There’re two certainties in life..death and taxes. And unless there’s itemizing going on in Hell, I suspect death is a bit less time-consuming. Yes, it’s tax season once again so that means it’s time to gather those crumpled receipts from the shoe boxes and try to remember how little money you had before you didn’t have any money. It’s kinda like you’re being forced to give a loan to that crazy uncle that says he needs the cash for groceries, but you know he’s just going to blow it at the race track, always betting on the horse with emphysema. Still you hope you might find a loophole somewhere and get some money back: “Could I actually write-off dog grooming?” “Is beer deductible?” “If I get my wife pregnant, can I claim the kid this year?” These are just some of the questions you might ask, but you can take comfort in knowing your cash will go to good use in the community. It will be invested in deserving projects such as the secret underground testing labs where they train monkeys how to open pickle jars. Large portions will go into technology investments like $12,000 coffee makers for Area 51, or eco-food preservation. Maybe they can finally fill in that big pothole they call the Grand Canyon with some of the money that’s left over. I’m counting my receipts and checking them twice because if the IRS Fairy ever does ever visit me at night, I want her to leave me a nice little tax return, and not pimp slap me and steal my wallet again.

Speaking of life-sucking vampires: Mathilda May may have induced many boys into puberty in the mid 80’s when she gallivanted around as a naked space vampire vixen in “Lifeforce.” A giant evil-looking space thistle is discovered in the tail of Haley’s Comet, and instead of just nuking it and asking questions later, a group of curious, dim-witted astronauts decide to go check it out. While inside they find a bunch of giant dead space bats floating around, and 3 naked people frozen in display cases. Is anyone in the crew mildly concerned for their safety yet? Nope. So they decide it’s an even better idea to haul the aliens back to Earth in their cargo hold.

Months later a rescue shuttle from Great Britain’s bustling space program is sent up to intercept the now adrift shuttle. Much to their horror they discover most of the crew burned beyond extra crispy. An apparent fondue party gone horribly wrong. Fortunately, the space nudists are still well preserved in their see-through tanning booths, and they swiftly get hauled down to London to be studied at a minimum security community college. Suffice to say alien shenanigans occur, as the formerly freeze-dried alien girl wakes up and starts making out with strangers, sucking out their lifeforce like soda through a straw. She then goes streaking through the hallways, distracting everyone with her space melons, only being confronted briefly by a security guard with the lure of a potato chip. No one can resist the fever for the flavor of a Pringles. Once free she goes on a London whirlwind hitchhikers tour of soul suck-i-tude, with her consciousness jumping around between bodies in an attempt to recharge her lifeforce batteries.

Meanwhile back in the lab, her first victim, now shrunk up like a used Capri Sun bag, gets up from the autopsy table and starts attacking the doctors to absorb their soul juice. Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback), the only survivor of the doomed space crew, suddenly shows up back on Earth in a mercury escape capsule (he must have been stuck in traffic), and he’s debriefed by a NASA British agent, who learned that he has a psychic connection to the female alien. They decide to hypnotize him to learn of her whereabouts, because that’s what NASA does best. His unique powers give Tom a Google Earth street view of license plate #’s, and he soon learns she’s traveling with a poor sheep herder in a Volvo. It’s as if the DMV suddenly became omnipresent.

Along with a Special Air Service operative and a wormy little doctor named Professor Fallada, they track down the partially possessed people, using them as a sort of compass to her main squeeze, a balding British doctor played by Patrick Stewart. They decide to pimp slap around Captain Picard for a while, and then pump him full of more narcotics than are in Mark Maguire’s butt cheeks, thus trapping the alien’s consciousness in his body. On a flight back to London, the space chick escapes via some nasty nasal discharge, materializing in front of them, and then crop dusting the whole of downtown London with her space vampire electric mojo. Warning: Side effects of vampire mojo may include dizziness, vomiting, and turning into an undead zombie who sucks out human souls.

Your typical zombie plague occurs, putting London in a quarantined war zone, while Caine and Carlsen race to destroy the source, and try to stop the vampire ship that’s attracting souls like flies to a bug zapper. It all leads up to a big showdown in a citadel with naked vampire chick, a Conan sword, and a whole lotta cheap special effects.

Tobe Hooper, after his little stint with “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, decided to make this sci-fi/horror movie, and it never quite decides if it’s an alien film or zombie film. Maybe it’s just an excuse to have a lady walk around naked for a half hour. Either way it’s a win-win. Retroman Steve says check it out and remember, only store your vampires in official Gladware containers. They help avoid freezer burn and lock in freshness.

- Dead space bats
- Giant space thistles
- Soul powered light beacons
- Explodo vampire-zombies
- Freeze dried space bats
- Patrick Stewart pimp slappin’
- Extreme sinus drainage
- Multiple face suckings
- Multiple impalements
- Capri Sun soul bags
- Death by flare pistol

Rated 9.2 out of 10

Lost Highway is proud to partner with Crackle.com in providing you the ability to watch “Lifeforce” online for Free! Check out the link to launch the website and video.

Everybody has to deal with fear. There’s the fear of snakes, fear of fire or dark places, and more people are more afraid of public speaking than actually dying. Strange how someone would rather be the person in the casket than the one delivering the eulogy, but there are a few lesser known phobias that are just as terrorizing. One such condition is Arachibutyrophobia, the overwhelming fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth and causing instantaneous death. There’s also Mulletphobia the fear of mullets and hockey hair. It’s a phobia approaching epidemic levels in certain parts of Canada. Some people also sufferer from Bananaphobia and won’t even be in the same room as the menacing yellow fruit referring to it as the “Devil’s Snack Food.” To them eating a bowl of fruit salad would be a dance with death.

Unfortunately there’s no help for me and my rare condition. I suffer from LaBeoufophobia…….it’s the irrational fear of the actor Shia LaBeouf. Ever since I saw Transformers the guy just gives me the creeps. He’s like a tiny man stuck in a teen body with facial hair and the mere thought of seeing his giant man-boy face on a 30ft screen makes me want to curl up in the fetal position. Even actors that have French sounding names make me feel queasy.

I’ve taken precautionary measures though, so as not to trigger an all out Shia-attack. I  avoid all movies starring giant talking robots. I steer clear of McDonald’s Playlands for fear a tiny Shia is hiding in in the ball pit. He’s well under their height requirement and has ninja like hiding skills. I’ve also put away all my vintage transformer toys into secure boxes for fear they will report back telepathically to Shia with my location and activities. So take heed my b-movie fans, the LaBeouf walks among us and he’s hungry searching for souls to steal. Only then can he remain perpetually 15 years old and still make movies with Megan Fox. It’s the perks of his deal with the Devil or as the unknowing public refer to him as “Michael Bay.”

Speaking of dealing with phobias. Allison (Jillian McWhirter) just signed up for a class in fear headed up by professor tall dark and creepy. After “pissing off” a frat guy by playing some Russian roulette, and threatening campus wide keg bans, Professor Derek pulls an Elvis and fakes everyone out with a staged suicide. This gets the college board of trustees’ undies in a bunch and they force him to conduct private classes in his home as punishment. Allison and her friend Cheryl along with a few others college kids who can’t find a kegger head to his house for some private tutoring. While I was holding out for virgin sacrifices or blood orgies for the extra credit, instead they get to sit around and tell scary campfire stories.

