Russian and American war machine
Will destroy mankind's dream
They shoot their missiles in the air
They do not care they do not care
Guerrilla armies rule the street
No more christmas or trick or treat
Is this what the future will bring
I pray for peace more than anything
The solution to peace isn't clear
The terrorists threat is a modern fear
There is no future for the youth
There is no hope for the young
Death destruction bombs galore
The rich are laughing at the poor
Planet Earth 1988 -Ramones
released,1984
You gotta love the positive outlook of some of our great artists eh? Without their sunshine and rainbow visions sometimes sprinkled with some nutty political agenda and/or hard liquor and narcotics we would have never gotten any of those wonderful films forecasting a future where there was no future. Ya know the kinda films who's opening credits would be followed by a title card ominously reading something like, OUR FUTURE, After the Fallout, Earth Post WWIII, or if the movie was made anytime in the late 70's/early 80's, then maybe any calender year between say 1985 and THE PRESENT. Cut to some mangey kid with axel grease smeared all over his face wearing a tank top made out of a possum and staring a burning Plymouth Volare crashed into the side of a building and you got the opening of half a dozen post apocalyptic/dystopian films from the era. By the way isn't in funny how in Planet Earth 1988 with our world on the precipice of atomic ruin that the thing the Ramones seemed most concerned with is halloween candy?!
I can remember being a wee little guy when Ronald Reagan took that lead for Jody Foster back in '81. And while every B horror and sci fi movie maker at the time was wanting to fast track some flop about the fit hitting the shan and the world being bombed back to the stone age within the next decade, all I can recall is thinking that my dad and mom were going to beat me to death for hearing me say the F word when I was irate about not being able to get anything on the damn teevee except Bonzo Ronnie laid up in a D.C. hospital. I can maybe sorta kinda remember all that dang assassination hullabaloo preempting a showing of Escape from New York which for crying out Hinckley might be the best of the best when it comes to these ridiculous movies. Johnny Carpenter sees Manhattan Island as a max security prison for all the countrys' criminals, Isaac Hayes as its' in-house dictator and Donald "clearly I'm british" Pleasance as our own U.S. President? All by the year 1997!? Well you better believe it! Plus that's all fine 'cause we got Kurt Russel to send in and sort it out? HOME RUN!
On the ever so long and must less distinguished list of sac flys and bunts we have a bleak little Ozsploitation picture or peek-sha set in the popular world gone to crap year of 1995 and going by the title Turkey Shoot or Escape 2000 orrrr Blood Camp Thatcher orrrrrr, well, I think those three titles were it. What we get outta this one is a totally totalitarian society in which any and all persons deemed "deviant" by who the hell knows, are rounded up, given a banana yellow track suit and some Chuck Taylors and stuffed into murdered out Winnebagos and carted off to "Reeducation Camp". These less than luxurious camps are where they're to be broken of their decadent behavior by being tormented, slapped silly, raped, hunted for sport or if the days schedule is really busy just plain doused in flammables and blown up. Turkey Shoot opens with a lotta stock news footage of what I'll gently call social unrest and then we get to meet our two protagonists and gasp are they most heinous offenders against the new ideology of 1995! Paul, played by Steve Railsback AKA the poorman's Tommy Lee Jones and damn that IS pretty poor, gets nabbed by the gestapo or whatever they are for unlawful ham radio usage. Chris, played by the huge slice of eye pie that is Olivia Hussey is taken into custody for as near as I could discern...politely operating a jewelry store. You'll all recognize Miss Hussey who at the tender age of 15 flashed her cash and prizes in Franco Zeffirelli's renown version of Romeo and Juliet. Later she went on to star as Jess in Bob Clark's just as legendary but way less fleshy Black Christmas. Just a heads up for bawd hounds, the curve machine Hussey gets a steam o' rama shower scene in Turkey Shoot but my suspicions tell me that the filmmakers and Olivia pull the old switcharooney on us. That's right folks, stunt boobs. Enough with the gratuitousness of this movie right? Yeah right!
After we get acquainted with our two good characters we get to meet all the nasties that in no short supply populate Turkey Shoot. We get the camps warden type Thatcher and his two goon enforcers, one played by Roger Ward AKA Fifi from Mad Max and the other by some guy who looked a lot like my primary schools' custodian Mr. Costello who I can remember challenging me to fight him for hitting him in the back of the head with an egg salad sandwich on accident in the 6th grade. Beyond these three menaces we also meet a few evil aristocrats who convene at the re-ed camp on their weekend breaks from definitely not ever never doing anything deviant to participate in hunts of hand selected inmates. We get a cannibalistic lesbian archer on horseback, a Newt Gingrich lookalike which is deviant enough in and of itself but who also displays sex predator tendencies, and lastly a guy looking like the Count from Sesame Street who rides around in a dune buggy bulldozer thing and who of course has a circus freak sidekick that looks like some half-assed wolfman that rocks a top hat and vest. Freaky wolfy's name? It's "Alph".
After some random punishments by way of beatings, bullet sprayings, and immolations are handed out to some of the camps inmate extras it's time to send Railsback and Hussey a'runnin' for their lives. They're released with a trio of other deviants who you know aren't gonna see act 3 in this baby and then are promptly set upon by Thatch and his guards, the Count and wolfdude Alph, Newt, and the galloping gay version of Jennifer Nichols. The hunts' rules which clearly none of these scumbags are gonna adhere to are simple enough. No poaching of each others priorly selected prey and if any of the targets survive until morning they will be allowed the freedom to rejoin society. Well about 30 seconds into this honorable hunt good old Alph is pulling saturday nite wrasslin' moves and eating pinky toes off anyone he comes across and the lesbian archer is firing exploding arrows all over the joint like it's dystopian Dukes of Hazzard. Pretty soon there's blood everywhere, Newt is in flames, Steve Railsback is sweating through his jumpsuit in all the wrong places, and poor Alph has a stick jammed through his eyeball before getting his legs chopped off by a runaway go-cart! So this thing is pickin' up right? Our jungle hunt down of Railsback and Hussey all leads up to the double back to the camp for a slam bang freedom assault finale that features a gazillion squibs, a LOT of stuntmen doing somersaults, and at least like 600 dollars worth of what looked to have been South of the Border bought fireworks. Whammy kablammy. Machetes end up in skulls and through limbs, faces fly off heads, and king creep Thatcher is reduced to about 50 lbs. of flying ground beef when Steve Railsback finally gets him in his sights and lights him up like a christmas tree with an M-16. Steve's arm goes round Olivia, smiles, obligatory H.G. Wells quote, roll credits!
Gratuitousness aside, which if you edited it all out you'd be down to a 6 minute feature, we really have to hand it to the aussies for what they regarded in the late 70's and 80's as acceptable film making. Backstory on Turkey Shoot reveals the usage of LIVE ammo in weapons fired AT live actors with one actual extra being shot. Hey only one! The wonton pouring of gasoline all over the set to "liven up" the finale. Telling actors, not stuntmen but actors, oi so yeah mate ummm this jeep type rig with a huge blade on the front will be driving straight at you full speed so just get out of it's way "a bit early". Oh and just for fun we're gonna add in a dag bodgy wolfman wearing a top hat and vest. Good onya Turkey Shoot! Ozploitation at it's finest.
