Deep Hurting
Mood:  crushed out
Now Playing: Pure, unadulterated crap
Whew! It has been one long crazy night of crappy movie watching. Tolemite dropped into town tonight, so we rounded up most of the gang and treated ourselves to a special Crappy Movie Night revolving around a holiday theme. Plenty of pizza, donuts, sausage, cheese, Miller High Life, wine, Red Can and little Reese's (thanks, Cheeseburger) were consumed in the process.

First off was the infamous STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL, which aired on CBS in 1979 and has not been seen publicly since; it isn't even on home video as a DVD extra. It's not hard to guess why, as it's extremely bad and George Lucas has presumably washed his hands of it. All of the major STAR WARS cast members contribute, including Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, who you can bet doesn't pull it out around his house on Xmas Day. The show revolves around "Life Day" on the Wookie planet, as Chewbacca's wife, father and son (!) wait around the treehouse for him and Han Solo to return, while Imperial guards invade. It's hard to guess who the intended audience for this was; it's too boring for kids, and too stupid for adults. At one point, Grandpa Wookie uses a virtual reality device for a sexual fantasy involving Diahann Carroll! Harvey Korman appears as three characters, including a transvestite robot chef, and Jefferson Starship performs a wretched song during a laser show. Bea Arthur and Art Carney are in it too. Truthfully, the highlight of the tape are the original commercials, which include promos for upcoming CBS specials like BOBBY VINTON'S ROCK 'N' ROLLERS (which include Erik Estrada and Fabian) and LUCY COMES TO NASHVILLE, in which Lucille Ball frolics at the Grand Ol' Opry with Mel Tillis and Lynn Anderson. Oh, man, do they look terrible.

Next was CHOPPING MALL, a Jim Wynorski film for Roger Corman about horny teenagers who are locked inside a mall overnight with three berserk security robots that use lasers, stun guns and sharp pincers to kill their victims. In addition to some boobs, lots of action and one of the best exploding heads I've ever seen (SCANNERS is still #1), CHOPPING MALL (originally titled KILLBOTS) provides some neat in-jokes, such as the casting of genre favorites Dick Miller (A BUCKET OF BLOOD), Mel Welles (LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS), Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel reprising their EATING RAOUL characters, Barbara Crampton (RE-ANIMATOR) and Angus Scrimm (PHANTASM).

I wrote about SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT here at Mobius Home Video Forum. It's about as tasteless as you can imagine, featuring strong anti-woman and anti-Catholic biases. The highlight is Linnea Quigley's death scene, as she is impaled while topless on a pair of reindeer antlers mounted on a wall. I don't think anyone has copied that move.

Chuck Norris was one of America's biggest box-office stars at the time he made INVASION U.S.A. for Cannon. As retired Company agent Matt Hunter, Norris spends his free time wrestling alligators and trading quips with his grizzled Indian neighbor outside his ramshackle shack in the Everglades. He reluctantly returns to action when a large gang of godless Commie terrorists led by old foe Rostov (Richard Lynch) invades Florida and starts blowing up school buses, shooting up shopping malls, turning citizens against authority and generally making Christmas a big bummer. Although it makes sense to let the Army, Marines, National Guard, FBI, etc. in on the caper, Chuck's condition for stopping Rostov is "I work alone!" so, while hundreds of terrorists roam the Sunshine State mowing down innocent civilians, he cruises around town in his pickup truck looking for bad guys, blasting them with his twin-holstered Uzis, and moving on to the next target. Characterization is kept to a bare minimum, and the whole film is merely a series of setpieces in which Norris stumbles onto someone in danger and blows the bad guys away. There's no detective work involved in which he is able to deduce where Rostov's men will pop up next. No, he just drives around until he accidentally discovers the script's next action scene. A lot of bullets fly in this movie, and director Joseph Zito, who previously worked with Norris on MISSING IN ACTION, at least keeps things moving fairly quickly, tossing in a few smooth dolly shots and splashing enough blood on the screen to keep nondiscriminating audience members (like me) from getting bored. Working with a reported $10 million budget, Zito manages to get it all on the screen, photographing enough exploding houses, squibbed chests and burning men to keep Cannon's stunt crew plenty busy. INVASION U.S.A. may be stupid, crude and confusing, but it certainly isn't boring, and is pretty typical of the fun but empty-headed stuff Cannon was putting out in the mid-'80s.

By 1:00am, most of the crew was still hanging in there, and we finished the night with MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000's presentation of SANTA CLAUS, a Mexican fantasy in which Pitch, a Satanic minion with red skin, horns and a tail, tries to prevent Santa from making his rounds on Christmas Eve. Very strange, to say the least, and one of MST3K's better shows, even if it does feature Mike.

Time to get some rest before attacking the Apple Dumpling buffet tomorrow. I'll need all my strength for that raid.