Trackdown (1976)

   You know what I'm sick of? People who claim that living in a small town or rural community makes them better than those who live in a city. All the crazy, kooky degenerates supposedly flock to New York, L.A., Austin, Chicago, and other urban centers, and meanwhile the good, decent, "sane" folks live the healthy, quiet life in a little community. Having grown up in a village (yeah, I grew up in a village. It didn't become a city until two years ago), I can safely say that I have dealt with far bigger pricks and cocksuckers in village life than I ever have when living in a big city. There's this romantic idea that dwelling someplace where everyone knows everyone is so great. No. Wrong. End of story. It might not be Peyton Place, but being in a closed off, tight knit community just means people are in each other's shit all the time. Should you eat at the same diner every Friday, and suddenly decide you don't want to eat there anymore, the busy bodies in town start playing Sleuth, wondering what could possibly be wrong. If you dig having people nose in your business, memorize any routines you may have, and be privy to every private problem in your life, then by all means live in a small town. Me? I'll gladly take the anonymity of city living. I could walk down the street in Austin or Vegas and not get called a 'fag.' Small towners LOVE that goddamn word. Even if you're just taking the trash out to the curb, some jackwagon will find some shithead thing to say, and it's usually 'fag' or 'faggot.' It could be Schwarzenegger taking out the garbage; he would still get a gay slur of some kind because small town people aren't creative or bright enough to come up with anything better. 

   Whenever I watch a movie like Trackdown, I am reminded of how lousy small communities are. Like Paul Schrader's Hardcore, Trackdown involves a "decent" man from the country who travels to Los Angeles to rescue his kin from flesh peddlers. I really dig Hardcore, largely because Schrader acknowledges that George C. Scott's "victory" at the end is a hollow one. As he leads his daughter away from the porn life, Scott has unlearned everything he learned on this trip. Yes, his daughter will be back in Michigan with her family and its Baptist lifestyle, but Scott will never admit to the flaws he discovered while in L.A. It will be a return to form, a Baptist king taking back his throne. The questions about his own morality and judgment will be buried. Schrader's a great director, so Scott's Searchers-like quest is morally hazy.

   Trackdown has no such moral hang-ups. It sticks to a very macho idea about women needing to be steered  by a man. When Jim Calhoun (James Mitchum) discovers that his sister Betsy(Karen Lamm) has packed up and left their Montana ranch for Hollywood, he shits bricks and pursues her. Of course, Jim would look like a reactionary dope if Betsy made a good life for herself in L.A., so director Richard T. Heffron stacks the decks against the poor girl. Within minutes of being off the Greyhound, Betsy is distracted by hot Latino, Chuco (Erik Estrada), who was forced to act as a patsy by his gang. While sweet-talking the girl, he scoots her suitcase and purse away from her, allowing the gang members to grab them. With no money or clothes, Betsy stands on the street crying. Chuco, feeling lousy about what he's done, invites Betsy to stay with him. After a day together, the two start falling for each other.

   Shit gets bad when the gang shows up, beats Chuco, and rapes Betsy. They dope her up and whisk her away to meet Johnny Dee (Vince Cannon) and Barbara (Anne Archer), who run a call girl ring. Barbara feels bad for the kid and insists Johnny pay the gang $500 for her. She cleans Betsy up, buys her new duds, and starts her down the road of prostitution. Here's my problem with the movie so far: It's wrong that the gang drugged Betsy, and she's forced into the life of hooking. She never willfully decided to partake in this lifestyle, so of course it ain't copacetic. She's also seventeen, which isn't the age of consent in some states. Again, it's wrong, though there isn't much difference between a seventeen year old and an eighteen year old. Heffron refuses to allow the possibility that a woman could want to work as a sex worker. Make Betsy eighteen or twenty, and have her choose to become an escort, you suddenly have a different story. Her older brother's fright and worry of the "big, bad city" starts to make him look like a jerk.

   But that wouldn't be as easy to market. This is basically an updated western, so Jim's cowboy ways have to be morally pure. His white Stetson tells us that Jim is incorruptible, choosing to stay on what he perceives to be the "holy" path. Small town values are treated as sacred tenets that Betsy has rejected for the filthy, godless life. In the movie's mind, a woman who chooses to embrace her sexuality is a whore, but to avoid actually saying its true intentions, the film disguises its message with the sort of cheap gut punchers you find on crap like CSI, Law & Order: SVU, and NCIS. Complexity isn't wanted in these ventures; it gets in the way of the hollow platitudes is espouses. So, not only is Betsy underage, but she's robbed, raped, beaten, threatened with death, and made to sell her cunt to gross men. Again, it's called "stacking the decks."

   James Mitchum has absolutely none of the talent his pops had. While dad was off doing stellar work in the seventies, like the amazing The Friends of Eddie Coyle, son James was sleepwalking through pictures. He's just flat, a non-entity throughout the picture. His Jim Calhoun is a blowhard with no self-awareness. The movie almost comes to a stop when the man has carry a scene by himself. Since Calhoun has no flaws, and Mitchum plays him in such a somnambulant state, his journey is uninteresting. He mostly goes around kicking in doors and muttering at people.

   Faring better is the rest of the cast, which often threatens to raise the movie above its low standards. Lamm is good at Betsy, making her character not the one-note victim it cold have been. There's a few moments that suggest maybe Betsy isn't too upset at her new life, and Lamm sells this moral confusion. Equally as good is Archer as her hooker mom. She, too, appears to have willing embraced her work, and does her best to look out for Betsy. Her relationship with the girl is understandable in light of the reason Betsy left Montana: she didn't get along with her own mother. Real humanity starts to peek in, but Heffron keeps it under his thumb as much as possible. The best performance of all, if you can believe it, comes from Erik Estrada. His Chuco is shaded in all the ways Jim Calhoun isn't. This duality could have really pumped the movie up had he been the main protagonist. The in-between state of his life (in a gang, but not wanting to be; remorse at the crimes he's committed; knowing Betsy has been sold off) is compelling, and Estrada displays real acting chops. Someone remake this movie with Chuco as the lead.

   The film does have that nice seventies grit to it. L.A. looks hot and humid, and the underworld is appropriately seedy. The action ain't bad either, particularly a scene in an elevator shaft where Calhoun and some thugs shoot at each other while riding on the tops of different lifts. The ending takes on the classic cowboy showdown pose as Jim Calhoun stands in the middle of a desert road and takes out goons. Souring the movie, though, is a sudden mean-spirited event that darkens the remainder of the picture. It's wholly unnecessary, and the movie doesn't have the balls to properly deal with the ramifications. When all is said and done, Trackdown plays to the exaggerated fears of small town folks who can't fathom why anyone would want to mosey out of their little burg. If this doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth, you have a stronger palate than me.

Jim Henson's Reagan Babies: Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure (1984)

   Unlike a majority of Star Wars fans, I've never held any kind of hatred toward the Ewoks. It might be that I was first introduced to them at the right age. I was a year and half old when my parents took me to see Return of the Jedi. My obsession with movies had to have started there. Though I was incredibly young, I still have a vivid memory of that day. We ate at Zantigo's, a Mexican restaurant chain that was taken over by Taco Bell in the 90s. My body was restless, vibrating with excitement at knowing I was going to see new Star Wars. The theater was right across the street from the Zantigo's, which meant that I was interested in pressing myself against the window and staring at the theater than I was in eating. I distinctly remember my mother telling me if I didn't finish my food, the movie was cancelled. Obviously, I chowed down.

