Arachnophobia (1990)

ARACNOPHOBIA (1990) ***1/2
Arachnophobia is another one of those movies from the late ’80s or early ’90s that I must have watched a hundred times back when it first played on cable TV.

File it alongside such movies as Back to the Future 2, the first two Bill & Ted movies Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey, The Great Outdoors, Gremlins 2, Terminator 2, Total Recall, Tremors, and Young Guns. Those are the ones that quickly come to mind.

Recently revisiting Arachnophobia again for the first time in many years, I have to admit that I remembered a good number of the scenes, especially during the second half of the film when the spiders go wild on the fictional small town Canaima, California. I blurted out John Goodman’s line before his exterminator character Delbert McClintock says Rock and roll! I had a lot of fun with it around the age of 13 and I still had a lot of fun with it at 44.

You can have a good old time with Arachnophobia, just like Tremors, because it doesn’t go too far into extreme gross-out territory with the shock moments and death scenes, it has predominantly quirky and likable characters that you can support for the length of a silly, spooky monster movie, it straddles that razor-thin line successfully between comedy and horror, and it enjoys preying upon our fear of the unknown. I don’t have arachnophobia, or an extreme or irrational fear of spiders, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I want a surprise in my size 12 shoe either.

Arachnophobia gives us a lot of familiar character archetypes.

For example, we have the highly educated big city doctor with the loving wife and two small children who relocate to a small town to get away from all the hustle and bustle. They have his new practice, her severance pay, and they also have each other. It goes without saying, of course, that our doctor suffers from arachnophobia.

The crusty old doctor who takes back his retirement after the young doctor and his family already made their move into a new house and who then seemingly opposes the young doctor at every turn during his subsequent effort to set up shop in the small town. He’s also the resident disbeliever when the spiders begin mounting their body count, and the younger doctor wants an outrageous autopsy because he doesn’t believe it was a heart attack.

The local head law enforcement officer who resents somebody like the highly educated big city doctor.

The straight-shooting but friendly old widow who takes an instant shining to the young doctor and who volunteers to be his first patient in a new town.

The football coach and his wholesome All-American family and the funeral home director and his penchant for jokes that never quite land.

Also, the world’s foremost expert on spiders, who Arachnophobia introduces before any of the small-town characters with a prologue set in Venezuela.

See, Dr. James Atherton (Julian Sands) and crew discover a new species of spiders, very large and very deadly, and one of the specimens hitches a ride in the coffin of his first victim Jerry Manley (Mark L. Taylor), a photographer from Canaima, California.

Our lethal spider makes his way out from the coffin and ultimately into the barn of the young doctor named Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels). He crossbreeds with a local domestic spider that Jennings’ wife saves from their new house and relocates to their barn. The Jennings not only have the barn but also the cellar that’s very convenient for spiders and their nests, and their eventual world domination.

Daniels has been one of the most reliable actors in the movies, and his presence almost guarantees quality. His 88 acting credits include Terms of Endearment, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Something Wild, Gettysburg, Speed, Dumb and Dumber, Pleasantville, The Squid and the Whale, and The Martian. He’s very good as Jennings and this character and performance come across to the audience like Roy Scheider as Martin Brody in Jaws because he’s terrified by spiders just like Brody was not the biggest fan of water. In the end, though, it’s Jennings and Brody who overcome their greatest fears.

Goodman attempts to steal the movie with great moment after great moment. He’s a strong and steady injection of humor especially when the horror kicks into overdrive around the midpoint of the 110-minute film. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out if Goodman’s Delbert McClintock and Michael Gross’ Burt Gummer are related.

I prefer Tremors over Arachnophobia, because Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward are absolutely fantastic and trump any of the characters in Arachnophobia, Finn Carter’s Rhonda LeBeck is not cast aside for large chunks of the movie like Harley Jane Kozak’s Molly Jennings, and I just think it’s a better overall movie.

Both films, though, do a fine cinematic tradition justice.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1986) ****
Little Shop of Horrors, based on the off-Broadway stage musical itself based on the 1960 Roger Corman cult film, is one of those movies that I like a little bit more every time I watch it.

I’ll just come right out and say it early on in this review: I’ll take Little Shop of Horrors over The Rocky Horror Picture Show every day of the week because the performances and characters, the science fiction and horror plot, the script, the direction, the musical production numbers, and the special effects are all far superior. Granted, to be fair, Little Shop of Horrors had more than 25 times the production budget of Rocky Horror.

I watched both films around the same time, in the late ’80s or early ’90s both on late-night local TV Saturday night movie programming. I also remember first coming across Wolfen and The Breakfast Club in this format. Anyway, I’ve always liked Little Shop of Horrors and never particularly cared for Rocky Horror, which I’ve come to like even less with every viewing so it’s Little Shop of Horrors inverted.

