Wrong Place at the Right Time
Mood:  incredulous
Cheeseburger called me out for not mentioning the model that I did not meet this weekend. The excuse "it's too painful" doesn't work on her, so here's the dilly-yo. It's true...my brother's next-door neighbors have a hot 20-year-old neighbor who occasionally stops by to play with my brother's poodle. She does some modeling on the side. She dropped by Xmas Eve while I was downstairs playing XBox and everyone neglected to tell me she was there, so I never even saw her. I heard her upstairs and asked my brother, "Who's up there?" "I don't know," he replied. Thanks for not honing those voice-recognition skills, dude. Otherwise, I'm sure my life would have changed for the better beginning at that exact moment. As Napoleon Dynamite says, "Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. You know, like numchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills..." Worst. Christmas. Ever.

My presents are pretty nice. Nothing expensive or glitzy, but certainly useful and thoughtful. Some stoneware, kitchen utensils, dish towels, recipe box (my sister-in-law likes to give me tasty crockpot recipes), a James T. Kirk notepad and pen, a James T. Kirk "Trouble With Tribbles" MiniMate (sweet), salt and peppercorn shakers... And a winning lottery ticket--$2! Flippin' sweet.

Which reminds me that my brother gave my dad a fake lottery ticket. He scratched off the numbers to discover that he was a $25,000 winner. Boy, was he excited, laughing and dancing and telling all of us about the Cadillac he was going to drive back to Illinois. When he started wondering where he was going to collect, he checked out the retailer information on the back. Take a look at what he discovered at this link. Thankfully, my dad had a good sense of humor about it. My brother's face was red from laughing so hard.

Cheeseburger and Shark Hunter are apparently up for a viewing of THE STABILIZER and SWITCHBLADE SISTERS this week. I think pretty much everyone has seen SWITCHBLADE SISTERS...well, THE STABILIZER too, for that matter, but I don't think one can watch THE STABILIZER too many times. THE STABILIZER is probably the best Crappy Movie ever made--idiotic, incompetent, action-packed, illogical, inept, filled with fashion faux pas, terrible dialogue, animal cruelty, bad music, and reckless, dangerous stuntwork. Obviously a must-see. Tolemite will back me up on that.

Are You A Pothead, Focker?
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: MEET THE PARENTS
Got home from St. Louis tonight, checked email (I had a lot) and Mobius, unpacked, had some five-day-old goulash, watched MEET THE PARENTS from Netflix in anticipation of possibly seeing the new sequel, MEET THE FOCKERS. It's a fairly decent comedy, unusually low-key for a modern Hollywood comedy, which usually has a joke every four seconds and closes with a huge action setpiece like a silly car chase or something. The story doesn't really hold together, but its main flaw is what usually happens in Ben Stiller movies, and that is that his character is completely unsympathetic. The movie wants you to root for him, but he's such an idiot that he deserves all the abuse he gets. DeNiro is extremely funny in it though and it's a pretty good time. The supporting cast is good too...and what was Phyllis George doing in it? Odd seeing her pop up...and looking damn good for 50.

OK, Christmas...well, what can I say? Not very eventful. I ate, read, slept, watched TV and played XBox. That's it. Spent a lot of time watching my brother play Halo 2 online. What's really cool about it is that you can engage in this elaborate combat scenarios online in real time with and against as many as 15 others who could be next door or on Mars, as long as they have Internet access. I played a little bit too, but spent most of my XBox time with Links 2004. Halo 2 is not really my style--I don't really get into games where you just run around shooting things--but playing online can be addicting. It sets you up in random situations like Capture the Flag, which can be fun. If you own this game, but you never play it online, you probably wasted your money, because you aren't getting its true value, for sure.

I was lucky enough to catch the end of Letterman the other night and Darlene Love's annual performance of "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)", which she originally sang 40 years ago on Phil Spector's classic Christmas album. She has performed it on the Letterman show ever since his NBC days, and it's always a big thrill; it's such a fantastic song, and even in her 60s, Darlene (whom you may recognize as Danny Glover's wife in the LETHAL WEAPON movies) has a fantastic voice.

