"Movies That'll Make You Wet Your Underpants!"

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The Amazing Transplant
starring Juan Fernandez, Linda Southern, directed by Doris Wishman,Unrated, 1970
Distributed by Something Weird
DVD Reviewed By: Chris Beyond

Doris Wishman had a thing for rape scenes. (She's dead now, by the way.) I like a bunch of Doris Wishman films, and this film is a classic in its own weird way, but there are just so many rape scenes in her films and especially in this one. What was up with that? This film is about a man who has a certain "organ" transplanted from a frisky dead friend onto his lower region that seems to take over whenever he sees women's tacky gold earrings. What transpires is rape scene after rape scene while an investigator tracks down the man responsible for these crimes. In typical Doris Wishman fashion most of the dialogue in the film happens off camera or the camera focuses on the person being talked to while the person talking almost always off camera. By the way, why is that particular transplant considered "amazing" with all the harm it causes. The dvd cover is cool, though. The color and film transfer is great and the sound is really clean. You can see those oddly blocked rape scenes in clean glorious technicolor. I guess you could say the film is stating that men are really controlled by their penises...or in this case transplanted penises, but I think the truth behind the film is that Doris saw all the bucks she could make from the film and just went for it.

This is a Something Weird Video dvd, so there are some good extras (although not as many as their more recent releases). There are a bunch of trailers, a couple'a educational short subjects, and a gallery of 60s sexploitation art with grind-house radio spots. Get this for a nonromantic evening of jawdropping ridiculousness.

(Chris Beyond is the creator of No-Fi "Magazine" and just wouldn't donate "that" organ.)

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April Fool's Day
starring Deborah Foreman, Griffin O'Neal, directed by Fred Walton, , 1986
Distributed by Paramount Home Video
DVD Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

For some inexplicable reason I have always liked this one. Always thought the poster art was one of the best of the 80s. Love the bad acting, the ridiculous, yet somehow satisfying "twist" ending.

I was geeked when I saw Paramount was putting this out on DVD, but holy god does this DVD suck! Actually, Paramount sucks! Yeah, thanks for the super cool Jones Trilogy and Godfather trilogy boxsets and the awesome Star Trek SE’s you’ve been putting out … but screw you on the rest! All you get here is the movie and no extras whatsoever. Not even a g.d. trailer! Come on!

Ah well, I bought it anyway, and to its credit, the movie itself looks sharp. Better than the videos did, anyway. And if you like the movie as much as me, then I suppose somewhere in there it’s worth it. I hear there’s an uncut version of this, although that could just be geek apocrypha. Either way, all you get here is the original 88 minute theatrical cut.

Within that 88 minutes, you get some goodies, though. You get characters with names like Muffy and Chazz, great creative murders, a well scene that’s actually more thrilling than the one in the pointless American Ring remake, a great 80s new wave tune called "Too Bad You’re Crazy" played over the end credits … And some absolutely astonishing dialogue! At one point, one character is describing another character as having only two emotions: "Collar up, and collar down." Wow. And there's another astonishing bit of character description where one guy tells someone else about another guy (I can't keep these one dimensional "characters" straight): "Before the night is over, someone will pull his wang," and they cut right to a close up of a hot dog sliding out of a package! Man, oh man. EDITING, folks. It breathes life to the lines. Why the Academy gave the Best Editing Oscar to Platoon that year and not this is beyond me.

And topping it all off, you get the stunning Deborah Foreman in the role of Muffy. And I swear she looks just like this girl I lived next to growing up, who I had a little crush on. So that was weird. For me, at least. You won't recognize her, so you won't care.

But you should love April Fool's Day. No joke. (Ha! You didn’t think I'd go there, but I did, dammit, I did!) It's even got a requisite cat-jumping-out-and-scaring-somebody scene. And once you see the "twist" ending, it changes the whole thing into a completely different movie that you can't watch the same way EVER again! That's evolution, folks. Why wouldn't you like it?

(Ryan Lies is a No-Fi "Magazine" staff writer and goes by the name Muffy too.)