Rick Moranis stars as the meek, nerdy florist Seymour Krelborn. He means well but he’s extremely clumsy and pines after his beautiful coworker Audrey (Ellen Greene) who dates the abusive, sadistic, nitrous oxide fiend ’50s style greaser biker dentist Orin Scrivello (Steve Martin). Seymour’s perpetually chewed out by his boss Mr. Mushnik (Vincent Gardenia), the owner of Mushnik’s Flower Shop. Everything changes for Seymour, Audrey, and Mr. Mushnik when Seymour discovers Audrey II (voiced by Levi Stubbs, lead singer of the Four Tops), one mean green mother from outer space with an insatiable appetite and designs on taking over Planet Earth. Feeding Audrey II proves to be a nightmare for Seymour.

Moranis gives his definitive film performance, Greene returns to play Audrey from the stage production, Moranis and Greene make for a great movie couple and they’re very deserving of a happy ending, and Martin and Stubbs are both absolutely incredible in their villainous roles.

In fact, Martin and Stubbs both should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but it’s understandable why they were not in a year with supporting actor winner Michael Caine for Hannah and Her Sisters and nominees Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe for Platoon, Denholm Elliott for A Room with a View, and Dennis Hopper for Hoosiers.

Comedies, science fiction, and horror films very rarely earn nods from the Academy, a problem for Little Shop of Horrors when it encompasses all three genres.

It also became complicated when considering Stubbs (1936-2008) for a nomination, since he’s the voice of an animatronic puppet with 21 different principal puppeteers including Brian Henson. Stubbs’ authoritative, booming voice benefits the movie infinitely in both the dialogue scenes between Audrey II and poor Seymour and four musical numbers.

Audrey II’s Mean Green Mother from Outer Space, with lyrics by Howard Ashman and music by Alan Menken, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song and lost to Berlin’s Take My Breath Away from Top Gun.

I’ve been known to say to pets both canine and feline Feed me, Seymour.

Crystal (Tichina Arnold), Ronette (Michelle Weeks), and Chiffon (Tisha Campbell), names borrowed from three girl groups contemporaneous with the original Little Shop of Horrors, provide a Greek chorus with sass and style.

Jim Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Guest, and Bill Murray show up in small roles.

Little Shop of Horrors originally retained the ending of the stage musical with Audrey and Seymour killed and giant Audrey II plants on a Godzilla-like rampage, but test audiences positively absolutely hated that Audrey and Seymour were killed and the original 23-minute ending became a rewritten and reshot happy ending that pushed the release date back to December 19, 1986.

I’ve only watched Little Shop of Horrors with the happy ending, and I must say that I’m more than happy with that.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) ****
Over a period of a couple years, I watched all 36 Abbott and Costello feature-length comedies from their scene-stealing minor roles in One Night in the Tropics (1940) to their last disappointing picture in Dance with Me, Henry (1956).

Bud Abbott (1897-1974) and Lou Costello (1906-59) are not on the same elite level as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy, for starters, but they fit on a tier below neatly alongside the Three Stooges and Wheeler and Woolsey.

I recommend 28 out of their 36 films, and I do like the duo and their films a good bit. That said, I do not recommend binge-watching their films because they are often saddled with cornball musical numbers, cornball romantic subplots, and comedic routines that could quickly become very repetitive and tiresome after repeat exposure to their work. I spread their 36 films out very effectively, rarely ever watching any of them consecutively in a single sitting.

Until I recently watched Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein again, easily their most famous picture, I would have even argued they never made a truly great motion picture.

I’ve seen it several times over the years, and I’ve always liked it a lot ever since that first viewing many years ago on AMC. I always considered it nothing less than a very good film and the ultimate Abbott and Costello motion picture experience.

Anyway, this last time watching Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a meeting of Universal’s main staples, I thought Who the hell am I kidding, this is a great movie and I’m bumping it up to four stars exactly right where it belongs!

Of course, Abbott and Costello don’t actually meet Frankenstein, it’s Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) and he plays a subservient role to Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and Larry Talbot / The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.), and it’s also not Abbott and Costello but Chick Young and Wilbur Gray who do the meeting within the movie. I guess Chick and Wilbur Meet Frankenstein’s Monster or Abbott and Costello Meet Glenn Strange or Abbott and Costello Meet Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man just wouldn’t have worked as titles.

If you stop and think too much about the inconsistencies and continuity gaps and logical flaws in any Universal horror movie, especially the ones made during the ’40s, you just might drive yourself stark raving mad and start foaming at the mouth.

I recommend just going with the flow. You’ll likely live a little if not a lot longer.

