“Introducing the New 2010 Chevrolet Chernobyl with optional power windows, power locks, and death ray emitting trunk.”

This weekend, while working on my Camaro behind the old toolshed & trailer, I busted a fan bracket off the engine block. There’s no nearby Autozone or NAPA dealer, and it was after 5 on Sunday. Luckily, Joe Don’s Salvage Yard is just a hop, skip, and a drunk stumble down the road, and I can always count on Big Joe to still be up watching “Law and Order” re-runs at his front office desk, mostly to avoid his old lady. The man refuses to get cable, and uses an old black and white TV with rabbit ears wrapped in tin foil. Usually I try to sweeten the deal with something deep fried as a gift for Joe. He’s much more willing to help me scrounge around the lot if his veins are immediately filled with salt and nitrates. However, this time I had nothing with me, not even a piece of pocket-warmed beef jerky; I was going into a gun fight without a six-shooter and Joe knew it. He immediately became agitated, cursing and mumbling under his breath, fumbling with the TV antenna, and just waved me off in the general direction of where I might possibly find the fan bracket or get a painful staph infection–whichever came first.

I find the junkyard to actually be a very peaceful place to think and meditate, much like a cemetery… minus the possibility of a spontaneous zombie uprising, though I am well prepared for such a situation. Sure, I always get funny looks at funerals when I carry that machete around, but you can never be too careful. I like to show it to people in the procession and say things like “Yeah, you never know…we might need to bury him twice.”

After hours of dead ends I finally found what appeared to be a Camaro similar to mine, with a heck of a lot more rust. It was a bit hard to tell though, as most of it had been flattened like a PB&J in a kid’s lunch sack, but the engine was still intact, so with my trusty Allen wrench, I removed the fan bracket cautiously. I couldn’t help but imagine the scene of Indiana Jones removing the golden skull from the altar. Checking around for hostile natives, I made my way back and paid the fair price of $25 and the promise of a bucket of chicken for Joe when I came back. Who said you can’t put a price on adventure?

Speaking of pioneers in the salvage industry, Emilio Estavez plays Otto Maddox, a rebellious punk who enjoys head banging with friends and eating his dinner out of dog food cans. Ahh, the rebellious youth of the 80’s. These are the same guys that wore Wham shirts. Howard Dean Stanton plays Bud, a seasoned, disgruntled repo-master who enlists Otto to join his dojo of car jackers. The other beer-inspired repo staff are: “Lite”, a streetwise gun touter, and “Miller”, a hippie mechanic who tries to teach him the repo code of ethics, and hopefully convince him not to make “Mighty Ducks 2.” Taking a few too many head butts at the previous night’s rave, Otto feels a kinship to them and the life of the auto repossessor. Sure the hours stink, but you do get the benefits of getting shot at by enraged Mexican immigrants, or getting the snot kicked out of you by a Mowtown band with guitar cases.

Meanwhile, during all this grand larceny fun, a one-eyed self-lobotimizied scientist, J. Frank Parnell, is transporting glowing shrimp platter aliens in his car trunk across state lines. Besides breaking some food import laws, he’s also encouraging people to look in his trunk, which immediately vaporizes them, leaving behind only the fresh scent of pine. It’s his own Ark of the Covenant on wheels, minus the Nazi’s. J’s plan is to meet up with Leila, one of the few members of the official fan club of UFO’s who isn’t still living in their parents’ basement, and expose the world to the truth. Otto puts some of his smooth moves on her, and she gets Estevezed in the back seat of his car. How romantic, but she hopes the horizontal mambo will encourage Otto to help her find the scientist, so they can  book the intergalactic shrimp cargo on local talk shows.

A $20,000 bounty is put on the Malibu, and soon a secret G-team in rented suits, along with every repo and car theft ring in the county is out looking for it. The G-team is led by a cruel German dominatrix with a mean kung-fu grip robotic hand (do they charge extra for that?), and an unhealthy obsession to get those alien remains at any cost. Otto gets captured  and is tortured by Mrs. Roboto so that she can try to learn the whereabouts of the actual car, but Otto is rescued before his hair gets singed. He later encounters his ex-girlfriend, Debbie, a particularly nasty punk rocker who left Otto for his best pal at a mosh party, leaving him heart broken in his tighty whities. It’s your typical boy meets girl, boy catches syphilis kinda of love story.

Debbie is hooked on speed and sushi eating with her new boyfriend, Boni, when they run into Otto while they’re robbing a 7-11. Everyone has a gun pointing at someone else’s head, leading to a pretty frantic session of scratch and win tickets. Boni however, just wants to settle down, get married and have little spiked hair social deviants. But instead, he ends up getting a shotgun blast to the chest. Just an early preview of married life, my friend; count yourself lucky.

Any semblance of a plot was lost a long time ago, but no one really cares at this point. We meander the city streets at night in glowing cars, have spontaneous shootouts in hospital stairwells, torch street people, and listen to hippie mechanics spouting universal wisdoms about the cosmic order of consciousness and the lattice of coincidence. Gotta love Saturday nights in L.A.

Repoman is a definitive cult classic that gets even better upon repeated viewing. A special Roadside award goes to Emilio Estevez, whose role as Otto redefined the anarchist punk rocker, and Howard Dean Stanton, who fit his role as a crusty, seasoned car reposessor perfectly. If I saw either of these two guys near my car, I’d be getting nervous. Retroman says check it out, and be sure to order the all-you-can-eat sushi buffet.

- Obsessive air freshener collecting
- Generic food in a can
- Radioactive intergalactic calamari
- Devo radiation suits
- Mace to the face
- Rat tossing
- Coffee to the face
- Emilio Estevezing
- Mexican rockabilly Vegas lounge singers
- Levitating cars

Rated 9.3 out of 10

“Don’t fear the Repo…baby I’m your man…we’ll be able to fly now”… man, those lyrics ring so true now.

Check out the trailer for Repoman

“If you can read this sign then you’re too close.”