The first story told revolves around a couple out for a birthday celebration that decide to take the scenic route home only to get the inevitable flat tire in front of the spooky mansion. Seems that always happens in horror films. Car warranties should really cover drive by hauntings. They decide its safer to go into the house where there had been a vicious murdering spree rather than wait for a tow truck. The wife disappears upstairs, and the husband who has all the kahunas of a Don Knots starts freaking out, and sword swinging at anything that moves. Sufficient to say heads roll and the birthday bash ends on a big bummer. But hey at least he won’t have to deal with marriage counseling anymore plus he still gets cake.

After the tale of birthday beheadings we get stuck with a story about a bunch of whiny teen girls who haven’t discovered texting or the internet yet. They instead head out for a night of downtown clubbing in their 84′ Chrylser LeBaron. While trying to find a club that allows high school girls dressed like hookers, they get held hostage at an abandoned Gas n’ Go by some guard dogs, and a bum who looks a lot like Tommy Chong. Completely out of their weed stash the girls escape in their “teenmobile” which can easily achieve top speeds in the low twenties. It gives the bum plenty of time to hitch a ride on their roof to go get some snacks for his munchies. Fortunately, the girls innate driving skills slam them into a parked car sending the bum through the windshield like a test crash dummy. The relief that they’ve helped with downtown vagrancy is short lived though as the hungry guard hounds show up and turn one of the panicked girls into a doggie chew toy. The rest of them see that as the perfect time to get away but actually run out of gas, and have to hoof it to an abandoned warehouse instead. In the final standoff of lame they try to outsmart the hungry hounds in a battle of wits and hide and seek. It’s hard not to root for the dogs at that point.

The third and final story is about a  pre-CSI Marg Helgenberger who plays Alex. She’s works at a late night call center hoping around on crutches because apparently nobody had invented message machines in the 80’s. She starts getting crank calls from a psycho with a fetish for heavy breathing, and phone cord strangling who just offed one of her only customers. Alex’s mild apathy grows to terrified victim mentality as the psycho easily takes out her best friend, and uses her as a elevator door stop. Alex starts frantically hopping around knocking out incandescent light bulbs like some sort of photo sensitive jack terrier, and winds up falling down the stair well and impaling a security guard with a wood stake. This eventually leads to a showdown back in the main office. It’s all just an obvious assassination attempt from the phone recording machine industry. AT&T workers probably tell this story to their kids at night.

Back in reality the college kids are now all effectively creeped out and cranked up on caffeine, and Jujubees. A power blackout forces the professor to “check the fuses” in the basement where he gets strung up like a Piñata, and is about to get flame-broiled by the frat boy he had humiliated earlier. But things go sour as frat guy chickens out, and Edward emerges from the flames as an evil skeleton with a hankering for chopping on Greek pledges. Amongst the fiery chaos Allison ditches her friends, and high tails out of the house across multiple movie sets of all the previous stories while professor “Skeletor” is in hot pursuit with an axe to grind. Yeah it started getting a bit weird around then.
“After Midnight” is not one the scarier films to come out during the anthology band wagon of “Creepshow”, and Tales form the “Darkside” but it’s still a pretty entertaining ride. Hard to believe this movie was directed by the same guy that made the Ewoks film.

Retroman Steve says check it out, and never trust a professor who wants you to stop by his place for some “extra credit work.” They inevitably turn into blood thirsty undead skeletons that will try to steal your soul. It’s all right there in the fine print of your syllabus on page 24.

- 1 accidental beheading party
- 1 headshot
- Multiple heads rolls
- Pants wetting
- Homeless joyride stunt spectacular
- Flame broiled attack dogs
- Teenage doggie chew toy
- Professor Piñata
- Body chopping with axe

7.7 out of 10

I believe Shia LaBeouf roughly translated in the ancient french dialect means “Hungry Like the Wolf” or “Shy of the Beef.”

Check out the trailer for After Midnight

I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. Normally I’d attribute it to the 2 liters of Monster Energy drink I normally consume while watching schlocky late night cinema, but I’ve been cutting back on that. So now when I finally do fall asleep I have some really weird dreams. One in particular I keep having is where I’m being chased by zombies in a city and when I try to drive away my car will only go 10 mph. Sure it looks like a Lamborghini but drives like a Prius. Then I realize that I actually have the mutant power of Spiderman and used my web slinging ability to climb to the top of the Sears towers. That’s where I discover Oprah Winfrey perched like a vulture in her pants suit gnawing on a chicken leg. It figures Oprah would be the one person to survive the zombie apocalypse. So she gave me keys to a free car and a Oprah book of the month club membership and I go swinging back to down to my car. It all ends when I try to peel out, and I find my tires have been replaced with large sprinkled doughnuts and there’s a monkey dressed as a bellhop in the passengers seat singing Celine Dion songs. That’s when I wake up in a cold sweat. Sure zombies and a benevolent Oprah I can handle, but not monkeys singing “My heart will go on”. Guess I should ease up on the Chinese food before bedtime.

Speaking of bad dreams. Dennis Quaid plays Alex, a psychic womanizer who uses his gift to predict the future, bet on horses and read girl’s minds. A former associate Dr. Novotny (Max von Sydow) hates seeing him squander his money on effeminate casual wear from the Penny’s catalog and gets him to join his classified government dream project instead. And you know when it’s secret and the government is involved someone is going to die. The military is using psychics to enter people’s dreams all in order to advance military science or in-dream banner ads which ever is more profitable. Alex, when he’s not gallivanting his boney torso around in his Underoos likes to play the saxophone Clinton-style and hit on lab technicians. Jane (Kate Capshaw) plays the queen of the babe lab technicians and works with Alex to sharpen his dream linking skills. They play card games, he reads her mind for a quick lite read and they get right to some train shagging during Jane’s power nap.

Alex starts warming up his dreamcatcher skills through some subconscious marital advising and construction stunt work all leading up to a big snake hunt in some little fat kids head. This was apparently during a time when science didn’t really need a specific purpose. Buddy has been having bad dreams of being stuck in a Tim Burton movie while being pursued by the Boogeyman and it’s been really cutting into his eating time, so Alex plugs his mind into Buddy’s brain and they do battle with a big demonic snake creature who wants to make little buddy into ground round. It’s a sort of Anne Coulter of the subconscious. Buddy succeeds in chopping the creatures head off with a big kill axe while Alex gives it a nice bear hug. I believe Buddy’s been doing a lot of free weights in his spare time.

