tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47888908571018353882024-03-05T05:50:03.485-05:00thrivin' at the drive-incrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-20314605448673600422012-02-26T21:26:00.008-05:002012-02-28T20:20:38.310-05:00Uncle Gary's all time fav, Humongous!If you know me like I do then you've no doubt heard umpteen stories about my notorious, infamous, and highly entertaining Uncle Gary. A tall thin drink of water resembling a mix of Count Floyd and Pete Townshend with a greaser pomp and sideburns. 'Twas this great man who had not only seen but "shot the Jersey Devil", who walked arms at sides into the railing of a backyard deck to flip head first over it and fall six feet to the ground only to stand up, dust off, and blame the feat on a patch of rogue ice on the deck. An accusation of rogue ice made downright spectacular by the fact that this Super Dave Osbourne act occurred during a 4th of July barbecue!! A few more of my beloved Unc's greatest hits: my cousins' cat gets flapjacked in the street directly in front of their house, Aunt Donna suggests amongst the kiddies' sobbing that he deal with it. How does Gary deal? Well he strolls outside, into the road, pulls up what's left of Tinkerbell or Jasper or whatever that damned cat's name was by its tail and promptly whips it around with the arm of an Olympic slow pitch champ and sails it straight into a tree top right on the side of the road. Walks back into the house and then tells my cousin who has hysterically witnessed all of this that in fact the cat was "taken up there by a giant spider". Uhhhhhh!? There was the Thanksgiving where me and my two brothers got a little overzealous tossing around a toy football in the living room and accidently chucked it right into the roaring fireplace. Gary to the rescue! Unblinking, unflinching Gary staggers over to the contained inferno, reaches right into the flames and retrieves a molten mess of what was moments before our football. Arm hairs glowing orange and the air stinking of burnt Gary and Nerf he then proceeds to blow the smoldering ball out and hand it back to my brother who upon the gesture shoved both hands into his pockets and says "WHOAH!" Notice I said "Gary staggers". I wanna inform you at this point in the tale that my uncle's oft beverage of choice was a PBR emptied into a 22oz plastic cup and then topped off with what I think I can recall as vodka of the plastic bottle variety. In short, Gary could par-tay. Ok one more really quick before we get to our movie. I'm staying over my cousin's house, my aunts out and Garys left to watch us. Uh oh Spaghetti-O's! Gary watching us usually consisted of us watching him watch television and get bent up like a beach chair in a typhoon. Unc gets tired of our monkey shines in a hurry and orders us upstairs where we're "not to make any noise for the rest of the evening". Sounds like a dare to us. Once exiled we quietly devise a plan to send a near life size creepy roller skating doll they own called "Baby Skates" careening down the stairs to see if we can get a rise out of Gar-bear. Once Baby Skates made it to the bottom of the steps with some amount of crashing and banging what we got was a beheaded Baby Skates sent flying right back up the staircase at us! That message my friends was received loud and clear. Pin drop silence the rest of that night.<br /><br />I could lay down at least another forty tales from vault of Uncle Gary but the main reason I'm bringing this gent up is that he was pretty instrumental in shaping my taste for distasteful movies. See my aunt and uncle had cable long before my parents so I used to end up over their house a lot on weekends watching stuff I had no business watching. I can remember the first time I ever watched <span style="font-style:italic;">Halloween</span> was on a beat to pieces VHS tape that they had copied the gem off of cable onto. Great stuff like<span style="font-style:italic;"> Creepshow, Hamburger the Motion Picture, Phantasm, Prophecy, Cujo,</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Salems' Lot</span>, to name a select few, were first viewed by my young eyes under the furrowed brow of my Uncle. Somebody bless'em!<br /><br />You know how there are supposedly "Elvis people" and "Beatles people"? Or like "'Stones people" or "The Who people"? Yeah I kinda buy it 'cause I love Elvis but detest the Beatles. Rolling Stones and The Who? I'll give it to The Who but I like 'em both. Of this I AM sure, there are indeed "Godzilla people" and "King Kong" people. These two icons started many a debate between me and Gary. Picture an 11 year old me in big mean greens' corner and whatever image you've painted yourself of my uncle fighting out of the corner covered in back hair. Always a reptile man and thus certain to back Godzilla, a typical conversation between me and Kong supporter Gary would sound like this, "Godzilla is 400 feet tall and breathes blue radioactive fire! If he didn't just stomp on King Kong he would set his hair all on fire and burn him up!" "Cristopher listen, Godzillas brain is the size of an olive, King Kong's brain is at least the size of my own. Bigger brain will win that fight!" When he and I finally sat down to watch <span style="font-style:italic;">King Kong vs. Godzilla </span>for the first time together..well you can't imagine the tension. That friggin' movie ruined my life for awhile. In its' finale King Kong emerges from the sea after quite ambiguously defeating Godzilla. Gary's monster triumphs and I am shattered. I later informed Gary that in the Japanese film version it is of course the hometown boy who beats the living bananas out of the lame ape and celebrates a clear cut victory. Gary's response "too bad this is America". Again, somebody bless'em!<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Humongous </span>released in 1982 was Gary's all time favourite movie. He talked about this one ALL the time and it was "just the best" and "it had everything". Sadly I never got to see <span style="font-style:italic;">Humongous</span> with Gary and by that I mean I actually DID see it with him but not really 'cause when you watch this damn movie you can't really see anything because two thirds of it are shot in total darkness! Yeah <span style="font-style:italic;">Humongous</span> had it all alright, less one important thing in it's budget called LIGHTING! I later found out that the one thing this obscure movie was at all known for was its' extreme absence of lighting. Maybe PBR and vodka enhances vision 'cause Gary sure didn't seem to mind. <br /><br />So...Labor Day weekend back in '46 on the quaint little Dog Island some hobnob Canadians are having themselves quite the shin dig. One of the women at the festivities is being drooled/sweat all over by this guy who looks like Harry Anderson from tv's <span style="font-style:italic;">Night Court</span>. She rebuffs this less than gentlemanly glandular goon and makes the mistake she needs to advance the story, she runs off into the woods alone. She's of course followed by Mr. Persistent who takes it upon himself to get REALLY romantic by slapping the macaroni salad out of her and forcing her into a little of the Labor Day on Dog Island woods romping. In great close up we get to this sweaty clods face as he does his thing whilst smoking a cigarette and mumbling something about this or that. Then outta nowhere one of the many ravenous dogs that populate the island shows up and rips the guys neck open. While he's then laying there doing a herky jerk death twitch and begging the woman he just raped for help she forgivingly takes a cinderblock and blasts a pint of Smucker's preserves out of his face with it. Humongous!<br /><br />Flash forward thirty odd years and we get six dink twenty-somethings pleasure boating around in the fog off the coast of the very same island from our preface. I forget the characters' names but for brevity's sake and because a few of them actually looked like the members of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Scooby Doo </span>gang we'll call those three Fred, Velma, and Daphne. The other three are Fred's brother, Fred's model wannabe girlfriend, and some guy they just happen to come across floating in the water for no reason. Fred's brother is a real party animal who runs around on the deck of the boat slamming beers and playing with a shotgun and who in true Uncle Gary fashion, gets blasted to the bejesus belt and decides to skipper the ship straight into some big pointy rocks. Now I'm not sure when boats were ever made of balsa wood cured in kerosene but this friggin' thing explodes faster than you can say "did they just put a firecracker in a toy boat and shoot it close up?" Luckily or maybe not, all six passengers make it off in time to swim safely to the shores of......take a wild guess.