum is a super intelligent creepy recluse scientist dude who is flirting with a magazine reporter Geena Davis. He charms her into coming back to his place even though she is reluctant. He starts playing the piano and she's like, I'm gonna split, and then he's like, no wait, check it out, my invention is going to change the world. He's super confident about this project even if he hasn't been about himself. He tells her to give him something personal, and she goes and pulls off one of her stockings... Kinky shit. I've never thought of Geena Davis as a dirty lady, you know because "there's no crying in baseball", but she had "the look" in her eye in this scene. Anyway, he throws it in one of his "telepods" and tinkles some keys on a computer and bang- out comes the stocking in the other telepod. When she figures out what happened she tells him she's going to make an article out of it, and he's like, no way jose. But she basically says, bullshit, and splits.

The next day she tries to convince her boss/ex boyfriend of what happened, but he thinks she got conned by Goldblum. Then 5 minutes later, Goldblum busts in, and convinces her to go hang with him with one magic word: cheeseburger. Then he tells her that she should not do the article, she should document his experiments because there was one big problem with the project still lingering. He hadn't actually teleported anything living yet, only inanimate objects. She agrees, and then they try to teleport a baboon. The baboon comes out the other side TOTALLY INSIDE OUT. Its one of the sickest fucking scenes ever. I squealed out loud when I saw it the other day. I can only imagine the screams when it came out in the theater. I mean THIS is horror, this is heavy heavy shit. Why they don't make flicks like that anymore is beyond me. Ok, so then Geena Davis decides to bang Goldblum. And then they are about to eat, and she makes a suggestion that helps him figure out that the flesh of living objects is the problem and he sets out to solve that. Then he does, and soon after successfully teleports the other baboon that he got from wherever test baboons come from.

Ok, so then they are about to celebrate but Geena finds an envelope with a magazine with Jeff's face on it. She realizes her scum ex boyfriend is trying to steal her story and leave to confront him. Goldblum is pissed cause he puts two and two together and thinks she must be banging her old flame. So he says fuck it, "sorry I killed your brother" to the baboon, gets naked, and jumps in the pod. Unbeknownst to him, a little fly is in there with him, and when he comes out the other side, everything seems cool. Unfortunately everything isn't cool. He passes out, Geena comes back, he catches a fly in mid air while he was asleep, then gets up and does an uncanny gymnastics routine. They go out the next day and he's acting more and more jacked as the hours go by, I'm talking young Robin Williams jacked. He also starts sucking down sugar by the spoonful. She then begins to notice something isn't right. Then he bangs her for like half a day. After they finish he tells her she needs to teleport so she can feel like him. When she declines, he FREAKS out, rambles incoherently, dons some pants and goes out on the town to find some chick who will go through the pods. He goes in a bar, and now is visibly beginning to look haggard, as bumps are forming on his face. Two dudes are arm wrestling and he starts flirting with one of the dudes chick. They are like, hey man fuck off, and Goldblum still munching on a Zagnut is like, I got $100 bucks says I could beat either one of ya. They are like, alright- easy money. Goldblum breaks the dudes wrist leaving him with the bone sticking out of his arm screaming, grabs the girl and takes off. They go out to the bars, and he takes her home and bangs her, then when he tries to get her to teleport, Geena jump out is like, "Be afraid, be very afraid."

The girl splits, Jeff is pissed, and he figures out that something MUST be wrong when his fingernails start falling off. He thinks he has cancer and then he starts dabbling with the computer results and realizes a fly was in the machine. Weeks pass, and Jeff Goldblum turns into a fucking monster. He is becoming less human all the time. His hair recedes, his skin is all putrid, and he has to vomit up this liquid to break down his food. Then he starts to walk on walls. His mental state goes from desperate, to hopeful, to excited, to disturbed. He realizes there isn't much time to save himself. Meanwhile Geena Davis is pregnant with his child. She gets her ex to take her to get an abortion, and Goldblum busts through goddamn window like a maniac, grabs her and splits. Her ex tracks them back to Jeff's lab, and busts in with a shotgun. Goldblum jumps outta the rafters and pukes on his hand melting it off, and THEN pukes on his ankle separating him from his foot so he can't walk anymore. He then tells Geena he's gonna fuse him and her and their baby into one mega-creature so at least he'll be a little bit more human. She is freaking out, and tries to get away as he tries to lock her in the pod and she accidentally rips his fucking jaw off!!! YES!!! That triggers his full on transformation into the final stage of the Fly, his face falls off revealing this hideous creature, his skin all falls off, and its just the best gross special effects ever. He slings her in one pod, gets in the other one, the ex comes to, shoots the cable so her pod isn't connected but the thing goes off, transporting him and half the pod door into the third pod. Then the fused Fly and pod door abomination come crawling out of the pod, grabs the shotgun and points its barrell at its own head as if it wants Geena Davis to blow its head off. She says no, no, no, but eventually pulls the trigger and his fucking head is just decimated spreading guts all over the room. She falls to her knees crying. THE FUCKING END. FIVE FUCKING STARS. They don't make em like that anymore folks. Get you some of that. Seriously there are some INTENSE goose bump, I think I'm gonna puke moments in this one. Chock full of it. LOVED IT.