Mayonnaise Bathtub

TROLL 2 (1990)

2010-12-14T00:32:00.000-08:00

A family vacations in a town of vegetarian goblins that turn humans into plants and then eat them.

One was not enough because this is not a sequel, and it's not about trolls. At all.

This movie is about so many other things. So many things.

Why does that girl have freckles drawn on with eyeliner?
Is the father adjusting his belt about to urinate on his son or whip his ass or...go on hunger strike?
Why is dead Grandpa Seth only selectively visible?
Who was in charge of costume continuity?
Which amazing acting school did Deborah Reed attend?
Have you ever seduced a grown man with Frederick's of Hollywood lingerie and a corncob?
And then done it so hard it made popcorn?
WHAT IS THE CHEMICAL PROCESS BY WHICH HUMAN FLESH BECOMES VEGETATION????? WHAT ENZYMES COULD POSSIBLY BE INVOLVED??? HOW??? HOW??? HOW??? DO YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT LIFE?????????

You will be asking yourself all these questions and more.

Personal confession:

I resisted watching this movie for a long time, because I was thoroughly queased out by the clips I'd seen of the goblins eating green mushy things and making the same disgusting toothless gum-smacking noises my cat breathes in my face at the crack of every dawn.

Oh I was wrong.

So wrong.

So wrong I'm giving myself corner time and deferring to my girl C-$'s writeup while I think about how wrong I was.

In conclusion, OH MY GOD:

Special thanks to C-$ and Tina for hosting.

MB Shoutout: Joel Modelo

2010-09-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

Did you have to miss both last weekend's screening of NINJA TURF aka LA STREETFIGHTERS and the prior weekend's screening of MIAMI CONNECTION? Don't feel sad. Joel is here to keep you informed.

INCUBUS (1965)

2010-09-04T20:33:00.000-07:00

William Shatner battles mod/hippie nuns who sacrifice innocent men's souls to the devil.

Three things you need to know about this movie right away:

1. William Shatner.

2. Its dialogue is entirely in Esperanto, the "universal language" that is spoken all over the world but by not very many people in a given spot.

3. It was shot by Conrad Hall, the DP who later won Oscars for his work on BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID, AMERICAN BEAUTY, and ROAD TO PERDITION.

Big Sur, the years of thick liquid eyeliner and cotton macrame pullovers. Also the years of moody black-and-white high contrast film stock. Under the supervision of her Mother Superior-type person Amael, mod/hippie nun Kia spends her days like a more active/less cerebral version of THE SEVENTH SEAL: She lures unsuspecting young fellows to drink from a roofie-filled well, then coaxes them into the sea with promises of doing it - only to drown them beneath her sandaled foot. Once their prey are dead, the ladies donate the bodies to their Dark Lord, Milos Milos in an ill-fitting button-down shirt. Which, creepy for real: Shortly after they wrapped, Milos Milos killed Mickey Rooney's wife and then himself*. So perhaps playing evil was...not a huge stretch.

Be that as it may, Kia's scheme works fine until she tries it on The Shat, whose soul cannot be bought because it is made of pure love. He has looked Death in the eye and wished him rainbows and kitten kisses and well-won chess games, warns Amael, but Kia must have him. She happens upon his homestead pretending to be a lost traveler, bats her liquid eyeliner at him during an eclipse until he gives her a blanket, and then seduces him away from his sister (sister in incest? hard to tell, and again, creepy), who has been dumb enough to look straight at the eclipse with her own liquid eyeliner even after The Shat specifically tells her not to.

While the sister is discovering her new self-inflicted disability and getting kidnapped to the satanic nunnery, Kia leads The Shat to the roofie well, which doesn't doesn't work on him due to said purity of soul. She goes straight to the hard-sell - some good times beneath the trees - but he doesn't just want a roll in the hay, he wants, like, romance and eternal whatnot. Naturally, she redoubles her efforts, during which The Shat carries his jacket with him everywhere. Kia and Amael use the kidnapped sister as bait to lure him and his jacket. At some point Kia passes out and The Shat brings her unconscious body into a church, where she wakes and runs screaming - only to get attacked by a goat head puppet interspersed with an actual goat menacingly licking its lips**. There is of course a climactic battle between good and evil, complete with large bat wings, and you can probably guess who wins but it's worth watching to find out, and PS the sister gets her sight back, Praise Fred B. Phillips, credited makeup artist.

Subtitles are available in English and French.

