Hercules in New York (1969)

HERCULES IN NEW YORK (1969) One-and-a-half stars

I remember first watching HERCULES IN NEW YORK, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s infamous motion picture debut, on “USA Up All Night” and I am trying to remember if it was Rhonda Shear or Gilbert Gottfried hosting that night.

I caught up with HERCULES IN NEW YORK about 10 years ago and wrote a rather negative review (that seems to be a pattern). I remember making fun of the ridiculous voice dubbed for Schwarzenegger and cracking multiple governor jokes.

I received “Arnold’s original classic” for Christmas and it’s hyped featuring his original audio track. That’s a vast improvement from dubbed Arnold, because it is infinitely more enjoyable to hear Mr. Schwarzenegger (billed as Arnold Strong, playing off co-star Arnold Stang) flub his lines than hear some mismatched voice for the world’s strongest man. We do hear Arnold’s voice except for the final scene. In that sense, we don’t leave HERCULES IN NEW YORK asking ourselves like Johnny Rotten, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

Where do we go now with HERCULES IN NEW YORK? The title basically sums up the plot, but unfortunately, there’s a lot more to it than that with scenes taking place in both New York City and Mount Olympus. On Earth, it’s a situation comedy with tons of slapstick and incredible feats by our title character, while on Mount Olympus, it’s a soap opera featuring Zeus, Juno, Venus, Hercules, Mercury, et cetera.

Hercules challenges Zeus, Zeus punishes Hercules, Hercules defies Zeus, Juno plots behind their back, Mercury attempts to bring Herc back, oh help us all, I just want more scenes like the infamous one where Hercules takes on a man-in-a-bear suit or even like the early one where he overpowers a car. Yes, I want more incredible feats and less soap opera.

If viewers at home decide to play a drinking game with HERCULES IN NEW YORK, please be careful which phrases and drinks are selected. For example, if you select “I am Hercules” and you’re drinking shots, you just might be passed out by the 30-minute mark. Then again, you just might prefer that over watching the rest of HERCULES IN NEW YORK, especially since the final 30 minutes are much worse than the first 30.

I wonder if there’s ever been a weirder screen pairing than Stang and Schwarzenegger.

The 5-foot-3 Stang and the 6-2 Schwarzenegger. The high-pitched motor-mouthed New Yorker and the Austrian who struggles with the English language. The scrawny bean pole and Mr. Olympia. They both enjoyed successful careers against the odds: Stang (1918-2009) described himself as a frightened chipmunk who’s been out in the rain too long, while Schwarzenegger’s mentor Joe Weider (1919-2013) falsely claimed the bodybuilder had extensive “stage” experience to get the big lug the Hercules part. Schwarzenegger returned to acting in Bob Rafelson’s STAY HUNGRY (1976) and later became perhaps the unlikeliest star after CONAN THE BARBARIAN and THE TERMINATOR. Stang continued to work into his 70s in a career that spawned more than 50 years.

It should be mentioned that Reg Park’s performance and physique in Mario Bava’s 1961 HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD inspired Schwarzenegger to become a bodybuilder. In turn, Park himself urged Schwarzenegger to take on the Hercules role. Too bad, Arnold did not have Bava (BLACK SUNDAY, TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE) for director.

Schwarzenegger’s friend and rival Lou Ferrigno played Hercules in two movies, HERCULES and THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES. At the fourth annual Golden Raspberry Awards in 1984, Ferrigno won “Worst New Star” for his performance in HERCULES, beating out Loni Anderson in STROKER ACE, Reb Brown in YOR, THE HUNTER OF THE FUTURE, the shrieking dolphins Cindy and Sandy from JAWS 3, and Finola Hughes in STAYING ALIVE. Bet only this one time Ferrigno would have liked to have been beaten by two dolphins.

Schwarzenegger became more successful avoiding being typecast than any other bodybuilder turned actor. At one point, he was the biggest action star in the world, both physically and financially.

Even in a bad movie like HERCULES IN NEW YORK, one can see Arnold’s potential.

In all conscience, I cannot rate HERCULES IN NEW YORK lower than JUNO, because I laughed more at it than I did the overrated 2007 comedy.

Friday the 13th (1980)

FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) One-and-a-half stars

Of all the horror movies over the decades that have been labelled “classic,” FRIDAY THE 13TH is the one arguably least deserving of that label.

Plain and simple, it’s a bad movie. One-dimensional characters, corny dialogue that even makes references to much much much better movies like CASABLANCA, filler scenes, and perhaps the least convincing mass murderer in screen history are some of its crimes against cinema.

Harry Manfredini’s musical score derived from PSYCHO and JAWS and Tom Savini’s make-up and special effects are both very good, and their work earns the film one half-star each.

I can only see FRIDAY THE 13TH being considered a classic if you count all the sequels and imitations.

