“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

“On my planet this shirt attracts the females of my species.”

I’m not what you call a proficient grocery shopper. I don’t stock up on coupons or scan through the Sunday paper looking for the latest deals on canned tuna and toasted Wheat Thins. I only know it’s time to shop when I can no longer make a full meal from the refrigerator’s remaining survivors.. usually some condiments, a jar of olives, and a box of baking soda. So putting on a coat over my PJ’s I’d head out for that late night grocery run.

Late nights food runs you’d often find the store empty of customers so it was difficult to even find a checkout lady to wave me over to her conveyor belt. This time I was forced to confront the newest shopping breakthrough that was the new self checkout machine. Hey I’m a man of the world, a technology connoisseur, I could surely conquer this fancy slot machine wanna-be. First the Cheetos bag wouldn’t scan and when it did, It told me I bought 25 bags worth forever bestowing me the title “the crazy Cheetos guy.” Then placing the items in the bag a condescending computer voice would keep telling me to “Please place the item in the bag”… “Oh you mean the item that’s already in the bag?” The computer didn’t seem to understand any sense of irony. My arms had grown weak from the numerous failed attempts at scanning some cantaloupe and the Fonzi method of banging the machine on the side didn’t seem to help any so eventually a technician had to show me where to put my crinkled dollar bills. Who would have thought groceries need IT support.

I thought technology was supposed to make things easier. When was it decided that “easier” was just do it yourself? Self-serve gas station, ATM banking, and self scanning checkout lines, these are advances in modern convenience? No I want someone else to do this for me because I’m American and laziness is my God given constitutional right. if you’re not going to give me a real person to do the job then at least give me a robot. This 2009 after all, I should have my own jetpack and hover car by now. I shouldn’t be standing in my PJ’s swipping cans of lima beans while a lady in a purple mu mu waits behind me with her big box of glazed chick peas. Next time I will just go when a friendly cashier lady is available that will gladly talk with me about the weather as she scans my groceries while perfectly bagging things so my bread isn’t crushed by the 2 gallon mayonnaise jar and bag of ice (Hey I like potato salad and it was hot that night.)

Speaking of ladies that excel at their jobs. Switchblade sisters introduces us to a gang of street-wise ladies called the Dagger Debs who’ve made a career at beating up elevator passengers and picking fights at the local Dairy Queen. The Debs are led by Lace, a high-strung snappy dresser who works out her dialog through clenched teeth like she’s got a case of lock jaw. She and her gal pals beat up a helpless landlord, go jay walking,  and then take a break at the ice cream shop. Here they run into a cute blondie named Maggie who is hogging one of their favorite seats. Maggie’s your sorta typical girl next door…if your typical girl is packin’ heat and has inner rage issues. Little do they know she’s the kind of girl that will cut you deep for even looking at her Oreo Blizzard the wrong way so she slices one of the gang members across the face with a knife. The police suddenly show up like a swat team before it can turn really ugly. Apparently a doughnut shop was very close by.

The Debs all end up in a juvenile detention center where some big burly lady wardens try to make the night moves on the new girls but end up getting the snot beat out of them instead. Maggie is finally freed from juvi-jail but has an even worse time on the outside when she’s raped by Lace’s boyfriend Dom. Dom is the leader of another powerful gang called the Silver daggers, a ruthless gang of thugs who resemble the cast from Welcome Back Kotter and enjoy playing billiards between felonies. Lace trusts Maggie and invites her to join the Debs not knowing that her and Dom just did the nasty at her apartment the night before. The resident cyclops “Patch” happily points out that Maggie has to be initiated first before becoming a true Deb and then starts whining about how she “lost her eye for this gang.” But really, how can you take a pirate seriously?

They send her on a mission to recover a toy prop necklace from a rival gang leader who goes by the unfortunate name of crabs. Great way to impress the ladies when you’re named after a venereal disease. Crab runs a fake community center where they give out narcotics under the disguise as vitamin pills so that he can buy even more hideous shirts for his wardrobe. Maggie stops by at their headquarters and  pretends to be attracted to Mr. Crabs which is probably the most impressive acting you’ll see in the whole film. In the middle of her seduction act she bites him on his Shootzle Deetzle, grabs the necklace and breaks through a office wall like the Koolaid man. Maggie returns to the Debs triumphant with her newly won trophy. Now there’s no questioning Maggie’s loyalty  with her ability to steal novelty prop jewelry.

