"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Ghost Rider

GHOST RIDER is the story of an Evil Knievel type motorcycle jumper named Johnny Blaze who accidentally drips blood on a contract with the devil so his dad is cured of cancer but then dies in a motorcycle accident the next day so he leaves his girlfriend and then about 15 or 20 years later the devil turns him into a burning magic skeleton so he has to fight some gothy monster dudes and hang out with a cowboy (Sam Elliot, obviously). If you’re into bullshit like that, you might like this movie, but probaly not. I have too much respect for you to assume that.

Now, I gotta admit I went into this movie knowing I would not like it, and actually hoping it would be hilariously bad. It’s not like this is a surprise – the last movie by this director is DAREDEVIL, an absolutely fucking horrible comic book movie about a chubby blind lawyer in a red gimp outfit who fights a villain whose power is that he can kill people by flicking peanuts at them. (I’m not joking.) This is basically the same type of bullshit with more uncomfortable failed attempts at humor and a bigger budget for lots of cheesy video game style effects. (Apparently this movie cost $120 million, which almost makes me cry.) (read the rest of this shit…)

February 17th, 2007 | 22 Comments »

The Holy Mountain

PLOT SUMMARY: When a dwarf with no hands or feet and some little kids try to stone a naked dude they found passed out, pissing himself with his face covered in flies, the naked dude and the little guy smoke a joint, hug and become fast friends. So they go into town, where tourists laugh and take pictures of the troops executing school children, and they watch the frogs and chameleons re-enact the conquest of Mexico in a model city. Also the naked dude looks like Jesus and these guys drug him and make a cast of him and he wakes up surrounded by hundreds of duplicates of himself so he screams and smashes them but takes one and carries it around for a while and later he eats its face off and ties it to a bunch of helium balloons and sets it free. He hangs out with 12 hookers in matching see-through black outfits. One of them is an old lady, one is a little girl and they also have a chimpanzee. Some people might call it 13 hookers I guess, but I’m old fashioned so I’m gonna assume the chimpanzee is just an associate and not a professional. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 16th, 2007 | 5 Comments »

Ballbuster

Remember when that jackass Geraldo opened up Al Capone’s vault on live tv, and there was nothing inside? I know he remembers, people probaly give him shit about that four times a day. Well, most of us are smart enough to check inside the vault before we go live on tv, but the truth is that most of our big discoveries turn out to be a bust. I mean, if it was easy to find gold it wouldn’t be gold, would it?

I only bring this up because when I discovered this little known ’80s blaxploitation/karate dude from Indianapolis named Ivan Rogers, and especially when I found his movie BALLBUSTER, I figured I had pretty much just opened Al Capone’s vault and found Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Eirhart’s skeletons inside holding hands. I mean the title alone is a treasure, but you read the back of the box, one of those way-too-detailed synopsises you find on some real low budget movies, and you gotta get excited: Ivan Rogers plays a P.I. named Roosevelt “Ballbuster” Prophet. I repeat, his name is Roosevelt “Ballbuster” Prophet. Two of the villains he fights are called Hacksaw and Paycheck. Later he fights mercenaries called “The Nasty Boys.” (I’m not sure if they said this in the movie, so I’m glad it’s mentioned on the box.) (read the rest of this shit…)

February 12th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Black Caesar

In my opinion BLACK CAESAR is one of my favorite blaxploitation movies. It’s got a good story and direction (by Larry Cohen), a badass soundtrack (by James Brown) and a super badass lead (Fred Williamson). Fred plays a cruel motherfucker, sort of a Scarface type anti-hero, but makes him mostly sympathetic.

You already know the movie is good at the beginning because it has such a good and unusual opening. Fred’s character Tommy Gibbs is a kid (played by some young guy, don’t worry it’s not Fred wearing a beanie or nothin) working as a shoe shine boy.

There’s a nervous white man in a suit, looking over his shoulder, but Tommy convinces him to get a quick shine. Suddenly a scary mafia dude comes out with a gun and the whitey tries to run. But Tommy holds onto his shoe. After the dude is dead, Tommy meets up with the mafia dude in an alley. He gets his payment and also gets to hold the murder weapon and check it out. This kid may have some problems, is the idea. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 12th, 2007 | 4 Comments »

Elektra

ELEKTRA was considered sort of a flop when it came out a year or two ago, and that made the studios think there just isn’t money in female action heroes or female biopics. This may have led to the troubles with the Edie Sedgwick movie, the limited release of the Betty Page movie, etc. However, this very unorthodox and presumably fictionalized biography of Carmen Elektra is not really as bad as I thought it would be.

Jennifer Garner (Felicity) plays Elektra (they never call her Carmen) as a brooding, obsessive compulsive ninja assassin who has recently returned from the dead. (a little exaggerated there, in my opinion.) She imagines herself as a major player in some kind of mystical war between good and evil forces. I think you can interpret it a couple of ways, alot of people probaly take it literally and figure this is like CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, this is telling us that the whole time we thought Carmen Elektra was just some chick on BAYWATCH or SINGLED OUT or whatever, she was actually also a ninja assassin. On this mission she goes to an island somewhere, it is not exactly a beach paradise but still she could be filming some pickups for BAYWATCH or MTV Spring Break while she’s there and then after she’s done with those she’s gonna assassinate some people. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 11th, 2007 | 82 Comments »

By Popular Demand! Vern Reviews The GYMKATA DVD!!

Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

What else needs to be said?

This makes me giddy the same way Neill reviewing 300 did. Sometimes the right reviewer gets hold of the right film, and the result is… well, see for yourself:

I believe Donald Drunko was the name of the wiseguy talkback newsie who kept bugging Harry and Moriarty to review the GYMKATA DVD, and then roped me into it. If so this is for you, Drunko. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to perform this important service. Number one, I am a positive individual so I try to give back to the community. Number two, I always meant to see this horse shit anyway.

GYMKATA is the 1985 picture by Mr. Robert Clouse, director of ENTER THE DRAGON, BLACK BELT JONES, CHINA O’BRIEN and various other American martial arts pictures. Unfortunately he must’ve hit upon some hard times during the Reagan years because here he is rehashing ENTER THE DRAGON but instead of finding a cool new martial artist to star in it he got a gymnast. Kurt Thomas was a world champion and was expected to win a gold medal in the 1980 Olympics, but the US team boycotted over the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. If he had gone maybe he would’ve won, but maybe he wouldn’t have and people woulda been disappointed, the shine woulda been gone on him and nobody would’ve wanted to make GYMKATA. What I’m saying is this movie and Osama bin Laden are both unintended consequences of the same conflict. And I can say objectively that the better of the two is GYMKATA. GYMKATA is better than Osama bin Laden. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 10th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

El topo

The wind whistles in the distance as a scary cowboy in black rides through the desert. And for some reason he’s holding an umbrella. As he gets closer and steps off the horse we see he has a little boy with him too, naked except for a hat and a pair of mocassins. He hands the boy a teddy bear.

“Son, you are 7 years old. Today you are a man. Bury your first toy and the photo of your mother.”

The boy does as the man says. In the foreground we see the half-buried portrait of the friendly looking mother poking out of the sand as this crazy duo rides off toward the horizon. The opening credits tell us we’re watching EL TOPO. And that opening is the most normal and straight forward part of the movie. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 7th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Letters from Iwo Jima

Dear Friends,

Last year we all heard Clint Eastwood, who I still consider the greatest living human, was directing this World War II movie produced by Steven Spielberg. Not really my genre, but with Clint directing obviously I was looking forward to it. Things got more interesting during filming when he announced that he realized the story of Iwo Jima needed to be told from the Japanese perspective too, so he was doing another movie straight after FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, originally titled RED SUN, BLACK SAND. And that sounded more interesting to me. Way to be ambitious, Clint.

But when FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS came out it was underwhelming enough that, to be honest, I lost some of my interest in LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA. That first movie’s not terrible, and I really like what it was about – the complicated feelings of some guys who are declared war heroes for bullshit reasons and have to go along with it in order to raise war bonds and help out their fellow soldiers who are still fighting. But the way the story was told was just not Clint enough. Usually when he directs the stories are pretty spare, pretty bare, and the emotions are raw. The score of FLAGS was about the only thing that was the usual laid back Clint. He had to jump between the present day with the son of one of the flag raisers interviewing the survivors, the actual battle of Iwo Jima, and the war bonds tour after the battle, and then all of those are jumbled up so they’re in even less order than it sounds like. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 2nd, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Crazed Cop

I don’t know if you ever do this, maybe this means I had a bad childhood or somethin, but every once in a while I see a weird old VHS box in the action section at the video store and I say “what the fuck is THIS?” and even though it looks like shit I have to rent it just to take a peek at some weird corner of the action cinema universe that I had not previously charted. I’m an explorer, is what I’m saying. The latest example of this is CRAZED COP starring a guy named Ivan Rogers. I will be impressed if any of you know who this guy is, because I asked around and only got blank looks.

First a visual of Ivan Rogers: an African-American gentleman of slightly above average build, with a mustache, likes to wear light colored suit and tie with dark shirt. If there was a movie about his life he could be played by Steve Harvey. But he doesn’t make any jokes in this movie, and doesn’t talk unless he has to. He has a dead-eyed stare and frown. His face betrays no emotion so, to show how depressed he is throughout this movie (or how crazed he is, I guess) he drinks lots of scotch and points a gun at his head 3 different times. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 2nd, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Connors’ War

CONNORS’ WAR is a straight to video picture most of you never heard of, starring Treach (from Seagal’s TODAY YOU DIE) and Nia Peeples (from Seagal’s HALF PAST DEAD) written by some guy who wrote HALF PAST DEAD 2 (not Seagal’s).

Treach plays Connors, a dude from a notorious secret government agency of super badass loose cannon killers and problem solver type individuals. There’s a PGFDTV (pretty good for direct to video) opening where some terrorist individuals have the first lady hostage in a fancy hotel. When the secret service arrives on the scene (they should’ve been with the first lady in the first place – I blame their incompetence for this movie even happening) they are told by the police that Sgt. Mandela is already working on it. It would be funny if the movie tried to name a guy Mandela, but this is actually a joke played by Brooks, the head of this secret agency. He sits smiling in the lobby and bragging that his team is already inside. His team, it turns out, is Connors dressed as a waiter. (read the rest of this shit…)

January 27th, 2007 | No Comments »

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