My personal favorite FRIDAY THE 13TH movies are PART III, THE FINAL CHAPTER (perhaps the most schizophrenic movie ever made, a cross between leering teenage sex comedy and brutal violence), and JASON LIVES. They succeed more at having a sense of humor and a sense of fun than all the other installments. The rest of the movies all have their isolated moments.

If you have seen the sequels before the original, you might be shocked by the film that started it all. It is very sluggish, at times, and there’s no hockey-masked homicidal maniac in the middle of the mayhem.

Sean Cunningham (director) and Victor Miller (screenwriter) made FRIDAY THE 13TH to cash in on HALLOWEEN, which earned $60-70 million on a $300,000 budget. When there’s an unexpected runaway success like that, naturally the clones and variations start appearing in droves and they did after HALLOWEEN for at least five years.

Cunningham and Miller worked together previously on a family film called MANNY’S ORPHANS, released nearly two months before HALLOWEEN. Cunningham began with adult movies THE ART OF MARRIAGE and TOGETHER, produced Wes Craven’s THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and directed a sexploitation comedy named CASE OF THE FULL MOON MURDERS before consecutive family pictures in 1978.

In other words, he saw FRIDAY THE 13TH as the way to make inroads in the brutal movie business. Honestly, who could blame Cunningham, especially as many others had a similar brainstorm.

Cunningham, of course, lacked the finesse and skill of HALLOWEEN director-writer-composer John Carpenter. FRIDAY THE 13TH does benefit, however, from its own low budget production — $550,000 — so it is effective in fits and starts despite itself. It is far more of an exploitation film than HALLOWEEN, and proved nearly as profitable. We saw FRIDAY THE 13TH movies in every year of the 1980s except for 1983 and 1987.

What FRIDAY THE 13TH did was establish a campground setting, add more corpses, er, characters, and amplify the gore, elements that quickly became the norm for an onslaught of “dead teenager” movies. Like virtually every horror movie since CARRIE (1976), it also has one final jump scare. The sequels — namely PART 2, THE FINAL CHAPTER, and THE NEW BEGINNING — upped the nudity and sex quotient. (FRIDAY THE 13TH fans should check out Mario Bava’s BAY OF BLOOD, a 1971 film that undoubtedly influenced the first two FRIDAY THE 13TH installments. If you’ve not seen the Bava film before, you might be surprised. It’s also much better than any of the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies.)

The original FRIDAY THE 13TH exists in that post-HALLOWEEN storytelling mode, where there’s a prologue detailing terrible events that happened in the past and will dovetail with the events of the present. Just about every horror film made after HALLOWEEN includes a bloody, sordid back story.

In FRIDAY THE 13TH, we head back in time to Friday, June 13, 1958, Camp Crystal Lake, when camp counselors Barry and Claudette sneak inside a storage cabin for a little lovin’ and they are murdered. We come to find out that one year before, a 11-year-old boy named Jason Voorhies apparently drowned in Camp Crystal Lake, due to negligent camp counselors.

You could build a nifty little collection of these back story / terrible event in the past scenes.

Let’s see, HALLOWEEN began on Halloween 1963 with 6-year-old Michael Myers killing his older sister Judith.

In PROM NIGHT, it’s 1974 when 11-year-olds Wendy, Jude, Kelly, and Nick cause the accidental death of 10-year old Robin.

In TERROR TRAIN, a sexual initiation prank at a college fraternity’s New Year’s Eve party leads a young man named Kenny to become traumatized and committed to a psychiatric hospital.

In THE BURNING, it’s a fiery prank on a cruel, alcoholic summer camp caretaker named Cropsy that leads to five years in the hospital before his release and revenge.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE waits a bit to spring its 20 years ago flashback story on us.

Anyway, you get the point.

Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) decides that he will reopen a renovated Camp Crystal Lake. That’s his big mistake, one that results in eight deaths — seven of them Christy and his staff — on Friday, June 13, 1979.

Final Girl Adrienne King does have a great scream and some of the same wholesome All-American appeal as Jamie Lee Curtis. We also find out that she’s very talented at making coffee. Alice Hardy is virtually the only likable character among the lot, although we’re aghast that she ever had a love affair with the creepy Steve Christy. Girl, what were you thinking? There goes the whole idea of the Final Girl being a virgin.

As far as the boys go, Kevin Bacon later became a big star but he’s not around long in FRIDAY THE 13TH. Harry Crosby, son of the legendary actor and singer Bing (1903-77), attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and earned his MBA from the Fordham Graduate School of Business Administration before becoming a successful investment banker. Anyway, he’s killed in FRIDAY THE 13TH.

That all leads us to Mrs. Pamela Voorhees, played by Betsy Palmer (1926-2015), who we find out committed all the murders in a final act reveal. This middle-aged, albeit crazy, middle-aged lady, who at first seems like a kindly middle-aged lady, created all that mayhem. Early in this review, I called Mrs. Voorhees “perhaps the least convincing mass murderer in screen history” and I stand behind that claim. I just don’t believe that she could have accomplished such murderous feats, especially as she begins her attack on Alice by slapping her silly. Palmer brings on the camp — as in campy — during her screen time.

