Return of the Killer Tomatoes

RETURN OF THE KILLER TOMATOES
(PG, New World Pictures, 98 mins., theatrical release date: Apr. 22, 1988)

Remember when Fox Kids managed to crank out botched animated series based on the strangest choices of movies? In the early 1990s, there was a 13-episode run for Little Shop of Horrors, in which Audrey II was defanged and rechristened "Junior" alongside teenage variants on Seymour and Audrey. Once that wilted on the vine, Wes Craven's inaugural adaptation of DC's Swamp Thing begat both the live action program on the USA Network (former home of the Toxic Crusaders!) as well as Fox's Saturday Morning spin-off which lasted a paltry five episodes. Actually, Fox Kids' Swamp Thing probably hewed closer to the spirit of Jim Wynorski's The Return of Swamp Thing rather than Craven's 1982 film, notorious for its international version which unshackled Adrienne Barbeau's bosom.

But the one which managed to outlast all of them was adapted from a movie nobody ever expected to be revived, even for children. And I include the Toxic Avenger saga in the mix. That was about an eco-friendly superhero (think Captain Planet with elephantitis squeezed into a tutu) on the most basic of levels; although the films were incredibly debased, they could plausibly be toned way down for possible "Toxic Tots." Instead, the genesis for this ne plus ultra of schlock cinema kiddie adaptations came from an episode of Muppet Babies ("The Weirdo Zone"), which made a sight gag out of 1978's Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! was widely dismissed as a overworked attempt at sending up monster movies, reveling in its own ineptness but hardly as funny as any random segment from The Kentucky Fried Movie. That reputation still exists, but in the VHS boom such sins were completely forgiven and it got celebrated as a proto-Airplane! despite the fact that Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker's embryonic Kentucky Fried Movie existed a year before, and remains the funnier movie to this day. A lot of people felt Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! was merely cynical in its openly amateurish satire, with a ratio higher in the misses than in the hits.

It garnered its expected cult following just the same, and when that aforementioned Muppet Babies installment achieved surprisingly high ratings, New World Television sent the word to their film distribution wing and Four Square Productions was enticed to make a sequel on a $2,000,000 budget. The result was Return of the Killer Tomatoes, which became the nerve center for the revived Attack of the Killer Tomatoes franchise to come, from the Fox show to the NES video game (although an 8-bit Sinclair version was developed in 1986) to a succession of further sequels and re-releases of the '78 film, including a "Director's Cut" vidcassette from Disney!

I'm here not to squash Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! but instead shine a grow light onto Return of the Killer Tomatoes, which endures for better reasons than its predecessor and recently got the red carpet treatment from Arrow Video. Whereas Attack! labored witlessly to spin its cheap conceit into a kitsch ruby, this time creative partners John De Bello, Costa Dillon and James Stephen "Rock" Peace settle more into a pleasantly silly groove worthy of, say, Killer Klowns from Outer Space minus the Chiodos. The mostly unfamiliar cast includes one obvious standout (we'll get to him) and is tarted up by someone who knows how to play to the lowbrow material the right way. And several of the jokes actually manage to seem good enough to have really inspired future movies which I also like.

Framed within a mock-public access late show in which the host (Michael Villani as Bob Downs) advertizes a call-up contest to win a "Pot o' Gold" worth $9.22, Return of the Killer Tomatoes cheerfully preempts itself at the beginning and several times during the movie proper, which picks up in the aftermath of the Great Tomato War. Having foiled a corrupt politician as well as leading the do-or-die charge during the Battle of San Diego Stadium, Lt. Wilbur Finletter (Peace) is now a pizzeria owner who works around the government ban on marinara by any means necessary, from mayonnaise to peanut butter to boysenberry sauce. He employs his nephew Chad (Anthony Starke), who makes a fateful delivery to the house of Professor Gangreen (John Astin), the mad…er, angry scientist committed to breeding a new strain of ferocious fruit by genetically evolving them into human form through toxic waste and a 25-cent Seeburg jukebox with no pesky 45s of "Puberty Love" (Alex Winter must have taken note when he made Freaked).

Chad, however, experiences said emotion when Gangreen's assistant Tara (Karen Mistal) greets him, unaware that she as well as the commandos guarding the lair evolved from the Finletter family foe. Tara isn't the kind of girl you take home to uncle, especially if yours flashbacks an entire five-minute montage whenever the Red Menace is invoked, but before you can say "nice stems," Chad gets beet-cheeks even though the reception is both unrequited and hostile. He returns to the shop to create his banana-and-Raisinets signature pie, but Tara has fled from Gangreen's with a neglected mutant tomato, F.T., in tow and delivers herself to Chad.

Can Chad learn to love a literal hot tomato? Will Gangreen and his sidekick Igor (Olympic swimming champ Steve Lundquist), a blonde bohunk with dreams of anchorman glory (watch out for the Ted Baxter degree and Diane Sawyer cut-out in his bedroom), steal Tara away from Chad and facilitate the breakout of a double-crossing archenemy of Uncle Wilbur? Which lucky lady shall win a date with Rob Lowe? And is Wilbur ever going to get rid of that dumb parachute?!

Nobody was jumping off New York's Golden Gate Bridge to know the answers, but that doesn't make Return of the Killer Tomatoes an overripe failure. Maybe because the 1980s were the salad days of ZAZ, "Weird Al" Yankovic, The Dead Milkmen, and Savage Steve Holland, but John De Bello has made tremendous strides compared to the undemanding humor of the original. Oh, it's still sophomoric and senseless enough to honor its lineage, but the energy level is cranked up and there is more follow-through in both premise and parody.

The biggest surprise is the influx of legitimately amusing running gags, from the self-explanatory skin flick "Big Breasted Girls Go to the Beach and Take Their Tops Off" teased at the intro to Igor's wildest wish to host the nightly news (his KIGR van is a garbage truck) to the ipecac-friendly menu items at Finletter's Pizza to the undeniable show-stopper, a fourth-wall obliteration as riotous as the "Spaceballs: The Video" premiere which cuts shameless product placement deeper than Wayne's World and challenges the generic inventory out front in Repo Man. If George Clooney sees his participation here as a Secret Shame, that's only because there is an alternate universe where his character of horny schemer Matt is Clooney's life, pitching Subway sandwiches, Geico insurance and Honey Nut Cheerios to save his bacon project after project.

On the contrary, this is the best vehicle for Facts of Life-period Clooney (no contest when the competition includes Return to Horror High and the unfinished Grizzly II: The Concert), as it is he who sets the sponsorship lampoon into motion and commits so hilariously to it. Even for a stock character of the era, Clooney demonstrated potential which would serve him well once the Coens harnessed his comic abilities. It's every bit as infectious as watching the more seasoned John Astin dramatize his maniacal archetype to the highest hilt, a precedent which helps loosen up the proceedings so that even the central lovebirds have their opportunities to land a decent joke. The absurdly alluring Karen Mistal, who'd go on to play Cake Lase in Savage Steve Holland's New Adventures of Beans Baxter, is alternately sensual, spacey and subservient, a Weird Science-caliber dream girl in extremis ("I cook 815 international dishes, perform 637 sexual acts [and] use all the popular home appliances").