I also picked up five crappy movies yesterday. My brother and I stopped into a Family Video, where I bought five of their used VHS tapes for $2.95 each. Quite a steal for MIAMI HORROR (sounds like a totally hilarious Italian SF/action pic), MARTIAL OUTLAW, two Leo Fong "classics" (KILLPOINT and LOW BLOW), and a pretty fun action movie with Lance Henriksen and Stephen Collins called CHOKE CANYON. Truthfully, it makes me a little sad to see obscure 20-year-old videos going to waste. I always have this nagging feeling that, one day, this tape of MIAMI HORROR will be the only one left on the planet. It isn't likely to ever show up on DVD, so when these tapes are gone, they're gone. Big bucks are going into preserving major films like SPARTACUS and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA; at the very least, I can put one copy of MIAMI HORROR away somewhere for the next generation of crappy-movie fans.

Have You Ever Heard A Gorilla Sing?
Mood:  quizzical
Now Playing: BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA
Well, now I've seen everything. Thanks to Horizon's White Elephant party, I was finally able to see one of cult cinema's most notorious pictures, BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA. No kidding--that's the title. I acquired it on a $1 (!) DVD from an outfit called Digiview, although I would bet that it's a bootleg of Alpha Video's DVD. Digiview might be a subsidiary of sorts, since the cover art seems to be the same, and you'd have to have balls to rip off someone's cover art as well as their DVD. That said, the audio and video presentation of Digiview's GORILLA is very good, especially for a film made in nine days for 50 grand back in 1952.

I might have to rewatch this on Toler's next visit. Not only does the plot involve mad scientist Bela changing a man into a gorilla (played by an actor in a suit), the film also features a pretty good trained chimp that walks on its hind legs, turns a key in its lock, opens doors, climbs into bed...it's actually impressive. If you're into monkeys, that is, which Tolemite definitely is.

GORILLA's reputation mainly rests on two features:
* its ridiculous title
* its unusual stars: Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo

Duke and Sammy were relatively noted at the time for being Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis impersonators. Duke didn't really look a lot like Dean, but he was a good-looking Italian guy who could sing a bit. Sammy's resemblance to Jerry, however, is uncanny. He isn't very funny, but he looks and sounds like Jerry, and is able to present a reasonable facsimile of Jerry's spastic screen persona. He and Duke could have used some better writers, though, because the gags in GORILLA are pretty weak.

In a nutshell, Duke and Jerry play Duke and Jerry, a pair of nightclub entertainers who accidentally fall out of an airplane (!) while luckily wearing parachutes (!!) and happen to drop onto a South Seas island populated by a native chief with a Brooklyn accent (!!!) and his smokin' hot daughter Nona (played by a yummy actress billed as Charlita). Also on the island is Dr. Zabor (Lugosi), who is in love with Nona, who also works as his assistant in the lab (the film establishes Nona as having an American college education, yet she has no idea what a clothing label is!!!...ah, I give up with the exclamation points). The story is as asinine as its setup; suffice to say that "hilarity" ensues, Duke does his signature tune, "'Deed I Do", Sammy screams and runs around, Bela gets to be Bela, and it's all pretty harmless, especially at 74 minutes.

Believe it or not, BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA is not Duke Mitchell's most interesting film. More than 20 years later, he wrote, produced, composed, directed and starred in a mobster flick titled THE EXECUTIONER. In this violent GODFATHER-inspired Mob movie that was filmed as LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON, Mitchell, billed as Dominico Miceli, plays Mimi Miceli, the son of a notorious mobster who was exiled to Italy years earlier. Leaving his young son in the Don's care, Mimi heads to Hollywood to look up his childhood pal Jolly. With Jolly serving as his muscle, Mimi decides to get back in the Mob's good graces by kidnapping the local Mafioso, Chicky, holding him for $250,000 ransom, and sending his thumb back as proof ("Yeah, that's his thumb. I seen it on him a million times."). For some reason, the Organization doesn't seem as pissed off about that as you would think, as Chicky gladly agrees to let bygones be bygones, accepting Mimi into his inner circle. From there, Mimi attempts to increase his territory, branching into prostitution and gambling, threatening a black pimp he calls "Super Spook", and killing a helluva lot of people.

THE EXECUTIONER is as confusing and crazy as it is sincere. Mitchell is not a particularly skilled writer or director, but his performance is pretty good. He's in every scene, many of them eaten up by loopy monologues in which he tells the story of his father being bashed on the head every day by competing street-corner fish merchants (!) or how the Cosa Nostra has grown obsolete by hippies who "screw for free". In between Mitchell's nutty rants ("You're either in or you're in the way!") are plenty of nudity, sleaze, and gory killings, including a crucifixion above the Hollywood Bowl, a guy hanging from a meathook in his eye, and lots of squibbed gunshots.

