The B-Hive version 2
Reviews to make you laugh of movies that made us cry.






The Sleeping Car (1990)


"A One-Stop Ticket to Terror"


As the first film to be reviewed as part of the new B-Hive (later to be renamed Spike TV), I knew there was nothing that me and Keith wanted to see more than a forgettable horror film. Strangely, forgettable horror films are filmed with moments so strange that you have to rewind them. Yet despite this, you still forget these bizarre and outrageous scenes easily. It’s not that the mind tries to block them out, because these stupefying scenes are the saving grace of these movies. But I know that in a couple months, I will have forgotten the last ten minutes of The Sleeping Car, despite the fact that they are the best ten minutes ever committed to film.

The Sleeping Car seems to be an anomaly of film. While it looks like it was made in the 80’s, the film was in fact made in 1990. That may not seem interesting, but this film feels 5 years older than it is. It’s like they went back in time five years to film this movie! The atmosphere, the poor sound and picture quality, the agonizing pacing, the hair, the death scenes. There is a certain je ne sais quoi to this combination that gives it a completely eighties feel. It’s as if they stopped making movies like this on New Years of 1989.

This is the basic plot: A crazy and ugly train captain (I know it’s not a captain, but I can’t remember whether it’s a conductor or an engineer at a train’s helm so bear with me) called the Mister tells his assistant to stop having sex with a chick. He doesn’t and this somehow causes the Mister to jump off the train, which crashes and explode as the Mister gives us a heavily overacted “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Apparently this causes the Mister to have sex with young women and then kill them in a train car converted into a duplex. This stops when his wife kills him and the haunting begins. It really takes us the whole movie to learn that, but I don’t think I’m spoiling things here and I just want to get major explanations out of the way.

As for the main characters: There is the crazy landlady (the Mister’s ex-wife), a spirit hunting neighbor who looks like Paul Newman (Kevin McCarthy, who played RJ Fletcher in the Weird Al magnum opus UHF), Jason (the protagonist), Kim (the girlfriend) and Jeff Conaway (Bikini Summer 2) as a Journalism Professor who attempts to be funny (I call him Professor Shecky). None of them are interesting. The characters bounce quips off of each other, but most of them tend not to make sense.

The box cover would have you believe this is a film about a haunted train. This is incorrect. This is a film about a haunted couch that folds out to become a bed. All of the deaths in the movie are couch/bed related. They kill you with coils and... that’s about it. They wrap around you or burrow through you and such, killing anyone who lies on the bed who is expendable. The film’s only three victims are some bully guy, Professor Shecky (who dials a sex line called 976-JIZZ. HA! BRILLIANT!) and the main character’s ex-wife. Only killing three people was probably a good thing because you can only kill people with animated bed springs in so many ways before it gets repetitive.

The film’s ending makes the whole experience worth it. First, the Mister finally appears before Jason and attacks (interestingly whenever someone says something like: “But you’re dead”, he responds along the lines of “No, you’re dead”, giving him the wit of a three year old). Jason’s neighbor tries to exorcise the ghost but nothing works. Then the neighbor suggests that Jason love the ghost (?!?!) and hug him. Then, in an ending not unlike Ernest Scared Stupid, hugging seems to work and the ghost moves on to the next life. Later Jason walks around his apartment by himself and suddenly a geyser of blood shoots out from the bed. Jason then wakes up... to find tons of blood on his crotch and sleeping next to the Mister, which begs the question: WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN? Then Jason wakes up again and decides not to buy the house he’s been sleeping in. Which just makes the ending feel weirder.

Rent this movie only for its incredibly awesome ending if nothing else. They are ten minutes that will be very well spent.


In a lot of ways, the eighties were better times. The pop music was catchier, the blockbuster summer movies were actually good, and they were not afraid to make robust film trailers. I'm not talking about those pussy red-band trailers we have now, I'm talking tits, tits, violence, tits, swearing, violence, and more tits. The first thing we saw when we popped in this movie was a trailer for Enrapture ("Falling in love... with evil!") that had so much violence, so much swearing, and so many tits that me and Stefan decided we had to see it. Luckily for us the film is lost in the annals of time, because it probably sucks pretty bad. It probably sucks right about as much as, say, just off the top of my head, The Sleeping Car.

The Sleeping Car ("One Stop Ticket... To Terror!") is about a train that crashes because the guy running it is too busy getting graphically laid to do his job. Even his crusty old co-worker telling him to get his shit together doesn't help. The crashed train is then made into a haunted apartment ("One Damage Deposit... From Doom!") in the middle of the woods, which is years later rented out to the world's wittiest guy ("You Weasels Stop That Laughing, Or You're Gonna Laugh Yourselves... To Death!").

