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

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)

"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)

"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)

"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)

"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)

"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!!

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)

"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)

"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!!

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)

"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)

"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)

"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.