The Scoop: Get your flippy-floppies, people, because we're going on a boat!
The 1960s was awash in "Beach Party" knockoffs, and "Catalina Caper" was one of the worst of the bunch. While on a sunny summer vacation to Catalina Island, a group of groovy teens stop an inept group of upper crust thieves who are trying to smuggle some sort of valuable scroll out of the local museum, while rocking out to the occasional musical guest star. The intentions here are good and the acting and filmmaking are technically competent, but the story is a sorry mishmash.
If you're a B-movie fan, you find a lot of familiar faces here, including Tommy Kirk ("Mars Needs Women"), Del Moore ("Bachelor Father"), Jim Begg ("Village of the Giants"), Sue Casey ("Beach Girls and the Monster"), Michael Blodgett ("Beyond the Valley of the Dolls") and even Wonder Woman's" Lyle Wagonner. The musical numbers come courtesy of the Cascades, Carol Connors and the wildly out of place Little Richard.
These '60s teens-in-the-sun movies are always a fun diversion and worth your time -- even the ones with as many shortcomings as this one. It's worth checking out, even for the unintentional laughs.
Best Line: "Look! The water fuzz!"
Side Note: The Cascades' song "There's a New World Just Opening For Me" was written by Ray Davies of the Kinks.
The Scoop: This ultra-low budget parody of 1950s movie musicals, released by Troma, is an early effort by "South Park" creator Trey Parker. It plays very fast and loose with the real-life story of frontiersman Alferd Packer, who killed and ate the rest of his traveling party while snowbound in the Rocky Mountains in the winter of 1882-83. And, true to the title, there are musical numbers (including a love song to a horse), though not nearly enough to sustain the somewhat amateurish storytelling. While there are some pretty funny parts (the Japanese Indian tribe, for instance), the quality of humor is nowhere near the brilliant levels Parker and co-conspirator Matt Stone later reached in "South Park." It's worth a look for hardcore fans, but otherwise a bit tedious. For great non-"South Park" work from Parker and Stone, check out "Orgazmo" instead.
Best Line: "Fudge, Packer?"
Side Note: Parker and Matt Stone were students together at the University of Colorado at Boulder while filming this movie in 1993. The short order grill at the university student union is named after Packer.
Companion Viewing: "Orgazmo" (1997) and "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut" (1999).
The Scoop: In "The House Bunny," Anna Faris is great as a Playboy bunny turned sorority house mother, but the rest of the film needs a lot of help.
Faris plays Shelley, an aspiring centerfold who gets kicked out of the Playboy Mansion and is taken in as a house mother by the nerdy, awkward sisters of Zeta Alpha Zeta. She helps them have their sorority house by giving them makeovers and making them popular, while they show her that there's more to life than being an airheaded nude model.
The script from Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith (based on an idea by Faris) has plenty of good one-liners, but the beyond that it is clunky and filled with just about every cliche you can imagine. There are some good performances, particularly from Faris, Emma Stone and Kat Denning. But they can't outweigh the wooden presence of Hugh Hefner (as himself, of course) and Tyson Ritter (the lead singer of All-American Rejects). Nor can it outweigh the fact that no film with a PG-13 rating is able to get to the truly good material to be found in either sorority houses or the Playboy Mansion. And let's not get into the questionable gender politics.
In fact, "The House Bunny" feels less like a contemporary story and more like a throwback to the popular comedies of 30 years ago. (It's no coincidence that the sorority's name is abbreviated ZAZ.) But unfortunately it falls just a bit short of being worthy of their company. Yet it is a little fluffy, mindless fun for a rainy day of movie watching -- if you can get past the premise that a woman's highest goal should be to meet a guy.
Best Line: "Do you know where the crapper is? I have to do a very mysterious thing in there."
Side Note: Celebrity offspring alert! Tom Hanks' boy Colin plays Shelley's love interest, Oliver, and Rumer Willis (daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore) plays Joanne, the Zeta girl who won't give up her back brace.
Companion Viewing: "National Lampoon's Animal House" (1978) and "Clueless" (1995).