With black-market tomato smugglers ("the real Acapulco Red"), a Sinatra-style "love theme" suitable for toaster shopping and punching mimes, Miami Vice and Mr. Potato Head jokes, and "master of disguise" Sam Smith (Frank Davis) instigating the first and best ever barroom brawl located within a pizzeria, Return of the Killer Tomatoes is a welcome reversal of fortune compared to its predecessor. The conventions Lampshaded in this film are more flexible in regards to self-aware sarcasm, from a rejiggered theme song calling attention to its own prefab development to a romantic hero who gets heartsick over produce, hallucinating "giant zucchinis and man-eating artichokes."

Sadly, Crest wouldn't go on to manufacture tomato toothpaste despite the valiant efforts of George Clooney, who instead shilled the Bat Credit Card to our eternal damnation.

In a healthier show of interest, Arrow Video picks up the slack from prior distributors Anchor Bay, who never bothered to correct their bare-bones, full-frame DVD release in the time we knew them. Arrow's BD transfer, a 2k scan from a 35mm interpositive, places it in the proper 1.85:1 theatrical format and buffers the film to its proper 80s movie sheen. The LPCM 2.0 track allowed me enough fidelity to understand the theme song's processed-vocal lyrics, which accounts for something. Extras aren't as copious here as they were for Vamp or Slugs, but director John De Bello's audio commentary and lead actor Anthony Starke's video interview are comprehensive and entertaining. "It's okay for you to drool."

Shoot to Kill

SHOOT TO KILL
(R, Touchstone Pictures, 110 mins., theatrical release date: Feb. 12, 1988)

A pip of an opening sequence heralds the decade-long comeback of the Civil Rights era's leading man in Roger Spottiswoode's Shoot to Kill. On a sleepy San Franciscan night, a jewelry heist bursts onto the scene, the perp revealed as the store's owner, Mr. Berger, undisguised and still in his evening dress. In walks Sidney Poitier as Special Agent Warren Stantin, a G-Man of 22 years experience, to suss out the reason for Mr. Berger's jittery self-theft: someone is pointing a gun at his wife, having previously shot their dog, and is demanding two pounds of stones or else. To prove he's not bluffing, the faceless criminal lets the maid out of the Berger's mansion in plain view of Agent Stantin and the SWAT team, and pops her just as ruthlessly.

Stantin submits to the gunman's demands whilst taking a sniper for back-up, though once they've driven out to the pier, Stantin is left with another dead body, that of Mrs. Berger, and a fugitive who has successfully eluded his tail. This instills a determination in both parties as one flees north towards Washington and the Canadian border, the other struggling to identify the cleverly-concealed psycho on the slimmest of descriptions. It will get worse once Stantin receives a report of a fisherman's death in Bishop Falls, murdered in the same manner as Mrs. Berger and all of his clothes stolen as the thrill-killer blends himself in with the slain sportsman's wilderness expedition.

This looks like a job for the man we once called Mr. Tibbs, but is indeed Sidney Poitier in his first starring role since 1977's A Piece of the Action, his third partnership with Bill Cosby and his fifth time behind the camera, to boot. Those lighthearted capers, which also included Uptown Saturday Night and Let's Do It Again, showed Poitier attempting to break away from the steely prestige he was associated with, an iconoclastic populism Poitier carried on when he limited himself to directing in the ten year hiatus from acting. But his frustratingly spotty track record, which peaked with Stir Crazy and would go on to include such stiffs as Hanky Panky and Ghost Dad, created a longing for Poitier's greatest gift to cinema: his very own unmistakable presence.

Being 1988, Sidney Poitier came back to a Touchstone-distributed action programmer where he shared top billing with rising star Tom Berenger, whose post-Platoon glories are as inconsistent as Poitier's directing credentials, but acquits himself well under the circumstances as much as the returning Poitier. Berenger is wild man Jonathan Knox, a guide-for-hire whose girlfriend Sarah Rennell (Kirstie Alley) just so happens to be leading the hiking quintet which includes the clandestine killer. Agent Stantin, having never roughed it once in his metropolitan life, demands Knox's assistance to prevent a vigilante rap, the solitary tracker knowing full well Stantin is going to slow him down.

Sarah's out there, though, with four happy-go-lucky tourists and one impostor, though in a shrewd display of casting, the expedition is a rogues' gallery of venerable character actors. Who can it be? Is he Andrew Robinson, who cuts the widest swath in unsettling villainy by his association with Dirty Harry and Hellraiser? Or Richard Masur, who was in Spottiswoode's Under Fire as the spokesman for El Presidente and also once perverted Dana Hill's innocence in the 1981 TV movie Fallen Angel? I thought I recognized the late Frederick Coffin, a.k.a. "Holden McGuire," as Ike, the orange-haired yokel ("Disco's stupid!") from the eternally skeevy Mother's Day! And just where do I even start with Clancy Brown! Poor Kevin Scannell (Turner & Hooch) is the odd man out, but that can throw one off, just as well.

I will refrain from spoilers (thanks for nothing, Touchstone Home Video!) except for one minor reveal: It isn't Richard Masur. His recently-divorced Norman is the only supporting role written with deliberate red herring traits (he shares an elevated cart over a gorge with Kirstie Alley and queries about her boyfriend's potential for jealousy), but Masur is too endearingly anxious to come off as a threat, even if Fallen Angel, which was directed by the same man who gave me the Moon Goddess of Summer Girl, proved otherwise.

When the villain inevitably outs himself, he sends the rest of the men plummeting to their rocky doom, the better for Alley's Sarah to guide him to the border without incident. At the same time, Stantin and Knox have their own reluctant game of "follow the leader" to navigate, and it's not without danger, either. Take the aforementioned conveyor cart, which the killer has sabotaged by jamming a large trunk in the clutch. Knox has to climb the rope from one side of the gorge to the other, which is scary enough given the distance below him, only to make it halfway there before the trunk comes loose and the cart slides down and knocks him off the rope. Hurtled violently against the cliffs, Knox has to rely on Stantin using all the strength in his aging body to hoist him back up to safety.

Spottiswoode and cinematographer Michael Chapman (who also plays a minor role as lawyer for the diamonds broker whom the villain keeps in touch with) create for that first 40-odd minutes leading up to the killer's reveal an efficient genre pastiche with pure currents of dry humor (e.g.: a fried marmot dinner between Knox and Stantin), gut-twisting set pieces and Poitier jumping back in the saddle with both his authoritative charisma and his overlooked comic timing intact. Once Sarah becomes hostage, though, the script becomes a protracted grind in which those once consistent pleasures are reduced to fleeting embers.