Meanwhile back in Washington the president has been having nightmares of kids with bad acne jumping out of broom closets while nuclear blasts are going off all around them. The dreams are so bad that the president decides he wants to disarm all the nukes at the next Geneva convention. It’s obviously a plot by bunch of commies, so they must be destroyed, and the president is rushed into the dream institute to have him studied to end this horrible threat. The military dream program is headed up by Bob Blair. One of the most politically evil character’s ever to wear a polyester suit and yet they named him Bob. “Oh no!…tremble before the fear of…. Bob!” But Christopher Plummer can just ooze evil out of any character even if you stuck him in a Barney suit he’d still make children cry. Bob also has a hit squad in rented suits ready to run over phone booths on a moments notice, and his own pet psycho psychic, Tommy played perfectly by David Pat Kelly. Tommy enjoys stuffing his face with food while harassing Alex about whose the better dream-linker, and when he’s really bored he kills patients “Just for the kicks man.” Bob doesn’t want the military machine to stop churning out nukes, so he hires Tommy to try to dream assassinate the president at nap time.

Alex discovers the assassination plot thanks to the cunning investigative reporting by Norm from Cheers but then gets rick rolled out of a moving car before he can get the news back to Dr. Novotny whose already been killed by Bob’s goon squad. There’s a motorcycle road race and Alex gets chased down by Lincoln Continentals at the race tracks narrowly escaping into the back of a horse trailer. That’s a lot of horses a** for one trailer. Alex works his way back to the institute just in time to remote link up with the president who is dreaming he’s on a Amtrak in Hell, next stop downtown Armagedonville. They fight subway zombies, ninjas, and radioactive wolf-beasts while being pursued by Tommy who just impaled the train conductor with freddy fingers and turned into a giant Snakeman. I had that exact same dream once but I was in high school and I was in my underwear. Oh wait… maybe that wasn’t a dream.

Dreamscape’s a pretty fun little 80’s flick with big nods to influencing Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm St., complete with a bad guy sporting Freddyish finger blades, and a giant nightmarish snake creature. I saw this movie when I was 10 years old and back then the Snakeman scared the heck out of me, but this time around I found it rather goofy. Dennis Quaid without a shirt was the most horrifying thing about it. Retroman Steve says check it and be sure to not eat Chinese food before bedtime.

- 1 motorcycle chase with crash and bale
- 2 nuclear explosions
- 2 Snakemen
- Multiple radioactive mutants
- Norm from Cheers cameo
- Steel beam circus acts
- Train shaggin’
- Emergency heart removal
- Lee press on Freddy nails
- Numchuck chucking
- Mutant dogs

7.1 out of 10

“it’s Dennis Quaid-tastic”

Check out the trailer for Dreamscape

It’s not too early to sharpen up your pinball skills. In April Pinball at the Zoo’ returns with all the flashing lights and dinging sounds your senses can handle. Now I wouldn’t really consider myself a pinball wizard. I’m neither deaf, dumb, nor blind… well…. o.k 2 out 3 ain’t too bad, but I do play a pretty mean pinball. I rate my pinball playing skill at a “David Blane” level. It’s lots of hype with no really big payoff. Mostly it’s just  me jumping around and yelling obscenities at the ball. But I can’t help it, I’m addicted to the game. The combination of precise skill shots and random chaos, the lights, the cheesy digital music, the way the arcade owner gives me an evil glare when I tilt the machine on it’s side. It all makes my fingers twitchy just thinking about it.

This year the Zoo’ will have the usual assortment of vendors to buy some cool pinball swag but the big draw has got to be that tournament trophy and 1st place pinball machine. Oh that would look great in my living room right next to that leg lamp Santa brought me. There’ll also be an arcade auction where you too can take home a piece of your childhood memories minus the pubescent humiliations and locker stuffings. Hundreds of arcade and pinball machines going cheaper than what you’d pay for a Playstation, and just like a cheap hooker if you overlook some cigarette stains you can get yourself a good deal. So come all ye pinheads and basement Game Room dwellers. Pilgrimage forth squinting in the sunlight to play with ye balls and flippers. You might just go home with a trophy to impress the ladies or at least a used game. Good luck fitting it in the back of that 83 Pinto.

Speaking of evil silver balls hurdling at your face, Phantasm II continues the fine tradition of flying death spheres ready to impale and dismember. The Tall Man, Angus Scrimm, is back to work digging up corpses and shrinking them down to evil dwarf monks for his army of the dead. Mike (James LeGros) has recently been let out of the insane asylum and is heading back home with his old pal Reggie from Phantasm I. Reg is a balding unemployed ice cream truck driver and ever since the ice cream market tanked he’s been living at home with his family. He refuses to acknowledge the events of the first film ever happened until The Tall Man kills his whole family in a spectacular gas explosion that would make Michael Bay weepy. All those gallons of ice cream lost forever… oh the humanity!! Hungry for revenge and Rocky Road they take a road trip in their Hemi Barricuda searching abandoned towns and dug up graveyards for the evil mortician.

The two take a pit stop in a creepy abandoned town where Mike communicates telepathically with his out of state girlfriend Liz when he sleeps. She’s a squeaky voiced bimbo whose in love with Mike even though they’ve never actually met. It’s sorta like Internet dating only with ESP. Liz’s grandfather just kicked the bucket recently so she’s been hanging out in mausoleum filing her nails, and getting tossed around by the tall man like drinking night at Ike Turner’s house. Soon her recently buried and now zombified grandpa tries out his new door to door sales job on the local town’s priest knocking at his door and giving him a good scare then crawls into bed afterwards with grandma. Dang! Grandpa didn’t get this much action when he was alive.

Liz heads to the mausoleum where grandma’s already been Shrinky Dinked down into a Star Wars Jawa and proceeds to viciously attack Liz’s knee caps. She easily put her down with a china vase to the noggin’. This sort of begs the question, why would the tall man raise an evil army of weak midget monks with thin skulls? Doesn’t seem like the best way to take over the world. Maybe he could have stretched them out instead of leaving them in the oven so long.

Meanwhile the priest catches a bad case of van Gogh-itis losing an ear and gets his head drilled in by a flying Cuisinart. This barely gives Liz enough time to escape into the nearby cemetery tripping over Mike and Reg already hiding out in an open grave. They all run like little girls and barricade themselves in a nearby abandoned house where they make S’mores, sing Kumbaya, and rig up grenades with Budweiser cans. Reggie then puts his moves on the nymphomaniac hitchhiker they picked up earlier whose got a thing for balding hippies who play guitar. Wow what are the odds? While those two are doing the naked lambada upstairs, Liz is left alone so she can be more easily kidnapped through the a convenient plate glass window. At this point she’s probably feeling like she should’ve just stayed in bed.

So it’s back to the mausoleum again where Reg and Mike battle evil henchmen in gas masks with giant chainsaws and shoot up dwarfs for target practice. They also get attacked by more flying drill spheres with upgraded seek and destroy lasers and then wrestle with some pasty white guys in rented tuxes.  Seriously guys some blondes just aren’t worth all this. But they do eventually free Liz from a pre death embalming and get sucked into a cross dimensional gateway…all because Mike had to be all “wonder what this button does?” Turns out the “other side” looks a lot like an abandoned beach in Jersey complete with red skies and mutant dwarfs in toxic waste barrels. One of the baby dwarfs nearly eats Reggie’s face when it’s turkey pop up timer goes off. This all leads up to a big showdown back in the real world with the tall man, a embalming needle, and some sulfuric acid and that’s when you know you got a party.

