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"Sometimes They Come Back ...
For More", from Johnny Web
And sometimes they come
back, like this series, for less. Why does
Stephen King allow his name to be used in
conjunction with this derivative crap? Never
mind, I think I know the answer to that. It has
dead presidents' pictures on it. If you want to
make Shawshank Redemption 2 as a buddy movie with
Van Damme and Rodman replacing Robbins and
Freeman, Big Steve will give you the green light
if you give him the other green stuff.
To be honest, this film
had some potential. The first few minutes had
some real tension in a
rip-off-of-John-Carpenter's-The-Thing way. People
working in a renegade Antarctic research/mining
station are eliminated one by one, because one of
the crew members has gone inexplicably ballistic.
For a half hour, while they maintained the
shadowy mystery, this was a fine low budget film,
marred only by the presence of phony snowdrifts
which were really white sheets draped over mounds
of dirt. If you have to make a low-budget film,
the best way to hide it is to locate it in a
setting that is small and can't change - like an
Antarctic research station. I mean, the actors
were competent, and the film stock was good, so
what the hell could James Cameron do any
different with a zillion dollars. It's just a
grungy headquarters and a permafrost landscape,
kind of like the Metrodome in Minneapolis.
Unfortunately, when the
mystery revealed itself, it managed to be about
the cheesiest possible explanation. It turns out
that the killer is the son of satan, and he needs
to kill and then re-animate the bodies to do his
father's bidding, and to open portals from hell
to earth, institute a new order ... you know the
drill. And, as if that weren't enough cheese, it
turns out that the guy sent by the army to rescue
the party is, by sheer unexplained coincidence,
another one of satan's kids, who has turned
against his father's ways and wants to stop his
half-brother. (Hey, different mom. That can make
all the difference.) And then they have cheesy
altars far beneath the surface, bodies that
appear to be dead but still hang out, and other
bodies which we thought were alive but turned out
to be dead and working for satan. Then pretty
much everyone in the cast turns out to be related
to satan in some way, like his uncle Irving on
his mother's side, a tailor who specializes in
custom clothing to accomodate satan's tail
through his pants. It's like the satan family
reunion. And then they all play Family Feud
against the Brady Bunch, and I don't know what
else. It turns out in the end that satan's good
son, who is more than a millennium old, falls in
love with Corky from Murphy Brown, and she knows
he's satan's thousand year old kid, but she's
going to be with him anyway, because she really
loves the big lug.
So now I realize why
IMDb viewers rate this among the worst 100 movies
ever made. Anyway, it does feature nudity, in
non-Antarctic flashbacks, from Jennifer O'Dell, (#1, #2) who's now kindasorta famous as
the star of The Lost World on TV.
"Naked
in New York", from Johnny Web
Here's your cultural
aptitude quiz for the day. "Life is
Beautiful" is to Robin Williams as
"Naked in New York" is to .....? The
answer is Woody Allen. Just as "Life is
Beautiful" is a Robin Williams movie that
doesn't actually star or have anything to do with
Robin Williams, "Naked in New York" is
a Woody Allen movie that actually has nothing at
all to do with Woody Allen. Neurotic, sexually
clumsy, easily embarrassed, red-headed, Jewish
New York writer has some raw writing talent, but
not the social skills or appearance to market
himself. He also tries to work out a relationship
with a cute protestant girl whose lecherous boss,
competing for her favors, is the suave and
unbearably handsome Timothy Dalton. The narrator
tells the story in flashback while looking
directly at the camera and talking to the
audience. Throughout the movie, he has
conversations with imaginary characters in his
past or elsewhere. No further comment.
The girlfriend is Mary-Louise Parker, who did an all-too-brief
topless scene which I have never seen captured
before. Sorry, this is VHS, not DVD. I wish they
would get Grand Canyon onto DVD so I could do
that scene, which was her only meaningful nudity
that I can remember. (She also did one or two
fleeting frames in last year's "Goodbye
Lover", but she looks much different now,
almost like a different person.)