Technically, THE EXECUTIONER is quite crude, suffering from a fragmented storyline and indifferent acting from the supporting cast (to no surprise, several actors are identified in the closing crawl as first-time performers). It takes place over a series of years, which is difficult to pick up on at first, due to the fact that the costumes, vehicles and hairstyles are clearly 1970's, and Mitchell, with his slight build and helmet-hard Neil Diamond hairdo, barely resembles a tough guy. However, one has to admire his devotion to getting his story, said to be partially autobiographical, on screen, and while his dialogue and filmmaking technique may be laughable, the sincerity with which he presents them is not.

After BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA, Mitchell more or less fell out of show business until making THE EXECUTIONER in 1974, although it may not have been released theatrically until after his death. It was originally distributed by Matt Cimber (director of drive-in dreck like THE BLACK SIX) and retitled MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE. Joseph Juliano's Spartan Films later labeled it THE EXECUTIONER, the title under which it appeared on videotape by Video Gems. It's relatively difficult to see today, an alternately fascinating and hilarious peek behind the personality of Duke Mitchell. Maybe I should have Duke Mitchell Night at Crappy Movie Night sometime.

I'm heading out of town for the weekend, so I don't know if I'll do any posting 'til at least Sunday. My dad and I are driving to St. Louis to spend Christmas with my brother and his wife. Should be a pretty decent time, even though the temperature has been dangling around 10 degrees all week. At least my brother's house will be warmer than my apartment, which has a few drafty spots.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (for my Jewish readers...all one of them!), friends! Hope it's a safe and fruitful weekend for you. I also want to shout out to my boy Z, who posted a howdy in the Comments section a few days ago. How the hell did you even find me, dude?

Chicken's Lunch Thoughts
Last year, I kept track of every film that I watched, including the venue (theater, TV, VHS or DVD) and date. I was appalled to announce that I sat through 436 films in 2003. I'm even more appalled and embarrassed to admit that 2004's total will far exceed that of last year. And I thought I had more of a "life". Maybe not. I'll write more about the 2004 list in January, and I'm sure there'll be some startling stats to pass along.

I added Chicken's blog to my list of links over there on the right. Chicken's Lunch Thoughts is, um, a list of things Chicken thinks about at lunch every day. These started as daily emails and have now progressed to Web status. So make sure you add Chicken to your Daily Bookmarks along with Tolemite and Cheeseburger. And, uh, me, I hope.

BTW, his name isn't really Chicken Del Gosso, although I wish it was. His last name is DeRosa, but for some reason, when his landlord penned a nasty complaint letter about his roommate (whose last name was Hehn), it was about those rascally boys "Del Gosso and Helms". Sounds like a shortlived '70s cop show--"Burnin' rubber and breakin' rules! Poundin' the streets and mountin' the ladies! Del Gosso and Helms! This fall on ABC!"

Stay Home and Eat All the Freakin' Chips, Kip.
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: NAPPY D
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE arrived from Netflix today. Unfortunately, the disc seems to suffer from a pressing error that causes my DVD player to not read its audio track right away. While bouncing around the extras, I was having trouble getting any audio to play, and only by turning my receiver off and back on a couple of times was the audio able to "register". Perhaps it's just a compatibility issue with my player; I'll test it with my computer's DVD player later.

Anyway, I checked out a few of the extras, including PELUCA, the original 9-minute short film that inspired NAPOLEON. It's interesting, but so much of it was directly recycled into the feature that it works as a novelty at best. Some of the NAPOLEON deleted scenes have some real laughs, including Napoleon's pathetic attempt to buy a Lotto ticket and a funny dialogue exchange during a kickball game. I'm really looking forward to listening to the commentary track with director Jared Hess, star Jon Heder and producer Jeremy Coon.

Pedro: "Do you think people will vote for me?"
Napoleon: "Heck yes! I'd vote for you."
Pedro: "Like what are my skills?"
Napoleon: "Well, you have a sweet bike. And you're really good at hooking up with chicks. Plus you're like the only guy at school who has a mustache."