I have one question. When did magicians get so lame? Case in point, David “I am blander than a rice cake” Blaine’s recent stunt on national TV with his Dive of Death. I believe this will go down in history as the most un-entertaining thing since the invention of CSPAN. Blaine is known for his endurance stunts of living in igloos, catching bullets in his mouth and agitating street patrons with lame card tricks and his depressive demeanor but this time he took his annoyance to new heights with this live televised stunt. Hanging himself upside down for days from a 7 story pole in New York facing the ever threat of death or in his case, fame obscurity, and would supposedly end in a terrifying plummet to the ground. In reality he was in a secure safety harness, took frequent coffee  & pee breaks, and bunged slowly towards the ground before being lifted in the air by a crane like a maniac-depressive peter pan. All the while an apathetic New york crowd watched from below who I suspect  if they would have found some sticks would have made him into a human piñata. “I got your abracadabra for you right here Davie Boy.” Now that would have been some must see TV.

I think David should go back to some street magic, maybe try reading a few people’s minds and absorb their psychic energy much like the electrifying Raymar in “One Dark Night.” Raymar is a recently deceased psychic that used his magic to decoratively arrange food utensils on his apartment walls and soak up some student’s brain energy. He unfortunately overdosed during a brain juice binge the night before with some co-eds shorting himself out permanently. Later at his funeral his estranged and just as boney looking daughter Olivia shows up. It turns out she may have inherited some of that psychic power when she has vague premonitions of the future through some montage visions or she was just hallucinating from lack of nutrition. She’ll probably just end up using her new powers for writing fortune cookies, doing weather forecasts, or predicting trivial things like “You’re going to have lunch,…it’ll be seafood but the shrimp will be bad.” or in her case “You’re going to end up in a schlocky 80’s movie.”

Her husband Allan played by Adam West can’t seem to find his bat pole anywhere to get out of this film and spends most of the time trying to convince her that all that magic mumbo-jumbo is just in her head. An Andy Warhol albino in a turtle neck shows up to tell her otherwise and gives her a book on tape that warns of Raymar’s evil telekinetic powers and his possible return from the grave. She obsessively listens to it over and over again while poor Allan can only drown his misery in whiskey obviously still fuming over Michael Keaton getting picked over him.

Meanwhile in what appears to be an entirely separate film, a young pre-breast enhanced Meg Tilly plays the nerdy girl Julie Wells who wants to break out of her goody two shoes stereotype. Julie’s dimwitted plan is to join the local girl gang “The sisters” so she too can get a shiny purple jacket and have her hair feathered even higher than gravity allows. I’m not sure a gang of 3 girls  really deserve their own embroidered jackets, bowling leagues are bigger than that and much more deserving their garments of cool.

Carol (Robin Evans), the queen of the shiny coat wenches convinces her to join only if she stays alone a whole night in the Mausoleum where Raymar’s body is kept. So Julie armed with only a sleeping bag, a flashlight and some Quaaludes, explores the endless casket filled hallways for the night. Meanwhile the other girls plot to sneak in and dress up as retirement home escapees to try to scare her. Their obvious lack of showmanship upsets the spirit of Raymar who starts breaking free from his entombed prison throwing around flower vases and moving around furniture with his psychic powers. He’s a sort of  malevolent interior decorator from beyond the grave.

Soon his brain power grows to the point that the tombs burst open and he can prop himself up while levitating dead bodies with his mind. It sounds a lot scarier than it looks  though as the rotting bodies float awkwardly around like they’re on magic coat hangers in a laundry shop. With a back field blitz they pile up on the pranking co-eds smothering them until they can’t breath. It’s a death by dry cleaning.

Julie’s boyfriend, Steve, finally shows up just in time to save her from a Raymar brain drain but then has his butt handed to him by another bunch of muppet zombies that knock him unconscious. Rotting Raymar tries again to get a jump start off Julie’s brain…but I think we all know that battery was running a bit low. There’s a showdown with his bone skinny sister who suddenly swoops in to try save the day using her natural ability to blend in with the undead to her advantage. Steve Just lies there like a slug, it’s his only defense.

Writer/Director Tom McLoughlin of Friday the13th part 6 fame did an admirable job with a very simple premise and one that taps our deepest fear of graveyards, mausoleums and dry cleaners. Also noteworthy is Tom Burman who did the gruesome special effects in this little PG-rated fright flick and he definitely showed his chops with some realistic gooey corpses.  Retroman says check it out for a few good creeps and always be sure to have your corpses professionally cleaned, pressed and folded before packing them for overnight trips.

- Multiple dead bodies
- Utensil-fu
- Obsessive toothcare
- Exploding mausoleums
- Undead puppeteers
- Electric eyeballs
- Fondu faced corpses
- Gratuitous use of Adam West
- Crypt-a-glow night lights

Rated 8.4 out of 10

Check out the trailer for One Dark Night

“I had this same dream once after eating that all you can eat fried squid at the Chinese buffet”

The fishing season is upon us once again. That means it’s time for the men to take to the lakes as a united front against the deadliest of all enemies, the large mouth bass. Bass tournaments bring out the elite fishermen in droves with their shiny new sports fishing boats pimped out with a mean sounding Evinrude, some sweet cupholders, and 6 speaker radio systems that’ll make the deep bass thumpers in south central jealous. If there’s a single fish on the other side of the lake by gosh they’ll be able to swoop down on it like a puma. Fish will jump into the boat from pure intimidation. I on the other hand am used to the old flat-bottom and the good old hook and worm method of catching fish. No depth finders, fancy lures, or live wells, just a bobber and an unmatched ability to sit in one place for hours at a time. I’m not sure why they even call things like the bass tournament a competitive sport? Is there a swimming relay involved? Do the boats race laps around the lake? It’s just basically you tricking a fish with a tasty snack on a hook and dragging them out into the great beyond. To them it must seem like some sort of horrifying alien abduction. “Did you hear about Earl…yeah some food was just dangling there in mid air and he took a bit and got yanked up into the sky!” “Yeah he came back after a few minutes and said a voice told him he was too small.” So it’s a near death experience as well as a slap to their self esteem, but hey they’re sure are delicious with butter and look great stuffed over my mantle.

Speaking of some fish out of water, the movie Dagon has a whole darn village full of them looking for some tourists to sacrifice to their pagan squishy squid god Dagon. “Dag” is an ancient god of the sea who grants wishes and leaves gold fish trinkets on the beach like an underwater tooth fairy. It turns out that years ago the villagers sold their souls for fortune and fish and now are slowly getting turned into canned tuna. A pretty fair trade onto todays seafood market in my opinion.

Paul Marsh (Ezra Godden) and Barbara (Raquel Merono) along with another vacationing couple are on a 3 hour sailboat tour just off the island’s coastline when a freak storm suddenly strands them there on some jagged rocks.