Later on the Debs and the Daggers are vengefully ambushed by the Crab gang at the local rollerskating rink.  Lace gets punched in the baby maker whose oven was already preheated with Dom’s unborn kid and Dom gets a shotgun blast to the belly by the big Red Lobster himself. Maggie and Lace have to leave him to bleed to death in the center rink while Donna Summers music still blares on… a truly horrifying fate for anyone.

Maggie and Lace decide they want to avenge Dom’s death so they enlist some black power lady militants who drive pimped out armored Cadillacs and get their kicks making white hippies in disco shirts run and scream like little girls. I think that’s something anyone can really enjoy though. But not everything is as it seems there’s plot twists a plenty as jealously and secrets are threatening to destroy the gang. Who set up whom, who had an affair with who…who is loyal to whom. And when should the word whom actually be used in a sentence? It all ends up in a good old dance of death with switchblade divas giving us a great Shakespearean twist to this little exploitation romp.

Tarantino released this as his second film in his Rolling Thunder film series so be sure to check out his intro and outro on the DVD extras. His movie clerk geekiness clearly shows as he talks in great detail about the film and why they changed the name from The Jezebels to Switchblade Sisters. You can tell he was just up late one night at the videostore wired up on Jujubes and diet Coke while watching it. Also Keep an eye out for Don Stark who plays Hook. Yes it’s the same Don Stark that played Bob Picnciotti in that 70’s show and by gosh he still had the same hair and side burns. A great cheesy exploitation film, Retroman says check it out and be sure to be packin some heat.

- Multiple gang shootings
- 1 neck stabbing
- Medallion-fu
- Wacka-chicka-wacka fu
- Welcome Back Kotter doppelgangers
- Dairy Queen Dagger Queens
- Face plunging
- Swirly-fu
- Vita-van vandals
- Cadi-tanks
- Bellybutton ashtrays

Rated 8.9 out of 10

Check out the trailer for Switchblade Sisters

“This has to be the worse salad bar I’ve ever seen.”

You know we’re living in a rough economy when even an American foundation like Playboy is struggling. They recently announced a net loss of 2.1 million dollars and they would have to lay off employees and tighten the company’s budget or face potential bankruptcy. I only wonder how is Hugh Hefner going to cut back? Will Playboy bunnies be forced to buy their own rabbit ears and sleazy lounge uniforms? Will there be less air brushing in the centerfolds? Will Hugh have to settle with only a couple girls on on his arms instead of the dozen or so buxom blondes normally surrounding him. It would be an American tragedy if he was forced to turn in the smoking jacket and pipe for a Walmart greeter uniform and smiley button flare. I mean how can this man survive in those conditions? The long established tradition of teenagers hiding their stash of Playboys under their mattresses is now at risk. Millions of them are at risk to be forced to read Sears underwear catalogs, playboy playmates out on the streets holding up signs that read “will tell you my likes and dislikes for food.” We simply can’t allow that to happen.

Speaking of men that  really like their melons, Charles Bronson plays Vince Majestyk, a Vietnam vet turn watermelon farmer and a collector of denim jackets and goofy hats. Vince is approached one day while working out in his fields by a scraggly Owen Wilson wanna-be named Bobby Copas. Bobby finds combing his hair difficult and likes to dress in cheap western wear while trying to talk farmers into hiring some of his gang of drunks and homeless. He’s sort of the used car dealers of cheap labor but Chuck Bronson will have no part of his shenanigans as he’s totally content with his $1 an hour illegal immigrant work force and smashes him in the groin with the end of his own shotgun. Now that’s how you negotiate a labor dispute. Majestyk has to serve some time at the county jail for that little fruit smashing incident and is worried about not being able to get his crops in on time but the sergeant doesn’t really care for fruit salad and makes him serve his sentence. While being transported on a prison bus along with a Mafia big fish, Frank Redna, a breakout attempt occurs along with big 70’s style shootout that gives Vince the chance to kidnap Frank and use him as leverage to help clear the charges against him. Though the thought of hiding out in a tiny cabin with a loud mouthed mobster might be a worser fate than any jail time. Frank is eventually picked up by his rail-thin girlfriend and Vince has to squeeze into the back seat of a 70’s Ford compact.

