bad/awesome flixxx review: The Plague Dogs (1982)

"Just a proposition, bonny lads. If ye'll hunt with me, I'll keep ye right, and ye'll have yer meat, we'll run through the night and follow me feet..."- The Tod

"Have you ever thought, Rowf... that we won't need food when we're dead? Or names for that matter... I wonder who the buzzards will like best... You, or me... I hope you make sure we're properly dead before you start, old rip-beak!"- Snitter

"Something's been burnt in there. It's a death place. Bones, hair..."- Rowf

HUGE SCORE in Richmond! I found this super rare cartoon film on a recent trip up there. It's another heavy, and I'm not talking Combat Shock heavy. I'm talking about most people that are sensitive especially where animals are concerned would have a hard time watching this. Its not for kiddies. And, there's nothing BAD that happens, its just about a sad situation concerning animals that are being experimented on in the early eighties in a national park in England. Whew, one of the first scenes made me cringe for sure. But, all in all, its a film about freedom, true freedom, and experiencing the opposite, only to escape and relish the moments, wondering where your place is now that you are free. Funny, because my feeling and that description would fit another film I (finally after 17 years) watched the other day. When the old librarian and Morgan Freeman are released after so long in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, its a similar feeling. They'd been locked up so long, they didn't know what to do, or where to go. A hell of a tale, from the author Richard Adams, and the same director Martin Rosen who directed Adams other film adaptation WATERSHIP DOWN, I present to you THE PLAGUE DOGS!!!





In the beginning of this film we have some dudes at a research facility making a black lab (Rowf) swim until he eventually drowns and then they resuscitate him. It's implied that that this has been done numerous times because he is able to swim longer each time. He is super bummed. He hates the "whitecoats". His neighbor in the cages is a little fox terrier named Snitter with a bandage on his head. One night the guy who feeds them accidentally leaves Rowf's cage unlatched. Snitter is a schemy nosy little guy and he sneaks under the wire between their cages. Rowf is ready to give up hope of ever living a normal life again, and wishes for death. Snitter informs him that they can leave his cage, and goads him to follow along. They snoop around the facility knocking over rat cages and making a mess, until they reach the incinerator. They jump down into it in hopes of escaping. They finally do escape right before one of the night dudes throws another dead doggie in to dispose of him.



They are excited to be away from the whitecoats, but realize quickly that they aren't in a regular neighborhood. Snitter says they should seek out a master like his old one, and begins to have flashbacks of how he ended up in the facility in the first place. It never says what really happened, but apparently his first master was hit by a car, and Snitter blames himself and figures that their are flies in his head that caused the damage. They try to become sheep dogs by mimicking two dogs out in a field, but are run off by the dogs, and warned that those dogs master would shoot them if they stuck around. They kept searching and found shelter in a cave high up on a canyon overlooking the sheep's fields. Living in the cave they met a sly old fox with a funny accent called "The Tod".



The Tod convinces the boys to hunt with him, helping him catch and kill the sheep that he could never do by himself. Only he does it in a meticulous manner hoping to stall the shepard from finding out for as long as possible. He then gets pissed when Rowf kills a sheep without his say so, and storms off saying they'll be dead soon. The shepards ARE pissed and launch a small investigation after hearing that 2 dogs escaped the facility. The dogs soon stir up more and more trouble, and the news catches wind of the trouble. The compound that trouble, Snitter accidentally kills a man who would have probably adopted him, by stepping on the trigger of his gun. Now the news really picks up and the facility starts to feel the pressure. They send an assassin after the dogs, and spread rumors that the dogs may be carrying the bubonic plague (or maybe they actually were, maybe someone else spread those rumors, it was hard to tell where that came from).



The Tod helps the boys again when the assassin is almost upon them, and the hunter falls to his death. They eat the hunter because they were starving to death. When the army is called in to find these dogs that may have the plague and have killed at least 2 humans, its a race for survival. The Tod helps them hop a train before being caught himself, and then they make it a few stops down and race for the sea. Snitter swears he sees an island and tells Rowf to swim for it, but then he assumes its just the flies in his head again, and gives up beginning to drown. Rowf finally spots the island and tells Snitter to keep swimming, as a heavy fog rolls in. The movie ends not telling you whether or not they make it to the island or if Rowf was just holding out for a little bit longer. HEAVY! Heavy shit man. I don't think a bunch of buddies could sit through this one. Its a tearjerker.
They didn't make many copies of this film, and the super rare version only had 8000 made. Who knows how many are left out there, but if you like heavy stuff, animated masterpieces, or are an advocate of proper treatment of animals, this one may be for you. Or not. I dug it.

