“Make any sudden moves and you’ll get an arrow straight through your thunderdome.”

What is the appeal of NASCAR? I’ve watched it a few times on tv and will wake up for the occasional wall smash or mid lane collision. But overall it’s watching cars go endlessly around in circles all at about the same numbing pace. Like a marching band parade at 200 mph. Where’s Rusty Wheeler yelling to his pit crew”Rubbin’s is racing!” and slamming into another car into the outside wall at 200 mph all the while an 80’s soundtrack blares in the background. Days of Thunder this ain’t. Nope Instead I get to be treated to the views of beer bellied fans with the number 31 painted on their tools sheds while they sit on top of their big RV’s scratching themselves. Is that a stereotype of Nascar fans…no it’s a stereotype of RV drivers.

In The Road Warrior, the racing is much more interesting with no spectators and the stakes are your life for gasoline. At $3.25 per gallon I can see why people even today might consider running that Humvee off the road and siphon off it’s fuel supply, but in post apocalyptic Australia it’s purely a matter of survival. Mel “Catholic to the extreme” Gilbson plays The Road Warrior. A man whose lost everything and now travels the desolate highways scavaging for food and gasoline for his muscle car. Not a Speedway or Arby’s in sight he comes across a booby trapped homemade helicopter instead. After a brief stint with a rattle snake and a bad toothed Brit he learns about a nearby operational oil refinery where he could stock up on supplies.

Mel takes the Monty Python wanna-be hostage to track down the oil refinery but finds that it’s also being stalked by a crazy gang of outlander barbarians who want to take the refinery for their own. Lead by a balding muscleman in a hockey mask, they continue to attack the barricaded compound while he spouts his keen observations through a mega phone. It’s sorta like a muscle car truck rally without the high ticket prices.

Mel eventually makes a deal with the leader of the compound to help them all escape to a tropical paradise and with the help of a small furry midget boy who has a striking reemblence to Bam-bam from the  Flintstones,  he hauls the fuel tanker out with a beat up old semi truck. Ehat ensues could be one of the best post apocalyptic car chases and semi truck fight scenes ever….ok it might just be the only one but still a lot of fun to watch. What struck me odd was the fact that the people defended this compound with a flamethrower and a seemingly endless supplies of bows and arrows. Did someone lose all the guns? At least they had a good supply of used football equipment to use for costumes.

Definitely one to watch again if you haven’t seen it for a while. Sad to say I haven’t seen the original Mad Max but plan to now that I’ve experience the greatness of the Road Warrior….and yes I’ve seen Thunderdome..all I got to say to that is “Big wheels keep on turnin’ …turnin’…”

Keep an eye out for…

- football shoulder pads of the apocalypse
- Bad British dental care
- dog food gourmet
- sharp shooter hockey players of wastelands
- bommer-rang Ginsu knives
- Bam-Bam from the Flintstones
- Armageddon archery club

Fortunately Mel Gibson wasn’t drinking when filming Road Warrior. Nothing worse than getting pulled over after the apocalypse on DUI.

rated 8.9 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for The Road Warrior

“ok tell me again which end the bullets come out of?”

After the carnage of another Thanksgiving day bloated and sleepy, I couldn’t stomach another gruesome horror movie blood bath so instead sat down with a copy of the vigilante movie Death Wish 3. Nothing like a Charles Bronson film to help regulate the old digestive tract. Have I seen the first 2 yet? nope…I figured third times the charm though and really do I need to understand the intricate plots of the first two movies to understand this film? It’s pretty much Charles Bronson with a big gun shooting up bad guys who have poor aim. That really sums up most of the plot of this movie. But what a glorious ballet of old western style vigilante shootouts I’ve ever seen.

Charles Bronson plays Pual Kersey who is accused of a crime he didn’t commit while visiting an old friend in a bad part of town. (acting without a license?). Kersey is arrested but offered a deal by the head balding cop of which there is many. He can murder all the street villains he wants as long as he occasionally calls in and lets the cops know about it. Sounds like a fair deal so Kersey moves into an apartment building in the mean part of the town that looks like a demilitarized zone. The building is occupied mostly by elderly people harboring giant shotguns and pistols and addictions to stuffed cabbage just waiting for a crazy man in a mustache to lead them to destroy the neighbor youth. When Senior Citizens go bad.