Film critic Gene Siskel (1946-99) hated FRIDAY THE 13TH so much that he first gave away the movie’s reveal and Palmer’s fate and then he provided the addresses for the chairman of the board of Gulf & Western Industries (who owned Paramount back then) and Palmer. Siskel rated FRIDAY THE 13TH “no stars.”

Palmer herself thought very little initially of the film and took on the assignment so she could buy a Volkswagen Scirocco. She called the script “a piece of shit” and she thought no one would go see FRIDAY THE 13TH.

In her later years, Palmer embraced the film and the role.

Nowadays, the next FRIDAY THE 13TH might be a documentary on the legal copyright battle between Miller and Cunningham.

As of Oct. 19, 2019, 655 folks have signed the change.org petition “Victor Miller & Sean Cunningham, End The Lawsuit and Work Together To Let Jason Live Again.”

The petition reads, “We, the fans of Friday the 13th ask both Victor Miller, Sean Cunningham along with Horror Inc to end the lawsuit and find resolution over the copyright claim by working together.

“Allowing the battle to take place in court helps no one, especially not the fans of the series. Relying on a courts decision will take years with neither side truly profiting within that time frame. Even after the courts decision one side will likely appeal the case and that will lead to even more years of not profiting on the franchise.

“By coming to a mutual agreement you both compromise and get something you want. You find common ground and you can work together to profit both sides. You’d also be supporting the fans that have supported you and the franchise for so many years. We want to continue to watch the franchise grow under your direction. Please support us as we have supported you. Thank you.”

Juno (2007)

JUNO (2007) One-and-a-half stars

The second episode of the 10th season of “South Park” gave us a great concept that applies to the 2007 comedy JUNO: “Smug Alert.”

That internal smug alert went off throughout Jason Reitman’s film, especially regarding Diablo Cody’s screenplay and Ellen Page’s precious little title character.

Two quotes from “Smug Alert” pinpoint what’s not right with JUNO.

“Being smug is a good thing,” Gerald Broflovski said.

“You mean — we should drive in hybrids but not act like we’re better than everyone else because of it?” Randy Marsh said.

JUNO (both the movie and the character) acts like being smug is a good thing and that it’s better than everybody else because of it, well, yeah, because that’s what it means to be smug.

Believe it or not, Cody’s original screenplay won for “Best Original Screenplay” in both the American and British editions of the Academy Awards. Yeah, I don’t believe it.

The dialogue scene between Juno and a clerk named Rollo proved enough to set off the “Smug Alert.” I’ll quote it all because I’ll let it form my case against JUNO and Juno.

Rollo: Well, well … if it isn’t MacGuff the crime dog? Back for another test?

Juno: I think the last one was defective. The plus sign looked more like a division sign so I remain unconvinced.

Rollo: Third test today, Mama Bear. Your eggo is preggo, no doubt about it.

Tough Girl: It’s really easy to tell. Is your nipples real brown?

Rollo: Yeah. Maybe your little boyfriend’s got mutant sperms. Knocked ya up twice.

Juno: Silencio old man! Look, I just drank my weight in Sunny-D and I gotta go pronto!

Rollo: Well, you know where the lavatory is.

Rollo [yells]: You pay for that pee stick when you’re done! Don’t think it’s yours just cuz ya marked it with your urine!

[later]

Rollo: Well, what’s the prognosis, fertile Myrtle? Minus or plus?

Juno: [taking a pregnancy test] I don’t know. It’s not seasoned yet. [grabs some candy] I’ll take some of these. Nope … There it is. The little pink plus sign is so unholy.

Rollo: That ain’t no Etch-a-Sketch. This is one doodle that can’t be un-did, homeskillet.

Yeah, exactly, that early dialogue indicts itself and the entire film. Did the voters for “Best Original Screenplay” have that scene erased from their collective memories? Never mind all the critics who listed JUNO as one of 2007’s best films — Roger Ebert named it his No. 1 film.

There are some good things in JUNO but they are ultimately overshadowed by that darn you-know-what that starts with ’s’ and ends with ’ss’ (it’s not success or sadness).

I also dislike the cinematic trend where seemingly every single damn character in a comedy talks like a stand-up comedian with crack timing and perfectly-timed cheap shots, even the characters that are not being played by stand-up comedians.

You had to have been living under a rock to not hear about JUNO in late 2007 and throughout 2008.

JUNO received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress (Page), in addition to its one victory.

Other screenplays nominated against JUNO were LARS AND THE REAL GIRL (Nancy Oliver), MICHAEL CLAYTON (Tony Gilroy), RATATOUILLE (Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava, and Jim Capobianco), and THE SAVAGES (Tamara Jenkins).

I don’t know about you at home, but I’d favor the rat over the brat ‘cause Ratatouille and RATATOUILLE are not smug in the slightest and that makes a huge difference.