In typical Phantasm fashion the ending doesn’t make a lick of sense but who really cares. It’s such a fun ride just getting there. Any movie that has four-barreled shot guns, 5 foot long chainsaws, and homicidal dwarfs gets extra bonus points in my book. The director Don Coscarelli really out did himself on this one with some obvious nods to “Evil Dead”, and  ”The Beyond” and it also gave us more of The Tall Man and his evil scowl of creepiness. Phantasm II is one of those rare films where the sequel really out performs the original. Retroman Steve says check it out…. but only during visitation hours. Also be sure to keep your coffins stored in a cool dry place for freshness.

- Exploding house
- Exploding rats
- Ear choppin’
- Embalming-fu
- Chainsaw to the groin
- Corpse stabbing
- Forehead drilling
- Exploding Cudas
- Hand choppin’
- Flame-throwers
- Sawed off double barrel shotguns
- Dwarf tossin’
- Head drillin’
- Embalming acid
- Barrel-o-dwarfs

9.5 out of 10

“it’s Phantastic!”

Check out the trailer for Phantasm II

Happy holidays, y’all.  Boy do we have a special treat for you.  This is the first-ever review done by Drive-in Dan and me, his loving wife, Mrs. Drive-in Dan.  We are going to review for you what we consider to be the quintessential holiday film, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”  If you have not seen this, y’all need to just go out and buy it, because it is a classic that will have you tangled up in the tinsel and rolling on the floor under the Christmas tree, you’ll be laughing so hard.  Y’all wanna know just how much of a classic it is?  Why Hallmark even has a “Christmas Vacation” tree ornament of Cousin Eddie’s RV, that speaks Eddie quotes.  Y’all can bet on your last bottle of moonshine Dan and I have that sucker hangin’ on the tree.

Now, in terms of format, Dan and I are going to do this sort of like a script.  Each of our names will be listed, with our thoughts and comments after.  O.K., y’all ready now?  Here we go.

Mrs. Drive-in Dan: Our story begins with the Griswolds driving out into the countryside to select the all-important symbol of the holiday season…the Griswold Family Christmas Tree.  Clark W/ Griswold, Jr. (Chevy Chase) leads his family in the singing of Christmas carols, while barely escaping the jaws of certain death when he moves the car under a big rig haulin’ logs.  After a moment of being airborne over a snow bank (which resembles the airborne moment in the desert from the original “National Lampoon’s Vacation”), the family wagon lands at the tree lot, and the search for the tree begins.  Unfortunately, it leads them out into the wilderness, and no one brought a saw, so they take the tree home—roots and all.

Drive-in Dan: Honey, you forgot to tell how they got under that big rig in the first place—by pissing-off those good ol’ boys in the pick-up truck.  And how did they dig-up that big tree, anyway?

Mrs. Drive-in Dan: Suspend your disbelief, honey.  It’s a movie.  They can do that kinda stuff in Hollywood.  Anyhow, Clark wants to have a big, family Christmas at their house.  The in-laws arrive, to several descending, ominous notes of a doorbell chime.  The children are outsted from their rooms and beds; Ellen Griswold (Beverly D’Angelo) starts smoking; and everyone is in a general state of holiday miserableness.  In a display of classic avoidance, Clark and Rusty head outside to string-up the lights on the house.  Rusty gets the un-enviable task of untangling a knot in the string of lights that resembles the world’s largest ball of twine.  Honey, do you remember when we went to go see that?

Drive-in Dan: Honey, can I get a word in here?  You’re forgetting about the part where Clark comes out of the garage with the chainsaw and the Jason hockey mask on to cut the tree, and exchanges unfriendly comments with the yuppie neighbors, Todd and Margot (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Nicholas Guest).  And then they get the tree in the living room, and when Clark cuts the rope to release the branches, 50 million things are knocked over and broken.  It’s kind of like Rosie O’Donnell taking off her spandex and releasing everything.  “Stand back!  Contents under pressure!”

Mrs. Drive-in Dan: Oh, honey, you’re right!  Now, how could I forget that!  Do you want to keep telling the story?

Drive-in Dan: No, I think you’re doing a fine job.  I’m comfortable here on the couch.

Mrs. Drive-in Dan: Alrighty, then!  Anyway, so back to stringing the lights.  Clark spends the whole day putting lights all over the house, risking life and limb as he has some mishaps with the ladder, and is hanging by the gutter at one point.  The gutter starts to separate from the house, sending a huge piece of ice shooting through Todd and Margot’s window when they’re not home, and wreckin’ their expensive stereo (heh, heh).  And when Clark brings the whole family out to see the fruits of his labors, the dang things won’t light!  After much pain and agony on Clark’s part—and a few meltdowns—Ellen realizes the light switch in the garage needs to be flipped on for the outside lights to work.  And, oh my Lord, let’s not even talk about the craziness of add-ons, extensions, and cords at that electrical outlet!  That thing fully illustrates what my college friend used to say: It’s not a real Christmas unless it’s a fire hazard.  But I digress…  Anyhow, the lights come on, the nuclear power plant needs to flip on the auxiliary power, and the entire Griswold clan ooh’s and aah’s at the purr-ty lights…Although Art, Ellen’s Dad, notices that they aren’t twinkling.  Big, freakin’ deal. Catherine and Cousin Eddie are impressed.  They just pulled up in their RV, which is the biggest piece of crap you could ever lay eyes on.  I am telling you, it is a sight to behold.  Honey, do you want to jump in here?

(Quiet snoring)

I guess not.  He’s tired from being up late watching “Black Christmas” online and Twittering, or tweeting, or chirping—or whatever the heck you call it.  That’s fine.  He can pipe-in at the end.

While Clark was fiddlin’ with the lights on the house, Todd and Margot were getting’ ready to, um, well, have “relations.”  Y’all know what I’m talkin’ about?  There was wine, and candlelight, and…  You get the picture, don’t ya?  So, all of a sudden, Clark’s Mom goes into the garage and flips the switch to get a cake out of the icebox in the garage.  The Christmas lights come on, and Todd and Margot are blinded and just about kill themselves trying to move around their bedroom and down the stairs.  The following morning, there’s chaos in the Griswold dining room during breakfast, with Eddie and Catherine’s rug-rats runnin’ around.  Meanwhile Todd, who’s about to go out for a morning run, thinks otherwise when he comes out and is greeted by the sight of Eddie in a short bathrobe, emptying the RV’s chemical toilet into the storm sewer.  Eddie holds up his beer can in greeting and delivers the best line in the whole movie, “Merry Christmas!  Sh*tter was full!”

(Snort from Drive-in Dan as he wakes up)

Welcome back, sweetie pie.

Drive-in Dan: Woman, do you remember when we went to that baseball game, and you asked about the guy waaaay out in the field, and I told you he plays the position of right field?

Mrs. Drive-in Dan: Yes…

Drive-in Dan: Well that’s where you are in this review.  I need to reel you in.  You skipped over the whole part about where Clark gets locked up in the attic when he goes up there to hide Ellen’s present, and the family leaves and goes to the mall.  Clark is freezing his baguettes off in the attic, and dresses in drag in some old clothes from a trunk, and watches old home movies to pass the time.  First, though, he goes ten rounds with the floorboards coming up and hitting him in the face.