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New Gladiators
starring Fred Williamson, Jared Martin, Eleanor Gold, directed by Lucio Fulci, , 1983
Distributed by Troma
DVD Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

While this will never be considered one of Fulci’s better efforts I found it to be, at the very least, one of his most entertaining. This man made a lot of flicks, and some of them are downright arduous to sit through (Aenigma, Sweet House of Horrors … I’m looking at you!). In between his strange masterworks like The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery, and all the unwatchable dreck, are a multitude of average and a-little-better-than-average movies that divide fans of the maestro. New Gladiators falls into this middle ground. Some think this movie sucks. Some celebrate it for sucking. Some just dig it.

For me it’s got a lot more to celebrate than to fault. First off, the cast is pretty cool. Primarily blaxploitation stalwart Fred Williamson and veteran TV thespian, Jared Martin. I really dug ole Jared in this one! For some reason I can’t quite explain, he rocked. They both seem to be having a good time with this wacko movie and I give them both props for that. And the actress who plays Sarah, Eleanor Gold, is SMOKING HOT. Seriously. I’ve never seen her in anything else, but she’s incendiary! I want her for Christmas.

Essentially the plot is an amalgamation of Mad Max, Rollerball and The Running Man (even though the film version didn’t come out until later, King’s book was out in 1982, so it’s possible the screenwriters ripped some of it off.) Prisoners in a post-Apocalyptic future are forced to duke it out in an arena, to the death, on the highest rated TV show in the country. Ratings are starting to slip a bit so the producers need to get more blood into it. Prisoners eventually revolt and escape and battle the bad guys amongst chintzy miniature cityscapes and coliseums, all to the rhythms of a classy, campy Riz Ortolani score.

The battle royale itself is fun stuff, but we never really get a sense of its scope or impact or scope cuz we never get to see any audiences reacting to it. Only the nefarious producers, who sit up in their observation deck and grimace every time one of their minions is bested by our heroes. Just the tip of the ice burg if you want to start tearing this thing apart. But I don’t and I won’t, so forget it. This movie’s just whole bunches of fun. My fave scene involves Fred Williamson being forced to train in the strobe lights, to deliriously bad syth music, by fighting what look like the hockey-uniform clad bad guys from Strange Brew. Totally rad!

Troma released this on DVD, so of course the movie is “introduced” by co-founder and president Lloyd Kaufman, who states that New Gladiators is the “Best movie ever made,” and even gets a jab in at Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, saying Troma beat him to the punch almost a decade earlier.

Anyway, get this DVD, it’s only like 10 bucks. If you’re a Fulci fan this will serve as an interesting side note to a very tumultuous and arguably haphazard career. If you have no idea who Fulci even is or why I’m talking about him, then you can still get a kick out of this 80’s B-movie silliness, especially if you dig flicks like Warrior of the Lost World, The Ultimate Warrior or Texas Gladiators 2020.

(Ryan Lies is a No-Fi "Magazine" staff writer and runs Barter-Town too.)

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Run Ronnie Run!
starring David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, directed by Troy Miller,, 2002
Distributed by New Line
DVD Reviewed By: Chris Beyond

I've had a bootleg copy of this film for over a year and was aching to review it, but wanted to wait until a theatrical release was announced. Plus I knew that it wasn't a final cut of the film and since I liked the film and I like Bob & David (from the HBO comedy series Mr. Show), I didn't want to review it before they were finished with it.

So Run Ronnie Run is based on one of Mr. Show's few ongoing sketches (they never ran things into the ground like Saturday Night Live always does) about a trashy guy named Ronnie Dobbs who became famous for always ending up being chased by the police on the "Cops"-lke tv show "Fuzz". The movie tells the whole story (well, except for his fatal battle with the fictitious disease Intittleitis) from his humble drunken beginings to his drunken life of fame. He is discovered by a British inventor (Bob Odenkirk in a really bad "Britishy" accent and fake beard) named Terry Twilstein who develops a whole show around him where Ronnie is the sole criminal being chased by the coppers. But will Ronnie be able to stay drunk and get arrested with all the new celebrity friends and clean living surrounding him?

Now the big difference between the cut I have of this film on video and this new DVD is the timing. The version I had on video was funny but dragged a bit and this version seems right on...although it does seem maybe a little too short. I guess it suffers from some of the same problems as the movies Saturday Night Live makes from its sketches. It's hard to stretch out something meant to last only a few minutes. But unlike most of the SNL films, this one has better writing and less of an emphesis on having a love story plot. Also the music is pretty bad thoughout the film. They took out the song that was in the bootleg verson I had on video called something like "Music Makes The Credits More Interesting" that was actually pretty funny. Now it's just some generic music. It has some extras including the (dvd/video) trailer and a bunch of deleted scenes...which is really weird. Since the movie was never released, isn't the whole film like one big deleted scene? Weird. Anyway, this is a really funny film and worth a rental or purchase of you're a big Bob & David fan. I just wish there were some commentary or something else for my 20 bucks. And this has nothing to do with anything, but why does Dr. Phil have a diet book and does shows on dieting when he is fat himself?

(Chris Beyond is the creator of No-Fi "Magazine" and runs to and from danger always.)

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Sixteen Candles
starring Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, directed by John Hughes, , 2002
Distributed by Universal
DVD Reviewed By: Chris Beyond

For whatever reason when I think of this film, I think of Jr. High when an ex-girlfriend of mine was in this creepy guy's house at the end of her street. I think she said that we was depressed and wanted to talk to her and I had to wait outside. She was in there an awful long time and I was worried because she told me that he was always trying to make out with her (and he was waaaay to old for her). I knocked on the door and the creepy guy came out, looked both ways outside the house, and went right back in, closing the door behind him. When she finally came out, she said she was using his restroom. I asked why it took so long, she said that that "there was a lot of blood too," to which I quoted the bratty little brother in this film by saying, "Your period!" What a messed up story. You know there was something else going on there, but all I could do was quote one of my favorite movies and pretend that I didn't know what was going on.

So here's this film Sixteen Candles. It's the story of a girl (Molly Ringwald post Facts Of Life) in the mid eighties who turns sixteen, but her family doesn't even remember her birthday as they are too busy getting ready for her older sisters wedding. She likes one of the popular boys in school, but she doesn't think that he even knows that she exists. There is a boy who likes her (Anthony Michael Hall post Vacation), but he's one of those nerdy kids and who wants to hook up with one of those? Anyway in the film we meet her family and friends and all sorts of crazy characters along the way including one character who we all thought was funny at the time, but realized was a little too much of an Asian stereotype later on. Let's talk about that. This film has a lot of extreme characatures...from REALLY over the top "nerds" (I prefer the term "Riot Nrrrd" that one of our original writers, Marc Fischer, came up with) to mean jocks to ditsy blondes. So there is this character named Long Duck Dong. He's a crazy horny Asian kid who does all sorts of wacky stuff. Perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad if a big "Gong!" didn't follow a couple of his scenes. Is he as bad as Tim Conway's absolutly racist "china-man" stereotype in Breakfast At Tiffany's? No, but there could have been a few better steps taken to ensure that kids weren't compared to him while growing up (read all about it in a back issue of Giant Robot). I related to Anthony Michael Hall's character as the nrrrdy kid just trying to get a girlfriend. I too wanted Molly Ringwald's panties to hold over my head with pride. I still do. That's weird, huh. (By the way isn't it weird that a girl would just hand over her used panties to some guy?)

Anyway, this is a VERY VERY VERY barebones dvd edition of the film. There isn't even a trailer!!! What's the point of even putting it on DVD? Well at least (and I mean very least) they restored the original soundtrack to the film (the video versions replaced many of the songs with generic music) and they restored a couple Long Duck Dong jokes, but that may not be such a good thing. No commentary? No nuthin'?!? It's in letterbox and it's sorta cheap as far as new DVDs go so I guess that counts for something, but I have a feeling that Mr. Hall & Ms. Ringwald are more than available to do commentaries all over the place. Still a well written film and although it has some messed up values, it's a pretty good story too.

I've heard many good things about this film since early last year. Since then the film has had a hard time getting released due to the gore actor...oh, yeah...there is a little gore in the film. Anyway with a little help from David Lynch (whom writer/director Eli Roth had worked for), the film has finally gotten distribution and is going to be in theaters starting in September.

Cabin Fever is a modern day homage film that openly borrows from horror films from the 70s and early eighties like The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Night Of The Living Dead (which is actually the 60s, I know), and very heavily from The Evil Dead. Only this film doesn't have cannibal mutants, interior decorators (I like to think of the `Saw family as just really intense interior decorators), or zombies; it just has a fast working flesh-eating virus that kills people in horribly gory ways. It begins with (now please DON'T stop me if you've heard this one before) a bunch of kids going to an old cabin in the woods for a vacation. Along the way they meet some weird townsfolk including a kid with a hankerin' for biting anyone near him and an and old fey southern stoorkeeper. After arriving at the cabin (and a nice scary story around the campfire), they are met by a severly bleeding man who vomits blood everywhere promting them to force him to leave in a way that ends very badly. Soon one by one they begin to get sick and it ain't pretty. How is the virus spreading so quickly? Is there a cure? Will anyone survive? Well, you KNOW I'm not gonna tell you (unless I hated the film and didn't think it worth your time to see it) so you're gonna have to see it when it comes out on September 12th in theatres everywhere.

But WHY should you see it? Well it was written very well. I'm not a fan of the casting choices for the main characters so much (but they are all practically unknown actors and I'm always a fan of that), but the dialogue is so good that it would sound good coming out of anyone's mouth. I don't mean to take that away from the main cast, but they do come off as a bunch of "pretty actors" a little bit. Perhaps tha was the point though, as the director did refer to the characters as a "bunch of jackasses" when he spoke about the film after the screening I attended. The real breakout star of the whole cast was Giuseppe Andrews as the deputy Sherrif who you have to see to belive. He practically steals the whole movie. Nobody would cast a role like this and Giuseppe really does a good job and in the process invents a whole new type of screen character. He actually reminds me of a member of the band DIOS. In fact all the townspeople remind me of members of the bands DIOS, GRANDADDY, and BUILT LIKE ALASKA. Speaking of music the soundtrack is great and free of those annoying soundtrack-padding bands that are only there to sells CDs. Instead we have a score by Angelo Badalamente (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Mulhollond Drive) and Nathan Barr (Briar Patch) with a few folk songs thrown in for good measure (remember when horror films in the 70s had folk music playing over the horrible things happening on screen?).

So I could go on about this film forever so I'm going to wrap it all up. Go see this film for some good scare and good laughs. Fans of The Evil Dead series will LOVE this film with it's inspired balance of comedy and horror. I hate to sound like some sound-byte guy, but it' true. What are you doing still reading this? Go get in line! NOW! Word.

Director Doris Wishman (who died earlier this year, Jebus rest her soul) was a dirty old woman who loved making cash and loved shooting movies featuring titanicly bosomed vixens being smacked around until they eventually get their revenge. Doris's film Double Agent 73 is a film about a female top government assassin who, due to her disturbingly abundant appendages, has a camera surgically imbedded into her left breast. That camera itself is booby-trapped (pun intended, I'm sure) with a bomb that will explode if set off or tampered with. Her assignment is to hunt down a top evil secret agent and to take pictures of all the people she encounters (and then usually kills).

The star of Double Agent 73 is Chesty Morgan who, in addition to her natural "talents" also knows how to put on lots of blue and/or silver eye shadow. Oh, and she knows how to spin in circles. Who better to cast in this actually pretty watchable little movie? When I refer to her breasts as "disturbing" it is because they are so big, they aren't even "sexy". Her boobs are so big that she practically trips on her own nipples. Seriously, her breasts are so large that small pilgrims sailed to them in search of a new homeland free from religious persecution. No, wait, I gotta `nother one... (uh,...I don't have another one.)

Besides all the boobity, the film is pretty funny and actually good for crowd viewing. It's like going to a sideshow in your living room. Double Agent 73 is filled with late 60s/early 70s charm from the multicolored wallpaper to the cool white "bubble watch" on Chesty's arm. This is one of Something Weird Video's earlier DVD releases and it sports very few extras compared to the dvds they release these days. It has a couple trailers, an old short featuring Tempest Storm getting a plaster cast made of her bust, and the usual exploitation art and poster gallery (this one focusing of the films of Doris Wishman). Nature creates strange things in this world and it created a couple of them right on Chesty's chest. If you complain about your cup size being too big or too small, seeing this will probably make you think twice before complaining again.

This newer Godzilla film is one of the more controversial films in the bunch, but I think that I like it more than any other I've seen. First off this film, like a couple others in the series, takes place in an "alternate universe" post atomic bomb/Godzilla Japan. In this film, there had been no Godzilla attacks since the original one in 1953 (so forget Godzilla's fights with Hedora, Megalon, and Gigan. I know you were thinking about them so just stop it, ok.). Monster sitings are occuring all over the world and in a nod to the American Godzilla film, they talk about one that had attacked New York that people there had mistaken as Godzilla. When strange deaths start occuring around Japan, people realize that Godzilla may be returning to Japan. What they don't realize is that a few other giant monsters and been disturbed from their slumber and are causing heck all over Japan.

I'll start with the bad first...In the daylight scenes...Godzilla looks REALLY bad. His skin is much looser in this new costume (which now has cool white eyes with no pupils, but at the same time it loses the expression his eyes usually show). He looks more like a guy in a suit than any other Godzilla film. He actually looks worse than even the oldest Godzilla films. I think they should have done his day scenes with a CGI-zilla (blasphemy, I know. Sorry.) I mean, he actually looks like a big muppet in a scene where he crosses from the left side of the screen to the right. That scene in itself may be the worst directed Godzilla raiding scene ever. At least the miniatures were much better than those in Godzilla Versus Megaguirus. Baragon looked pretty good most of the time (even in the daylight) as did Mothra and Ghidorah. And that reminds me...Why wasn't Baragon in the title of this film? Everyone else is! Still the bad daylight Godzilla is made up for by everything else in the film...

This is the first Godzilla film where I thought the acting was really good. Seriously. With the exception of that horrible Godzilla crossing scene, the directing in the film is really good and the actors he was working with did a great job. The lead charicter is a woman and she actually takes charge of the situation when the chips are down. The actor playing her father was excellent too. You wouldn't normally expect that in one of these films (Ok, the acting was pretty good in Godzilla 2000 too, but not THIS good). It takes a while to get to the big Godzilla scenes, but the actors and story really draw you in. Yes, the story is pretty good too. I don't want to give it away, but they really rework the Godzilla story and it involves giant monsters fighting and knocking over buildings. Oh, and Godzilla is really evil in this film too! One big plus is that you actually "meet" many of the human victims before things go horribly wrong for them. That's pretty interesting and reminds me of how you used to meet likable charicters in horror films before they got rubbed out. Nowadays, most horror films give you a reason to not like the people so much so that you aren't upset or even happy when they die. Oh, how I hate that.

But I digress. "Giant Monsters All-Out Attack" is a good Godzilla film, but it'll be a hard one to find. I saw it on the big screen at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and it ain't gettin' a wide release so your best bet is to find a bootleg video or get an all region DVD player and buy it on E-Bay. RrrrrRrrRroooooaaaawwwwrrrrrr!

(Chris Beyond is the creator of No-Fi "Magazine" and won four nrrrdy G-Fest ribbons.)

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The Human Tornado
starring Rudy Ray Moore, Gloria Delaney, directed by Cliff Roquemore, , 1976
Distributed by Xenon Entertainment
DVD Reviewed By: Jeff Roe

Blaxploitation legend Rudy Ray Moore helped establish said legend with this triumph of the silver screen. Dolomite returns in this sequel to Dolomite to wreak vengeance on all the white honkeys who try to keep a brother down. If you're expecting some Afro-kung fu and blackalicious lovin', this flick does not disappoint. After tangling with a racist sheriff in what looks like the Hollywood Hills, Dolomite and his crew run all the way to Los Angeles, where they soon get mixed up in a clubland turf war. Some jive turkeys have kidnapped some of Queen Bee's lady friends, and it's up to Dolomite to get them back. He's busy, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have time to lay down the lovin' when it comes time

This movie's a lot of fun. Rudy Ray Moore's kung fu style is something to behold. The set design, costumes, and dialog are classic 70's era funkadelic. There's enough green shag carpeting to cover West Virginia. In an innovative editing technique, foreshadowing the style of "The Matrix," we get to see some of the film's most spectacular stunts over and over, as they are "rewound" and played back over and over again. That's not to say that there's nothing wrong with the movie. The poor sound editing and low production value betray the low budget, but it's a low budget masterpiece.

There's not much when it comes to extras on the DVD. Just the poster and trailers for the whole Dolomite epic. But the movie is worth the purchase price.

So I picked up the 50th Anniversary Edition DVD of Invaders From Mars more as a collector and connoisseur of 1950’s SF cinema than as an actual fan of the film. While Invaders has always been one of the prototypical films of that era it’s not really one of the more exciting or even entertaining ones. In fact, it’s sort of a lackluster effort, only picking up a little momentum in the final act. Still, it’s a classic. Who could ever forget that scene at the beginning where the young boy stares out his window during the storm and sees the glowing disk dip below the horizon? Or the strange Martian Intelligence, trapped in its glass ball, dispensing orders to its green, furry minions with eerie psychic powers? These are the kinds of images and scenarios that these movies were made of, and that’s why I love ‘em so damn much.

And therein lies the problem with trying to review a movie like this. You just can’t do it, as far as I’m concerned. After 50 years this movie has gone past the point where a review is even relevant. It’s a relic, an antique. In no way can it stand up against the 50 years of SF filmmaking that has come after it. Special effects and storytelling techniques have long surpassed anything this movie might have showcased upon its initial release. It suffers from languid pacing, tepid dialogue, flat characters … The dramatic elements are ineffectual, the action scenes are staged with little to no style or panache and even the damn costumes have zippers running up their backs! (Which is actually a plus in my book. Shut up, I’m serious. Actors in monster suits make my day, man. Especially gorillas.) But anyway, and I wish I didn’t feel this way, a lot about this flick drags.

But … I still love it for what it is! And what it was! And everything it made me think of as a kid when I first saw it. I’ve always been obsessed with these old flicks, and granted, most of them are clunky and derivative and cheesy as hell, but I love the feelings they stir in me. The feelings of being a ten year old kid and not caring how contrived a plot might be, or how wooden the acting was. I just wanted aliens, and UFOs, and creepy monsters and logic be damned! Good storytelling techniques be damned! Even after all these years, Invaders From Mars still manages to make me feel like I’m ten years old again, sitting between my parents on the couch on a rainy July night, eyes transfixed on the television screen, quietly licking an ice cream cone. Not understanding why my parents kept chuckling at the movie. I mean, “come on, mom! This kid’s parents are being brainwashed by Martians!” “Come on, dad! Those big ray guns are awesome!” This was it, man. At ten, all I needed was a stack of comics in the closet, ice cream in the summer and creepy space alien movies on the tube at night! I sure as hell knew I wouldn’t be sleeping easy that night, but the morning would come soon enough, so who cared? Besides, even if I did wake up at 4 in the morning and saw a UFO landing in the field behind our house, I know my dad would believe me.

There were certainly much better movies before and after this one. The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, This Island Earth, War of the Worlds, When Worlds Collide …hell, even “quickie” flicks like Invasion of the Saucer Men and It Conquered the World are more exciting than Invaders From Mars. What sucks is having is actually realizing this. A geek shouldn’t have to be so jaded. While Invaders From Mars may be hoary and gauche by today’s standards, try and reflect as best you can to the mindset of those seeing it in 1953. It was scary stuff back then. Exciting even. By all accounts a major box office hit. But time has made most of us impatient with simple stories and simple movies. This movie is too quiet. We’ve been taught to expect bombast …our cinematic appetites can only be slaked by big-budget Sturm und Drung. Well, some of us anyway. Some of us do our best to fight the tractor-beam of modern conditioning.

There are those who will think I’m wrong and that this movie is a highpoint of the era. I hope there are people out there who do. It just isn’t one of my favorites, although I love it like it is. The liner notes by Wade Williams describe Invaders “primarily as a young boy’s fantasy gone wild.” And that’s pretty much why I fell in love with these (and all other SF/ horror flicks) as a kid. Not only were they fantasies run wild, they succeeded in making my young fantasies go wild.

Before girls, I mean. For me, spaceships and monsters always came before the ladies …