<br /><br />While we're at it take another guess at what became of our lovely party guest from reel one. You know the young woman who had some unrequited hibbity-dibbity put on her by the sweat hog hood who ended up as puppy chow? If your answer is that she put it all behind her, moved off Dog Island to the British Columbia mainland and started a successful custom teddy bear building shop well then I'm sorry. Here's a hint though, she becomes a shut in recluse, stays on the island alone with her mongoloid child spawned out of the rough love, raises him up to be a vengeful seven foot tall mongo-man, then dies leaving him to fend for himself alone and angry on the island that the six Scooby dinky dorks are now stranded on! Things may have gone better for him and the castaways had mongo man not chosen to eat all of the dogs on Dog Island but what's an abandoned, confused, overgrown cave dude to do for his three hots? It's the familiar formula from then on. Dumb annoying kids lost on island + giant sized, blood thirsty man beast = <span style="font-style:italic;">Humongous</span>. Soon enough we're treated to the standard stalk and slash (in this case smash and bash) fare that we're used to. Mongo man starts busting through shed doors Randy Savage style only instead of snapping into nasty ass beef by-product treats he's more into snapping neck vertebrae and femur bones through dim teen flesh. I know I said before that this movie is quite dark in the literal sense throughout and it boasts a synth score that pretty much sounds like who ever recorded it had no sense of tone nor actual fingers on either hand AND I'm totally one for obscuring the bad guy beastie until the moment is just right but DANG!! <span style="font-style:italic;">Humongous</span> takes it to a new level and that level is lowwwww! Mongo is only ever shown in silhouette and in that light totally DOES look like Macho Man Savage. His oh so terrifying visage is only ever glimpsed once at the films dreary climax and thats after he's been set ablaze, put out and then impaled with a sign post. By then folks the titular character in <span style="font-style:italic;">Humongous</span>' face is pretty much a 10 lb. burnt marshmallow with a bright blue SuperBall stuck in it. A sigh, a die, the lone survivor (Daphne) stares off a dock, end credits and horrible music roll. Humongous!<br /><br />This thing is of course derivative of a hundred horror films before it and though wild island marshmallow head caveman is an interesting angle, in the end poor pretty-much-everything does <span style="font-style:italic;">Humongous</span> in. Maybe if you're a genre completist, a masochist or just wanna know what my Uncle Gary considered a damn fine film you'll decide to visit Dog Island for yourself but don't say you weren't warned! So here's to Gary, hopefully at this writing, sneaking into that great drive-in in the sky! Pop* hiss* glug glug glug! Miss ya man.<br /><br />"Humongous! It's loose! It's angry! And It's hungry!" Seemingly for Slim Jims, OOOOOHH YEAAAHHH!!! <br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1-Pxmat3b1E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-35861599574997477972012-02-25T21:42:00.012-05:002012-10-16T23:43:26.254-04:00Great Clips, awesome songs set to awesome films.Just something different this time out. Perusing YouTube like any other person I accidentally and thankfully frequently come across cool videos where someone has taken one of my favourite movies and paired it up bang on with one of my favourite songs. Soo, no review this time out. I just wanted to share my current top five clips done in this manner that I have managed to watch at least twenty times each. I'll throw in a bit of commentary of course but more so, here's to the people who took the time to make each one of them. <br /><br />My earliest memory of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Evil Dead 2</span> was looking in the movie section of the newspaper as a kid and being scared sideways by the one sheet ad running for it. That iconic skull with intact eyeballs leering corner eyed straight off the page at me I'm sure kept me up a couple nites when I was a little guy. When I finally saw the movie some years later it was by complete accident. I had somehow obtained an unmarked VHS tape and I had no clue what was on it. One nite me and my good friend Brad rolled the dice on said mystery tape and upon seeing the Rosebud Productions marquee before the title sequence we were less than hopeful. When <span style="font-style:italic;">Evil Dead 2</span> hit the screen shortly after though... oh goodness...bliss! Good guy Ash clamping the disembodied and shrieking head of his zombie bride to be in the work shed vice before pointing in it's face and yelling "You're goin' down!" cemented this thing immediately as one of the best things we had ever seen. I still own that all black unmarked tape of pure Raimi/Campbell gold. Groovy!<br /><br />When I told an ex once that I did in fact think Duran Duran were a more than credible 80's outfit she pretty much laffed in my face. She said that it was the kinda music her dad tuned in on an FM station while sitting in their garage bobbing his head, drinking Miller High Life and staring at his derelict muscle car. Well baby if in twenty years I own both a garage and a muscle car I'm pretty sure I'd think it was pretty damn cool to do the same exact thing. <br /><br />#5 Howlin' Ash gets hungry!<br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fObeEVF-i-M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Plenty have people have heard me say plenty of times that I wouldn't mind putting on a pair of golf cleats and kicking beady eyed Ryan Gosling's head to bits. I don't get what it is about that guy that makes me wanna go all <span style="font-style:italic;">Twisted Brain</span> on him. Maybe it's that every girl between ages 20 and dead turns into a puddle of lust over the clown and I just can't see why? I suppose I could have my eyes surgically moved so they are two millimeters apart too. Then I could be beating them off with a stick and getting cast in droll movies where I have dirtface scruff and speak uninspired lines monotonously. Good plan. Having said that, his excuse for a musical venture has produced at least one catchy tune that comes off even catchier when paired with one of my favourite creep kid flicks, 1960's <span style="font-style:italic;">Village of the Damned</span>. <br /><br />#4 Glowing eye murder brats backed with kiddie creep chorus!<br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FA0zncJOx0E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />What other band in existence are you gonna even try to lay over the <span style="font-style:italic;">Mad Max</span> trilogy? Exactly! Speed, speed and more freakin' speed! "WE REMEMBER THE NIGHT RIDER! AND WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE!" Side note: I actually met and took photos with Lemmy at London Heathrow. Later when I was eating alone at the T.G.I. Fridays in the terminal, Mr. Kilmister sent a Corona from the bar over to my table. True story!<br /><br />#3 Lemmy Kilmister vs. Lord Humongous? I'll double down on Lem!<br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hirZFmRwXvE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Recently I was telling my dear friend Oskar about how I was really into finding these sorts of videos online. She had a revelation for me. Never would I ever think ANYTHING but the sheer greatness of Ennio Morricone could be beautifully paired with the epic Sergio Leone westerns. She certainly proved me wrong showing me this clip. Sometime later we sat down and watched <span style="font-style:italic;">One Upon a Time In the West</span> under some blankets on a cold sunny day. A marvelous 175 minutes of Fonda and Bronson married to Leone and Morricone where I couldn't help but thinking if they had cheated on them with Arcade Fire..it would have worked out too.<br /><br />#2 Arcade Morricone. Blasphemous? No. Gorgeous? Yep.<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/4085880?byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
Now because I feel like I just personally cheated Ennio as the greatest film composer in history I offer this one up as tops. I have probably watched this at least a hundred times and while John Williams score to the <span style="font-style:italic;">Star Wars</span> trilogy will forever be one of legend, just gotta ponder what these films would have been like with Morricone at the conductor's stand. When I was a kid all I really cared for were snakes, bikes, punk rock, and Star Wars. As an adult I can say I still look pretty much the same as I did then and continue to like those things a lot. My music taste has however, slightly matured. Quite possibly it's the only thing about me that has. My love of film has brought me to a great love of film scores and sir Morricone, definitely for me, stands at the pinnacle. Ecstasy of Gold is my all time favourite piece of music period, paired here with my childhood favourite movies. Enjoy!<br /><br />#1 Defining epic with the Maestro! <br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FykT1N0FEjo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-32834054265685268432012-01-19T21:53:00.018-05:002012-02-06T12:33:24.885-05:00Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy Oi Oi Oi, budget werewolf helms dune buggy in Turkey Shoot!<i>Russian and American war machine<br />Will destroy mankind's dream<br />They shoot their missiles in the air<br />They do not care they do not care<br />Guerrilla armies rule the street<br />No more christmas or trick or treat<br />Is this what the future will bring<br />I pray for peace more than anything<br /><br />The solution to peace isn't clear<br />The terrorists threat is a modern fear<br />There is no future for the youth<br />There is no hope for the young<br />Death destruction bombs galore<br />The rich are laughing at the poor</i><br /><br /> Planet Earth 1988 -Ramones<br /> released,1984<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Planet Earth 1988</span> with our world on the precipice of atomic ruin that the thing the Ramones seemed most concerned with is halloween candy?!