Shoot to Kill's confidence goes so downhill that the movie doesn't even conclude in those treacherous natural environs, with a literal cop-out on land which belabors the inevitable scene of déjà vu involving Poitier aiming his gun at the madman, once again using a human shield. The slickness finally becomes helplessly transparent and the script is revealed for the shambles it is. And then you start questioning the killer, whose frightening intelligence at the start is bogged down by formula dunderheadedness which makes you wonder if he has any real accomplices ("my men" he refers to at the start), why he's keeping Sarah alive given his hair-trigger temper and just what happened to his lethally calm aim when the bullets start firing in all directions.

Suffice to say that whichever of the line-up (Scorpio, Ike, the Kurgan, the Other Guy) is our baddie, it ends up being a waste of one man's evident talent. Or all of them, including Masur. And perhaps even spunky, endangered Kirstie Alley.

Poitier and Berenger, though, are given enough action and rapport so that Shoot to Kill becomes entirely watchable thanks to them. The manhunt eventually becomes a chore to sit through, but Knox cracking wise about Stantin's newfound ruggedness as well as the immortal grizzly encounter show glimmers of life which kept me interested despite the script, which originates with story writer Harv Zimmel (a real-life outdoorsman) but also includes touch-ups from Michael Burton (Flight of the Navigator) and, most pertinently, formula action specialist Daniel Petrie Jr. (Beverly Hills Cop, Toy Soldiers). There's a single comic-relief allusion to Stantin's racial identity, and Knox has but one zinger about "mountain boys" as he tries to warm up Stantin's body during a blizzard. Mostly, it's a battle of persistence that is highly entertaining up until the domesticated final stretch.

Shoot to Kill winds up with its barrel jammed once there is no more Pacific Northwest to take in. But for the excitement our then-60-year-old Sidney Poitier inspires, it's fairly irresistible. Do note that the film's international title was changed and that, in this particular trailer, there is a line which doesn't appear in the movie, just to deter you from suspecting a cross between The Defiant Ones and Survival Quest.

Micki & Maude

MICKI & MAUDE
(PG-13, Columbia Pictures, 118 mins., theatrical release date: Dec. 21, 1984)

To paraphrase Peter Gabriel from the "Willow Farm" chapter of the Book of Genesis, MICKI & MAUDE transmogrifies from Dud to Bad to Mad to Dad.

Reuniting with Blake Edwards ("10"), the dashingly middle-aged Dudley Moore plays Rob Salinger, a chronically dissatisfied telejournalist for a puff program called "America, Hey!" He is introduced covering the inedible buffet spread at the election night victory of a California governor, yet this is by no means the most debasing or ridiculous story he's been tasked with (in his portfolio are such exposes as "Are Plants Seducible?" and "Lingerie for Animals"). It's actually quite beneficial to his lawyer wife, Micki (Ann Reinking), whom Governor Lanford is set on appointing to Superior Court judge. For Rob, it's another wrench in his now seven-year itch towards starting a family, as Micki's ruthless schedule won't even allow for a dinner date with her hubby.

And then Rob inadvertently goes bad, his next assignment introducing him to an unlikely replacement in the Cambodian String Quartet, cellist Maude Guillory (Amy Irving). Drunken sparks ignite and send the two of them into a passionate love affair which causes Rob to question his loyalty to Micki, especially after Maude announces she's pregnant. He's reluctantly ready to declare his divorce, until Micki confesses a reconciliatory epiphany in the wake of her own fertility. Rob marries Maude, anyway, and thus is forced to darting back and forth between two child-bearing wives, convinced he can handle it without either of his brides getting more the wiser ("As long as I don't get bedsores and the San Diego Freeway doesn't collapse..."). The madness is what happens when Micki and Maude go into labor simultaneously, and it all culminates in a deliciously ironic realization of Rob's sincere dreams of paternity.

If this synopsis makes Micki & Maude seem astoundingly wrong-headed for a farcical comedy, then I only thought about it when others brought up the touchiness of it all. Blake Edwards, first-time screenwriter Jonathan Reynolds and the three leads walk the thinnest line between guileless adult screwball and an inadvertent celebration of bigamy. What Rob does causes him guilt, as well it should, but the human element never goes astray in either of these relationships. Rob is hardly a creep, and though, as one colleague puts it, Rob's "value judgments are right up there with Carter and Nixon," you can't help but squirm along with Dudley Moore as he tries to put on a brave face.

Thank Edwards for warming up a little more towards Moore's impulsive cad, as well as matching him this time with two delightful personalities in Ann Reinking and Amy Irving. Irving, the De Palma fave from Carrie and The Fury, must have inherited the gene which allows her to excel at verbal comedy. For all her divine sex appeal, she imbues Maude with a sharp wit and towering affability. I believed she is the kind of woman who can have fun watching bad monster movies, especially when Maude and Rob scare off a suspicious, doped-up Micki. Statuesque Tony-winner Ann Reinking (best known for 1982's film adaptation of Annie) is endearingly frosty at the onset but with moments of vulnerability that can be either uproarious or touching ("What if the baby turns out to be manic-depressive? What if she grows up to be the first successful female assassin?").

A lot of this character-rooted charity might also be Off Broadway playwright Reynolds' own credit, as he alternates equally tender domestic scenarios in which Rob cares for the women in his life. In the case of Maude, there's also a gorilla in his midst, Mr. Guillory (H.B. Haggerty), a trained Jesuit priest cum professional wrestler (he even shares a locker room with Andre the Giant) who wants to pursue interior decorating when he retires. Most protective dads aren't built enough to body slam a bad boyfriend, and these two are thrust into express matrimony. When Micki's parents spot Rob outside the church, he and his boss/confidante Leo (Richard Mulligan, of Edwards' scabrous S.O.B.) improvise their way out of a tight spot by claiming they're attending a gangster's ceremony. As future complications drive Rob to even wilder desperation, the slapstick is framed within a delirious context and several welcome supporting roles, especially Wallace Shawn's OB-GYN and Lu Leonard's skeptical nurse, offer a droll relief from Rob's frantic façade.

This is Dudley Moore's best romantic comedy role mostly because it is so tethered to the need for engagement, the deceptions his Rob concocts in his own head and towards his paramours forcing him to react in the moment as well as turn up the charm. Should Rob slip, he takes the premise along with him and overcasts the light-heartedness Reynolds' script and Edwards' camera endeavor to sustain. Luckily, Moore finds expert subtleties in moments that lesser mortals would convey with eyes too bugged out or pathetically misty. He plays it so naturally that he can fight over an egg roll with Maude's pet cat and elicit a hearty laugh without shifting into overdrive.

Moore previously anchored a remake of Unfaithfully Yours which was a pox on the Rex Harrison black comedy classic of 1948. With Micki & Maude, he finally gets a movie worthy of Preston Sturges. It's the details Reynolds works into his script, even in Rob's wardrobe choices, one key instance involving a green sweater Maude presents him with during her second trimester. It's the ways in which an energetic, generous Moore plays off of Irving, Reinking and Richard Mulligan, who also benefits enormously from witty dialogue whenever he tries to make Rob see some sense: "You're about to get a plate of sautéed brains thrown in your face...and you're correcting my grammar?" It's Edwards' orchestration of those moments where Rob is in the same building with his wives, often inches away from each other, using long takes to his advantage.