Paul and Barbara head to the docks in a porta-raft to get help for one of the passengers who’s leg is now pinned below deck and is also getting stalked by a oily sludge creeping up from the waters below. Paul and Barbara find the island deserted and stumble into a  peculiar church that seems to be obsessed with golden eyeballs statues (the first church of Opthalmology perhaps?) They run into a pale faced priest who offers to get them help and call the police at the villages only hotel. Sure they have a Hotel 6 on the island but no Long John Silvers? No wonder their tourist season sucks.

Susan heads to the hotel while Paul takes a small boats back to the shipwreck to try help the other survivors. He climbs back aboard only to discover they’ve mysteriously disappeared. Unphased, Paul arrives at the hotel later on and decides to catch a few snoozes in his crack house of a room while waiting for Barbara’s return totally unaware that she’s already been kidnapped. Paul notices a big mob of walking sushi with pitch forks gathering outside ready open a big can of tuna whoop ass on him.

Paul’s dumb luck allows him to escape to the streets below where he makes the horrifying discovery that one of his boat guests has been skinned and gutted and made into clothing. Not wanting to end up the next pair of Docker pants he douces several villagers in lighter fluid for an impromptu fish fry and hides out under a staircase. There he’s greeted by the only human left on the island, a Spanish Santa looking fellow who

tells him the whole history of the island through a voiced over montage. His accent is so thick I’m not really sure what he said but I  believe it involved ritualistic sacrifices and quesadillas. Paul not being the brightest bulb on the christmas tree decides his best chance for escape is to steal the biggest car on the island from the Mayor’s mansion and try to track down his girlfriend. B-movie survival tip for ya folks, when you need to escape an island never pick a car! Inside the mansion he has just enough time to cop a feel on a bed-bound squid girl, wrestle with a jello spined chauffeur, and get a vicious toilet bowl swirly before ending up getting tangled up in a fish net.  His lack of strength is astounding. You’d think it would be pretty easy to over power some soft spinned amphibi-freaks that have the combined strength of my 90 year old grandma.

He tries to escape from the prison with some of the survivors but that only results in his new Spanish friend gets a involuntary facelift, old school style and his girlfriend getting strung up nekid for a Dagon sacrifice house party. You know Paul should have just stayed home that week and watched Shark week instead.

One of Stuart Gordon’s lesser know films but still a great re-imagining of a classic H.P. Lovecraft tale. Along with From Beyond and Reanimator I’d rank it up there as among the best Lovecreepian films I’ve seen thus far, and as usual don’t expect a happy ending. Retroman says dive on into the deep end but beware of those lovely squid ladies. Now if you’ll excuse me I have some fish sticks burning in the oven.

- Cop-a-gill
- Extreme wet dream
- Multiple fish fryings
- Web hands
- Arm ripping
- Toilet bowl swirlies
- Extreme facelifting

rated 9.1 out of 10

Red Dagon…for the seafood lover in you.

Check out the trailer for Dagon

“A game of pin the tail on the donkey goes horribly wrong.”

Since getting rid of cable I don’t get to catch as many of those re-runs of my favorite TV shows like I used to. Cops used to tops on my list. High speed car chases, busting in drug dealer’s doors, police ride alongs, all for keeping the peace. Domestic disturbance calls would always be the most entertaining. Like a Jerry Springer reality show it always seemed to involve the same besheveled guy who resembles a young WIllie Nelson in a beer stained tank-top standing out in front of his double wide while his girlfriend is yelling at him with a broken cigarette hanging out of her mouth. “I didn’t do nothin’, you’re crazy!” He’d be yelling back at her as the cops would have to play referree and eventually throw him against his old firebird still on the cinder block. They’d cuff him kicking and screaming and haul him away to consider his career path in life. That’s reality TV at it’s best right there. There’d also be those episodes where a drug dealer thinks he’s an Olympic gold medalist runner and tries to out run not only the cops, but also a pack of vicious police dogs and a swat helicopter. After jumping over a few backyard fences flo-jo style, they’d finally drag him out by his pant legs from under an overturned kiddie pool. Criminals aren’t always very smart, but they sure are entertaining.

Speaking of unstoppable cops on a mission, the police officer whose face could stop a truck, Matt Cordell is back. Yes, the same cop who got framed and sent to Sing-Sing to get his face carved up a like a Thanksgiving turkey has returned from the dead to dish out some more bulk cans of whoop ass. In the first film he took a steel girder through the chest and ended up pinned at the bottom of the East river but now like Jason with a shiny new badge he returns as a supernatural killing machine with a killing quota. The undead officer Cordell, played by Robert Z’Dar, must be working out a lot or shootin’ up some crazy zombie steroids because he’s a monster of a man. Luaren “don’t call me Hundra” Landon and Bruce “Don’t call me Ashley” Campbell somehow survived the first film through pure dumb luck and are the only people minus a few who had their heads twisted off who believe he’s actually returned. They unfortunately get picked off pretty early by officer pizza face in an unfortunate chainsaw accident and drive-by neck stabbing. Doesn’t it seem like Bruce Campbell always gets killed off early in horror films now. Remember Congo? I think he barely got out 2 lines before being mauled to death by a pack of mutant gorillas. By the way, little known fact the Congo has the highest capita of mutant gorillas in the world. Lost Highway is here to educate.

Anyways, after strippers start showing up dead and cops end up on tow hooks the police chief calls in the big guns, a police shrink played by Claudian Christian who enjoys getting handcuffed to runaway cars, and wearing pants suits and turtle neck sweaters but she’ll always best be known as the stripper who liked to shake her Miranda rights in the sci-fi classic, “The Hidden.” Also on the case is the movie veteran and chain smoking Robert Davi who plays Detective Mckinney. This guy plays either an evil Italian mobster who hates everyones guts or a seasoned New York cop who also hates everyone’s guts. This time he’s re-directing his inner childhood rage at capturing the cool hand Cordell instead.