This guy is so witty I can hardly express it in text form. His name is McCree, which is Cherokee Indian slang for "awesome". When the old lady who rents him the apartment asks him how old he is, he says he's been 18 as long as he can remember. He is cleary at least 36. When she tells him no ladies are allowed in the apartment, he says he's been neutered. It goes on like this. There's only one scene in which he doesn't try to make a hilarious joke, and it's so amazing that one of the other characters actually comments on it, proving that this movie is self-aware and will soon become sentient. The Sleeping Car will awaken and destroy us all.

So enough about this crappy movie, the real story here is Jeff Conaway. I saw his name in the opening credits and said "Hey, isn't he the guy who made Bikini Summer 2?" I recalled this fact without even the use of the Internet Movie Database, through only my keen powers of memory and perception. Though admittedly it was hard to forget, since the credits of Bikini Summer 2 go something like this:

Written by Jeff Conaway
Directed by Jeff Conaway
Conceived by Jeff Conaway
Produced by Jeff Conaway
Casting by Jeff Conaway
Catering by Jeff Conaway's Mom
Breasts Inspected by Jeff Conaway and Jeff Conaway's Mom
Jeff Conaway's Mom Produced by Jeff Conaway's Grandma
Jeff Conaway's Grandma Nailed By Jeff Conaway's Grandpa
Jeff Conaway's Bed Nailed Together By A Hammer And A Bunch Of Nails and Jeff Conaway
A Jeff Conaway Film
Music by Jim Halfpenny

Basically, I loved Bikini Summer 2, so by extention I loved Jeff Conaway. For every pair of naked, jiggling breasts I saw, I loved him that much more.

Until now.

In The Sleeping Car Jeff plays a cool journalism teacher, who isn't as witty as McCree, but who makes up for it by impersonating a person on cocaine. He loves life and life loves him for it, and I hate him. Being cool is the best thing a man can do, if he's good at it. If not, the performance turns wryly spastic, like a beaver clearly eating a man's genitals and the man trying not to let on. He was so goddamn annoying that even after the haunted apartment ate him, I felt unrevenged. For having to sit through his in-your-face views on journalism, his sly hand gestures, his rockin' libido and the subsequent fawning of the female students, I demand the actual death of Jeff Conaway.

It's coming, Conaway. You'll never snicker while secretly loosening a woman's bikini top again! You hear me? You're dead! I'll chase you to the ends of the earth! I'll spit on your grave, you pseudo-smug, knowing-glance-giving slap-in-the-face to genuine-cool-guy performances everywhere! Christian Slater is crying! Crying! He made 1988 through 1995 cool, and you ruined it! You blew it up! You maniac!!

Jeff Conaway... God, I'm breaking up here... Why? Why must I kill my heroes? Why can't there be just one hero left? Why isn't Jeff Conaway... that hero..? Oh god, why? Why, jesus?

So at the end of the movie McCree is convinced by his next door neighbor to hug the evil spirit haunting his apartment, because love is the answer and not hate. He does it and it seems to work, but he keeps waking up in a cold sweat because deep down he knows that it was the most retarded solution imaginable. And from that day forth he was seen bolting from every apartment that had any kind of bedding in it, because that bedding might kill people, like it did in the sleeping car where he used to live. And every time it happened, the rental agent laughed and laughed at another appointment wasted.


Creepshow 2 (1987)




Well, I must say that I found the first Creepshow pretty well done, though I admit I have never seen it in its entirety. Written by Stephen King (Maximum Overdrive) and directed by George Romero (O.J. Simpson: Juice on the Loose) Creepshow paid homage to the classic horror comics of EC Comics. Filled with black humour, interesting stories (for the most part), and a decent framing system (comic book flies all over town and the pages open up to a new story), the film was a fun little horror treat. The sequel, however, sucks. There’s only one good story, and I feel it could have been better. Even worse, while the first Creepshow had 5 stories, this has only 3. But since the film has an inconsistency of quality, I’ll just go through each individual story:

Wraparound story (framing device): OK, this is the worst thing about the film. It starts off with a boy who loves Creepshow comics getting chased around by bullies, until he feeds them to his giant man-eating flytraps. If I made it sound at all interesting, I’m sorry. The story (except for the first minute) is animated, which was an interesting decision because the finished result looks like shit. It’s also weird, because we first see The Creep as a comic book delivery guy in very bad make-up. Then he’s animated and somehow manages to look even stupider (with some help from his chin shaped like a pair of testicles). The Creep also sounds like he’s supposed to be clever, but I don’t recall anything that’s supposed to sound like some cheesy macabre pun, just assurances that the story will be bloodcurdling, bonechilling, or will somehow have a negative effect on my body, which they do. This animated piece was so bad, I thought Ralph Bakshi did it (zing!). In the end, the boy tricks some nasty bullies into a garden of man-eating plants and we are supposed to see it as a twist. I see it as poorly written.