New Valient Thorr Video for "SLEEPER AWAKES"

video was made in Raleigh & Chapel Hill, NC in April 2011 by Charles Cardello & Bradley Scott of Bifocal Media. Feel free to leave comments. Let me know what you think. Thanx

bad/awesome flixxx review: Leonard Part 6 (1987)

"Cancel the grits!"- Duchamp

"Possum's in Piedmont awaiting orders."- Man Ray

"Mango me." - Medusa Johnson

Everyone claims this is one of the worst movies ever made. Believe me, I've seen way worse. You know what I think the real problem is with this movie? Maybe the editing, and more specifically the music selection. The songs edited into these sequences are fucking tragic, and I think that might be the biggest problem. I'm talking really super shitty sax heavy R&B from the 80s. Sounds like you're getting your teeth cleaned. Cosby isn't that funny really in the first place outside of some of his classic 'parenthood' standup, but here he could've been better had he been the kind of comedian that Richard Pryor was. No, you don't have to swear to be funny, but Cosby was way past his prime here, and could've benefited from some better writing than some of the gags in this one. One bright spot for me was the appearance of Joe Don Baker, ol Mitchell himself as the CIA captain. Definitely some good sight gags here, but Cosby himself apparently denounced the flick before it came out, so he shot it in the foot before the race began. Oh well, if you like spies, and comedy about rich spies, follow along with LEONARD PART 6!!!!





The movie starts off with three quick weird scenes of "Leonard". Him driving a car with a tank turret on the top, jumping a huge SF style hill, him doing ballet, and him jumping an ostrich off of a building. Then you have a dude explaining why you haven't heard of the first five installments of the Leonard series, and how he'll explain how Leonard did all those weird things in the course of a weekend. Leonard was supposedly such a badass and the first 5 installments were such a threat to national security that they were confiscated by the CIA, whom he used to work for. I think it was probably a bad idea to show these three parts of the movie in the beginning, because it reveals a lot of the action that comes later, BUT what do I know, it also kind of hooks you in, makes you want to see why this dude is on a fucking ostrich. His butler Frayn is doing the narration and he explains that Leonard Parker has retired from the spy game to open a restaurant, one of his many successful endeavors. We learn the real reason that he left the espionage game later when it is told that his wife left him and he became disheartened.



A fish is sent to kill an agent, and then you see Joe Don Baker addressing a bunch of other 'agents' who say squirrels, fish, possums, rabbits, etc, are killing agents all over the US. JDB says, I'll send Munroe to get Leonard to help. Munroe goes to collect Leonard at his restaurant but bungles the capture and Leonard has to bring Munroe's dead body back. JDB greets him as if he'll just be ready for his next assignment, but Leonard turns him down flat. JDB says she'll never come back to you Leonard, probably because you aren't with the service anymore. Leonard goes home to meet his daughter.



Another agent is killed by frogs jumping his car into a river. He drowns. Leonard's daughter brings home a dude who is older than Leonard, and says she's gonna marry him. Leonard has a sit down with him and shows us a Coca-cola. He has some choice words with them, then devises a plan to call his wife to discuss the whole thing. She says meet her at her place tomorrow 9pm. Leonard is fucking psyched. Flick cuts straight to a montage of Leonard getting ready all the next day, working out to a Jane Fonda tape where she is speaking directly to him, having old shaolin monks make his suit, spending all day having Frayn pick out ties from a huge closet and then finally picking the LAST one. Then he goes over, she pours the food all over him (prompting the grits line, the best line in the movie) cause she's still pissed that he was fucking around with some 19 year old girl on him, like 8 years ago. He leaves, and tells Frayn to suit him up for duty. Frayn busts out a shitload of awesome weapons, including underarm rockets, and a razor. He puts on a helmet that says "Ipso Facto", and goes to fight the leader of the vegetarian badguy club, Medusa Johnson.



He first goes to meet with this psychic gypsy whom he can't understand named Nurse, and she gives him ballet shoes. He ends up fighting some dudes dressed up like birdmen with them and stealing this ball that supposedly mind controls the animals. Then he goes to watch his daughter's play and she gets naked. Then the ex wife and daughter are kidnapped by Medusa. Leonard has to get the ball back from JDB who wants to use its power as well. Leonard knows he's power hungry so he uses the ball and gets rabbits to attack the CIA, then he goes to get his family. It all comes down to a showdown, and finally Leonard wins his ex wife back... And then more shitty R&B kenny g sax bullshit. Seriously, that was the real BAD part of the flick. It could have been better, but I don't agree that its the shittiest or even one of the shittiest. Let's say this is def in the category of SO bad it's good. Seek out only if you have NOTHING else to do at all.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Flash Gordon (1980)

"Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror."- Ming

"Prince Barin! I'm not your enemy, Ming is! LET'S ALL TEAM UP AND FIGHT HIM!"- Flash Gordon

"Don't empty my mind! I've spent my whole life filling it!"- Dr. Hans Zarkov

Awesome flick! Another masterpiece produced by good ol Dino De Laurentiis!! A super campy version of the old Flash Gordon comic strip based on the serials of the 30s and 40s, with a soundtrack by Queen! and starring Max Von Sydow as Ming! and two time James Bond- Timothy Dalton as one of the princes of Mongo! Pretty badass sounding already huh? And we haven't even gotten to the costumes! This is pretty much a pleasure to watch even after all these years. There are a lot of haters that don't dig this one because its not Star Wars. I don't think this was ever supposed to be like Star Wars. The Hawkmen don't even try to actually look like they're flying, they are obviously hung from ropes. But its details like this that give FG it's camp, and overall feel. Sit back, and enjoy FLASH GORDON!!!