Cordell crashes in on a stripper’s apartment who already has an unwanted guest,  a grizzly adams looking serial killer who has an affection for collecting strippers like baseball cards. Somehow they end up bossum buddy and he let’s Cordell hang out at his apartment so they can drink Schnapps, eat some fondu and talk about their work day. The psycho hillbilly gets put in jail later that night and Cordell has to go bail out his new BFF with an epic shoot-up rampage at police station. He likely still needs his half of the rent. They escape on a field trip to his old prison stomping grounds dragging along the cop shrink as their hostage. Officer meat head plans to go puts some hurt on the prisoners who sliced him up years before. Lots of torched inmates, shootings, and vehicular explosions round off what I feel is actually a superior film to the original Maniac Cop. How often can you say that about a film in a b-movie trilogy? It also has one of the best car chase scenes ever filmed. Retroman says “You have the right to see this movie…If you give up that right then your opinions about it maybe held against you in a court of awesomeness.”

- 1 tow and go cop on a hook
- 1 police station shootout
- Neck twisting
- Death by stiletto
- Stripper Fu
- Shower Fu
- Chainsaw Fu
- Downhill car skiing
- Prisoner smackdowns
- Shish-ka-cop

rated 8.3 out of 10

I’m alway holding out for yet another sequel in this series. Coming soon… “Maniac Meter Maid…A pocket full of quarters…a pocket full of death.”

Check out the trailer for Maniac Cop 2

“Kmart’s new blue-light special mascot wasn’t very well received. He kept scaring away the customers.”

I know I would make a poor survivalist. When the zombie apocalypse comes don’t expect to find me living off the land in the high hills at my makeshift campsite. No my idea of roughing it  is more in line with a cheap roadside hotel that has hard beds and that don’t have those mini-fridge stocked with those neat little wine bottles. Just for fun I like to pretend I’m a freakish giant when I drink them. Give me a microwave over rubbing two sticks together anyday but mainly going camping is a flash back to those days of being crammed into a leaky tent with my cousin Ted whose uncontrollable flatulence could only be drowned out by his bear like snoaring. It seems everytime we did the family camping trip a terrential downpour would happen in the middle of the night creating a nice mudslide into our tent…mostly towards my side making a wading pool for me and my sleeping bag. I’d awake from my dreams of a buffet breakfast truck coming to save me in to being both soaked and hungry. My dad being the great outdoorsmen wouldn’t pack much food supplies instead opting to be  ”living off the land” by fishing or eating potentially poisonous berries along the way. The lack of fish in the nearby weeded lake didn’t seem to sway his determination either, so after a fine meal of saltines and blue gill we’d take a short hike in the to burn off all those extra calories. Now with as many horror movies as I’ve seen I’d  always halfway expect a masked psycho to jump out from behind a tree or a family of cannibals carrying us away to make us their next meal, but I figured I could just trip Teddy and buy myself some time. The camping trip would usually end with me desperately needing a shower and having a case of poison oak on my butt when I used those leaves for toilet paper. Ahhh those were good times.

Speaking of grizzled survivalist, Jack Palance is living off the land and is out to kick some alien butt in “It Came Without Warning.” This little 80’s made for TV sci-fi homage pits humanity against flying fanged frisbees that look like like vomit novelty props. A camouflaged dad and his hippy son are out hunting in the woods one day when suddenly super suction alien discs attache to their backs tossed at them from an unseen alien disc golfer. This particular part of the woods seems to be pretty popular for both disc golfing and camping as later that day a group of boy scouts and their troop leader also show up. The super trooper gets a dose of alien frisbee-fu and all the kids run away screaming from a shadowy lurking figure…well except for one kid who sort of just mosseys along instead. Just about that time a mystery van of college co-eds driven by Tom, a young David Curroso in mini shorts are heading towards the same wooded area for a relaxing camping trip. Beth (Lynn Theele), Greg (Christopher S. Nelson) and Sandy (Tarah Nutter) are along for this CSI miami camping trip of terror. If only Tom had some sunglasses he could cooly take off to indicate his disdained interest in this Camping Scene Investigation.

Once at the campsite Beth and Tom go off into the woods to perform their own “body frensics” leaving Greg and Sandy to better get to know each other. The couple mysterously doesn’t return so Greg and Sandy go off in search for the missing lover and their feathered hair. They eventually find them strung up in an old water shed along with the puss filled hunters and gooey camp scout trooper. High tailing it out there as fast as their wood-paneled van can carry them and wiping off aliens on their windshield along the way, they stop at a redneck bar for some help. The bar dwellers are already used to plenty of southern tales of alien abductions and don’t believe their story but then the crazy vet Sarge (Martin Landua) starts spouting off about the impending alien invasion and in his paranoid outburst shoots the Sherriff at the door (luckily he didn’t shoot the deputy.) Taylor played by Jack “my skin is 100% real leather” Palance shows up at the bar and tells the two about his own encounter with the alien years before and thankfully leaves out any of the alien probing stories. So they all head back to the alien love shack so Taylor can try to put a shot-gun slug in the predator wanna-be and add it to his trophies of alien kills in pickle jars. Taylor gets a vomit-disc to the knee and Sandy and Greg say asta-la-vista Taylor and run away screamin’ like little girls. Fleeing down the highway they get picked up by the crazy Sarge whose stolen the dead sheriff’s Police car and believes that they’re aliens too. The guy is definitely off his prozac. They go along with his delusions just long to  escape by a quick jump into the river and hide out in someone’ abandoned  house, post foreclosure. After a nap and a light snack Sandy wakes up to find Gary has been disced to death in a barcolounger with a little alien suction disc still sucking on his face. Sandy’s so jealous, oh and there’s a horrifying bubble headed alien hanging out in the living room too. The house party is just is getting started as Taylor shows up again limping but more grizzled then ever to help Beth escape. He then takes her back to the shed, the obvious safest place to go, where’s he’s rigged up the building with dynamite for his own fireworks display and a chance to yell “ALLLIEEEEN!!!” at the top of his lungs. Hey Jack Palance won oscar, who knows why he does these things.

This movie is a great example of b-movie cult 80’s TV. The tension ramps up towards the end and having Landua and Palance both in this type of b-movie is a rare treat. Retroman Steve says check it out but watch out for flying fake vomit.

-Alien disc golf
-Windshield wiper-fu
-Cat lynchings
-David Curros in 80’s shorts (more horrifying than the alien)
-Landua looniness
-Extreme Palance grizzliness
-Kill and store watersheds
-Fanged frisbees fake vomit

rated 8.6 out of 10

as Jack Palance would say “I crap movies better than this.”

Check out the trailer from It Came without Warning

“Well, she warned Horace to stop staring at her chest”

Once again, Wes fails to impress with his 1989 Nightmare on Elm Street knock-off called “Shocker.”

