Beyond and Back (1978)

BEYOND AND BACK (1978) No stars

I am here to tell you about life after Beyond and Back.

I cannot believe that I finally watched a film that displaces The Star Wars Holiday Special as my selection for the worst film made in 1978.

Beyond and Back proved to be D.O.A. It showed no vital signs of cinematic life and brought me a micrometre closer to atheism with its faith-based and family-friendly agenda shoved down my throat, 90 minutes of bad actors monotonously gushing over near-death experiences, life after death, psychokinesis, Heaven and Hell, bright light, weighing souls, seeing dead relatives, ad nauseam.

Beyond and Back puts Benjamin Franklin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Eddie Rickenbacker, Thomas Edison, Louisa May Alcott, Ernest Hemingway, George S. Patton, and Harry Houdini on an equal plane with Anne Fleck, Dr. Stevens, Byron Temple, and Dr. Paul Kelly, since they’re all just cannon fodder for that agenda told through a pseudo-documentary approach with bad narration and bad reenactment.

Two of the worst films ever made (both from 1978) involve laughable disclaimers:

The African killer bee portrayed in this film bears absolutely no relationship to the industrious, hardworking American honey bee to which we are indebted for pollinating vital crops that feed our nation — The Swarm

The events you have just seen have been taken from actual accounts, but the names of the persons involved have been changed to preserve their anonymity. All such persons have been portrayed by professional actors and actresses — Beyond and Back

Of course, Beyond and Back is the same picture that starts with its narrator telling us, “You are about to see one of the most extraordinary movies of our time, a movie that dares to investigate the possibility of life after death.”

We can thank the folks at Sunn Classic Pictures for such classics, er, drivel as Beyond and Back, namely director, producer, novelist, and Sunn Classics founder Charles E. Sellier. Sellier (1943-2011) evolved from Cajun Catholicism to Mormonism and finally evangelical Christianity, but his product remained in the realm of quick-buck exploitation, whether it was Sunn Classic productions In Search of Noah’s Ark and In Search of Historic Jesus or the controversial killer Santa picture Silent Night, Deadly Night and the teenage comedy Snowballing (both directed by Sellier) or his later productions George W. Bush: Faith in the White House, Breaking the Da Vinci Code, The Search for Heaven, and Apocalypse and the End Times.

For obvious theological reasons and philosophical differences, Beyond and Back passed on many tales and famous last words.

Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough — Karl Marx

I hope the exit is joyful and hope never to return — Frida Kahlo

Dammit, don’t you dare ask God to help me — Joan Crawford

I’m bored with it all — Winston Churchill

I’m going, but I’m going in the name of the Lord — Bessie Smith (I do not recall a single black person in Beyond and Back)

My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go — Oscar Wilde

Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck — George Sanders (a charming wit to the end)

As we depart this mortal review, I leave this joke: What’s the last thing that goes through a fly’s mind when I kill him? My fist (reporter’s notebook).

Laserblast (1978)

LASERBLAST (1978) Two-and-a-half stars

LASERBLAST is a clunky piece of low-budget junk, but it is not without its charms.

For example, LASERBLAST takes a pot shot at STAR WARS, literally when our teenage protagonist Billy Duncan (Kim Milford) blows up a STAR WARS billboard on the side of the road with his laser cannon. It blows up real good. For that matter, just about everything blows up real good in LASERBLAST.

We’ll get back to that later.

For now, however, I’d like to touch on a couple of the contemporaneous pot shots taken at JAWS.

THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION, which came out a few months after JAWS in 1975, has Sheriff Jeff Jones (Alan Hale Jr.) say over the CB radio of the spider, “You ever see the movie JAWS? It makes that shark look like a goldfish!”

THE HILLS HAVE EYES includes a ripped poster of JAWS.

ORCA: THE KILLER WHALE has a killer whale kill a great white shark early on in the proceedings.

Coincidentally, both THE HILLS HAVE EYES and ORCA were released on the same day (July 22) in 1977.

Anyway, back to LASERBLAST, a quickie exploitation picture made to cash in on the teenybopper science fiction craze between STAR WARS movies. It later became known for being one of the worst movies ever made, especially after Mystery Science Theater 3000 lampooned LASERBLAST in a 1996 episode.

I feel almost bad for giving a mixed review to LASERBLAST, especially after writing positive reviews for THE KILLING OF SATAN, TROLL 2, THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN, and PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Almost. Believe it or not, all four of those other films have a higher IMDb rating than LASERBLAST.

LASERBLAST surrenders itself to filler scenes that just scream out TACKY SEVENTIES. It feels like a bloated production even at 80-85 minutes.

David W. Allen (1944-99) worked on 48 films in visual effects or puppetry or stop motion animation over nearly a 30-year career. His notable credits include FLESH GORDON, THE HOWLING, CAVEMAN, Q: THE WINGED SERPENT, THE STUFF, WILLOW, and GHOSTBUSTERS II.

Allen’s alien stop motion work in LASERBLAST received better reviews than any other aspect of the film.

Unfortunately, the stop motion aliens do not have more screen time in LASERBLAST.

Milford is not exactly playing the greatest hero in the history of cinema. For example, he’s the first and only hero ever to be picked on by screen nerd extraordinaire Eddie Deezen; both Milford and Deezen made their screen debuts in LASERBLAST. Milford (1951-88) became known for his work in the musicals “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” He plays most of the movie without a shirt.