Ol’ Chief Woodenhead: This story features 20 minutes of nothing followed by 5 minutes of lame. An old shopkeeper and an old shopkeeper’s wife are terrorized by a Native American convinced he’ll be a Hollywood star (I have no idea what he’s basing that on), his rich friend, and a fat annoying guy they found. (Is it just me or are most fat characters from eighties movies extremely irritating?) The old man tries to spring into action, but he ends up not so much springing as slowly attempting to shuffle into action. Interestingly, the thugs actually seemed threatened enough by him to still point a gun at him. Gun or not, that guy ain’t really moving anywhere at a speed that requires a gun being trained on him. Hell, you could have left it in your car, and then if he strikes you still have enough time to get it. Eventually, the store’s wooden Indian is brought back to life by Indian magic and kills everyone off in unimaginative ways.

I was disappointed for two reasons: 1. It was long. 2. After the guys kill the old folks and drive off, they mentioned leaving for Hollywood before ol’ Chief Woodenhead comes to life. It really made me wish that it turned into a fucked up detective story in which Woodenhead would track down the now famous and powerful native guy to put him behind bars. I really just want to see a film where a wooden Indian shakes down a pimp for clues. Wouldn’t you?

The Raft: Easily the coolest story, in which four teens get stuck on a raft in the middle of the lake, with a blob monster waiting below to devour them. The monster, while really a bunch of garbage bags tied together, is actually surprisingly effective. There's a twist ending where the apparently safe teen gets killed by a spontaneous tidal wave, which had me rolling on the floor. Haha! Dumb teen. Or twenty-something actor portraying a teen. Then there’s another twist ending where we see a sign that says “no swimming”.

I think what makes this story so cool is its simplicity. I mean, in a way anyone could have thought it up: If you move from this spot, you’re dead. I actually think this is an under-used tension-building device in film and this short uses it well. And, going back to Ol’ Chief Woodenhead, tension is what that previous short lacked. First of all, any attempt at tension was ruined the moment we knew what was going to happen. The old people were going to be killed by young people and an entity (in the form of Woodenhead) will kill them. But rather than tension in the hostage scene, we have tedium. And when the Chief came to life, he finished off the bad guys way too quickly. And he still didn’t go out of his way to fight crime. (I’ll stop saying tension now.)

The Hitch-hiker: The final story is “the Hitch-hiker” and is about a hitchhiker. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any anthology TV show that didn’t have an episode about a hitchhiker entitled “the hitchhiker”. In it a woman cheats on her husband (which never enters into the plot again), and starts driving home. Distracted, she runs over a hitchhiker and keeps going, too scared to face the consequences of her actions. But wait! In a twist that no one could have predicted - EVER! - the hitchhiker is alive and attacking her for killing him. He also keeps saying “Thanks for the Ride”, making me think that this is a highly confused dead hitch hiker.

This story is pretty repetitive. Woman drives, thinking she’s lost hitchhiker, hitchhiker pops up, she loses hitchhiker for about five seconds before he pops up again. The best part is a great camera shot when she looks like she’s driving away from the mangled zombie, stops for about 10 seconds... and then proceeds to back up. It might not sound great, but seeing it, it’s like you can hear her thinking “Wait, now that he’s down, I can fuck with him before he gets back up.” It might not sound special, but it just felt like the perfect camera shot.

Anyway, this repeats ad nauseum until she gets home and is killed by the hitch-hiker. Her husband later finds her cold dead body holding a sign: “No Swimming”. OK, it says Dover, but my ending would have at least been slightly cleverer than her holding the hitchhiker’s sign. It’s not really ironic and doesn’t really ad anything to the movie. On the plus side, I can imagine that the husband thought that her wife wanted to bury her in Dover, which would be great.