Cody (born June 1978) made a name for herself writing an “adult” blog named “The Pussy Ranch” (honest to blog!) and her memoir “Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper” before she hit the jackpot with her debut screenplay for JUNO. Her life sounds perfectly equipped for becoming an Academy Award winning bio pic. Would her character be played by Miss Sassy Pants Page?

Cody’s other screenplay credits: JENNIFER’S BODY, YOUNG ADULT, PARADISE, RICKI AND THE FLASH, and TULLY. I also regret watching JENNIFER’S BODY, a horror comedy starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried that again set off the “Smug Alert.”

Cody said of JUNO, “You can look at it as a film that celebrates life and celebrates childbirth, or you can look at it as a film about a liberated young girl who makes a choice to continue being liberated. Or you can look at it as some kind of twisted love story, you know, a meditation on maturity.”

I’d rewrite Cody’s quote, “You can look at it as a film that celebrates superficiality and celebrates hipster, or you can look at it as a film about a glib young girl who makes a choice to continue being glib. Or you can look at it as some kind of situation comedy, you know, a meditation on monotony.”

JUNO also frequently misses the mark with the soundtrack, apparently picked by Page herself.

JUNO makes overtures to punk, glam, alternative, et cetera, but picks songs like the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking with You” and Sonic Youth’s “Superstar,” for example, atypical numbers for those bands. Where’s Nirvana and the many bands name-dropped by Kurt Cobain? Like the Vaselines, just one example. Nirvana covered “Here She Comes Now,” the most accessible song from the Velvets’ second LP WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT, 40 minutes and 13 seconds of sound renowned for clearing rooms and making ear drums bleed. What would Juno have made of “Sister Ray”?

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore on JUNO in Magnet Magazine, “Every once in a while, you’ll be asked whether your music can be used in a movie. Invariably, we always ask, ‘What’s the movie about?’ Because you don’t want it to be some kind of grotesque film. I didn’t even remember that they’d used the song until I was watching it with my daughter, then I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ [Laughs} When Mark (Jason Bateman) tells Juno, ‘Here’s a Sonic Youth song, I think you’ll really like this,’ and then he plays the song that’s the least indicative of our music — us covering a Carpenters tune — it’s such an odd choice. It’s also funny that she would be into totally hardcore punk — Iggy, Patti Smith, the Runaways — and then quantify Sonic Youth as ‘just a bunch of noise.’ But I think she was just angry at the guy and trying to get back at him.”

Michael Cera plays Paulie Bleeker in what amounted to his second movie featuring “The Michael Cera Role,” following SUPERBAD, and I was already tired of it. No, that’s not Jesse Eisenberg, who you might remember from THE SQUID AND THE WHALE and ZOMBIELAND. Yeah, it’s confusing.

Guess this confusion happened to the guys all the time.

“I bumped into Jesse on the street once and he told me he gets it once a day,” Cera said in the New York Post. “This guy asked me today if I was Napoleon Dynamite [Jon Heder].”

You know you’re in trouble when the best performance in the movie belongs to Jennifer Garner.

Avatar (2009)

AVATAR (2009) One-and-a-half stars
After I watched James Cameron’s AVATAR for the first time in nearly 10 years, numerous things hit me over the head like a (Hebrew) hammer.

Mental notes:

1) This movie sucks. I mean it, man, and I’m not sure how or why I ever liked it in the first place. I’ll blame it on the alcoholic consumption during my first watch in late ’09 and my love/lust relationship at the time with a woman who loved AVATAR.

2) It never ends. AVATAR is not the cinematic equivalent of the late ’60s Jefferson Airplane chestnut “3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds” or 216 miles per hour. The final act of AVATAR, in fact, could be called “3/4 of a Hour in 10 Years.”

3) Will Cameron ever direct a film again that comes in under 120 minutes? The 161-minute AVATAR followed hot on the heels (12 years later) of the 195-minute TITANIC. Here are the run times for TRUE LIES (141), TERMINATOR 2 (137), THE ABYSS (140), and ALIENS (137). In fact, you’d have to go all the way back in time to the 107-minute TERMINATOR (1984) for the last Cameron-directed picture under 120 minutes. (For the record, I like TERMINATOR 2, ALIENS, and THE ABYSS, I’ll pass on TRUE LIES, and I’ll have to revisit TITANIC to see how it holds up removed from all the hype and hysteria in late ’97 and early ’98.)

4) It’s been said that no good film is too long and no bad film is short enough. In that case, AVATAR will be cinematically torturous for people who think it’s no good. Let me put it yet another way: AVATAR and my last dentist appointment lasted about the same length of time, and I’ll go back to the dentist before I ever watch AVATAR again.

5) AVATAR just might be the preachiest movie ever made, even more so than any movie about, you know, preachers. Apparently, even 20th Century Fox asked Cameron to remove “some of this tree-hugging, FERN GULLY crap” from AVATAR. This preachiness makes AVATAR a real drag at times, and why it feels more like an endurance contest than an enjoyable, visionary motion picture experience.