While showing off some Deon Sanders style moves during football practice, future Heisman trophy winner Jonathan Parker hits his head on a goal post harder than a K.O. punch from Mike Tyson and suddenly without any explanation at all becomes a crime-solving clairvoyant. Could it be one of those famous Craven plot holes? Or, maybe Jonboy suffered temporary amnesia after hitting his head… Anyway, Jonathan uses a kind of psychic GPS in his dreams to track down and help catch a serial killer who’s been eluding the entire police department in his hometown.

Later that evening, Horace arrives at the “big house” for the prison BBQ they’re having in his honor the next morning. Man, that was fast. No trial, no courthouse hearing or any kind of legal proceedings… Even suspected witches in Salem got a trial. And we all know how those witch trials usually turned out ( the ol’ burned at the stake routine), but at least they got a trial. Well, time is running out for Pinker just like retail chain Circuit City and he better do something fast before he becomes fuel for that big furnace down below because he sure isn’t visiting that big antenna in the sky. So, Horace does what any Death Row inmate who’s about to be executed would do, he decides to catch up on his soaps which seems harmless enough, right? However, when the prison guards arrive to escort Horace to his date with death they see him getting the shock of his life from a television set. Could it be a Poltergeist from the netherworld who got angry after finding out he really wasn’t Carol Anne? Is it a possible suicide attempt? Or, did he get caught stealing cable from cable provider Comcraptic? Hey, wait a second… Why is he kneeling in front of what appears to be a makeshift altar with buring candles and several open books scattered on the floor? Hmmm… I’m not really sure what’s going on here, but something doesn’t seem right.

So, after finishing up his farewell tour and grabbing a quick bite to eat (two fingers and a lip) from the guards, Horace gets strapped in and prepares for ignition. And just as the festivities are about to get under way, Pinker reveals a truly shocking revelation like something from one of his favorite daytime soaps. That he is…”Dun, da, Dun” Jonathan’s father. Sadly, though the heart-warming reunion doesn’t last very long as the executioner pulls the lever and Horace rides the lightning which causes his body to convulse like a bobble head figure sitting on a rodeo bull during an earthquake. Not surprisingly, in true horror movie fashion it appears that the execution attempt has failed after only a few seconds. Immediately, the prison doctor goes to check his vital signs. Little does she know that Horace was only warming up and is about to do his own version of Shock n’ Awe. He quickly knocks the doc out and then vanishes under a shocktacular cover of electrical flashes and thick smoke like a ninja who has watched one too many David Copperfield television specials. But, before you can say free jelly doughnuts, every available law enforcement officer at the prison charges into the execution chamber room looking for the deep-fried demon. When Pinker is finally discovered, he bursts into flames and leaves behind an extra crispy meat suit in a scene that’ll remind you of Freddy’s exit at the end of Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Apparently, hothead Horace couldn’t handle being in the hot seat.

Thanks to some black magic shenanigans via a telecast from the Darkside, Pinker has returned from the dead after a short commercial break. Now, you didn’t really think that Horace was using those candles and books for aromatherapy or mediation, did you? We soon find out that during the confusion of the botched execution, Horace possessed the injured prison doctor and left the “Slammer” undetected as she was put in the back of a police car and taken to a hospital for treatment. While chilling out in the doc’s body and recharging his batteries, Pinker/Doc suddenly lurches forward, killing the other officer who’s riding shotgun, and then forces Officer Pastori to crash into a fuel tanker which causes a huge Michael Bay style explosion that nearly knocked me out of my seat. Fortunately, it doesn’t take long for emergency and law enforcement personnel on the scene to find Pastori alive, not too far away from the smoldering wreckage. Amazingly, he has sustained very little physical damage to his body, not even a flash burn. It’s a good thing that he remembered to put on his fire retardant gel that morning before leaving for work because you never know when an electrically charged up psycho is going to take over your body and crash the car your driving into a tanker filled with flammable fuel. Soon, the movie short-circuits into supernatural silliness as Pinker body-jacks (an idea he got after watching the Hidden) bodies left and right in his quest to re-connect with Jonathan and make up for all of those missed birthdays and holidays. Will Father and Son meet again? To be continued…

Well, I would be “Sleepless on Lost Highway” if I left you guys and gals with a cliffhanger like that. So, here it is… Father Horace and Son Jonathan do reunite for a final time in a clever EFX sequence that has them battling it out WWE style (but I won’t say who gets canceled) as they channel surf through old television reruns that plays like a kid with ADD who got their hands on a TV remote after drinking a six pack of Jolt Cola. And while this TV Land action spectacle won’t make your heart race with suspense, it will give you a good laugh, and showed that Wes did have a brief creative spark during the filming process. The rest of the visual effects are so bad that if the effects saw their own reflections, they would immediately pull the plug on themselves. Also, don’t expect any scares in this one. The only way you would jump during any part of this movie is if you accidentally sat on a “live wire.”

And since Craven doesn’t give us any memorable screen exits or T & A, (not even a pair of perky nipples poking through a t-shirt) the best part of this movie is without a doubt the soundtrack that has bands like Megadeth who do a respectable cover of Alice Cooper’s rock classic, “No More Mr. Nice Guy. So, if you’re a fan of music from the 80’s seek out a copy of this high voltage, bang your head until snaps off soundtrack. If you want to see Craven when his movies were a nightmare scarier or a scream louder than the competition, then check out horror gems like “Last House on the Left”, “The Hills Have Eyes”(original) or his mainstream horror classic “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

In the end Wes just carried too much cinematic baggage from his earlier efforts into this production which prevented Shocker from being it’s own movie.

- 1 Seriously wet dream
- 1 Plug n’ Slay serial killer
- 1 Mother and Daughter demonic possession
- 1 Foul-mouthed kid
- 2 Kicks in the gnads
- 1 Botched execution

- 1 Power of love punch
- 1 Faked heart attack

Rated 2.0 out of 10

Check out the trailer for Shocker

“His pants were the obvious source of his super-powers!”