Blink and you'll miss my main man Alph at 00:49
Saturday
Whoah baby The Baby is wild!
At one time or another they've tried to make EV-REE-THING frightening enough to turn into a scare the britches off your bottom terror picture. I heard Elvis say that once, "terror picture", love it! Anything that walked, swam, crawled, creeped, leaped, looked remarkably like Robin Williams, or even breathed oxygen was formulated into an antagonist in many a drive-in worthy fright show. You got your crazed people eating animals, crazed people eating people, masked madman on the loose from what does that even matter, oversized insects, plant people with moldy faces from all kinds of outer spaces, killer cars, killer trucks, killer appliances, alien creatures, critters, humanoids from beyond wherever, eco-terror, high winds, hard rains, poor weather all around, and even oxygen itself doing people in in the most creative of ways all for the sake of good old drive-in entertainment. Now some of these premises work like gangbusters. The giant radioactive ants in Them? Heck yeah! Some coal miner whackadoo in a gas mask running around with a pick axe on Valentines Day? I've seen it forty times and I'll see it again. Human assimilating space virus action set in Antarctica? Still one of greatest movies ever made! A lot of the ideas were and still are right on the moola with what would make a great drive-in freak you out film er.. terror picture.
Not so high on the idea list of things to try and make effectively scary or even interesting you might find a 21 year old retarded guy who's kept in an oversize crib like a baby so he can toss around his Duplos, go geeegy gooey ga geee, fill his diaper a few times, chew the buttons off his baby sitters shirt and look like the member of the Monkees who didn't make the cut because he only played the rubber band between his teeth. Come on now! Do ideas for a scary movie get much worse? I mean I'd love to have sat in on the pitch meeting for this thing. "We wanna put a drooly mop haired manchild in a crib and have a vibrant curvaceous social worker express a little too much interest in'em!" Now this is where someone chomping a cigar should have said "GET OUT!" Thankfully they didn't because even though it is a lame terrible awful idea, the movie completely and totally works.
The Baby released in 1973, centers around "Baby" the already described man-tard and the social worker played by Anjanette Comer that takes his case and thus has to meet his family, the perfectly creepy Wadsworths. Momma Wadsworth and his two eye pie pretty damn hot for the 70's sisters. Beside the fact that they have a 21 year old guy upstairs wearing Huggies and fondling his babysitter's cash and prizes when no one's looking, the Wadsworth women are two tons of eeriness in their own right. Chain puffin' gruff talkin' Momma seems to hate everyone who's not Baby or a member of the Hells Angels. Sister #1 seems to hate everyone that's not Baby and she proves this by getting buck starkers in the middle of the night and climbing all over him while he's in his crib dreaming about strained carrots. Sister #2 looks like the one the Brady Bunch kept locked in the attic and she hates everyone INCLUDING Baby! So much that she attacks him with a CATTLE PROD when he gets on her bad side for wanting to play "ball ball". This friggin' family is icky bingo and THAT is what makes this movie go! They are that family that you just aren't sure about, there's one in every neighborhood and when you peel away the rhine and get a good look at 'em you start getting the heebie jeebies. Once the social worker is introduced tensions mount faster than a rabbit in the springtime. The Wadsworth wackos clearly loathe her and her interest in Baby DOES seem a little pedo bear dubious. What keeps this movie taught and together are all the twists in each of the characters interactions. So well done that you really start to wonder WHO the good people even are in this movie. Now as I've told anyone who ever reads this blog before, I kinda watch these movies so, for the most part, you don't have to. Or maybe you've seen'em before and just wanna see what some idiot other than yourself thinks of 'em. The Baby is absolutely one worth checking out but if you reaallly don't feel like it... here goes. The good people in this movie? THERE ARE NONE. Baby's momma and sisters are plum psychos! The social worker who cares sooooo much about the case and Baby's welfare? Well she's wrapped about as tight as a mummy in a hurricane! Her and her also crackers mother-in-law have formulated a nefarious plot back in reel one that we aren't allowed to fully realize until the final 30 seconds before the credits roll. What starts and builds very slowly as a quirky unsettling tale about an odd as a cod matriarch and her just as nutty kids fast unravels into a drugged, baby napping, back stabbing, neck slitting, leg breaking, axe whacking, shovel beating, burying bodies ALIVE fiasco all in the name of a new swimming buddy. See I still can't in good conscience give EVERYTHING away about this movie. It's a sicilian thick slice of well done weird and you really need to see it for yourselves this time. ***
Shock the Monkee! Baby's better lookin' sister teaches him a thing or two about a thing or two.
Not so high on the idea list of things to try and make effectively scary or even interesting you might find a 21 year old retarded guy who's kept in an oversize crib like a baby so he can toss around his Duplos, go geeegy gooey ga geee, fill his diaper a few times, chew the buttons off his baby sitters shirt and look like the member of the Monkees who didn't make the cut because he only played the rubber band between his teeth. Come on now! Do ideas for a scary movie get much worse? I mean I'd love to have sat in on the pitch meeting for this thing. "We wanna put a drooly mop haired manchild in a crib and have a vibrant curvaceous social worker express a little too much interest in'em!" Now this is where someone chomping a cigar should have said "GET OUT!" Thankfully they didn't because even though it is a lame terrible awful idea, the movie completely and totally works.
The Baby released in 1973, centers around "Baby" the already described man-tard and the social worker played by Anjanette Comer that takes his case and thus has to meet his family, the perfectly creepy Wadsworths. Momma Wadsworth and his two eye pie pretty damn hot for the 70's sisters. Beside the fact that they have a 21 year old guy upstairs wearing Huggies and fondling his babysitter's cash and prizes when no one's looking, the Wadsworth women are two tons of eeriness in their own right. Chain puffin' gruff talkin' Momma seems to hate everyone who's not Baby or a member of the Hells Angels. Sister #1 seems to hate everyone that's not Baby and she proves this by getting buck starkers in the middle of the night and climbing all over him while he's in his crib dreaming about strained carrots. Sister #2 looks like the one the Brady Bunch kept locked in the attic and she hates everyone INCLUDING Baby! So much that she attacks him with a CATTLE PROD when he gets on her bad side for wanting to play "ball ball". This friggin' family is icky bingo and THAT is what makes this movie go! They are that family that you just aren't sure about, there's one in every neighborhood and when you peel away the rhine and get a good look at 'em you start getting the heebie jeebies. Once the social worker is introduced tensions mount faster than a rabbit in the springtime. The Wadsworth wackos clearly loathe her and her interest in Baby DOES seem a little pedo bear dubious. What keeps this movie taught and together are all the twists in each of the characters interactions. So well done that you really start to wonder WHO the good people even are in this movie. Now as I've told anyone who ever reads this blog before, I kinda watch these movies so, for the most part, you don't have to. Or maybe you've seen'em before and just wanna see what some idiot other than yourself thinks of 'em. The Baby is absolutely one worth checking out but if you reaallly don't feel like it... here goes. The good people in this movie? THERE ARE NONE. Baby's momma and sisters are plum psychos! The social worker who cares sooooo much about the case and Baby's welfare? Well she's wrapped about as tight as a mummy in a hurricane! Her and her also crackers mother-in-law have formulated a nefarious plot back in reel one that we aren't allowed to fully realize until the final 30 seconds before the credits roll. What starts and builds very slowly as a quirky unsettling tale about an odd as a cod matriarch and her just as nutty kids fast unravels into a drugged, baby napping, back stabbing, neck slitting, leg breaking, axe whacking, shovel beating, burying bodies ALIVE fiasco all in the name of a new swimming buddy. See I still can't in good conscience give EVERYTHING away about this movie. It's a sicilian thick slice of well done weird and you really need to see it for yourselves this time. ***
Shock the Monkee! Baby's better lookin' sister teaches him a thing or two about a thing or two.