The drop off to the police doesn’t go as planned and Vince ends up tumbling out the backseat like a tossed watermelon into a ditch. Frank tries to shoot at him with typical bad guy accuracy and Vince easily escapes fleeing into the woods. Being the upright citizen Vince turns himself in to the police station only to find that Bobby Copas has dropped the assault charges against him so that he and his new Mafia friends can put some major hurt on Vince when he’s set free. Haven’t any of these guys ever seen a Death Wish movie?

With the help of a pretty immigrant union organizer named Nancy, Mr. Majestic goes back to his normal life of melon tossin’ and squinting in the sun until his workers start ending up getting bullied by Frank and company. Vince’s right hand man has his legs smashed, his workers are forced out of their homes at gunpoint, and policemen in Porta-Potties turn up dead…but that is barley even enough to curl his mustache.

The final straw is when a mobster hit squad shots up his watermelon crop with some semi machine guns while Vince is out putting the moves on La Senorita Nancy. Nothing makes a farmer angrier than a pointless melon massacre and he goes on a vengeful shooting spree against this gang of Gallagher impersonators. Finally, a fruit cup of justice is served. Some great cross country truck racing, cars getting pushed off cliffs, and a log cabin stand-off make the highlight reel in this 70’s film classic as Charlie Bronson becomes the ultimate watermelon vigilante. Retroman says check it out and don’t forget to spit out the seeds.

- 3 Shoot-outs
- 1 Mobster kidnapping
- Shotgun butt to the groin
- Multiple car chases and car explosions
- Water-melon-fu
- Drive by Porta-Potty attack
- 2 by 4 smack down
- Vehicular leg crushing

Rated 9.4 out of 10

My Uncle told me when I was a little kid if I didn’t spit out the watermelon seeds that a watermelon would grow in my stomach . So I thought that pregnant ladies were just carrying around watermelons in their bellies. So began my unhealthy fear of fruit…and of pregnant women.

Check out the trailer for Mr. Majestyk

“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

“The chef’s brutal killing of the Kool-aid man was originally censored in theaters”

Well I finally did it I made the ultimate sacrifice as a red blooded male. I terminated my cable service. My TV’s cable is now gone to that big ComCraptic place in the sky. It was the less vestige of where I am king of my domain, master of my destiny, wielding the remote control like how an artist uses a brush, but my paranoia that the government was watching me through the TV screen finally convinced me in to turn it off. Besides my tin foil hat was starting to chaff. Really though it was paying the $70 a month to watch crappy re-runs of Law and Order and American Idol Rewind that I couldn’t endure any longer. I think waterboarding would be a welcome relief compared to that. One thing that I will miss however is the food channel. it’s sort of like porn for us snack lovers. “oh yeah baby…add those diced onions. Saute it, oh yeah fillet it, now peel pack those potatoes…” They create delicious plates of things you’ll most likely never get the chance to eat or can even pronounce. Sure, they claim the meals are easy to fix at home but only if you have your own staff of 20 getting all your ingredients together and you don’t have kids hanging on your leg while the phone is ringing and the dog is chewin’ on your work shoes. Martha Stewart I am not. Shoot my kids are lucky to get macaroni and cheese and on those special occasions we add chopped up hot dogs. Now that’s redneck dining at it’s best.

Speaking of cooks with bad attitudes, the French ZZ-top cook returns for another night of slicing and dicing and lightly sautéing with Bikini Bloodbath Carwash. The soapy sequel to Bikini bloodbath has more bikinis but a little less of the bloodbath. Ms. Johnson played by Debbie Rochon has miraculously  healed from her previous axe to the chest wound to return and run a bikini carwash business. Any women that can come back from an axe impalement is one lady you just don’t mess with. Ms. Johnson tests new employees through interpretive MTV video re-enactments and inviting them over so she can watch them hang party streamers or demanding them to fetch her beers to pickle her liver some more. I think had that same dream once.