Mrs. Drive-in Dan: Well, darlin’, you were asleep, and so I was just keepin’ on here…

Drive-in Dan: Well I’m awake now to keep you on track.

Mrs. Drive-in Dan: Well aren’t we grumpy?  I think you need another nap.

Drive-in Dan: I’m fine.  Just wrap this up.  You’re going on forever here.  It’s a movie review, not a reading of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue.  Jeez, couldn’t someone please go rogue on her?

Mrs. Drive-in Dan: You are on thin ice, mister.  Fine.  Anyhow, the rest of the movie involves a lingerie sales girl taking off her bathing suit; Aunt Bethany reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over dry turkey and cat food Jell-O; an electrocuted cat; Uncle Lewis igniting the Christmas tree and himself; Eddie’s dog, Snots, chasing a squirrel from the new Christmas tree through the house and out the door, tackling Margot, who then slugs Todd; Clark getting an unpleasant Christmas bonus from his employer and having a meltdown with a very impressive and agitated monologue; Eddie kidnapping Clark’s boss; and the police crashing into the Griswold home.  The plastic Santa and reindeer are sent spiraling across the moon, propelled by Uncle Lewis dropping a match by the storm sewer, igniting the fumes from Eddie’s emptying of the chemical toilet.  As Aunt Bethany sings the National Anthem, all join in, and then head back inside.  The end.  Does that wrap it up enough for you, dear?

Drive-in Dan: Yup.  That about covers it.  That’s all I’m gonna say, before I end-up sleeping on the couch.  But we need to do the Roadside Attractions…

- Jason Voorhees trimming a tree
- 2500 non-twinkling Christmas lights
- Christmas décor smackdown
- 1 flying Popsicle
- 1 rust-bucket RV
- 1 choking-hazard dry turkey
- 1 pissed-off squirrel
- 1 Tylenol plug
- Flaming Santa and Reindeer

Rated 10 out of 10

Check out the trailer for National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

I was hooking up some new speakers the other night to my pristine 1975 Pioneer amplifiers. Yeah I know your jealous. I was looking forward to a few hours of Skynard’s greatest hits dulling my senses with a freshly made Hot Pockets and Schnapps but all I got out of the speakers was a screeching high pitched squeal. It was sort of a cross between Fran Drescher and a howling spider monkey only less pleasant. So I got behind the stereo with a flashlight and a pair of rusty pliers to check my wiring finally tracing the problem to my vintage CD player. I “jerry-rigged” it with some old RCA cables covered in duct tape a few years back and somehow the player had gone from normal spin to warp death speed and was now creating the banshee howl. The one side benefit is I could listen to all of “Free Bird” in under 4 seconds or saw some fresh timber. I fiddled around with the wire mess, unplugged and replugged connectors and eventually just banged on the amplifier a few times. I imagine it’s sorta like watching a drunk orangutan try to solve a Rubik’s Cube but amazingly the banging worked and Skynard was rockin’ once again. Years of technological expertise  culminating in simply employing the Fonzi method. Now if you’ll excuse me it’s time to dust off that Packard Bell PC sitting in my attic. There’s a copy of Windows Vista just itching to get installed on it. I’m sure nothing could go wrong.

Speaking of evil technology, Dylan “pre-law” McDermott takes on a jacked up toaster oven in 1990’s cult classic  ”Hardware.” Dylan plays “Moses” a soldier on leave in post apocalyptic America, a big desert now thanks to radioactivity full of scavengers and disgruntled taxi drivers and Tusken Raiders. Moses or Mo’ as his burning bush pal like to call him buys some used robot parts off an Outlander while visiting a dwarf junk dealer in a cave (I’ve had that dream once). Mo gives the scrap metal to his artist ex-girlfriend Jill in uptown, mostly just for him just being a schmuck. Nothing says love and please forgive me like the disembodied head of a killer robot. She gives it a Andy Warhol makeover and hangs it on her wall thanking him with some late night shagging. All that whoo-hooing give the robot sculpture enough time to boot up and build itself a cyborg body of killing complete with optional craftsman saw blades and toxic LSD injectors (action McDermott sold separately.)  Mo meanwhile has secretly taken off for the battlefield yet again leaving Jill alone to fight this psychotic Cuisinart. You can really see why she loves him so.

Her peeping Tom neighbor a big slob of a man whose been sweating grease all night while oogling her through infrared binoculars shows up at her door. He tries out his best sleazy pick up lines only to get a howdy hey from the killbot in the form of a giant robo-drill to his belly. With all that deep fat drillin’ there’s just enough time for Jill to hide in her giant walk in freezer away from the robots standard issued heat sensors. “Quick throw the turkey pot pies at it! That’ll stop him!”

Meanwhile back on the battlefield, Mo learns that his gift is actually a killer robot named Mark 13 (Marky Mark for short) built by the government to eradicate humanity through toxic LSD injections. It’s the gift keeps on giving perfect for that special ex in your life. Mo’ frantically heads back to her apartment and calls his drugged out Buddha buddy to try stop this terminator poser. It’s like sending one armed man to a clapping contest, he can’t even figure out how to get pass the apartment’s door security. Mo arrives on the scene while his buddy cowers near the doorstop just in time to blow a couple shot gun slugs into the robot’s chest. The blast causes it to tumble out the window and it pulls Jill along for the ride crashing her down onto a Chinese family dinner below. Because if the fall don’t kill ya the MSG will.

Mo distracted by his girlfriend acrobatics gets shot-up by the robot’s finger syringes and dies in one of the longest tripped out MTV styled death montages ever put to film. His only lasting legacy…perfect hair and nice teeth. Really I think she was doing better before he showed up again. The neighborhood watch patrol in goalie safety gear finally arrive but just end up being more meat for the meat grinder. They get sliced, chopped and shot, It’s like the 3 stooges started a neighborhood association. Jill once again is left alone to fight the seemingly indestructible robot and there’s not a single Austrian actor turned governor in sight anywhere as she gets cornered in with Marky Mark 13 in the shower. What follows is one of the weakest battle finales since Saved by the Bell’s “Screech” fought Danny Bonaduce in celebrity boxing. Turns out the Mark 13 had poor insulation and is susceptible to water. “so sorry the robot apocalypse has been canceled due to rain.” So the robot shorts out in the shower…and Jill is left with a hefty deposit to pay on her demolished apartment.

At least we get treated to some trippy camera work, infrared gazongas, and a rockin’ soundtrack. It just goes to show you can make a movie people will still watch without much of anything really happening you just gotta do it with style!!!! *jazz hands*

Retroman says check it out only if you need to see a killer robot movie that doesn’t have a screaming Christian Bale in it. Just remember to keep your severed robot heads away from children and pets as it may lead to hallucination, injury or possible death.

- 1 self building kill-bot
- 2 breasts (infrared)
- Peeping tom slob-o-vision
- Infra-red red head
- Dwarf tossin’
- Head drillin’
- Exploding kitchens
- Door crushin’
- Arm carvin’
- Bed carvin’
- Extreme McDermott

2.7 out of 10

“what if Johnny 5 was pure evil and tried to kill Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg? Now there’s a killer robot movie worth seeing.”