Monday
Jaws of Satan, or Would I Just Rather Have Venom Spit Into My Eyes?
A lesser known fact about myself. When I was just a wee lad spending my summer nites at either the Delsea or Rio Grande drive-ins in less than picturesque southern New Jersey, I was spending most of my summer days schlepping through field and stream looking for snakes. Snakes and most any reptile or amphibian were a huge hobby of mine growing up. Identifying, keeping, breeding, and raising snakes held my fascination all through the warmer months and aside from the occasional random acts of vandalism, usually influenced and co-perpetrated by neighborhood nuisance Karl Forss, the little hobby kept me out of troubles. I was very hopeful in my youth of actually one day going to university someplace and furthering my studies in this field and becoming a paid herpetologist. Now before you start asking, "Cris, is that one of them people who prescribe those creams you find yourself needing on sunday morning when you wake up with a red bump on your something?" the answer is noooo. Herpetology is simply the scientific specializing in reptiles and amphibians. It was always a little weird in primary school being asked what I wanted to be when I was grown up and me enthusiastically responding "aaaaa herpetologist!" I'm fairly certain all the adults including school teachers I told this to were oblivious as to what the fudge a herpetologist even was. I'd have to say the strange corner eyed nods and silence I was treated to when I ever I let this ambition be known pretty much made me change my answer. From then on when asked what I wanted to be when grown up out came the much more ambiguous and sadly more acceptable, "man, I don't even know". "Oh.... well that's ok honey". Turns out it was definitely NOT ok but that's a tale for another time.
Speaking of tales about tails. What's sixteen feet long with inch long fangs and starts slithering about the country side after escaping from a padlocked box on a derelict train run by horny inept bozos and has hopes of unhinging its jaw and swallowing a alcoholic preacher whole in a single gulp? If you guessed the gigantic king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), yes that's the latin genus and species and yes I'm that big a snake nerd, that's running amok and is apparently the embodiment of old Satan himself in the 1981 devil snake clunker Jaws of Satan then you've nailed it. What happens here is that for no good goddang reason at all a big beast of a cobra starts stalking a booze soaked holy man played well enough here by Fritz Weaver of Creepshow notoriety. A fellow drinker in a self proclaimed "witch" tries to warn him of this evil presence by clairvoyantly reading his coffee grounds, catching the vapors and going into a full faint fest in the middle of a fund raiser social BUT our man of gawd simply dismisses her antics as "parlor tricks". Meanwhile every other snake in town has gone plain herky jerky and starting sinking their fangs into any farmers or undersexed kids listening to boom boxes they happen to come across. This is presumably because the king cobra Satan super commander is orchestrating the attacks. The sheriff is at a loss, big shocker in these types of films, the town officials don't want any fuss made about the attacks because the bad publicity would hurt the opening of a new dog track, plot point reminiscent of many a horror film namely Jaws and the local big wig doctor is at odds with the super smarmy herpetologist she has called in to "assist" her in the ways of the serpent if you can pick up what I'm putting down for you there. Our protagonist doctor manages somehow to not be repelled by the sour pussed sexist reptile specialist even after she calls him for help when a snake that DOESN'T call his wrangler jeans home finds its way into her bed. This clown haired clod shows up and gains entrance to her home by smashing out what looks to be a pretty expensive window in a sliding glass door and THEN follows that up by blasting a big hole through the offending rattlesnakes face and into her drywall with a pistol seemingly produced out of nowhere!!! THEN, and I'm not kidding cause you will see this in the posted clip, he straight slaps the hysterical doctor right across the chops!! But of course in the very next scene she is cooking him breakfast and in a clearly post coital manner they exchange a cute kiss. B-A-R-F !!! Two things immediately sprang to mind when I saw this. First I literally out loud, spelled the word barf. Second, damn I should have became a herpetologist!! I mean this idiot's running round playing with snakes, smashing windows and shooting guns off IN houses only to then get a girl to hop in the humping hay AND make him waffles by smacking her around!?!? What a life!
Onto the rest. What ends up happening is after one town meeting and six or eight more snake bites, the town officials buckle and our priest sobers up long enough to realize that what his witch lady friend was trying to tell him before she got fanged in the face herself was the truth. Satan was after him in cobra form. The why of this matter is further explained with a subplot about the priest being an ancestor of St. Patrick, ya know the saint who drove all the serpents out of Ireland? Aaaaand there's also a sequence where the demon snake for some kind reason saves our doctor lady character from being raped by a biker, not making that up, but none of it is necessary in getting to the pivotal yet underwhelming showdown between father single malt and the Satan snake. They meet in a cave, crucifixes are brandished, holy light illuminates the cave, latin is shouted and bammo serpent souffle faster than you can say it. Roll credits.