I’m not even going to regurgitate a plot synopsis for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein because life is short, life is precious, and I honestly believe that one knows more or less what to expect from something titled Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Abbott and Costello developed a routine in their horror comedies, as early as 1941’s Hold That Ghost and starting again with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and continuing through 1955’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, where something frightens Costello’s character and he will try (often in vain) to get Abbott’s character to believe him.

I am not exactly the biggest fan of this routine, I must admit, and it’s the first exhibit for what I wrote earlier about their comedic routines becoming repetitive and tiresome.

They never got that routine down any better than Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, however, and it definitely has something to do with the presence of Lugosi (1882-1956), Chaney (1906-73), and, to a much lesser degree, Strange (1899-1973).

Lugosi, Chaney, and Strange play it straight and they help sell the laughs just by acting no differently than if they were in House of Frankenstein or House of Dracula.

Costello never played more convincingly frightened than he does throughout Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Abbott and Costello were never more consistently funny than they are during Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)

SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY (2021) *
I am not exactly sure why I decided to watch Space Jam: A New Legacy on a Saturday afternoon, following hot on the heels of the Disney live-action films Midnight Madness and Condorman.

I mean, I am not the biggest fan of the original Space Jam from 1996, basically a feature-length advertisement for the greatness of Michael Jordan with Looney Tunes and Bill Murray and Wayne Knight and everybody else guest stars or glorified cameos. Never thought it was all that great even back during the height of the Chicago Bulls — Space Jam came out Nov. 15, 1996, just a few months after the Bulls put together a 72-10 regular season and won an NBA title — and it has aged worse. Of course, it seems to have a major cult following, but then again, so does Howard the Duck.

Also, I have never been much of a LeBron James fan, since his arrival upon the scene in 2002. I’ve never cared for his style of play, his flopping and floundering about like he’s been shot when selling a foul despite the fact that he’s easily the size of an NFL tight end and bigger than most NBA players, his celebratory antics, his aping Michael Jordan from the shoes, money, and the uniform number to the chalk toss and now his very own Space Jam movie, his ring chasing and team hopping, and his outright hijacking of ESPN for the last two decades. He’s arguably been even more omnipresent in our lives than Jordan, one of the most famous people in the world during his glory days in the ’90s, given the social media factor.

For example, I liked and shared one LeBron traveling GIF, and the Facebook algorithms just won’t show me any mercy in the two or three years since. LeBron this, LeBron that, just because I thought it was funny to see LeBron travel across the desert with basketball in hand. Now, I have to see a brilliant quote like this one, I don’t give a fuck what nobody think. I’m him. I get shit for making the right play. Four motherfuckers on me. Motherfucker wide open right here. We are a team and I trust them. Why wouldn’t I have thrown it to them? I don’t care about the results. What?

Anyway.

You guessed it, Space Jam: A New Legacy is a $150 million and 1-hour, 55-minute advertisement for the greatness of LeBron James.

You can even play a drinking game with A New Legacy: Take a swig of the sauce every time you hear King James. It’s a lot safer than drinking every time they say Carol Anne in Poltergeist III or Cheech and Chong utter Hey, man in Up in Smoke.

I found very little to like in A New Legacy. A lot of the movie felt like watching a mash up of the plots from Hook and Space Jam. Also, the Looney Tunes more or less serve LeBron James and his greatness, aside from very fleeting isolated moments that don’t add up to any of the Looney Tunes shorts like Duck Amuck or The Great Piggy Bank Robbery or Porky in Wackyland or You Ought to Be in Pictures or any number of the brilliant shorts of the ’40s and ’50s.

Wile E. Coyote proves though he could be ideal halftime entertainment.

I absolutely hated what they did with all the Warner Brothers intellectual properties: Turn them into fans in The Big Game that closes out the picture. I mean, seriously, do you take King Kong or Pennywise for a basketball fan? I don’t see Pennywise cheering for anything. Come on, man. I didn’t catch Dirty Harry or Rick Deckard or Stanley Kowalski or Jack Torrance or Pazuzu in the crowd, but I sincerely hope that doesn’t mean we’ll see them in Space Jam 3.

I must admit to rooting for the villains, or the goons, during A New Legacy and found the greatest entertainment when they dunked on LeBron real good in the first half.

Of course, I understood the second half would take a dramatic turn and give us a great big happy ending for LeBron and his celluloid family. Wasn’t it cast in stone?

I just hope that LeBron (and his legion of fans) do not try and count his victory in A New Legacy toward his NBA titles.

Midnight Madness (1980)

MIDNIGHT MADNESS (1980) 1/2*
Midnight Madness is a teenybopper It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and I wrote of the latter picture ‘I laughed more during Inherit the Wind,’ ‘Because of its length, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb title) earns my vote for worst comedy ever made,’ and ‘I did not laugh once for more than three hours. That’s a record.’