6) Cameron practices what he preaches, though, because AVATAR recycles from DANCES WITH WOLVES, POCAHONTAS, FERN GULLY, ALIENS, and several Hayao Miyazaki films (just a short list). We’ve seen this movie before, and better.

7) AVATAR uncannily illustrates the “uncanny valley.” Definition: “The uncanny valley is a common unsettling feeling people experience when androids (humanoid robots) and audio/visual simulations closely resemble humans in many respects but are not quite convincingly realistic.”

8) Blue is not my favorite color.

9) Black is my favorite color. I loved AVATAR most when it finally faded to black.

10) I liked the Na’vi subtitles much better when they were in German on the bootleg copy I first consumed.

11) I must follow the THIS IS SPINAL TAP rule, which means this list must go to 11.

Pet Sematary (2019)

PET SEMATARY (2019) One-and-a-half stars

I best stay away from the reboots, retcons, or remakes of horror movies for quite some time.

In the case of PET SEMATARY, it actually did meet my rather low expectations.

For the record, it’s the second time in my life that I let a loved one pick the free rental — following M. Night Sham-A-Lama-Ding-Dong’s 2006 epic turd LADY IN THE WATER — and I still feel cheated. There’s an obvious moral lesson to be learned here.

PET SEMATARY lays it on thick, awful thick, with just about every cheap carny trick in the book. I wanted to give up about 20 minutes in, during the death of Victor Pascow in the hospital. That’s when the young man’s brain pulsates from his skull and a nurse exclaims, “Oh my God! I can see his brain!” I stuck it out, although I grumbled something or other about “cheap trick” to my wife not long after the scene.

The plot: Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) and his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) move their family — daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence) and son Gage (Hugo, Lucas Lavoie), plus fur baby Church — from metropolis Boston to rural Maine.

Now, in real life, that’s undoubtedly a good move for everybody concerned. Not in the movies, however, especially any movie based on a best-selling Stephen King novel.

You just know they’re fucked, doomed to a nightmarish saga worse than urban violence. In fact, we needed Crazy Ralph peddling past on his bicycle and screaming “You’re doomed” and “It’s got a death curse” at our young couple.

I know what you’re thinking, that Jason killed off Crazy Ralph long ago, but not if Crazy Ralph was buried in a pet cemetery. I’m just getting a little bit ahead of myself, oh by about three paragraphs.

Thanks to the collective works of King and “Murder, She Wrote,” I have no desire to move to Maine.

The Creeds buy one doozy of a property and I bet it’s listed right next to the Amityville Horror House in Toms River, New Jersey. Once again, the true villain of a horror movie should be the realtor.

Real estate perks for the Creeds’ dream house: A highway seemingly just a step away with semi-trucks barreling down the road all hours of the day (exactly what you’d want for two young children and one pet) and a pet cemetery in your backyard.

Never mind a kindly old man neighbor (John Lithgow) who’s going to lead you straight to your doom.

You’d think you’d rather go back to where you came in the first 10 minutes, right?

All this happens with the utmost predictability, because first and foremost it’s a remake that does not stray too far from the original. We’ve already been down this highway before and one big alteration director Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer and screenwriter Jeff Buhler made was spelled out in the film’s promotion. One of the trailers showed the whole movie in a mere 2 minutes, 26 seconds. PET SEMETARY is yet another movie where I recommend watching the trailer over the actual movie.

Somewhere, in past reviews, I have mentioned how I normally hate jump scares. They’re precisely what I mean by cheap carny trick.

Seasoned movie viewers should be able to detect a jump scare from a country mile away, identifying all the telltale signs.

PET SEMATARY abuses the old standard “It’s Only A Dream” about, just a guess here, 10 times too many.

Abuse is a fitting word for PET SEMETARY.

NOTE: How many times did AutoCorrect change the second half of PET SEMATARY to seminary? Every single time, and I had to change it to the original “incorrect” spelling. However, just think of the possibilities inherent here, for example, “I don’t want to be buried in a pet seminary.”

The Rocky Horror Picture Show vs. Rock ‘N’ Roll High School

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW VS. ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL

I’ve never understood the appeal of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and how it became the ultimate cult film.

Lord knows I’ve tried, but it’s still neither good nor bad enough to be any good for me.

First time I watched it was late-night TV during my early teenage years. This same late-night program later showed WOLFEN and those are the only two films I can remember watching from that program. (Upon further reflection, I also recall watching HOWARD THE DUCK and THE BREAKFAST CLUB under such circumstances.) Who would have ever guessed that I liked ROCKY HORROR most on this first viewing.

Second time I saw it was part of Starz’ “Midnight Movies” circa 2005. Starz presented a documentary called MIDNIGHT MOVIES based from the book written by film critics J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum, then played the movies featured in the doc. I remember watching THE HARDER THEY COME and ROCKY HORROR.

