Caddyshack (1980)

I've always loved this scene. Cindy Morgan, "Danny" and Ted Baxter. (zipped .wmv) Did you know that Danny went on to be a Zen Buddhist priest and was also married to Bonnie Raitt? If you did, you had it over me. I just now figured it all out. Better still, he did them together. He was ordained about halfway through his marriage to Bonnie. I think Zen masters believe that everything in the universe is one. Given that, I guess he finally managed to be the ball.

 

Bachelor Party Vegas (2006)

I'm not even sure this one is worth writing about, but I'm doing so anyway just to keep you from wasting your time and/or money on it when it is released to DVD. (I saw a screener.)

The groom and four of his best friends go to Vegas to have their bachelor party planned by the greatest party planner in history. When they get there, they are met by someone who tells them that the legendary party planner has been called away on a family emergency or something, and that he will be taking over. This is the beginning of a nightmare unimagined by Hieronymus Bosch. In the course of the evening:

1. They are implicated as casino swindlers, and eventually as accomplices in a five million dollar casino heist which results in the death of an FBI agent.

2. They are mistaken for a gay bachelor party and receive lap dances from a sweaty, obese man.

3. They are waylaid by a limo full of fat chicks who ask to see their dicks, then make fun of them.

4. They are robbed of all their possessions and IDs.

5. They stumble upon a porn star. Unfortunately, her jealous boyfriend shows up, and he just happens to be the Ultimate Fighting Champion.

6. While running away from the ultimate angry tough guy, they find the money from the casino heist. The police soon catch them with the money, which really isn't good for them, because they were already suspects in the robbery.

7. They are jailed, and are assaulted by a gigantic muscular man who wants to make sweet love to them.

8. On their way from the local jail to the federal penitentiary, their vehicle is assaulted, their drivers are shotgunned to death, and they are kidnapped by the Ultimate Fighting Guy, who plans a different gruesome death for each of them.

So, as you can see, it is a very pleasant movie. Just a wacky bachelor romp. How could a story like that possibly end? Well, if you still really want to see the film, I won't spoil it for you. I have to say that the ending is actually kind of cool. Unfortunately, you will have to endure the unendurable in order to get to that ending.

This is a story that might have been redeemed by some really raunchy sex and nudity, but there is very little,  just a few actresses playing the parts of porn stars. True to character, they all have plastic aftermarket hooters. Here are the two women who provide clear nudity. I think the blonde in the fuchsia outfit is Tamara Whelan. No idea on the other one.

 

Other Crap:

Japan highlight of the day: "the only Buddhist temple in the country devoted entirely to the worship of women's breasts."

"RUSSIA CAUGHT SMUGGLING BIRTHDAY CAKE TO SADDAM" Hacksaw, Nail File Found in Smuggled Dessert

• "Just days after the Pentagon reported that Russia had leaked U.S. war plans to Saddam Hussein in advance of the March 2003 invasion, the Russian government was caught in the act of smuggling a birthday cake to the former Iraqi dictator’s prison cell in Baghdad."

Nudity review of Ask the Dust (2006)

• Salma Hayek - "Stupendous body right out of a Russ Meyer movie. At the beach, you see her boobs, and butt multiple times in the 5-minute scene. She is full frontal, but it is for fractions of a second. She appears to have an anachronistic Mohawk, or reduced triangle down there. Wait for it on DVD; with gamma correction your TV/PC, your dreams will come true. There are some sexy scenes in the bedroom, but they are identical to what you saw in Desperado".

The dot com boom - Wave 2

The famous al-Qaeda hacker is exposed. Maybe.

Stop the presses! George Mason beats #1 Connecticut in OT!

• The Mason Jars? The Mason Mints?
• The 11th-seeded Jars have tied the record for the worst-seeded team ever to make the final four! They will match up against Florida.
• The Fightin' Mints actually have a shot at this thing. There are NO #1 seeds in the final four for the first time since it became a 64 team tournament, and only the second time ever.

Weekend Box Office Results, March 24-26, 2006

• It was an encouraging week for the industry, as the performance of two new releases was far stronger than anticipated.
• The gross for the top twelve films was 11% higher than that of the equivalent group in 2005.
• That percentage represented about a nine million dollar increase over last year, and about a twelve million increase over the predictions
• Spike Lee's acclaimed new film, Inside Man, provided more than eight of that twelve million dollar surplus, with revenues 40% higher than expectations.
• The poorly-reviewed horror film Stay Alive provided the rest of the windfall, with revenues approximately double what the experts had predicted!
• The other new release, another critical punching bag featuring Larry the Cable Guy, did not fare as well, but managed to pull in more per screen than the strongest hold-over, V for Vendetta.
• Thank You For Smoking had such a successful trial that it almost managed to make the top twelve, despite being in only 54 theaters! It averaged nearly $20,000 per screen, and finished 13th.