Had I seen it at the time of the original review, I would have stated ‘I laughed more during Judgement at Nuremberg.’

I, however, did not laugh more during Midnight Madness, which I thought I would rate higher than It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (much prefer James Brown’s It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World) because it’s shorter by a hour but Midnight Madness got so incredibly dumb in the final act that I could not in clear conscience give it any more than half a star.

Letterboxd plot summary for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: ‘A group of strangers come across a man dying after a car crash who proceeds to tell them about the $350,000 he buried in California. What follows is the madcap adventures of those strangers as each attempts to claim the prize for himself.’

Letterboxd plot summary for Midnight Madness: ‘A genius grad student organizes an all-night treasure hunt in which five rival teams composed of colorful oddballs furiously match wits with one another while trying to locate and decipher various cryptic clues planted ingeniously around Los Angeles.’

Laugh summary for a disgruntled viewer in the middle of nowhere, er, middle America: None.

Basically, I just do not like this comedic style, where a bunch of rumbling bumbling stumbling fumbling idiots fall all over themselves for two (or three) hours in the broadest possible acting imaginable (mugging) and this is supposed to be funny, entertaining, satirical.

Midnight Madness also belongs in this bizarre cinematic nether region between a G-rated Disney live-action movie and an R-rated National Lampoon’s Animal House.

Walt Disney Productions released Midnight Madness and it’s quite obvious, despite the studio not appearing in the credits and despite no Dean Jones, no Tim Conway, no Don Knotts, no Sandy Duncan, no Bette Davis, no Ray Milland, and no Keenan Wynn in the cast.

It has enough, more than enough, zany slapstick action for 10 Disney live-action pictures.

We get five different teams of colorful oddballs or rather, 21 young professional actors mugging through stereotypes like the fat twins, the beer-loving jocks, the debate nerds, the feminists, the Latino who never speaks, the older and younger brother, etc. There’s even a character named ‘Barf,’ preceding Spaceballs and Pizza the Hutt’s infamous line Barf … Puke … Whatever! Stephen Furst plays Harold – Blue Team Leader in a way that amplifies his Flounder from Animal House and crosses him with Mark Metcalf’s detestable Douglas C. Neidermeyer.

Midnight Madness certainly delivers the fat jokes at rapid intervals.

Anyway, well before the end of this dreary mess of a motion picture, all the characters are reduced to becoming overacting jerks like they’re all descended from Dick Shawn’s Sylvester.

The plot summary mentioned something or other about matching wits.

That’s more like half-wits, if you ask the spirit of Moe, Larry, and Curly.

Speaking of them, I’ll stick with Men in Black, Punch Drunks, and Hoi Polloi.

Mac and Me (1988)

MAC AND ME (1988) *
Cable TV came to the little hamlet of Arcadia, Kansas, circa 1988 or 1989 and I watched a whole lot of movies time and time again.

That includes not only blockbusters like Back to the Future Part II and III, Beetlejuice, Big, Die Hard, Total Recall, and Terminator 2, but Arachnophobia, the first two Bill & Ted movies, The Blob remake, Tremors, Red Heat, Cocktail, The ‘Burbs, Bloodsport, Johnny Be Good, Appointment with Death, and even that disaster starring Tony Danza, She’s Out of Control. That last one begs the question WHY? Because it was on, naturally.

I only watched Mac and Me once back then, however, and that’s because even then with less discriminating taste I knew it sucked.

I revisited it all these decades later and it still righteously sucks. Just imagine a stupid E.T the Extra-Terrestrial where none of the cast members have the slightest bit charm or ability to keep our interest and to earn our emotional investment. It’s also incredibly weird and off-putting, especially considering that it’s designed to be family entertainment like E.T and The Wizard of Oz (1939), still the ultimate standard bearer for this kind of movie.

One of the main sources of weirdness: Mac and Me plugs more products than any movie this side of Leonard Part 6 or Happy Gilmore. Don’t you just hate it when a movie does that?

I mean, though, now that I think about it some more, it’s truly a missed opportunity for the ages that Dorothy didn’t drink Coke or the Tin Man didn’t use WD-40 or the Scarecrow didn’t wear designer hay or the Cowardly Lion didn’t have the courage to make a commercial plug right smack dab in the middle of his big melodramatic scene. MGM could have done so much more with their Yellow Brick Road (a sponsor on each and every brick) and the Wicked Witch of the West should have been melted by a brand name water, for crying out loud. We need a remake immediately just so the ruby slippers can be Nike.

Mac and Me could switch people over forever to Pepsi, Burger King, the St. Louis Cardinals, and Sweet Tarts.