*More about this and "the curse of INCUBUS" in this Salon article from the 1999 re-release.

**This turned out to be the stuff of nightmares, probably thanks in large part to the late night chicken mole tacos and goat head sized Diet Coke.

Special thanks to Amanda Jude for hosting.

SEX AND THE CITY 2 (2010)

2010-06-06T23:08:00.000-07:00

Four wealthy BFFs yearning "to go somewhere RICH!!!" jet off to Abu Dhabi OMGWTFUAEWHY.

I've never taken 80 hits of acid at once, but this must be what it's like. Liza Minelli performs a jazzy version of "Single Ladies" with two doppelganger backup singers, then Sarah Jessica Parker's husband watches a lot of infomercials, and vaginal yam solvents are applied during (glass-walled) office hours. After that, each protagonist gets her very own on-call Arab to non-metaphorically warm her midnight milk. Then there is a movie-within-a-movie entitled HEART OF THE DESERT (one-sheet: shirtless white hunk cradling helpless brown child); public narghile fellation; Helen Reddy karaoke as rousing international female anthem, with belly dancers; and Ken-on-Barbie missionary touted as "sizzling hot" that appears only marginally sexier than re-grouting the bathroom. Also, the best, and sorry if this is a spoiler but it is just too astounding not to share: Muslim ladies secretly sporting this spring's couture lines beneath their abayas...in 100+ degree weather...at their Suzanne Somers book club meeting. FASHION WILL NOT BE OPPRESSED, SISTER, AND ALL'S COMPANY HERE!!!

The above are just a select few highlights, mind you. These 146 minutes are stylized within an inch of their very lives, and each moment offers new delectations of cognitive dissonance.

The only thing that could possibly make it more over the top would be to have the girls played by FTM drag queens, and to have all of the infomercial footage be Shake Weight advertisements.

If there is a god this will happen asap.

TRIPLE X PRESENTS: THE BEST OF LEZSPLOITATION (2007)

2010-05-03T22:25:00.000-07:00

Pretty much what it sounds like.

This still is from DAUGHTERS OF LESBOS, which has the best narration ever: "She was constructing a sexual pyramid."

47 minutes of just the good parts, ma'am! Filmmaker Michelle Johnson aka Triple X has lovingly assembled a grindhouse-era montage of what the Outfest blurb calls "seduction and consummation among schoolmates, cellmates, swingers, nuns and vampires." That's right! Just the naked ladies doing what feels natural, with none of the condescending, rapey tripe that usually surrounds such footage. PS the sound is amazing, especially given what Johnson had to work with.

QUIZ: SHOULD YOU WATCH THE BEST OF LEZSPLOITATION?

Check off which of these items you enjoy:

_suburban housefraus picking up hitchhiking hippie lovechildren
_proto-butches performing arbitrary - and arbitrarily naked - jail calisthenics
_nuns riding the fast train to hell (i.e. each other)
_vampire lesbians jumping out of grandfather clocks on the stroke of midnight

Why are you still reading this? Go watch it!!!

STUNT ROCK (1978)

2010-04-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

Real-life Australian stunt man Grant Page moves to Hollywood, hangs out with his cousin's real-life metal band, Sorcery; after an hour-and-a-half of stunt montages, they mount an unforgettable stage fusion of STUNTS AND ROCK.

STUNTS. And ROCK. Together at last, in a movie to which Michael Bay might totally spank it morning, noon, and night.

STUNT ROCK's appeal is pure, unfettered by story: the cliff-diving...the ziplining...the human torching...the human torch ziplining off a cliff. The squibs, the rappelling, the motocross, the upside-down biplane commandeering, the jumping from the roof of one high-speed Cadillac into the backseat of another, the martial art of soda bottle-breaking, the man-to-tiger combat, the explosion after explosion after explosion - all in fearless double and triple split-screens to maximize said purity of appeal.

This movie relies heavily on clips from Grant Page's actual career - I'm guessing most of the budget went to clearance rights. One such clip - from MAD DOG MORGAN (1976) - features Page as part of Dennis Hopper's (onscreen) nightmares. You're probably thinking that the nightmares of Dennis Hopper must be pretty cinematic, and you are so right about that: Page emerges from a lake completely aflame, flies vertically through the air up a cliff and jumps into Hopper's face, scaring the bejeesus out of him and making our viewing party gasp-clutch-pearls screaming "OMG IT'S DENNIS HOPPER!!!!!" It was obviously cliff-jumping-on-fire footage run backwards, and it was equally obviously AWESOME.