So brisk and well-crafted Micki & Maude is that the only real letdown is the final stretch, in which faulty fire extinguishers and burglar garb allow for easy outs when the fallout should have been more sobering, or at least as giddily insane as Victor/Victoria. The compromise Rob has to accept does pay off considering how the film begins, with Rob entertaining Lanford's children with his camera and discussing the afterlife. But the three central characters, well-defined and sympathetic as they are, share a complicity which Rob, whose strained attachment with Micki and refreshing initial honesty with Maude provide him a human cushion, is solely burdened by. Reynolds' warm approach to dialogue escapes him almost entirely, and Edwards suffers a similar flatness.

Micki & Maude's reputation might have been unjustly tarnished in the Internet age, with misguided nitpicking robbing it of its surprising affability. And if this must be, allow me to relate what happened to much of the main personnel afterwards. Blake Edwards fell upon self-imitation so hard (including such lesser lights as Sunset, Skin Deep and Switch) that when he returned to the Pink Panther franchise in the early 1990s, it was the Mirriam-Webster example of "too little, too late." Hollywood lured Jonathan Reynolds into frivolity full-time, forsaking the maturity of Micki & Maude for the tedious silliness of Leonard Part 6 and My Stepmother Is an Alien. Dudley Moore revisited his star-epitomizing role of Arthur Bach to his own diminishing returns, Ann Reinking retired and Amy Irving became arguably more known for her brief marriage to Spielberg than any performance she gave post-1984.

Keep that in mind the next revisionist reviewer appoints a one-star rating to Micki & Maude, seek the movie out for yourself and prepare for two delightful hours in the company of various talents who united at their prime to make what may have been their last real winner. Should big mosquitoes come out of your ears when it's over, then maybe I'll consider it a stinker.

The Identical

THE IDENTICAL
(PG, Freestyle Releasing, 107 mins., theatrical release date: Sept. 5, 2014)

The idea of "faith-based" entertainment is not without its virtues. Whether optimistic or misanthropic, a film instilled with some kind of moral angle can prove stimulating, if not transcendental. But the deal breaker, the most important aspect I look for, is that is has to be tangibly grounded. Capra understood this, even if one's path is blocked by the rising corn stalks. Archetypes work better with a real environment, if not other all-importants as credible dialogue or a biological allergy to arrogance. Dipping my toes into today's Christian-baiting cinema, alas, has not made me feel newly baptized.

I singled out the atrocious Old Fashioned as a ground zero offender in this movement. The rust belt condescension, its disturbing romantic doctrine and the pervasive leadenness of Rik Swartzwelder's driving hands has haunted me since first watch. But in today's culture of heightened ironic appreciation, Swartzwelder's homely regression has nothing on THE IDENTICAL. Much like the Cannon movies of yesteryear or the current crop of midnight movie figureheads, some people laugh off the unhinged shoddiness as a defense mechanism. And Dustin Marcellino has given this cult the Bible-thumping successor they've craved, knowingly or not.

You can easily deduce this as fan fiction from a church organist gone to the Land of Nod, borrowing freely from the biography of Elvis Presley as it drifts off into madcap Zionist screeds and pining for the edgeless assimilation of Pat Boone. In Howard Klausner's script, the King's mythically-stillborn twin Jesse Garon Presley survived birth and was raised as the dumbfounded adopted son of a tent show minister, breaking away from his daddy's idea of living and embracing divine career consultation. Had this been written for the secular market, the premise could have had a chance at prestige. Crafted for the modern day pulpit, it's more hysterical than the apocalyptic barrage of imagery in Nick Cave's "Tupelo."

The Identical begins in Depression-era 1935, where William and Helen Hensley (Brian Geraghty, Amanda Crew) arrive via boxcar to start a family in Decatur, Alabama. With employment not being so gainful, William picks cotton while house-sitting Helen gives birth to two baby boys. William frets over the financial woes posed by this fruitful circumstance as he takes in a sermon by Reverend Reece Wade (executive producer Ray Liotta), a traveling preacher who, in the midst of declaring "better to give than to receive," reveals his wife Louise's (Ashley Judd) infertility in a show of vulnerability. And thus the Hemsleys painfully agree to give up one of their tots to the Wades, with a shoebox burial staged for the absent Dexter Ryan Hemsley.

This child, now simply known as Ryan Wade, grows up under Reece's God-fearing tutelage and parameters. Ryan instinctively develops a love for music to where the crux of his teenage rebellion is sneaking into juke joints to hear R&B, never once smoking or drinking unlike his rowdy best friend Dino (Seth Green). But Ryan (Blake Rayne) is not the only one; his twin brother Drexel Hemsley (Rayne) heeds the same call and becomes a superstar in the process, nicknamed "The Dream." But because of their separation at birth, Ryan remains unaware of his lineage even as his resemblance to Drexel thrusts him into the limelight as "The Identical," playing Drexel's hits to audiences just as oblivious as he. It's not long until Ryan's attempts at independence finally lead him to both the secret of his bloodline and the path of righteousness.

A lot of specifics were left out of that synopsis, but it's those details which turn this potentially engrossing film into a ridiculous pretender. Begin with one of the most unavoidable topics: the American South in the 1950s. Were dusk-till-dawn road houses there really alive with the sound of black music back then? Did we achieve integration that easily and civil rights was never an issue again? Isn't it odd that the stereotypical redneck officer makes more of a fuss over Ryan than the people who had every right to fear for their safety at this point in time? When Elvis burst onto the scene, it was inflammatory to both sides of the racial divide, whereas scandal is scrubbed clean away in The Identical. There's even a couple of stereotypical mammy surrogates (a house maid, a nurse's aide) thrown in mindlessly.

Putting aside that revisionism in the name of "alternate reality," it's amazing how much Elvis is in this movie, which couldn't be more anti-Elvis if Michael J. Fox played a supporting role. Rather than try a different tack for Ryan and Drexel's musical awakenings, Marcellino & Klausner lift all the basics from the Elvis Presley timeline. There are impromptu concerts while in the Army, recording sessions in a faux-Sun studio, a private getaway called Dreamland, and even a kitschy beach blanket pastiche called "Sunrise Surfin'" which was done better in Top Secret! In fact, since the King's music remains out of the producers' reach, the original soundtrack tries for facsimiles of the classic Elvis sound that are nowhere near as uncanny as when Val Kilmer sang "Straighten Out the Rug." Drexel Hemsley is even spiffed up Jim Morrison-style in his later years, and he's still no huckleberry let alone Mr. "Hound Dog."

And yet, in a pivotal scene where Ryan shuns his Drexel-impersonating fame on the grounds of not being able to work in his original songs, Klausner has the irate manager scream "There's only one Elvis!" This is easily the most hilarious line in the movie, especially considering Drexel and Ryan are played by Blake Rayne, who we all know was cast for his striking resemblance to Fabian. No, Rayne is actually the screen name of Ryan Pelton, an Elvis impersonator who gets to parlay his act toward leading man stature. An identical playing an identical of an identical…of an identical.