Spielberg also missed an opportunity by not having a dance contest in a chain restaurant in E.T.

I was really bummed when I couldn’t find Paul Rudd in the cast and instead endured these apparently neophyte actors like Jonathan Ward, Tina Caspary, Lauren Stanley, and Jade Calegory. Ward and Caspary have considerably more acting experience than Stanley and Calegory, but they’re just as stilted or melodramatic in every scene.

The adult performers and their characters suck, as well, but they are blessed with fewer scenes to suck than the younger actors. By all rights, I should have rooted for the government agents, but, no, I cheered when the end credits rolled on this jive turkey. This is a movie that viewers should put they survived it on their resume.

Oh, in all this hubbub over a crap movie, I almost forgot MAC stands for ‘Mysterious Alien Creature’ and not that one restaurant with the impromptu dance scene interrupted by evil government agents. We have the main one, then his family, and I am guessing they’re distant, no good cousins of E.T. I mean, I doubt they would ever sit together for one of them big family pictures that brings in all the brothers and sisters and cousins and parents and grandparents and grandchildren. E.T. is simply too good for Mac.

Weird children, weird adults, weird aliens, product placement out the wazoo, and Squire Fridell add up to one weird (and awful) movie.

Mac and Me is so awful that Harry and the Hendersons seems like Citizen Kane instead.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986) ***
I wanted to like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 considerably more than I did, because of the way director Tobe Hooper (1943-2017) and screenwriter Kit Carson (1941-2014) mixed in satire and dark comedy with all the material that seems like a prerequisite for a sequel to only one of the most infamous movies ever made, 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Unfortunately, though, leading lady Caroline Williams’ harried disc jockey Stretch — yes, even women from Texas have names that play right alongside Slim and Tex — spends a good 75 percent of her screen time screaming. Williams screams more than Fay Wray in The Most Dangerous Game and King Kong and Mystery of the Wax Museum combined, more than Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween and The Fog and Prom Night and Terror Train and Halloween II combined, and more than all the heroines combined who have faced Jason and Freddy and Michael over the last couple decades. Williams probably wishes they paid her by the scream.

All that infernal screaming begins to bog Massacre 2 down in the middle stretches of a film that both starts and finishes rather strongly.

Massacre 2 also features a Dennis Hopper performance that rates a distant fourth behind River’s Edge, Blue Velvet, and Hoosiers in the unofficial Hopper-portrays-an-epic-burnout-not-totally-unlike-himself (though, to be fair to Hopper, his Blue Velvet character goes beyond, way beyond, the pale of the normal cinematic psychopath) in 1986 competition.

Since Hopper (1936-2010) portrays former Texas Ranger and Sally and Franklin Hardesty-Enright’s uncle Lt. Boude ‘Lefty’ Enright and Cannon Films released Massacre 2, wouldn’t it have been absolutely fantastic if Cannon action hero Chuck Norris played the ranger pursuing vigilante justice against the ripped, twisted, absolutely positively deranged (not to mention cannibalistic) Sawyer family.

Both Chainsaw movies start with narration and an opening crawl.

The original: The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But, had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

The sequel: On the afternoon of August 18, 1973, five young people in a Volkswagen van ran out of gas on a farm road in South Texas. Four of them were never seen again. The next morning the one survivor, Sally Hardesty-Enright, was picked up on a roadside, blood-caked and screaming murder. Sally said she had broken out of a window in Hell. The girl babbled a mad tale: a cannibal family in an isolated farmhouse … chainsawed fingers and bones … her brother, her friends hacked up for barbecue … chairs made of human skeletons … Then she sank into catatonia. Texas lawmen mounted a month-long manhunt, but could not locate the macabre farmhouse. They could find no killers and no victims. No facts; no crime. Officially, on the records, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre never happened. But during the last 13 years, over and over again reports of bizarre, grisly chainsaw mass-murders have persisted all across the state of Texas. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has not stopped. It haunts Texas. It seems to have no end.

Made on an estimated $80-140,000 production budget, the original deserves such descriptive phrases as grainy and gritty. Gory, no. Disturbing, yes definitely, terrifying, for sure, with a more than macabre sense of humor, especially during the best dinner table scene this side of Tod Browning’s Freaks. I about lose it every time the family wants the 124-year-old Grandpa Sawyer to end Sally’s life with one crushing blow of a hammer and this cannibalistic codger just can’t find the strength to do it, ultimately giving Sally the opportunity for escape.

More than a decade later, Hooper wanted Massacre 2 to be a dark comedy, accentuating those elements from the original. Meanwhile, naturally, Cannon desired a finished product more along the lines of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or at least its shocking reputation.

The finished product plays more like a compromise.