While most of the stunts do involve 1970s style cliff jumps, fire, and cliff jumps on fire, there is also some indescribably shredtastic footage of stunts from the 1920s - highwires over New York City, headstands on skyscraper cornices, dudes jumping from rooftop to rooftop over thin air. All in black-and-white, all from back in the day when there was no such thing as greenscreen, when these sorts of activities were that much more dangerous. So just think about that for a moment.

While Page is busy jumping off the Paramount watertower (oh yeah, a plot point, but just the one - he moves to Hollywood to stunt-double on a show called "Undercover Girl"*), Sorcery is tearing up the studio and the stage with their King Of The Wizards Vs. Prince Of Darkness show. Have you ever seen a wizard on fire? Look no further. Sorcery, for real, opened for Van Halen's very first show, opened for Black Sabbath after that, and offers fat, deep early metal grooves that will rock off socks that you don't even wear, like before you even think about how cold your feet are and wouldn't it be nice to...IT'S SORCERY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The stage shows - all three nights of them - are full of magic illusions conducted with somewhat undersized props. Also, fire. Did I mention that there is a lot of fire in this film? One could almost call it symbolic of...itself. In the third show's finale, Page successfully helps Sorcery unite STUNTS and ROCK 4-ever by getting tied to a thing onstage and set on fire (again), then disappearing!, only to somehow sneak to the back of the house and zipline over the crowd in a STUNT to rejoin, onstage, the ROCK. And, happy ending. Especially for Michael Bay.

PS Grant Page is still tearing it up. DOUBLE DEVIL HORNS = TOO MUCH METAL FOR ONE HAND.

*unfortunately not about asskicking private investigator female-identified drag kings but at least it does involve skintight gold lame jumpsuits.

Special thanks to John and Amanda for hosting, specialer thanks to John for letting me wear his spare STUNT ROCK teeshirt, and specialest thanks to Brian for mentioning this movie in the first place. At El Cholo. In the booth where Monte Hellman wrote TWO-LANE BLACKTOP.

MEGA PIRANHA (2010) - part one-point-five of two

2010-04-24T01:59:00.000-07:00

Curses! Due to a TiVo crisis*, further analysis of killer fish is on hold. We watched JURASSIC PARK III instead, and, well, beyond the ALL SUBTEXT ALL THE TIME dialogue, what can you say about a nicely-structured nonstop action movie with good effects where Allesandro Nivola looks buff and flexes conspicuously? Shoutout to William H. Macy's moustache. Seriously it looks like a small mammal took up residence on his upper lip. I so hope he grew it himself.

Anyway, please enjoy this MEGA PIRANHA consolation prize interview with Tiffany.

*Is it possible to overstuff a TiVo until older picks drop out? All of a sudden it was filled with a certain housemate's people-yelling-loudly-about-politics shows, with last week's Syfy selections nowhere to be found.

Special thanks to Julie for hosting, and to Quincy for technical support.

MEGA PIRANHA (2010) - part one of two

2010-04-22T21:31:00.000-07:00

Oversized deadly fish chomp their way up the Amazon, destroying everything and everyone in their path.

Good-hearted ichthyologist Tiffany - Tiffany "I Think We're Alone Now" Tiffany, no last name required, yo - has been genetically modifying Venezuelan piranhas to make them a bigger and therefore more bountiful food source for the people. Unfortunately, she hasn't just made their bodies bigger...she's made their teeth bigger, too.

These piranhas have METAL TEETH. DEATH METAL TEETH. F YES THEY DO. Turn off that Hall & Oates and crank some Carcass, because that's what's about to go down onscreen.

First 10 minutes shred count includes:

- locals
- tourists
- girls in skimpy neon bikinis
- the US Ambassador
- a boat

And these biters double in size every 36 hours! Extrapolate this algorithm: If there's nothing to stop them from growing, how long will it take until the earth's surface is destroyed with nothing left to sustain them but each other's flesh? How big will the last fish standing be, and would its mass create a pull too strong to sustain the physical balance of the universe? COULD THERE BE A SEQUEL EXPLORING THESE ISSUES PLEASE.

Anyway, back to the lab, where Tiffany feels awful. So does Greg Brady, who plays Government Dude In DC Trying To Get Things Done By Yelling Into A Cell Phone. (Greg Brady's character is named Bob Grady, maybe to make it easier for Greg to remember his own name? Everyone has days like that.) Someone throws a dead piranha on the Venezuelan Colonel's desk to prove a point ("this is bad!") and he is most displeased. How will he get the smell out of his paperwork???