As far as snake scare films go, this sorta hodgepodge of religion meets nature's horror is a bit of a low rung. Coming in way under titles like Stanley, Venom, Frogs, or even Sssssss!. That being said it's 100 percent a drive-in type deal and good for at least a chuckle when in one scene the cracker deputy tells the african american sheriff, "Sharf they gotta snake over in the corner store!" Sheriff says, "well what kind is it?" Deputy,"I don't know...it's black!" Sheriff, "Natch!" **1/2
Breaking and entering + indoor gun play + slapping a woman silly for being upset = sex and waffles in Jaws of Satan
Speaking of tales about tails. What's sixteen feet long with inch long fangs and starts slithering about the country side after escaping from a padlocked box on a derelict train run by horny inept bozos and has hopes of unhinging its jaw and swallowing a alcoholic preacher whole in a single gulp? If you guessed the gigantic king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), yes that's the latin genus and species and yes I'm that big a snake nerd, that's running amok and is apparently the embodiment of old Satan himself in the 1981 devil snake clunker Jaws of Satan then you've nailed it. What happens here is that for no good goddang reason at all a big beast of a cobra starts stalking a booze soaked holy man played well enough here by Fritz Weaver of Creepshow notoriety. A fellow drinker in a self proclaimed "witch" tries to warn him of this evil presence by clairvoyantly reading his coffee grounds, catching the vapors and going into a full faint fest in the middle of a fund raiser social BUT our man of gawd simply dismisses her antics as "parlor tricks". Meanwhile every other snake in town has gone plain herky jerky and starting sinking their fangs into any farmers or undersexed kids listening to boom boxes they happen to come across. This is presumably because the king cobra Satan super commander is orchestrating the attacks. The sheriff is at a loss, big shocker in these types of films, the town officials don't want any fuss made about the attacks because the bad publicity would hurt the opening of a new dog track, plot point reminiscent of many a horror film namely Jaws and the local big wig doctor is at odds with the super smarmy herpetologist she has called in to "assist" her in the ways of the serpent if you can pick up what I'm putting down for you there. Our protagonist doctor manages somehow to not be repelled by the sour pussed sexist reptile specialist even after she calls him for help when a snake that DOESN'T call his wrangler jeans home finds its way into her bed. This clown haired clod shows up and gains entrance to her home by smashing out what looks to be a pretty expensive window in a sliding glass door and THEN follows that up by blasting a big hole through the offending rattlesnakes face and into her drywall with a pistol seemingly produced out of nowhere!!! THEN, and I'm not kidding cause you will see this in the posted clip, he straight slaps the hysterical doctor right across the chops!! But of course in the very next scene she is cooking him breakfast and in a clearly post coital manner they exchange a cute kiss. B-A-R-F !!! Two things immediately sprang to mind when I saw this. First I literally out loud, spelled the word barf. Second, damn I should have became a herpetologist!! I mean this idiot's running round playing with snakes, smashing windows and shooting guns off IN houses only to then get a girl to hop in the humping hay AND make him waffles by smacking her around!?!? What a life!
Onto the rest. What ends up happening is after one town meeting and six or eight more snake bites, the town officials buckle and our priest sobers up long enough to realize that what his witch lady friend was trying to tell him before she got fanged in the face herself was the truth. Satan was after him in cobra form. The why of this matter is further explained with a subplot about the priest being an ancestor of St. Patrick, ya know the saint who drove all the serpents out of Ireland? Aaaaand there's also a sequence where the demon snake for some kind reason saves our doctor lady character from being raped by a biker, not making that up, but none of it is necessary in getting to the pivotal yet underwhelming showdown between father single malt and the Satan snake. They meet in a cave, crucifixes are brandished, holy light illuminates the cave, latin is shouted and bammo serpent souffle faster than you can say it. Roll credits.
As far as snake scare films go, this sorta hodgepodge of religion meets nature's horror is a bit of a low rung. Coming in way under titles like Stanley, Venom, Frogs, or even Sssssss!. That being said it's 100 percent a drive-in type deal and good for at least a chuckle when in one scene the cracker deputy tells the african american sheriff, "Sharf they gotta snake over in the corner store!" Sheriff says, "well what kind is it?" Deputy,"I don't know...it's black!" Sheriff, "Natch!" **1/2
Breaking and entering + indoor gun play + slapping a woman silly for being upset = sex and waffles in Jaws of Satan
Wednesday
How to derail the Horror Express? Send in Kojak!
been a bit lax folks I know, but to be fair that's what happens when you relocate to a horrid southern locale ridden with crime, horrible police forces, terrible food, and the worst weather ever. did i mention NO DRIVE IN!? seriously!? i could/should have been spending more time catching up the dedictated reader(s) i have on some titles i've taken in instead of making a nice comfy grip on the non business end of a louisville slugger so's i don't get a blister when i cave in the skull of the very next mongrel criminal i find walking around near the backyard after sundown. trust me folks it won't take long for one to show up. gah....the south, anywhere but Texas!
you guys remember the show Kojak right? ugh, probably not, but Kojak was this bad-butt teevee cop played by renown bad-butt baldy Telly Savalas. here's every episode of the show ok? ole' Koj would land a case, usually murder or if youre Kojak, "mur-dah", then he'd put on a floor length mink coat, suck a dozen lollipops, kick down six doors, bust three heads, solve one case and then say "who loves ya' baby?" roll credits! i bring up this small screen nonsense only because Telly shows up in the third reel of our movie this time out...chugga chugga toot toot, Horror Express.
Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Telly and guess what it's not a Hammer production folks. i'm not gonna take the time to research it but i'm gonna say this was an Italian backed movie about two Englishmen, sixty Russians, and one mad monkey looking missing link man thing with glowing red eyes and a temper because he's been thawed out and has some sorta alien being inhabiting his Chewbacca like bod. back it up you say? uhh no sir.. full steam ahead!
so Lee plays an archeologist who finds a possible missing link creature frozen in the Himalayas. well hell doc let's box him up and load him on a train and get the plot moving shall we? once on the train, Lee and Cushing do a lot of yammering with the aristocratic passengers while our crate creature wakes up and starts having red eyed staring contests with baggage handlers and other non essential characters and the end result is them ending up white eyed and dead. bodies start to pile, our two main men Cushing and Lee catch on and i guess because it was in the effects budget, autopsies start happening. after turning a few dead peoples skulls into flip lid convertibles with a hacksaw and poking a few eyeballs (in close-up thank you) with some syringes our docs discover that the walking throw rug monster man is only a host organism for an ancient alien being that's been around since the dinosaurs. what? yeah, so this thing's running amok on the train and turning people into white eyed corpses and then thankfully it gets shot full of holes and falls over dead. the end? you wish! we still have a train to wreck off a cliff here folks. for what? well because before fur-foot kicks the lunch bucket the alien thing jumps into another body. this time a dodgey policeman who comes with a freaky fur hand to match. then that guy gets shot down and then the alien jumps into a mad and butt butt butt ugly monk who we're introduced to back in reel one but he's got the kinda face you just wanna forget for the whole movie and you hope to god he got off at an earlier stop. sigh, he doesn't, and the next thing you know he's the one sporting the evil red eyes and goin' on about satan and what not. remember Kojak? then all the sudden he gets on the train with a bunch of sword swinging Cossacks and they start stabbing fools and taking names. action upon action here in the late going right? so funky monk alien man then is able to resurrect all the dead white eyes that have been piling up and all the sudden it's the full on zombie express with the throttle pinned to the WTF? setting. so quick thinking Lee and Cushing get anyone who isn't a mangled monk alien or a zombie onto the caboose, unhitch the locomotive and that thing model railroads right into a miniature ravine taking all the zombie cars along with it. el Kaboomy blam-O!! roll 'em Smokey!
not a bad movie this Horror Express, decent effects for the 70s. they include gross out close-up eyeball prodding, skull sawing, blood squirting eyes, shish kebab sword play, evil alien infested chewbacca, the best worst looking annoying mad monk ever, and one model train explosion. worth your 86 minutes. the trailer is in German here but that figures when your'e dealing with an Italian movie staring iconic Brits and a bunch of other Italians playing Russians. points for Telly Savalas showing up in the final half hour to show that Kojak don't play.
you guys remember the show Kojak right? ugh, probably not, but Kojak was this bad-butt teevee cop played by renown bad-butt baldy Telly Savalas. here's every episode of the show ok? ole' Koj would land a case, usually murder or if youre Kojak, "mur-dah", then he'd put on a floor length mink coat, suck a dozen lollipops, kick down six doors, bust three heads, solve one case and then say "who loves ya' baby?" roll credits! i bring up this small screen nonsense only because Telly shows up in the third reel of our movie this time out...chugga chugga toot toot, Horror Express.
Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Telly and guess what it's not a Hammer production folks. i'm not gonna take the time to research it but i'm gonna say this was an Italian backed movie about two Englishmen, sixty Russians, and one mad monkey looking missing link man thing with glowing red eyes and a temper because he's been thawed out and has some sorta alien being inhabiting his Chewbacca like bod. back it up you say? uhh no sir.. full steam ahead!
so Lee plays an archeologist who finds a possible missing link creature frozen in the Himalayas. well hell doc let's box him up and load him on a train and get the plot moving shall we? once on the train, Lee and Cushing do a lot of yammering with the aristocratic passengers while our crate creature wakes up and starts having red eyed staring contests with baggage handlers and other non essential characters and the end result is them ending up white eyed and dead. bodies start to pile, our two main men Cushing and Lee catch on and i guess because it was in the effects budget, autopsies start happening. after turning a few dead peoples skulls into flip lid convertibles with a hacksaw and poking a few eyeballs (in close-up thank you) with some syringes our docs discover that the walking throw rug monster man is only a host organism for an ancient alien being that's been around since the dinosaurs. what? yeah, so this thing's running amok on the train and turning people into white eyed corpses and then thankfully it gets shot full of holes and falls over dead. the end? you wish! we still have a train to wreck off a cliff here folks. for what? well because before fur-foot kicks the lunch bucket the alien thing jumps into another body. this time a dodgey policeman who comes with a freaky fur hand to match. then that guy gets shot down and then the alien jumps into a mad and butt butt butt ugly monk who we're introduced to back in reel one but he's got the kinda face you just wanna forget for the whole movie and you hope to god he got off at an earlier stop. sigh, he doesn't, and the next thing you know he's the one sporting the evil red eyes and goin' on about satan and what not. remember Kojak? then all the sudden he gets on the train with a bunch of sword swinging Cossacks and they start stabbing fools and taking names. action upon action here in the late going right? so funky monk alien man then is able to resurrect all the dead white eyes that have been piling up and all the sudden it's the full on zombie express with the throttle pinned to the WTF? setting. so quick thinking Lee and Cushing get anyone who isn't a mangled monk alien or a zombie onto the caboose, unhitch the locomotive and that thing model railroads right into a miniature ravine taking all the zombie cars along with it. el Kaboomy blam-O!! roll 'em Smokey!
not a bad movie this Horror Express, decent effects for the 70s. they include gross out close-up eyeball prodding, skull sawing, blood squirting eyes, shish kebab sword play, evil alien infested chewbacca, the best worst looking annoying mad monk ever, and one model train explosion. worth your 86 minutes. the trailer is in German here but that figures when your'e dealing with an Italian movie staring iconic Brits and a bunch of other Italians playing Russians. points for Telly Savalas showing up in the final half hour to show that Kojak don't play.
Saturday
Mucho murder on the Bronson Express in... Breakheart Pass
honestly has Charles Bronson ever made a bad movie? ok, ok, has he ever made a movie that wasn't bigtime entertaining? exactly. this time out Chuck ends up full speed on twin rails of murder, intrigue, double, no, make that triple crosses, weird beards, redman savages and extra whacky secret spy shenanigans in Breakheart Pass.
the story starts off with Bronson being detained at a rail station by some stuff shirt army troops and an immediately noticable slimey governor played by Richard "Col. Troutman" Crenna. seems that they have commissioned a train to travel through snow country to reach a military fort stricken with disease. supposedly this train is to provide fresh healthy enlisted men and medical aid. yeah supposedly. after an encounter at the rail station water hole they take Bronson aboard as a prisoner because supposedly he is wanted for arson and card cheating and having the meanest mustache this side of the old miss. the seemingly good guys on the train, governor bag O' lies, an army major (Ed Lauter), a lowdown lawman (legendary Ben Johnson) and a seedy preacher (Bill McKinney of Deliverance "squeal boy!" fame) don't treat Chuck very well off the bat but guess what? someone starts offing lesser characters left and right and then everyone wants to be Bronson's best bud. they've all likely seen the guys' movies and know that in a pinch with the stench of death everywhere, few are better than Chuck. the plot then starts to thicken and the pace starts to quicken as we're treated to a few games of human plinko with people being mysteriously thrown from the train and pingo pongoing down some high as hell bridge supports. then a little literal backstabbing, and a great mass murder scene in which every one of the enlisted men on board is sent to a canyon grave in one single swoop. i'm talking crasho el smasho the caboose is kaput! along with a bunch of mooks who were never gonna be integral the the twisting plot of this thing anyways.
once this thing get's rolling full tilt it's pretty clear that the big mystery is that everyone on board, save for the "bad guy" Bronson, is actually a REAL bad guy! and this train ain't hauling no dull medical supplies but something of much more interest. especially to this weird beard cat named Calhoun and a bunch of savage injuns! one or more of the passengers is in proverbial cahoots with the caveman lookalike Calhoun and the actual cargo is there to be secretly and illegally dealt to this rowdy row of rogue rapscallions! they had the plan, the train, the cargo and the deal in place but the sonsabitches forgot just one thing, Charles Bronson. and ultimately bad guys find out what many had found out before them, that you never ever f@*# with Chuck.
give this gem a look, it's certainly no Deathwish, Chato's Land, Dirty Dozen or even White Buffalo but i ask again folks...has Charles Bronson ever made a movie that wasn't bigtime entertainment?
whether it's a New York subway, a Nazi prison camp or on the top of a speeding deathtrain in snow country, Chuck kicks ass at kickin' ass. points for the snowball toss and extra points for the baddie ricocheting off the bridge supports!
the story starts off with Bronson being detained at a rail station by some stuff shirt army troops and an immediately noticable slimey governor played by Richard "Col. Troutman" Crenna. seems that they have commissioned a train to travel through snow country to reach a military fort stricken with disease. supposedly this train is to provide fresh healthy enlisted men and medical aid. yeah supposedly. after an encounter at the rail station water hole they take Bronson aboard as a prisoner because supposedly he is wanted for arson and card cheating and having the meanest mustache this side of the old miss. the seemingly good guys on the train, governor bag O' lies, an army major (Ed Lauter), a lowdown lawman (legendary Ben Johnson) and a seedy preacher (Bill McKinney of Deliverance "squeal boy!" fame) don't treat Chuck very well off the bat but guess what? someone starts offing lesser characters left and right and then everyone wants to be Bronson's best bud. they've all likely seen the guys' movies and know that in a pinch with the stench of death everywhere, few are better than Chuck. the plot then starts to thicken and the pace starts to quicken as we're treated to a few games of human plinko with people being mysteriously thrown from the train and pingo pongoing down some high as hell bridge supports. then a little literal backstabbing, and a great mass murder scene in which every one of the enlisted men on board is sent to a canyon grave in one single swoop. i'm talking crasho el smasho the caboose is kaput! along with a bunch of mooks who were never gonna be integral the the twisting plot of this thing anyways.