   When we got to the theater, I recall the lobby being cramped with people. This was still a time when movies were events, unlike today where Iron Man 3 is treated with all the fanfare of a television movie. Big budget films no longer have that massive sway they used to. They're advertised, they open, they make money, and four months later they're at Redbox. In 1983, Jedi was massive. The lobby was decorated in that strange orange and burnt ash color scheme that seemed to be chic in the 80s. The carpeting, the countertops, even the friggin' ceiling panels were an orange shade. As my parents waited in line at the concession stand, I stepped over to a pillar that went from the floor to the ceiling. Inside were huge globules of orange liquid that passed through a honey colored substance. Essentially, it was a giant lava lamp. I was fixated by the inside movements until I saw the Jedi poster in a case on the wall. I hurried over, and gawked upward at the beautifully rendered art. This was the main poster, the one that featured all of the characters. The window slates behind Jabba the Hutt with light pouring through was something stuck with me, as did the design on the Emperor's window that sits behind Luke. In my mind, these were strange architectural choices. Something about them both frightened and fascinated me. They looked suitably otherworldly, removed from our world of giant lava lamps.

   During the movie, my mom read Jabba's subtitles to me, whispering in my ear like a U.N. translator. The amount of people sitting inside the auditorium astounded me. It was the first time I could ever recall being part of a group. The movie bonded us, even though I couldn't explain that at the time. I felt comfortable there. Another thing I remembered was really noticing death for the first time in my life. Late in the film, when the Ewoks battle the Imperial forces, two of the furballs get blasted by an AT-ST. They both hit the dirt, but only one gets up. When he realizes his little buddy is no more, the Ewok sits down and cries. Well, that fucked me up. Sure, I had seen dozens of stormtroopers shot, but the film never paused to mourn their deaths. This cute teddy bear was now sitting next to his rapidly cooling friend whose heart had probably exploded when the laser hit him. It would be another before I scarred by another movie, this time a re-release of E.T. No bullshit: even though the alien gets away okay, I cried for at least two hours after the movie because of the moment they reveal E.T. to be pale and dying. Tears, dude. Tears.

   I liked the Ewoks. I had their action figures, and for Christmas '83 I got their treetop village playset, which had elevators, escape hatches, and cabins. I thought it was pretty badass. The Ewoks bothered me so little that I actually watched their Saturday morning cartoon, which followed the C-3PO and R2-D2 series, Droids. There were a few Ewok comics in my collection, too. So, I don't have any ill will regarding the Ewoks. They taught me about me death, gave me a cool playset, and were generally pretty cute. One thing I didn't enjoy, though, was the television movie, Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. It premiered November 25th, 1984, my birthday. Three years old, and pumped that a new Star Wars thing was going to be on T.V. The excitement buzzed through my body all day until it was time for the movie to start. I fell asleep, and didn't see it all the way through until they reran the movie a few years later. Even then I had trouble getting through it.

   The main problem is that it's goddamn boring. Caravan of Courage clearly shows the Ewoks aren't very compelling without Luke, Leia, and Han hanging around. The three of them were able to relate to the audience just what the hell the Ewoks were saying. In the bright and bubbly cartoon, they spoke English. Here we're left hanging out for long periods of time with the Ewoks without any sort of translator, save for Burl Ives, the folksy singer who occasionally explains just what in the Sam Scratch is going on.

   Not helping matters are the two kids who soon team up with the Ewoks to rescue their parents. Boy, are these two rotten actors. Eric Walker is older brother Mace, a petulant, smug jackass with the de rigueur 80s bowl haircut and Scott Baio's rounded features. He's intolerable, a wet blanket of dickery that drags down what little good there is in the film. Fairing only slightly better as little sister Cindel is Aubree Miller, who was apparently only cast because she bares a passing resemblance to Drew Barrymore in E.T. Seriously, as a kid, I always thought it was Barrymore. She lacks the charm and wit of little Drew, but the adorable face and bundle of blond, curly hair could trick just about anyone.

   The "adventure" starts when Cindel and Mace's parents crash their starcruiser on Endor. While roaming the woods at night, armed with only a flashlight, a giant called a Gorax suddenly appears and snatches them away. The next morning, we hang out with Wicket (Warwick Davis), the Ewok who befriends Princess Leia in Jedi. We get to spend time with him and his family chill, talk, get into trouble, hang glide, and eventually find the downed starcruiser. Hiding inside a cabinet is Cindel, who finds the Ewoks cuddly because she's five. Mace, sneaking in behind the critters, is too taken with them, and brandishes a goddamn blaster on everyone. Acting like the wobbly cock he was born as, Mace shoves the Ewoks, calling them "munkface," and screeching at them in anger.

   Able to get the upper hand on the nitwit, the Ewoks grab the blaster and take a suddenly ill Cindel back to their cottage. They give her some medicine, but run out, which further infuriates Mace. The stooge demands they get more healing syrup, so the Ewoks trek out into the woods and extract more of the goo from a tree. Not content to just chill out, Mace wanders over to another tree, punches a little creature in the face, and gets his arm stuck inside the trunk. I wish I could say the Ewoks leave him there to rot, but they aren't as grim as me, so they save him. With more of the magic medicine, Cindel is miraculously healed.

   Even though they're on a planet they aren't familiar with, knuckleknob Mace steals Cindel away into the night to run through the woods of Endor. A pig-bear thing attacks the two, and the Ewoks once again have to save Mace's ass. Why Cindel doesn't give this goober the finger and become an honorary Ewok is beyond me. She'd stand a better chance at survival with the space teddy bears than she would with her waterbrained kin.

   An Ewok wise elder performs a ritual, and figures out just where Mace and Cindel's parents are. Wicket forms a posse, and they take off the mysterious mountain residency of the Gorax. Whereas the original Star Wars trilogy had one form of spirituality (the Force), there's all manner of magic and wizardry on Endor. Besides the Gorax and magic trees, there's fairies, a lake that zaps people into it, man-eating spiders, spells, and various other fantasy tropes. Caravan is less a Star Wars film than a Tolkien factory. It's never explained why none of this other stuff didn't appear in the theatrical movies. Surely, if there was magic aside from the Force, it would have been mentioned. Fans have come up with explanations as to how this movie fits into the Star Wars universe, but those reasons are listed on a site called Wookieepedia, and I still have too much dignity to visit such a site.

   It's about forty-five minutes before the group even decides to leave and search for the parents. The journey isn't all that great, either. The aforementioned lake pulls Mace into it, but the Ewoks easily rescue him and nothing else is ever made of it. Everything just goes along in fits and starts until they finally reach the giant's hideout. That spider shows up looking like a prop from The Horrors of Spider Island, which is bizarre since ILM worked on this picture. Not all of the effects work is as chintzy, but, man, this spider is as claptrap as they come. The webbing is worse, clearly made from bungee cords and ripped up bed sheets. Once inside, the caravan finds the parents locked in a wooden cage with holes big enough to allow them to walk out. A battle ensues between the Ewoks and the Gorax, and the big guy falls down a crevice. Back at the village, everyone smiles and celebrates, and Burl Ives reminds that "courage, loyalty, and love are the strongest forces in the universe."

   Is Caravan of Courage as bad as any of those prequels? Absolutely not. There's still enough of the charm and excitement from the original trilogy to make Caravan infinitely more enjoyable than Episodes 1-3. That said, it's still pretty dull. Wicket ain't as much fun without Leia, and both kids are abysmal actors. There's a reason Aubree Miller only has this movie and its sequel, Battle for Endor, as credits on IMDb. Burl Ives narration exemplifies the major flaw here, which is that we're just meandering with teddy bears. If Cindel, Mace, or Ives don't explain what the Ewoks are conversing about, then we're just watching pantomiming dwarves in expensive Halloween costumes. You feel at a real arm's length during the viewing, kept back from the lack of a lively human element. Revisting Caravan of Courage just reminds me why it put me asleep on my third birthday.