The Scoop: Maybe it’s because I was raised on them, but the juvenile comedies of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s are a lot more entertaining than those that came before or after. The masters of the genre were Ivan Reitman, John Landis, Harold Ramis and the alums of the original “Saturday Night Live” cast. You can see their best work in “Animal House,” “Caddyshack” or “The Jerk” but, sadly, not in “Meatballs.”
Directed by Reitman (and written by Ramis, Len Blum, Dan Goldberg and Janis Allen), “Meatballs” is the episodic, disjointed story of a summer among the misfits at Camp North Star. Bill Murray stars as activities director Tripper alongside a bunch of folks you’ve probably never heard of. Murray sleepwalks through this, his first film role, but as he’s proved repeatedly in his 30+ year career, he can still do that and be entertaining. The rest of the film is fun too, although pretty insubstantial; there’s no plot to speak of and many of the jokes fall flat. Despite some nice moments between Tripper and Rudy (Chris Makepeace), “Meatballs” really isn’t essential viewing.
Best Bit: Tripper explains the perks of rival Camp Mohawk.
Side Note: This was filmed at Camp White Pine in Haliburton, Ontario, during summer camp season. The real life campers were used as extras in several scenes.
Companion Viewing: "Stripes" (1979) and "Caddyshack" (1980).
The Scoop: William Bendix was a fantastic character actor who built a fine career in the 1940s and 1950s playing distinctive supporting parts in a variety of different films. He specialized in playing gun-toting heavies in classics like “The Blue Dahia” and “The Glass Key,” as well as playing the lovable schlub/best buddy in plenty of war movies. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to tackle lead roles too often, but when he did (most memorably in "The Life of Riley" and as the Sultan of Swat in “The Babe Ruth Story”) it was always worth a watch.
That’s why his presence is the best thing about the otherwise forgettable “Kill the Umpire.”
Bendix plays Bill Johnson, a former ballplayer who still gets so wrapped up in the game that he can’t keep a steady job because he keeps sneaking off to the ballpark during work hours. After losing one too many jobs, his wife threatens to leave him if he doesn’t do something to shape up. Bill’s father in law, a retired major league umpire, comes up with the idea of sending Bill to umpiring school so that he can make a living in the game he loves. What follows is a lot of slapsticky, sitcom-ish comedy and moralizing about the importance and integrity of umpires as Bill finally finds a steady life for himself.
The script by Frank Tashlin and direction by Lloyd Bacon are amiable and competent, but also silly and predictable. (When the opening theme incorporates the melody of “Three Blind Mice,” you know exactly what you’re in for.) Baseball has been a constant presence on the big screen since the beginning, but stories focusing on umpires have been rare, so it’s good to see that aspect of the game highlighted, even if it’s only superficially.
And it lets Bendix put his flair for comedy to work. Plus he’s surrounded by a solid cast of fellow character actors (lots of familiar faces, including Ray Collins, Una Merkel and William Hawley) who do a lot to save the film from itself. But ultimately “Kill the Umpire” falls a little flat with its ridiculous situations and hokey theme.
It’s a treat to see Bendix get a chance to carry a film himself, even if the material doesn’t live up to his talents.
Best Bit: The three-headed steer. (Don’t ask.)
Side Note: The uncredited actor playing Harry Shea, the catcher whose bobbled play is at the center of the rhubarb at the end of the film, is none other than Alan Hale Jr.
The Scoop: So why waste your time on this? What’s the point of bothering with a made-for-cable, third generation live action adaptation of a hack cartoon, which is squarely aimed at tweens? Really, why bother?
Well, it turns out that this disposable entertainment has a thing or two to recommend it.
A Cartoon Network original, “The Mystery Begins” is the third live action version of “Scooby Doo,” following two big budget big screen stinkers. It’s a prequel, telling the story of how the gang got together at Coolsville High School and solved their first mystery together.
Unadoptable shelter dog Scooby (voiced by Frank Welker) accidentally gets sprung from his cage and runs off in search of someone who’ll take him in. He wanders through a cemetery at night, where he sees two ghosts rising from their graves. In a panic, he runs right through the basement bedroom window of high school burnout Shaggy (Nick Palatas) who naturally takes a liking to him and tries to sneak him into school the next day in human clothes. This winds up causing a free-for-all in the school bus, which eventually lands Shaggy in detention with football team captain Fred (Robbie Amell), drama club diva Daphne (Kate Melton) and brainy geek Velma (Hayley Kiyoko). Of course, the ghosts pick that exact time to disrupt the school pep rally, and the chase is on.
The “mystery” is just as paper-thin as you’d expect, both from a “Scooby Doo” story and a tween movie. But it’s the small, fresh details that keep this from being a complete waste.
Most intriguing is the dynamic between the four kids which -- not only because it grows out of detention hall, but also because of the way it develops the relationships between members of four different high school social cliques – owes a big debt to “The Breakfast Club.” It’s actually hand led quite well for tween fluff, and the cast nails it with gusto. This is where the real story is, not in the formulaic ghost hunting shenanigans.
The interesting upshot of this is that it makes the title character almost entirely irrelevant in his own movie. Unfortunately, director Brian Levant and writers Daniel Altiere and Steven Altiere try to compensate for this by making Scooby completely obnoxious, thrusting him into all sorts of situations where he isn’t needed, and making him the vehicle of lots of sophomoric, unfunny humor. That’s all bad enough, but to top it all off, the CGI work on Scooby is atrocious.
There are also some obligatory details, like the origins of the Mystery Machine (which is pretty much what you’d expect) and Scooby Snacks (which is actually a nice little twist. And Shaggy’s status as a flat-out stoner is hinted at even more strongly than before (but because this is still ostensibly children’s entertainment, he still can’t be shown for what he really is).
However, some entertaining new wrinkles are added. Like the fact that Shaggy is a few years older than the others and, thanks to being held back in school so much, is basically an adult still attending high school. Or the casting of Velma as an Asian.
However the biggest departure from the “Scooby” mythos is that the ghosts are actual undead spirits, and not mere mechanical tricks. But don’t feel too disoriented – the villain behind those vengeful spirits is straight out of the Hanna-Barbera playbook and even gets to deliver the signature “meddling kids” line after his capture. Because there are some classics you just don’t want to mess with.
Best Bit: The gang's ridiculously over-the-top undercover disguises -- Daphne as a goth, Fred in hip hop gear (think Brian Austin Green), Velma as a hot chick, and Shaggy and Scooby as trash cans.
Side Note: Welker is a veteran cartoon voice actor who has been working steadily since the 1960s. His roles include most of the Decepticons in the original "Transformers" series and numerous roles in "Tiny Toon Adventures" and "Animaniacs" -- not to mention playing Fred in the original "Scooby Doo" series.
Companion Viewing: The original Hanna Barbera cartoons from the early 1970s.
The Scoop: Let's cut to the chase. Gavin Grazer and Joe Wein's film "Scorched" is just another one of those self-consciously quirky indie comedies that tries too hard to be clever for its own good.
In a nondescript California desert town (apparently named Desert, California), three disgruntled employees of the local bank each plot come up with their own plans to rob the bank, and execute their heists on the same weekend. There's Stewart (Paolo Costanzo) and his numbskull pal Max (David Krumholtz) who "borrow" $250,000 from the mini-vault to use on an all-or-nothing roulette bet in Las Vegas. Sheila (Alicia Silverstone) enlists new firefighter pal Max (Ivan Sergei) to empty out the ATMs to get back at her ex-boyfriend, the douchebag bank manager Rick (Joshua Leonard). And then there's Woody Harrelson in the role he was born to play -- Woods, the spaced-out desert rat assistant manager who wants to get revenge on infomercial con artist Mr. Merchant (John Cleese) by cleaning out his safe deposit box. Also mixed up in the shenanigans are new employee Doleman (Marcus Thomas) and his free-spirited pal Shmally (Rachel Leigh Cook).
The plot, which relies on such improbabilities as the banks lack of 24/7 video cameras and the fact that ducks live wild in the desert, plays out pretty much as you'd expect. The comedy is pretty half-baked, unless your idea of fun is watching Woody Harrelson try to hold his own while acting opposite various animals. And, except for Silverstone and Costanzo, everyone else pretty much mails it in.
Sure, there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes of your life. But there are also lots of better things you can do with your time than spending it on this well-meaning but forgettable trifle.
Best Bit: Jeffrey Tambor's cameo as the spaced-out bank executive.
Side Note: The horned toad Woods is talking to in the desert at the beginning is actually an Australian bearded dragon, which is not native to California.
The Scoop: One of the joys of seeing Shakespeare on stage, even after 400 years' worth of productions, is the range of experimentation that is still possible with the material, even if the risks don't always pay off. On film, however, the risks have traditionally been kept to a minimum, with most productions being set either in a generic 19th century European countryside, or in Elizabethan dress.
So, on that level, it's a breath of fresh air to watch Kenneth Branagh's take on "Love's Labour's Lost," which he stages as a 1930s movie musical. For all of Branagh's Shakespearean bonafides, it's a bold move to have the Bard's words broken up by musical numbers set to the songs of George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and others. However, this is one experiment that falls flat.
But first, for the uninitiated, here's the story in a nutshell. The King of Naverre (Alessandro Nivola) and his three buddies (Matthew Lillard, Adrian Lester and Branagh) agree to give up the company of women for three years to devote themselves to their studies. However, the French princess (Alicia Silverstone) shows up on a diplomatic mission with her attendants (Natasha McElhone, Carmen Ejogo and Emily Mortimer). As you might guess, various wackiness ensues before a bittersweet ending. The play is one of Shakespeare's early comedies that doesn't carry the weight or beauty of his later, more famous work.
The biggest problem with the film is that Branagh's concept requires such wildly different skill sets from his cast that none of them can do it all. So, despite the presence of a talented ensemble, nothing quite hangs together. The actors are either good at the poetry (Branagh, McElhone and the wonderful old pro Richard Briers) or the song and dance (Lester and Nathan Lane, who seems to be channeling all four Marx Brothers). And then there are the unfortunate few (namely, Silverstone and Lillard) who can handle neither. As a result, every scene seems strained as everyone on screen is trying too hard to reach out of their comfort zone to deliver something they may not have training in. And then there's the performance of Timothy Spall as Don Armado, who chews the scenery into tiny pieces.
But for all of that, it is still a lovely film to look at, thanks to the art direction of Mark Raggett, the costumes by Anna Buruma and Alex Thomson's excellent cinematography. There are even a few good directorial touches from Branagh. It's not quite enough to offset the problems with the acting, but it's still good to see a play from outside the usual cinematic Shakespearean canon on the big screen, even if most of the text has been cut.
Best Bit: The best Shakespearean bit is Branagh's dynamite delivery of the "From women's eyes" soliloquy. The best musical bit is the Gene Kelly-ish sensuality and bravado of the "Let's Face the Music and Dance" number.
Side Note: Shakespeare's ending to "Love's Labour's Lost" is notoriously inconclusive, which is something Branagh addresses with a montage showing what happened to the characters after the end of the story. However, many scholars now believe that this play is just the first part of the story, which was finished by Shakespeare in a play called "Love's Labour's Won" that is now lost to history.
Companion Viewing: "Pennies From Heaven" (1981) and "Everybody Says I Love You" (1996).
The Scoop: I watch this crap so you don't have to.
Why should you bother watching "The Gorilla"? This one is only for the morbidly curious who want to see Bela Lugosi's career in mid-decline. Here he plays straight man (as does the similarly-declining Lionel Atwill) to the tragically unfunny Ritz Brothers who are trying to solve the mystery of a serial killer in an old mansion.
They don't get much more boring than this. Even eight hours of Andy Warhol's camera trained on the Empire State Building will entertain you more than "The Gorilla."
Seriously, I can't recommend this movie to you less. I shouldn't even be writing about it, and you shouldn't even be reading about it. As it is, we've all just wasted a few precious minutes of our finite lives on it, not to mention all the irreplaceable fossil fuels we've just burned up by using our computers to deal with it. Let's all just cut our losses now and move on. Please, just move on.
Best Line: "But how could a monkey write those notes to Uncle Walter?"
Side Note: The costumes were designed by Gwen Wakeling, who would go on to create Barbara Eden's iconic costume for "I Dream of Jeannie."
The Scoop: Food lovers will find a lot to like in "Ratatouille," Brad Bird's second feature for Pixar.
The film takes us inside the gourmet kitchens of Paris as Remy (Patton Oswalt), a culinarily gifted rat, helps nervous apprentice chef Linguini (Lou Romano) move up in the world of high cuisine, woo fellow chef Colette (Janeane Garofalo), please the notorious food critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole) and stay one step ahead of his conniving boss Skinner (Ian Holm).
The world of the busy kitchen is lovingly recreated, with plenty of attention paid to the preparation of the ingredients, culinary aesthetics and the simple joys of cooking. This is a top-notch Pixar production in other ways too, particularly in the character design, the excellent voice performances and a couple of bravura chase sequences.
Where "Ratatouille" stumbles, however, is in its predictable, cliched story. The plot doesn't offer any surprises. This may not be entirely the fault of Bird, who took over the project from original writer/director Jan Pinkava midway through. But it still amounts to possibly the weakest story in the Pixar repertoire.
That's not a reason to avoid "Ratatouille" but unless you're enamored with the world of gourmet cuisine, you might not be revisiting it very often.
Best Line: "I defrauded a major corporation. I robbed the second largest bank in France using only a ballpoint pen. I created a hole in the ozone layer over Avignon. I killed a man -- with this thumb."
Side Note: The shop with the dead rats in the window is an actual exterminator's shop in Paris called Destruction des Animaux Nuisibles, which has been in business since 1872.
Companion Viewing: "The Tale of Despereaux" (2008).
The Scoop: Rose McGowan seems born to play the queen princess ice bitch sex goddess, and this role just cements that reputation.
A catty '90s update of "Heathers," "Jawbreaker" finds McGowan as Courtney, the leader of a vengeful high school clique who accidently kills one of her friends then enlists others to help her cover it up. She hits all the right notes in her performance, creating a character that is both fuckable and detestable at the same time. The supporting cast, which includes veterans like Pam Grier, P.J. Soles and Carol Kane, is solid as well. And, as a bonus, we even get a cameo by the Donnas as the prom band.
Best Line: "I mean, food's cool and all. It tastes good and you need it to live, but the mere act of eating involves thoughts of digestion, flatulation, defecation -- even, shall we say, complexion defection."
Side Note: William Katt and P.J. Soles, who play Mr. and Mrs. Purr, costarred together in "Carrie" (1976) while Charlotte Ayanna, who plays their daughter Liz, costarred in "The Rage: Carrie 2" (1999).
Companion Viewing: "The Doom Generation" (1995) and, of course, the much better "Heathers" (1989).
The Scoop: Pixar has been around long enough now, and it's aesthetic has become firmly established enough, that the easy approach to evaluating each new film is to compare it Pixar's earlier releases. "Up," however, changes the expectations just a bit.
When we first meet Carl Frederickson (Ed Asner) he is a child in the Great Depression watching newsreel footage of his idol, explorer Charles Muntz, sharing his discoveries in Paradise Falls, somewhere in South America. The oddball Carl soon finds his match in fellow Muntz lover Ellie (Elie Docter). A montage quickly shows their life together -- fixing up their dream house; trying to save money to visit Paradise Falls, but never quite having enough; losing a baby and living childless; and finally Ellie's death, which leaves Carl alone and bitter.
This sets the stage for the main action, in which Carl not only escapes from the greedy developers who want to take his house, but also from the prison of his later years, by using balloons to fly his house away to Paradise Falls. Accidentally hitching along for the ride is overeager Nature Explorer scout Russell (Jordan Nagai). When they finally reach South America, they find a talking dog (Bob Peterson), a legendary bird and a few secrets about Muntz himself (Christopher Plummer). And, of course, it wouldn't be a Pixar movie without some lessons about the nature of family and cherishing the adventures of life.
The technical quality of Pixar's animation continues to evolve. While the characters are highly stylized takes on familiar animated "types," and the look of the scenery and camera work is the studio's most naturalistic yet. The aerial scenes are especially breathtaking.
Although there are some significant plot holes in the script by writer/directors Peterson and Pete Docter, they shouldn't be any concern for the young viewers who are ostensibly the main audience for "Up." But with the usual mix of comedy and action that are Pixar's hallmarks, Peterson and Docter have mixed in liberal doses of pathos, too. The many small compromises that get in the way of Carl and Ellie's dreams are vividly presented, as is the narrowness of Carl's later years. It's handled with a light enough touch to pass over the heads of younger kids, the message is unmistakable for the adult viewer.
It's this mix of humor and heavy subject matter that helps easily supplant "The Incredibles" as the most "adult" of Pixar's offerings so far. And it is also what makes "Up" so difficult to compare with Pixar's earlier efforts. Perhaps it is simply heralding the maturation of Pixar's vision, as the studio's earliest kiddie audiences are now moving into adulthood.
While "Up" may not be as flat-out fun as other Pixar films, the same message of living adventurously is still there, although it is delivered with some of the bitter pills of growing up.
Best Line: "My name is Dug. I have just met you, and I love you. "
Side Note: Of course, helium-filled balloons can't really pick up a house like that. And certainly not as many as shown in the movie. It would take a factor of more than 600 times more balloons to lift that much weight.
The Scoop: After decades as an underground cinema phenomenon, I suppose you can do anything you want to do.
Witness this little movie from our friends at Troma (which company co-founder Lloyd Kaufman directed, cowrote and stars in), in which every one of their familiar trademarks is thrown into a blender with the lid off. Weird sex, grotesque violence, drugs, familiar characters, hilarity, even a blatant ad for the company's website -- it's all here, coming at the viewer a mile a minute, along with bits of Kaufman's filmmaking philosophy and his take on film history.
Eventually the mayhem settles down enough to outline a basic plot -- the oddball denizens of a low budget movie set are being threatened by a mysterious serial killer. The cast is led by Will Keenan and Alyce LaTourelle and features such familiar faces as Debbie Rochon, Ron Jeremy, Lemmy, Joe Franklin and Kerry Kenney.
As with everything else produced by Kaufman and his partner Michael Herz, the right people will love this while everyone else is disgusted and appalled. It's sprawling and chaotic and not quite their best work. But if you are looking for the quintessential Troma movie, this may well be it.
Best Bit: The hermaphrodite tolerance PSA at the end, which stars Trey Parker and Matt Stone as a hermaphroditic couple and is narrated by Lemmy.
Side Note: Somehow, this is supposedly based on Kaufman's book "All I Need to Know About Filmmaking, I Learned From the Toxic Avenger."
The Scoop: Don't you just love the tagline on that poster?
Anyway, in this cheap Italian-produced sequel to "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine," the nefarious doctor (Vincent Price) is back and making robot women again -- only this time, they explode. The plot involves another attempt to take over the world and it doesn't really make much sense.
In place of Frankie Avalon in the swinging teen heart-throb spy role we get Fabian trying to keep his fading career alive. Also along for the ride are Laura Antonelli (paid to do nothing but look gorgeous, and succeeding) and the terribly unfunny Italian comedy team of Franco and Ciccio (who never got popular in America for good reason).
Even with the addition of more girls, this terrible, slapsticky sequel can't even live up to the low standards of the first. It's so bad that Price has to stop the movie about 20 minutes through to deliver some pointless exposition directly to the audience, because it would be too hard to actually work it into the story. The final chase devolves into a bad silent movie (literally) before eventually taking a Strangelovian twist.
Watch it for the girls (and maybe a touch of '60s mod style), but otherwise stay away. Stay far away.
Best Line: "Ah yes, an exact reproduction -- programmed for love and destruction!"
Side Note: Directed by horror maestro Mario Bava, who obviously would do anything for a buck (or a lira).
Companion Viewing: "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine" (1965) or the "Batman" TV series.
The Scoop: How could something with such a great premise be so bad -- so earth-shatteringly, jaw-droppingly bad?
A convicted killer (Charlie Sheen) escapes police custody in Los Angeles, takes an heiress/socialite (Kristy Swanson) hostage and begins a high speed chase to Mexico and freedom. Tons of cops wind up on his tail, as do several TV news crews, who broadcast the chase live.
The television news' obsession with high speed freeway chases should be such a perfectly ripe topic for parody -- a softball any idiot could hit out of the park. And yet this movie utterly fails at its mission. It's not just that the script and acting are bad, because those are fairly run-of-the-mill problems. This movie tries hard to cross the boundary into full-scale Ed Wood style ineptitude -- all the freeway signs are obviously fake (what was wrong with the real freeway signs, anyway?), none of the police cars or uniforms match, and the list just goes on and on.
Writer/director Adam Rifkin, who was coming off the hilarious "The Dark Backward" (1991) really blew it here. The definitive parody of freeway chases is still waiting to be made.
Best Bit: The best part isn't even in the movie proper -- it comes after the end credits, with Charlie Sheen in a clown suit reciting the "I love the smell of napalm" speech from his dad's film "Apocalypse Now" (1979).
Side Note: Punk icon Henry Rollins has a supporting role as a cop, but watch for the cameo appearances. These include Anthony Keidis and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cary Elwes and porn star Ron Jeremy.
And all that would be enough to recommend this film. But it is raised a notch by Lake's presence and sex appeal, which prove that there was a lot more to her than just being a noir moll.
Best Line: "'Twould be nice to have lips... lips to whisper lies... lips to kiss man and make him suffer. Father, why cannot I have lips, and eyes, and hair?"
Side Note: The production got uncredited help from Preston Sturges (who produced) and future blacklistee Dalton Trumbo (who co-wrote). However both men eventually left the production before it was finished.
The Scoop: This is supposed to be a horror spoof, but frankly, it's not very funny and not very scary.
Birthday girl Muffy invites a bunch of her mopey preppie friends to spend April Fool's weekend in an island vacation house, where they spend the time whining about their lives, playing practical jokes on each other and getting hacked to bits.
Deborah Foreman (who was briefly a star in the '80s following her turns in "Valley Girl" and "My Chaffeur") plays dual roles as Muffy and Buffy, while the rest of the cast is rounded out by the likes of "Friday the 13th" veteran Amy Steel, Griffin O'Neal, Jay Baker, Pat Barlow, Tom Heaton and other sorta-beens and never-weres.
It's all meant to poke fun at the slasher genre, but instead of something clever and inventive like "Scream," but instead director Fred Walton and writer Danilo Bach deliver a sort of bloodier version of a Whit Stillman film. If whoopee cushions and exploding cigars are your idea of a good time, this might be up your alley. But otherwise -- eh, not so much. Allegedly, the script is based on the Agatha Christie story, "And Then There Were None." If you squint, you might be able to see the resemblance.
The end credits theme is wonderfully goofy, though -- it's a catchy, '20s-style jazz novelty number called "Too Bad You're Crazy," written by the film's composer, Charles Bernstein, and performed by Jerry Whitman and Linda Harman. It is worth sticking around through all the other nonsense just to hear it.
"April Fool's Day" was remade in 2008, for reasons that escape me.
Best Bit: Although most of the practical jokes are pretty predictable, the one with the bedroom lamps is particularly inventive and funny.
Side Note: An alternate, more downbeat, ending was shot, but was ultimately scrapped for being too convoluted. It is currently unavailable on DVD, although you can sign a petition to change that.
The Scoop: There's something terrific about goofy, campy sci-fi movies. But what makes them especially fun is their dead earnestness. Maybe the parties involved really believe in the quality of what they are doing, or maybe they know it's all ludicrous but are willing to put in good work for a paycheck. But either way, when talented or even semi-talented people give their all for their material, regardless of its quality, that's when the magic happens.
When a film tries to be intentionally goofy and campy, that's when things start getting a little iffy. The folks at Troma -- both in their own productions and in the outside productions they choose to distribute -- do a good job of walking that thin line, but a lot of others do not.
Producer/director Lorenzo Doumani's "Bug Buster" is one of them.
The plot is pretty familiar territory -- big bugs threaten a small town and it is up to the local teens (including the luscious Katherine Heigl and Meredith Salenger) and a world-famous exterminator (Randy Quaid) to stop them. While there are some good moments, the film is mostly too self-conciously silly for its own good, despite the able cast.
Lord knows why Quaid lowered himself to be in this thing. The same can't be said, on the other hand, for "Star Trek" alumni James Doohan and George Takei, Bernie Koppell of "The Love Boat" (who has a sex scene -- eeew!) and MTV's Downtown Julie Brown, who no longer had any careers to speak of anyway.
And as if that all weren't enough, there's also an aging country band that sings a song called "I Itch."