The neighborhood is ruled by a gang leader known as the Fraker who played by Gavan “check out my haircut” O’Herlihy. The gangs dressed in a variety of strange ensembles they found at a bargain bin costume store harass the residents and sneak thorugh windows stealing TV sets. Obviously their punishment should be death by a 52 magnum! So Kersey lays down his own law and sets up some mcgyver-like boobie traps for them. people are stabbed, shot with machine guns, thrown from rooftops, set on fire, ran over by cars, beaten with chains, blown-up with missile launcher, kicked, strangled, bludgeoned, and there’s even a few mighty evil glares exchanged. Between all the carnage Kersey even falls in love with a public defender played by Deborah Raffin who is young enough to be his daughter. After they spend the night together she dies in a horrible car accident only to further the revenge fuel for the fire and get back to the killing. The movie finale is great with a huge death toll on the gangs side while Bronson and his magnum walk through the city streets picking off bad guys like some sort of shoot-em up videogame.

I can’t say this is a great movie. In fact it’s pretty laughable but worth watching for the battle royal at the end. Also listen for the insane 80’s soundtrack…everything is emphasized with a 80’s Casio keyboard riff chord even when someone flashes their headlights it apparently needs some music support. Absolutely hilarious.

Keep an eye out for…

- renaissance festival reject gang members
- home tooth removal kits
- extreme foot acupuncture
- geriatric gun control
- reverse mowhawk tattoos
- spikes to the forehead
- extreme stuffed cabbage dinners
- missile launcher pest control
- gratuitous use of an 80’s soundtrack

Charles Bronson has only two speeds, walk and kill.

rated 7.2 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Death Wish 3

Well I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving. We’re going to get hammered with a snow storm here in Michigan so looks like we won’t be heading up north. I have a 4 day weekend so I should be able to sneak in another b-movie review this week. Save some pumpkin pie for me. I was just thinking wouldn’t The Great Pumpkin from The Charlie Brown cartoon make the world’s largest pumpkin pie? mmmmm…yummy.

Check out the trailer for the fake horror movie Thanksgiving that was a part of the Grindhouse double feature. WARNING: THIS TRAILER IS RATED R!

“The Craftmatic adjustable dead”

Well It’s nearing the end of yet another disappointing MSU football season. The great rivalry game between Michigan and Michigan State ended in yet another tragedy for us Spartan Fans. I swear it’s only when I watch or listen to a football game that we lose, and I sooooo hate losing to those spoiled rich snobs wearing the Corn and Blue. I refuse from here on out to watch any Spartan football game thereby hopefully removing my curse that is on the team and shall now only receive ESPN updates via email along with Viagra ads. I really think our players should be required to watch the movie 300 before every game for some motivation. I mean 300 Spartans held off the Persian army…you’d think we could handle some small furry mammals who call themselves “wolverines.” When is the last time we even had a real wolverine in Michigan? Aren’t they just in Alaska now? We’ll we’d kick their butt in Hockey there anytime.

Freddy vs. Jason is another great rivalry for the ages. The man in the Christmas sweater takes on the world most ticked off hockey goalie in a no holds barred fight to the finish. Freddy is stuck in Hell..which I imagine is a lot like being stuck holding your wife’s purse at Target so he obviously wants to get out and quick. But the only way to do that is to get people to start remembering who is so he can get his power back from their fear. Disguised as Jason’s mother he tricks Jason ( apparently also vacationing in the same part of hell) to head back to Elm St. and scare up a little fear among the local teenagers. But Jason can’t get enough of the killing and starts taking away Freddy kill bonus points for his own score.

Meanwhile A local teen Lori played by Monica “stop staring at my chest” Keen learns about how the town is ran by an inept police force who covered up Freddy’s existence and locked away any surviving kids in a mental hospital. Lori begins to investigate which leads to bad dreams and some of her friends ending up gouged and folded in half like a manwich of death. Amazingly she holds herself together well enough to go to a local rave party out in a corn field. Because when your in mourning it’s time to dance and the safest place to be with a killer on the loose is a cornfield. You’d think nobody would ever move to this town after it’s previous history of carnage. It must have some amazing real estate value and some great schools.