I love vintage diners. You know those old style diners where you could sit up at the counter and dodge the grease splatterings from the kitchen. Wood grain paneling surround your bright orange plastic booth and you have to avoid the newest stain on the floor smartly camouflaged by the 70’s style floor tiles. Orders were yelled by a middle aged waitress with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth with catchy titles like “Bloodhounds in the Hay (hot dogs and sauerkraut)”, “Adam and Eve on a raft (2 poached eggs on toast)” or the less apitizing “Angels on horseback” which is actually oysters rolled in bacon on toast. Yummy…. serve that in a smoke filled room and you got yourself some fine dining ambience.

Sure the food was greasy and the atmosphere was noisey but it was your grease pit not some impersonnel mega-restaurant chain. Now you get places like Johnny Rockets with their $7 hamburgers and awkward interludes of employees singing and dancing. There’s also Bennigans which is just an Irish dining experience without the drunken brawls. You can also see a lot of TGIF’s (Terrifying Godless Incarnations of Food) and the ever popular Apple Bee’s. They all pop up next to a strip malls like weeds. Well it’s time to stomp them out and stand up for the small businessman. Your heart attack shouldn’t occur at a Apple Bee’s where the last sounds you’ll hear is some poor sap getting a birthday serenade by workers covered in flair. Nope, let me die on that brown tiled floor with a couple partially chewed fries on my shirt. They’ll just step over me on the way out the door. “Hey Charlie, yeah you got another stiff over here from your food ya lousy cook. Come clean up this mess he’s blockin da door.” ahh the sweet sounds of the Jersey accent would be the last thing I hear before sitting down at that great greasy spoon in the sky. 

Speaking of Diners with questionable health standards. Blood Diner stands as a testimate to everything you thought might be in a fast food joint but were afraid to ask. Brothers Mike and George Namtu are the owners of their booming vegetarian diner where their only special ingredient  isn’t tofu but chopped up tramps in tight spandex. To guide them in running their venture business is the disembodied brain and eyes of their Uncle Anwar whom they recently dugged up and put in a canning jar. He’s no Gordon Ramsey but he is a loud foul mouthed organ with a jewish accent so that’s close enough.

Anwar gets a bit Fahklumpted as he orders his nephews to kill whichever big haired 80’s tramp walks into the diner but also demands they use only the best body parts for a resurrection of Shee-tar. Shee-tar is either a poorly named 2 million year old pagan goddess or the modern jungle princess of gold body paint. The dimwitted brothers patchwork together their golden frankenhooker with the spare body parts only needing the obligatory virgin sacrifice to bring her to life and rule the world. But that kind of ceremony can only work if it’s done at a punk rave party with a zombie buffet and motown harmony band. Mike hypnotizes a shy cheerleader with his Jedi mind tricks and dollar store neck charm convincing her that she actually wants to see a Nazi wrestling match that his brother is in. The date takes a sour torn when George bites off the ankle off his Hitler opponent and they have to knock out Connie unconciousness with a mean right hook (Isn’t that how Britney and Kevin Federline first met.) Some cops in 70’s leisure suits and greesy hair suspect that the brothers might be involved with the recent rash of nude areobic massacres and the recent killing of a handless vantriliquist chef.

Lead by a trovoltian saturday night fever parody who oozes grease through every pore,  the cops track down the brothers  at the local rave club. On the main stage is a propped up Shee-tar with some newly grown tummy teeth about to snack on Connie’s noggin while zombies party at the buffet table. The only thing that could save this movie is deep frying a batter dipped hooker and a kung-fu naked chick…and luckily it has both. Can it get any weirder? Probably but I think they ran out of film.

This gross horror-comedy is supposedly a low budget tribute to Herschell Gordon Lewis’ trashy splatter classic Blood Feast and with the crazed splat stick humor you can see the influence but I wouldn’t put it in the same class. Especially bad acting all around on this one but still enjoyable for it’s pure outrageous weirdness. Retroman Steve says check it out, but watch out for flying body parts. 

- Nude areobic workout massacre
- Pickled brains
- Belching overweight vegetarians
- Vantriliquist diner chefs
- Deep fried hookers noggins
- Finger food
- Multiple mamboo hit and runs
- Kung-fu nudists
- Hitler wrestling 
- Zombie mosh pits
- Broomstick decapitation
- Gratuitous use of the line “Georgie, stop fooling around!”

 rated 7.3 out of 10

Blood buffets…take all you want but eat alll you take. Sheetar commands it.

Check out this clip from Blood Diner. This is why I Love to Mamboo!

“His decision to fight crime as Chocolate Chip Cookie Man was not received well within the super hero community.”

I would have to say that hunting is my least favorite sport that I’ve experienced in my lifetime. Give me basketball or football or even the nerve wrenching tension of Canadian curling. Just as long as you don’t put me in camoflauge and drop me in the woods. I’m not quite sure why they even call hunting a sport. There’s no running involved, well unless a bear is chasing you up a tree. There’s no throwing things except maybe empty beer cans in the woods. In fact there’s no real physical activity at all. Mostly it’s just sitting on your hinder shivering in a tree blind with a rifle barrel freezing to your groin hoping for the unlikely chance of a deer crossing your path to your pile of apples. “Oh look a magic pile of food..what a lucky deer I am that someone left this here for….KAAAABLAAAAAAAAM!!!”

Lucky that you picked up that semi automatic at Kmart last week so if at any point a large semi-trailer gets between you in the deer well he’s still a goner. Though Dick Cheney would beg to differ, I don’t feel other hunters are competiting against me nor do I mistake rich lawyers faces as targets, well most of the time. Give the deer a gun too and now we’ve got a real competetive sport. I’ve sat in the tree stands, slept in the deer blinds, and caught headlice in rustic hunting cabins but never caught buck fever at least nothing a couple shots of  Nyquil wouldn’t fix. I know some people say “Well if we don’t kill the deer they’ll just destroy our crops!” If they were locusts and this was biblical times then it’s a maybe but you’ll see at most five deer darting across a big empty field once in a winter. That’s not really an infestation. But I respect the hunter. They’re truly committed to their craft. Anyone that can sit out in a deerblind in a middle of a field all day is a man of patience and perseverance. It builds character, just look at what it did for Ted Nugget.

Speaking of people standing out in the middle of a field with nothing to do. Night of the Scarecrow introduces us to a vengeful scarecrow that unleashes an unholy terror on a group of redneck vigilantes. Larry Drake plays Bubba, a mentally challenged middle aged man who is wrongly accused of killing a young child. They’re lead by one of the the most evil postman ever seen on TV since the dark days of Mr. McFeely. Charles Durning plays Otis P. Hazelrigg (not his maiden name) the town postman who convinces a group of his friends to track down Bubba now disguised as a scarecrow and  shoot him up like a pinata at a gansta party.