Let’s face it, Billy Duncan has a bad, bad, bad life: His mother always seems to be going to Acapulco, his girlfriend’s grandpa freaks out on him and runs poor, poor Billy off, two dope-smoking cops love writing up Billy for speeding tickets, and Chuck (Mike Bobenko) and Froggy (Deezen) bully him. Froggy, by the way, has seen STAR WARS five times, according to one of the dope-smoking deputies (played by veteran character actor Dennis Burkley in the early stages of his career).

Billy’s life changes for the better when he finds that darn laser cannon in the desert. As it says on the poster, Billy was a kid who got pushed around then he found the power.

Billy, of course, uses the laser cannon to blow up a bunch of stuff real good before the stop-motion aliens come for him.

One car blows up about five times in LASERBLAST. They give us just about every conceivable angle.

Yes, it’s that kind of a movie.

Keenan Wynn and Roddy McDowall (his last name spelled “McDowell” in the credits) make glorified cameo appearances.

LASERBLAST is bad enough that McDowall’s Peter Vincent could have played it on the TV series “Fright Night” featured in FRIGHT NIGHT.

On the bright side, LASERBLAST is considerably better than “The Star Wars Holiday Special,” which has gone down in history as the biggest STAR WARS rip-off of them all.

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL (1978) No stars
Movies, oops, TV specials based on movies, like “The Star Wars Holiday Special” are when yours truly wishes that he owned a stunt reviewer or had an evil twin movie reviewer, yes, an evil movie reviewer.

I first watched “The Star Wars Holiday Special” during the same week as LEONARD PART 6 and it’s amazing, it’s stupendous that anything competes with LEONARD PART 6 for sheer gut-wrenching awfulness. Sure enough, I saw two of the most awful pieces of celluloid within a short time of each other. I survived and now I am here to put together my story. Let me just say that you are not a true STAR WARS fan until you see “The Holiday Special,” which I rate at the bottom of the barrel. That’s an insult to the bottom and to the barrel.

Where does this review start? Where does it end? Why didn’t they dub in the laugh track?

First and foremost, please look at the cast for “The Star Wars Holiday Special.”

I seriously doubt kiddos in 1978 wanted codgers like Beatrice (her friends just called her “Bea”) Arthur and Art Carney anywhere near Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and Darth Vader.

One bad idea right after the next flies right past our systems. No, wait, I am practicing the fine art of understatement when I say bad idea.

The first bad idea would be centering the action so to speak on Chewbacca’s family unit. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. That’s absolutely unbelievable.

Granted, I am somebody who desired Chewbacca being a Hollywood leading man and paired with all them blazing beauty starlets like Kate Hudson, Katherine Heigl, and Jennifer Lopez in all them lovey dovey romances. Sorry, I am behind the times in romantic comedies and their beautiful people.

Anyway, we get Chewbacca’s wife Malla, his son Lumpy, and old man Itchy, who should have been named “Icky.”

Back to the bad ideas.

Malla watches an intergalactic cooking program with a cook based on Julia Child played by Harvey Korman, not Harvey Keitel, in drag.

Diahann Carroll shows up as an intergalactic and holographic sex fantasy of a dirty old wookie and sings a song for all our troubles. She doesn’t solve them, she makes them even worse.

Yes, Bea Arthur owned the intergalactic famous Cantina we saw in STAR WARS and of course, she sings a song.

Dagnammit, everybody, well, almost everybody gets a song.

We see intergalactic famous bounty hunter extraordinaire Boba Fett in cartoon form and we laugh every time he tells our protagonists that he’s a friend of Luke and Han and the droids. Boba Fett sounds like Mr. Rogers. Let’s see, Boba Fett died a crap death in RETURN OF THE JEDI and he made a crap entrance in “The Holiday Special,” but hey, at least, he made for a great action figure.

Jefferson Starship, a holographic facsimile of a rock band in the infant stages of dinosaurism, plays us an old-fashioned love song or perhaps not and they are not yet Starship, who knocked down a city with adult contemporary schlock rock and sang the love theme from MANNEQUIN that stopped Andrew McCarthy’s career.

“The Star Wars Holiday Special … brought to you by the Force or 20th Century Fox.” It premiered November 17, 1978 on CBS to much bewilderment.

George Lucas was not a big fan. Here’s Mr. Lucas from a 2005 interview:

“The special from 1978 really didn’t have much to do with us, you know. I can’t remember what network it was on, but it was a thing that they did. We kind of let them do it. It was done by … I can’t even remember who the group was, but they were variety TV guys. We let them use the characters and stuff and that probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but you learn from those experiences.”

If you’re seeking out “The Star Wars Holiday Special,” you will have to do it on YouTube. That’s how I came across my dubbed copy several years back. Folks, a.k.a. preservationists, found their original videotape recordings from November 17, 1978 and made copies, so what you see today started as second- to sixth-generation VHS dubs. Some copies have the original commercials and news breaks.

Apparently, at one point in time, Lucas said that he wished he could take a sledgehammer and smash every single copy of “The Holiday Special” in existence.

Out there in this cold, mean world, you will see “George Lucas Ruined My Childhood,” “Georce Lucas Wrecked My Childhood,” and even “George Lucas Raped My Childhood.”

Would those people look more favorably upon Lucas if he indeed smashed every copy of “The Holiday Special”?

Dammit, George, you’re not smashing mine, though.