Not that Rayne is given a chance to channel Elvis in any way but appearance's sake. The real life dichotomies of the once-in-a-lifetime singer of both "One Night" and "In the Ghetto" are glossed over to focus on Ryan's blandly overfamiliar growing pains. This allows not only for the pervasive chasteness and multi-periodic anachronisms, but also for Dustin Marcellino and his extended clan (including father Yochanan, who plays a record executive whose label boasts the same name as his production company, City of Peace) to work in a more Judeo-Christian angle than expected. The first clues are there in that Depression prologue, in the dialogue and design. By the time it's rendered explicit with a messianic lecture about the Six-Day War, such a quirky tack fades away to reveal yet another "faith-based" movie where the inspiration doesn't merely take a back seat to the agenda, but is pushed out of the car and off of the bridge.

The Identical is a hard movie to fully hate, which is a blessing in itself compared to Old Fashioned. I am touched by certain themes of reconciliation (watch for Chris Mulkey in a minor role) and uncertainty which play out in the arc of Ryan Wade. Ray Liotta, undergoing an unintentionally non-flattering aging process, convinces richly in several emotionally-charged scenes even though a couple, like when he holds infant Ryan in his arms on a dark night, are irredeemably hammy. And as a black sheep myself, I am open to a story about distanced siblings who never get the chance to truly unite. The highlight of The Identical is a genuinely moving scene where Ryan sneaks into the hospital room of his gravely ill birth mother and serenades her in a way that reminds her just enough of the boy she raised. Coincidentally, it's the sole time any of the overreaching original songs works in any scene.

But there's not a whole lot of struggling going on with Ryan, who should've been written and acted to be less of a nonentity. Marcellino's promo clip style favors senseless montages and repetitive musical cues at the expense of real engagement. At one point, Drexel appears at a contest to judge his own best impersonator, Ryan being the clear shoo-in. With the passing of Helen Hemsley and Ryan being told non-stop of his resemblance to Drexel (including from Joe Pantoliano's saintly mechanic), the stage is set for resonance which Marcellino doesn't capitalize on. Blake Rayne is just striking overrripe poses in his self-confrontation. The incident doesn't have any bearing afterwards, even as tragedy strikes from all sides.

These melodramatic contortions are made worse by the narration, which we come to learn very belatedly is voiced by the character of Jenny (Erin Cottrell), Ryan's sweetheart who lives up to her name by hopping in and out of the narrative to help this rock-n-rolling Forrest Gump believe in love. On screen, Jenny does precious little except join the gallery of subservient wives alongside Ashley Judd and Amanda Crew. Speaking aloud, Jenny is even more worthless, an insufferable vessel for solemn homilies, wishy-washy historical accounts and even repeating verbatim lines of dialogue spoken seconds prior. When Reece tells his wayward son "it's time to grow up and start being a man," it's terrible strategy to have the narrator parrot it from her POV.

Despite the involvement of Liotta, Pantoliano, Judd, and lifetime adolescent Seth Green (the Robot Chicken lampoon of his involvement here is preordained), The Identical is as cut-rate as they come. There is indeed only one Elvis, and no amount of innocuous plagiarism can erase that, let alone such pitiful tunes as "Boogie Woogie Rock and Roll," "Nashville Tonight" and "City Lights." I could easily re-christen this The Imitation for sarcasm's sake, but I deeply anticipate a RiffTrax commentary to take care of that for me. Indeed, The Identical may just be manna from heaven for guilt-free fans of Grease 2 or The Apple. Everyone else can leave the building.

Porky's II: The Next Day + Old Fashioned + 'I Know Where I'm Going!'

PORKY'S II: THE NEXT DAY
(R. 20th Century Fox, 98 mins., theatrical release date: June 24, 1983)

Beyond epitomizing the teen sex farce when it became the surprise hit of 1982, Porky's may also be the definitive prankster comedy of its decade. The problem many had at the time was that those japes were mostly at the expense of females, with the safest male target being Pee Wee, the gullible runt with the bird chest and growth chart. Making a sop to social consciousness in the presence of Jewish teen Billy and his pitiful antagonist Cavanaugh, such finger-wagging mired the hormonal momentum, especially with Lassie and the Shower Scene around the bend. In the meta-defensive Porky's II: The Next Day, the victimizing mantle shifts from Billy (Scott Colomby), who now takes greater part in the foolishness, to John Henry (Joseph Running Fox), the Seminole student on the sidelines who has been cast as Romeo for a Shakespeare-themed class project. Before you can say "Moral Majority," along comes a much wider net of deplorables (religious fanatics, graft-crazed commissioners, Klansmen), alongside bad ol' Balbricker (Nancy Parsons), for Angel Beach's resident miscreants to catch with their pants down.

Bob Clark, whose A Christmas Story was waiting for the coming winter, is somehow operating even broader than the last sty, Not only is the prejudice subplot here a nonentity, but Porky's II doesn't climax so auto-destructively, instead allowing the girl to have all the fun. She is, naturally, Wendy Williams (Kaki Hunter), the one whom the boys all say is the campus bicycle but actually takes a shine to Pee Wee Morris (Dan Monahan). Not that their consummation on the bus has done much for his incredulity, as his attempt to settle the score for that Cherry Forever incident goes very familiarly wrong. Her confessional doesn't even dissuade Pee Wee from leveling the same unfounded suspicion towards a band geek immediately afterwards. But away from their peers, Wendy does talk more sense than the interchangeable sausage party. Even Billy (Mark Herrier), cast as "big fairy" Oberon, has to play straight man to his moronic buds, although you can still count on Meat (Tony Ganios) to thrust his lower weight even while in tights.

Luckily for Clark (and his two fellow writers, including longtime collaborator Alan Ormsby), the uptick in amiability offsets the exaggerated arrogance and hypocrisy of their straw enemies, chief among them Reverend Flavel (Bill Wiley), who tests even the timid principal's (Eric Christmas) patience when they trade indecent passages from both the Bard and the Bible. It doesn't freshen the smutty humor, recycled beat for beat from its predecessor, or encourage Clark to direct with a lighter touch. But like the original, there are a few undeniable elements which escape Clark's belaboring expertise, from the abovementioned literature slam to an impromptu replacement for Billy's defective sword to Wendy's show-stopping jailbait incrimination scheme. Stirring greater havoc with gag boas and breasts in a five-star restaurant than the boys do by scalping and stripping the Kartoon Klan, Kaki Hunter obliterates the subgenre's rosy-palmed loyalty to the He-Man Womun Oglurs Club.