Jason being the big party crashers he is soon shows up and starts his rendition of teenage wasteland getting doused with Alcohol and set on fire. All pretty typical for anyone at a rave party so it takes a while for anyone to notice. Never have you seen so many dumb teenagers get in Jason’s path of slicing destruction all seemingly running up to him in confusion hoping to be spared a horrific death. It’s a corn field people…try not to run towards to guy on fire wearing the hockey mask!

Eventually Freddy ends up in Jason’s world from a quick cop-a-feel by mammary enhanced Lori while they’re driving Jason back to Crystal lake in their Scooby-doo van. Jason been taking a deep snooze via some elephant size tranquilizers injected in his neck for the trip so Lori enters Jason’s dreams to grab a hold of Freddy and bring him back to reality. With home court advantage you can put wages on who you think will win the big final fight between these two horror icons. Lots of body slamming, slicing, dicing and impaling with not a referee in sight. There’s rumors of a sequel coming so we’ll keep our bladed fingers crossed. Definitely a great horror film that does justice to both franchises so I say definitely check it out and place your wages.

Keep an eye out for…

- weed smoking magic caterpillars
- severe head twisting
- machete darts
- literal blood baths
- Jason acupuncture
- extreme nose jobs
- Billy Idol tossing
- Jason dunking
- cop zapping

Man it would suck being a teenager growing up on Elm St. and getting sent to Crystal Lake for summer camp.

rated 8.6 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Freddy vs. Jason

“She’s just a Nekromantic at heart.”

I come from a union family. My father worked the engine test line at a Michigan GM Assembly plant. I can still remember the picket lines and at that time never really understanding why employees would unionize and strike. Now that I’ve been in the corporate world for quite a while, I totally see the importance of a good union to protect employees rights, wages, and benefits so that corporations don’t steamroll over them. The union created the middle class and both have been slowly eroded leading to growing slave wage service industry and consumer based economy. Without a union backing you up, your boss can one day decide he doesn’t like that particular bad haircut you got and fire your butt. There that’s my soap box and I’m stepping off…I think Hoffa is buried under it anyways.

In Fido I’m once again reminded that behind a Union there’s is power to the people…even the undead should have employee rights. Welcome to the post zombie war era. Isolated towns now live in idealistic 1950’s communities fenced off from the unsavery deadlands where the zombies roam free. Instead in these corporate sponsored safe zones, zombies have been domesticated for the rich via a control collar that stops their urge to eat human flesh. They deliver milk and the paper, mow the lawns, walk people’s dog and generally moan about their work day. Things your teenager would do at a substantially reduced cost. Of course the side risk is that they tear your arm off and eat it but even with some teens you have to watch out for that possibility.

A local family wants to keep up with their upper class new neighbors so they purchase their first zombie servant played convincingly by Billy “I’m so Scottish I bleed kilts” Connolly. The young boy Timmy, treats him like a pet teaching him to fetch and catch a baseball (mostly in the face) but one day the collar accidentally loosens via a smack down with one mean grandma causing the zombie to chomp off the old ladies arm at the town’s park. Of course this causes a small zombie outbreak but it’s easily contained but the Corporate ZomCon hit squad who is called in for a round of zombie target practice. Little Timmy goes back to find the now zombified old lady and takes out some severe pre-teen anger to her head via a shovel then burying her in a flower bed to hide the evidence of Fido’s boo-boo.

Like a scene out of Lasie, minus the craving for human flesh, Fido and Timmy becomes best friends and spend their days playing in the woods, washing the car, and tossing obnoxious cubscouts. Soon even the mom played by Carrie Ann Moss has become smitten with their new pale friend. The dad is deathly afraid of zombies…in fact seems to be the only sane person in town who is and wants to get rid of Fido. Fido is blamed for all of the recent towns folks deaths and is sent off to work in the Zombcon factory near the borderlands. Where’s the a zombified Hoffa when you need one? Timmy and his mom drive to rescue him while their neighbor, a leader at Zomcon tries to stop them and as we all know in any good zombie movie, if you fence off zombies away from their food source, they eventually find a way in just like old people at a buffet.