Arena (1989)

   Sometimes I miss being a kid. It isn't that I dislike being an adult; I enjoy my freedom and independence, but as a kid, I assumed I would be a stodgy, musty old fart by now. That feeling hasn't come, and knowing that I'm marching toward my forties has begun to weird me out. I still feel youthful, like there's piss and vinegar still swimming in me. A recent run-in with an old classmate provided a bizarre moment. Here was this dude Brian, who was always good looking when we were in school. As we stood in the grocery store, I saw the wrinkles on the face, the graying of the hair, the potbelly, and the four kids who kept bugging him for a package of brownies. This wasn't my world. I certainly don't judge Brian; the life he chose has made him quite happy. I didn't feel a part of it, though, and I never could. That sort of life doesn't jibe for me.

   Maybe my head is still in the clouds? My drive and ambition are still that of a twenty year old, yet my body is one heading toward middle age. I didn't start thinking about this dichotomy until recently, which has begun my nostalgia for my childhood. There's a freedom you have as a kid. It opens the world and the universe to all sorts of possibilities. You don't know what you don't know, so life is this boundless one of possibility. I could spend hours outside, running through our woods and pretending to be Han Solo or Rambo. That felt like an achievement. I would create something new everyday, conjure up some story, and act it out, free of judgment and reality. Discoveries were constant. I was a perpetual explorer. This can't last, though, and the bitch of living long is learning how screwy things actually are in the world. That freedom evaporates the more you learn.

   Arena is the kind of film that restores that childhood glee for a few hours. It feels like the kind of film a five year old would dream up, hoping to convince his friends to join him in acting it out. This is a joyful movie, a lighthearted pulp adventure that brought me back to those long gone moments of my youth. Here, the good is good, but evil isn't so evil. It's a place where even the bad guys are really just mild annoyances. The problems can be solved easier, and common sense and justice is returned. Complexity is a great thing to have in fiction; it better represents the truth of the world. There's something to be said, though, for brief moments with stories unencumbered of emotional baggage.

   The wonderfully named Steve Armstrong (Paul Satterfield) is a human trapped on a space station. After losing his job as a cook, he moves in with his four-armed friend Shorty (Hamilton Camp), who is essentially Mickey to Steve's Rocky; they even talk with the same gnome-like growl. Steve is pulled into an intergalactic boxing match that takes place on the station. Fight manager Quinn (Claudia Christian) has recently lost her fighter, and desperately needs a new one. After Steve beats up a few henchmen working for the corrupt tournament head, Rogor (Marc Alaimo), Quinn recruits Steve to be her new pugilist. He fights alien after alien, working his way up the board while also fighting Rogor's bribes and temptations. For Steve, winning becomes less a matter of pride, and more of a chance to make the station better for everyone.

   Arena is just plain fucking awesome. The effects are great, even though modern audiences would call them "cheesy," a term that annoys me more and more with each passing year. There's some really impressive make-up and puppet work on display, a lot of it as good as anything Jim Henson or the various Star Trek series every produced. The filmmakers paid attention to detail, which saves a film like this. A real culture was developed. There are class systems, businesses, and a real way of life. The station looks like an inhabitable environment. In a move of real commitment, the boxing matches have actual rules and regulations. Light beams are projected down to the fighters, giving them handicaps and ensuring the boxers can perform as actual competitors.

   Satterfield makes an excellent square-jawed hero. His blond hair, Captain America face, and physique work well with his roguish charm and humor. Claudia Christian is great, as usual, giving the film's best performance as the no-bullshit Quinn. The rest of the cast is equally cool, even though they have to act beneath layers of make-up. Empire Pictures really put effort and money into Arena. This isn't a cheap time filler; it wants to be a cosmic adventure, and it succeeds magnificently. During its running time, that childhood freedom returns.

Body Melt (1993)

   More like Body Bore, amirite? Yeah, it's a shit pun, but what do you expect? I'm not using good material on a dopey movie. Humor is subjective, sure, yet there are some movies out there that really can't be defended. I'm not saying Body Melt is an affront to decency or morality; rather, it is simply an overly broad wad of nothing. The filmmakers aim for the stands, but can't even get the ball to the batter.

   This is one of those films that is constantly patting itself for taking shots at suburbia. Did you know the suburbs hide secrets beneath their cheerful facades? People living there are often duplicitous, and there is a strong emphasis on appearances and material goods. Stop the presses. These kind of movies still exist nowadays, often springing up like mushrooms on the indie film circuit. Body Melt tries to do a satirical horror spin on the material and comes up squishy.

   Don't look for any kind of thread to cling to, because instead of giving us a protagonist, we get a cul-de-sac of various "kooky" neighbors. They're meant to represent a wide swath of culture, though they are played with one note apiece. Vimuville Vitamins is the run-of-the-mill corrupt company you find in billions of other movies. Recently they created a "wonder drug," a sort of super vitamin to charge up the body and mind. Problem is, when the damn thing kicks in, people start to hallucinate and their bodies melt (hence, the title). The cul-de-sac is chosen to try out the new goody, and soon each one of them is falling to pieces.

   I don't know. This one let me down. A good premise and admittedly amazing effects are left to float hazily in the languid pace the filmmakers chose to adopt. The film bounces around from one person to the next with little connecting them, and then someone dies. After that, it's off to the next victim. The same conceit (people are stupid) gets banged like a gong repeatedly. Watch the first ten minutes, and you get the point. Spending time with the remainder of the picture is a waste. You could be clipping your toenails, or making eggs, or masturbating. All would be better options. If you really need a reminder that people suck, just look out the window. It's a lot shorter of an activity than Body Melt.

Bad Kids Go to Hell (2012)

   Bad Kids Go to Hell is one of those movies that's difficult to review. It's better than expected, but also lacking the necessary verve needed to make it noteworthy. All the pieces are there for a really smart, unique film, yet too many shortcuts were taken. A movie with satirical aspirations needs to have the teeth, so that you wind up with Heathers and not Saved.

   Essentially a horror riff on The Breakfast Club, the movie concerns six students forced to attend Saturday detention at their ritzy prep school. The library they are forced to remain in is brand new, constructed with money from the rich parents in the neighborhood. Matthew (Cameron Deane Stewart) is the new kid, a low income student that has made it into the school based on merit. His weeks at Crestview Academy has been miserable and embarrassing; the Headmaster (Judd Nelson) is already at his wit's end with the boy, and has decided to expel him.

   For mysterious reasons, Matthew convinces his school shrink to let him attend detention anyway. He's accompanied by Goth girl Veronica (the super cute Augie Duke), stuck up bitch Tricia (Ali Faulkner), jock douchebag Craig (Roger Edwards), awkward Tarek (Marc Donato), and prissy Megan (the even cuter Amanda Alch). All of the kids have crossed paths with Matthew, and each hold some kind of grudge against the kid. Defying safety codes, the school shrink locks all of the students in the library and walks off.

   Boredom and bickering kick in, and Veronica suggests a séance might be fun. When pressed as to why she thinks this, Veronica explains the library was built on the same ground a Native American man named Rainwater, who was killed for his land. She convinces the others to join her, and, soon enough, what seems to be the spirit of the Indian is hunting and butchering the kids.

   The filmmakers play around with the idea of inherited guilt, much the same way Poltergeist did. Slant Magazine noted that Bad Kids could be considered part of a new genre: the Occupy horror film. Matthew is the most appealing, but he still is portrayed as a fairly callow kid. There's a glibness to the performance that keeps him from being charming or enjoyable. He's meant to function as the audience surrogate, someone who can bring us into the gilded world of the 1%. The others are all vulgar, disgusting, and psychotic in various levels. Veronica comes closest to matching Matthew as far as being personable, but too often she sabotages her good moments with snarky quips.

   The film feels like there's been a few more character pieces removed. The hatred everyone feels toward Matthew seems unearned and forced. Likewise, Matthew's rebellion against the smarmy school rings hollow; there isn't enough evidence to suggest the boy is the pariah he is made out to be. The motivations of the other characters, especially in the third act reveal, are murky. It seems inexplicable that everyone behave the way they do. This is partially due to the fact that the tone shifts wildly from one second to the next, alternating between macabre to jokey to dramatic within the same scene. Tonal shifts are fine if the director can pull it off. Here, it just feels abrupt.