<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Escape from New York</span> 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! <br /><br />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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Turkey Shoot</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">Escape 2000</span> orrrr <span style="font-style:italic;">Blood Camp Thatcher </span> 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. <span style="font-style:italic;">Turkey Shoot</span> 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Romeo and Juliet</span>. Later she went on to star as Jess in Bob Clark's just as legendary but way less fleshy <span style="font-style:italic;">Black Christmas</span>. Just a heads up for bawd hounds, the curve machine Hussey gets a steam o' rama shower scene in <span style="font-style:italic;">Turkey Shoot</span> 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!<br /><br />After we get acquainted with our two good characters we get to meet all the nasties that in no short supply populate <span style="font-style:italic;">Turkey Shoot</span>. We get the camps warden type Thatcher and his two goon enforcers, one played by Roger Ward AKA Fifi from <span style="font-style:italic;">Mad Max</span> 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". <br /><br />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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Dukes of Hazzard</span>. 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!<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Turkey Shoot</span> 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Turkey Shoot</span>! Ozploitation at it's finest. <br /><br />Blink and you'll miss my main man Alph at 00:49<br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tcN68XFGoiI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-62317864784679516342011-02-12T01:44:00.009-05:002011-02-12T04:16:25.063-05:00Whoah 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Them</span>? 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Baby</span> 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. <span style="font-style:italic;">The Baby</span> 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. ***<br /><br />Shock the Monkee! Baby's better lookin' sister teaches him a thing or two about a thing or two.<br /><object width="480" height="390"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qjp8CpdqyOI?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qjp8CpdqyOI?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="390"></embed></object>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-85964254921969906772011-01-24T19:01:00.012-05:002011-01-24T21:13:11.761-05:00Jaws 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. <br /><br />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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Jaws of Satan</span> 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Creepshow</span> 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 <span style="font-style:italic;"> Jaws</span> 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! <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Stanley</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Venom, Frogs,</span> or even<span style="font-style:italic;"> Sssssss!</span>. 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<br /><br />Breaking and entering + indoor gun play + slapping a woman silly for being upset = sex and waffles in <span style="font-style:italic;">Jaws of Satan</span><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wit5Xggp_pg?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wit5Xggp_pg?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-5981701791036714292009-08-12T23:37:00.005-04:002011-01-24T23:59:03.435-05:00How 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!<br /><br />you guys remember the show <span style="font-style:italic;">Kojak</span> 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, <span style="font-style:italic;">Horror Express</span>.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />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!<br /><br />not a bad movie this <span style="font-style:italic;">Horror Express</span>, 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.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ztgcUksBqWA&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ztgcUksBqWA&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-84745671630528814172009-01-24T22:29:00.007-05:002012-02-06T23:24:49.932-05:00Mucho murder on the Bronson Express in... Breakheart Passhonestly 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Breakheart Pass</span>. <br /><br /> 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Deliverance</span> "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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> give this gem a look, it's certainly no <span style="font-style:italic;">Deathwish, Chato's Land, Dirty Dozen</span> or even <span style="font-style:italic;">White Buffalo</span> but i ask again folks...has Charles Bronson ever made a movie that wasn't bigtime entertainment?<br /><br /> <br /> 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!<br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dh8Wnaptces?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dh8Wnaptces?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-48734423643168100522008-10-29T23:10:00.005-04:002008-11-10T21:48:19.291-05:00Bad Ronald, the kid's just a victim of circumstancewell 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. <span style="font-style:italic;">Saw V</span>!? 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Friday the 13th</span> remake. three words for you all, tra-ve-sty. marcus nispel helming? didn't he already muck the <span style="font-style:italic;">Texas Chainsaw</span> remake enough? didn't the stink bomb that was <span style="font-style:italic;">Rob Zombie's Halloween</span> 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. <br /><br /> 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Magic</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">the Beast Must Die</span>? 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Jeepers Creepers</span>, TWICE!!! <br /> <br /> 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Dark Night of the Scarecrow</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Don't Be Afraid of the Dark</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">How Awful About Allen</span>, the BBC's <span style="font-style:italic;">the Woman in Black</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">This House Possessed</span>, and the grandaddy mini series <span style="font-style:italic;">Tobe Hooper's Salems' Lot</span>. 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Bad Ronald</span>.<br /><br /> 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 <span style="font-style:italic;">Planet of the Apes</span> 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. <br /><br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">Bad Ronald</span> 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.<br /><br />1. react with blind violence whenever you are teased, if lucky you will accidentally crush the base of someones skull and kill them.<br /><br />2. HIDE THAT BODY!!! the more shallow the grave the better.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />4. have your mom die. if necessary just kill her, this will pin the needle on the bad O'meter for sure.<br /><br />5. scare your nibby neighbor to death, accident style. HIDE THAT BODY!!!<br /><br />6. when a new family moves into your house, STEAL THEIR GROCERIES!! i mean bad dudes gotta eat right?<br /><br />7. kidnap one or more members of the new family.<br /><br />8. finally, and this is imperative, when you and your dastardly deeds are finally discovered...GO OUT SWINGING!!<br /><br />you too can be as bad as Bad Ronald.crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-35332782906405187522008-09-20T01:42:00.003-04:002012-02-06T23:25:11.549-05:00Drive-in shoot'em up and King Karloff hands out a bitch slappin' in Targetsyeah 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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Breakin'2: Electric Boogaloo</span> and the classic eco horror job <span style="font-style: italic;">Frogs</span>. 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!<br /><br />speaking of things that are fun to watch kill people. snipers! the movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Targets</span> is a fine little gem lensed in the late 60's by Peter <span style="font-style:italic;">the Last Picture Show</span> 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<span style="font-style: italic;"> Targets</span>.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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:<br /><br /> TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:<br /> IT IS NOW 11:40 AM. MY WIFE IS STILL ASLEEP, BUT WHEN SHE WAKES UP<br /> I AM GOING TO KILL HER. THEN I AM GOING TO KILL MY MOTHER.<br /><br /> I KNOW THEY WILL GET ME, BUT THERE WILL BE MORE KILLING BEFORE I DIE.<br /><br />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.crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-55370294491774775432008-06-10T14:01:00.007-04:002012-02-06T23:25:44.204-05:00Live from Austin, dietary drive-in totals and something crazy goin' on at the Tourist Trapso your second favourite drive-in fiend spent a little time in the great lone star state recently. man alive it's gotten kinda hard to leave the heat, the meat, the friends and felines so i'm looking to make an extended stay there happen relatively soon.