I was hoping for a bit more carnage with a big zombie town outbreak but that never really panned out. Still all in all a fun little horror/comedy with a great social commentary. A sort of Leave it to Beaver meets Dawn of the Dead. Is it possible to make a family friendly zombie movie? Well this one almost is.

Keep an eye out for…

- school yard rifle ranges
- zombie washing and detailing
- shovel-fu
- zombie love-slaves
- zombies with nicotine habits
- extreme zombie zapping
- samba of the undead
- unionized zombies
- head coffins
- Cubscout tossing

“In the brain and not the chest, head shots are the very best. ”

rated 9.4 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Fido

“Now that’s some ultra spicy chili…I think I’m going to need a Tums.”

Happy Halloween!! Just got back from a brief trick or treating trip with the kids. My daughter got tired and wanted to come home and watch Casper on DVD. A truly terrifying movie if your a cute puppy scared of rainbows. I remember when I was the trick or treating age and we’d go across the whole neighborhood by ourselves and amazingly return in one piece. No chainsaw maniacs chasing us through the woods, no mutants in hockey masks waiting for a spontaneous camping trip…but hey we still had fun. So now we’re working on starting our sugar coma. Amazing how many things you can put sugar in these days and call it edible.

In The cult classic “From Beyond” there’s also plenty of midnight snacking as well though mostly the sucking of people’s brains through their eye sockets but hey that always a nutritional snack between larger meals.

Stuart Gordon returns after making the classic Re-animator with this lesser known yet just as weird and twisted horror film. Dr. Pretorious (Ted Sorel) and his assistant, Dr. Tillinghast (Jeffery Combs), are working in an old mansion on a experiment with sound tones that will allow them to enter a new alternate reality. They do this by stimulating the pineal gland of the human brain with giant tuning forks. Besides giving them major headaches and making dogs twitch they can see the alternate reality inhabited by giant jelly fish and mutant lampreys.

Dr Pretorious is beheaded by a unseen netherworld creature and the cops blame Crawford. Because he obviously bit the head off and hid it somewhere. Locked away in a mental institute to practice his big line about biting off ginger bread heads, he’s soon let go by a young phsychologists played by Barbara Crampton who wants to study the doctor’s experiment. Along with Buford ‘Bubba’ Brownlee (wow could they come up with a more racist name?) they travel back to the house to start up the old hoover tuning fork.

The alternate reality has weird side consequences though as it turns the Physcologist, Katherine McMichaels, into a nymophomaniac dominatrix and cause Crawford to sprout a third eye appendage out of his forehead with built in predator infrared vision. I believe the sound of Kenny G. will have similar effects if played at the right pitch.

Within the alternate reality they soon discover that that Dr. Pretorious is not only alive and has regained his cranial region but is also apparently made of silly putty and can now take weird demon forms and of course has the ability the copy newspaper comics by laying on them. This new super-uber evil Doctor wants to eat their brains for the ultimate sensory experience much like a trip to Denny’s at 3 in the morning. Soon Crawford’s pineal gland pops out his forehead and leads him around town as he sucks out people’s brains through their eyeball sockets! Wow! if you gotta die that’s one of the worse ways of going. You’d think it would be tough to suck out a eyeball though…thick milkshakes are tough through a straw but an whole eyeball…that would be even more a challenge. I’m sure you’ll see it on Fear Factor.

Anyways it all comes down to a big battle in the mansion as the alternate reality spreads throughout the home creating all sorts of nasty creatures covered in goo in every room. Bubba gets eaten by ravenous flies while trying to save his friends only to utter the words…”urgh….gg…..gghjagr..tfttt”. We’ll always remember that Bubba, your kind words of wisdom.
Definitely a must see horror movie especially if you enjoyed the Re-animator series or area fan of HP Lovecraft since this film is based on one his short stories. Have a wonderful Halloween and remember to check under your bed tonight for anything that might eat your brain.