once this thing get's rolling full tilt it's pretty clear that the big mystery is that everyone on board, save for the "bad guy" Bronson, is actually a REAL bad guy! and this train ain't hauling no dull medical supplies but something of much more interest. especially to this weird beard cat named Calhoun and a bunch of savage injuns! one or more of the passengers is in proverbial cahoots with the caveman lookalike Calhoun and the actual cargo is there to be secretly and illegally dealt to this rowdy row of rogue rapscallions! they had the plan, the train, the cargo and the deal in place but the sonsabitches forgot just one thing, Charles Bronson. and ultimately bad guys find out what many had found out before them, that you never ever f@*# with Chuck.
give this gem a look, it's certainly no Deathwish, Chato's Land, Dirty Dozen or even White Buffalo but i ask again folks...has Charles Bronson ever made a movie that wasn't bigtime entertainment?
whether it's a New York subway, a Nazi prison camp or on the top of a speeding deathtrain in snow country, Chuck kicks ass at kickin' ass. points for the snowball toss and extra points for the baddie ricocheting off the bridge supports!
Wednesday
Bad Ronald, the kid's just a victim of circumstance
well if you're like me, and i know i am, you used to always really look forward to this time of year. the air chills, the leaves go amber then croak, you can dig your stinky red hooded sweatshirt out of the closet and plan on wearing it to local cineplex (drive-ins are usually closing round now) to see whatever horror films the old movie machine has churned out for you this halloween. only today it's more like whatever they've regurgitated onto the screens to grab a bit of that ol' consumer cash people are too willing to part with to see the same damn thing they saw last year. Saw V!? are they really up to a part V already? who paid to see II-IV? holy Christ in a sidecar friends. and let me not forget the upcoming Friday the 13th remake. three words for you all, tra-ve-sty. marcus nispel helming? didn't he already muck the Texas Chainsaw remake enough? didn't the stink bomb that was Rob Zombie's Halloween teach anyone anything? answer to these questions...heck no! the mighty dollar and the box office take for those movies was triple enough to keep the hollywood remake monsters keep on looking for stuff to do-over and rip more people off who have no clue about film nostalgia and care more about....gee what do them dullards care about? it certainly ain't the integrity of a good old fashioned, well done, ORIGINAL horror film. maybe they are too busy caring about...i'm still drawing a blank. maybe i'm the dullard.
another annoying thing about this halloween season. i'm calling you out AMC! what the hell happened to MonsterFest? you know a couple weeks of round the clock horror movies including classics like Magic and the Beast Must Die? now you've went wimp city USA on us all and bastardized the once damn cool couple weeks of MonsterFest into this pale semblance called FearFest. a measly eight days of horror movies when they aren't ramming their overblown series Mad Men and Breaking Bad down your throat every other hour. i've watched a collective eight hours of this FearFest so far and four of those hours consisted of Jeepers Creepers, TWICE!!!
TV around halloween is supposed to be enjoyable for the likes of us. i will still always sit through the immortal Carpenter film at least once a year around this time. another great thing about this time a year, at least when i was a kiddie was that you could count on coming home from begging for candy and catch a made for TV scare show on one of the major networks. in the day an age of sequels that i wouldn't take the time to beat with a stale salami and remakes that are just as wretched as taking a big bite from a beat up stale salami, i'm going back to the golden age of the made for TV horror film. the early 80's we're the bonanza jackpot for these pictures. some of them so good that i may talk about at length separately at another time when the mood hits. just to give ya'll an idea though. i'm talking Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, How Awful About Allen, the BBC's the Woman in Black, This House Possessed, and the grandaddy mini series Tobe Hooper's Salems' Lot. grade A horror every one of them. for now though let's talk about a nerd-0-matic weirdy Magee who mistakenly bashes a little blonde brats brains out on a sidewalk brick and then has his overbearing mother hide him out in a secret room under the staircase in their house. yeah let's talk about the made for TV semi sorta scary Bad Ronald.
so yeah, as stated our titular character, Ronald Wilby, is the garden variety high water wearing, milk out the nostrils at lunchtime, sci fi fantasy geek who nobody really likes at school. early on he tries to chat up some of the school cools at a pool party and they pretty much tell him that they would all rather ride a road cone covered in army ants then hang out with our main man Ron. on his way home some bicycle brat outta nowhere who is of course is essential to the plot starts picking on Ron and out of frustration he shoves her and well, she falls down and goes dead. you'd think our book wormy nerd would be smart enough to go to police and explain all of this but nah instead he just buries the kid which is just as well because now we have ourselves a movie. next thing is that Ron runs home and tells his mommy, played quite effectively by Kim Hunter. for all of you who aren't as geeky as Ronald Wilby and myself, Kim Hunter is widely known for playing Dr. Zira in the original Planet of the Apes films. i must admit apart from the Apes movies i've never seen Miss Hunter in anything else let alone without being all monkeyed up and in her day the woman must have been what my drunk uncle Gary would call "a stone fox". let's get back to the less attractive Ronald. his mom who clearly has a little rust on her hinges, if ya know what i mean, decides to hide Ronald in a secret room under the steps and wait for all the dead kid backlash to just "blow over". what a mom. sure enough the coppers come callin' for our missing suspect Ronnie and mom tells them he must of just ran away, ya know, "like a normal teenager". so with Ronnie spending weeks inside the secret room and conjuring up a fantasy land called Atrana to pass his time his darling mother goes for an operation and ends up getting dead. two minutes later a new family is moving into the house with Ronald still living inside the staircase. wouldn't ya know it the family has as many daughters as Ronald has peep holes drilled through out the walls he roams around behind. suddenly you start to get the impression that Ronnie isn't missing his cuckoo bird mom as much with all the new eye pie running round the joint. but it isn't long before Ronald, who is by now believing himself to be "Prince Norbet of Atrana", is literally climbing the walls and venturing out to steal hard boiled eggs and scare nosey old neighbors so sideways that they roll down concrete steps like a lincoln log and drop dead. chalk up another accidental death and one basement burial later Ron has flipped his wig so hard that kidnapping one of the girls living in his house seems an ok idea. so with an abduction and a subsequent braining of one of the girls boyfriends, Ronnie is finally getting on with being some kinda B A D. finally after he has done enough rash things for the family to catch wise and coupled with the fact that his mind is gone harder than the wind, Ronald comes crashing out of one of the walls Kool-Aid man style. everyone freaks, the cops show up and Ronald, looking dirtier than a turd at a rodeo, is hauled off to who the hell knows. Roll credits.