Both films are reflective of the times they were made. The original, released on the first day of October 1974, came out in the midst of Richard Nixon’s resignation speech, the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down, the final year of the Vietnam War, the Oil Embargo 1973-74, and general discord in the land. The sequel, released on Aug. 22, 1986, gives us cannibals with ‘family values’ a few months before former Hollywood actor turned politician Ronald Reagan’s speech centered around the family unit and giddy excess in every single frame to produce a bigger but not better Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The original has this insidious way of getting underneath our skin and dominating our thought patterns, and none of the slicker sequels, remakes or imitations even come remotely close to its power to provoke.

NOTE: The parody of The Breakfast Club earns the film’s poster four stars.

Petey Wheatstraw (1977)

PETEY WHEATSTRAW (1977) ***
Rudy Ray Moore (1927-2008) created his own comedic universe on film, featuring outrageous characters with sped up chases and kung fu, stand up and musical interludes, and sexual exhibitions articulating his vision — basically party records brought to low-budget live-action cartoon.

Imagine a foul-mouthed, sexually-explicit Sanford and Son crossed with Benny Hill and Kung Fu and populated with pimps, madams, prostitutes, crooked cops, gangsters, and other larger-than-life figures designed to amuse or titillate.

I definitely had a strong negative reaction to Disco Godfather and then worked my way back through Dolemite, The Human Tornado, and finally Petey Wheatstraw, arguably the ultimate expression of the essence of Rudy Ray Moore and his iconic characters. Full title: Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil’s Son-in-Law.

Anyway, I now know that I should have started with Dolemite and then proceeded chronologically through Moore’s filmography. Maybe I’ll go revisit Disco Godfather and like it more because Moore as either Dolemite or Petey Wheatstraw grew on me to such a degree that I became more than willing to forgive him for Disco Godfather and his overindulgence in Put your weight on it. Maybe his rhyming abilities wore me down, or maybe I just find the idea of a middle-aged stand up comedian well-versed in kung fu greatly appealing.

Petey Wheatstraw is absolutely positively ridiculous and we’d not expect anything less or want anything else from Mr. Moore and gang. Moore plays our title character, a popular stand up comic nothing like the real Moore, and rival comics Leroy (Leroy Daniels) and Skillet (Ernest Mayhand) plot and scheme to get the more popular Wheatstraw to change the date of his show. Leroy and Skillet, not the most adept smooth talkers in the world and who are under extreme pressure for their enormous debt, finally resort to deploying their henchmen in street violence. They gun down a kid in cold blood and then an entire neighborhood — inc. Petey Wheatstraw — at the kid’s funeral. In the afterlife, Petey naturally makes a deal with the Devil (G. Tito Shaw) — he can return to life if he marries the Devil’s daughter, the world’s ugliest woman, of course, and provides Lucifer a grandson. Petey also takes control of the Devil’s cane that provides Mr. Wheatstraw incredible powers. Wheatstraw was taught the martial arts relatively early in his life — Petey Wheatstraw knows kung fu and Petey Wheatstraw knows crazy.

Petey Wheatstraw doesn’t fool around one bit — like Moore and his characters themselves — and it makes a leap straight for the joyously absurd with Petey Wheatstraw’s pre-credits narration and a flashback to Wheatstraw being born in the form of a 6-year-old child. The film goes on its merry little way from that point forward and I thought I had found myself in the midst of the most sublimely ridiculous sight I’ve ever seen when Wheatstraw and his associates have to fight off the Devil’s minions. Then, they did it again and I felt like I had died and gone to Heaven.

The Human Tornado (1976)

THE HUMAN TORNADO (1976) **1/2
I have mixed feelings about this sequel to Dolemite
Sometimes it sucks and sometimes it is outta sight
Rudy Ray Moore returns as our title character and he’s fine
He’s truly one of a kind and his bluntness will blow yo’ mind
He’s grown on me since he made a terrible first impression
Both Dolemite and The Human Tornado a better expression
He’s not what earns The Human Tornado a mixed review
I promise that I like Dolemite and Rudy Ray, I really do!
It’s that rat soup eating motherfucker redneck racist sheriff piece of shit
He drags the movie into the mud and his every scene’s just like a cesspit
Character’s named Sheriff Beatty, played by J.D. Baron in his film debut
Somebody should have kung fu kicked him to death, but they never do
His all-out redneck assault often brings The Human Tornado to a halt
Not sure if that’s writer Jerry Jones or director Cliff Roquemore’s fault
Enough about that, how ’bout “Glorya De Lani” as Hurricane Annie
Her glorious breasts distract from Rudy Ray Moore’s big fat fanny
She contributes her fair share to some of the best nudity in screen history
I’d trade her nude for every redneck sheriff scene and it’s sure no mystery
Glorious Gloria Delaney and her breasts returned as Peaches in Penitentiary
What else can be said but yes, God bless the breasts of the Twentieth Century
Dolemite seeks out the sleazy crime boss’ sex pot wife and their sex wrecks the set
Nympho gives Dolemite the info he wants so many times none of us will ever forget
Dolemite takes out anonymous henchmen in a flurry of speeded up kung fu kicks
The Human Tornado truly has everything, a gay blade and a guy with karate sticks
We can’t neglect Ernie Hudson early in his career or Lady Reed and Lord Java in the cast
Funky music, funky hair, miles of nudity, loads of vulgarity, mostly a blast from the past