"Sugartown",
from Johnny Web
New release! Aging
members of a once successful glam rock band try
to mount a comeback, and deal with the real world
post fame. It's a just-OK movie which you might
enjoy if the subject sounds appealing. Not really
worth commenting on, but I found it really fun to
hear Beverly d'Angelo talk really dirty as a
billionaire ex-hooker. There's just something
inherently great about hearing Mrs Griswold say
"oh, really? I thought it was my cunt"
The movie has some
better looking women in it, but the only one who
gave up the goodies was the frumpy Lucinda Jenney. Sorry, VHS again. One of those
Blockbuster exclusives, not on DVD.
"Ladies'
Room" (new release, no nudity)
Whatever you do, don't
rent this. Without exaggeration, this is the
worst movie of the 90's. Never even seen anything
else close. Women find out that the ladies room
is really purgatory, where they have to hash out
the former lives ad infinitum. It's Sartre's
"No Exit" as performed by an all-girl
cast under the direction of Leo Gorcey and Huntz
Hall.
Don't be fooled by the
presence of recognizable names like John
Malkovich, Lorraine Bracco, Molly Parker, and
Greta Scacchi. It is simply awful. Malkovich
shaved his head and did some kind of foreign
accent which he really had no ear or enthusiasm
for, so his creepy normal self kept slipping back
through. At one point he did the old cartoon bit
of running up a very long flight of stairs then,
near the very top, slipping on the rug and
falling back down feet first on his stomach,
while trying to recover and go back upward. Be
warned, I'm not kidding. This is the worst thing
I've seen in years. No nudity.
Red
Shoe Diaries - "The Written Word" -
from Johnny Web
I'll be damned if I'll
waste any time discussing this crap, but I do
have one stock market tip for you. If you have
any stock in companies that make gauze or gauze
curtains, you better keep an eye on Zalman King's
health. If he looks to be incapable of making
more films, sell that stock, because that sucker
is single-handedly keeping the world's gauze
curtain makers in business. They are everywhere
in his images. Here's what you need to know about
this episode: Robbi Chong got naked, including an
aparently shaved fontal - lower image in #1. (1,
2,
3)
"Incognito"
from Tuna
John badham film. Art
forger goes for the ultimate score - convincing
people of a lost Rembrandt. One of the mnore
interesting elements is that a painting deemed a
priceless masterpiece one minute is considered a
piece of crap the next, because th eartist is an
unknown, not Rembrandt. There is a great blissful
anarchy there, and disrepect for the art world,
because it posits that paintings themselves have
no intrinsic merit. In fact, it suggests that all
the other Rembrandt's would become pieces of crap
if scientists suddenly could prove them to be
19th century forgeries, even though
"experts" have been pontificating on
their intrinsic merit for years.
He's best known for
"Saturday Night Fever" and
"Stakeout", but Badham directed my
favorite baseball movie. Whenever SABR votes on
this topic, I am the only one who votes for it,
and I have to write it in. "Bingo Long's
Travelin' All-Stars and Motor Kings".
Amazing that my favorite baseball movie would be
the first film of a guy born in Luton! (He was
raised in Alabama in his step-dad's home)
Tuna's thumbnails for this movie Irene Jacob (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11)
"Maximum
Risk" from Tuna
What can you say? Jean
Claude van Damme as twin brothers (Apparently
stolen from a soap opera plot.), one of several
times he's played multiple roles, obviously
because of the subtle differences he can portray,
ala Joey in Friends as Drake and Hans Remoray. If
you thought Van Damme was bad with Rodman,
imagine what he's like teaming up with himself.
This was directed by Hong Kong legend Ringo Lam,
although genre fans say that it has none of his
characteristic fire. I haven't seen the film.
Does the movie really matter? Henstridge removes
her clothing.
Tuna's thumbnails for this movie Natasha Henstridge (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20)
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