The gang of  generic brand college guys show up at the carwash business for some impromptu break dancing and to ogle the gyrating actions of the employees and I believe at some point some cars even got a bit of soap and water on them but I was a little distracted. Later that evening the girls bring out the old trusty ouija board and tell stories of the killing spree in their neighborhood  and wouldn’t you know it, the Chef starts a Ouija chat session. You simply can’t repress the French so he busts out of his make shift grave to track down more fresh ingredients for his souffle of death and revenge.

Ms. Johnson invites the girls over to her house for a long night of alcohol consumption and verbal abuse when the Generic brand college guys decide to crash the party including  the mop headed generic German exchange student hoping to get a Farvenugen for his Schwanznuggen. The Chef starts picking them off one by one until getting eventually done in by a baseball bat because we all know the French can’t play sports. Home team 2, Killer Chef 0 and now I have the urge to get some German waffles. Retroman says check it out and bring a sponge.

- Professor shipwreck
- Community college cobra commander
- Impromptu college breakdancing
- Borat-like foreign exchange students
- Beat-it boobs dance of death
- Intestine munching
- Extreme Camel Toe liquor drinking
- Violin solos
- Nipple cutting
- Gratuitous Jaws references
- Salad spooning
- Jacuzzi-soup

rated 7.1 out of 10

Check out the trailer for Bikini Bloodbath Carwash

Retroman Steve crashed at the Podcast Movie Meltdown to give his take on a few films they’ve been watching. Movie Meltdown is a conglomeration of celluloid interests that any movie geek will appreciate and they made him feel right at home. After borrowing their toothbrushes and sleeping on the couch for a few days it was time to hit the road again. We’re sure Steve will be a house guest again soon and is very sorry he accidentally set the livingroom rug on fire.

	“Movie Meltdown gets Cheesy with My Name is Bruce and the Oscars” Join us as we give our own personal commentary on the red carpet, opening number and celebrity overload at the infamous Kodak Theater. With four smart-ass jerks on the mic, it’s ain’t pretty. But argueably, pretty damned funny. Then amidst all the bacon, ham and bologna - we still manager to piece together box office totals, the buzz on upcoming movies and a “Sofa Theater” review of Bruce Campbell’s “My Name is Bruce”! And if all that wasn’t enough - wait till we bust out the dessert! Believe me, you’ll want the recipe!! LISTEN NOW TO THE PODCAST, IF YE DARE (warning podcast contains some strong language)
	“Camp Crystal Lake - Archery, Wallet-making and Murder!” Come back to the newly re-opened Camp Crystal Lake! Where we teach your children important life lessons like, how to grow and sell drugs, how to set a bear trap, the proper way to dry a sleeping bag, fun things you can do with a mannequin, the best place to store a severed head and most important of all - the ancient secrets of defending yourself with Asian cookware. If your kid survives, we think it’ll be the best Summer they’ve ever had! LISTEN NOW TO THE PODCAST, IF YE DARE (warning podcast contains some strong language)
	“The Epic That Is SHOWGIRLS!” Sit back and relax as we tell you the sweet story of an ambitious young girl, off to seek her fortune in a magical land called - Vegas. That’s right, this week we place our bets on whether we can handle the “classic” film - SHOWGIRLS! Elizabeth Berkley’s ears must be burning, (or maybe that’s just the venereal disease?) because we have A LOT to say about her and all the stars of this modern-day Verhoeven fairy tale. LISTEN NOW TO THE PODCAST, IF YE DARE! (warning podcast contains some strong language)

“Never fall asleep in a jacuzzi”

I remember looking forward to the arrival of the spring county fair. The crowds, the smell of the deep fried meat by-products and the eventual sugar coma I got from the elephant ears. Traveling down the row of colorful tents, the carnies would try to hussle you and you’d inevitably fall victim to spending $50 for a $2 stuff animal. Well worth the cost to impress your date with your amazing athletic ability to toss an oversized softball into a fruit basket (it really is harder than it looks.) Of course the big attraction were those crazy rides of the midway. Suspiciously held together by just a rusty bolt and a lock pin, your life hidged on the safety expertise of the greasy haired guy operating the speed dial below. You know, the guy with the two missing front teeth and bottle of Jack Daniels in his front pocket laughing maniacally as he spins you around to unconciousness. Tilt-a-hurl…the Toboggan Run to the Bathroom… all with their own blaring hard rock sound tracks. Midway rides were your quickest way to both deafness and dizziness so my favorite ride had to be the fun house. Sitting in that little two seat metal death trap that resembled those old motorcycle sidecars you’d experience the combination of dread and excitement as a chain driven track would drag you away to it’s mysterious dark world.  Warnings sprawled in dripping neon paint telling you to “turn back now before it’s too late” or “beware of vampires” as you were greated by plastic skeletons popping up via air hydraulics and creepy things dropping and buzzing from the ceilings. You’d be ducking from side to side as lumbering zombies and giant styrofoam demon heads would lurch at you as you passed by until you finally emerged back safely into the real world. Sure it wasn’t exactly blood curdling terror but it was a fun goofy ride that put a smile on your face. 