Who Loves Ya, Baby?
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Kojak and Sipowicz
Finally sat down with THE BELARUS FILE tonight, a tape I picked up over a year ago at the grocery store for $4.95. It's a KOJAK reunion TV-movie from the mid-1980s that presents a new case for that suave baldie Theo Kojak, played so smoothly by silky Telly Savalas, and features a few old series regulars in small supporting roles (sans Kevin Dobson, who was doing KNOTS LANDING at the time). It's a solid mystery shot in New York and features the great Max von Sydow (THE SEVENTH SEAL) as a Russian survivor of a Nazi death camp who may or may not be murdering his fellow inmates 40 years later in New York City. It isn't action-packed or sensational or glossy or rat-a-tat-tat, merely an engrossing police procedural with clues and conversations and not a single Crime Scene Investigator in sight. THE BELARUS FILE isn't particularly memorable, but it's well-written and performed, the kind of quiet mystery network television appears to have forgotten about.

I'm also sadly anticipating the final episode of NYPD BLUE, which is scheduled for March 1. In typical get-no-respect-from-ABC form, tonight's episode ended in a cliffhanger (unusual for this series), which isn't so bad in and of itself, but the fact that ABC isn't airing the second part for another three weeks is infuriating. It looks like the show is already setting the groundwork for its finale, with stammering cop Medavoy (the underrated Gordon Clapp) hooking up with a hot new girlfriend (remember Mary Page Keller from '90s sitcoms like BABY TALK and OPEN HOUSE? I didn't think so.) and a new gig selling real estate.

I had an unexpected visit from an old friend tonight, who dropped by with his girlfriend. He and I used to be close, but we had a severe falling-out several years ago. And it was about, of all things, a woman. There's a lot to the story, but suffice to say that I was brutally victimized and rightfully took it personally for a long time, not so much because of the woman, but because of the underhanded way in which my friend screwed me over and continued to do so for years afterward, even after his relationship with this woman had ended. Every once in awhile, he pops up to get back into my good graces. He's never made a serious attempt to explain or apologize for his actions, but in his own clumsy way, he has attempted to slowly make amends. I was pretty surprised to see him drop by unannounced tonight. It was a little uncomfortable for me, as it always is whenever we're thrust together (because we have mutual friends), but I became more relaxed. He was here about an hour, and even though the conversation never really moved past small talk and "have you seen so-and-so lately" and stuff like that, I have to admit that it wasn't so bad. I don't think I'm ready to hang out with the guy all the time...maybe I never will be...but I don't think I'll feel so awkward the next time I run into him.

My VHS collection numbers about 700 or more. While I won't inflict the whole list upon you, every once in awhile I'll lay a few titles on you.
1000 Convicts and a Woman (not nearly as sleazy as it sounds)
1990 World Series (Go, Reds!)
1990: The Bronx Warriors
2019: After the Fall of New York
2020 Texas Gladiators
25x5: The Continuing Adventures of the Rolling Stones
36th Chamber of Shaolin, The
Abby (a hilarious blaxploitation EXORCIST ripoff)
Abductors, The (foxy Cheri Caffaro IS Ginger)
Abominable Dr. Phibes, The (Vinnie Price is a genius)
Accidental Spy, The (original HK cut)
Adam-12 (TV series)
Adios, Sabata
Adventures of Captain Marvel, The (serial)
Adventures of El Frenetico and Go-Girl, The
Adventures of Fu Manchu, The (TV series)
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The (TV series)
Adventures of Superman, The (TV series)
Agency
Agent of Death
Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV series)
Alice in Wonderland (1976) (X-rated cut)
Alien Terminator (with Maria Ford)
Alone in the Dark (Palance, Landau, Pleasence and Howling Mad Murdock!)
Amazons and Supermen (crazy Italian acrobat superheroes rule)
America 3000
American Dragons
Angie (TV series)
Annihilators, The
Arousers, The
Assault, The
Astounding She-Monster, The
A-Team, The (TV series)
Atom Man vs. Superman (serial)
Atomic Brain, The
Attack of the 50 Foot Monstermania
Avenger, The
Avengers, The (TV series)
Avenging Force (Michael Dudikoff's best film--this needs to be on DVD--get off your ass, MGM!)

Wanna See My DVD Collection?
Mood:  mischievious
I've got 453 titles lining my shelves. How many of these have you seen? And which ones would you like to see?