OLD FASHIONED
(PG-13, Freestyle Releasing, 115 mins., limited release date: Feb. 6, 2015)

Beware the kind of quaint romance pitched at the intellectual capacities of Reverend Flavel and the Angel Beach boors. Porky's II painted its barn-door strokes in a manner that suggested Bob Clark reeling from the critical smack downs of his earlier smash. Old Fashioned was released on Valentine's Weekend 2015 as a Christian-friendly alternative to Fifty Shades of Grey, despite the whips-and-chains eroticism in the mainstream being no less passé than the amateur pornography, sexist radio DJ and Manic Pixie Dream Girl used to spice up its spiritual contender. Whatever the opiate of the masses, Rik Swartzwelder is oblivious to the naked truth that his ideals of courtship are as toxic as the Stephenie Meyer/Marquis de Sade drivel he's rebuking. And it's not like he is witty enough to make like Wendy Williams and quote the wisdom of Groucho Marx to mitigate his autumnal frostiness.

Clay Walsh (Swartzwelder) is basically to his sleepy Ohio town what Johnny from the The Room was to his San Francisco burg, although he dabbles in antiques rather than accounting. And Clay's a reactionary scold with serious intimacy problems, which he tries to sermonize as an Abstinence Pledge. So when runaway eccentric Amber Hewson (Elizabeth Roberts) rents the room above his carpentry shop, the frigid Clay tests his domineering philosophies in his courtship of Amber. When her stove breaks, she is sent outside until Clay has finished maintenance. Clay consults a needling, traffic light-themed guide book to determine their compatibility during their dates. He even tests Amber's efficiency in slicing up pears into baby food. Swartzwelder wants us to believe these are gateways to true love, yet the vacant chemistry between these opposites and Clay's validated self-righteousness allows for Swartzwelder to recoil from romance as much as he does sexuality.

Drearily formulaic when it's not transparently demagogic, Old Fashioned slogs on for nearly two arduous hours on rote "boy loses girl" drama, tedious moments of solitude, lifeless side characters with no bearing on any of the plot (including Clay's elderly aunt and third banana black friend), and numerous heavy-handed, one-sided potshots against modern day impurity. Not that references to silent movies and Sleepless in Seattle in any way justify the stultifying portentousness. It's the vanity that kills: Swartzwelder writing clunky dialogue (read: worst proposal ever), deifying himself in the name of "folksiness" and looking/acting like a suicidal Jeff Daniels clone is a lousy advertisement for chivalry. I came into Old Fashioned hoping for innocent erotomania and was rewarded instead with passive-aggressive egomania, a love story whose target audience I imagine composed solely of now and future cat ladies (perky doormat Amber included) and dog dudes.

'I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING!'
(Unrated, Universal Pictures, 91 mins., U.S. theatrical release date: August 9, 1947)

You want old fashioned? Go right to the source. 'I Know Where I'm Going!' is every pound and pence the charmer Swartzwelder's spew isn't. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger rapturously weave folkloric imagery and local color in a wartime tonic that still plays on the heartstrings 70 years later. Having demonstrated forward motion ever since infancy, Joan Webster (Dame Wendy Hiller) takes the next leap by marrying into wealth. This means trekking out to Kiloran, an island on the Scottish Hebrides, to wed Lord Bellinger, thereby getting hitched to his Consolidated Chemical Industries in the process (a notion made even more hilarious in dreamtime). An impenetrable fog and furious gale winds sidetrack Ms. Webster from boarding the last boat to her destination, so she is stuck on the Isle of Mull in the raffish company of naval administrator and Kiloran laird Torquil MacNeil (Roger "Colonel Blimp" Livesey).

A bond develops between Webster and MacNeil as they gaze out from across-the-way windowsills, take separate places at lunch tables and eavesdrop on a Ceilidh, a Gaelic wedding anniversary jamboree. The Archers (Powell & Pressburger) are more enraptured with the scenery and its well-drawn inhabitants than setting an agenda or spelling out the unlikely union until where it counts, in a surprise finale where a curse on MacNeil's family is confronted head-on by the wary laird. Along the way are such "magical realist" touches as the phone booth nearby a crashing waterfall, the fantastical use of model trains navigating the Tartan hills to bridge Webster's journey and, most awesomely, a treacherous whirlpool nicknamed Corryvreckan.

Hiller and Livesey, both invaluable, flesh out their roles to match Erwin Hiller's singularly evocative cinematography (locations scouted by Powell himself), with Webster less of a grating stock socialite and more a wayward dreamer who can count beams on the ceiling to achieve her prayers but could stand to count her blessings. MacNeil is princely in all the right ways, too, discerning the difference between being poor and having no money. The Archers also show impeccability in casting such secondary players as Pamela Brown (as Catriona Potts, a lonely bride who shepherds goats and skins rabbits with ease), C.W.R. Knight (as Col. Barnstaple, a proud falconer who names his prize eagle after MacNeil) and George Carney as Joan's father/banker, who is about the same age as Lord Bellinger (heard briefly in the voice of Norman Shelley). There's even a wee Petula Clark as a studious girl who reflects Webster's headstrong qualities.

'I Know Where I'm Going!' got lost in the shuffle among the Archers' more ambitious productions (even Scorsese didn't get around to it until he was in the midst of Raging Bull), but it tames the wild appetite for intelligent, tactful and wistful romance in a way most of today's Hollywood pictures as well as their opportunistic faith-based indie ilk cannot. Take the highland over the low, and you'll get to paradise before thee.

The Hollywood Knights

THE HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS
(R, Columbia Pictures, 91 mins., theatrical release date: May 16, 1980)

As long as there are cars and girls to be romanticized, there will always be a place for filmmakers to wax nostalgic about their high school nights spent cruising the metropolitan strip looking for action and adventure. The benchmark example remains George Lucas' American Graffiti, which was both entertaining and expressionistic in following four Modesto seniors' last tastes of adolescent freedom. We will need sewers, too, which is appropriate in the case of THE HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS. 

Having built enough of a fan base among after-hours HBO aficionados and suckers for low-hanging slapstick, Columbia/Tri-Star overcame music licensing issues for The Hollywood Knights' initial DVD release in 2000. That Universal Studios managed to put Bob Zemeckis' I Wanna Hold Your Hand on plastic four years after seems a grave injustice.

Writer/director Floyd Mutrux pleads naiveté several times in the audio commentary track (exclusive to the DVD, not on the Blu-Ray release) when he shares ideas that are blatant cribs from American Graffiti and its ilk, from the disc jockey-as-Greek chorus device to the peeping tomfoolery of horn dogs from on high to the sobering depiction of society's fall from grace after the 1950s. But what Mutrux hasn't done with The Hollywood Knights is allow it Lucas' sense of levity, nor turned the period setting into a kitschy cartoon a la Grease, nor went for John Landis' droll burlesque which made Animal House its own trendsetter.

Instead, The Hollywood Knights, cult following be damned, is exactly what it is to the naked eye: the inbred bastard offspring of all three established blockbusters. And in 1980, too, where comedy fans could look forward to Airplane! and Used Cars and The Blues Brothers and Caddyshack and Stir Crazy and 9 to 5 and Private Benjamin. In what stunted brain does The Hollywood Knights share a pedestal with these films, let alone its exalted forebears?