And then there is fish-kicking: Paul Logan on his back at the water's edge, bicycling away the piranhas like an aerobics champ, right before a fellow scientist declaims something like "They won't get away with it this time!" and then gets chomped by an enormous piranha. As for Tiffany, well, she hates it! Really! Hates hates hates! And wants to kill them all!

What happens next is a bit of a mystery because my viewing companions and I ate seconds on pasta before snuggling down into the couches with the dogs and consequently, somewhere post fish-kicking we were all zzzzzzzzz. So please tune in shortly for reportage on a conclusion sure to involve MAYHEM and PULVERIZED FISH BITS.

Special thanks to Julie and Quincy for hosting.

TNT JACKSON (1974)

2010-02-21T15:58:00.000-08:00

First up from the amazing 50 B-movie box set, the gift that keeps on giving, giving, and forgiving...

A young, frequently nude karate expert searches for her brother's killer in Hong Kong.

Crucial information:

- chick-on-chick cemetery kung fu (even match; dome crack on headstone)
- one chick in panties vs. four fully-dressed dudes kung fu (chick wins)
- same chick PUNCHING ALL THE WAY THROUGH dude's stomach kung fu (chick wins...duh)

There is not much happening between all of the kung fu, but there doesn't really need to be. There is some cracking wise, but the sound is super-surprisingly inconsistent so you might miss a lot of it. Where there is one clearly audible "I will track a motherfucker down and bust a motherfucker up" there is bound to be more of the like, so you win whether you watch this movie in total silence or yap it up and wait for the fight scenes. It's just over an hour - taking the latter approach means you won't have to wait very long. Eat a few Skittles and the next chop will be thrown before you have time to get thirsty.

Special thanks to Julie and Quincy for hosting.

I Have Been Watching High-Quality Movies

2010-01-20T18:27:00.000-08:00

Which is why this blog has been so quiet. I've been catching up on my Scorcese and French New Wave and super-obscure high-falutin works you have never heard of because they are SUCH SUPERIOR CINEMA. Okay, truth - I've been having a big, long, embarrassing Nancy Meyers and Bravo reality tv fest. Netflix probably thinks I've been PMSing for the last fiscal quarter.

BUT! This is all about to change.

My dear friend Evan gifted me with a 50-movie, quadruple-DVD set that looks suspiciously like he bought it at a truck stop (making it even more awesome). "OVER 71 HOURS OF YOUR FAVORITE DRIVE IN CLASSICS," it says! Here is just a tiny sampling of the treats for which you and I are in store:

BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE
BLACK HOOKER
DAY OF THE PANTHER
INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS
SNOWBEAST
WOMEN OF DEVIL'S ISLAND

These are a mere six of 50! FIFTY! Where to begin????

HUSSY (1980)

2009-09-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

An aging high-class London prostitute takes up with the club sound technician; dramantics ensue.

You probably know this already, but if you coerce a hooker into dating you because you are disgusted by her line of work and want to save her from her own depravity - all the while dealing in arms trading yourself - and then yell at her and physically threaten her, you can make her do whatever you want, including love you! This is true! For real!

Also true for real, but in a REALLY true for real sort of way, if any of the following strikes your fancy, you will dig HUSSY:

Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren being awesome (as usual)
Helen Mirren stark naked
Helen Mirren mock-chastising a john for being "a very bad boy"
Cabaret
Fin-des-'70s fashion shows (shoulder pads, beaded evening jackets, large perms, super-intense eyeshadow configurations)
Movies that end in freeze frames

MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS (2009)

2009-08-09T00:45:00.000-07:00

Scientists struggle to rein in two freshly-defrosted prehistoric creatures before they can destroy the world's oceans...and the world!!!!!!!!

You may remember Debbie Gibson as the singer/songwriter of such 1980s hits as "Shake Your Love" and "Out Of The Blue" and "Electric Youth" and "Foolish Beat" and also "Lost In Your Eyes" and "Only In My Dreams." You may remember Lorenzo Lamas from such television fare as "The Bold And The Beautiful" and "Falcon Crest." You may know Vic Chao from last season of "24," if you're still watching (some people's adrenal glands are still recovering from season one....sorry, Cochran and Surnow). Now all three are together at last, working to rid the seas of paleolithic-era threats accidentally freed by a rogue whale.