Interesting note: At the end of the credits, we see this scroll down:

"Juvinile delinquency is the product of pent up frustrations, stored up resentments and bottled up fears. It is not the product of cartoons and captions, but the comics are a handy, obvious, and uncomplicated scapegoat. If the adults who crusade against them would only get steamed up over much basic causes of delinquency as parental ignorance, indifference, and cruelty, they might discover that comic books are no more a menace than "Treasure Island" or "Jack the Giant Killer."

Colliers magazine 1949

This is interesting, because even in 1987 this is old. Politicians had stopped beating up on comic books and had set their sights on TV shows. Why not just add a quote about why the Negroes need not be slaves anymore. It’s not a bad message, but man is it outdated.


Sometimes, excess is a useful device. Cartoons such as Ren & Stimpy and The Family Guy have successfully used excess in a comedy capacity: A situation will begin and be mildly funny, and the same joke will be hammered again and again until it's not funny at all anymore. Then it will keep going for so long that it becomes funny, a lot funnier than it was to begin with. It's an interesting phenomenon, and obviously one that must be treated carefully. Improperly used, it can spell disaster.

Creepshow 2 uses a smiliar technique, except that instead of comedy through the use of extreme and potentially mundane length, it instead attempts to convey horror in that same fashion. Each one of these three short films will attempt to scare you to death through the use of a leisurely pace and the continuous restating of the same idea, again and again, until you tear your own lips off while screaming for someone to turn it off.

First up is The Wooden Chief, a tale about a good man who runs a general goods shop in a small town. This good man (by which I mean a man who is good, not a man who sells goods) has a wooden indian statue outside the door, which he's good enough to clean and speak to in a goodly fashion. His good wife, who's good, tells him he should leave this town. It's dead, they have no customers, and frankly he's too good for the place. He doesn't know about that; he's sure that deep down other folk are as good as he is, since that's all a man as good as he can possibly think. People will come back to the town. Things will be good again, as good as the good feelings that well in the goodness of his heart. He can smell prosperity in the air, since his nose is pretty good too. The theme is goodness.

This shopkeeper has loaned some money to various people, including some local indian tribes. Moved by his generosity, they decide to offer him a collection of tribal treasures as collatoral, which he may keep if they have not repayed him in "two autumns". See, even the bloodthirsty, scalping indians are influenced by this guy's goodness. Dammit, I'm gonna take a stand and say that this guy is good. He's really good. He might be the best man ever, and I love him.

After the chief leaves, the shopkeeper and his wife stand around being good. Then, the bad people show up.

I think you get the point, so I'm not gonna tell you how bad they are. But I will point out that they're not only bad, but also kind of stupid. Which, now that I think about it, so is the shopkeeper. Good and stupid, a dangerous mix. So the bad people rob the store, steal the indian jewels, kill Old Man Goody-Good and wife and take off into the night.

At this point the wooden indian statue on the front step has had enough. He... slowly... comes to... life... and... applies... his... war... paint. Then he... lifts... his... wooden... leg... and... bends... his... wooden... knee... and... starts... to... walk...

At this point the bad guys are 10 thousand miles away. They live a long and full life. Fifty years later, when the wooden indian finally gets to their door and kills them, they don't know what the fuck is going on. The end.

The second story is actually kinda cool. Four teens go swimming and this horrible blob that looks like a buncha garbage bags starts eating them. All they can do is stay on a raft in the middle of the lake and pray to the sweet lord to give them wings. But being sex-having drug-abusing teens, they have no such luck, and soon two of them are dead.

The remaining two, denoted in the credits as "the nerdish fellow" and "the hot slut", start getting tired and fall asleep. Nerdy wakes up first, and while slut is asleep he lifts up her shirt and starts to fondle her breasts. Now come on, what the hell is that? I was genuinely disturbed, especially when the evil substance seeped up through the cracks in the raft and ate the hell out of the screaming slut. This wouldn't be so bad if it were just a random occurance, but nerdy knew this could happen. He spent the entire day telling people not to step on the cracks in the raft so the blob couldn't seep up and get them, and yet he lays the slut out across a dozen different tiny gaps in the raft just so he can molest her while she sleeps. Christ, that's just wrong. The shopkeeper from the first short would be shaking his head disapprovingly from heaven, if only he weren't too good to pass judgment on anyone.

So as slut is being eaten, nerdy dives into the water and swims away. He actually manages to swim to shore and, SPOILER ALERT, as he sits there taunting the goo it forms a sudden tidal wave and crashes down on his scrambling, molesting body, eating his skin and organs in a most painful fashion! Yes! I was so pleased with that, I can't even tell you.