This tale begins with a shot of the Earth and some voiceover by 2 dudes. One is complaining that he wants something to play with because he's bored. Klytus the other guy offers Ming a planet and aims some sort of gun toward it and presses a button that says earthquake. There are tons of other buttons including one that says "hot hail". This pleases Ming. Then we have some wild credits that show a montage of the old Flash Gordon comic strips. Then we are on a plane ride. On that plane is our hero, Flash Gordon, a football player for the New York Jets, and his travel agent Dale Arden, along with the two pilots. Dale is giving Flash the cold shoulder until some heavy turbulence begins. Flash goes up to check it, then Dale fesses up that she's scared shitless. Flash tells her to cool out til the sky turns blood red... Next thing they know, the pilots are sucked out and Flash takes the wheel or handles... whatever. Then they crash into this crazy scientist's castle greenhouse thing.



The castle belongs to Dr Hans Zarkov, who has long believed the moon would fall to the earth in some sort of attack. He plans to rocket himself and his sidekick into space to stop the unknown threat, except Munson chickens out. Lucky for him Flash & Dale crash just in time. He tricks them and the rocket is off into space. Unfortunately for them it gets sucked into a black hole leading them to the realm of Mongo, which is ruled by the supreme emperor Ming the merciless. Ok, so Flash is to be executed, Hans gets brainwashed by Klytus, & Dale is gonna have to marry Ming. There are 2 peoples on Mongo, the tree dudes, and the hawk dudes, and they fucking hate each other. Aura, Ming's slut daughter saves Flash & takes him to the tree people where her other love interest, Timothy Dalton lives. He's pissed cause he knows she's a slut, but he can't overcome his lust so he listens to her. He won't kill Flash, but he tries to get him killed by sticking his hands in a beast tree. Flash tricks him back and escapes, all the while trying to get him to team up and beat Ming. They are both captured in the tree dudes forest by the hawkmen.



Dale gets a telepathic message from Flash so she splits to find Zarkov who isn't brainwashed after all. They escape only to be captured by the main Hawkman Vultan. Aura is getting the shit beat out of her back at Ming's house. Flash is forced by the hawks to fight Tim Dalton to the death, but he doesn't kill him, so Tim Dalton trusts him. He's about to get lovey dovey, but Klytus breaks up the party. He tries to arrest them, but they fucking kill his ass. Ok, so then the Hawkmen split cause they are chickens (get it??!) and then Ming shows up. He grabs them all up except Flash. He tells him if he'll rule in his stead, he can be the ruler of Earth. Flash is like, "fuck off", so Ming leaves him and destroys the sky city where the hawkies lived. Except for some reason, the hawkies had a rocket cycle (who knows why? they could fly!) and Flash steals it to go save the day.



So Flash calls the hawks and tells them his plan. He pretends to attack Ming's castle, but instead he has the hawks in the clouds. Klytus's chick who is in charge now sends a ship out to kill Flash and they are tricked. Then there's a big showdown, and a bunch of hawkies are killed, but Flash still takes control of the ship. He turns it around and aims it straight for the castle. Klytus's chick figures out the deal and fires on their own ship, but its too late, Flash crashes the goddamn thing into the wedding party and the point of the ship stabs Ming right in the heart. Ok, so Timothy Dalton becomes the king of Mongo, Vultan becomes the head of the army, and Flash saved the Earth. And QUEEN RULES! There ya go. Watch it.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Combat Shock (1986)

"It's not your fuckin' sunglasses that got smashed!"- Labo

"I see it all so clearly now."- Frankie

"The war is not over. The battlefield may have changed, but the war is not over."- Frankie

This is a heavy, heavy, heavy fucking flick. It drags on like no other movie. I was waiting for a plane that was about 6 hours late the other day, and this was the movie that I picked to watch. Boy was I suckered. For pretty much the whole thing, I was just begging and waiting for something to happen. Did it? Well, maybe the last 10 minutes of the movie saved it from being a total suck fest, but what a grueling wait for something. I'm pretty sure that was the director's point. This is a bleak movie about a bleak subject. It's so heavy that after being mad about it for the whole time I watched it, I had to reevaluate how I felt about it after it was actually over. A bunch of unknowns in an independent Troma film entitled COMBAT SHOCK!!!





This one starts out with VERY LONG DRAWN OUT SCENES of the protagonist walking through a memory of his time in Vietnam. He is lost and can't remember why or how he became lost. A voiceover explains that he relives this same scene every night of his life. After a serious 10 minutes of walking around the jungle, he is being chased by a young Vietcong group. He questions why one of them, a pretty girl in charge, wants him dead. Stupid question. He reluctantly shoots her in the belly, drops his m-16 and takes off running. Then the group catches him and just beats him up with their guns. Then he wakes up in his very shitty apartment in Staten Island where his wife is yelling at him that they have no food whatsoever and his kid won't stop crying.



The crying is very strange at first and it sounds like its made with a weird fake synthesizer. Immediately you wonder, why didn't they just get a real baby crying sound effect. But then you get a glimpse of the baby. Its a fucking mutant slobbering thing that was supposedly created by his exposure to agent orange. The wife is seen a few times rummaging through an empty cupboard and eating the crumbs of cereal, trying to make some kind of paste for the little monster to eat. She yells at Frankie to get a job and lambastes him saying that all he does is walk the streets. He actually does go to look for a job, and really lives in a despicable neighborhood ridden with crime.