Keep a third eye out for…

- alternate reality tape worms
- nymphomaniac psychologists
- flesh eating mutant fly swarms
- the rapid hair removal monster method
- skull socket brain sucking and brain munching
- thermo-vision, brain seeking pituitary glands (predator vision)
- spontaneous self fixing electrical lines
- tuning forks of doom

Great now we’ll get spam for Viagra treatments for Pineal Glands “Not feeling like eating brains like you used to…try our new Piagra!”

rated 9.2 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for The Beyond…love the last line “Bite off his head like a gingerbread man” Do Gingerbreads go around biting off people’s heads?

“Dang that’s one ugly cat!”

I just celebrated my 34th birthday this past week. Hard to believe it but I don’t feel a day over 25. That was the age my car insurance rates went down so after that last milestone I kinda lost track. We celebrated with a ice cream cake and some heart-burn inducing pizza with my kids. My wife’s present to me was an official Goonies t-shirt and a promise she’d watch Deathproof with me after the kids went to sleep. A huge sacrifice on her part as she can’t stand most of the b-movies I hold so dear (The Warriors bored her to sleep.) Surprisingly she liked Tarantino’s take on the 70’s grindhouse genre, so there’s still a remote chance I’ll be able to get her to watch Troll 2. “Yeah honey it’s just like Deathproof except with Goblins!” So all in all I’m a happy 34 years young most of which I spent watching these wonderfully horrible movies that I’ll probably still be writing reviews for when I’m 100. Of course my brain will be cryogenically frozen at that time and we’ll be living in a baron wasteland full of zombie mutants but that’s how dedicated I am.

In the movie Demons 2 Sally doesn’t have such a great birthday experience. In fact her birthday would be ranked as the end all worse birthdays ever. She can’t find the perfect big shoulder padded dress to wear and her punk rocker ex-boyfriend is supposedly about to crash the party sending her into hysterics. Oh and to top it off, her television spits out a demon with a striking resemblance to Jerry Seinfield who possesses her so she can spread the demon virus to all her fellow big 80’s haired party goers. That generally puts a damper on anyone’s birthday celebration.

Trapped in a high security apartment hi-rise, the demons run a muck after Sally sinks her teeth and claws into the assortment of bad actors and bad singers. To hear them drone on and on with the birthday song, it’s no wonder she went all evil demon on them just to shut them up. Meanwhile on another floor a little boy apparently abandoned by his parents is left alone to fend for himself in his apartment. Eesh is this kid living on saltines and tap water? Usually kids make it out of these type of films but little Tommy gets almost immediately turned into one mean midget hell spawn and takes off after a nearby pregnant resident, Hannah, played by Nancy Brilli. Hannah must have learned some killer self defense maneuvers from her lemas class as she fights the little demon runt with everything she can throw at him including some convenient jars of acids. Who keeps jars of acid in their apartment? She should have thrown one of those tacky 80 neon signs she has hanging up all over her apartment therby riding the world of 2 evils. The midget demon turns into a even more space saver friendly ghoulie monster who is about as scary as animal from the Muppets thus ending up squashed and filleted by the hormonal soon to be mom. Don’t mess with a woman who craves pickles and ice cream at 3 in the morning.

Hannah’s fiance, George is trapped in an elevator with a middle aged hooker when this demon outbreak occurs (and really who hasn’t had this happen?) George goes all Bruce Willis on them and escapes through the elevator shaft using his cunning survival business school training skills to climb out and search for his pregnant wife.

While also this going on upstairs, beef headed workout addicts in the lower levels get in their last reps just before the demons come in to help spot them and rip them a new six pack. Hank “McLarge Huge” the building’s gym instructor, rounds up his workout survivors and through a barrage of constant yelling leads his spandex and speed-o wearing survivors into a last stand in the basement’s parking lot. That just goes to show you that the guy that’s yelling the loudest might not be the smartest one to follow.