Aping George Lucas' patchwork plotting but adding the kind of gratuitous vulgarity which made it more pliant to the easily amused, Mutrux comes nowhere near close to capturing the spirit of ‘65. He clearly wishes he it were ‘56 instead. The three years of history that existed between Lucas and Mutrux's respective settings doesn't exist, and the soundtrack doesn't even scratch the surface of what I'd imagine listening to the radio in 1965 would be. For one, the only hit song of that year heard in The Hollywood Knights is "Wooly Bully," which was the Year-End #1 song of 1965 and also heard in More American Graffiti. Except for a couple nods to The Supremes, there's little of the Motown sound. No British Invasion at all, no Dylan or McGuire, no Tom Jones, no Righteous Brothers, not even the deathless likes of "I Got You Babe," "I Got You (I Feel Good), "(What a) Wonderful World," "Hang on Sloopy," or even "The Name Game."

He does use "Little Darling" by The Diamonds, in the exact same way American Graffiti did. Maybe Mutrux should've set it in 1964 given that "Baby Love," "Rag Doll," "Goin' Out of My Head," and an a cappella rendition of "Under the Boardwalk" represent the lion's share of a single year's chartbusters. The point is that Mutrux could care less about the ostensible year this takes place in, and that I might be stalling from having to describe the many other ways this movie bombs.

The gist of the movie is that the title posse are into cars and girls, which means that the news of their beloved hangout, a drive-in diner named Tubby's, being closed the day after Halloween at the behest of the Beverly Hills Residents Association will not do. Mutrux doesn't even do thing one with the possibilities of October 31. Where are the costume parties, trick-or-treaters, jack o'-lanterns, fucking anything to make me believe in Halloween?!

Anyway, Tubby's is set to be torn down by the richies, so The Hollywood Knights, a completely anonymous bunch led by the wannabe mythical Newbomb Turk, decide to pull a few pranks at various societal gatherings in between pit stops at their beloved diner and other negligible run-ins with ladies, lawmen and lame-os. Because none of these jokers has any conceivable personality, their appeal lives and dies with their front man. As played by Robert Wuhl in his first movie, Newbomb Turk is as boring as he is boorish. You'd never guess he would be ready for prime time someday (cf: Arli$$) based on Mutrux's film, where Wuhl is the very poor man's John Belushi (lesser than John DiSanti from 1979's King Frat) crossed with an equally broke schmuck's Bill Murray (he's not even Steve Guttenberg).

Turk's most inspired act of sabotage is to kidnap an obese nerd (Stuart Pankin) and, in the place of the scheduled magic act during a pep rally, scream and fart a rendition of "Volare." And Wuhl's not even the least bit funny doing that. It's as if he‘s trying too hard at something Belushi could cruise with. Not that Mutrux writes anything for Wuhl on the level of "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!" The sophomoric comedy is mostly visual, and Mutrux bungles every one of them, including several gags that would thrive in the late 1990s under better directors. Mutrux even rips off National Lampoon magazine's own high school satire during the aforementioned rally. And Turk's other fast ones involve the oldest of standbys, from flaming dog doo to peeing in the punch to ogling/spying on numerous girls to what we will call Chekhov's Pie Wagon.

"But wait, Johnny! What about Tony Danza and Michelle Pfeiffer, who are clearly the stars of this movie based on the DVD cover art?"

I'd pity whoever would say that, because neither of them are in the film for even a quarter of the time as Robert Wuhl is. They do appear onscreen together in a pitiful clone of the Ronny Howard/Cindy Williams subplot from American Graffiti, in which Danza's Duke chafes at Pfeiffer's Suzie Q wanting to escape the boring life of a car hop for a shot at acting. It's as obligatory as their names, as is another Knight's plight (Gary Graham's Jimmy) concerning his one-way ticket to Vietnam. Given how Pfeiffer was Mutrux's choice of leading lady when he was in talks to direct Urban Cowboy, it's astonishing how little she has to do with the movie.

Fran Drescher makes more of an impression than Pfeiffer, but this is the same year she starred in Gorp. So her main function is to prattle away with her two girlfriends while they undress in the unwanted company of the Knights. Although the two attempt to get it on later in the flick, it was never clear if Drescher's Sally is Turk's squeeze. Anyway, the future Bobbi Flekman is just as squandered here as Pfeiffer is.

Am I missing something? Well, Gailard Sartain and Sandy Helberg (another one who went on to Spinal Tap? And Joyce Hyser is in this, too?!) are incompetent patrolmen who incur the wrath of the Hollywood Knights by towing the car belonging to Turk's brother. Leigh French and Richard Schaal are two of the evil hoi polloi who can't keep from engaging in illicit sex in broad nighttime. Did I mention that the Knights are like the T-Birds crossed with the Delta Tau Chi fraternity except I can't remember a single one besides the three who are the most prominently hackneyed?

The Hollywood Knights is non-stop raunchy exploitation too cluttered and clumsy to enjoy on a basic level. It can't even climax with a convincing bang like Animal House given how tasteless it is even looking past the puerile humor, because it is such an unabashed rip-off of American Graffiti. Funny that Columbia Pictures were one of the many big studios who spurned George Lucas on his way to the top, only to greenlight this travesty. "And here I sit, sucking on brown Popsicles."

Pirates of Silcon Valley + American Mary + Dancin' - It's On!

PIRATES OF SILICON VALLEY
(TV-14, Turner Network Television, 95 mins., broadcast premiere date: June 20, 1999)

A made-for-TNT, Y2k-era precursor to The Founder given how ‘80s survivor Anthony Michael Hall reinvents the passive yet playful geek persona honed from his John Hughes partnerships while assimilating the malevolence of his best known role of the 1990s, the varsity bully from Edward Scissorhands. Channeling Microsoft mastermind Bill Gates, Hall is as awkward as ever ("You must have really great bandwidth" is his pathetic seduction line at a roller rink) but resting on a hot wellspring of aggressive subterfuge. Gates is even introduced as the new Big Brother for another seething entrepreneur, Apple's Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle), who begins by addressing the camera in the manner of Michael Keaton's Ray Kroc. It is revealed that Jobs is speaking to Ridley Scott (J.G. Hertzler), the director of Apple's Orwellian Super Bowl ad.

Writer/director Martyn Burke splits his superficial if fairly agreeable docudrama (based on Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine's Fire in the Valley) between the evenly competitive Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, their prickly, isolating ascendancies mitigated by good-humored layman's testimony from their respective right hands, moral compass Steve Wozniak (Joey Slotnick) and morally deficient Steve Ballmer (John DiMaggio, the second Bender to be playing foil to Hall). The Berkeley-educated Jobs goes from acid-tripping boy guru to capitalist emperor, blithely ruthless in matters both personal and professional. The hapless geek standing in Jobs' shadow, Harvard grad Gates hustles to outsmart IBM (a common enemy) and ultimately Apple in the same way Jobs himself got the best of Xerox. As Pirates of Silicon Valley progresses, their power dynamic shifts, the once-charismatic Jobs ("Better to be a pirate than join the Navy") now a wayward cipher and Gates the clever parasite holding the royal flush.