Scientist Debbie - now Deborah - yanks something bonelike from the gooey red beached whale carcass. She and cohort scientist Sean Lawlor (of the forthcoming 1066) extract red, yellow, and purple Kool-Aid from the something, mix the liquid over Bunsen burners, and run it through a highly specialized software program to discover that it is the tooth of a MEGA SHARK. Simultaneously, other scientist Chao is having problems all the way over on the far side of the world with a GIANT OCTOPUS.

The scientists meet up at San Francisco International Airport, which looks astoundingly similar to Long Beach, and discuss tactics. They mix some red, yellow, and purple Snapple over the Bunsen burners and run it through a highly specialized software program to no avail. Deborah and Vic make out in front of a random day player and then retire to a closet decorated like an Ikea drawer-pull showroom to do it to each other.

Meanwhile, the MEGA SHARK jumps out of the water 30,000 feet to nom an airplane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then later it jumps out of the water again to nom the Golden Gate Bridge in half!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The GIANT OCTOPUS just hangs out in the sea trying to look menacing and smacking the occasional boat off-course. It's hard to compete with plane and bridge biting so it's probably having performance anxiety.

Back to the showroom, where post-coital Deborah and Vic exchange compliments on each other's fetching body odor and then realize that the answer to the MEGA SHARK/GIANT OCTOPUS problem is: Pheromones! Vic will return to Tokyo and Deborah will stay in San Francisco; they will release sexy sea creature smells underwater to lure and then corral each creature in their cities' respective bays. This is about when Lorenzo Lamas shows up and he...yells a bunch and does...stuff? He sports some rather intense sideburns - this much is clear. They all wear jumpsuits and the plan is set in motion, but soon fails as Deborah's submarine pod loses its pheromone-dispensing arm and they realize they never actually figured out the corralling part.

The only solution is to force a MEGA SHARK/GIANT OCTOPUS SHOWDOWN, aka per Deborah, "a thrilla in Manila.*" So they do some more luring and then the MEGA SHARK bites off the GIANT OCTOPUS's tentacles while the GIANT OCTOPUS squeezes the MEGA SHARK and they simultaneously die and it's a little sad. The main message of the story (told exclusively through exposition): Stop global warming, Obama = Hope, save the animals, no nukes. Since Michael Vick got his job back you might feel uncomfortable watching something like this but don't worry, MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS is a very progressive movie at heart, and no mechanical models were harmed during the making thereof.

*"We can get the buy-in, but the shark is going to want 50% of the Pay-Per-View." --Viewing companion Mat

Special thanks to Julie and the Mini-W for screening.

THE ROOM: A Public Service Announcement

2009-07-28T18:05:00.000-07:00

It's even better in person, especially here in Los Angeles, where screenings are hosted by Tommy Wiseau himself.

Until then, you can tide yourself over with Mayonnaise Bathtub's own writeup and this:

THE SUBSTITUTE 4: FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION (2001)

2009-07-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

Undercover asskicker Treat Williams must pose as a teacher to infiltrate and destroy a white supremacist group at a military academy.

A SPECIAL NOTE:

First viewing of TS4: FINAO led me to believe that it was just not sufficiently horrible enough to merit a write-up here on Mayonnaise Bathtub, where we believe in the QUALITY crap. But after some reflection (and some prodding from Seth, who lent it to me), I have decided that it is worth fast-forwarding to the following points of interest.

* On the DVD menu, the title is in the same font as PLAY, SPECIAL FEATURES, etc., but as my viewing companion pointed out, FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION is, hilariously...not an option.

* Decrying of "Atheists and multiculturalists!" (Side note: If you're going to watch the whole thing, you should definitely consider downing a shot every time someone in the movie utters this phrase.)

* Neo-Nazi bonfire festivities shot to make it look like the joint is popping off...but then the camera pulls back and there are just four sad but very, very determined haters.

* Very long is-it-a-fight-or-isn't-it??? dude-on-dude wrestling sequence. No homo!

* Ballroom dancing interlude.

* Head on a silver platter! Literally!

TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE (1987)

2009-06-30T13:05:00.000-07:00

An ex-con wakes from the bender of his life to discover that he may have murdered someone...or several someones.