Bad Ronald isn't the worst way to spend 75 minutes by any means. it can also be used as a handy guide for any shy or nerdy sci fi kid who ain't all that great with the ladies and is looking to forge a new "bad boy" image that everyone knows is plain irresistible. just follow the Ronald Wilby steps and you'll be beating them off with a stick...and then burying them in the woods.
1. react with blind violence whenever you are teased, if lucky you will accidentally crush the base of someones skull and kill them.
2. HIDE THAT BODY!!! the more shallow the grave the better.
3. tell your whacked out mom about your misadventure and have her hide you in the walls of your victorian home and lie to the cops about where you are because "teenagers run away all the time". duh stupid cops!
4. have your mom die. if necessary just kill her, this will pin the needle on the bad O'meter for sure.
5. scare your nibby neighbor to death, accident style. HIDE THAT BODY!!!
6. when a new family moves into your house, STEAL THEIR GROCERIES!! i mean bad dudes gotta eat right?
7. kidnap one or more members of the new family.
8. finally, and this is imperative, when you and your dastardly deeds are finally discovered...GO OUT SWINGING!!
you too can be as bad as Bad Ronald.
another annoying thing about this halloween season. i'm calling you out AMC! what the hell happened to MonsterFest? you know a couple weeks of round the clock horror movies including classics like Magic and the Beast Must Die? now you've went wimp city USA on us all and bastardized the once damn cool couple weeks of MonsterFest into this pale semblance called FearFest. a measly eight days of horror movies when they aren't ramming their overblown series Mad Men and Breaking Bad down your throat every other hour. i've watched a collective eight hours of this FearFest so far and four of those hours consisted of Jeepers Creepers, TWICE!!!
TV around halloween is supposed to be enjoyable for the likes of us. i will still always sit through the immortal Carpenter film at least once a year around this time. another great thing about this time a year, at least when i was a kiddie was that you could count on coming home from begging for candy and catch a made for TV scare show on one of the major networks. in the day an age of sequels that i wouldn't take the time to beat with a stale salami and remakes that are just as wretched as taking a big bite from a beat up stale salami, i'm going back to the golden age of the made for TV horror film. the early 80's we're the bonanza jackpot for these pictures. some of them so good that i may talk about at length separately at another time when the mood hits. just to give ya'll an idea though. i'm talking Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, How Awful About Allen, the BBC's the Woman in Black, This House Possessed, and the grandaddy mini series Tobe Hooper's Salems' Lot. grade A horror every one of them. for now though let's talk about a nerd-0-matic weirdy Magee who mistakenly bashes a little blonde brats brains out on a sidewalk brick and then has his overbearing mother hide him out in a secret room under the staircase in their house. yeah let's talk about the made for TV semi sorta scary Bad Ronald.
so yeah, as stated our titular character, Ronald Wilby, is the garden variety high water wearing, milk out the nostrils at lunchtime, sci fi fantasy geek who nobody really likes at school. early on he tries to chat up some of the school cools at a pool party and they pretty much tell him that they would all rather ride a road cone covered in army ants then hang out with our main man Ron. on his way home some bicycle brat outta nowhere who is of course is essential to the plot starts picking on Ron and out of frustration he shoves her and well, she falls down and goes dead. you'd think our book wormy nerd would be smart enough to go to police and explain all of this but nah instead he just buries the kid which is just as well because now we have ourselves a movie. next thing is that Ron runs home and tells his mommy, played quite effectively by Kim Hunter. for all of you who aren't as geeky as Ronald Wilby and myself, Kim Hunter is widely known for playing Dr. Zira in the original Planet of the Apes films. i must admit apart from the Apes movies i've never seen Miss Hunter in anything else let alone without being all monkeyed up and in her day the woman must have been what my drunk uncle Gary would call "a stone fox". let's get back to the less attractive Ronald. his mom who clearly has a little rust on her hinges, if ya know what i mean, decides to hide Ronald in a secret room under the steps and wait for all the dead kid backlash to just "blow over". what a mom. sure enough the coppers come callin' for our missing suspect Ronnie and mom tells them he must of just ran away, ya know, "like a normal teenager". so with Ronnie spending weeks inside the secret room and conjuring up a fantasy land called Atrana to pass his time his darling mother goes for an operation and ends up getting dead. two minutes later a new family is moving into the house with Ronald still living inside the staircase. wouldn't ya know it the family has as many daughters as Ronald has peep holes drilled through out the walls he roams around behind. suddenly you start to get the impression that Ronnie isn't missing his cuckoo bird mom as much with all the new eye pie running round the joint. but it isn't long before Ronald, who is by now believing himself to be "Prince Norbet of Atrana", is literally climbing the walls and venturing out to steal hard boiled eggs and scare nosey old neighbors so sideways that they roll down concrete steps like a lincoln log and drop dead. chalk up another accidental death and one basement burial later Ron has flipped his wig so hard that kidnapping one of the girls living in his house seems an ok idea. so with an abduction and a subsequent braining of one of the girls boyfriends, Ronnie is finally getting on with being some kinda B A D. finally after he has done enough rash things for the family to catch wise and coupled with the fact that his mind is gone harder than the wind, Ronald comes crashing out of one of the walls Kool-Aid man style. everyone freaks, the cops show up and Ronald, looking dirtier than a turd at a rodeo, is hauled off to who the hell knows. Roll credits.
Bad Ronald isn't the worst way to spend 75 minutes by any means. it can also be used as a handy guide for any shy or nerdy sci fi kid who ain't all that great with the ladies and is looking to forge a new "bad boy" image that everyone knows is plain irresistible. just follow the Ronald Wilby steps and you'll be beating them off with a stick...and then burying them in the woods.
1. react with blind violence whenever you are teased, if lucky you will accidentally crush the base of someones skull and kill them.
2. HIDE THAT BODY!!! the more shallow the grave the better.
3. tell your whacked out mom about your misadventure and have her hide you in the walls of your victorian home and lie to the cops about where you are because "teenagers run away all the time". duh stupid cops!
4. have your mom die. if necessary just kill her, this will pin the needle on the bad O'meter for sure.
5. scare your nibby neighbor to death, accident style. HIDE THAT BODY!!!
6. when a new family moves into your house, STEAL THEIR GROCERIES!! i mean bad dudes gotta eat right?
7. kidnap one or more members of the new family.
8. finally, and this is imperative, when you and your dastardly deeds are finally discovered...GO OUT SWINGING!!
you too can be as bad as Bad Ronald.