Check out the trailer for Hardware

I noticed our local community center now offers the aerobic workout class “Pole Dancing 101.” I never realized that this was actually an aerobic exercise or that it required classes. Sure Jazzercise makes sense because you have a lot calories to burn when you have to do all those jazz hands moves, but didn’t expect to see a pole dancing class in the brochure next to the intro to scrapbooking and decoupage for beginners. I wonder do you have to bring your own pole? Does it offer you tips in properly securing dollars bills in your g-string when hanging upside down and not getting you hair wet in the beer pitchers? All legitimate questions any pole dancing beginner should be taking into consideration. Also since this is intro 101 does that mean there’s advanced classes? If so then we could we perhaps see this as an Olympic sport someday and I for one welcome this type of sleazercise to the Olympic stage. It could sure bring in more money for those school fundraisers too.

Speaking of extreme nekkid dancing. Linnea Quigley makes her cinematic mark as scream queen extraordinaire with all her nekkid gyrations on tombstones in “The Return of the Living Dead.” Linnea may have actually induced puberty in many a young boy in 1985 just from that scene alone and even her Ronald McDonald haircut can’t distract us from drooling over the best onscreen tombstone striptease ever filmed. But hold on I’m getting off subject here…there also happens to be zombies too!

This undead brain muncher classic starts off when a group of army brats decide to ship the remaining zombies left over from of the Night of the Living Dead incident to a medical supply room in Louisville Kentucky. In typical government engineering fashion the seals on the tank are about as thick as cheese paper……and soon they start to ooze out some funky fumes. Not a bong in sight the two workers there Frank and Freddy take a forced zombie-flu snooze and awake to find all hells breaking loose. The boss man, Burt is called in to try to help wrangle up the freeze burned cadavers and half dissected dogs who have since reanimated and are tearing up his shop.

Burt whose best friends with Ernie the mortician (Sesame Street lawyers start your letters now) enlists him to help burn the remains in his crematorium so as not to tarnish the shining reputation of his medical business. Yes, a company that already stores zombies in it’s basement but who are we to judge. Burt begs Ernie to burn the chopped up remains so that not even the bones are left and as everyone should know the best way to get people to burn your cadaver is to tell them it’s rabid weasels. Lesson learned.

Ernie tosses them in and cooks them on high causing the oven to billow out a bunch of zombie smoke into the air and leaves behind the fresh scent of pine. Soon the rain starts a pourin’ thanks to before mentioned nekkid rocker rain dance and the toxic smoke rains down on the graveyard. Brain cravin’ zombies start popping up like weeds and thousands of the undead that can run like Carl Lewis take over the cemetery. Turns out brains make the dead feel better and calm their nerves, sorta like Häagen-Dazs for pregnant women. The survivors hold up in the mortuary while a dead oily guy in the basement does some contortionist breakdancing moves stalking the punk rocker survivors.

Freddy’s girlfriend Tina stumbles upon oily face zombie in the basement and locks herself in a locker (ha the irony!) but good old oily face has got some mad MacGyver skills and rigs a crane and pulley system to open the door. She barely escapes when the rest of her punk rocker friends bust in to save here. One of them gets a chunk of his brains chewed out but he never had a decent line in the film anyways thinning the punk rocker herd.

Meanwhile Frank and Freddy who breathed the zombie fumes are looking pretty bad, sweaty, and pale. I don’t think their medical insurance even covers chronic zombification. The paramedics are even called in only to confirm that they’re already dead and then get attacked by a zombie horde on the way out. Worse doctor bedside manners ever!

Frank and Freddy justifiably freak out and are locked in the mortuary’s church while the others try to fend off the zombie herds unsuccessfully. Undead Freddy starts chasing his girlfriend around the place trying to convince her that he loves her for her body and  not her brains but she just douses him with acid. That’s what we call around here “Tough Love.” Tina and Ernie holds up in the attic while Freddy stumbles around all melty face downstairs yellin’ “Brains” and Burt tries to and escape in the a Chevy Malibu. Good luck, those cars have no handling whatsoever when running over zombies and I should know.

Burt in a last ditch effort calls the military 1-800 number on the side of the zombie spam can so the army can do what they do best, blow crap up. Really the best lesson learned from this films… keep your food sealed fresh, never rely on army intelligence, and avoid Kentucky in a nuclear fallout.

ROTLD has all the perfect ingredients for shlocky 80’s horror mixed well and served with a side of satire. There’s brain-chompin’,  head-rollin’, blood-spoutin’, and zombie dwarfism. What more can you ask for? Retroman Steve says check it out. It’s one of my all time favorite zombie film. Just be sure to “send moooore paramedics.”

- Zombie spam cans
- 1 naked punk rocker
- Half a zombie, half a dog
- Brain-munchin’
- Leg-grabbin’
- Acid rain dance
- Pick axe to the head
- Chopped up freezer burned cadavers
- The dreaded rabid weasel defense
- Acid to the face
- Embalming fu
- Zombie-midget-fu
- Kentucky fallout

9.8 out of 10

We’ll be showing “The Return of the Living Dead” on Friday the 13th at Wells Hall on MSU Campus. There’ll be a zombie costume contest and tons of great giveaways. Check out all the details at www.lostmovienight.com.
B.Y.O.B. Bring your own Brains.

Check out the trailer for The Return of the Living Dead

Before getting his butt kicked by a chick with telekinetic powers in “The New Blood”, or taking a cruise to the big apple in “Jason Takes Manhattan”, Director/writer Tom McLoughlin takes a cue from Dr. Frankenstein and resurrects Jason and the “Friday the 13th” franchise with his entry, “Jason Lives.”

Tommy Jarvis, who’s on a weekend pass from the nuthouse, decides to go visit an old family friend at a cemetery that he hasn’t seen for several years. During the short drive over we find out that the old family friend is Jason Voorhees. Man, he should have gone to Disneyland. There’s no need to worry about Jason; he’s as dead as Vanilla Ice’s rap career. After pulling into the cemetery Tommy jumps out of his truck along with Allen Hawes (Ron Padillo), and they start searching for ol’ Wormface’s grave like they’re on some kind of demented Easter egg hunt. Soon they come across a headstone with the name Jason Voorhees on it, but Tommy, for some crazy reason, doesn’t think he’s found the right grave and wants to make a positive I.D. Seriously? How many people named Jason Voorhees would be buried in the local cemetery anyway? Hawes doesn’t think this is a good idea and throws a brief hissy-fit. But he doesn’t want to risk loosing his ride home, so he and Tommy grab shovels and they start digging “Raiders of the Lost Ark”-style until they reach the top of the coffin. Shortly after popping off the casket lid like a can of Pringles, Tommy gets blind-sided by a childhood flashback (audio only) of him tenderizing Jason’s meat suit with a machete.