<br /><br />i know youve all got the same question for me about this move. ain't it about time? how long have you been yammering about moving to Texas? to be fair i have been on the fence about it a long long time but then i found out they have hockey leagues outside of Austin and the deal as they say, was sealed. if you add that i'll be able to play hockey in a climate controlled indoor facility to the fact that Texas has the best BBQ and sweet tea in all the country, throw in the Terror Thursdays at the Alamo Drafthouse, mix in that some great friends with great cats residing there already, divide it all by me being able to handpick a monthly feature at the Kitti City Courtyard Drive-In my darn self, multiply that with some Big Red soda and it all equates to me now not knowing what i'm even talking about. i'm going to Texas! home of Buddy Holly, Joe Bob Briggs, Lance and the most drive-in locations of any state in the union.<br /><br />the only problem i can foresee is plumping up like a ballpark frank in a brick oven. it's hard not to stuff your face every waking hour with all the food down there. i have a BBQ problem and i realise it but at the same time i have no dang intentions of trying to curb it. im gonna keep this part quick and say i am NOT a slob but this is what i remember ingesting during my recent 3 day stay in Austin.<br /><br />1 1/2lb. barbecue burger w/fries covered in sauce<br />1 32oz coke<br />3 bottles Big Red soda<br />1 caesar salad (i got derailed here a bit)<br />1 deep dish bowl of the homemade holy guacamole<br />3 bottles Topo Chico<br />1 bottle some kinda meskin malt liquor (only bit of booze i had, just can't party no more)<br />1 plate Bill Miller famous BBQ (includes brisket, sausage, slaw, potato salad and beans)<br />approx 2 gallons of sweet tea<br />3 plates Salt Lick BBQ (includes brisket, sausage, ribs, slaw, potato salad, beans and cobbler)<br />3 buttered rolls<br />1 grilled Bison steak<br />1 grilled ear of corn<br />1 can Coke<br />1/2 rootbeer float from Amy's gender bent ice cream hut<br />multiple grilled asparagus tips (wait what!?)<br />4 bowls granola (ok things are going awry)<br />1 garden salad<br />1 choco mint lunabar (now i ate this in Houston during a layover and since it was actually delicious you can say what you want)<br /><br />man i think i just suffered a phantom heart attack writing all that down. see what i mean though? i get down there for any amount of real time and it's exploding pants city! you see a mushroom cloud on the horizon this fall rest assured it was only me trying to put down one more slice of brisket at Bill Millers famous BBQ<br /><br /> friends lets talk <span style="font-style: italic;">Tourist Trap</span>. what we get here is some decent teen tenderloins making stupid decisions and NOT living to regret them. nothing wrong with that! the drive-ins thrived off this kinda movie for years. i hand picked this to be shown at the Kitti City Courtyard Drive-In myself and the masses were more than pleased. it was a bit rough going at first because of some projector issues, you see our normal projector man Travis was unable to helm this one because of some imperial entanglements if you know what i mean and i think you don't. he had to work folks, on a sunday nite no less. i mean we couldnt hold it against him cause he'd already broken the Texas sabbath by declining to eat Salt Lick BBQ with us earlier in the day so hey Trav may as well go all out and friggin' work too! i kid Travis, he's got what we'd all call a "real job" that i ain't even gonna go into cause half of you would probably shoot me for associating with the cat but trust me he's a good dude. Feather Mac did a good job with the projection in his stead and we got <span style="font-style: italic;">Tourist Trap</span> a' rollin.<br /><br />we start out with some Fonzarelli lookalike dude and a trio of tube topped trollops breaking down (of course) and having none other the Chuck "Rifleman" Connors come to their aid. you all know Chuck, or maybe you don't, as the poor mans Jack Palance. now if youre saying to yourself "wait who's Jack Palance" then excuse me while i politely bury the business end of a claw hammer into your forehead! Jack Palance for all you ignoramuses is the old creepy guy from the <span style="font-style: italic;">City Slickers</span> movies. "oh yeaaaaahhhhh, him? oh hi Cris what are you doing with that...OWWWWWW!!!" ok enough fooling about. Chuck plays kind old Mr. Slausen, the proprietor of the Lost Oasis Roadside Attraction. now right off the bat we get the feeling that Slausens tea kettle ain't on the right burner. he tells Fonz and his bimbos he's miffed about the new highway that done stole all his customers. "everyone's in a damn hurry these days! do you know why that is? 'no' yeah, me neither!" he also shows them his creeptacular menagerie of all too lifelike mannequins (now if theres anything freakier then some half hinged whackadoo shut in wearing dungaree overalls who has a collection of mannequins? you all let me know). finally Slausen warns the group to stay away from his house on the hill cause thats where his brother Davey lives and Davey is "troubled". wouldnt you just know it that when Slausen and the Fonz leave to try and fix the kids car that soon to be dead bimbo No.1 decides to disregard his kind warning and go snooping around the house that she was told two minutes before hand to stay away from. this is when we get to meet kind and playful Davey and folks i'll tell you that if his first on screen appearance isnt frightening enough to make you fire a kitten out of your cornhole then you may not have a pulse. remember when i asked what was more scary than a half hinged shut in wearing overalls who has a collection of mannequins? if you answered, his twin freakout brother Davey who wears scare you stupid Elvis/women masks, talks in a spooky voice and can control said mannequin collection and various sharp objects to make them do his murderous bidding with telekinesis? then you get the chicken dinner. Davey is a two legged nightmare and he has an odd little hang up about ensnaring wayward travelers, scaring the bejabbers out of them and then having these little parties where he ties them up and covers their faces in Bisquick instant pancake mix until their hearts go all Pop Rocks and then he can turn their dead bodies into those oh so real mannequins we see all over the Lost Oasis Roadside Attraction. good stuff here! this thing starts out as campy as anything you'll ever see but i'll be dipped in the stink and shot for smelling if this movie doesnt get under your skin and serve you some bad dreams for dessert afterwards. the Davey character alone is enough to make you think twice when you wake up and see a jacket hanging in your closet that just doesnt look quite like its just a jacket hanging in your closet. we bend the needle on the freak-meter with the mannequins, screaming wooden heads, knives in necks, axes through shoulders, arms torn off, making dead bimbos into mannequins how-to lessons, and a great scene where our final girl thinks shes put down Davey with some double barrel shotgun action. oh theres also a decent twist before twists were obligatory in these kinda movies being this was lensed in '78. if you like the original <span style="font-style: italic;">Texas Chainsaw</span>, and you darn well better cause i know where i left that hammer then check out <span style="font-style: italic;">Tourist</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Trap</span>. **1/2 close to *** from me.<br /><br />no trailer, but creepdog Davey gets busy with the Bisquick pancake facin' while sporting his favourite Love Me Tender mask in this heartwarming scene.<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1VOPD89g1VE?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1VOPD89g1VE?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-36447270503079356252008-06-05T00:14:00.002-04:002012-02-06T23:26:04.232-05:00First trip of the season to the Delsea yay, Indy meets some aliens, ugh!even though Joe Bob would revoke my BBQ privileges for saying so, i figured Indiana Jones and this crystal cranium nonsense would be the first drive-in worthy movie the Delsea would show this season. sadly i was right and since i had seen all prior Indy movies at the drive-in when i was younger, it was pretty much an obligation to check out the on life support Ford and Spielbergs' cash in attempt at another round of whip crackin, nazi or in this case commie smackin, Cate Blanchett awful actin, Indy-ventures. Joe Bob says "Stevie han't made a durn thing since <span style="font-style: italic;">Jaws</span> that ain't been indoor bullstuff". i respectfully disgree cuz the Indy movies have always been great indoors or out. the trip to the Delsea was on.<br /><br /> TL, Webb and i jumped into Webbs imnotsurehwhatkindacaritis and tooled over the Walt, down hwy 55 and made a quick stop at Verona ice cream so i could get myself a gut wrecker of a sundae and admire their employees fingernails. these chicks are of the triple shellac-double varnish-single coat lacquer variety and they are some kinda scary. i'm telling you Freddy Krueger himself woulda puddled the cuffs in his Bugle Boys had he caught sight of these frito chip finger tips. fright show deals these Vineland girls. i'm not even gonna go into the pre-movie get down boogie woogie routine some preteen girl was putting on for her mom and everyone else who cared to watch. it was pretty funny though. i do wanna kinda talk about the food at the Delsea though. you see they'd really rather you buy food at the concession than sneak in your own. when i say really rather i mean to say you damn well better buy from them instead of sneak in your own or you may be forced to face consequences. if youre lucky you kick them a few extra bucks and they call it even. if your less lucky, ejection. if youve no luck at all, Froggy.