I forgot to mention the odd side story of these teenage punks driving around town who crash their car in a minor fender bender. Not sure how it’s related to the demon tenants other than the one guy driving is the jerk ex-boyfriend who never shows up to the party anyways, but it certainly add …well…uh…at least another 10 minutes to the film.

While not quite the enjoyment level of Demons 1, this movie was still a good b-movie experience and of course has the hilarious dubbing and odd monster grunting voice overs like Demons 1 which is always a plus. So grab your friends by the arm and go rent Demons 2. Just don’t forget the DVD and get it accidentally switched with your kids copy of Thomas the Tank Engine. Oh wait that never happened to me before.

Keep an eye out for…

- midget demons kids
- canine companions from the underworld
- extreme building rappelling
- death by gym equipment
- rabid muppets
- speedo-fu
- death by tanning
- overly interactive TV
- lots of demon goo
- spontaneous demon generation
- gratuitous singing of the birthday song

Joe: [to his friends, upon finding a hideous, lethal supernatural creature lying dormant in a dark spooky alley] “There’s no danger!”

rated 7.8 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Demons 2

“Honey, can we just cuddle tonight, I’ve got a headache.”

In Pixar Animation’s Monsters Inc. we learned that monsters emerge from closets to scare children and harvest their screams to power their monster city. They’re giant cuddly teddy bears with fangs who are afraid of children touching them and have complex social problems. When did we neuter the classic movie monster like this? If it was a real horror movie the big blue monster would have eaten the kid while she slept, burped up a shoe and picked his teeth with her hair clip..movie over. Unfortunately Monsters in the Closet doesn’t help monsters regain any sort of dignity.

Richard “Don’t call me Superman” Clark is a mild manner reporter who is put on the case of some mysterious deaths in a nearby small town. Some people were found dead in their closets (apparent death by over accessorizing.) The brutal yet offscreen carnage of a blind man, his dog and a whiny little girl doesn’t really catch the newspaper’s attention so the newspaper owner sends in Richard Clark as a joke to cover the story. Dick meets Diane, a biology teacher at Chestnut Hills College. We assume she’s a professor only due to the fact that she wears a lab coat and has glasses. She’s otherwise passable as an airhead super model who has random blackouts in middle of conversations. Diane has a far out theory that the victims are being killed by a snake-like creature that travels from closet to closet across the town. Along with another scientist, Dr Phillip Pennyworth who has a strong resemblance to a hung-over Einstein and a PETA lovin’ preacher, they decide to hunt down the creature and stop it’s closet killing rampage. Dr. Pennyworth thinks that he can communicate with the monster via repetitive and annoying xylophone playing but that only ends with the monster punching out his heart. Isn’t that the same way Einstein died?

An extremely ineffective branch of the army is brought in to throw every missile and bullet they can at the monster. The same army used in most godzilla films who can’t seem to aim worth a darn. When nothing works, the army hightails it back to barracks and orders a city wide evacuation. A bit over-reactive along with the news casters claiming the end of the world is upon them.

Diana and Dick stay behind in town to try to electrocute the monster with a giant metal hot plate. See Dick Die…Die Dick Die!!! But there’s no accidental electrocution of Richard or monster munching on his useless brain stem. Instead he lures the monster into the trap with a chocolate bar. A bold move and a big sacrifice for Richard since he’s compulsively eating chocolate bars all day. The guy should be 300 pounds with acne the way he packs away the junk food.

Of course the hot plate fails as well as a hastily home-made laser beam built by Diane’s genius son who also nearly gets kidnapped by the monster while at the elementary school. Sure the kid can build a laser gun but can’t avoid a slow moving guy in a giant rubber monster suit. This is why nerds don’t play sports.

When it looks like everyone is going to become a midnight snack the monster suddenly falls in love with Richard and carries him away! WHAT?!! the monster is gay? of course, hence the movie title!! with no monster pride parade for it to march in, It tries to escape with it’s new kidnapped boyfriend via closets around the town but residence have already started burning them or chopping them up with axes. Richard is also incapable of breaking the monsters grasps as he continues to faint everytime he wakes up. Major wuss.