The screen fades to black, but then it fades back in! That tidal-wave twist wasn't enough. The camera pans over to the woods, and semi-obscured in the bushes is a sign that reads "No Swimming". Oh man! Now that's a twist! There was a sign all along, if they'd just read it they'd be fine! Because obviously these rebelious teens would heed a "No Swimming" sign. Hell, even if it said "No Swimming - Blob" I don't think they'd heed it, because that doesn't make any sense. There aren't blobs in lakes. That's crazy.

The third short is about this lady who hits a hitchhiker. Then the hitchhiker keeps trying to get into her speeding car, and no matter how much she swerves, hits or shoots the hitchhiker, he just won't die. He keeps saying "Thanks for the ride, lady", even though she made it clear that she was not offering him a ride by running him over. The hitchhiker finally kills her, but it takes a really long time.

Framing all these shorts are cartoon segments, and I'm glad Stefan described them, because I'm not gonna. I just can't. The wounds are too fresh, and it hurts too much.


Maximum Overdrive (1986)




I've only read two books by Stephen King, but man they were good. The first was On Writing, which to me, as an aspiring writer, I find quite interesting and well written, even if you don’t agree with everything he says. The other book I read was The Dead Zone, an amazing drama about a psychic whose power is more curse than gift (And that last sentence was more cliché than description). While I’m aware not all of his books are masterpieces, books like these get me off to a good start with Mr. King. Then there’s this film.

Now before I go and bash this film, I must say that it is actually pretty entertaining, which is far more than I can say for a lot of the other films I watch. Something is always happening, whether it’s a guy being killed by a pop machine, or a lawnmower chasing a kid on a bike. (That lawnmower will never catch up, making you almost root for the poor mower. He tries so hard.) It’s not a good movie by any means, but it at least captures my attention. I also respect Stephen King for bashing his own movie in On Writing.

The main idea behind the film is that some sort of meteor passes by Earth, causing all mechanical life to become sentient (don’t question it). And since they are sentient they do the only logical thing for a machine to do: Destroy humanity! Some machines do a better job than others, but some are just plain unfortunate. One is a clock on a wall that goes crazy. Vicious or not, nothing wants to be a clock on the wall. And if you’re trying to help your mechanical brethren destroy humanity, the best you can do is screw with people's heads and always be five minutes slow no matter how many times you’re fixed. I just feel so sorry for that clock.

Anyway the characters focused on in this story are a bunch of humans trapped in a roadside diner and to be honest, I was hoping for the machines to win. Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson) is extremely annoying as a white trash newlywed and the rest of the humans, while unable to match up to Smith’s sheer irritating behavior, are no prize pigs. (Though this film does star... Kevin BACON! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!) None of the characters were interesting and I felt nothing for any of them. In fact there was one waitress who seemed to think she was in a particularly bad episode of The Twilight Zone, screaming “WE CONTROL YOU!” to the machines over the course of the film.

One particularly annoying aspect of the film was the poor use of logic. In one scene the white trash husband decides to try to dodge the trucks and allow himself to be trapped in the café. His reasoning is that it is “safer than being out there”. Perhaps he was thinking of the proverb “You can find safety in the heart of danger”, but he was obviously ignoring the concept that you can find safety far, far away from danger. The other thing that bugged me about that scene: Their car never turned evil. What’s that all about?

In the end, we are given a surprise twist: This film makes no fucking sense! It ends with the people getting on a boat and heading somewhere safe and we are given a little message that the good guys survived and that the meteor was the creation of a UFO found days later. Did it matter that aliens were involved? It in no way effects how the plot went. I may as well have written an epilogue about how their ship landed on the moon and they all got ponies. I just felt this movie could have left us with the more logical conclusion: That meteor space dust made all the machines alive. I would buy that.


I'll be honest with you, I ain't got much to say about Maximum Overdrive. Stefan brought it into the shop as a mystery movie surprise, so I was trying to guess what it was. The movie began with a comet passing overhead, leaving the earth strangely irradiated. "Return of the Living Dead?" I guessed, then said, "No, wait! Maximum Overdrive! Yeah!"

At first things were great. A machine calls Stephen King an asshole, a guy gets pelted to death by pop cans, a kid gets run over by a steamroller. Good times. But after about half an hour, that was it. I was all funned out.