Frankie tries his best, waiting in line at the unemployment office trying desperately to get a job, talking to dudes who really don't give a shit about him or what he's going through. Frankie suffers from hallucinations and flashbacks, but really seems to try to do the right things. He tells his buddy Mike not to rob a chick for dope money. Mike does it anyway, and scores, and then tries to find a rig, but can't and eventually cuts his arm with a piece of wire or a stick or something and just pours the dope on his pus ridden arm. GROSS. He dies. Then the chick he robbed robs him of his gun. The pusher Paco and his thugs beat Frankie up a few times for money he owes them. Then later, Frankie tries to call his dad whom he had a fight with a long time ago. His dad thinks he was killed in Vietnam, and thinks its a joke. When Frankie convinces him, his dad says its no use anyway, he had no bread for him because he is not only dying himself, but he is broke as well. BUMMER.



So Frankie says fuck it, I'm just gonna rob this chick, I'm better off in jail, and he steals her purse. But Paco and his gang beat the shit out of him. Only they lose the gun, but see the bullets... too late. Frankie mows them down. Finally he realizes what happened in Nam before they threw him in the hole. The village killed themselves before the troops got there so they wouldn't be raped and murdered. Frankie decides he'll do that for his family. He goes home, and over a loooooong drawn out scene, shoots his wife in the belly, then 3 more times on the floor. Then he (finally) shoots that crying kid, then holds him close, then puts him in the goddamned OVEN!!!! Then he turns it all the way up. Finally he sits down with some rotten milk, drinks it, and as the cops are beating down his door, he shoots his brains all over the wall. HEAVY! This is a heavy flick. I'd say its hard to watch not because its so heavy, but because its so goddamned slow! WOW. It really drags. The dude isn't believeable as a Nam vet, because he looks too young. That's one real constructive gripe. I'm trying to be cool here with it. Its not the worst movie of all time, but it really drags on and on. Personally I have a hard time relating to it because I would never in a million years join the military. Not unless somehow (hostile) aliens came here to take over. So, yeah. There ya go.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

"I wonder who the real cannibals are."- Prof. Monroe

"I've seen the rest of the material, you haven't. You haven't seen the stuff that even your editors didn't have the stomach to put together, and if you had, you wouldn't hesitate but to agree with me."- Prof. Monroe

"The only thing I know is we're gonna risk our lives to save those fuckers. Let's go see the Yacumo."- Chaco

**************************** WARNING ************************************

This is the most disturbing movie I've ever seen.

At first I thought it was going to be a Troma flick, funny, campy horror done at no one's expense. I was wrong. This is (according to how you look at it) either one of the scariest films of all time, or one of the most exploitive. In a sense its both. I have good things to say and bad things to say. Its definitely hard to watch. There are things in here that director Ruggero Deodato put in here just for the sake of shock value. But then again, in these countries, these indigenous tribes eat an kill animals in the way some of these scenes portray. The film can also be construed as racist as the tribes depicted here are not and never were mortal enemies of each other. This was all a story... put together in a similar way that the characters depicted in the film piece their story together how they want it to be seen... But we'll get to that. Touted as the most controversial film of all time, once banned in over 50 countries, where the director was accused of killing the actors and actually had to go to court to prove his innocence, I present to you: CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST!!!





Ok, so the film is lambasted for having many disturbing scenes. The quick of it is a team of documentarians go to the Amazon to film tribes that still practice cannibalism. They've been warned that many teams have gone there and never came back, but they are young and cocky and have a reputation of not taking no for an answer. The team has been lost for 5 or 6 weeks when the film begins and a rescue team is being organized. They get a dude named Professor Monroe who knows about indigenous tribes to be the main guy and give him some jungle guides. They begin into the jungle and here's where the shocks begin.



First of all they chop a "muskrat" up, which is really a coatimundi, and he's screaming and cute and its REALLY hard to watch. BUT... in their defense, if you are a meat eater, which a lot of people are not, but even those who don't realize that all over the world, animals are killed for food. We don't like to think about how they are killed. We don't want to even know about it, and sometimes when one does think about it for the first time, they don't eat meat anymore. The team catches a Yacumo kid, and takes him to exchange him for information and to gain entry to their village. Then they head out deeper to see the other tribes. The other tribes are warring, and they help one tribe over the other, and the tree tribe take them back to their tree house. There they try to learn what happened to the film crew, because they keep seeing clues. Finally, the professor gets naked with the tribe women and they take him to the bones. Then in a last ditch effort, he wows them with a tape recorder of chanting and they trade the tape deck for the undamaged film cannisters, the last information of the film crew.



When they get back to NYC, the executives (who I guess sent them out there in the first place- the "suits") want to use the professor to host the documentary once they've edited down the footage. Then they begin to watch the footage. The film crew turn out to be a nasty bunch of people. They watch another film they've done before called 'THE LAST ROAD TO HELL' with heavy footage of soldiers killing people and hauling them off. Then the chick tells him its all fake. So then they get into the amazon footage. They kill a huge turtle and its not that bad, but its disturbing and very graphic as the turtle's legs are kicking after his head's been chopped off. HEAVY. Then the guide gets bit by a snake, and they immediately chop his leg off. Then it shows them burying him shallowly. Then they find some of the natives, shoot one to follow him to the village, then treat the natives terribly. They make them get into a hut and burn it down to fake an incident between the "warring" tribes. The professor tells the lady that they shouldn't use this footage, that its bad news, and just bad all around. The families seemed to know they were bad, the dad called his own kid a sonofabitch.