I can only recommend this movie based on its pure cheese-factor. You won’t be scared and you’ll end up hoping the monster wipes out this even more dumbed down human race. Be warned it’s rated PG yet had some accidental full frontal nudity of a blond bimbo in an early shower scene? Oops Apparently the ratings board was still smoking weed in the early 80’s and missed that little scene. Though I’m sure the 12 year olds that couldn’t get into Porky’s Revenge at the theater appreciated the camera mishap.

Keep an eye out for…

- the ancient Chinese xylophone torture method
- slimeball news reporters in light blue leisure suits
- Clark Kent look-a-likes addicted to chocolate bars
- German Shepard suicides
- monsters coming out of the closet.
- walkthrough electric hot plates
- extreme closet makeovers
- toy bugle monster calling

“Please destroy all your closets! though you may want to take the clothes out first.”

rated 6.8 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Monster in the Closet

“Why would someone put the toilet in the middle of the living room?”

I’ve endured the pain of Gymkata, suffered the Nilbog torture of Troll 2, suffered the tons of farm manure shoveled out by Manos the Hands of Fate. But I could never wish the deep hurting that the movie Starcrash rained down on me. Like getting hit in the gut with a sledge hammer just before you’re pushed off a cliff into a pit of rusted Cadillacs, this movie will make you beg for the excitement of waiting in line at a bank or watching c-span after downing a bottle of Benadryl. I am still suffering post traumatic shock disorder from this movie. I close my eyes and still see the people swimming in space.

Stella Star is a space smuggler super model with a fetish for wearing black leather space bikini’s when fighting evil. Her Playboy profile would read something like “enjoys longs swims in outerspace, prefers men that are bulky robots, turns offs are evil minions, cavemen, PMS-ing giant robot women, and snow.”

I would try to summarize a plot to this film but as far as I could tell there really wasn’t one. It would have just gotten in the way anyways. Stella along with her faithful robot companion Akton, named after a failed diet plan, are fleeing the space police in their goofy looking space cruiser. Maybe they’re just out to replace the giant Christmas bulbs that makeup the background space scenes. Akton has the uncanny ability to make Pink Floyd light shows in his hand for his own amusement and can even see into the near future but most of the time it’s seemingly random irrelevant information. It would be like having the ability of predicting what’s for dinner or when the mail is coming. Not exactly hero worthy.

Stella ends up on a prison planet hauling giant glowing beach balls while working out in her favorite bikini. The beach balls are supposedly powering the prison though they should have just harvested the power of the various perms adorning the actors throughout the film. It’s a little known fact that perms were a major power source in the 1970’s. Each strain of hair is a elaborate network of solar cells creating a vast network of….oh wait I’m having another Starcrash flashback.

Stella escapes and with her other robot boy-toy Elle, who looks to have been hastily assembled with used pinball machine parts and a free-range oven. They decide to explore an ice planet together when their ship is sabotaged by a green Spock wanna-be so they end up frozen like cryogenic TV dinners. But Elle holds Stella’s hand and miraculously that keeps her all warm and fuzzy inside preserved like a galactic pop-tart.

The movie could end right there but unfortunately they are thawed later back on the ship with only a hint of freezer burn. On yet another planet they battle against a giant nippled girl robot who looks liked it was hastily put together by a 9 year old kid with a roll of tinfoil and duct tape. They’re also attacked by some wild woman of Womba who fall down easily via a standard karate chop to the neck. This just happens to be a the only defense move Stella has so they easily escape. Suddenly Christopher Plummer shows up as the galactic emperor and freezes time. What the heck is Christopher Plummer doing in this movie anyways? He must have had some mob debts to pay off.

They finally get the help of a prince played by David Hasselhoff before his Knight Ridder days and before he didn’t need to suck in his gut for Baywatch sand running. David helps fight off attacking cavemen with a mask that shoots powerful laser beams out it’s eye holes. David is relegated to the backup hero role while Akton fights off robots with a light saber or to be constantly out acted by his permed hair

There’s also an evil Count Zartan based loosely on Darth Vadar, if Darth Vadar was a small creepy bipolar Latino with greased pointy hair who can’t stop yelling “KILL THEM!!!” Count Zartan intends to take over the universe via a super secret weapon that drives people insane from giant lava lamps special effects. He accomplishes this all from his fortress of kung-fu grip which is shaped like a giant hand. I was almost expecting the fortress to flip me the finger but that probably would have blown the rest of the $6.00 budget.