Saturday
Drive-in shoot'em up and King Karloff hands out a bitch slappin' in Targets
yeah it's been awhile but life's been a bit more busy of late. please chill cheetahs and rest easy for i have been ingesting my swell share of drive-in fare. just last week i sat through an ever so sweet double dip of Breakin'2: Electric Boogaloo and the classic eco horror job Frogs. you gotta love watching a 21 year old 100lb. not yet badd ass Ice-T mc a bunch of day-glo clad mullet pop and lockers backed with moustache king Sam Elliot and a bunch of snobby southerners getting taken down by a union of cranky creepy crawlin' critters fired up about fools dumping trash in the swamps of Florida. seriously how can you not like a film whos most annoying character gets chomped to death by a snapping turtle? ah the good old days, when any animal you could think of could go icky bingo and kill you deader than Dillinger and it would make an damn entertaining movie!
speaking of things that are fun to watch kill people. snipers! the movie Targets is a fine little gem lensed in the late 60's by Peter the Last Picture Show Bogdonovich. it's basically the celluloid son of a favour owed by legend Boris Karloff to Roger "Mr. Drive-In" Corman and Peter Bogdonovich's spin on real life sniping madman Charles Whitman. story goes that Boris owed Roger a couple days worth of filming for some reason and Peter was wanting to do a movie inspired in part by the factual antics of texan Charles Whitman, who after killing his wife and mother, ascended a tower on the campus of the University of Texas and started shooting at whomever was happening by. talkin' real life horror here friends. art imitates life or whatever and all and the result in this case is Targets.
the plot is as follows. aging horror star Byron Orlok, played beautifully here by Karloff in a turn basically as HIMSELF, is wanting to retire. he's wonderfully cantankerous towards the biz and feels that it's high time to hang up his brand of outdated victorian horror. his people however want him to at least put in one final personal appearance at an LA drive-in. this works in nicely later.
meanwhile across town the mild mannered Bobby has a sweet girlfriend, doting parents and a mint Ford Mustang with a trunk full of guns that would make the A-Team envious. well for no real discernible reason he wakes up one day and shoots his wife and mom and for good measure sprays a poor delivery boys' innards all over the kitchen floor. then Bobby leaves the following note:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
IT IS NOW 11:40 AM. MY WIFE IS STILL ASLEEP, BUT WHEN SHE WAKES UP
I AM GOING TO KILL HER. THEN I AM GOING TO KILL MY MOTHER.
I KNOW THEY WILL GET ME, BUT THERE WILL BE MORE KILLING BEFORE I DIE.
so cool as a cucumber Bobby loads up his arsenal, stocks up on ammo and then parks himself on top of a refinery roof alongside the highway. after a few cokes and a peanut butter sandwich he figures it's time to get the ball rollin' and starts shooting at ANYONE driving by. i wanna say that these scenes are among the films most viseral and compelling. due in part to there being no score during the sequence and the actor playing Bobby's icey demeanor. you cannot help watching this and feeling a little unnerved, always a good thing if you ask me. so somehow Bobby and his shoot'em up shenanigans manage to get the attention of the police and he is forced to flee. and wouldn't you just know it, he ends up hiding out at the same drive-in where Byron Orlok is making his appearance. seeing another opportunity to pour some more hot lead on unsuspecting drive-in patrons popcorn, Bobby ends up hiding up behind the screen and sniping people through a small hole he cuts in it. after he dead eyes a guy in a phone booth, a couple making some sweet steam, a crying kids' dad, and the friggin' projectionist for crying out loud he once again garners everyones attention and a bedlam ridden mass flight from Bobby's gun sight breaks out. in the ensuing bullet flying mayhem our marksman, who has shot what seems like half of California at this point, goes that final step too far. he wings the old horror star Byron Orlok's personal assistant in the shoulder. even worse for Bobby is that a now steaming mad Orlok sees were he is hiding and with cane in hand strides right on over for a bit of the old face to face. Bobby in an awestruck panic freezes up and it ends with with old man Karloff pimp slapping Bobby into submission like he was some street walking sally a few johns short of her payout!! awesome stuff. three big stars for this more than watchable, highly enjoyable, low budget bullet parade.
speaking of things that are fun to watch kill people. snipers! the movie Targets is a fine little gem lensed in the late 60's by Peter the Last Picture Show Bogdonovich. it's basically the celluloid son of a favour owed by legend Boris Karloff to Roger "Mr. Drive-In" Corman and Peter Bogdonovich's spin on real life sniping madman Charles Whitman. story goes that Boris owed Roger a couple days worth of filming for some reason and Peter was wanting to do a movie inspired in part by the factual antics of texan Charles Whitman, who after killing his wife and mother, ascended a tower on the campus of the University of Texas and started shooting at whomever was happening by. talkin' real life horror here friends. art imitates life or whatever and all and the result in this case is Targets.
the plot is as follows. aging horror star Byron Orlok, played beautifully here by Karloff in a turn basically as HIMSELF, is wanting to retire. he's wonderfully cantankerous towards the biz and feels that it's high time to hang up his brand of outdated victorian horror. his people however want him to at least put in one final personal appearance at an LA drive-in. this works in nicely later.
meanwhile across town the mild mannered Bobby has a sweet girlfriend, doting parents and a mint Ford Mustang with a trunk full of guns that would make the A-Team envious. well for no real discernible reason he wakes up one day and shoots his wife and mom and for good measure sprays a poor delivery boys' innards all over the kitchen floor. then Bobby leaves the following note:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
IT IS NOW 11:40 AM. MY WIFE IS STILL ASLEEP, BUT WHEN SHE WAKES UP
I AM GOING TO KILL HER. THEN I AM GOING TO KILL MY MOTHER.
I KNOW THEY WILL GET ME, BUT THERE WILL BE MORE KILLING BEFORE I DIE.
so cool as a cucumber Bobby loads up his arsenal, stocks up on ammo and then parks himself on top of a refinery roof alongside the highway. after a few cokes and a peanut butter sandwich he figures it's time to get the ball rollin' and starts shooting at ANYONE driving by. i wanna say that these scenes are among the films most viseral and compelling. due in part to there being no score during the sequence and the actor playing Bobby's icey demeanor. you cannot help watching this and feeling a little unnerved, always a good thing if you ask me. so somehow Bobby and his shoot'em up shenanigans manage to get the attention of the police and he is forced to flee. and wouldn't you just know it, he ends up hiding out at the same drive-in where Byron Orlok is making his appearance. seeing another opportunity to pour some more hot lead on unsuspecting drive-in patrons popcorn, Bobby ends up hiding up behind the screen and sniping people through a small hole he cuts in it. after he dead eyes a guy in a phone booth, a couple making some sweet steam, a crying kids' dad, and the friggin' projectionist for crying out loud he once again garners everyones attention and a bedlam ridden mass flight from Bobby's gun sight breaks out. in the ensuing bullet flying mayhem our marksman, who has shot what seems like half of California at this point, goes that final step too far. he wings the old horror star Byron Orlok's personal assistant in the shoulder. even worse for Bobby is that a now steaming mad Orlok sees were he is hiding and with cane in hand strides right on over for a bit of the old face to face. Bobby in an awestruck panic freezes up and it ends with with old man Karloff pimp slapping Bobby into submission like he was some street walking sally a few johns short of her payout!! awesome stuff. three big stars for this more than watchable, highly enjoyable, low budget bullet parade.
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