Without warning he “snaps” and grabs the nearest metal object and heads back to Jason’s coffin. This is just great! Now we have a crazy guy stabbing a dead corpse with a metal pole during a t-storm in a “Friday the 13th” movie–oh, man–this can’t be good. And before you can say, “Chi-chi-chi-cha-cha-cha,” lighting strikes the metal pole sticking out of the dead psycho’s body, and Jason lives. Hawes sees Jason and pauses just long enough to have a “girl moment”, and then disappears offscreen. I really don’t understand what the big deal is. So what? He saw a walking corpse… It’s not like he just saw Rosie O’ Donnell in a two-piece micro-bikini. Now THAT’S freakin’ SCARY!

Tommy quickly realizes that he has dug up a very big problem (ya think?) and grabs a can of gasoline that I had seen earlier, and starts splashing it all over Jason, who is slowly advancing towards him like he has rigor mortis or something. Tommy then strikes a match and is about to make a “Jason S’more-hees” when–what-da-ya-know–it rains and puts the match out. Now this wouldn’t have happened had Tommy used REI Storm matches. And I can tell by the, “Oh, crap! What do I do now?!” look on his face that he’s fresh out of ideas. Fortunately for him though, Allen returns onscreen with new-found courage and a Plan B, which consists of running up behind Jason while yelling a Braveheart-ish battle cry, and whacking him across the head with a shovel. Now for a second there I thought Jason was going to have to sit out another movie. But aside from a couple of cobwebs getting knocked out of place, ol’ Coffin Breath wasn’t phased one bit. Not the same can be said for a stunned Hawes, who gets killed before the movie’s opening credits. I guess Ron Palillo (Hawes) had to leave early for a “Welcome Back Kotter” reunion.

After Tommy speeds off to the police station to get reinforcements, a lightning-fast Jason makes up for lost time spearing, impaling, crushing, and hacking his was way towards a personal best and franchise high body count. When he’s not having stare-downs and showdowns with Sheriff Garris, he likes to mug for the camera, do James Bond tributes, and enjoy the lakeside scenery while taking power walks through the woods.

Tommy stays busy in the movie getting thrown in jail, falling in love, doing a little B&E (breaking and entering), being suspected of murder, and running from the law. But somewhere during all of this our crazy friend amazingly finds the time to buy and then read a couple of step-by-step books that tell him exactly how to kill Jason. Now this sounds too good to be true, and it is–because the hockey-mask-wearing fiend has already signed on to do five more movies after this one. But I don’t think Tommy knows about this because he and Megan are still preparing for Jason’s big send-off.

Later that night they all meet up at the camp for a wet and wild threesome in the middle of the lake. It’s not what you think… But don’t worry about Jason adding you to his already impressive body count because, trust me, Tommy and Megan are keeping him very busy this time around. So you’re safe wherever you watch the action. And besides, once Tommy drops anchor on the USS Voorhees at the bottom of Crystal Lake, courtesy of some steel chain and a boulder the size of an asteroid, ol’ Jason won’t be going anywhere until the next sequel.

This is your typical “Friday the 13th” movie minus the scares, nudity and gore of earlier films. Director McLoughlin doesn’t even attempt to scare the audience with “Jason Lives.” His installment is about as terrifying as an episode of “Goosebumps.” But I’ll take an un-scary “Friday the 13th” film any day over a ridiculous sequel like “Jason Goes to Hell” that has a body-jacking Jason who eats an evil heart (what???) and swaps spit and Hell Slugs with his victims.

Another bummer is that this movie has zero nudity which means you’ll just have to wait until the next sequel “The New Blood” to see any hot chicks take their clothes off. To me having a “Friday the 13th” film without any nudity is like having Mork without Mindy, or Michael Knight being without his car buddy, KITT. I mean c’mon, this isn’t an episode of “7th Heaven”, it’s a horror movie, so let’s see some skin. The closest it gets is seeing Megan, the very talented Jennifer Cooke, sporting a pair of 80’s jeans that are so tight, the seams can be heard crying “uncle.” And for anyone out there who has a bare knee fetish, you should definitely get your fix whenever Cort appears on screen with his knees falling out of his ripped jeans. The movie doesn’t have a lot of gore, either, except when Jason shows his creative side and does his version of a Jackson Pollock painting using a female counselor’s blood and gooey insides. At least “Jason Lives” has a couple of really cool kills. Like when Maggothead himself gets a three-for-one decapitation using a pimped-out chrome machete. Another one has the undead psycho evening the score with the sheriff when he snaps him in half like a cheap number two pencil after their second showdown. Now that’s what I call a tiebreaker! The next kill reminded me of when I used to pull the heads off my cousin’s Barbie dolls. It involves a female counselor who gets her head ripped off after making the fatal mistake of pouring lemon and lime soda over Wormface’s head. I guess Jason prefers Pepsi.

The cast is fairly bland by “Friday the 13th” standards. Even the usual crop of walking cliches isn’t here. But there is one character named Martin who really stands out. If you liked Crazy Ralph from Parts 1 & 2, and Edna from “A New Beginning”, then you will definitely get a kick out of this crusty caretaker. When he isn’t involved in cover-ups over at the local cemetery where he works, he can be overheard serenading his bottle of hooch, affectionately named Kathleen. Sadly though, while walking home from work one night, Martin meets his end and gives fans a great death scene that has Jason using a broken bottle to tap his neck like a keg of beer. This gives new meaning the old saying “the bottle killed him.”

For a franchise that suffers from advanced sequel-itis, the acting is surprisingly solid. The group of attractive female camp counselors are believable as friends working at a summer camp. Even the sheriff and deputy act like they’ve known each other for years. Thom (I haven’t had an acting gig in years) Mathews gives a credible performance as a troubled young man who still has a major case of Jason on the brain. This sequel has the best production values of any movie in the series. We get some creepy opening shots of fog floating across the lake and crawling along the ground that reminded me of the classic horror movie “The Wolfman.” It’s just a shame that director McLoughlin didn’t build on this atmosphere and create a film full of thrills and chills. However, on a positive note, resident “Friday the 13th” composer Harry Manfredini is back with a brand new and totally awesome sounding score to celebrate Jason’s return. Now, as far as I’m concerned, a “Friday the 13th” movie just isn’t a “Friday the 13th” movie if Manfredini isn’t doing the music.

In the end I still enjoyed seeing the real Jason back onscreen (Roy doesn’t count), but I just like Jason better when he kills you with a machete, and not with humor.

- Extreme swimming in skin-tight jeans
- 3-for-1 decap attack
- 1 Pimped-out chrome machete
- Gratuitous display of knees
- 1 Frankenstein-esque resurrection
- Jason’s James Bond Tribute
- 1 Corpse covered in a “Fear Factor” Party Mix of creepy-crawlies
- 1 Boat propellor to the face
- 1 Power-walking undead killer
- 1 Machete covered in strawberry jam
- 1 Fried and furious undead psycho

Rated 8.3 out of 10

What Would Jason Do T-shirt available from Fright Rags At Fright Rags you can get this high quality horror shirts 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 What Would Jason Do T-shirt

Check out the trailer for Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives

Lost Highway would like to welcome the Syrin of Cinema, Krysha Syrin as a guest reviewer to Lost Highway. “My attraction to B-movies started merely a year ago, after entering college. After attending what was to later become a weekly movie night at a friend’s house, I realized how much I missed the silver screen. We watched Grindhouse and I was intrigued. I wanted to know the inspiration behind the film, the history of the bygone grindhouse generation. Weeks upon weeks of researching and interviews later led me to the true fans of the trade. Before I knew it, I was grabbing a Netflix subscription, scouring video stores, and getting my hands on all the B-movies and exploitation films I could.