 

Film Jerk's Early Report for March 26

Urban Legends Reference Pages: "A Congresswoman called for hurricanes to be given African-American names."

A great moment in broadcasting ... CNN Has No News!

Snakes on a Plane update: The wiseacres at Fark.com make their suggestions for the SoaP marketing campaign. (Great stuff! The studio should use some of these ideas!)

Germany's Allianz Arena recreated in LEGO blocks - more than a million of them

Soylent Green is me!!! Hollywood director Richard Fleischer dies

• The director of Tora!³ was also the son of the legendary Max Fleischer, whose studio first produced film versions of Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Popeye, and Superman

Six-Legged Lamb Born In Belgium (Video and slideshow) It looks delicious - and 50% more drumsticks for the kids!

Spurlock Speech Causes Stir at Pa. School

• He made fun of the Special Ed class, which is surprising, since they are the market for his films.

Online test measures your brain speed.

• I set a record which will never be broken. Took me less than a second to decide to move on to another page. I'd like to see anyone's brain work faster than that.

The SI cover jinx

'Desperate Housewives' - the video game (I'm not kidding)

Nicole Kidman gets naked in that Diane Arbus film, as per an IMDb contributor who saw a test screening.

The host of "Heartland with John Kasich" exchanges folktales with Stephen.

Colbert talks to Miss Manners about manners.

Stephen Colbert's Sound Advice: How to Raise a Hero

Colbert says the rainbow weather map is just another example of the homo-meteorological agenda.

See which parts of Europe world will disappear when the polar ice caps melt!

• Here's a tip for you youngsters. You might want to re-consider your planned move to the Netherlands.

Cousin Eddie says he was hoodwinked by Brokeback producers.

Underdog LSU wins in OT, ends the Longhorn dream of the grand slam

• The Horns are the current national champions in football and baseball, but they will not make it a clean sweep.

 

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

Death by Dialogue (1988)

Death by Dialogue is easily one of the oddest horror/slasher films I have had the honor of seeing. I promise everything in this review is completely true.

A group of friends goes to visit one of their eccentric uncles, whose house is a veritable museum of items collected in his world travels. Before the guests arrive, the estate's handyman sneaks into a basement, extracts a script from a locked chest, and starts to read it. When he gets to the part of the script about his being fired, he loses his temper, and walks outside, where he is burned to death on the spot. Our group of friends discovers his remains. Meanwhile, the housekeeper is upset that the script is missing.

When the group settles in a bit, Laura Albert is having hot sex in the barn, with her panties on, when she is suddenly blown through the front door of the hay loft and falls to her death. Her boyfriend is untouched, but not real happy, and runs outside to find a really bad long haired metal band playing in the woods. Somehow, that kills him as well.

We then learn the history of the magical script. During his travels, the uncle was elected to the hall of fame of some reclusive Pre-Columbian tribe. When a reporter was overly persistent about taking their picture to accompany a story, they killed him, but his spirit caused them a whole bunch of grief, so they trapped his ashes in a magic urn, and sent him home with the unsuspecting uncle. One day the housekeeper was overzealous in her dusting, and let the spirit out of the urn. The spirit of the reporter immediately possessed the script of the movie being shot at the movie studio next door, and the cast started really dying. That is when the uncle trapped the script, originally called Victim, in the urn with the ashes. Now that the spirit and script are again free, the script is calling itself Victim 70, representing a total body count which includes the most recent three deaths.

That is nearly as far as I want to go in the plot description, other to say that the demon suddenly turns into a bald-headed guy with a big sword, and then two freaks on motorcycles. This prompts the best line of dialogue in the file, "Ya-Fucking-Hoo." The living then try to find some way to trap the evil spirit, but every time they try something, the spirit rewrites the script.

We have breasts from Laura Albert early in the film in the sex scene that precedes her death scene, and then again near the end when the other woman of the group of friends has a nightmare about her in which she is standing by a pool of water in a flowing white dress when her boyfriend drives up in a race car. She bares her breasts, then takes off his racing scarf, and calmly takes off his head with it. Ms. Albert has 55 credits at IMDb, the most recent being last year. It would not be surprising if you do not recognize her, since 40 of the credits are for stunt work. That isn't as odd as the fact that writer/director Tom DeWeir also earned 113 of his 125 film credits for stunt work.

I have no idea what, if anything, they were thinking when they made this one, and would love to hear their thoughts.  If ever a film cried out for a commentary, this is the one, but the DVD is bare bones.  A small number of IMDb voters assign it a 2.6. That is either way too high, or a little low, depending on whether or not you find it unintentionally funny. Based on the fact that it is laugh-out-loud bad in places, I will call it an "entertainingly bad movie," and give it a C- based on plenty of (presumably) unintentional laughs.

Laura Albert