After a circus courtroom hearing that had all the lawful proceedings of a skit from He-Haw, the judge throws out the case claiming it was all in self defense. As if these upstanding members of society would ever harm a fly on purpose. I mean who’d ever believe a postman would go on a murderous killing spree? If Judge Judy was there she’d mop up the floor with them and their plaid shirts and bolo ties. Later than night a mighty wind blows through town bringing with it the vengful spirit of Bubba and the strong odor of fertilizer manure. Soon a possessed scarecrow starts showing up in empty fields near their homes to put the creeper jeepers on his murdering foes. It’s mostly an intimidation move but causes the guys to panic and start suspecting each other of breaking their secret.

What you gotta love  is throughout the film Otis never once changes his mailman uniform. I swear he must shower and slept in it. Impressive also is his ability to pack away the food like it’s a 99 cent buffet even after killing an innocent man. Buffet’s cower in his presence. Otis’s friends start showing up dead it what appears to be work related accidents. Falling into wood chippers, drownings in grain silos, typical farming mishaps. But Otis’s paranoia kicks into overdrive as his tiny pea brain theorizes that it’s Bubba’s grieving mother or the prosecuting attorney causing all the ruckus trying to get him to confess.

A stern warning from Otis accidentally gives Bubba’s mom a fatal heart attack and he then proceeds to off one of his buddies with a shovel to the back of the skull from fear he might tattle on him. This brings up the Ottis murder-meter total to 3, already beating out the scarecrow’s in just a few short days. That’s not to shabby for a middle aged government worker.

Later after a drab halloween party where he gets drunk on spiked apple cider, he ends up getting chased down in a corn field by a rusty John Deere and meets his much deserved and pointed ending. Serves him right for all that junk mail delivery. Oh and his stupid hat.

So go put the flag down on your mailbox, turn the lights down low and cuddle up with your favorite bag of hay. Retroman Steve says check it out and bring a pitchfork.

- Dorky postal jungle hats
- Scarecrow target practice
- Farmer mulchers
- Feed grain drowning
- Gratuitous pancake eating
- Fat guys running in fields
- Shovel to the head

Speaking of creepy scarecrows on TV, Scarecrow Spud on Bob the Builder is hands down the most frightening.

Dark Night of the ScareCrow T-shirts available from Fright Rags At Fright Rags you can get this high quality horror shirt you can’t find anywhere else. Fright Rags has the best selection of horror shirts based on your favorite cult classics, creature features, and slasher flicks! Check out the Dark Night of the Scarecrow T-shirts

Check out a scene from Dark Night of the Scarecrow

“Chris discovers Tom Cruise’s Scientology approved hyperbolic chamber. The only side effect is his continual shrinkage.”

I think college frat guys are getting an unfair stereotype in film. In most movies they’re portrayed as the dumb jock whose out to boink every co-ed they stumble across and that’s only if they can take enough time to put their beer can down. They initiate freshmen pledges by forcing  them to carry around stemmed cherries with their butt cheeks or having them steal the rival teams animal mascot and put in the dean’s new convertible. Their frat house are like a demilitarized zones littered with pizza boxes from last years graduating class and empty keg cans make up most of their furniture. The place is so gruesome sometimes you can count the ring of stains on the walls and figure out how old the building is. It’s not their fault and I think I know where the blame firmly lies…it’s the cheap beer. College frat guys are always broke and are forced to buy cheap beer which leads to binge drinking and eventually some guy who thinks he can fly off the roof if he wears a cape and an adult diaper (and I have the metal plate in my head to prove that.) I think the colleges should institute a fine imported beer requirement. They can only drink a few though because, well who can afford to drink any more. No more Pabst Blue Ribbon specials for those incoming pledges either, that’s just cruel. Freshly sobered, the dumb meat headed jock suddenly becomes a wine critic, an upstanding member of society, a consumer of fine cheeses and toothpicked snacks. Just think about it, no more streaking pledges across campus…because that’s really not that funny unless your drunk. No more belching the alphabet or lighting farts, again not funny unless your hammered. Pizza boxes are recycled into green friendly IKEA packaging, no more rowdy football games on the TV just Antique Roadshow re-runs and rush week turns into home and garden tours where….. wait you know what? On second thought I think they should just keep the cheap beers and wear those greek embroidered polo shirts. Their inner caveman will thank them for it later when they get married.
Speaking of frat guys who are no longer in control of their own brains. Night of the creeps has a whole bus load of them as helpless co-eds faceoff against zombified frat brothers whose brains are infested with alien slugs. Makes your last prom date not look so bad don’t it? Chris “don’t call me George” Romero is a red headed nerd in a sweater vest and J.C. is a wise talker in an arm brace walker out cruising around pledge week. Suddenly Chris spots Cindy Cronenberg, a pretty college girl with the voice of a chipmunk hooked on helium. Chris can’t resist a girl who looks like a super model but sounds like Rocky from a Bullwinkle cartoon so he has J.C. try to introduce him to her. Unfortunately his weak human ears can’t handle her vocal octaves so they have to pledge a fraternity to impress her instead. Brad, their fearless leader and king of polo pop-up collars sends them on a pledge mission to steal a corpse and drop it on the front lawn of a rival frat house. Nothing really says a fun greek week like rotting corpse lawn decor so Chris and J.C. break into a medical lab on campus hoping to score some fresh dead. They find a freeze dried corpse instead who had a close oral encounter with some alien slugs 40 years earlier. Why the med students decided to freeze this guy like a TV dinner is beyond me. “We have to preserve his tall hair style for future generations!”

Smart as a brick J.C. hits the child friendly release button and the corpse starts spitting out slugs from it’s head like a broken Pez dispenser. J.C. has such a big mouth it’s an easy target for the alien slugs so he soon gets zombified during a bathroom break and his failed burning toilet paper roll defense. Dead med students start walking, janitors are turned into mopping alien incubators, zombie dogs and cats living together..it’s mass hysteria!