10 to Midnight
1941
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Abbott & Costello Go to Mars
Abbott & Costello in the Foreign Legion
Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein
Abbott & Costello Meet the Invisible Man
Abbott & Costello Meet the Killer
Abyss, The
Across 110th Street
Active Stealth
Adventures of Robin Hood, The
Africa Screams
Air Marshal
Airport
Airport 1975
Airport '77
Alien
All Monsters Attack!
Allnighter, The
American Ninja 2: The Confrontation
American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt
Angel
Angel III: The Final Chapter
Arena, The
Arlington Road
Army of Darkness
Assassin
Assault on Precinct 13
Assignment: Outer Space
Asylum of Satan
Attack from Space
Avengers, The: '65, Set 1
Avenging Angel
Bail Out
Barbarella
Barbarians, The
Baretta: Season One
Basket Case
Bat Masterson
Batman
Battle Beyond the Stars
Battle of Blood Island
Beast of Blood
Beastmaster, The
Behind the Planet of the Apes
Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla
Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens
Best of Times, The
Beverly Hills Cop
Big Bosoms, Square Jaws
Big Trouble in Little China
Black Brigade
Black Caesar
Black Christmas
Black Cobra
Black Cobra II
Black Fist
Black Gestapo
Black Hole, The
Black Six, The
Black Sunday
Blackbelt
Blood and Black Lace
Bloodstained Shadow, The
Bloody Pit of Horror
Blue Sunshine
Blue Thunder
Bond Girls Are Forever
Boston Blackie
Braddock: Missing in Action III
Breakin'
Brides of Blood
Bronx Executioner
Bummer!
C.B. Hustlers
C.H.U.D.
Capricorn One
Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter
Case of the Bloody Iris, The
Cheerleader Camp
China Syndrome, The
Choppers, The
Chopping Mall
CIA: Code Name Alexa
City of the Dead
Cleopatra Jones
Clerks: The Animated Series
Code of Silence
Coffy
Columbo: Season One
Comin' Round the Mountain
Conan the Barbarian
Concrete Cowboys
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Countess Dracula
Curse of the Voodoo
Dawn of the Dead
Dead & Buried
Dead Heat
Dead Men Walk
Death Curse of Tartu
Death Valley Days
Death Wish 3
Deathsport
Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans
Delta Force 2
Demons of the Mind
Deputy, The
Destroy All Monsters
Devil Bat, The
Die Another Day
Django
Django Kill
Dolemite
Doomed to Die
Double Nickels
Dracula vs. Frankenstein
Dragnet
Dreamscape
Drive
Drums of Fu Manchu
Educational Archives: Social Engineering 101
Empire of the Ants
Erotic Adventures of Zorro, The
Escape 2000
Escape from New York
Escape to Witch Mountain
Eurotrip
Evil Brain from Outer Space
Evil Dead II
Evil Dead, The
Executive Target
Exorcist: Special Edition, The
Extra Weird Sampler
Extreme Limits
Eye for an Eye, An
Fantastic Voyage
Fear in the Night
Fiend Without a Face
Firestorm
First Blood
First Nudie Musical, The
Fistful of Dollars, A
Flash Gordon
Fog, The
For a Few Dollars More
For Your Eyes Only
Foxy Brown
Freaks and Geeks: The Complete Series
French Connection II
French Connection, The
Friday the 13th: From Crystal Lake to Manhattan
From Dusk Till Dawn
Gauntlet, The
Godmonster of Indian Flats
GoldenEye
Goliath and the Dragon
Good Guys Wear Black
Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The
Grand Theft Auto
Great Escape, The
Great Texas Dynamite Chase, The
Greatest '70s Cop Shows, The
Gremlins
Guns of Navarone, The
H.O.T.S.
Halloween
Hammer
Hands of Steel
Hang 'Em High
Have Gun-Will Travel: The Complete First Season
Hawk of Powder River, The
Hercules Against the Moon Men
Highlander: 10th Anniversary Director's Cut
Highway Patrol
Hijack
Hitch Hike to Hell
Hollywood Boulevard
Horror Hospital
Horror of Hammer, The
House
House II: The Second Story
Howling, The
Hudson Hawk
Humanoids from the Deep
I Spit on Your Grave
I Spy #1
I Spy #10
I Spy #11
I Spy #12
I Spy #13
I Spy #14
I Spy #2
I Spy #20
I Spy #21
I Spy #3
I Spy #4
I Spy #5
I Spy #6
I Spy #7
I Spy #8
I Spy #9
Incident on a Dark Street
Incredible Hulk, The
Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, The
Incubus
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
In-Laws, The
Inseminoid
Intruder, The
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Invasion U.S.A.
Jaws
Jekyll & Hyde...Together Again