<br /><br /> since Webb declined on getting any ice cream at Verona and we all played nice this time and didnt sneak any food in, we decided to be good little patrons and check out the Delsea's "extensive menu". extensive? what happened to the hot dog, fries, popcorn, soda days? do you really want to eat peirogies from a drive-in, and wtf? a "low carb chicken salad" uh does that come with leg wamers and a resistance workout band!? get the hell out of here with this stuff. i went old school thank you. bladder busting bucket of iced tea and a popcorn that i immediatley soaked down in that oh so delicious day glo yellow 10w-40 movie butter. i was set. Webb loaded up with some fries and a slice of some suspicious looking pizza. you know that kinda shady slice that looks like you could cool it down, throw it sidearm style into someones head and give'em the instant Frankenstien flat-top look so they'd pretty much know what they were being for Halloween for the rest of their lives. i mean to say pizza at a drive-in is shakey business at best. she braved it though, no troubles. TL, the smart one, forewent any concessions cause i dont know, she's smart! but for a second i may of almost had her talked into some wild cherry flavoured MnM's. yuck and O!!! so bordeline torture treatment food aside, we all had a pretty good time getting down to the Delsea for the first time this year and hope to make a go of it a bunch more in the summer of 08.<br /><br /> oh yeah we did see a movie too so i guess i should say a couple words about the eagerly awaited <span style="font-style: italic;">Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</span>. here it goes..BLAME LUCAS!!<br /><br /> seriously were gonna have to do another Charles Bronson movie next week to take the sting off this disappointing, weak, ridiculous, Spielberg indoor bullstuff! the only great thing was The King Elvis Presley blaring over the opening credits. oh well at least we were at the drive-in.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vczE4MS5waG90b2J1Y2tldC5jb20vYWxidW1zL3gyODIvY3Jpc2dlb3JnZV9waG90by8/YWN0aW9uPXZpZXcmY3VycmVudD1pbmRpYW5hcG9zdGVyMy5qcGc=" target="_blank"><img src="http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x282/crisgeorge_photo/indianaposter3.jpg" alt="Photobucket" border="0" /></a>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-1887564964337841852008-06-05T00:11:00.003-04:002012-02-06T23:26:41.688-05:00Get out your Outlaw to English dictionary for the White Buffaloit's disconcerting that here we are on our fifth review of the summer and we still have yet to go on location to the actual drive-in. The Delsea is still stinkin' and the Diamond State is still reekin'. And now we got another of those damn cutesy animal doing extreme sports turdfest films on the way. i wish i were kidding friends but you can bet your economic stimuli dough that <span style="font-style: italic;">Kung Fu Panda</span> is gonna grace our beloved outdoor screens that were once reserved for hack and wack slashers and criminal crackin', do it yourself vigillantes. <span style="font-style: italic;">Kung Fu Panda</span>? suddenly my idea of an animated film featuring a deejay hippo sounds as though it could go someplace. i hate to say it but i think <span style="font-style: italic;">Indy 4</span> is gonna end up being the first worthwhile film at the drive-in this season and that still is more an indoor blockbuster biggie that even further still doesnt come out til Memorial Day!! man, by mid-May in the good ol'days at least 895 teens had suffered on screen deaths due to someone leaving a pick axe or a tent stake laying around too long.<br /><br /> i'm actually going on location before too long to the great state of Texas where the drive-in is still only a threatened and not yet endangered species. hopefully the folks down in los state of uno star, which once boasted more drive-in locales than any other state, will be projecting something crass and violent up on at least one of the big boys. if not, then my friends/the indigenous population of Austin's Kitty City Courtyard Drive-In have no problem making a great go of it. my last time out there during SXSW we had about 35lbs of BBQ going while simultaneously watching a double feature of <span style="font-style: italic;">Massacre at Central High</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Spies Like Us</span>. outdoors and up on a DYI bigscreen. the Gods were smilin'!<br /><br /> so honestly, how did i get this far with these blogs with doing a Charles Bronson picture? Who doesnt love the guy right? You look up "ass-kicker: n-" in the dictionary and the mans arm comes out of the damn book and pistol whips you! Chuck will always be best known for the 52 movies where he'd play an urban everyman that gets pushed a little to far and before too long is killing every mugger, rapist, druggie, pusher, and mime within city limits. seriously now, Chuck would blow you away just for playing your boombox too loud or having a bad hairstyle. when he took guff, he gave out lead sandwiches and that's the way it was. but before he was the street sweepin', punk smashin', car crashin' bring 'em all on vigillante hero type, Bronson was a staple in some of the greatest western and war films of all time. in <span style="font-style: italic;">The White Buffalo</span> he takes a break from keeping the subways safe and returns to the western genre.<br /><br /> Chuck takes a turn as western legend Wild Bill Hickock in this one and he is being driven mad by dreams of a deadly white buffalo. its seems that its become so common place for Bill to wake up in a cold sweat with Colts blazing from these terrible nitemares that he fears theyre slowly loosening his grip on sanity. he's made up his mind that he's going to once and for all track this albino beast down and turn him into buff burgers. Bill rolls into Cheyenne first and gets ambushed by some of General Custers men. Bill kills the hell out of all of them in about 8 seconds flat. it's almost like once these men saw that Charles Bronson was playing Bill they just knew it was marble hat time.<br /><br /> meanwhile Chief Crazyhorse's village is reduced to debris by our titular monster. during the monster mash Crazyhorse's child gets turned into corn beef hash courtesy of the white demons' hooves. afterwards an elder tribesman tells Crazy that he needs to stop "weaping like a young woman" and slay this evil white buffalo because if he does not his dead child's soul will only know torment and never be at peace on the "other side". Chief Mad Old also takes away Crazy's name and hangs "Worm" on him until he can exact his revenge. chilling stuff.<br /><br /> while this is being set up, Bill meets up with his old buddy Charlie Zane and manages to kill another dozen or so people because they "use their mouths for breakin' wind" . there is a lot of outlaw old west slang in this movie folks and all of it is pretty darn amusing and i've the feeling mostly authentic. examples: "hanging a wooden suit" on someone means killing them. a dead hooker is now "walking streets glory" because "blue whistler got her in the third eye", meaning an indian shot her in the ass. brave men are "all sand" and so forth. this movie is worth watching just for dialogue alone.<br /><br /> Bill and Charlie leave town on the hunt for the white spike and no sooner do they cross paths with Crazyhorse. against Charlies wishes because he's kinda an indian hating bigot, Bill defends Crazy when he's out gunned by some war whooping Crow indians. after they kill another 15 guys together they form a shakey alliance and both go on the hunt for the white buff. so then they have to kill a few more people and when the body count hits around 45 the white buffalo finally shows up to kill some horses, pee on some rocks, nearly start an avalanche, and test the mettle of Bill and Crazy's friendship. there's a standout scene in this movie that for all the films' hokeyness and it kinda being a western spin on <span style="font-style: italic;">Jaws</span>, nearly induces tears. it's when Wild Bill explains to Crazy around a campfire meal that the indians are going to have to bend to the will of the ever expanding white nation or suffer fate at the hands of their armies. Bronson shines here and Will Sampson who plays Crazyhorse fully conveys the notion he knows this truth but despises believing it without saying a single word. Phew! we got a little serious there. back to the action. big bad buff comes in charging for a showdown in final reel and if you can look past the effect of the buffalo being a little too mechanized and being moved on a rail track, you're in for a treat. i've probably watched this movie 20 times over since first seeing it on TV one nite with my brother when i was about 7 years. you should at least see it once. old west slang, indian stomping, a star studded cast, buffalo rodeo riding, gratuitous Jack Warden as the white maned Charlie Zane, and award nominations for both Bronson and Sampson. ***. give'er a look ya sway backed shad bellies!!