   I didn't dislike the movie. It kept my interest, but when all was said and done, it felt immaterial. I can see what the filmmakers were shooting for. When the credits rolled, I didn't really feel anything. The cast is pretty good, so I hope they keep working, and director Matthew Spradlin has potential. Hopefully he gets another crack at directing. As it stands, though, Bad Kids Go to Hell is only mildly successful at its lofty goals.

 

 

Farmer's Daughters (1976)

   Spalding Gray was a great monologist. If you haven't read or watched Swimming to Cambodia, Monster in a Box, or Gray's Anatomy, I highly, highly recommend you check them out. He was an infinitely brilliant and perceptive man, offering up his life as an examination of the odd, inexplicable aspects of human existence. There is a quote of his that has hung in my head for the last five six years, a period of great change in my life.

"I fantasize about going back to high school with the knowledge I have now. I would shine. I would have a good time, I would have a girlfriend. I think that's where a lot of my pain comes from. I think I never had any teenage years to go back to."

 

Sad, yes, but on the mark. Whenever a "celebrity" dies, everyone stumbles over themselves to proclaim it a tragedy, even if it's someone like professional self-destructor Amy Winehouse. Pickling your liver and burning a coke hole in your nose is not a tragedy; it's stupidity, regardless of the talent behind the shit behavior. Gray's suicide in 2004 was a genuine tragedy. It was the culmination of a lifetime battle with a depression he had tried to ward off.

   Given how dim Gray's point of view was, I wonder just how much his appearance in Farmer's Daughters haunted him. Back in '76, porn was still considered chic and revolutionary. Making a dirty movie was just one part of the counterculture. Looking at Farmer's Daughters with a modern eye, it's difficult to see it for anything besides bizarre. It certainly assaults taboos, but to what end? This kind of cage rattling might have been considered important or artistic forty years ago. Today, it's merely a parade of bad taste.

   Think of it as a porn version of Last House on the Left, a film Wes Craven intended to be hardcore. A farmer and his wife are screwing. Peeking through the window are their three grown daughters, all looking like Hee-Haw cast members. They giggle and point as dad gives mom the old heave-ho, eventually getting so turned on they grab the man-boy farmhand and drag him to a back porch. The girls tease and mock the boy, fucking him with fierce abandon before peeing on him as humiliation.

   About that time, three escaped convicts (one of them played by Gray) stumble onto the farm. They catch the farmer still screwing his wife and bust in. Here's where it gets creepy. If you're into rape, here's the movie for you. For the rest of us Normals, the remainder of the film becomes a flipbook of illness. The convicts rape mom, drag her and her husband outside, get ahold of the daughters, and proceed to assault them while the parents watch on. When that's done, they start forcing the girls to partake in some incest, all which is puke-inducing. The farmhand shows up, grabs a gun, kills the convicts, and then orders the daughters to screw him. While the dope is distracted, dad grabs the gun and shoots the farmhand. The editing goes wild and--wah-wah-waaahhh...it was all a dream of the farmhand. The daughters throw a bucket of water on him and run off giggling.

   I don't have a problem with porn. It has its place in society, and the people involved aren't monsters or sickos. Something like Farmer's Daughters sullies the good name of porn, though. I find it hard to believe anyone with a smidge of taste could pull out their pecker and get off on this. Only the most askew would find anything about this arousing. It's not the actions that make it repulsive necessarily, but the lecherous mindset behind the camera. Director Zebedy Colt has the reputation of being one of the more far out porn filmmakers of the seventies, always pushing the bounds of taste. It's just a very damp movie filmed through a filter of pond scum.

   Somehow, though, Farmer's Daughters manages to capture a part of Gray's mindset. He once wrote, "If you live long enough, I find that it all comes full circle." Is that giving this porno film more weight than it carries? It can be argued that, yes, this is a stretch. But beneath the exterior of the film is a pure sort of pessimism. When the farmhand wakes up from his dream, his power is gone, and he is back to being the mere skin and bones the girls mock. The loss of strength was a running theme in Gray's work, usually manifest in the form of death. His mother killed herself, and the monologist felt that he was heading for the same denouement. Before the moment of finality comes the stripping of place, power, and purpose, which both the farmhand and Gray experienced. If this picture is the gutter, Gray escaped, but only briefly.

 

You're Killing Me, Smalls: Hooking Up (2009)

   It's been a stressful couple of weeks for me. I had school finals to deal with, my asshole allergies are raging, thus giving me a perpetual headache, and my car needs to go into the shop for a possible busted head gasket. These things aren't the end of the world. I can be a curmudgeon, but in order to keep my head from exploding in frustration, I remind myself that all bad things pass. My annoyance used to get the best of me, which is why I have been known to be a moody sonnavabitch in the past. Time goes on, and nothing is really worth being livid about.

   Except Hooking Up. I usually only focus on certain films when I do an entry for You're Killing Me, Smalls. Typically, they're either the worst Hollywood has to offer or they are representations of a bad trend in filmmaking. Hooking Up is a small-time "comedy" from 2009 that perhaps only a hundred people have seen; I might be the one hundredth and first. It never caught on, and it certainly didn't make any money. The director, Vincent Scordia, hasn't made a feature film since this loathsome debut. The "big stars" Scordia managed to rope into this mess are hardly anybody of note, so it isn't like the film dirtied the reputation of any good actors.

   Regardless, Hooking Up has to be one of the most poisonous, vile, abject, noxious, sleazy, vicious, wicked, despicable, iniquitous, disgraceful, coarse, contemptible, sexist, and misanthropic pieces of horse shit I have ever seen in my entire life. This isn't hyperbole. Until the day I die, Hooking Up will forever be in the back of my brain, stinking up my skull with its fetid brand of casual misogyny disguised as cheerful comedy. You would have a better chance of convincing me Andrea Dworkin was a consultant on Porky's before you could make me believe that the filmmakers behind this picture weren't degenerates. If anyone reading this has a daughter, and the daughter brings home a guy named Vincent Scordia, run to Netflix and watch Hooking Up. You need to know what kind of slime has infiltrated your life.

   What sort of sick sons-a-bitches find non-consensual sex to be funny? Who would invest in a film that actively supports pedophilia? What kind of man would gladly helm a movie that believes in the notion that any woman who enjoys sex is a dirty, filthy whore and deserve to be mocked? This is slut shaming with a $400,000 budget. No one except a mentally ill misogynist would end their "sex comedy" with a tear-stained forced threesome. That's how Scordia and screenwriter Jeff Siegel chose to close out the picture. In that doesn't make you puke in your soup, the man in the threesome is thirty-eight year old Corey fuckin' Feldman, who is playing an abusive, coked out twenty-five year old.

   Ostensibly, Hooking Up is supposed to be a week in the life of six teenagers (three boys, three girls) as they navigate the heady storm of sex, hormones, and love. I offer this as the plot because there really isn't any distinct direction to the story. Siegel and Scordia were possibly too busy jerking off to fourteen year olds at the local pool, and simply didn't have time to do a second pass at the script. Think of all those sex terms you find on Urban Dictionary. Now, create the dumbest scenarios around those sex terms and you have Hooking Up. The boys are divided into the sexually confused one, the handsome one, and the cocksucker ripoff of American Pie's Stifler. Were these kids real people, we might be staring at the future mass shooters of America. They are all disgusting in various ways. The "wild " one will obviously be the grossest, though showing him grabbing the breast of a passed out young girl at a party probably wasn't the best thing to do five minutes into the film. That's assault, dipshit. Drunk or no, you don't get to go around and do whatever the fuck you want to women. There's a video on YouTube where a guy tries to interview porn actress Alexis Texas. When she turns around to show her butt to the camera, the interviewer tries to grab it. A few other porn women come over and stop him. Texas quits the interview and walks off. In the comments below the video, there was a mass army of dudes going, "shel'l fuck all those guyz in front of a camera but he can't touch her ass? FUK that BEEYOTCH! Youre a horror!" In the eyes of Scordia, women are supposed to let any dude do whatever he wants. Open those holes, ladies, 'cause Vincent Scordia needs somewhere to put his fingers.