Between attending classes and working towards a degree in Creative Writing, my spare time is spent viewing all sorts of films and trying to entice everyone I know to do the same.” You can check out her website as well as follow her on Twitter.

At first glance, Hobgoblins appears to be a strange off-shoot of Gremlins. Look again. Hobgoblins is a quirky mix of bad puppetry, bad acting, and an explosion of the 80s crammed into 90 minutes of non sci-fi torture.

The plot, should you ever find yourself forced to scrape one up off the bottom of this barrel, consists of a senile janitor named McCreedy who sends his interns off to their doom by trusting them to follow instructions and not investigate an unlocked, green-glowing vault. His latest janitorial protégé, Kevin, manages to free a “great evil” which McCreedy had tried to warn him about in sentence fragments but failed do to his senility.

Kevin attempts to correct his wrongdoing by wrangling up the Hobgoblin with his ragtag crew. Amy, his girlfriend with exceptionally high morals; Daphne, who thinks “morals” are a brand of condom; Daphne’s boyfriend, Nick, a war vet who probably got discharged for smuggling out grenades; and Kyle, female in-training.

At some point or another, the entire crew falls prey to the Hobgoblins cunning trickery, resulting in their arrival at Club Scum and the inevitable progression of the film further, much to any viewer’s dismay.

- Thugs
- Loose women
- Frigid women
- Spandex pushed to its limits
- Mortal Kombat: Garden tool edition
- Puppet-induced hallucinations
- Flailing
- Van rocking
- Extreme parking
- War flashbacks
- The plot (and let me know if you find it)

2.5 out of 10

Check out the trailer for Hobgoblins

I consider my time as a teenager not too traumatic. I mean it was no Wonder Years though there’s been times where a disembodied voice would annoyingly narrate over me. My teen years just weren’t filled with all that typical drama, angst and teenage rebellion you’d come to expect. I had a few good buddies, couple of ex-girlfriend and enjoyed watching lots of b-movies.

Back then I drove a 1969 Camaro SS that was given to my on 16th birthday (and yes my dad is that rockin’ cool.) I’m not sure why he trusted the car to a 16 year old lead foot who thought “Gone in 60 Seconds” was a drivers education video but I wasn’t going to complain.

The car was a thing of beauty. Daytona yellow with SS striping and a 300 small block v8 that we pulled out of a Monte Carlo just ready to break free from that hood. It had a low 411 gear ready to run a quarter mile in a heartbeat and it would take all your weight resting on that brake pedal just to hold it back at the stop light. It was like a wild animal ready to pounce and rip through any foreign compact that got in it’s way. My buddy and I would go to the cruise in town on Friday nights driving around aimlessly for a few hours, wastin’ gas, loading up on junk food, and occasionally stopping in at the Big Boy’s parking lot. For some reason all the cool kids liked to hang out there. Maybe it was just the siren call of that giant Big Boy statue smiling endlessly onwards mocking us with his dead cold stare taunting us while holding that giant burger. *shivers*

But my car drank gas like a sponge and eventually I had to put it into storage and drive something a bit more practical and a lot less exciting. Sure I drive a mini-van now, but my Camaro is still waiting in an undisclosed location. Patiently looking forward to taking to the streets again and if you listen quietly at night you might still hear that engine purrin’.

Speaking of muscle cars with a mind of their own. “The Car” features an unmarked Lincoln demon car terrorizing a small country town with it’s thirst for blood… unleaded blood of course. The horn blaring hell car bumps off a few bicyclists while barreling down the highway one day, but soon it shows it’s true motives when it makes a human speed bump out of a french horn playin’ hippie and then goes on a hit and run spree with a high school marching band. Yes Satan has a deep hatred of marching band music. This was a bit surprising as I would have thought marching bands greatest hits would be on a continuous loop in Hell’s waiting room.

Some of the survivors take refuge in an old cemetery whose holy ground notoriously protects them from the likes of vampires, werewolves, and more importantly demon cars. The loud mouthed band teacher, Lauren, decides that’s the perfect time to taunt and belittle the unseen driver. I mean really how do you trash talk a car? “Your daddy was an Etzel” “Your momma’s so old she farts dust out her tailpipe.” The whole scene was just unnecessary.

Meanwhile, Luaren’s boyfriend Wade (James Brolin) is hanging out at the police station. He’s a divorced father and part time lawman who besides having the unfortunate name of Wade he also sports an epic 70’s mustache. Stache’s like that usually only grow on serial killers or porn stars so props to Wade for making it work.

Wade’s band of emotionally fragile deputies attempt to catch the car but Satan has seen plenty of episodes of Dukes of Hazzard and knows how to outsmart them law folks. The way I figure it this small town consists of about 100 people total so that breaks down to about 40 marching band members, 20 drunken wife beaters, 10 rodeo cowboys and the rest are sheriff deputies. logically, there should’ve been plenty of law enforcement to go around but the car continues bouncing people off it’s bumper like ping pong balls. Even the sheriff gets run down in the middle of main street and Lauren gets offed in her own home like a bug on a windshield. Not so much a drive-by but more of drive-thru kill.

Wade teams up with the town’s reigning wife beatin’ drunk and resident explosive experts (aren’t they usually the same person?) and they plan to lure it to the rock quarry where all made for TV movies go to die. As luck would have it the car can’t be found though and nobody had gotten killed lately but Wade arrives home one night to find the car parked in his very own garage just sitting around mooching a few oil quarts, reading his Motor Trends and puffing out some carbon monoxide. Mustering up a Jackie Chan stunt dive he escapes through the garage window and flees on his jr. dirt bike with the evil car in hot pursuit. With a total disregard to helmet laws he lures it outside town limits for the big demon showdown and pyrotechnic light show spectacular. They could charge admission for fireworks finales like that. Just add some heavy metal music and Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat and you’ve got yourself a show.

This movie had made for TV movie written all over it with very little gore but plenty of melodramatic acting. The main star of course is the car itself. It was designed by the late automobile customizing extraordinaire George Barris. George also designed the original bat mobile, the Munster’s car as well as the sweet ride for The Hoff’ in Knight Rider. Big props to Mr. Barris for making this car a true killer on wheels and making me fear tinted window Lincolns.  Retroman says take a test drive with “The Car”. It’s a hot pocket of car killin’ mayhem with some b-movie cheese inside. But “Caution: Contents may be hot.”

- 1 Lincoln Deathcar with optional truck horn
- 1 James Brolin mustache
- 3 Car crashes with multiple crash and burns
- 1 Motorcycle chase with gratuitous demon explosion
- Extreme off-road biking
- French horn homicide
- Marching band hit and run
- Car door fu
- House drive-thru service
- Rodeo marching band shows

8.4 out of 10

Check out the trailer for The Car