Finally Professor Monroe tells the bigwigs that they absolutely should not show the footage. They are fighting him and he says well, I've seen how it ends, you haven't, I'll bet you won't show it when you do. And then they go watch it in the screening room. The film crew end up raping a chick while the girl on the team fights them, and then they see the girl impaled, which is heavy. Then there's a weird abortion scene, and then finally they are attacked by the tree people. The one dude takes a spear to the chest, but instead of helping him, Alan the dickhead leader shoots him to see what the tribe does. They cut off his weiner and disembowel him and eat him. Then they come after the others, rape the girl, and behead her, and finally they get the other two. Disgusted, the head exec walks out, the other one orders the film destroyed. Professor Monroe walks off wondering to himself, "who are the real cannibals?" Prompting us to think about the film viewed in the theme of civility. Who's civil, who is uncivil? Its a heavy film, with heavy scenes, and heavy shit. Not sure that I would recommend it to anyone to watch really. Its rough.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)

"I think I'm okay now. I just tell my brain when I know I'm hurting. I just say I got nothing for you buddy... Nothing to make it go away, so just go to hell. And he goes. He's like a brother to me now and brothers fight sometimes."- Hobo

"Lock him up with the sodomites and get me the goddamn chief of police!"- Hobo

"When life gives you razor blades... you make a baseball bat, covered in razor blades."- Drake

I've been waiting for a resurgence of over the top, poorly made, or well made, or made to look poorly made exploitation movies for a long long time. It seems that with the nod from Rodriguez and Tarantino, these films are actually coming together, and being well produced! This film was made in Nova Scotia where one of my favorite television comedy series of the last ten years, Trailer Park Boys, was filmed. They used a few of the cast members in cameos as well. Apparently made after wining a fake trailer contest at SXSW, here's a true indie film that delivers with a big bang. Rutger Hauer's excellent return to the big screen w/ cameos by Ricky and Sam Losco from TPB, I give you: HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN!!!





Rutger Hauer is a hobo who's seen it all, had enough, been through hell and back and has hopped the rails hopefully for the last time. He ends his journey in Hope Town, although the gravity spray painted over the sign making it read Scum Town doesn't sound very hopeful. The hobo dreams of buying a lawnmower so that he can start a business for himself and start earning and start living. All his hopes are shattered though when he discovers that shambles that Hope Town is in. For starters, he sees a man filming bums fighting, & they offer him money to get in on the action. Next up he sees Ricky from TPB running down the street screaming for help with a manhole cover around his neck. A car drives up and his brother Drake is there with Logan's (Ricky's) nephews Ivan and Slick. Logan screams for mercy, but they drop him in a manhole, tie a rope around his neck and pull his head off. The hobo is sickened as no one does anything. Apparently Drake and his sons run the town that they lovingly refer to as Fuck Town.



After seeing the lawn mower he want is 49.99, the hobo starts to beg. After getting humiliated by some dickhead crustpunks, he follows Ivan & Slick into some kind of fucked up arcade where people are being tortured and they are hooking kids on cocaine. A whore tries to help some kid, & Slick is gonna kill her, but the Hobo stops him, citizen's arrest and takes him in to the cops who turn out to be just as crooked as Slick. They carve SCUM into his chest and luckily he runs into the whore and she takes him in and he tells her a story about a bear. He also tells her she should be a teacher instead of a whore.



The hobo leaves her place early, goes to the camera guy, breaks bottles on his own head and eats glass, then gets the money for the lawn mower. But while he's about to buy it, some thugs start to rob the pawn shop and threaten a lady and her kid. He looks up at the wall a la Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction and the answer is written on the wall. 49.99 for a shotgun. He blows them all away, PAYS FOR THE SHOTGUN, then goes and shoots the fucking guy who made him eat glass in the face after he makes him eat the tape! Then he starts cleaning up the town, really pissing Drake off. Drake makes his son go after him, they kill some kids and instruct everyone to kill all the homeless people in town or they'll kill more kids.



So everyone is out to get the hobo, homeless people are dying horrible deaths, but once again, the hobo saves the whore. Ivan and Slick find out where she lives, come to kill her and the hobo, but the hobo gets the better of them, blowing Slick's wiener off, and chasing Ivan home. But not before they slit the whore's throat. Drake is super pissed, so he called for the twin gimps called the Plague. They come out to find the hobo at the hospital where the whore is recovering and they start hanging everyone. They kidnap the hobo and take him to Drake who puts him on some goddamned tv show, that is probably all just made up in this psychopaths head. He thinks he has the town on his side, but Abby the whore, after getting her throat split open, SOMEHOW ALL ALONG KNEW HOW TO USE MIG AND TIG WELDERS, and she takes apart the lawn mower, AND BUILDS A FUCKING SPINNING BLADE SHIELD. Yeah right! She was a whore! When did she have time to take all those shop classes?? Anyway, Why spoil the ending here? YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BUY THIS NOW. Why not? Get it from itunes, or purchase a hard copy. It came out July 5th on blu ray, and dvd. Word Up.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Stone (1974)

"We'll do what we fuckin like. We're not going to hang round getting knocked off one by one while you smartarse bastards do your investigation routine. "- Undertaker

"Go on now, you're persecutin' a minority religion, now piss off!"- Undertaker

"looks like Jap-crap, whoops, it fell over!"- Blackhawks leader

Well, we could sit here talking about it all day, or you could just scroll down and watch this one for yourself. The whole movie is posted for your pleasure at the bottom of this review. For those of you who just wanna bask in glow of your lappies whilst perusing mine own review, well here we go... This is one that I've been looking for for a good long while. Recommended by our European agent Klaus, it was supposed to be, "you've seen Mad Max, but you haven't seen Stone!!!", and "this is THE greatest Australian film". And finally after watching the Ozploitation documentary- Not Quite Hollywood, I had to actually see this flick. Starring Toecutter and the Nightrider from Mad Max, I present a biker movie from five years earlier entitled- STONE!!!!





The Grave Diggers are a Sydney motorcycle gang. After one of the members (completely tripping balls on acid) witnesses an assassination, three members of the gang are murdered. The Grave Diggers and other gangs in solidarity ride down the coast to bury their fallen comrade "Get Down". While they are there, the pigs show up to hassle them. The leader of the group, The Undertaker tells them to piss off because they're Satanists. They go back into town to one of the bars they haunt, kick everyone ass, and then this dude comes to the bar. The dude is a pig named Stone, and he wants to join their gang in hopes to help find their killer. They tell him to fuck off, but then someone tries to kill a lot of them while he's there. He scares the killer off, and keeps them from getting killed. They vote whether or not to let him ride with them a while. Its 50/50 but they go with it and let him join. They send him home, and say they'll send someone round the next morning.



Stone dates this fancy chick and she doesn't fancy the idea of him running around with trash like the Grave Diggers. She asks why someone else can't babysit the hellions, but he tells her its his job. Basically the rest of the movie she's hassling someone about trying to get him home. Stone gets taken to the Digger's new compound. Its rad and on the coast. The give him his colors, hold him down, and pierce his ear. Then he's in. This one chick wants to bang him, but they told him to lay off the trim. She keeps coming onto him though and she's Toad's chick see? So she causes friction. Stone further convinces them he's cool by drag racing with them through town, and rolling his bike.



To fit in more with the dudes, Stone trades in his Norton, and has his buddy sell him a sick Kawasaki Z1(900) like they all ride. Upon showing it off to the dudes though, they end up in a confrontation with this rival gang called the Blackhawks. The Grave Diggers give them what for and the Undertaker fires a shot in the air and asks them if they want to get heavy. The Blackhawks back down. But this gives the murderers a scapegoat and they set up a hit on the Diggers. You get a bit more beautiful landscape and some more cool bike tricks and then its time for the finale.



Some politician is the one setting up the Grave Diggers in hopes of killing the one who witnessed the assassination of the other politician. They hide out in the graveyard waiting to kill the boys, but the boys are smarter. They surround the graveyard with their own dudes. They catch the would be murderer, but not before Toad ends up getting plugged, and Dr. Death bites it as well. They have the killer, but Stone won't let them kill him, because even though he has become enamoured with the Diggers and feels like he is a part of them, he's still a cop. So he takes the guy in. Then we see Stone with his girlfriend enjoying breakfast speaking kindly of the Diggers. Then they come into his house and beat him within an inch of his life. He tells his girl not to call the pigs. Just an ambulance. Two thumbies up!

bad/awesome flixxx review: Maximum Overdrive (1986)

"Honey! C'mon over here, Sugar-buns. This machine just called me an asshole!"- S. King

"It isn't the comet. It's a broom. Imagine you're a race of aliens, right? And, you're looking for a new place to live. Say you're looking for a planet like you and I looking for a new place to live. A new house. So here's Earth. Only it's like this big old house. And, it's kind of polluted, dirty, and smoky. Grease on the walls, soot in the chimney. So, they send in their interstellar housecleaners. Send in their broom. Sweep us all up. That's what this it is, it's a broom. Using our own machines to sweep us right off.- Bill

"Fucked if I know, Bubba. Fucked if I know."- Hendershot

What an enjoyable movie experience. This is one of those flicks that you saw years ago, but its been so long, and maybe you only saw it once, and so you never fully appreciated how awesome it was. Touted as the first Stephen King story to be written for the screen and directed by the man himself, this is a movie that brings so many things to the table that you have to appreciate the effort. Ok, for starters you have a Stephen King flick, filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina(!) about machines going haywire, starring Pat Hingle and Emilio Estevez, a truck with the Green Goblin's Face on the front, with a soundtrack completely by AC/DC?!!??! Are you fucking kidding me "bubba"?? King was so intent on letting the world know that HE made this movie that he put himself in the trailer and on the official US poster (which sucks, so I also posted the Spanish version). All that and more in a little movie called MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE!!!