Freshly sprung from jail Ryan O'Neal is back in Provincetown, barely vertical after a really bad night, piecing together the events of the past few drunked-out weeks with the help of his father (Lawrence Tierney) and a little hair of the dog - a square bottle that is probably whiskey but looks a lot like Manischewitz. There is a seance and a bunch of double-crossing (?) blonde ex-girlfriends, one of whom is now married to church preacher Penn Gillette. Two million dollars and a coke deal gone, of course, awry. A dance party featuring people doing lines off a glass table that is otherwise bare except for a tiny bowl of caviar. COKE AND CAVIAR, now that is how you know it is a wild scene. That and the rather spastic '80s dancing. Small New Wave butch doing the side-to-side elbows boogie in a pink tank top and suspenders, Private Vasquez and I salute you for your brief, lonesome representation of cinematic female masculinity.

When tough guys aren't tearing up the floor (and their nasal membranes), they are boozing in dive bars, getting bad tattoos, and hiding blonde ex-girlfriends' decapitated heads in their marijuana stashes in the woods. They are also possibly getting framed for said murders via car phone, parking illegally around the Cape, getting forced down the breakwater at gunpoint, anthropomorphizing their machetes ("my best friend in Viet Nam"), and hooking up with an Isabella Rossellini consigned, impossibly, to dowdiness by a parade of hideous Forenza sweaters that would make Cosby proud.

Best moment of the movie, and perhaps of all time: With the backing of an Angelo Badalamenti score that would not have been out of place in LOVE STORY, Ryan retreats to the shore to read a letter from Isabella...a letter in which she informs him that her husband is having an affair with his wife, that they should not discuss it, and what hello MURDER??

His response below:

Free writing lesson from Norman Mailer, who adapted the script from his own novel: There is "less plot" involved in writing a screenplay than a novel. Also from Mailer's making-of featurette: Drug deals are more exciting than real estate deals, and this is a thriller movie.

It really should be classified more as a mystery, though, since it a) is wonderfully hard to follow and b) ends with five bodies overboard...but SIX splashes. SEE? MYSTERY.

THE ROOM (2003)

2009-05-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

An American black comedy about love, passion, betrayal, and lies.

The astute among you may notice that the italicized text above - from the DVD box cover - is not a logline. That is because this movie isn't ABOUT anything. It just IS. There's a guy, and his fiancee, and at first she loves everything about him (altruism, dimpled man buttocks, habit of greeting everyone and everything with "oh hi, _____") and then suddenly she doesn't love him and takes up with his BFF (vapid and jarringly handsome, like if-Jesus-were-a-supermodel handsome, but not as smart as Jesus...or most supermodels). And then suddenly her mother has breast cancer, which is mentioned once but not pursued, and then suddenly the guy and the girl are expecting a baby (or are they?), and then suddenly he discovers her infidelity and there are fisticuffs and then suddenly a random extra angrily pops a balloon and the movie is over. This is as close as one might get to describing anything in this movie resembling the concepts of "plot" or "story."

But THE ROOM doesn't NEED anything as pedestrian as plot or story - or even (spoiler alert!) a relevant title - to carry it through, because, like I said, it just is. It is you and it is me. It is all of us. Like CATS, but deeper.

QUIZ: SHOULD YOU WATCH THE ROOM?

Check off which of these items you enjoy:

__multiply-repurposed love scene footage featuring:
a)__dimpled man buttocks
b)__spiral staircases
c)__Smoove B-style flowing sheer white curtains, three-wick candles, breasts decorated with rose petals, terrible R&B soundtracks
d)__creepy children attempting to instigate menage-a-troises*
__dialogue referencing missing or nonexistent items
__throwaway exposition regarding important matters (cancerous mother, creepy child's drug dealing)
__early-'90s fashion choices made circa mid-2Ks
__unrealistic San Francisco rooftop green screen, faulty film geography
__"The passion of Tennessee Williams" (mirror breakings, television tossings, dimpled man buttocks)

Let's be honest. If you checked off even one of the above, there is definitely something in THE ROOM for you, and you should just see it as soon as possible.

And remember: It is not A room, it is THE room.

Thanks for the screening is due Benj, who correctly notes, "The later at night you watch it, the better it gets."

*"I just like to watch you two!" which naturally begs the question: How many times has he watched those two before? THE ROOM will task you with many such difficult inquiries.

DEATH RING (1992)

2009-05-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

A survival contest winner finds himself - and his fiancee - kidnapped to be prey for a bunch of bored millionaires on an isolated island. (Basically, Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" on a $5K budget.)