There’s a big space battle royal with lots of looping film footage and firework explosions. In case you never seen a spaceship launch before, the director is more than happy to show it you a dozen or so times over and over again. Laser blasts a pletny, model kits on fire, light saber duals and poorly balanced robot guards round out the film. And just when you think you’ve seen it all you geet torpedoes packed with imperial soldiers launched at the evil count’s base ship! A failed military tactic if I ever saw one.

Really this movie has to be seen to be believed. Definitely entertaining and purely awful. A so bad it’s good experience like fizz candy and Coca -Cola mixed together. Sure you’ll get a sugar buzz out of it but your stomach might explode.

Keep an eye out for…
- attack by lava lamp
- space swimming
- giant radium gumballs
- Hasselhoff hair
- giant robot nipples
- torpedoes stuffed with soldiers (wtih a side of salsa)
- redneck robots built like a GE oven.
- Christmas tree lights based galaxies
- Spaceships made of old model kit parts and household utensils

“Please Don’t Hassel the Hoff!”

rated 8.0 out of 10 for the movie

Check out this clip from Starcrash

“If stealing cars doesn’t work out, I plan to convert this place into an AppleBee’s”

I learned to drive a stick on my 69 Camaro back in the late 80’s. I was 16 and felt indestructible but really had no business being behind the wheel of such a fine tuned performance machine. Luckily my Dad trusted me that I wouldn’t wrap the bumper around a tree and took me out on a back road for some driving lessons in humility. This was so just woodland creatures could point and laugh. I stalled and stopped quite a few times before getting that engine to actually push the car down the road. Once I did, I realized the thrill of a driving a street machine so I was hooked and never looked back. But my how times have changed, now I drive a mini-van and attend PTA meetings. So soccer mom’s best watch out for the mini-van man cruiser.

Vickinski certainly didn’t need driving lessons in gone in 60 Seconds. This original 40 minute chase extravaganzas with 58 minutes of horrible b-movie schlock padding. Vickinski is a professional car thief played by the multi talent H.B. Halicki. HB directed, produced, wrote, distributed and starred in this giant ad for effective car collision insurance. I think he even did the catering. The deal is his team of car thieves have to steal 46 cars for some insurance scams, one of which is a 1973 Mustang Mach 1, which they’ve codenamed Eleanor. Eleanor seemed to be all around town though. The city apparently has more Yellow 73 mustangs per capita than any other city in the world. They’re standard issued to people like the Peter Frampton Comes Alive album.

So Vickinski gets multiple chances to steal the mean muscle machine and eventually succeeds but somehow forgets to disable it’s car alarm. So the cops with their superior observation skills start chasing him…and chasing him…and oh yeah more chasing. Hundred’s of cars are trashed, crashed, and burned. Lawsuits are being filed everywhere. The Mustang takes quite a beating as well but keeps on going like an Energizer bunny on crack. If Ford Motors built cars like that today maybe they wouldn’t be begging on the street for spare change.

It’s funny seeing the pedestrians standing around in the film as they’re obviously there to just to watch a movie getting filmed. Especially look the big jump finale for a huge crowd on the hillside. Did they pay for tickets to that event? I guess the director wants us to believe large groups of people congregate randomly near highways for potential traffic accidents.

This was a great film if you can endure the first half of porn-actor quality acting and constant Polish ethnic slandering but as soon as that Mustang revs it’s engine, get ready for a ride.

Keep an eye out for…
- chop shop wall-o-porn
- gratuitous use of polish slurs
- road-sweeper sized sideburns
- car crusher kung-fu
- towed! in 60 seconds
- the fast and the frizzy hairstyles
- boat sized pimp cars
- flour bag o-rama

“The hair-do’s in this movies were so large that the actors looked like frizzy oranges on toothpicks.”

rated 8.1 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Gone in 60 Seconds