1959’s House on Haunted Hill had this same sort of campy horror charm of a funhouse ride. An eceentric millionaire Frederick Loren played by Vincent Price invites 5 strangers to stay locked in a haunted house. If they make it through the night they’ll get $10,000 each which was a pretty good chunk of change back then. His wife Annabell (Carol Ohmart) is his cold hearted back stabbing wife who suggested the idea to throw his little haunted party. Why he’d listen to someone who tried to poison him earlier in their marriage is beyond me but this is his 4th marriage so he’s probably already used to parting with his money. The greedy guests not fearful of voluntary imprisonment from a stranger arrive at the home which resembles more a roadside motor lodge  than a haunted house. There’s the quintessential hero test pilot, Lance, a fragile nerved typist, Nora, a uptight psychiatrist, Dr. Trent and Ruth whose a chain smoking gossip columnist with gambling addiction. Aren’t all gossip columninst chains smoking gamblers? Watson Pritchard The owner of the house is also in the contest. He’s a bug eyed little man whose love of alcohol can only be matched by his absolute fear of the supernatural as he constantly whines about how the ghosts in the house are going to kill them all.  As the evening festivities begin which mostly consists of a lot of scotch drinking and cigarette smoking, Fredrick gives everyone a handgun in their own limited edition collector coffin holster. Always a good idea to give paranoid drunks some loaded guns in a haunted house. What could go wrong?

 Pritchard proceeds to tell heart warming bedtime stories of how countless people were butchered in the house and pieces were found everywhere except the heads. I sometimes can’t find my car keys so I could see how that could happen. Curiousity gets the best of Nora and Lance as they start snooping around the basement where they encounter dead flattened rats, an in-ground swimming pool of acid and a creepy old witch who glides around on roller skates. They return to their rooms only to find that Annabell supposedly committed suicide swinging from the rafters like a pinata. Later on she makes a cameo outside Nora’s window performing her vegas magic show of levitation and rope tricks. Ceilings start dripping blood, severed heads start popping up in closets and people get accidentally shot. It’s just another typical typical night in L.A. There’s a few interesting plot twist along the way but the movie degrades down into a kill by the numbers murder mystery. It’s capped off with a dissapointing ending that makes you feel like you were told you’d be getting a free dessert after a good meal only to find out they ran out of pie and it was closing time.

Whether House on Haunted Hill deserved its status as a frightful cult classic by today’s standards is debatable but for the time it was a campy funhouse style film that used some great gimmicks both on and off screen to give it’s audiences a few good jumps. The director, Mr. Castle was known for doing this sort of schlock-o-rama movie liked rigging electrical buzzers to the theater chairs for a nice jolt during “The Tingler” or in the case of “House on Haunted Hill”  had plastic skeletons on wires to float mysteriously above the audience during the humorous walking skeleton scene coining the term emote-o-rama. Special nominations go to Elisha Cook Jr.  who plays the house owners for uttering the obvious lines ”These guns are no good against the dead, only the living”  and to the immortal Vince Price who had such great lines as “Remember the fun we had when you poisioned me?” Vince you were a fine wine in a horror film surrounded by cheese. You will be missed.

-Squished rats
-Blood oozing ceilings
-Gratutious scotch drinking
-Disembodied floating head monologues
-Creepy witches on rollerskates
-Head-in-a-box surprise
-Coffin gun holsters
-Gold diggin’ pinatas
-Acid bone cleaner
-Skeleton puppet shows

rated 7.6 out of 10

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Check out the trailer for House on Haunted Hill

“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!