Burke energizes the starboard-storming ironies with wit (Hall's delirious comic energy negotiating with Albuquerque factory man Gailard Sartain and a couple of airport ticket counters) and a couple solid musical cues (The Guess Who and The Police, not so much the overworked Moody Blues). But whatever psychological acumen he could've afforded the script instead falls upon his actors, expert impersonators of the impersonal. The unflattering portrayal of Steve Jobs as a wannabe Jim Morrison does enable the saucer-eyed Wyle to overact cockily like he was soliciting membership in the Brat Pack rather than detonating his fame as Dr. John Carter. Even in his subtler moments, which hint at a lost optimism amidst the rampant petulance, Wyle isn't as entertainingly heated as Hall. Gates gets the loot and Jobs walks the plank, where Martyn Burke awaits to chew the flesh clean off his bones.

AMERICAN MARY
(R, XLrator Media, 103 mins., limited release date: May 31, 2013)

Canadian ravens Jen & Sylvia Soska, a.k.a. the Twisted Twins, pull themselves up by their jet black back-straps for this heady extreme horror follow-up to 2009's Dead Hooker in a Trunk. Surgeon-in-training Mary Mason (Katharine "Ginger Snaps" Isabelle) goes from suturing literal turkeys to figurative ones when, having fallen behind on her student loan payments, she stumbles upon the lucrative "body modification" craze. A man-size Betty Boop named Beatress (Tristan Risk) cajoles Mary into performing an operation on her equally plasticine friend, Ruby Realgirl (Paula Lindberg), who yearns for the asexual physicality of a Barbie doll. That success leads Mary to cultivate a hardcore portfolio as well as enact revenge on the side after her med school professors take brutal advantage of her.

The Soska Sisters simultaneously pervert and subvert the mad doctor trope by virtue of Isabelle's poised performance and the outlandish subculture they advocate. Once she cuts herself off from the debasing rigors of academia, Mary finds a bizarre renewal of agency in the inundation of misfits who willfully request split tongues, implanted horns and, in the case of the Soskas themselves as German siblings, an elaborate act of Siamese oneness. Isabelle's busty physique is frequently on show (specifically to taunt Antonio Cupo's desensitized strip club owner), a Kraut "slasher" jovially namedrops Mengele and the gleaming array of saws are laid out fetishistically (Eli Roth gets a dedication, although this is more perceptible in the manner of a Sam Raimi/Wes Craven showdown). Still, Mary is a unique anti-heroine in a genre which frowns upon objective female identification outside of the whimpering, hysterical Final Girl U.

Mary's criminal nature does result in some routine torture and milquetoast investigation (the only male voice of reason is a kind-hearted bouncer who values Mary's knack for transmogrification), and the third act suffers from copious plot strands which fail to take. "Ave Maria" is thematically co-opted (it sure beats the silly "Bloody Mary" tag the clientele bestows upon Mary), yet American Mary sputters on its operatic take-off despite Katharine Isabelle's final moment of gory pathos. But exploitation movie sketchiness is inherently a bitch to overcome. At their wickedest and funniest, the Soska Sisters are ennobled by the proud legacies of David Cronenberg or Clive Barker. The extreme horror genre could stand for more kinky reveries in the style of those veteran Nightbreeders, and the Soskas show potential for transcending grisly provocation in favor of psychological squeamishness and gleefully outré dark comedy. And unlike Eli Roth, who as of 2017 has regressed to self-parody (The Green Inferno) while the Soskas settled for plug-in proficiency (See No Evil 2, Hellevator), there's still potential in Jen & Sylvia.

DANCIN' - IT'S ON!
(PG. Medallion Releasing, 89 mins., theatrical release date: October 30, 2015)

"Want a pickle?" Schlock City's doddering Davids have nothing left to offer compared to the Twisted Twins. Dancin' - It's On! unites David Winters (Thrashin') and late screenwriter David A. Prior (Deadly Prey) for a youthsploitation danceateria that was miraculously declared the Worst Film of 2015 by Brad "The Cinema Snob" Jones, beating out such faith-based madness as Old Fashioned and War Room. It's also a vehicle for two victors of TV's Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance?, paired off a la Justin & Kelly as romantic leads who make the amateur Latino youths of Boaz Davidson's Salsa look like Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. Never you mind the vapid, derivative plot; like Salsa and From Justin to Kelly, there's nothing to feel here.

Jennifer August (an awkward Julianne Hough replicant named Witney Carson) is Winters' millennial Baby, grudgingly spending her summer vacation in infomercial-scenic Panama City, where even the dump trucks are painted hot pink, to visit her estranged father (Gary Daniels) at his Hit Parade Hotel. The staff includes a sad-faced mime for a shuttle accessory, desk clerks who quote Shakespeare while holding the room key to 2B, some Dr. Seuss refugee on stilts, and "The Captain" (Russell Ferguson), a dreadlocked doorman who pops, locks and drops bon mots. There's even impersonators of Rhett and Scarlett so that Jenn can namedrop "her favorite movie" with less enthusiasm than she demonstrates on the floor, which I'm afraid is terminal. Wandering the lobby, she meets both Danny (Matt Marr), the weaselly bellhop whom her father has arranged to be her guide/boyfriend, and Ken (Chehon Wespi-Tschopp, that's not my head hitting the keyboard), the dishwashing dreamer who captures her fancy.

Advertised/pawned off as a successor to Dirty Dancing, High School Musical and The Karate Kid(?), what Captain A-Rab (who takes a supporting role as an instructor with a Tragic Past) hath truly wrought is a less accomplished mockbuster of Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo! Say what you will about Sam Firstenberg's Crayola-bright gift to rubberneckers, but it was far more reverent of musical tradition, coaxed an infectious community theatre spirit and didn't lean on chintzy wipe transitions. The niceties of film-making have so completely eluded Winters to the degree where one worries if he's in the throes of Alzheimer's: "guerilla" camera angles from yards away made sense if you stole shots from the Cote d'Azur (as in The Last Horror Film), but it's death for a dance movie. With a minor exception for the hammy Ferguson as the Magical Negro, every other performance stiffs colossally, transparently ADR-ed dialogue sounding listless enough to match the forgettable faces. And not a single cliché sleeps all the way up to the Big Competition complete with Go Ahead, Kiss Her!

Save for some slick, silly moves in the opening credits when Ken is putting a literal spin on his busboy vocation, even the dancing is beyond perfunctory. They're diluted even further by cut-rate, montage-minded pop, some voiced by Harry Styles and Katy Perry imitators, and all boasting laughably on-the-nose lyrics ("I'll sleep with a snake in my bed/Just to prove I love ya"). If ever a party needed to be crashed by Tommy Hook and the Daggers, it's Dancin' - It's On! It's garbage.