There was one part I liked, though. There was this annoying traveling bible salesman who was trying to sell a bible to this couple, before the craziness has begun. I'm not sure if "bible" should be capitalized, but I don't capitalize any religious stuff. Not "bible", not "god", not "heaven", nothing. Nothing except Jesus Christ. Not because it's a proper name, but because he is the savior who died for us and who will show us the way to eternal paradise. I get so mad when people won't listen to me, because they don't understand that I'm not only talking about this earthly existence, I'm talking about their soul. Don't you care about your soul? It just pisses me off so much, I just wanna start gouging eyes and kicking throats... But this might not be the place.

So this bible salesmen, he's talking up the bible. Talking it up real big. "This book has got it all," he says. "Creation, damnation, redemption, it's all here. From Genesis to Judgment Day, it's all inside, and for one low price."

"Does it say anything about cars coming to life?" the lady of the couple asks him.

"Cars coming to life? Well that's a mighty queer question. Of course it don't have nothing about cars coming to life! Cars don't come to life! It's not what they do! So stop asking me damn fool questions and buy this cocksucking bible! Don't make me thump your skull!"

"Okay, okay," the man says, reaching for his wallet. "No need to get all uppity..."

I didn't notice that conversation the first time I saw the flick, nor the second, but upon hundreds of re-viewings it became apparent, and it's some brilliant foreshadowing. It's hidden, you don't get it right away, but it really rewards dozens upon dozens of viewings. Stephen King is a clever director, he hides things for you. You've just gotta lay in a bathtub full of liquid paper and watch, again and again. Don't worry, you'll be glad you did. It's better than french rap music.

And even if you don't see stuff, I'll tell you what: That Emelio, he's a hell of an actor.


Desert Kickboxer (1992)




My parents bought this really cheaply at Blockbuster as a Christmas gift for my sister, who’s into kickboxing. It was just a little gag present and we thought she might enjoy the thought, if not the movie. Did you enjoy that story? Kinda filmsy huh? Well, it is still a million times better than the film Desert Kickboxer, a cheapo HBO flick.

The story is of a kick boxer (Hawk) who kills a guy in the ring and feels bad about it. So now, he just stops criminals for money and carves little wooden buffalos, possibly to ease the pain. He meets up with a young girl and her retarded brother escaping a crime lord named Santos and must spend the film protecting them. Disappointingly, Santos is not the luchadore hero of the Mexican screen, but just a regular and not very intimidating crime lord. Seems that the girl stole all of Santos’ liquid assets, put them into her own account and ran off with her mentally challenged brother.

This girl’s brother might be retarded, but he knows his sketchy Indian facts. Apparently, he learned this all from “a show he watched” and seems only to exist in this movie to give us barely interesting and extremely vague Indian facts such as: Indians in the desert drank water from roots and Indians used warpaint. Perhaps that’s true, but none of it really matters. Actually, they try to fit it in near the end, but I don’t think we needed to have us told these things. We could have picked it up ourselves. Besides, the girl’s brother seems to be talking about American Indians in general, so it seems ridiculous that root drinking and warpaint should be attributed to all Indians.

The soundtrack is undoubtedly the most inept sounding thing ever produced for an action film (and that’s saying something). Man, what a soundtrack. The music was like what would happen if they took inspiration music from an action film and converted it into something eerily similar to muzak. It’s not the worst soundtrack out there, but it will certainly not get you excited during Hawk’s “gettin’ ready for revenge” montage. By the way, the music is by Roy J. Ravio, who’s only other film was one I hadn’t heard of and plan never to see called Fire on the Amazon. Since then, he’s probably gone on to do music for some particularly inspirational malls.

Interesting fact: Director Isaac Florentine went on to direct the American edition of Power Rangers (Which explain the lame fight scenes. Uh, not that I’ve sat down and watched more than one episode or anything), as well as various direct to video turds. I shouldn’t care except that Isaac Florentine has a rather hefty biography on www.imdb.com (the most helpful movie site EVER) and I found it was very positive... and was written by anonymous. Isaac, if you didn’t write that, your wife has a pretty high opinion of you. Interestingly, also on the site is this laughably dumb reader review:

An interesting movie, which incorporates martial arts philosophy with Native American mysticism. I like the style of fight choreography in the film, it's rough but still maintains a martial arts feeling and certain level of realism.

Wow, that was really overly kind to the film. But I guess it’s all a matter of taste... or is it? Looking at what else this reviewer, Donrw, reviewed, his taste seems to be mostly direct to video cheapies, but he especially has a soft spot for Isaac Florentine films. Nothing against Florentine, but if you are Donrw, please stop reviewing your own films! I’m sure US Seals II blew the first one's ass out of the water, but you can’t go around reviewing your own films. I’m sorry.