Johnny Firecloud
Jonny Quest: The Complete First Season
Judgment at Nuremberg
Jungle Girl
Kentucky Fried Movie
Kickboxer 3: The Art of War
Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor
Kidnapped Co-Ed
Killing Cars
Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects
Komodo
Krull
L.A. Confidential
Land of the Free
Last American Virgin, The
Lawless Years, The
Legend of the Eight Samurai
Lethal Weapon 4
License to Kill
Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, The
Lifeforce
Living Daylights, The
Logan's Run
Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold, The
Lone Ranger, The
Lone Wolf McQuade
Lost in Alaska
Lost in Space
Macon County Line
Mad Doctor of Blood Island
Magnum Force
Man Behind the Badge, The
Man with the Golden Gun, The
Manchurian Candidate, The
Manhunter
Mannaja
Mechanic, The
Messenger of Death
Mexican Hayride
Mighty Gorga, The
Missing in Action 2: The Beginning
Monkees: Season One, The
Monkees: Season Two, The
Moonfire
Mr. Majestyk
Murder on Flight 502
Murphy's Law
Naked City: Button in the Haystack
Night of the Bloody Apes
Night Shift
Night Stalker, The
Night Strangler, The
Nightmare at Noon
No Escape
Office Space
Once Upon a Time in the West
One Million AC/DC
Operation Delta Force 2: Mayday
Operation Delta Force 3: Clear Target
Osterman Weekend, The
Outland
Phantasm
Phantom Empire, The
Phantom of the Paradise
Phantom, The
Phase IV
Pieces
Piranha
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Poseidon Adventure, The
Prisoner: Vol. 1, The
Prisoner: Vol. 2, The
Prisoner: Vol. 3, The
Prisoner: Vol. 4, The
Prowler, The
Quatermass 2
Quatermass and the Pit
Rage of Honor
Rage of the Master
Raiders of the Living Dead
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rambo III
Rambo: First Blood Part II
Rangers
Raw Deal
Raw Meat
Return from Witch Mountain
Return of Swamp Thing, The
Return of the Streetfighter
Revenge of the Ninja
Richard Diamond, Private Detective
Rifleman, The
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire 2: Blood and Steel
Road Games
Road House
Robot Monster
Rock 'n' Roll High School
Rockshow
Rollerball
Rough Night in Jericho
Run Man Run
Santo y Blue Demon contra Dracula y el Hombre Lobo
Satanic Rites of Dracula, The
Satan's Children
Say Anything...
Scalps
Scanners
Scream 3
Scream in the Streets, A
Sender, The
Sex Killer, The
Shaft
Shaft in Africa
Shaft's Big Score!
Shaker Run
Shape of Things to Come, The
Shark Zone
Shatter
Shell Shock
Shock Waves
Short Night of Glass Dolls
Shotgun Slade
Silent Rage
Sister Streetfighter
Six Days, Seven Nights
Skyscraper
Sledge Hammer: Season One
Sleepaway Camp
Sneakers
Spartan
Special Forces
Species
Splash
Spy Who Loved Me, The
Stabilizer, The
Stage to Mesa City
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Original Series, Vol. 1
Star Trek: The Original Series, Vol. 2
Starsky & Hutch: The Complete First Season
Steel Frontier
Stepmom
Sting of Death
Stories of the Century
Strange Brew
Streetfighter, The
Stunt Man, The
Stunts
Substitute 3: Winner Takes All, The
Substitute, The
Sugarfoot
Super Troopers
Supergirl
Superman vs. Nature & War
Superman vs. the Monsters & Villains
Superman: The Movie
Supervixens
Swap, The
Swarm, The
Sweeney 2
Sweeney!
Sweeper, The
Sweepers
Switchblade Sisters
Sword and the Sorcerer, The
Terror, The
Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The
The Concorde: Airport '79
Thief
Thing with Two Heads, The
Thing, The
Thunderball
Thunderbird 6
Thunderbirds Are Go
Tingler, The
T-Men
To Live and Die in L.A.
Tomorrow Never Dies
Top Dog
Tourist Trap
Tower of Evil
Towering Inferno, The
Traffic
Treasure Hunt
Trespass
Trial and Error
Two-Minute Warning
Used Cars
V: The Original Miniseries
Vampire Lovers, The
Vampirella
Van, The
Vanishing Point
Venom
Venomous
Verdict, The
Victory
Vigilante
Violent City
Virtual Assassin
Vixen
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet
Wagon Train
Walking Tall
Walking Tall, Part II
Walking Tall: The Final Chapter
WarGames
Warning from Space
Warriors of the Wasteland
Warriors, The
Whip and the Body, The
Who Saw Her Die
Wraith, The
You Only Live Twice
Zero In and Scream
Zero Woman Returns
Zodiac Killer, The
Zorro's Fighting Legion