   The other two are equally douchey. The sexually confused one tricks the handsome kid into accepting head from him under the auspices that the blowjob is actually coming from the sexually confused one's sister. Later on, the handsome kid assfucks the sister, though this is interrupted when his two friends come in and "seagull" the couple. Seagulling, by the way, is when guys jerk off, run into a room where people are fucking, and throw their cum on the couple. They then make noises like a seagull. Ha-ha.

   If the boys are meant to be charming cads, the girls are damaged whores that need a scolding, or at least Scordia thinks so. One of them is a naïve sixteen year old who is dating Feldman's man-child. She says she loves him, even after he forces her to strip in front of his friends. Later on, he smacks her around and knocks her down a flight of stairs. Still, she keeps coming back. Another girl is the aforementioned anal sex chick, who we meet blowing guy after guy at a party. Note: the first person the girl blows in the movie is Jeff Siegel. Way to not be creepy, Screenwriter.

   The third girl possibly has the most bizarre storyline. She's a goody two-shoes who hasn't done anything sexually. Her dad (played with zero ability by Clerks' Brian O'Halloran) is the principal, which makes getting laid difficult for the girl. To alleviate her horniness, she sets her sights on her science teacher, played by that bastion of manliness, Bronson Pinchot. She tries to seduce him, first by stripping off her thong underwear in front of him, then trapping the man in her bathroom during a faculty cookout. Upping the ick factor more, the girl slides her hands down her pants, brings her fingers to her lips, and says she tastes like flowers. It's fucking vile. Pinchot isn't innocent, though; he sniffs her panties after she gives them to him. Way later in the film, she aims to fuck the handsome boy, but plans fall through and she ends up fucking Corey Feldman. His girlfriend shows up, can't understand why the principal's daughter is there, and is coerced by Feldman into having that tearful threeway. Watching the former Lost Boy pound what is supposed to be a fifteen year old girl while another crying "teenager" sits nearby in her panties asking him to stop is one of the most depressing visuals I have ever taken in. You're a rotten cocksucker, Scordia, for showing me that. I hope you develop diabetes and lose your feet.

   There is no development to any of these characters. Immediately following the threesome, the credits start to roll and we get a montage of what happens the next week. The sadness experienced by one of the characters is completely ignored, and we're instead treated to some more wacky hijinks. The last gag in the film involves a doctor calling Feldman and informing him that he's contracted "cunt worms." Nothing is learned! No one takes away any lessons, grows as a person, or learns a goddamn thing! Heady topics are introduced, but disregarded for jokes about "cunt worms." It's fine if the movie just wants to be a lightweight comedy, but the humor is the most distressing, mean-spirited shit around. The girls are laughed at, humiliated, and mocked endlessly, always derided for being "sluts" or not putting out. In a culture where rape is (somehow) still up for debate, I question the taste and wisdom of a man who creates a picture that also functions as a rape apology. A grown-up with even a modicum of sense would have looked at this script and thrown it the fuck away. Vincent Scordia must have been one of those genius kids who kept sticking metal objects in electrical outlets, even after the fiftieth shock. Only a dummy would take on this project and proudly slap his name on the finished film.

   Vincent Scordia and Jeff Siegel not only hate women, they hate themselves. The utter contempt they have for their own humanity trickles out of the frame. Both men are the kind of lame motherfuckers that just want to pretend to be movie people. Actually trying to make something good would take too much effort, and that would leave them too lethargic to pick up pussy. It's easier to just role-play. Neither of them has a creative bone in their body, opting to piece together a film so meandering and lazy that it is an insult to anything alive and breathing. If you don't believe me, consider this: We are introduced to each of the characters with MySpace-esque computer screens. The sexually confused kid lists one of his interests as Nicolas Cage. The problem? Scordia fucking spelled his name Nicholas with an H. This schmuck couldn't even be bothered to double check if a famous actor's name was right. It does my heart good to know that Scordia hasn't made a single movie since Hooking Up. I'm sure he's great weekend help, though, at Payless Shoes. Repulsive slimebags deserve such a bleak fate.

Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

   Late in Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures, Guillermo del Toro shows up. He's been hired to make his first American film for Dimension Films, a picture that would turn out to be Mimic. The Weinsteins have slathered del Toro's butt with compliments, and Mira Sorvino (then a fairly big deal) insists that the young director be hired. As will happen with the Weinsteins, the filming turns into a nightmare. Neither brother understands what del Toro is doing, foolishly believing they were getting a fun, kicky monster movie that the gravel skulls across America could embrace. What was being delivered in the dailies was a moody, pensive horror story about the fallacies of human life. In other words, not the kind of stuff that would pack a multiplex on a Friday night, or gather an armful of MTV Movie Awards. Pressure started to mount, and the brothers began to basically antagonize del Toro, causing the man to break down in tears repeatedly on the set. Were it not for Sorvino defending him, del Toro would have been fired.

   Like a lot of Hollywood bigwigs, Bob and Harvey Weinstein love to bask in the glow of other people's acclaim. They themselves hardly ever do any of the heavy lifting, the exception being Bob Weinstein's lone directorial effort, Playing for Keeps. Never heard of it? Neither has most of the world. Miramax was notorious in the late 90s and early 2000s for having massive vaults full of movies that they had bankrolled, confiscated from the directors and other producers, and locked away. It was a mercenary way of operating a movie studio, throwing money at projects to see what sticks. This method worked out of sheer luck. Were it not for Soderbergh, Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and a handful of other indie darlings, Miramax probably would have sunk. They were in the right place at the right time.

   They are neither creative or clever. They are just rich. To be a studio head, you need to value money over good work. Being in the movie business allows people like the Weinsteins to have their cake and eat it, too. The films they finance get critical acclaim, accumulate awards and money, and the brothers get to tag along with the actual creative forces.  On the surface, it looks like they care about cinema. It's utter bullshit. When the Weinstens lost Miramax in 2005, they took with them the Dimension Films label. It has provided them the money necessary to keep The Weinstein Company up and running. With the exception of a small pool of films, most of The Weinstein Company's pictures have done little business. Dimension (sometimes labeled Dimension Extreme) keeps the lights on, but further pollutes the genre pool with lame horror films and watered down sequels.

   When German movie producer Bernd Eichinger was about to lose the rights to The Fantastic Four back in the nineties, he teamed up with Roger Corman and cranked out the notoriously abysmal 1994 film. Doing this allowed Eichinger to keep the rights to the Marvel property. This story also explains why Hellraiser: Revelations exists. With their contract about to expire, Dimension hurried Revelations into production in order to hold onto the Hellraiser franchise, and eventually produce their long-gestating remake. Revelations was written and filmed in about the span of a month and a half. Seeing the writing on the wall, Doug Bradley walked away. It is telling of the quality that even Bradley couldn't be persuaded to return for a paycheck.

   The movie is wretched. Part found footage, part house-under-siege, Revelations offers no reason as to why it should exist. The only people who could possibly find any satisfaction in watching this are the Weinsteins, knowing a cash cow is still theirs to possess. Two douchebag boys go down to Mexico, get drunk, kill a hooker, and play with the puzzle box. Bad things happen. A year later, one of the boys shows back up at his sprawling mansion. Much to the alarm of his parents, his sister, and his friend's parents, he is covered in blood and babbling about "them." "Don't let them get me," he whispers. I'm going to do you a favor and not go into detail. Know this: the script sucks cock, the actors are awful, the new Pinhead is less intimidating than Dr. Claw, and the whole thing is only seventy-five minutes long. Save yourself the trouble. Avoid Revelations like the plague.