<br /><br /><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" allownetworking="internal" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/cp17j-fQkWE&hl=en" height="355" width="425"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="never"> <param name="allowNetworking" value="internal"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cp17j-fQkWE&hl=en"> </object><br /><br /><br /> <a href="http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=820290&blogID=393986678&Mytoken=B144C8EA-F970-40DD-9CCBD194B42BF68A129801160"><b> </b></a>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-84333790720686605182008-06-05T00:10:00.002-04:002012-02-06T23:26:58.484-05:00Drive-in denizens and praying The Prey would just endthere arent a lot of you out there that have been to the Delsea with me. it's a short list of friends who actually own cars that i could badger into driving an hour outside of Philadelphia to enjoy some fine outdoor entertainment. the actual movies are sometimes incidental especially since they dont make good goddamn drive-in movies anymore but it's the experience friends. sitting in your own car doing whatever you want, i mean WHATEVER you want, with no people yammering, mobile phones blasting Gwen Stefani ringtones or some 60lb. punk kicking the back of your seat and making you wanna turn his head into Mott's applesauce.<br /><br /> for those of you that have gone with me i wanna remind you and tell everyone else about Froggy. Froggy is a ticket booth worker at the Delsea. normal looking kid of i'm guessing round 20-22 years. im not sure of Froggy's actual christian name but it doesnt matter cause when this cat opens his mouth and starts telling you what station to tune your FM to..., im telling you this kid has a voice on him that makes Lawrence Tierney's voice sound like a slice of chocolate mousse laid on a black silk pillow. i mean Froggy must eat Grape Nuts dry and then wash it down with a broken glass and gravel malt shake before cutting the ends off of a pack of Pal Mals and smoking all twenty in a single shot. it's alarming but when this coffin dodger voice comes out of this kids body you'd like to think the poor punk was possessed by George Burns or something. id hate to think the FrogMans got some medical condition but whatever his deal is he makes Marge Simpson sound like a class A crooner. get down to the drive-in and see this guy for yourself but id mind laffing at his voice in front of him because Frog also looks like hes capable of pulling a few people out of their cars and beating them into the holy hallowed Delsea dirt!<br /><br /> lets talk about <span style="font-style: italic;">The Prey</span>. the long and short of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Prey</span> is that its the only 80 minute movie that ive seen that seems to last 2 whole days. what we have is your typical 80s forest slasher ala <span style="font-style: italic;">Friday</span> plot. kids go camping, kids get turned into ground chuck. this time we learn through exposition that our Jason type teen flayer is grown up under-sexed gypsy boy who was the sole survivor of a massive forest fire that made the rest of his gypsy band into burnt bacon. so what happens is that our burnt beast man happens upon an annoying couple right off the bat and uses an axe to turn the guys head into a flying red football and embeds the annoying girls face in a redwood. so its kinda a promising start. then we get A LOT of scenes of nature stock footage. im talking so many that youll think the VHS tape snapped and your TV kicked over to <span style="font-style: italic;">Nova</span> on WHYY Channel 12. then more scenes of our annoying camper teens drinking beers and trying to "go all the way" in their WalMart pup tents. meanwhile theyre being watched by toasted gypsy who all we ever get to see of are black boots schleping through the huckleberry bushes. oh we also got a forest ranger potential hero type who downs mass quantities of Coors, tells terrible jokes to deer, and has that kinda facial hair that makes him look like he'd <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> rather a career in pediatrics and not for medical reasons if you know what i mean. i know youre thinking already this movie sounds longer than 80 mins. after some grueling badly looped dialouge, a gratuitous telling of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Monkeys </span><span style="font-style:italic;">Paw</span> tale and some more nature stock footage, beasty finally gets his boots walkin' and starts bumping off some cast members. we get one of the films few good scenes when our two chunk head buff male teens decide to go rock climbing and leave their lambchops at the campsite. now i'm no rock climber but i'm seriously doubting that suede boots and bell bottoms are proper climbing apparrel. brent and brad (i forget their names) are dangling about half way down a huge cliff when our gnarly gypsy shows up and cuts their rope so they fall to the rocks below and promptly turn into about 170lbs. of week old liverwurst stuffed into Jordache jeans. dudes out of the way, time to get to the girls. girl #1 is bashed to bits and stuffed in a woodpile. girl #2, well cooked gypsy wants her to make lil' cooked gypsies with, yuck-0!! he's in the process of dragging her off to the local Feathernest Inn when hero ranger man shows up to save the day. now we finally get our obligatory good look at the killer. friends i'm not sure where you shop when youre a murderous gypsy man child who's head looks like a well done christmas ham and you have been living in the woods for 12 years but this guy has some spiffy threads. i'm talking nice dress slacks and fitted merino wool sweater spiffy. yes wtf!? indeed. ranger man, who has been built up to be the films savior, goes toe to toe with our best dressed monster and lasts all of 4 seconds. 1 crushed spine and 1 pint of spit blood later, ham head creature man gets his sex wish and the movie ends 9 months later with the sound of a baby crying in a dark cave. i guess in the end clothes do make the monster. *1/2*<br /><br /> sorry but no one sheet or trailer for <span style="font-style: italic;">The Prey</span> but the VHS box had a great tagline. "It's not human and it's got an axe!" uhhh actually IT IS human and it only has the axe for about a second in the beginning red football scene. maybe they shoulda went with "It's ugly, it's horny, and it shops at Macys!"crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-63386430308972557142008-06-05T00:06:00.003-04:002011-01-25T00:18:11.759-05:00Warren Oates declares hippies and satanists to be "the same damn thing" in Race With the DevilFolks, saying satanists are scary is an understatement. wildly tenacious satanists are even worse. still more terrible are wildly tenacious satanists that have networking capability and will stop at nothing to track you across Texas in order to keep you from squealing on them after you mistakenly happened upon them dancing naked by a bonfire in the moonlight and subsequently turning a blond cupcake into shish ka bob to appease their evil underlord! this is pretty much the set up for a movie made of totally awesome called <span style="font-style: italic;">Race with the Devil</span>. Warren Oates and Peter Fonda are two motorcycling buddies who are RVing across Texas en route to a ski trip getaway. with them are their motorcycle bunnies played by Loretta "Hot Lips Houlihan" Switt and Lara Parker. along the way they stop off, get sauced and happen to witness a gang of jolly old devil worshipers having their spring fling and sacrificing a naked girl. they are discovered spying and high tail it out of their with the salty satanists in hot pursuit. they tell the local sheriff played by drive-in staple R.G. Armstrong and his deputy who he calls "Booger" but they don't really seem to give a couple of cold cow flops about some outsiders "claiming" they saw a murder. hmmm interesting. from here on we get some great grade A stuff. our gang rolls from one small town to the next under watchful eyes at every damn stop. this movie really starts to give you the impression that every person living in Texas is a satanist! which come to think of it, may be totally true. these devil bastards are all heart and no quit and they stealthily follow our gang the whole time, putting snakes in their RV, strangling the snausages out of their cute dog, leering at the two women in a swimming pool, and leaving them creepy witchcraft warning messages. it's only when the the satanists sabotage their Bultaco motorbikes that Warren and Peter finally have their fill of these old scratch loving loonies and spend some of their traveling dough on a shotgun. i wanna note that this movie contains a scene which shows and explains exactly how to modify a pump action 12 gauge shotgun to make it very illegally hold five rounds instead of three. yeah i told you this movie was made of awesome! now with shotguns and very bad attitudes to match, our main characters are looking for just one more reason from the pesky devil dogs to go on the offensive and whoop some evil ass. the offensive comes in a climactic car chase pitting the RV against a fleet of satanic stunt drivers in tubbed out sedans. we get shotgun blasts to a fat devil worshiper, motorcycle flinging, cars driving on two wheels Hazzard County style, exploding trucks off bridges, a satanic school bus, one hellacious car crash roll over where the car flips approximately 482 times, seriously i did lose count, low bridge to satanist face, extremely dry martini making, more explosions, falling dummy deaths, hung pets, ski pole rattlesnake thumping, a satanic country and western band with a Harvey Keitel look a like playing a mean steel guitar, and finally a wonderful less than upbeat ending. let me just say you cannot stop these satanic sons of bitches, you can only hope to contain them. *** and a definite must see! check out the trailer here<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" allownetworking="internal" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/wqv6PIH_ymY&hl=en" height="355" width="425"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="never"> <param name="allowNetworking" value="internal"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wqv6PIH_ymY&hl=en"> </object><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div> see you next week and remember, never "trust a school bus on a Sunday!"crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-66476509025562887672008-06-04T23:58:00.004-04:002011-01-25T01:14:34.381-05:00the Last Shark or Vic Morrow wishes he would have made Twillight Zone the Movie first!TL's lil bro has the Tempo this weekend so no trips to the drive-in. Don't matter since theyre still heaving helpings of fudge up on the screen anyway.