Starring NORRIS, SWAYZE, and MCQUEEN!!!!! But not the guys you're thinking of. MIKE Norris, DON Swayze, and CHAD McQueen. I was told that this movie would be "inspiring" and "life-changing," and indeed it is.

Ex-military McQueen wins this 10-speed biking/rappelling competition held in like Griffith Park, attracting the attention of rich and freaky Billy Drago, who kidnaps McQueen and his fiancee while they're at the batting cages and deposits them on his secret island lair that has been outfitted for big, big game hunting. Fiancee is held captive in a bedroom that suspiciously resembles an amateur porn set. Her guards, Drago's henchwoman Miss Ling and two backless black leotard wearing escapees from a Robert Palmer video, threaten Fiancee that if she doesn't get dressed for dinner, they will make her. It's a beautiful inverse of those women-in-prison movies where they threaten the ladies with nonconsensual UNdressing.

Sadly there is no girlfight. But the dinner - at which we meet a rainbow coalition of manhunters (not that kind of rainbow, not those kind of manhunters...yet) - more than makes up for it. McQueen finds out he is the big game, Drago smells Fiancee's hair, a guy gets his hand stabbed with a fork, and there is a fight to the death composed solely of close-ups.

Meanwhile, ex-Vietnam heli pilot Norris rejects his gratuitously topless girlfriend in favor of filing a police report on behalf of his buddies and researching a suspicious tattoo seen on one of the batting cage captors: two triangles, one on top of the other. Relatedly, Drago heroically contributes to a long tradition of fey villains whose male femininity is supposed to tap into subconscious social fears about sexual boundary crossing...Z-Man/Superwoman, Frank N Furter, It Puts The Lotion In The Basket, The Joker in nurse drag. Also, he keeps his head tilted the entire movie. He can't even keep his NECK straight! That's right, I said it. Between the forced girl-on-girl clothing, the triangles, and the bi/trans what-have-you, this movie is a Queer Studies goldmine.

Back to Island Of The Creepy Dolphins, where Drago awards the culturally diverse hunter dudes their ethnically-appropriate weaponry - the Indian guy gets the spear, the Chinese fellow gets the throwing stars, etc. And then the culturally diverse hunter dudes start their ethnically appropriate preparations for the hunt - the Indian guy squats by a campfire with a bowl of something, the Chinese fellow meditates, the white man gets down with the Oriental meditation, etc.

And then the hunt is up! McQueen makes short work of the first few would-be assassins in some (finally!) fully framed hand-to-hand combat while Drago and Miss Ling listen in via radio and dry-hump to the sounds of struggle. McQueen periodically updates Drago on his progress: "The Iceman has melted," "Your Mr. Chin is now Mr. Dead." At some point McQueen falls into a cave. And there he meets last year's surviving prey, Swayze, who sports the most all-consuming mullet that ever there was. EVER. EVVVVVVER.

The two team up to kill everybody. Norris choppers in to drop two grenades on the scene. One of Drago's guards fires a really small gun at the aircraft. Fiancee is trapped in the house, tied to the dinner table in what would be by all standards totally ineffectual bondage. Miss Ling slips her the tongue (where is that Queer Studies grad student?), McQueen and Drago face off (spoiler alert: Drago dies), McQueen releases Fiancee and they run to the chopper, then McQueen goes back in the house to claim his prize: a butt-ugly DEATH RING, yes, the thing this movie is named after, allotted two mentions of approximately eight seconds of screen time total. On his way out, he is surprised by a not-dead-yet Miss Ling, who prepares to do him in, when she herself is killed by...okay, I'm not going to say it as an attempt to preserve at least some intrigue here. But I will say that, fabulously, it makes absolutely no sense.

Hands down my very favorite moment of this movie is when Drago whips out his sawed-off shotgun based crossbow...that shoots PUB DARTS. DUDE. HOW CAN YOU FUCKING TOP THAT. HOW. I ask you. I may have to stop blogging just because of this.

Special thanks to Gene (pronounced with a hard G) for the hard-sell and the loaner.

BATS: HUMAN HARVEST (2007)

2009-04-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

When an elite group of American soldiers embarks on a special mission to capture a rogue scientist hiding in a Chechnyan forest, they find more than they bargained for...genetically altered, flesh-chomping bats.

Much like BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, BATS: HUMAN HARVEST is not really a sequel to the first BATS. None of the original cast or crew appear to be involved. Netflix describes it as a "follow-up."