*facepalm*
Best Line: "I don't want to go to the hospital! People die there!"
Side Note: Filmed in the lovely mountain resort town of Big Bear, California.
Companion Viewing: "Earth vs. the Spider" (1958), which handles the premise with the old school earnestness it deserves, and "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" (2001), which does intentional camp right.
The Scoop: Four of the cleanest beatniks/hippies you'll ever see (Michael Parks, Robert Walker Jr., George Maharis and Faye Dunaway) accidentally get talked into kidnapping Miami mobster Roc Delmonico (Anthony Quinn) then have to figure out what to do with him. When he finds out that no one wants to pay his ransom -- not his wife (Martha Hyer), not his business partner (Milton Berle and his bad mustache), not his mob boss (Oscar Homolka) -- Delmonico decides to take matters into his own hands.
The film starts out promisingly enough as the sort of campy unintentional comedy that was so prevelant at the time as the major studios tried (but failed) to understand and cater to the burgeoning counterculture movement. But it quickly devolves from there into a typically "wacky" (and unfunny) mainstream '60s comedy.
That's not to say there aren't a few bright spots after that first half hour. Quinn gives his all for the trite material like the old pro he is, and there are a few genuinely funny gags here and there.
And, of course, there's Dunaway at her most enchanting. "The Happening" was just her second film (following her debut in Otto Preminger's "Hurry Sundown" by just a month), and she would follow it up with her twin breakout roles in "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Thomas Crown Affair."
But none of this is enough to save what is ultimately a snoozefest that works neither as a campy bad movie nor an unironic good movie. The film just falls flat in between, which might be the worst fate of all.
Best Line: "Call the cops? That's socialism! Can't anyone do anything for themselves anymore?"
Side Note: Composer Frank De Vol, who wrote both the score and the swinging Supremes songs on the soundtrack, had a second career as a television character actor, guest starring in a wide range of shows, such as "My Favorite Martian," "Get Smart," "Bonanza," "The Jeffersons" and "Silver Spoons."
Companion Viewing: "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963).
Zappa and the early-1970s version of his band, the Mothers of Invention, had an ongoing fascination with the life of a touring rock band. This fascination found its way into their music, and their shows became increasingly elaborate musical theater pieces full of songs, skits and jokes centered around sex, drugs and other outrageous behavior. It was all based on things they had done themselves, or on the stories that made the rounds among other groups. This exploration of the lifestyle finally culminated in "200 Motels."
Beneath all the madness and surrealism of the film, there is a plot of sorts -- Zappa (played by Ringo Starr) and the Mothers (who all play themselves) roll into the generic American town of Centerville looking for a good time. There, they cross paths with a pair of groupies (Janet Ferguson and Lucy Offerall), the devil (Theodore Bikel), a nun (Keith Moon) and a host of other strange characters.
Many of the situations come right from the Mothers' tour experiences, and much of the dialogue is based on transcripts of conversations captured by Zappa and his cassette recorder during downtime on the road. The result is surprisingly genuine, despited the intentionally stilted delivery of the troupe of non-actors and Zappa's notorious ironic detachment from his material.
Musically, the work here comes from one of Zappa's most fertile periods, and it finds following two different creative strands. With the Mothers, he creates some straight-ahead, powerful blues rock that would not sound out of place alongside the Allman Brothers, Zeppelin or even Sabbath. These songs are interspersed with FZ's more experimental compositions, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. These pieces represent a turning point in his avant garde career, both looking back to the studio-bound "sound sculptures" of his early albums and also foreshadowing the orchestral work he would do in earnest a decade later.
For Zappa neophytes, "200 Motels" (both the film and the soundtrack album) is probably not the best introduction to the man's work. But for fans it is essential and rewards close, repeated viewings.
Best Line: "The fuckin' devil's got an English accent. I seen him three weeks ago on TV. So you know, you can just take this big needle here and hang it in your ass as far as I'm concerned!"
Side Note: Offerall and Pamela Miller (who plays the Interviewer) were members of the GTO's (Girls Together Outrageously), a groupie collective/performance art troupe/singing group whose music was produced by Zappa. Miller would go on to become Pamela Des Barres, author of the infamous memoir "I'm With the Band."