To save the world they get cop Detective Ray Cameron played pitch perfect by Tom Akins. Ray is hankering for some good old slug skeet shooting and blows the head off an infested axe murder earlier just to warm up. Meanwhile Chris and Cindy are torching some slugs-ka-bobs outside the sorority house and mulching their lawn with frat guy’s innards. Detective Cameron  fights off more zombies inside the house dirty Harry style and gets to deliver one of the great lines in b-movie history “The good news is your dates are here…the bad news is they’re dead.” That’s pure movie gold right there. The slugs have all gathered in the basement to munch on some freshly canned brain preserves and Detective Cameron has got a can of gasoline just waiting to start the pyrotechnic grand finale. If you’ve seen the more recent movie called Slither directed by James Gunn then you’ll see the direct influence of this classic 80’s horror slug-fest on that story. Now if the owners of this film would just release the darn movie rights already so we could watch it on DVD. In the meantime you’ll just have to sift through some old VCR tapes bargain bins to find this little horror gem. Retroman Steve says check it out and be sure to bring some matches.

Roadside Attractions

- 3 naked alien midgets
- 1 sorority house explosion
- 1 corpsicle
- 1 fratastic bus crash
- 1 cat of the living dead
- Doggy slug-dispensers
- Canned brain storage
- Peeping tom zombies
- Lawn slug exterminators
- Zombie mowing and landscape services

rated 8.6 out of 10 for the movie

The most popular fraternities on my campus? I Felta Thigh and Kappa Tappa Kegga

Check out the trailer for Night of the Creeps

“Here’s a dollar…go buy yourself a bucket of shirts.”

I never haver really understood the appeal of fine jewelry. Women swoon over a pretty diamond perched on a gold ring or a silver necklace covered in precious stones but couldn’t the same look be accomplished with colored glass and metallic spray paint? The obsession kicks into an estrogen overdrive when a gal shows her friends her new engagement ring. You’d think she just won the Super-Bowl. “Ooooh..look how big the diamond is!” They drool over it’s shininess like Golum in Lord of the Rings. It’s a totally different experience for us guys. When we get our wedding band we fiddle with it,  place it on the soap holder in the shower precariously over the drain or spin it on the table just to see how long it will spin…right before it accidentally goes down the heating vent. We grudgingly buy you jewelry because we know you love it and hopefully it’s fair compensation for the dumb things we have done in the past and will continue to do over the course of the marriage. If given the choice though, we’d probably pawn it and buy something more practical that makes clicky electronic noises or has blinky lights. Give me a nice lazyboy chair with a built in fridge and remote…now see that’s something useful, or how about a 6 foot tall stuffed monkey wearing a beanie hat hold a serving tray. That would go great in the living room next to that fine china cabinet and really isn’t it just as practical? Friends would come over to admire it and they would put their drinks on the serving tray and ask me “So where did you get this cool monkey?” I’d proudly respond “Well I almost bought something impractical like jewelry but ordered this instead, and check out these new usb-powered nose haired trimmers I got yesterday!” Oh Sharper Image catalogs, how I will miss thee.

Speaking of people obsessed with precious metals, The movie Leprechaun proves that you shouldn’t take gold from a midget with buckles on his shoes and that they also make the worse house guests. Leprechauns are regularly sited exiting bars on St. Patty’s day but only the mean ones likes to hang out in the backwoods of Arkansas. So when a drunk Irish redneck tricks one into giving him his bag of gold coins, Irish tempers flare and it unleashes an unholy revenge on him and his wife. With the gold prices going through the roof you can understand him being a bit peeved over the loss of his dublins. His pint-sized gold rush is cut short though when Mr. O’Grady shoots the little bugger with his handgun and then seals him in a storage crate protecting it with a 4-leaf clover. Sure, vampires melt in sunlight, werewolves die from silver bullets, but leprehauns have only to fear lawn weeds. Spring forward 10 years and a young Jennifer Aniston, pre-Friends, and her Billy Ray Cyrus looking dad show up to do some renovations on the dingy old O’Grady house accidentally breaking the clover-seal of freshness. Also working on the rennovation is a foul-mouthed kid named Nathan (nevermind those pesky child labor laws), his slow-witted friend Ozzie and a Kevin Bacon look alike who must have lost his shirt sleeves in a freak fan accident.

Nathan and Ozzie discover a hidden bag of gold after following a magic rainbow to an old rusty truck in the woods…also a likely place for my 401k savings. Upon taking the gold they find themselves having to defend the house against the blood thirsty leprechaun. He hides out in cereal cupboards, goes go-karting, rides pogo sticks, and antagonzing policeman. Are we sure this isn’t just a punk kid jacked up on Red Bull? Seemingly now indestructible after get slammed with 10 shot gun blasts to the chest he easily gets distracted by having dirty leather shoes tossed at his head. Leprecahuns are known to be obsessive shoe shiners so this distracts him long enough for Jennifer to escape for help in her Jeep. She attempts to track down Mr. O’Grady at retirement home to find out how to kill the leprechaun but gets ambushed by the evil dwarf incognito who tries to run her over in a pimped out wheelchair. Little known fact that Leprechaun’s upper body strength is like that of Arnold Swarzenneger. There’s a big showdown at the farmhouse where they  make a final stand against the malevolent Irishman while searching the lawn for 4 leaf clovers. It all comes down to a gorey conclusion by the hands of a mighty sling shot and a stick of bubble yum. A sort of anti-David and Goliath ending.

I had always been meaning to see this film and remember the VHS tape cover at my local video store along with it’s countless sequels but was never in the mood even on St. Patty’s day. I like my psychotic  killers above 3 feet tall (sorry Chucky.) It just didn’t seem like something that could be very scary and I was correct…Not scary but still entertaining. You gotta admire a Leprechaun that’s just so darn happy on his killing spree. The little guy takes pride in his job. Retroman Steve says check it out, you’ll never look at your Lucky Charms cereal the same way ever again. 

Roadside Attractions

- Extreme house shack makeover
- Pogo vault to the chest
- Obsessive shoe cleaning
- 1 Bear trap
- 3 Leprechaun tossings
- Leprechaun skate boarding
- Irish dwarf Skeet shooting
- Irish go-cartin’
- Eyeball gouging
- Clover pickin’
- Lucky charms of death
- Exploding wishing wells

rated 7.1 out of 10 for the movie

In case you have a unwanted leprechaun house guest  may I suggest offering him some Clover Leaf Flaked Light Spicy Thai Chili Tuna. It’s delicious. He’ll burst into flames and you won’t have the messy clean-up.

Check out the trailer for Leprechaun