We Had Ourselves a Real Good Time: Blacula, Dolemite, TNT Jackson, The Devil and Max Devlin

WE HAD OURSELVES A REAL GOOD TIME: BLACULA, DOLEMITE, TNT JACKSON, THE DEVIL AND MAX DEVLIN
Max Schreck, Bela Lugosi, Carlos Villarias, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski, George Hamilton, Frank Langella, Gary Oldman, and Leslie Nielsen.

That’s a lot of bared fangs, deadly stares, and spectacular deaths over the decades.

Fair warning: Best get outta here with that Tom Cruise, Gerard Butler, Robert Pattinson bull.

Blacula star William Marshall deserves his rightful place among the best screen vampires. For example, he’s definitely better than, oh, let’s say, Carradine, who played Dracula in House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and often looked like somebody had squeezed some fresh lemon juice in his eyes. A few months after Marshall debuted as Black Dracula, Lee appeared in his sixth Dracula film — cleverly titled Dracula A.D. 1972 — and Lee’s spiraling lack of enthusiasm for the role that made him famous bites you right smack dab in the neck.

With his booming voice, commanding screen presence, and legitimate acting chops, Marshall (1924-2003) owns Blacula and makes it infinitely better than some cruddy hunk of cinematic junk like Blackenstein. He brings an unexpected dignity to what might otherwise have been a throwaway film.

Rating: Three stars.

— I enjoyed Dolemite a whole lot more than Disco Godfather, my first Rudy Ray Moore experience, and not only because I’m now calling the former picture Boom Mic Motherfucker.

Disco Godfather lost me by about the millionth or maybe it was by the billionth time Moore (1927-2008) exclaimed Put your weight on it, a slogan that needless to say would not be adopted or adapted by 1980 U.S. Presidential candidates Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and John B. Anderson. Despite the fact that it tried cultivating a social conscience, Disco Godfather needed some weight put on it, because it was the cinematic equivalent of an anorexic crackhead.

Moore has been called The Godfather of Rap and both Dolemite and the character himself almost instantly serve notice why. Jailbird Dolemite’s first lines are Oh, shit. What the hell does that rat-soup-eatin’ motherfucker want with me? One could play a reasonable drinking game with how many times Dolemite utters motherfucker in the movie, because it’s not every time Cheech & Chong say Man in Up in Smoke (reportedly 285 times) or everybody says Carol Anne in Poltergeist III (121). You won’t get wasted, best shit you ever tasted, from Dolemite. You’ll probably feel pretty good and the alcohol will help laughter.

The plot: Dolemite gets released from prison and fights the criminals and corrupt police officers who sent our favorite cinematic pimp up the river in the first place. Really, though, Dolemite is about the profanity, fight scenes, female (we’ll forget about the male) nudity, and complete utter ridiculousness, all of it done over-the-top. Never mind that it’s a time capsule into Bicentennial-Era America filed right alongside Dog Day Afternoon.

To be honest, though, I was distracted from the plot and everything else by the unpaid co-star Boom Mic Visible, who’s absolutely the funniest motherfucker in Dolemite. According to IMDb, The boom mic is visible in many shots of original Xenon VHS to DVD transfer from the 1980s. The film was originally transferred without the proper ratio ‘gate’ of 1:85.1, revealing more of the top and bottom of the frame than the film makers originally intended. The 2016 Vinegar Syndrome Bluray release was re-transferred from an archive print of the film, at the proper ratio, so the boom mics are hidden in many shots. The Bluray release also includes a ‘boom mic’ version of the new transfer, intentionally revealing the boom mics for comic effect.

Now we know.

The actor John Kerry (not that John Kerry) played Detective Mitchell in Dolemite and it’s a missed opportunity that nobody ever asked 2008 U.S. Presidential Candidate John Kerry about his experiences making Dolemite, what Rudy Ray Moore was really like, etc. That’s a real shame.

Rating: Three stars.

— TNT Jackson is definitely not a good movie, but I am still feeling a certain lingering affection for it that other (better) movies wish they could make me feel for them.