Third time did not prove to be a charm. Two of my ex-girlfriend’s friends could not believe that she had never seen ROCKY HORROR, so they immediately rushed out to the nearest video store and snagged a copy. My ex-girlfriend and I sat there in stunned disbelief at ROCKY HORROR.

The second and third viewings of ROCKY HORROR turned out to be washes and I liked it less each viewing.

I don’t know, I’ve always expected something more outrageous, something more shocking than GREASE in drag.

In fact, I’ve long equated ROCKY HORROR with GREASE: They’re both downright positively absolutely wholesome in dealing with the source material of transgressive art.

Hip to be square, indeed.

Next to FREAKS, BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, ERASERHEAD, and SHOWGIRLS, for example, ROCKY HORROR especially seems like a lame little song-and-dance picture.

As a social phenomenon, ROCKY HORROR is undeniable.

As a stand-alone film without the cult audience in the living room, it’s not so hot.

Feed me THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1986) instead.

Hell, give me ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, a 1979 production from the Roger Corman factory.

It’s a teenage rebellion picture and as the late, great Joey Ramone (1951-2001) once said, we haven’t had one of those since the Revolution. Think he meant the American Revolution, not the Industrial or the Television or the Rocky Horror.

ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL benefits greatly from a pair of fun fun fun performances at the heart of the picture: P.J. Soles as Ramones loving Riff Randell, who introduces herself as rock ’n’ roller, and Mary Woronov as the fascist Principal Togar, who’s the type to burn rock ’n’ roll albums and crush any individuality. She’s the Principal of Vince Lombardi High, and Riff Randell is her nemesis. Togar hates the Ramones, and I believe she point blank asks them, “Do your parents know you’re Ramones?”

In her quest to quash rock music, Togar introduces a nifty little device that I don’t remember seeing anywhere else: The Rock-O-Meter, which measures, I do believe, the comparative loudness of rock bands. The meter starts with Muzak at the bottom and proceeds through Pat Boone, Debbie Boone, Donny & Marie, Kansas, Peter Frampton, Foreigner, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Ted Nugent, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and, finally, the Ramones at the very top. Yeah, it’s a long way to the top, if you wanna rock ’n’ roll. When you reach that level, it’s not a good time to be a lab mouse (it’s just as bad as being a drummer in Spinal Tap).

Oh, it would have been a nifty little joke to have ROCKY HORROR between Donny & Marie and Kansas.

There’s also a role in ROCK ’N’ ROLL for cult film director Paul Bartel (1938-2000), who evolves from a rock ’n’ roll hater to a Ramones lover. It’s a great moment in dance and cinema when Bartel’s Mr. McGree shakes a tail feather to the Ramones’ cover of “Do You Wanna Dance?” after band and students have taken over the halls of Lombardi High.

That guy Dick Miller (1928-2019) shows up late, late in the pic as a scull-cracking would-be fascist police officer. Roger Corman once named Miller “the best actor in Hollywood” and he’s a favorite of fans of flicks like A BUCKET OF BLOOD, GREMLINS and GREMLINS 2, and PIRANHA. Arnold even blew him away in THE TERMINATOR.

Clint Howard plays Eaglebauer, a procurer at Vince Lombardi who sets up shop in a Brownsville Station dream.

Over the years, I began to notice the majority of my favorite movies are blessed with a multitude of great supporting characters and great character actors. BOOGIE NIGHTS and THE BIG LEBOWSKI, for example, leap quickly to mind.

Guess it goes to show the overall quality of ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL when I have mentioned five performers — Soles, Woronov, Bartel, Miller, and Howard — and not gone into detail about the Ramones.

Delving into the Ramones’ song catalog became one of the enduring pleasures of my life and their songs from “Beat on the Brat” and “Rockaway Beach” to “Rock ’N’ Roll High School” and “The KKK Took My Baby Away” have earned a place inside my punk rock heart alongside the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, et cetera.

It’s the punk rocker (and the antisocial free spirit) inside me that prefers ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL over THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) One-and-a-half stars; ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (1979) Three-and-a-half stars

The Pride of the Yankees (1942)

THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES (1942) Two stars
A “Yeah right!” movie, why that’s THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES.

We all know what “Yeah right!” movies are, right, because, yes, they make us say “Yeah right!” It could be any plot element, a plot twist, a casting decision, et cetera.

Watching THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES again, it left me saying “Yeah right!” more than anything I’ve seen since, oh, perhaps, CRASH (2005).

We’ll start with a defining “Yeah right!” scene.

Of course, I know, THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES is the cinematic equivalent of those books we read in elementary school about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. You might remember the larger-than-life stories about George and his cherry tree and Honest Abe wrestling.

THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES does that with a bat and a glove.