Ok, so a comet came past the Earth, and it was said that the Earth would be in the tail of the comet for 8 days. Right from the start, weird things begin to happen concerning machines. A draw-bridge comes alive while the guards are playing cards and lets drivers pass onto it, and begins rising, throwing the cars back onto each other, knocking dudes into the bay, smashing perfectly good watermelons, and also killing people too, which I've heard most people aren't fond of. Meanwhile over at the Dixie Boy gas station (which reminds me of the truck stops over where Interstate 40 begins or ends) a funny looking truck pulls up and things start to go awry. Also over at the little league field, a drink machine goes ape killing a coach, a steam roller smashes kids up and one kid Deke manages to escape.



So the Dixie Boy is the main scene of the action. The whole arcade starts freaking out and one of the video games kills a dude. Then an electric knife almost kills a waitress. Then the trucks start freaking out. Driving wherever they want, running down patrons. This chick is hitching to Florida with this creep Bible salesman, & he's not paying attention to anything but her, & she hears on the radio that the shit is going down. So she MAKES him pull over, quickly falls in lust with Bill the "hero" fry cook. Mr. Hendershot runs the Dixie Boy with mandatory community service cases & blackmails them. His son also works there. They are fat lazy mouthy worthless people, but Mr. Hendershot DID stockpile a shitload of surface-to-air missiles and machine-guns in his basement. So apparently he thought ahead. The trucks destroy the bible salesman's car, & he tries to go reprimand the trucks to his early demise.



The trucks begin to circle the gas station & two newlyweds successfully make it to the Dixie Boy. This is weird though, because they are driving a car that never turns on them. Every other machine in the movie or "on Earth" is supposedly fucked up, yet their Tercel is just peaches....Hmmmm?? They try to save the bible salesman who seems to be alive, but he's not really, but Deke gets rescued into the Dixie Boy instead. In the morning the trucks send a front-end loader and a machine-gun mounted army vehicle to negotiate. The army truck starts speaking Morse code & Deke decodes it. They want the survivors to refuel them. Bill starts the process & they pump for hours, days, until the gas runs out, then there's a fuel truck & they make the humans fuel the trucks from it. Everyone is sick and tired of the trucks, so they distract the machine gun car, blow him up with a grenade, machine gun a few more big rigs, blow up the Dixie Boy, then head for the coast, because Bill supposedly knows how to sail a ship.



When they arrive at the docks... and believe me this would've taken them a few hours from where they were... They would've had to go straight thru town!! Lots of machines to dodge! Anyway.... they get there and one greedy truck driver goes for this chick's huge ring and then the Green Goblin gets him. Bill fires a missile at it, jumps on the boat, and then they sail to an island with no machines off the coast called Haven... which is probably based on Bald Head Island. But they do have golf carts there, so WATCH OUT BILL! Then a screen comes on that says that a UFO was shot down by a Soviet "satellite" equipped with missiles & a laser gun. So I guess it wasn't the comet after all.... This movie rocks. I don't care what anyone says. It rocks hard. Stephen King never directed anything else, says he was coked out of his mind when he did this, and basically feigns that it isn't good, but if you like to laugh, and to rock, then fuck him because he doesn't even know what he's talking about. He had to have fun making it. A little kid crushed to death by a steamroller!! Go ahead and see it through... its good 80s horror comedy sci fi camp.

***********UPDATE!!!***********

@therobotviking says:
What, no mention of one of the best badass lines in film history? "Adios, motherfucker." [fires rocket launcher]

@valientthorr says:
it DID predate "Yippie Kai AAa motherfucker" (DIE HARD) by 2 years.... so yeah, def worth mentioning... there were a ton of great lines in here. My personal fav was when the front end loader and the machine gun truck ride up and the trucker slams the saloon doors open, "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON OUT THERE?".

bad/awesome flixxx review: White Lightning (1973)

"How'd you like that knife shoved up yer ass?"- Gator

"I'm so hungry I could eat the tail-end out of a hobby-horse."- Roy

"Only two things in the world I'm scared of...Women and the police.- Gator

Whenever we start talking about Burt Reynolds movies and Gator comes up, my old man always sticks to his guns that White Lightning is the better flick. Less well known than its sequel "Gator", White Lightning is a fast-paced, car chasin', ass-kickin', moonshine movie set in the late 60s/early 70s south, when the government was chasing down at the bootleggers for not paying their taxes. It reminds me of my early childhood, as the south didn't change much from the early 70s thru the late 80s. As a matter of fact it was pretty much slow going thru the 90s as well. Anyway, with characters that hit close to home, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Diane Ladd, and the uncredited debut of baby Laura Dern star in WHITE LIGHTNING!!!





Gator McClusky has been serving his time in the state penn for his 3rd offense of running moonshine. All is well and good in the penn, and Gator has one year left, until his cousin comes to bring him some bad news. A few counties over in Bogan county, A crooked sheriff (Beatty) has killed his little brother and one of his friends for unknown reasons. Gator lays down to think about it, then beats a guard and escapes. Caught within the hour, the warden, a friendly dude who generally likes Gator (everyone seems to) tells him he should just cool out and serve his last year easy. But Gator is pissed and decides to make a deal with the feds.