   As I end my time with the Hellraiser series, I am reminded of something Lewis Black once said many years ago. He was describing what anybody named "Bob" is really like.

"You meet Bob when you're stuck in an airport cocktail lounge for two hours, because the airport's been watching the Weather Channel, and you're stuck next to Bob and Bob starts talking about his wife and kids, and he buys you some drinks, and shows you pictures of the family, and you start to think 'Hey, Bob's not a bad guy,' and then Bob tries to sell you insurance, and you have to say 'Fuck you, Bob!' That is a Bob."

 

   Yes, fuck you, Bob. Fuck you, indeed.

 



Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

   "How's that for a wake up call?"

   And, with those seven words, Doug Bradley ends his tenure as Pinhead. Pity he had to go out on such a flat-footed, waterbrained, lazy, uninspired note. It took nearly twenty years, but Hollywood finally killed Clive Barker's original inspiration. Hellraiser: Hellworld is the worst entry in the franchise, an insulting hunk of waste created only to be an ATM machine for Dimension Films.

   Like the last two, Hellworld was based on source material that had nothing to do with the Hellraiser lore. In this case, it came from a short story by Joel Soisson, who you might recognize from the vast amount of work he's done on Dimension's roster of direct-to-DVD films: multiple entries for The Prophecy, Children of the Corn, Pulse, Mimic, and Dracula; he also produced 1998's Phantoms, too, so there you go. I saw Joel Soisson interviewed on Never Sleep Again, the four hour long documentary about the Nightmare on Elm Street series. He seems like a decent dude, and he needs work just like anybody, but, man...how much money is necessary?

   Like they did with Michael Myers in Halloween: Resurrection, Dimension forces Pinhead to meet the internet, producing equally dubious results. A bunch of dummies (including the new Superman, Henry Cavill) all play an MMORPG called Hellworld, based on the myths of the Cenobites. I guess the movies don't exist in this world. Pinhead, the box, and everything else are just urban legends that have been co-opted by this video game. These goons that are meant to be our protagonists are stock types: the good looking guy, the final girl, the black guy with attitude, the nerd, and the goth/alternative girl. To call them vapid would be a disservice to the millions of legitimately vapid people in this country. No, these are fleshy globs that are meant to resemble humans in shape and behavior, but have no discernible personality. Ryan Lochte and Kim Kardashian are Mensa members compared to this bunch.

   They all end up at this party thrown by Lance Henriksen, who's some mysterious figure with ties to the game. Once there, the kids start hallucinating about Pinhead attacking them in various bloody ways. Here, Dimension just gave up. They saw they were on the eighth entry, scratched their asses, and said, "Fuck it. Who cares? Just film something. We need to boost our third quarter profits." That's why you have Pinhead decapitating people with a cleaver, like some eighties slasher ninny. That they wrap up the initial series with a pun that even Freddy Krueger would have scoffed at makes one shake their head in frustration. I'm not asking for a Hellraiser movie as made by Stanley Kubrick, but c'mon. How about a teensy, weensy bit of effort?

   Everyone sucks shit through a straw in this movie. Even Henriksen and Bradley walk away with cow pies on their face. This is cavalier moviemaking at its worst, a kick in the shins and a poke in the eye to anyone who wants a movie that actually tries to appeal to more than the cretins jerking off in their barns. Let those animals go without movies. They don't deserve them. As they sit on their lawn mowers, pulling on their measly peckers, and snuffing a rag full of gas, they lose all ability to discern what's a good film and what isn't. These limp cocked savages should only get Maury Povich reruns and Law and Order: SVU, two programs that supply tawdry thrills and zero brains. Taking money from these crackpots is shameful, a condition I don't believe Dimension Films possesses. The dumb ruin everything in this country.

   Pinhead is dead. Long live Pinhead.

Hellraiser: Deader (2005)

   Hark! What is this? A good Hellraiser sequel? Get the fuck outta' town! It actually has a story, compelling characters, genuine surprises, intriguing ideas, and, best of all, Kari Wuhrer's breasts! Why am I acting like it's the lost footage from The Magnificent Ambersons? Because a decent sequel is a near miracle, let alone when it's the seventh entry and went straight to DVD. Hellraiser: Deader is, wait for it...good. It's really good. I'm just as shocked as you.

   Amy Klein (Wuhrer) is an American reporter living in London, making her wages by working for a Daily Mail type of rag. She primarily does gimmick stories, as evidenced by her newest report, titled "How to Be a Crack Whore." Klein digs for the most salacious stories, embedding herself with junkies and hoodlums for any nugget of news. Fresh off her recent investigation, her boss summons her to his office and plays a VHS tape for her. What she sees shocks her: a group of weirdos hang out in barren, damp room. They all are pale and decrepit, their bodies wracked into the heroin look. A young girl is paraded amongst them, eventually stopping to be seduced by the leader, Winter (Paul Rhys). He lays he down on a bed, and compels the girls to blow her brains out with a he gun he hands her. Next, he kisses the dead woman passionately, until she suddenly comes gasping back to life.

   Klein isn't sure if this is a special effect or not. Her boss explains the tape came to him from Bucharest, Romania, where rumors of this group have been floating around. They call themselves Deaders, and believe they can transverse life itself and exist forever. Knowing Klein's penchant for shock value, he buys her a ticket to Romania and sends her to find the cult. Once there, her search quickly turns haywire. She finds the sender of the videotape dead in her apartment, leaving behind another package made especially for Klein. The puzzle box is also in the dead woman's hands. Obviously, Klein takes it, too.

   That night, she plays with the puzzle box, setting into motion a grand plan of death and righteousness that she had no idea she was meant to be a part of. Pinhead appears, informing her that she is his link to Winter's Deaders, who are trespassing on his otherworldly terrain. With the box open, Klein now works for Pinhead and must deliver the cult members to him. It turns out that Winter is the descendant of Phillip LeMarchand, creator of the puzzle box, and is determined to use it as a tool to conquer death.

   What makes all this fly is director Rick Bota's paranoid handling of Klein's investigation. Made in Romania because of tax breaks, Bota manages to utilize the loneliness and broken spirit of Bucharest to trap Klein in a living nightmare. Death is cheap in this city. While she might be able to navigate her way through the London slums, Klein is out of her league in Bucharest. The cops begin to think she's a loon, and no one else really trusts her. There's real isolation felt here, and Kari Wuhrer does a great job at parlaying this into fear. She makes Klein into the strongest, most interesting protagonist since Part 2, someone we want to follow down this hellish rabbit hole. Wuhrer had been good in other films, most notably King of the Ants, and again shows that she should have had a better career than the one she ended up with. If Dimension had kept her as a focal point for the sequels, the series could have achieved the heights it once attained.

   The cult is fascinating. They're not the usual band of motley psychos; in fact, there's a sadness to all of them. It's as if they know this trip they've begun to take is heading nowhere. There methods might be morally questionable, but the hope and longing makes them empathetic. Winter isn't a routine asshole leader, either. He's arrogant and brash, but, again, he is allowed some measure of humanity. The fear of death motivates most of the world. To surpass this end, and make the finite infinite is a human desire. We all want to live forever in some capacity. I do wish there was a bit more of the cult explained. We don't get to go quite as deep as we want into the machinations of the group, leaving us from being as gripped as we could have been with an additional ten minutes. Here's one Hellraiser sequel that could use a longer running time.

   This ain't no modern classic, but Hellraiser: Deader can stand as one of the best entries in the series, easily able to hold its head high beside Part 2. It's good, grim, chilling, and thoughtful. I might have been wrong about Dimension. Maybe they got their shit together for the last few of these films?

Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)

   Well, figs...My optimism was merely a fool's errand. After Hellraiser: Inferno, I hoped that the next installment would rise above the generic hoo-hah. I mean, Ashley Laurence is back as Kirsty Cotton! Clearly they're trying to tie this film into the initial mythology Clive Barker created. Boy, I'm an idiot. Revisiting these later films is proving how my brain is like a sieve, filtering out not the terrible and loathsome, but merely the slight and needless. Hellraiser: Hellseeker is too mundane to be offensive to the senses, and too bland to become anything more than a tired cash-in on the part of Dimension Films.

   Don't let the appearance of Kirsty bolster your hope. Like Pinhead, she is out of sight for most of the film. Instead, we watch her husband, Trevor (Dean Winters, better known as Mayhem from those Allstate Insurance commercials), try to come to terms with her disappearance after the two are involved in a car accident. The police fish him and the car out of a river, but can't find any trace of Kirsty.

   A month later, Trevor wakes up in a hospital from partial memory loss. He attempts to go to work and restart his life, but strange things start happening. A co-worker needles him endlessly, like a babysitter watching a child. Women start throwing themselves at him, seducing him as though they were long time lovers. On top of all that, Trevor starts seeing Cenobites and other weird shit around his neighborhood.

   *SPOILER ALERT FOR AN ELEVEN YEAR OLD MOVIE* I'll jump right to the big twist. It turns out everything Trevor is experiencing is part of a dream. What actually happened was this: Trevor, feeling distant from Kirsty, was fucking three different women. His co-worker helped him concoct this plan to kill Kirsty after she took out a huge life insurance claim on herself. In order to murder her, Trevor gave her the puzzle box, expecting Pinhead and the gang to wack her. However, Kirsty strikes a deal with Pinhead--in exchange for her soul, she'll deliver five more. These wind up being Trevor's three mistresses, his co-worker, and Trevor himself. Kirsty actually survived the car accident, and Trevor is now on his way to Hell.

   Wah-wah-waaaaahhhhh. Let me get the big complaint out of the way: watching grass grow is infinitely more exciting than this picture. The whole story makes little sense, and there's no narrative to latch onto. It's a random assemblage of footage, pieces of film just spliced together in a way that merely suggests a movie. We are literally just watching a man roam around for an hour and a half. That this is considered a releasable feature is utterly inexplicable.

   Making matters worse is Dean Winters. I enjoyed Winters on OZ, and the Allstate commercials make me laugh, but he is a parched cipher here, a blank slate that carries a constant smirk. Even when people are getting chopped up, Winters is totally unaffected by it. How can a story be creepy if the main character can't even be bothered to react to the horror? Adding insult to injury, Kirsty is only around for the beginning and end. Laurence is quite good, and she is still gorgeous, but how they try to tie her history into this mess is lacking. Before this became Hellraiser: Hellseeker, the script was an unrelated horror movie that Dimension had purchased. Rather than develop a good idea, Bob Weinstein had a writer awkwardly insert some Pinhead/Cenobites stuff into this old script, and voila! A new Hellraiser picture was born. This explains why the movie feels so half-hearted. Emphasizing the cheapness of the movie, Laurence claims she was only paid enough to make a payment on a new refrigerator.

   I don't think Bob Weinstein really likes horror movies. To him, they're bullshit to pad the bottom line; extra cash to hand over to Harvey, so he can bankroll his next Oscar picture. Good things have escaped Bob Weinstein's factory, but it's because the people making the pictures fought for them. In the case of the Hellraiser series, Bob's 'fuck you' tone is apparent in nearly all of them. He doesn't want to draw in the general audience, but he also doesn't give a rat's ass about horror fans. What matters to him are the dumb yokels that will hand over their cash for any bullshit he offers. As long as some dope is willing to walk into Wal-Mart and buy one of his movies sight unseen, he'll keep cranking them out with little regard for care or effort.

   Well, Bob can suck my cock. He's what the Filthy Critic used to call a "grassfucker." The man aspired to mediocrity, and achieved it in spades. If you're completely empty of self-respect, art, and decency, then you, too, can be a grassfucker like Bob. Maybe Dimension has the right idea, though. Trying to appeal to anyone with a triple digit I.Q. isn't as lucrative as serving up hash to the gas huffers of America. Perhaps I'm no better, either. I sat through the stupid movie, and just devoted energy to writing about it.

   Fucking Bob...

Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)

   As I sat watching 8MM 3, I thought to myself, "Man, they made this movie too early. Given how badly Nic Cage needs money, he would have signed right up for this." A tortured cop goes the Bad Lieutenant route--coking it up with hookers, and stealing money from evidence lockers. He's not quite a madman, but the casualness with which he sins shows that he's not in a great place. Couple these issues with the fact that a serial killer is cutting off the fingers of a small child and leaving them at crime scenes, it's little wonder the cop is breaking down. The film isn't going full tilt, though. There's no mania in the devolution of this man's mind.

   Then, I remembered, "Oh, that's right, there is no 8MM 3. This supposed to be a flippin' Hellraiser movie!" You could be forgiven for thinking this was just a generic cop flick. After all, I think Pinhead appears for about three minutes, most of which are at the end, and the Cenobite/puzzle box stuff barely factors in. Instead, we get a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of The Silence of the Lambs filmed in the same style as a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode. The weird thing is that the opening moments aren't bad. There's some potential in this story, at least until the film shrugs its shoulders and throws in David Lynchian cowboys with kung fu assistants. Oy, vey...

   Craig Sheffer is Joseph Thorne, a corrupt detective in Denver. Why Denver? I haven't the slightest, especially since it was clearly filmed outside of L.A. Thorne is a douche, ignoring his wife and daughter to gallivant around with ladies of the night and utilize his Snuffleeupagas nostrils to suck up blow. He's investigating the murder of a creep who seems to have been ripped apart by chains (wonder who could do that...). The puzzle box is at the scene of the crime, as is a little kid's finger that's been inserted into a candle, which really grossed me out. Maybe I'm just a wuss.

   Ten minutes in, this is okay. Sheffer is actually pretty good at being a slightly charming asshole. The crooked cop angle isn't such a bad idea for a Hellraiser movie, although one has to be careful about obnoxious sermonizing ala the Saw films. Then, things start to mildew when Nicholas Tuturro shows up as Sheffer's new partner. I don't like this dude. I never have, and I never will, and I'll never be able to fully justify why. He just irritates the shit out of me. The forced "New Yawker" shtick drives me up wall, making it hard for me to watch him. He was the worst thing on N.Y.P.D. Blue, I'll just say that.

   They start investigating the murder, but Thorne gets freaked out about the finger, so he decides to fuck a hooker to ease his mind. After banging her, he goes into the bathroom and starts playing with the puzzle box. Clearly, we all know where this is going. All of Thorne's sins start to haunt him, as more and more of his snitches and cohorts start turning up dead. The relationship between him and his partner begins to fray, especially after Thorne blackmails the man as a potential murderer. Thorne also has those age old cop problems with his wife. I kept waiting for him to mutter, "I'm getting too old for this shit."

   Fuck, this movie got boring fast. It clocks in at a hundred minutes, which is way, way too long for a story that is this threadbare. What really makes it eat busted asshole is that Pinhead, who is featured prominently on the cover, is hardly in the fucking thing. When he does show up, it's clear that age is starting to catch up to Doug Bradley. He has the beginnings of that George Lucas turkey neck thing going on. Pinhead's midsection has also blossomed outward, too, erasing the odd sexuality of the character. Now he's just someone's dad in S&M gear. Look, it happens to all of us. I'm not saying Doug Bradley sucks, nor am I goofing on him. What his appearance does signify is that the series is already long in the tooth, yet there's still three more installments with Bradley to go. Both Robert Englund and Kane Hodder put on weight because they got older, as well. That's life. It does kind of seem odd that a demon or undead killer would suffer from middle age spread, though.