<span style="font-style: italic;"> Horton Hears a Who?, </span>Dr. Suess?? Excuse me while I barf in my own mouth. for the second feature we got <span style="font-style: italic;">Run Fatboy Run</span> going, again like <span style="font-style: italic;">Drillbit Taylor</span> a great drive-in title hung on a movie that belongs in a perfumed theatre. what are they trying to pull with these bait and switch titles? you're thinking raucous summercamp comedy about fat kids stuffing their sweaty fat faces with PayDay candybars and peeping on chicks wearing soap bikinis in the shower but nooooooo instead you get a reformed romantic Simon Pegg quitting vices and shedding pounds to prove something to some girl he didnt want in the first place. pass thank you. note to Mr. Pegg: unless you and your mate Nick Frost are thumping zombies with a cricket bat or taking down a crooked town with heavy weaponry, KEEP IT IN THE THEATRES!!<br /> <br /> anyhow before i burst a blood vessel in my eye, onto this weeks drive-in worthy picture. if youre like me, and i know i am, you cannot resist a good nature runs amok and lots of humans get turned into chopped sirloin flick. for a while in the horror heyday these movies were pumped out of studios like gangbusters. every animal you can damn near think of was made a feature culprit in one of these things. the grandaddy and champion was and still is, of course <span style="font-style: italic;">Jaws.</span> for a while though movie makers were going with whatever animal could strike fear or just plain rip a new one into a person. <span style="font-style: italic;">Grizzly </span>had the killer bear, <span style="font-style: italic;">Venom, </span>the deadly snake, <span style="font-style: italic;">Alligator, The Pack, Squirm, Frogs,</span> the list is never ending. sometimes even different species would team up like a Saturday night wrestling fest, <span style="font-style: italic;">Day of the Animals. </span>There's a movie you need to view for yourself cause if you thought you'd never see Leslie Nielsen from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Naked Gun</span> films turn into a homicidal rapist and then try to bare knuckle fight a bear...baby you thought wrong!<br /><br /> our drive-in watch this week is a hefty slice of Bee A Dee called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Last Shark</span>. now i know right off youre thinking <span style="font-style: italic;">Jaws </span>ripoff right? well wrong-O it's actually a rip off of <span style="font-style: italic;">Jaws, Jaws 2</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Jaws 3</span>. now i will give it some credit for that because ripping off three movies that are essentially the same movie and then combining them into one movie has to be more complicated than it sounds. what we end up with here is a great white chewing up windsurfing wimps in too tiny trunks off the coast of a Florida that looks suspiciously like Italy. let's call it Flitaly. the folks in Flitaly love their windsurfing and their swimming in slow motion. the activities make for some agonizing scenes folks. when a few locals start turning into people chowder and its deduced that "no floatin' chainsaw" is responsible we get Vic Morrow with a dumb fake accent on scene saying "it was a shaaahhK!" from then on he, James Franciscus, and the obligatory oily politician character make war on the shaaahhK. war is hell and so is watching this movie. they try dynamite, they try shotguns, then they even try giving up and just telling people the shark can't get them in their homes. sounds reasonable to me but the thing is you can only keep the none too bright flitalians off their windsurfing boards for so long. so the town holds a regatta and the shark eats it. yes you read that right, he eats the whole regatta. the oily mayor comes under fire again and makes it a personal vendetta to turn the shark into StarKist Chunky. time for phony politician on phony shaaahhK action and guess who wins out there? mayor McMoron is bitten in two while trying to do the old hold onto the runner of a helicopter while it hovers above the water stunt. oh then the shark, apparently not full, eats the helicopter. yes you read that right too. a couple more folks get legs bit off before Vic and James go all out against the giant rubber beast and blast about $95 worth of red dye no.5 out of it. it's hard to say what could of improved this movie, a lot less windsurfing scenes would have been a good start but if you take those out the movie is only about 6 minutes. re-watch any and i sincerely mean any <span style="font-style: italic;">Jaws</span> film instead, <span style="font-style: italic;">the Last Shark</span> is a floater. *1/2*<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/z0l9f29zdBQ?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/z0l9f29zdBQ?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-49508805555771507882008-06-04T23:33:00.004-04:002012-02-06T23:27:19.617-05:00Your weekly reeker, Silent Ragealthough the drive isnt entirely dead it really may as well be. its back open, technically breathing, but guess what TL tells me theyre showing this week?? <span style="font-style: italic;">Drillbit Taylor</span>!! Friends this would be fine if our titular character was some geek in safety goggles running around punching the business end of a cordless DeWalt through teenagers temples but noooo its about a jerkstore Owen Wilson teaching shrimpy kids hows to stand up to bullies while he wins over the best looking teacher in an elementary school. Barfage!! This kind of crap (i’m being genereous there) has no place in the holy unholy church of the drive in. No sir. Family movies? Please keep them in the multiplexes! If someone hasnt been burned, beaten, double crossed, triple crossed, shot, stabbed, left for dead, stalked, drowned, raped, robbed, slapped silly, karate chopped, thrown off a building, hit by a car, or even just severely wronged in the first 5 or 10 minutes of a movie, then the damn movie does NOT belong at the drive in!!!<br /><br />i’m talking the fundamentals people and filmakers need to get back to ’em. that’s why i can’t fully blame the remaining drive ins today. there has been a severe shortage of true drive in worthy movies over the past 10 years. that being said i’d still rather take in some big budget horror junk like <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ruins</span> or the <span style="font-style: italic;">Prom Night</span> remake at a drive in than see whatever cool animal of the month junk <span style="font-style: italic;">Pixar</span> has churned out to much pussbag critical aclaim.<br /><br />me and Joe Bob are only two men though and even the mightiest of the mighty drive in crusaders is a bit aged these days. so in his honor and in honor of what the drive in once was and what it should damn well return to before someone we both know has to check on just how flammable that screen is, if you know what i mean, and i think you do, i’m going to do a weekly write up of a movie that once was or deserves to be a true blood, breasts and beasts, drive in movie.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>taking place in Texas, which automatically gets points from me, <span style="font-style: italic;">Silent Rage </span>is about as good of a crossbreed of <span style="font-style: italic;">Halloween</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Walking Tall</span> that you are ever gonna see. The drive in immortal Chuck Norris is poobah sheriff of a town that has just been the scene of a double axe wacking courtesy of a nutty buddy named John Kirby. seems that John cant get the top off his perscription bottle of crazy pills and when he calls his doctor for help and gets blown off, well the neighboorhood punks dressing up in capes and yelling "shit,shit,shit" proves to be too much for him and his already fragile computer shorts out. John, who by the way looks like the lovechild of Mojo Nixon and Tom Waits, gets an axe from a chicken coupe and quickly plants it in his neighboors face and then uses it to turn another neighboor into bologna tar tar. then sheriff Chuck-O shows up with lights flashing and uses a 2x4 to beat about $250 worth of pudding out of John and locks him up. John of course escapes by snapping his cuffs and Chucks backup force promptly fills John with so much lead that his pelvis could be converted into a pencil plant. pronounced dead at the scene Johns body is then shipped off to some lab where a lot of science things start to happen. namely a few doctors pump his carcass full of some junk that looks like Grape Hi C that not only brings him back to life but makes any wound heal on his body in seconds. we are talking indestructible zombie John now. in the meantime sheriff Chuck along with his dough boy deputy are keeping busy beating the bejabbers out of a biker gang who like to spend their afternoons ransacking the town bar and slurping beer off biker broads bare breasts. Chucky no likey this kinda horseplay in his town so he basically lays waste to about forty of the undesirables including throwing one of them WHILE HE'S ON his Bultaco motorbike through the picture window. the doughy deputy opts out of any real fisticuffs and just gives the play by play of seeing his first real nekkid woman over the police radio. this nekkid woman is about the scariest thing in the picture up to this point. she shamelessly flirts with deputy Crisco-head and then shows him her things which are all covered in Barqs rootbeer tattoos and the 400lb virgin nearly blows a gasket.