What else could be said about some of the worst martial arts sequences ever committed to celluloid, from the very first fists and feet of fury scene all the way to the grand finale. Would you believe punches and kicks that do not connect but still inflict damage? Would you believe the heroine could punch right through the villain? Well, prepare yourself for TNT Jackson.

TNT Jackson falls short of the standard established by similar pictures Coffy and Cleopatra Jones, because, let’s face it, TNT Jackson star Jeannie Bell falls below Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson, respectively. Sure, former playmate and bunny Bell looks absolutely stunning with her great hair, great face, and great body, but she can’t act her way out of a paper bag and we don’t really believe that she could fight her way out of one if she wasn’t the star of the movie. Miss Jackson and her inevitable white chick nemesis (Pat Anderson) wage what’s possibly the worst cat fight ever in the history of the movies. It’s a doozy, and that describes the vast majority of the 72-minute TNT Jackson. Yes, that’s right, 72 minutes, a genuine throwback.

The late, great character actor Dick Miller (1928-2019) earned a screenwriting credit on TNT Jackson, but apparently producer Roger Corman had it rewritten by Ken Metcalfe, who plays the sleazy sub-villain Sid in TNT. Miller does not appear in TNT Jackson.

It’s amazing TNT Jackson romantic lead and main villain Stan Shaw did not get The Sensational, Smooth, Suave, Sophisticated, Stunning Stan Shaw for his screen credit, but maybe just maybe that’s because he overplays his smooth, suave, sophisticated ways so much that we’re tired of his jive real quick. Heck, even Shaw’s afro overplays it throughout TNT Jackson. I’ve not seen this much overacting by hair since, oh, let’s see, Chu Chu and the Philly Flash or maybe I’m mixing up Carol Burnett’s decorative head cover (wait, that’s just part of her costume) with her maracas.

Basically, I can’t hate too much on TNT Jackson like I do Chu Chu (more like Poo Poo and the Poopy Gas), since director Cirio H. Santiago remade TNT a few years later as Firecracker and substituted (white) Jillian Kesner for Bell in the title role. Both movies have similar plot elements, namely infamous topless fights, and Metcalfe in a similar role, but Firecracker does it better.

After watching TNT Jackson, I could not help but gravitate toward AC/DC’s song and the chorus ‘Cause I’m T.N.T., I’m dynamite / T.N.T., and I’ll win the fight / T.N.T., I’m a power load / T.N.T., watch me explode. Bonus points for TNT Jackson, ones that keep it from a two-star rating.

The best version of TNT Jackson is the two-minute promotional trailer put together by Joe Dante and Allan Arkush for New World Pictures circa 1974 or 1975. The voice-over narration takes it to greatness: TNT Jackson, Black Bombshell with a Short Fuse! This Hit Lady’s Charm Will Break Both Your Arms! She’s a One-Mama Massacre Squad! TNT’s Mad and That’s Real Bad! With That Dynamite Bod She’s a Jet Black Hit Squad! A Super Soul Sister and a Bad News Brother Under Cover and Out to Blast a Killer Army That’s Poisoning the People with Deadly China White! You Best Pay the Fine or She’ll Shatter Your Spine! Black Chinatown, Where Flesh is Cheap and Life is Cheaper! TNT Jackson, She’ll Put You in Traction!

Rating: Two-and-a-half stars. Trailer: Four stars.

— Before The Devil and Max Devlin, it had no doubt been a long time since Walt Disney Studios depicted Hell in one of their films.

For example, Hell’s Bells from 1929 and Pluto’s Judgement Day from 1935 leap first to mind, two animated shorts that might blow people’s minds who normally associate animation with cute-and-cuddly innocuous fare at this late point in history.

To be fair to the older films, which are both far superior to the main film currently under consideration, feature length The Devil and Max Devlin doesn’t spend a lot of time in Hell.

Well, actually, according to some former President, right, aren’t California and Hell the same?

I wonder, given the subject matter and the presence of Bill Cosby in one of the starring roles, if The Devil and Max Devlin will go or has already gone the way of the controversial, divisive Song of the South — suppressed for seeming eternity by the folks at Disney. I found them both in the dark, dank recesses of the Internet and I hope that I won’t go to jail or Hell for either cultural sin.

Anyway, I like the locations (especially Hell) and I like the high concepts behind The Devil and Max Devlin like a slumlord trying to save his soul by giving the bad guys three unsullied souls and it turned out to be perfect casting to have Cosby in the role of the Devil’s helper, but the movie gets so bogged down in plot details that it evolves into a real slog and we just want more than anything else in the world at the moment for the movie to finally be over. At least, if nothing else, that’s how The Devil and Max Devlin made me feel watching it.

Rating: Two-and-a-half stars.