Gator has the feds come in, and makes a deal with them that he can actually get the goods on this crooked sheriff who is taking bribes from known bootleggers, and is under investigation for several other homicides. The feds hook him up with a badass 1971 Ford Custom 500 to run the booze, and set him on his way. Gator visits his parents, then sets out to meet up with "Dude" a mechanic known to make deliveries around town, but who is on probation. Blackmailed by Gator, Dude reluctantly helps him get a job "blocking" for Roy, a bigtime runner in Bogan.



Gator has Dude mess up Roy's car so that he has to use his to do the deliveries and therefore meet the man who is making the shine, Big Bear. Big Bear doesn't trust Gator from the beginning, but uses him anyway. Gator, Roy, and Lou (Roy's cheating chick) go about running the shine. Lou gives Gator some "jiggle-puddin'' placing a rift between Gator and Roy. The scenes are dripping with the sweat on everyone's brows making it authentically hot as hell, and the subtle and sometimes not so subtle hints of racism, anti-hippism, and marijuana vs moonshine make the film very authentic, not to mention the ridiculous fisticuffs and super long, edge of your seat car chases. Killer stuff.



Pretty soon, the sheriff's lawyer finds out that Gator is working for the feds, and he starts messing with Dude, almost raping Dude's wife, messing with his folks, and setting up a trap at Big Bear's catching Gator but for only a moment, again, almost allowing the deputies to rape Lou. Gator gets the best of them though, escaping, hurt, but not dead, and finally ends up with a knock down drag-out car chase ending. At LEAST a 9 out of 10. This movie is pure awesome. Find it. Burt Reynolds laugh alone is worth watching the whole movie. Cheers.

bad/awesome flixxx review: The Gate (1987)

"May the old devils depart! May they burn in the fires of their own damnation! May they freeze in the infinite golden darkness of their own hideous creation! "- Terry

"Well... ever since I burnt a hole in the roof my dad says I can't launch any of my rockets without supervision."- Glen

"Demons aren't gonna ring the doorbell!"- Terry

I forgot about watching this for the review. I passed out watching it at Sadat Thorr's house right before we flew to Europe last month. Then I woke up and finished it. What a blast from the past. I don't think I ever put it together that it was Stephen Dorff as the kid! A super creepy flick that hasn't lost any of the real magic it had 24 years ago. Heavy metal, digging in the backyard, best friends who were the "bad" kids, and demons. Sounds just like my childhood. Ol Bill S Preston Esquire himself (Alex Winter) is currently filming a 3D(?) remake. Stephen Dorff, and the chick who plays Kenny Powers sister-in-law on East Bound & Down in THE GATE.





So, in the beginning, Glen (Dorff) is returning home from playing outside or whatever, and no one seems to be home. He's yelling but the house is abandoned. He goes out into the backyard, climbs into his treehouse and sees a doll. Then the tree gets struck by lightning and the treehouse starts to fall and then Glen wakes up. He looks out the window and there are workers cutting down the tree that he was just dreaming about. He finds this "geode" type rock in a hole left open in the backyard after the workers left. With nothing else to do, Glen gets his buddy Terry to help him dig down in the hole until they find another bigger geode.



As they seem to do in all of these movies, the parents decide to split on a vacation for the weekend. The last thing they tell Glen's sister "Al" not to do before they leave is---- you guessed it- NO PARTIES!!! But you also know the very next scene. Cut to the PARTY! Everyone is drinking AND smoking ciggies in the house(!) (the eighties). Al agrees to let Terry sleep over to appease Glen so he won't tell their parents. The next thing you know, some douche at the party starts telling "ghost" stories. Why anyone would sit around and listen to this guy completely baffles me. Meanwhile, Terry & Glen bust the bigger geode open and its gross, but it leaves these marks on a notepad. They read them aloud, unknowingly releasing the forces of evil from "the gate" to Hell out in the backyard. Then they go downstairs and some nerd girl is telling everyone how they can levitate people, but everyone is like- bullshit! Then they talk Glen into trying it, and immediately he levitates all the way to the ceiling, it scares him, he runs away crying and wants to call his mom, but Al won't let him.



Ok, so Terry sees his dead mother in a dream and goes to hug her but wakes up hugging Glen's huge dead dog!!! GROSS! He freaks out, listens to some heavy metal records and then sees the same incantation reprinted on one of the album's sleeve from the geode. He becomes convinced that the hole in the backyard is the same one talked about in the lyrics referencing some black book. Ok, so Al's friend is supposed to dump the body of the dog but he can't find anywhere, and he just dumps it in the hole out back and covers it up. Glen and Terry realize the only thing they can do is to try and close the gate by reading something from the black book before their is a sacrifice that would open the gate all the way. Too late.



So now the gate is open and the dead dog shows up again, and Al finally sees the demons, and moths come after them, and Terry gets sucked into a hole, and let's see: demon fake parents, the phone sets on fire and melts, there's all these claymation mini monsters crawling around and transforming... dead people fall out of walls, and grab Terry into them, Then they get a pistol but it doesn't do shit, and then a huge demon comes out and finally Glen has to use a remote control rocket to send them back to Hell. Plus he gets an eyeball in his hand- AND HE STABS THE EYEBALL!! Would you do that? I'd be afraid it would hurt like Hell... EXACTLY. Well, this one has awesome special effects for the time, it drags a bit, and is really aimed at little kids... So its bad and awesome. Let's say 6 out of 10.