<br /><br />thankfully it isnt too long before John Kirby is fully revived, sporting the obligatory slasher union suit and out and about stalking and snapping the necks of the doctors who were opposed to the experimental Grape Hi C deal the were doing on him. one doctor knows just how deadly and off the damn hinges John is and this prompts the films best line " i dont care if he kills 200 people, i am a scientist, not a moralist". well Mr. All Science No Morals and his assistant are both dead before the final act, John stabs one in the neck with a syringe full of acid and twists the others head off like a cap on a Coke bottle thus setting up the kick and punch show down between Chuck and the indestructible John Kirby. shoot ’em full of holes, toss him off a building, car crash with explosion and a flaming John Kirby? nope! Captain Timex aint stopping, he’s not even hurt. no sir the only thing thats taking this man down is kung freakin’ fu and of course Chuck is more than willing to oblige. we get a pretty good showdown in this one which as i said is sort of a slasher movie mixed with a karate movie. Chuck later did another one of these called <span style="font-style: italic;">Hero and the Terror </span>in the late 80’s but of the two i think <span style="font-style: italic;">Silent</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Rage</span> is the one worth the look. plenty action, some good killing and gore, excellent biker thrashing, science things, and about the most disgusting scene committed to film...Chuck in a nude love scene!!! save your popcorn bucket to barf in when that graces the screen! **1/2*<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgguh0db3w8W3REV0Fiq70RLuUPlxkGHvXN9lzznrXGNZbpo7Z_2FJ178QofQ50a1Ae2lPmFFh3xDprHjlL5XrU2iEW33VgzYAfmINBIBDa7OTlpMal2ukUlkwUD_f7g5wz6Za8Hv6kdQXp/s1600-h/cover.w200.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgguh0db3w8W3REV0Fiq70RLuUPlxkGHvXN9lzznrXGNZbpo7Z_2FJ178QofQ50a1Ae2lPmFFh3xDprHjlL5XrU2iEW33VgzYAfmINBIBDa7OTlpMal2ukUlkwUD_f7g5wz6Za8Hv6kdQXp/s400/cover.w200.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5208236986737284754" border="0" /></a>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788890857101835388.post-17785398952475457632008-06-04T22:36:00.002-04:002008-06-04T23:30:15.373-04:00prologue.<span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:georgia;">yeah so im really gonna date myself with this one, but out of sheer weekend boredom and with no one around willing to drive 40 minutes to see movies that dont belong in one, im going to share my thoughts and memories on my favourite childhood place. the drive-in.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">anyone who knows me well enough has heard me talk about the drive-in, the movies i've seen in them and the memories i .......remember from them. it sorta occured to me recently that my very first memory in life maybe from the drive-in. my parents and especially dear mother were out and out feinds for loading me into the car and driving out to whatever drive-in was at the time showing the most depraved piece of gore drenched, sex ridden filth imaginable. Bless their hearts! As i said the things i recall as my earliest memories were scenes from a picture called The Night Andy Came Home. Perfect drive-in title eh? I have in my adult years built a stout dvd collection, mostly horror and exploitation, and at one time tracked this actual title down and re-watched it. A charming tale of a young man shot dead in Vietnam only to return to his grief stricken family as a pale member of the living dead who has to choke neighborhood pets to death and inject murdered victims blood interveinously to keep from decaying. Re-released into drive-ins in 1977, that would of made its lasting impression on my yet unwrinkled thinker at an age of 2 years!!! Mom, Dad.....what were you thinking???? I was 2 and you have me propped up in the front seat of my fathers whatever muscle-car looking at zombie war veterans killing pets and squirting oodles of red out of syringes and running people down in flaming cars!??! Love you guys!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">many years and many drive-in weekends followed. john carpenters The Thing, a couple of the Jaws sequels and the re-release of the original, a great underrated horror film called Curtains, Amityvilles, Dressed to Kills, My Bloody Valentine, April Fool's Day, the Beast Within, the Car, Fulci and Argento films, multiple movies where an elderly Charles Bronson went around shooting holes in any street punk that happened to wrong him or just be outside that evening. Dawns and Days of the Deads, the Changeling, and a number of the Friday the 13ths. These became a yearly staple since a new Friday the 13th came out what seemed like every summer. I'd see the one sheet in the newspapers movie section and know what was in my weekend forecast...Jason hacking up horny teens, oh yeah! I have a couple particular "Friday the 13th at the drive in memories". One involving my mother playing a such a totally cruel and near pants shitting scary stunt on my young mind that i'm not even sure i want to re-tell it here. In part because a lot of close friends have heard it but also because if the wrong person read it child endangerment and or abuse charges may be filed and i've long gotten over the ire i once had about it. But this other memory, also involving Ma and being much less dramatic i'll share. 1980, im 5 years, Friday the 13th, the original is on the screen in all its glory. I'm sitting in the front seat livid with fear but for whatever reason more frightened to look away from the screen. My brother Richie is in the back and my mom sitting in the drivers seat next to me. In her wisdom mom thought tonites "drive-in treat" would be one dozen donuts, you see we'd always smuggle a food item in for dinner, sometimes pizza or sandwiches, tonite it was donuts, once again model parenting. I can remember that both my brother and i shyed away from any donuts with that creamy or jelly center intead favouring any other one with pink or white or brown frosting. That sorta puts mom at this point as to have eaten about four jelly donuts and then "it " happens. Now fans of the Friday series will know the exact scene im talking about when i say Kevin Bacon gets it good. If you dont know then ill give you the details Kevin Bacon is dispatched by a broad-point arrow coming through a mattress,the back of his neck and slowly puncturing his throat in a blood gushing, truly gag inducing moment. Gag is just what my mom did, she also rolled down the window and deposited every jelly donut she'd eaten in a tidy pile next to the car. The movies impact had vanished and my brother errupted in belly laffs and when i finally understood what had just happened i did too. Perhaps that trick my mother pulled on me at a later time was a bit of sweet revenge on her part although it was a pretty harsh bit.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">so there were more trips and more titles, more pranks and more memories until one by one, the drive-ins vanished. the last one in our area shut down in 1984 and the last movies i can remember seeing there was a double bill of Gremlins and the Goonies. not a bad note to go out on. in the past few years though the Delsea drive-in in Vineland has re-opened to quite a bit of success and while its good to have one back for nostalgia sake its just not the same. the Delsea is now, GASP, "family oriented". Joe Bob Briggs always used to say "the drive-in will never die" and to that Cris George Trout responds "not fully" because gone are the teen slasher, nature runs amok, blood soaked, everyman revenge pictures that the drive-ins of our day were built on. now the early showing is usually whatever tripe Pixar has going followed by whatever PG-13 rubbish is tops at the box office that week. still though its nice to be back there a few nites out of the summer especially with friends, old and new, who have never been to a drive-in. now who's got a car?!</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: georgia;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/061026/162828__bacon_l.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/061026/162828__bacon_l.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /></span>crishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07837837724856200557noreply@blogger.com0