Our Gehrig tall tale starts with a hospital room filled with reporters. Yankee slugger Babe Ruth (Babe Ruth) promises a boy named Billy that he will hit a home run to center field … against St. Louis in the 1926 World Series.

Why, not to be outdone, our hero Lou Gehrig (Gary Cooper) comes over to visit Billy on his own and promises the boy two home runs … in the same game, yes, the same game that Ruth’s supposed to hit a homer. What a lucky boy!

Ruth and Gehrig both get their homers out of the way in the first inning.

Well, Gehrig needs his second homer and it’s not going to be easy.

Sports writers Sam Blake (Walter Brennan) and Hank Hanneman (Dan Duryea) spend the movie bantering back-and-forth with Blake always supporting and Hanneman always doubting Gehrig. Blake and Hanneman bet on whether or not Gehrig will hit a second homer. They keep raising their stakes as the game moves on and Gehrig accumulates strikeouts. I should probably mention that Blake witnessed Gehrig making his promise.

All roads lead us to the ninth inning and why that dirty St. Louis pitcher, he’s gonna intentionally walk Gehrig.

Of course, a promise is a promise, though, and Gehrig finds a way to fulfill it in the absolute most dramatic fashion.

Later in the film, near the end of his life, Gehrig’s visited by an older Billy on Lou Gehrig Day. Billy tells Gehrig that his shining example and two homers that day inspired Billy’s full recovery.

As the reporter said in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Opening credits: “This is the story of a hero of the peaceful paths of everyday life.

“It is the story of a gentle young man who, in the full flower of his great fame, was a lesson in simplicity and modesty to the youth of America.

“He faced death with that same valor and fortitude that has been displayed by thousands of young Americans on far-flung fields of battle. He left behind him a memory of courage and devotion that will ever be an inspiration to all men.

“This is the story of Lou Gehrig.”

Signed by famous writer Damon Runyon (1880-1946). Far out.

Yes, THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES — made shortly after Gehrig’s death in 1941 at the age of 37 — lays it on thick right from the start.

Gehrig remains one of the greatest baseball players — his 2,130 consecutive games played streak stood as record until Cal Ripken, Jr., passed it on Sept. 6, 1995.

Great baseball players do not guarantee great movies — Babe Ruth, for example, received THE BABE RUTH STORY (1948) and THE BABE (1992), both even worse than THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES.

In a certain mood, THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES might be a moving experience.

Otherwise, it might be a “Yeah right!” movie for the ages.

Game of Death (1978)

GAME OF DEATH (1978) One-and-a-half stars
After Bruce Lee’s death in 1973, a new genre of exploitation films came into existence, “Bruceploitation.”

Actors in this genre included Bruce Li, Bronson Lee (combining two action stars), Bruce Lai, Bruce Le, Bruce Lei, Bruce Lie, Bruce Liang, Saro Lee, Bruce Ly, Bruce Thai, Bruce K.L. Lea, Brute Lee, Myron Bruce Lee, Lee Bruce, and Dragon Lee, while Jackie Chan was touted as the next Bruce Lee until he found his own groove with SNAKE IN THE EAGLE’S SHADOW and DRUNKEN MASTER (both 1978).

“Bruceploitation” films often included some variant of “Enter,” “Fist,” “Fury,” “Dragon,” and “New” in their titles. BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE, that’s my favorite title and VHS cover art.

The films were nearly all garbage.

That leads us to GAME OF DEATH.

Lee started filming GAME OF DEATH after WAY OF THE DRAGON and he finished a few dazzling fight sequences, including the most famous one against NBA superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a matchup pitting the 5-foot-7 Lee and 7-2 Abdul-Jabbar. GAME OF DEATH had all the makings of Lee’s masterwork.

Alas, it never came to be.

Lee stopped filming GAME OF DEATH to go make ENTER THE DRAGON, the film that helped break martial arts films in the international market.

Unfortunately, Lee died on July 20, shortly before the release of ENTER THE DRAGON, and he never completed GAME OF DEATH.

A few years later, director Robert Clouse built a theatrical version of GAME OF DEATH around Lee’s three fight scenes (totaling 11 minutes), with all sorts of subterfuge used to “cover” for the fact Lee died and left a major hole in the production. Clouse, under the pseudonym Jan Spears with Raymond Chow, concocted an entirely different plot leading up to the fights and changed Lee’s character from “Hai Tien” to “Billy Lo.” Amazingly enough, two former Academy Award winners found their way into the cast, Dean Jagger (in his penultimate theatrical film) and Gig Young (in his final film).

This insulting subterfuge includes multiple Lee stand-ins who hide behind shades for the majority of the movie, stock footage beginning with Lee’s fight scene from WAY OF THE DRAGON against Chuck Norris, a superimposed towel over stock footage, a cardboard cutout, cuts to “fake” Bruce from “real” Bruce, and finally footage from Lee’s actual funeral.

You can differentiate stock footage from the body of the movie, because of its grainy quality.