These days, HBO is pretty respected. However, 1991 was not "these days", and HBO made movies with titles like "Desert Kickboxer". These movies would be revenge fantasies with crap actors and weird music.

When I say "crap actors", let me elaborate: There's a school in San Diego called The Stalwart School of Finnish Feces Acting at which students are taught to behave like and become one with various forms of shit. They look like shit, they move like shit, they think like shit, and when they finally complete the course their experience washes over them, the totality of their instruction rendering them pure. It leaves them with a focus and level of ability the likes of which few have ever seen, and they proceed to dominate the world of acting. They have purged themselves of all shit, and they become the legends, the immortals. They fight through hell in order to come out heavenly on the other side. It's an experience few things can top.

However, some students get right to the end, when they are at their very highest level of shit, when their very being has almost become shit, and they stumble. They fail in their studies and are ejected from the school. The final cleansing ritual is never completed. So they wander over to HBO to get some work.

Now these movies they make, they might be about a former kickboxing champ who accidentally kills a guy in the ring, so he retires. To the desert, we'll say. And he'll live out there, running from the fact that when he killed that guy in the ring that time, he liked it. He actually... liked it...

That's pretty much how Desert Kickboxer goes. There's a drug dealer named Santos who Hawk, the kickboxer, has to topple while also protecting a cute girl and her retarded brother. Then the brother gets shot. Way to go, Hawk. But I was kinda into the movie when one character warned another not to screw with Santos, because he had "A long llama that reaches everywhere." I thought that was downright delightful, but while I was laughing about it Stefan told me it was "A long arm that reaches everywhere" and basically wrecked the whole movie for me. Thanks a lot Stefan. I was happy, and you ruined it.

That wasn't my only misheard line in the film. Hawk's grandfather hunted and killed rustlers, but I coulda swore he said "wrestlers". As with the omnipresent llama, adding wrestlers to the mix would have improved this movie greatly. Grandpa Hawk could be battling them while the wrestlers fought back impotently, stomping the ground while pulling their punches and wondering desperately why none of their attacks were inflicting damage. That woulda cracked me up, but they claim this movie is not a comedy.

This main dude Hawk looks a bit like everybody. At first he reminded me of Travolta, but by the end he was definitely Patrick Swayze. Is that how you spell Swayze? I can't believe I don't know that. I have "Roadhouse Throat Rip" tattooed across my back, and I've never regretted it. I'd tell you why, but it gets kinda technical. The terms "windpipe", "crush" and "bare hands" are involved. Maybe when you're older.

Like all of us 15 years ago, Hawk had a mullet, but I'm not gonna mock him for it. It was 1991, he didn't know any better. He thought he looked cool. You probably look dumb right now and you don't even know it. Not me though, since I'm shaved bald and am completely naked. Which is not to say that I don't look dumb, but I look dumb in the classical sense. In the biblical sense. Not in some fashion bomb kind of way. The only trend I follow is mother nature, and the only candy I eat is bark. Bark from a tree. With some sap.

In conclusion, I'd like to point out three ridiculous things about this movie, in inverse order of ridiculousness:

Number 3: During the final battle, Hawk's opponent does a high kick and Hawk kicks him square in the nuts. As Jack Black says, "When you fight / You gots ta fight fair / You mothafucka / Do you know what time it is?" It's time for Hawk to stop being a cheating little bitch. I don't care if it's about revenge or not, you don't kick a man in the nuts. Desert or not, it's just not done.

Number 2: Stefan's family paid $2 for this movie. Was it worth it? Only the Shadow knows that is was not.

Number 1: When an evil preacher is praising the hotness of the hot girl, he says, and I quote, "Your hair is like a flock of goats moving down the hills of Gileus." I thought an earlier utterance of "Does a buffalo drool?" would take the prize as weirdest line of the flick, but I was wrong. Hills of Gileus. God dammit.


Glitter (2001)


"In Music She Found Her Dream, Her Love, Herself."


Watching this movie (and to be honest, I did it quarter-heartedly) I now know that Mariah Carrey has three emotions: Smug happiness, white-hot petulance and a shy greeting. The shy greeting, which is by far the most convincing emotion of all, is the only one used through the first third of the movie. Basically someone introduces Mariah’s character to a record producer or someone in the music industry who will help her become a success and she kinda says hello and doesn’t really do anything for a while. It’s the closest she gets to becoming likeable. (Also, that first third is the best because Mariah says almost nothing, which means she almost never acts.)

The rest of this film has her bearing this horrible and terrifyingly smug expression that could scare away Julia Robert’s nightmarish smile. The musician to actor transition is sometimes surprisingly successful, but here it is more horrible than... my analogies. And those are pretty damn bad. Now while I dislike Mariah Carrey’s music I didn’t really hate her in any way, because I just didn’t care, but after watching this film I hate her. Not just because she’s a bad actress but her character is stupid, shallow and unbearable, and I’d hate to think that she admires any of these character’s qualities.

The film is about a singer named Billy Frank, who’s devastated when her mother accidentally burns the house down while drunk (which is presumably when she gave her daughter such a manly name). The mother leaves her daughter and claims that she’ll return when she cleans up her act, starting off by being a deadbeat mom. Later Billy Frank is a faux-teen and gets discovered in this shitty dance club by Dice, who has the stupidest name in the history of DJs. Then she goes on a Soul Train type show and is even more discovered and then the series of shy greetings that make up a third of the movie begin. Eventually she is sleeping with Dice and is succumbing to the stress of being famous. For example, she won’t dress scantily enough for her model shoot according to the modeling coach. This is strange because Billy Frank is not sexy in any way. This isn’t to say she’s ugly or unattractive but you would have no desire to sleep with her or even kiss her. I mean, I’m not under the delusion that she would care, but I might have to deal with it when I become famous for being the handsomest man in the world. Anyway, it ends when Billy is ultra-big but has broken up with Dice. Then Dice gets killed on Billy’s big Madison Square Garden night and Billy’s all sad. Then Billy finds her Mom and hugs her and it ends.

I have little to say about this movie, because while watching it, I barely gave it my full attention. However, there was a strange sensation watching this film because I felt it could have ended at the end of any scene and it would be OK. It’s not because I wanted it to end, but the film seemed like such an exercise in pointlessness that any ending would have worked and it would have felt complete in it’s entirety. If you try to watch this movie, even if just to mock it, I give you fair warning: Afterwards you will feel tired, cranky, and listless. That is simply the sensation of your soul being murdered by the might of Glitter.


Firstly, I just read Stefan's review and have to say that I'm shocked at how much of the storyline he managed to pick up. We've watched a lot of movies, and never before have we so deliberately done everything we could to ignore a movie. His level of comprehension in the face of our self-imposed semi-consciousness is a testament to his alien powers.

Now, let me explain something: I only rented this movie because I'd already seen Crossroads, and I had to find out which one sucked more. Glitter was the horrible victor, no question. I considered adding 8 Mile to the lineup, but I dunno... As far as I can tell from the previews, Eminem just spends an hour and a half staring at himself in a bathroom mirror while a guy behind him keeps saying "They're colling your name." I dunno, maybe that's a good movie, but I don't understand this rap stuff. I just wish it would all go away and jug bands would come back, with spoons.

Now for some reason, I made notes about Glitter. Let's see what I've got here:

-Makes no sense. Terrible wardrobe.

-Magical homosexual slows time, prances.

-Mariah is a monosyllabic girl. "Hi. Thanks. Hi. Hi."

-The Message is used thrice. Grand Master Flash rises from grave and weeps quietly.

-Doesn't feel like I'm watching this movie, I'm being exposed to this movie.

-The gay guy, Vanilla Dice, bangs Mariah, probably confused because her name is "Billy Frank".

-Executive Music Producer: Mariah Carey

-Wraith Effect

That last one needs explaining: A couple years ago my friend Mark and I were big into high school movies. We rented tons of them, and it was only a matter of time before we came across Jawbreaker.

When it was over, we couldn't stand up. We couldn't stand up. I'm not being cute or dramatic here, this is scientific fact. We sat slumped down on the couch staring at a black screen, with only enough energy to mumble vague inquiries to one another as to what the hell had just happened to us. It was frightening. Never watch that movie. Never. It doesn't sap your will to live, it saps your ability to live.

I felt signs of this same phenomenon while watching Glitter, and you have to understand that I barely watched Glitter. We played it at the comic shop, I was ringing up customers, talking to people and making fun of Glitter the whole time. It was the best possible scenario under which one could possibly watch Glitter, and I still felt wiped out after it was done. I'm horrified to think of what would have happened had I been stuck in a theatre with nothing to divert my attention. My dehydrated corpse would probably still be there.

R.I.P., all those brave souls who saw the theatrical release of Glitter. You knew not what manner of beast you faced, and now you're dead.




stefan - johnny_unusual@hotmail.com

keith - keithmpire@hotmail.com

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