I sort of want these livetxts to Elana to speak for themselves, cell phone punctuation and all -

Msg: Okay, BATS: HUMAN HARVEST actually has a compelling open. Well played, mr. merryman. [Brett Merryman, co-writer/co-producer.]
Msg: Except for the actor with the really bad fake croatian accent.
Msg: Wow. Weapons grade bad acting. Hello sexy counter terrorism science lady! (whoops,chechen, not croatian)
Msg: Hahahahaha freeze frame metal soundtrack american army gear-up montage
Msg: Amazing handguns that never require reloading!
Msg: The evil scientist talks just like lorne michaels
Msg: Did they even handcuff dr evil? Hes just walking around with his palms together
Msg: Now the american lone wolf is being led away by sexy russian double agent, arms behind his back. No room in the budget for handcuffs?
Msg: Oh, its over. Yay

But there's more to it than that. Yes, there are the confines of the genre (as it were) - the black ops mission, the lone wolf soldier who fights being a team player, Natasha Badinoff, Dr. SNL, and of course the bats - but like I said, compelling open. Obvious limited budget, but the shot reuse is clever enough that while the viewer realizes she is eating leftovers for the fourth night in a row, she does note their transformation from, say, stew to omlette filling to casserole to casserole over rice with little to no resentment...and even admiration for the chef's versatility.

Take, for example, the scene between three Chechnyan farmer dudes toting their heavy cart of farm crap up to the edge of the forest. They argue briefly about the merits of going through (shorter) vs. around (reputedly deadlier), and the pro-through guy attempts to prove his point by walking a few feet into the trees and yelling something like "See? According to all those completely silly rumors, I should be dead by now!" Cue bats biting off his arm at the elbow, cue FOREARM FLYING ACROSS THE SCREEN, SPEWING "BLOOD."

OHHHHHHHHHH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

And there is a bunch of actual witty dialogue, none of which I thought to write down so you'll just have to take my word for it. Or better yet, read THE WIDOWMAKER, which, if there is any justice in this world, will get sold and made. Hi, Brett, I have a big crush on your script.

BATS (1999)

2009-04-20T17:40:00.000-07:00

When a colony of genetically mutated bats begins eating residents of a small Texas town, a chiroptologist and her wisecracking black sidekick (tm) are called in to batten down the hatches.

Brett Merryman wrote one of my very favorite spec scripts of 2008, THE WIDOWMAKER (not the K-19 one) - a completely non-campy spy story that ends in destruction and awesomeness. But before he wrote that, he co-wrote and co-produced BATS: HUMAN HARVEST, which I will discuss in a later post. Naturally, I had to check out the regular BATS first.

The main thing you need to know about BATS is that it is an homage to Hitchcock's THE BIRDS. In the making-of featurette, director Louis Morneau tells you so. And then lead actor Lou Diamond Phillips tells you so as well. So you know it's true.

So basically these two innocent teenagers get chomped to death at Lover's Point or whatever and the military calls Sheila Casper, Bat Ph.D to investigate and exterminate with extreme prejudice. She loves the little batties and doesn't want them to die. Town sheriff and resident sweaty and muscular tank top wearer Lou Diamond Phillips is none too thrilled with this development, either: His town, his biceps, his rules. They manage to agree to kill the bats, together, after the bloodthirsty creatures fight their way into their locked truck, hurling their furry fangy selves through the windows, squirming in from beneath the gas pedal.

Lou evacuates the town - any reluctant-to-leave residents quickly change their minds after a semi-CGI bat attack on Main Street, where the movie theater is playing NOSFERATU; then he, Dr. Casper, and Wisecracking Black Sidekick (remember him?) locate the local evil scientist (tm) behind all this and barricade themselves in an abandoned school. Evil Scientist sneaks out to commune with his creations, which (spoiler alert!) promptly destroy him, leaving Casper, WBS, and sweaty, muscular Lou to destroy the bat herd with - now - military assistance. A plan is hatched, the plan goes awry due to infighting and whatnot (by this point I was basically doing my nails and counting minutes until the bombs were supposed to happen), Casper and sweaty Lou are forced to decend into the underground bat lair, where they set phasers on stun or something and then make it up and out just in time for everything to blow to the high heavens in a glorious detonation of 80% of the below the line expenses. Oh, and also the WBS doesn't die! It's a happy ending for everyone. Except the bats.

BATS tv promo with Dutch subtitles: