Towards the end of The Dirty Dozen, Lee Marvin asks Charles Bronson ,"You ready for the turkey shoot?" Now, No-Fi readers, I ain't never painted my wagon with Clint Eastwood or shot up terrorists with Chuck Norris, but I'm gonna steal that question from Mr. Marvin, and ask YOU: are YOU ready for the Turkey Shoot?

Cuz I don't know if you are! Even if you say you are! Cuz you know what, I sure as hell wasn't!

When I popped this DVD (released by Blue Underground, under the Escape 2000 moniker) into my player, I figured I was gonna get about an hour and a half of post-Apocalyptic action made with about the same amount I saw on my last paycheck, and that was about it. If you've seen one of these 80's low-budget, Mad Max rip-offs, you've probably seen them all. But don't ask me, cuz I haven't.

I'm happy to report that Turkey Shoot (which was renamed Escape 2000 for US release; AND, not to be confused with 1983's Escape 2000, aka Escape from the Bronx) is not just another Mad Max clone. In fact, it has more in common with The Most Dangerous Game, or more contemporary action flicks Hard Target and Battle Royale.

In the near future, the government has begin rounding up hellions (I.e. "young people") and carting them off to prison camps, in the hopes of reforming them. Railsbeck plays Paul Anders, a cynical, surly young man who really can't stand the government, and the government canÕt stand him. He's broken out of every facility they've thrown him in, so now he's been sentenced to General Thatcher's camp, which is, of course, the toughest camp around. No one escapes this place, and the guards here don't mess around. To demonstrate this point, Chief Guard Ritter (who looks like Jesse Ventura, back when he was a wrestler) literally kicks the blood and snot out of skinny young lady right in front of all the new prisoners, all the while laughing and doing some sort of weird bad-guy jig.

Olivia Hussey (who never fails at looking HOT) plays the timid Chris Walters, a girl who was arrested for trying to stop some policemen from brutally beating a deviant, is almost raped and pissed-on during the prisoners' orientation, and Anders sticks up for her. To punish him, the guards throw him in a cage, where he has to hold up a big chunk of concrete or be crushed.

Sound fun yet? Cuz it is! And it just gets better and better as things roll on. I haven't this much fun at a cheesy movie since Lucio Fulci's New Gladiators.

General Thatcher invites a few cohorts over to try a little experiment: prisoners are chosen at random to take part in a hunt; if they survive by making it out of the jungle, they can go free. Each of the hunters can use their own specialized methods of murder and torture (one of them uses a bulldozer and a mutant wolf-man as his weapons of choice! Seriously, a wolf-man!)

Once the prisoners are let loose, all manner of hell and chaos are let loose. Blood, guts, guns, crossbows, machetes, explosions. It's all here, in gloriously over-the-top 80s style. Complete with a campy synthesizer score by QUEEN's Brian May.

I've since shown this little gem to many a friend who has sat, stunned, jaws agape in disbelief, as the carnage splatters across the screen. You just don't see this movie coming, is what it is. You think, Oh, this is gonna be a shoot-em-up action flick, no more, no less. But hell no! It slaps in you the face like a little bitch and keeps you begging for more. This is the kind of cornball, no-holds-barred flick they just don't make anymore. And I suggest you wear a diaper, cuz you might just pee your pants laughing.

Hussey's nude body-double is almost raped in a shower, until she shows her would-be attacker why you should be careful before you zip up after peeing. The wolf-man (a goddamn wolf-man!) rips a dude's toe off and then eats it! Bodies run over by trucks! A lesbian psychopath torturing her quarry with some nasty love! And then, out of nowhere; Top Gun planes flying all over the place!!!!

Seriously, this review may seem a but juvenile, and I won't apologize for that, cuz this flick truly brought out the potty-mouthed, Rambo-loving, 80s juvenile delinquent in me. This isn't a movie for the serious cinema connoisseur. This is a crass, political-correctness and logic be damned, good time gut-puncher flick, made at a time when action movies didn't have "standards."

And for that, I say God bless.

You ready for the Turkey Shoot? You better be, cuz it's ready for you!

Geek-auteur Kevin Smith said, after Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back that he was done with slackers and losers, and he was going to turn to more personal filmmaking. However, he did also tease an eventual sequel to his break-out, Sundance-lauded film Clerks in the end credits to a couple of his other films. Plus, he did keep the “saga” going in comic books and an underrated animated series.

Whatever the case, after his first foray into PG-13, “mature” filmmaking (Jersey Girl) failed to ignite any fires under the seats of fans or critics, he has delved back into the milieu he knows best: that of the underachievers, the pop-culture saturated Gen-Xers, and the women they love.

I've always been a fan of Smith's work (although I have yet to see Jersey Girl). Hell, I even loved his much-derided Mallrats, a flick that I actually, for reasons forgotten to me, watched three times in one day when it first came out on video. The original Clerks was an ugly but hilarious look at a world I knew much about at the time (I worked at a video store in the early 90s). Chasing Amy, his more thoughtful follow-up to the brilliantly puerile Mallrats, really struck a chord with me, as, at the time, I was dating someone that I had hang-ups about similar to those Ben Affleck's character had in the film. In fact, I think of Chasing Amy as one of the most honest romantic drama/comedies ever made. Dogma was maybe a bit long and talky, but it summed up how I feel about religion, pretty much. And Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was just pure, foul-mouthed fun. I got to see Jay try to go down on Carrie Fisher dressed as a nun, and Mark Hamill say “Don't fuck with the Jedi master!”

I wasn't really expecting much out of Clerks II except to have a great time and laugh as much of my ass off as I could. Why should I expect any more? It's not like Smith was making Godfather, part II here. It's a sequel to a movie that was never meant to be anything more than entertaining lark in the first place. And Clerks II gave me everything I wanted.

I laughed … a lot. The movie is far from perfect, but really, who cares? Life's too short, and that's pretty much what Smith is saying with this (and the original) anyway. Do what you do, enjoy what you enjoy, and just try to have a go at it while you're here.

Clerks II picks up a little more than a decade after the original, with Dante Hicks arriving at the Quick Stop (where he sadly still works) to find it engulfed in flames. Flash-forward about a year later, and him and best-pal Randall Graves are now working at a McDonald's-esque fast-food joint called Mooby Burger. Dante's ship, however, seems to have finally come in: he's engaged to a pretty young woman (Smith's real-life wife Jennifer Schwalbach Smith) who's father is going to give Dante a car-wash to run and a house once they move to Florida and get married. Naturally, this being a Clerks movie, everything that can and will go wrong for Dante does. Plus, none of his friends are very pleased that he's leaving them behind, with a woman he may not really be all that in love with. Is she “the one,” or just his proverbial ticket to a better life? And maybe he's harboring feelings for his super-cool boss Becky (played by the super-sexy Rosario Dawson)?

Of course our dope-dealing, boom box-jamming heroes Jay and Silent Bob show up, fresh from a six-month stint in rehab; they're off the weed, and they've found Jesus, but they still peddle their narcotic wares against whatever wall they can find to lean against. Jason Mewes, one of the most naturally funny dudes (and Smith's greatest discovery next to Jason Lee), almost steals the show as usual; his Silence of the Lamb-inspired dance routine is piss-your-pants funny.

The character who REALLY steals the show, however, is fellow Mooby-FUNployee Elias, as played by newcomer Trevor Fehrman. This kid is a comic genius, and should get an Oscar-nomination for his performance here. The poor foil to much of Randall's innocuous abuse, Elias is a virginal, God & Mom-fearing Lord of the Rings/Transformers geek who believes he can't have sex with his girlfriend until she turns 21 and pees out her “vagina-troll.” I've worked with kids like this in the past, kids who are so naïve and pathetic that you can't help but befriend them, showing your affection for them by mercilessly picking on them.

Meanwhile, Smith's characters riff on everything from Go-Bots, Star Wars and whether or not “porch-monkey” is a legitimate racial slur. Priceless dialogue abounds (“You can't taste racism!") and the dick & fart & ass-to-mouth jokes fly faster than you can catch 'em. Not all of them work, but the majority do. Trying to one-up himself from the necrophilia subplot of the first Clerks, Smith brings in another sexual-taboo to lampoon, and this time he outdoes himself. Even I couldn't believe some of what he got away with, considering the original film was slapped with an NC-17 just for language. How times have changed since 1994, if some of the stuff in this new flick can slide by with an R.

Anyway, love 'em or hate 'em, Smith just wants to make us laugh this time around and the sold-out theater I saw this in was having a ball. A lot of people actually clapped at the end. And I think that's really all you need from a Clerks II, don't you think?

(Ryan Lies is a staffmember of No-Fi "Magazine"
and knows what from family problems.)

Never in this swingin' planet's history were there two films that deserved to be packaged together in a double DVD like this. We reviewed both of these films in 1997 when Something Weird Video was still sealing only in videotapes.

Take KISS ME QUICK!; this crazy 1964 tease-flick goes well with the theme of this month's issue (that line was in our original 1997 review and oddly enough it still rings true). A space scout named Sterilox (a much fatter ninth rate Stan Laurel [of Laurel And Hardy] impersonator) is called back to his home planet of Droopiuter (in the galaxy of Buttless) in order to send him on a mission to Earth to check out Earth females to see if they would make good servants to the male only Droopians. Anyway he pops up in the laboratory of the insane Dr. Breedlove (sportin' a 12th rate Bela Legosi impersonation). Dr. Breedlove is working on perfecting the female species and shows off his creations (lovely lasses and terrible mistakes - including the Frankenstein monster who is supposed to be a botched female creation).

Although slow during a few of the topless scenes, this is a good film to show at a gathering of friends maybe as background at a party. The go-go girls are topless but tame. The blonde topless go-go dancer does creep me out a little bit. She looks like Marilyn from THE MUNSTERS, but with shakey boobs. You'll want to dance yourself when Dr. Breedlove shows off his prize "specimen" (who looks a lot like an ex-girlfriend of mine). Insane dialogue and really really bad jokes make this a must see!

Also included in this DVD "Monster Nudie Double Feature" is the Bob Creese film HOUSE ON BARE MOUNTAIN. Shot in NUDERAMA, this movie tells the gripping tale of Granny Good and her charm school for girls. Only this charm school hides a secret underneath its castle's hallowed halls. The whole school is a front for a booze bootlegging ring. Granny and her werewolf assistant Krakow pump out the gin and juice below while above Granny teaches the girls charms such as nude art, nude sunning, and nude everything! (Luckily we never see the cross dresser playing Granny - played by infamous filmmaker Bob Creese in his best/worst Jonathan Winters impersonation - get naked.) Anyway, An undercover cop poses as one of the new students and tries to undermine Granny's operation and the whole movie ends at a booze-fest party where EVERYONE spikes the punch and topless gals do the twist with the likes of Frankenstein, Dracula, Werewolves, and the Phantom of the Opera.

This wouldn't be a Something Weird Video DVD without all the cool extras that can be found on each one. This one has the original trailers for each film, commentary by Harry Novak for KISS ME QUICK!, KISS ME QUICK! go-go dancer Natasha in a couple strip tease loops, and a couple monster themed shorts; WEREWOLF BONGO PARTY and THE VAMPIRE AND THE VIXEN. If your looking for the perfect double date for your next mad monster party, this is it. ...also you should stop dating DVDs.

I saw this film on the last night of the L.A. Film Festival and I really hadn't heard too much about it except for some of the good advance buzz it got and that DEVOTCHKA does the soundtrack for the film.

I went to the film with Kitten Natividad who had scored tickets from a friend of hers for us. We talked about different red carpet premeires we had been to. After I got us lost on the way to the Wadsworth theatre, I made a detour to the Giant Robot Store in Santa Monica where that gal at the counter was REALLY nice and gave us directions. We passed by the Nuart theatre where Kitten said the Beneath The Valley Of The Ultravixens premiere took place. I was amazed. After several parking misadventures (due to some misinformation by the LAFF - who, granted, had to be very busy putting this amazing festival together), we finally made it to the theatre, where I realized I had seen SONIC YOUTH play some years before.

Little Miss Sunshine is a film about a family falling apart. Steve Carell plays "Frank" who has just tried to commit suicide after learning that his academic rival has been granted a genius title in his field. His sister "Sheryl", played by Toni Collette, tries to hold her family together which seems to be falling through the seams including her husband "Richard" who is trying to make it as a self help guru, their son "Dwayne" who has refused to speak for 9 months played by Paul Dano, and the heroin snorting Grandpa played by Alan Arkin. The one person seeming to be normal in this disfunctional bunch is Olive, played by Abigail Breslin, who has the ability to both be ignored and be the center of family attention at the same time.

Olive is a wannabe beauty queen at 9 years old. Just after her Uncle Frank arrives from the hospital to stay with her family, she finds out that she has won a chance to compete in a beauty contest in California. Circumstances cause Abigail's trip to become a family trip. As you can imagine in a family dark comedy, things don't start very well once they get on the road. One of the first things to happen is the clutch breaking on the family bus, causing them to have to push and run into the open door every time they want to start the car. And it only gets worse from there. But the amazing thing is, just like the car, everytime they find themselves slipping downhill, they are able to find a way to use it to propel themselves toward their goal.

As you have guessed by now, yes, this is a road movie. Think of the style as somewhere between Flirting With Disaster and The Royal Tennenbaums. Directors Dayton and Ferris do a great job to capture the cramped yet open atmosphere of the family road trip, while giving it some interesting style often associated with their music videos or any Wes Anderson film. The music is great and each of the actors shines throughout the film despite the ensemble cast. When the family finally makes it to the beauty contest, that's when this film really gets crazy. Suddenly we are poured into the world of tots dressed up like creepy homecoming Barbie dolls with giant smiling heads and too much make-up. You know something even crazier is about to go down, but you never know just what until it happens.

I can definitely recommend this film for the date crowd or even the family crowd. It's got a simple story that feels like it should be more complicated than it plays out. Take your own family disaster to see this one. It couldn't hurt. Your dad's gonna be drunk anyway, right?

So when I heard that Bryon Singer was the director of this film a few yeas back, I was pretty happy. He did a good job with his two X-Men movies and respected the Superman story and origin - unlike the previous attempts of getting this character back on screen. I'm looking at you Tim Burton and Nick Cage!

Shortly after seeing the film last night I thought, "Ok, that was good, but it did have its flaws." Actually I said that out loud. People looked around nervously.

The new Superman film decides to take place shortly after Superman II. A film that is hearlded by fans to be the best, but suffered from a lot of behind the scenes drama and one director taking over after the previous was fired during filming. This is probably a good thing since most people think that Superman III was terrible and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace was an attempt to cause people to slay themselves in the theatre. Sorry Richard Pryor. Sorry Nuclear Man. So that all being said, Superman Returns tries to emulate the style of the first two Superman films in that 1970's does 1940's sort of way. It's usually successful.

You'll be reading a lot of press on this one so I'll spare you all the crazy details. Basically Superman has returned to Earth after a five year journey to and from the remains of Krypton (his home planet) in a scene that was apparently deleted from the film. (I've seen the storyboards and a couple pictures that indicate that they had worked on it.) At the same time Superman makes his heroic debut, Clark Kent also returns to the city of Metropolis after "trying to find himself". Uh, yeah... Well, I guess the old Is Clark Kent really Superman is no longer a question here.

And coincidentally, at the same time, Lex Luthor, played brilliantly by the perfectly cast Kevin Spacey is out of prison and wealthy due to bilking an old woman out of her fortune and decides to travel to Superman's Fortress Of Solitude to discover the secrets of Superman's homeworld's technology. He learns that the crystals that we've seen in the other films are the key and discovers a way of using this technology and the havoc it brings to our world for his own benefit.

Meanwhile Superman plays creepy superstalker to Lois Lane who has moved on with her life with a new man and a child to boot. (I'm not saying that they abuse the kid, but when you see what his hair looks like, you'll want to call a children's shelter right away.)

So Superman spends the film doing amazing things to help people. It's kind of like in the first Superman film where you are amazed at his deeds and the special effects used to mnake it happen. And I was especially happy to see Superman's cape go into another direction than straight down. If you have seen the comic books, you'll often find his cape flying to the side from the find rather than real life gravity kicking in and ruining the effect. I'm also happy with the casting of Brandon Routh as Clark Kent and Superman. He seems a little young, but I think he'll age into the part well and does his best to emulate Christopher Reeves' Superman while giving the part his own "deep in thought" spin. The costume could be a little better though. There was just something off about it. It seemed to be a little too wet-suit looking to me. (Couldn't they have fixed those lines on the arms of the suit?)

Keven Spacey...well, how can you complain there? He perfectly embodies the modern Lex Luthor who in the comic eventually becomes president of the United States. He is more evil than Gene Hackman's version of the character. He's also surrounded by characters that don't come off as oafish as Otis (in the previous films). Parker Posey (of Waiting For Guffman) plays his moll this time and is actually pretty good. She also tends to have the best styling in the film.

STYLING! Oh, yeah, back to that. Who did they hire to do the hair in this film? Why does Kate Bossworth's hair (wig) look like it's about to fall off in all her scenes where you see her hairline from the front. Brandon Routh's hair is also really bad. He has some serious hair helmet issues. I don't understand what they were thinking when they saw their hair in the dailies. And speaking of Kate, I can also say that this was a major miscasting as well which is pretty sad because everyone else is great. She may be fine in other things, but she is terrible in this film. Like does her best to ruin the film terrible. Do I even need to get into her kid in the film? He shouldn't have even been there and he kinda screws up the whole Superman mythos. Was this the deal that the studio made in order to get the film out there? If that's the case, I think the kid needs to die in a freak kryptonite meteorite landing on his head accident in the next film.

Anyway, that's all the hubub you'll hear out of me. I still liked the film, but yes it was flawed. Hopefully the next one will be better and maybe he'll even fight Brainiac too! THAT would be cool.