   Visually, the film stinks. Director Scott Derrickson would go on to make The Exorcism of Emily Rose, the dreadful remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and last year's Sinister. This was his first feature, which is clear as day. It has all the hallmarks of a first time effort: trendy editing styles, basic frame setups, meek authority behind the camera, and so on.  He loses what little grip he has on the Throne character, displacing the interesting tidbits in favor of empty twists and bug-eyed looks from Sheffer. It's a completely anonymous directing effort.

   Feh...it's too bad this movie reeks like it does. It started out fairly well, and then just kicked itself in the ass. I hadn't watched this since it was released on VHS in 2000, the year I graduated. It makes sense as to why I didn't remember the damn thing. It passes right through you, like a fart cloud. There's a brief bad taste, then--woosh! It's gone.

   Maybe the next one will be better...

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

   Hellraiser: Bloodline is a better film than Part 3. I'm aware that's not the cool thing to say, but it's true. This doesn't mean Bloodline is a marvel of awesome cinema; it just isn't the dilapidated snoozer that last installment was. Imagine you have diarrhea for two days. This is Hellraiser III. You wake up the third day, pop a squat on the toilet, and you find that your dookie is solid again. It's a relief, though it's still shit. That sums up Bloodline.

   The production problems on this film are notorious, at least in the horror community. Kevin Yagher was initially hired to direct, which, given Yagher's horror pedigree, was a wise move on the part of Dimension Films. Alas, in true Weinstein form, Yagher was displaced from the editing bay, and a different cut was assembled behind his back. Gone were graphic bits of gore and terror, as were vital elements of the story that actually explained what the hell was going on. Dimension wanted Pinhead to appear sooner, even though they green lit a script that didn't have him show up for forty minutes. Yagher went back in time, explaining how and why the puzzle box came about, and laid out an epic story of fate and sacrifice.

   All in all, twenty-eight minutes were snipped. Dimension asked Yagher to shoot additional scenes in order to make the new mess understandable. Feeling duped, Yagher told them to shove the picture up their ass and walked away. Enter Joe Chappelle, a man who was no stranger to the Weinstein problem due to his time as director of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. Since Yagher never directed another film, it's hard to say whether he would have panned out as a good filmmaker. What is certain is that he had a better cinematic eye than Chappelle. The movie jumps across time, allowing the differences in directorial quality to be more noticeable. Whereas Yagher pays attention to lighting, composition, and mise en scene, Chappelle just aims the camera at a flatly lit surface and rolls the film. This is most apparent in the spaceship sequences.

   Yes, this is the "Pinhead in Space" entry. Honestly, out of the all the franchises that have ventured into the deep realms of the galaxy, Hellraiser feels the least forced of them all. Something about its otherworldly nature sort of goes along with the dark inexplicability of the universe. Leprechaun and Jason Voorhees simply made no sense. Bloodline isn't entirely successful in carrying out the space motif, but it doesn't stink to high heavens like Jason X.

   The picture opens on a dreary space station, which looks like the puzzle box unfolded. A group of galaxy cops (or whatever) rush on board. Meanwhile, Billy Corgan-lookalike Paul Merchant (Bruce Ramsay) straps on a pair of power gloves and controls a robot that he is using to figure out the puzzle box. The gate to Hell is opened, the robot is blown up, and Paul is whisked away by the cops as Pinhead and his buds appear. A woman named, of all things, Rimmer (Dazed and Confused actress Christine Harnos) interrogates Paul, and we go tripping back in time to 18th century France.

   Here we meet Paul's ancestor Phillip (Ramsay, again), a poor toymaker with a frustrated wife and a baby on the way. He has been hired by the gluttonous Duc de L'Isle (Mickey Cottrell) to craft the Lament Configuration (in other words, the puzzle box). Poor Phillip doesn't realize the thing is actually a doorway to Hell, so he rush delivers it to Duc and his assistant, Jacques (Adam Scott of Parks and Recreation and Step-Brothers). Phillip gets his money, but strange noises and lights distract him. He peers through a window and watches Duc and Jacques summon a demon princess to inhabit the body of a dead hooker (Valentina Vargas), who dubs herself Angelique.

   Phillip, obviously pissing his pants, decides that something needs to be created to battle the Lament Configuration. A quick montage shows him sketching what becomes known as the Elysium Configuration, another box that will repel Hell. Feeling he needs the Lament box for some reason, Phillip breaks into the Duc's house, finding him dead and Angelique fucking Jacques. Things go awry, Angelique kills Phillip, and time jumps forward.

   This whole section is the best portion of the film. My suspicion is that Yagher had more of a hand in this part since it feels so different from most of the rest of the movie. The chateau belonging to Duc is rich in menace, a dark, murky housing of man's worst drives. The French section is so good that you can overlook its weaknesses, namely that it seems to end abruptly. Given the structure of the movie, one's initial thought is that the abruptness is okay. There's plenty more movie ahead.

   Of course, the film begins to wet the bed in the next section. It is now 1996, and Phillip's great-great-great whatever, John (yes, it's Ramsay) is an architect who has constructed a building patterned after the Elysium Configuration. The explanation is that the Lament box, dumped into a concrete bed in the climax of Part 3, is trapped in the foundation and influencing John's designs. This sounds okay, but halfway through this time period, it becomes readily apparent shit has been cut. Angelique tracks John down, asking him build another box. It turns out the building is one giant box, and soon enough Pinhead and her are trying to get John to set the mechanics off, so that the gates of Hell stay open and...truthfully, I'm confused. Phillip creates Elysium to counteract Lament, but the Cenobites now want it to work for them. Do they not know what Elysium does? If they do, why the sudden rule change? The 1996 bit ends up making little sense.

   And it gets dumber. We flash forward to the space station again, where Paul convinces Rimmer that he has to help her trap the Cenobites in the station, which is actually the Elysium Configuration made huge. I feel comfortable saying this is where Chappelle did most of his work. The whole just stops, and becomes Aliens. The picture also begins to undermine Pinhead, turning him into a buffoon. At one point, he marvels at an image of Earth.

"Glorious, is it not? The creatures who walk its surface, always looking to the light, never seeing the untold oceans of darkness beyond. There are more humans alive today than in all of its pitiful history. The Garden of Eden. A garden of flesh."

 

   This wouldn't be so funny, except that Paul up and leaves while Pinhead rambles on. There's a bizarre, awkward silence after the villain finishes his speech, like the movie had been edited by The Office crew. Pinhead looks like an even bigger goober when he's fooled by a hologram. When the image disappears, the Cenobite has the gaze of a lost dog. He has no clue what the hell just happened. Why put these things in there? Turning your antagonist into Elmer Fudd, and having him stumped by wascally tricks just kicks your film in the balls. Don't make him into a dingleberry. Who could be scared of a demon when it's made abundantly clear you can just walk away during one of his monologues? The fact that he "dies" a few minutes later in the Elysium deal just pees all over the character. So dopey.

 

   There's some good stuff here, though. Valentina Vargas is nice and menacing as Angelique. They had a cool thing going with her character, which made Pinhead's belated appearance perfectly acceptable. She's a compelling villain, like Kirsty's stepmom in the first two films. Dimension couldn't leave well enough alone, though. Poor Doug Bradley tries to do something with Pinhead, but there ain't much to work with. He just soapboxes and barks orders at the other Cenobites. The devolution of the villain was in full swing here. Everyone else is just okay, even though I suspect their 'meh' performances had more to do with the reshoots than their acting.

 

   So, all in all, a step up from Hellraiser III. I won't watch it again any time soon, but it's slightly better than I remembered it being. Rumor has it a cut of Yagher's film is floating on the bootleg market. I'm curious to see if it really is better, or if Dimension was right to panic. If anyone knows whether the bootleg thing is legit, hit me up. I'll do a dance and make a sandwich for you in exchange.

 

   Next up, we head in the Direct-to-DVD period. This might suck.