Abdul-Jabbar even refused to participate in the reshoot and so they filled the “Hakim” part with somebody who does not even closely resemble the basketball star.

In other words, none of it’s well done.

Not that it should have been done at all.

Heart of the Matter: The 11 minutes of the real Lee are the only reason GAME OF DEATH gets more than one star for a rating and these scenes are the only reasons for watching. Lee deserved better, a lot better, than a cynical slapdash exploitation film like the first 80 minutes directed by Clouse.

In those 11 minutes, however, we remember what a dynamo Lee truly was, a marvel of modern man. Just dazzling.

Thankfully, after technological advances, viewers can skip all the bullshit and cue up the good parts, as Phil Hartman’s Telly Savalas said (about different movies, lol, but yeah, we don’t have time to fast-forward).

Still, it’s tempting to speculate what could have been.

They could have taken all of Lee’s completed footage and built around it with interviews from Lee himself, Norris, Abdul-Jabbar, Robert Wall, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, et cetera. Or just used only the completed footage.

Nearly anything would have been superior to what they did for the first 80 minutes in GAME OF DEATH.

The Omen (1976)

THE OMEN (1976) One-and-a-half stars
The British have a great word to describe all THE OMEN movies: “bollocks.”

We can also substitute “poppycock,” “hogwash,” and “balderdash,” some of the best words in the English language.

THE OMEN movies are nothing more than an excuse to watch familiar and sometimes big-name performers be systematically eliminated in bizarre, gruesome ways. Sounds great, eh?

Not when the audience gets bludgeoned with the great significance of it all, unlike the average exploitation movie. We have some frenzied overacting, a whole lot of pretension, a relentless musical score, and a ridiculous storyline that’s like a Satanist soap opera.

Sometimes I like all of those elements in a movie but THE OMEN movies lay it on so damn thick with them all that I just balk and become an unrepentant nonbeliever.

Off the top of my old noggin, only THE AMITYVILLE HORROR movies compete with THE OMEN series for my least favorite horror series.

I’ll quote from the IMDb for a handy plot summary: “Robert and Katherine Thorn seem to have it all. They are happily married and he is the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, but they want nothing more than to have children. When Katherine has a stillborn child, Robert is approached by a priest at the hospital who suggests that they take a healthy newborn whose mother has just died in childbirth. Without telling his wife he agrees. After relocating to London, strange events (and the ominous warnings of a priest) lead him to believe that the child he took from that Italian hospital is evil incarnate.”

Robert and Katherine Thorn are played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, respectively, and they’re our leading big names. Peck naturally plays the great reluctant believer and every OMEN and AMITYVILLE HORROR movie needs one main character to constantly postpone the inevitable. What will it take to convince Peck’s Robert Thorn that his son’s the Antichrist? Unfortunately for us and the movie, it will take a whole helluva lot to convince Robert Thorn. I lost patience with Thorn (and the movie) long, long before he takes action down the home stretch.

Mainly it’s because THE OMEN and its sequels gave birth to what I call “The Omen Syndrome” or any time any character figures out a dread secret and either spills the beans or merely plans to, you can just bet your bottom dollar that in the next few minutes that character will be killed in the most unpleasant way possible. THE OMEN movies all played on this basic scenario time and time again. That makes them deadly predictable, and that’s when you earn a syndrome named after you.

To be fair, THE OMEN does have a few effective moments, but they all probably add up to 10-15 minutes of screen time and we’re talking about a movie that lasts nearly two hours. Those 10-15 minutes amount to the death scenes and the moments of danger, but the rest of the movie irritated me to no end unlike, for example, THE EXORCIST, a film that involved me from beginning to end. Because of the few effective moments, I have awarded the first OMEN movie 1/2 star more than its sequels.

At this point, I’d rather talk about the actors who played Damien in the first three OMEN movies.

English actor Harvey Stephens played the devil child and it was his first role. I mean, wow, where the Hell do you go from playing the Antichrist? Stephens only took on two more film roles: Young Emil in the 1980 TV movie “Gauguin the Savage” and Tabloid Reporter No. 3 in THE OMEN remake (2006). In 2017, Stephens received a suspended prison sentence for his 2016 road rage attack on a pair of cyclists; Mr. Stephens knocked one cyclist unconscious with a punch and punched the other cyclist several times in the face. Stephens received sentences of 14 months, suspended for two years.

Brazilian-born English actor Jonathan Scott-Taylor played a teenage Damien in the first sequel that’s set in Chicago (before John Hughes) and stars William Holden and Lee Grant in the Peck and Remick parts. Scott-Taylor’s career peaked with Damien and his last film performance came in a 1985 movie named SHADEY.

New Zealand actor Sam Neill took on Damien for THE FINAL CONFLICT and he’s the only one of the three actors to sustain a film career. We’ve seen Neill in everything from DEAD CALM and THE PIANO to THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER and JURASSIC PARK.

By the way, isn’t anybody who names their child Damien just asking for it?