4 for 4
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: SECRET AGENT
"We...are the champions, my friends..."

The Marketing department had its annual White Elephant party today. If you don't know what that is, everyone brings in one wrapped gift, either something decent or something crappy. Everyone chooses a gift one at a time and opens it. Each successive person has the option to either open a new gift or steal one that belongs to somebody else. In the second round, after everyone has an open gift, each person has the opportunity to steal from someone else or keep what he has. Each gift can be stolen a maximum of three times, so there is some skill involved.

Each of the past four years, I have walked away with a better gift than I walked in with. Of course, it helps when you like a lot of stupid shit that nobody else does. For instance, this year I made off with five cheapjack $1 DVDs of PD (?) titles like THE DEVIL BAT with Bela Lugosi, DEAD MEN WALK with George Zucco and BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA. Oh, yeah, there was a bag of puffed rice (!) in the box too.

It's also a good opportunity to clean out my VHS collection. I unloaded MARTIAL LAW II (Cynthia Rothrock), TERMINAL RUSH (Don "The Dragon" Wilson) and FORTRESS 2 (Christopher Lambert) on some poor soul today. I don't think they got a good home either, which actually makes me kinda sad for some stupid reason.

I finished the first SECRET AGENT disc tonight. Excellent series, sort of the anti-MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. and closer to I SPY than to any other TV spy show. Patrick McGoohan is a gripping lead, and the directors used MGM's British backlot to great advantage in showcasing the scripts' foreign locales. McGoohan is unfortunately semi-retired in Los Angeles these days, but you might have recognized him as Billy Zane's father in THE PHANTOM, King Edward in BRAVEHEART or the judge in A TIME TO KILL.

A Fingerprint on the Window of a Skyscraper
Now Playing: SIDEWAYS
Caught SIDEWAYS tonight at the Savoy 16. Even though it was about 132 degrees in the theater, I was still quite taken with this bittersweet comedy that offers extraordinary performances by Paul Giamatti, whom you may know from AMERICAN SPLENDOR, and Virginia Madsen and very good performances by Sandra Oh, whom I never saw before, and--surprisingly--Thomas Haden Church, the dumb guy on a dumb '90s sitcom called WINGS. As much as I admired SIDEWAYS and adored listening to its characters talk, I found it very difficult at times for personal reasons. I identified a bit too strongly with the Giamatti character--his dwelling and wardrobe, his passion for an obscure hobby, the loneliness of his shattered dreams and failed ambitions. Still, he's a basically decent man who comes to realize that his innate goodness is a by-product of what he had previously believed to be shortcomings, and SIDEWAYS ends on a hopeful note. Maybe it's a message for me to hang in there.

To illustrate how ridiculous my life can be, Tolemite ("Tolemite is my name, and fuckin' up motha'fucka's is my game!") and I began the day by watching the complete opposite of SIDEWAYS: a pretty bad Italian horror picture called THE GREAT ALLIGATOR with major hottie Barbara Bach as an anthropologist/hotel manager who runs Mel Ferrer's new resort in Africa/South America/Peru (the film never deigns to say) and is kidnapped, stripped and trussed up by primitive natives to be served up a sacrifice to their god, a killer 'gator called Kuma that's chomping down on all the guests. Thanks for visiting, Toler (which is "Relot" spelled backwards).

In between, I hit the Apple Dumpling buffet, which left me bloated for the rest of the day (I haven't had a bite since). Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, beef and noodles, corn, bread...good grief, I just couldn't stop. That the Dumpling has perhaps the best food in town doesn't help curb my desire to pound it until I burst. Maybe I'll eat tomorrow; I should be ready to go by then. I think.

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.