The Kids Are Alright (1979)

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
(PG, New World Pictures, 109 minutes, theatrical release date: June 15, 1979)

I was listening to music on magnetic tape for years before the conversion to compact disc, a transition eased over by my subscription to the Columbia House music catalogue. My early music education were repeated listens to whole albums by Peter Gabriel, The Beastie Boys, Michael Jackson, and Green Day on cassette. By the time I was in junior high, I had discovered The Who and coveted a huge chunk of their discography, chiefly the mid-1990s MCA remasters which often doubled their original track listings in rare and unreleased material. I had become intimately familiar with at least 50 Pete Townshend compositions, such was the gifts he gave as a musician and songwriter. And I realized just how unique a collective The Who were, acknowledging the volatile but passionate chemistry which Townshend shared alongside flexing blonde frontman Roger Daltrey, the stoic but striking bassist John Entwistle and, of course, Keith Moon "the Loon" on the skins.

There isn't a documentary which can fully do justice to the combustible, crazed push-and-pull between these four unique geezers who started out as totems of London youth culture before becoming stadium-packing superstars who straddled the line between the conceptual and the cataclysmic. However, a teenaged super fan named Jeff Stein was given a go in the latter half of the 1970s. Stein had already published a photo album compiled with Chris Johnston before he found himself pitching the idea of a visual scrapbook to an indifferent Pete Townshend. Band manager Bill Curbishley convinced Pete to reconsider, and soon Stein had edited together a 17-minute demo reel which inspired gales of psychotic laughter amongst the band and their spouses, thus Stein won their collective approval.

The Kids Are Alright is a preservationist's passion project more than an official band bio, but therein lies the appeal. Stein had to hustle his way into rounding up reams of classic Who footage, even going through the dumpster of the band's former label, and also coaxed the group into filming new material beginning in the summer of 1977 to fill in the blanks. But this wasn't the same band Stein witnessed as an awestruck 11-year-old in front of the Fillmore East stage, especially given Townshend's insular manifestos of middle-age malaise on albums like The Who By Numbers and the forthcoming Who Are You. Also, Keith Moon's wild man tendencies were getting the best of him, resulting in chemical dependency treatment and a paunchier physicality which curbed his ability to hold a drum stick.

The group agreed to perform a handful of one-off concerts in Kilburn and Middlesex, their last shows with Moon, so that Stein could definitively capture early 1970s warhorses "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again." Despite Townshend's reluctant cooperation, as he wasn't keen on doing an encore performance having given it his all before, and the post-production assistance of John Entwistle as musical director and overdubbing wizard, Stein and The Who ended the project in acrimony. Entwistle himself, contentious of the project to end of his days, oversaw a re-edit of the film for the European market and was even one step close to filing an injunction out of disgust. This truncated version, which was also egregiously sped up in spots for time constraints, became the norm when The Kids Are Alright made the rounds on home video, with only the rare television airing presenting a quality viewing in its intended cut. The humble, well-intentioned Stein proved wary in discussing his experience until a friend of Townshend contacted him about adding his insights on the 2003 special edition restoration.

Despite the fractured working relationships, frustrating archival forages and the specter of the late Keith Moon, The Kids Are Alright remained a critical and fan favorite in the rockumentary subgenre. Stein panned a goldmine of sorts before MTV and VH1 came along into popular consciousness. The Who would never truly be the same, but their legacy as one of the loudest, proudest rock bands from the British Invasion from 1965 to 1978 was secure. And you can definitely sense the personalities of each individual band member in every sound bite and amplified blast. In short, this is a movie that thrives on the spirit of rock ‘n' roll without the dispiriting need to explain the magic away.

Before Elvis Costello and The Replacements punked Saturday Night Live, for instance, The Who pulled one of the greatest on-air practical jokes when they were asked to appear on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in September 1967. Tommy Smothers introduced the band following a "performance" of their biggest U.S. hit, "I Can See for Miles," and you can definitely get a sense of the quartet's individual attributes. There's Pete Townshend, self-effacing, windmill-armed and still in his rambunctious, guitar-abusing prime. There's deadpan John Entwistle, "The Quiet One" with the perpetually-bored demeanor and also the earliest person alive to justify the bass guitar as a melodic lead. There's Roger Daltrey, gritty-voiced but goofy enough to introduce himself as "Roger from Oz."

And then there was Moonie…

From his prickly retorts ("My friends call me Keith, you can call me John") to his mockingly dainty miming of the drum track to his excitable, anything-for-a-lark energy, Keith Moon was uncontainable. His reckless attitude pushed him into one-upping the pyrotechnic conclusion of "My Generation" by enticing a stage hand to add ten times more explosive charge to his bass drum. And poor Pete is clearly in the line of fire, resulting in unscripted, spontaneous reactions from him and Tommy that are practically the funniest moments ever broadcast. This anarchic American appearance remains as disturbingly hilarious now as it did back when The Who were still British Invasion novices.

This wasn't the last time The Who turned talk show appearances into a farce. Scattered throughout the film are clips from their 1973 guest appearance on ITV's Russell Harty Plus, in which Moon damn near drives both Townshend and Harty to nervous breakdowns. All you need to know is that Moon refers to Daltrey as a "rust repairman," tears apart Pete's shirt, strips off his own clothes ("You just carry on, Russell"), and starts to rip into Harty with his own interview questions.

Don't worry, there is still music to be heard, and The Kids Are Alright does a fine enough job spanning The Who's career. The earliest live footage on display comes from their post-High Numbers tenure playing what the band called "Maximum R&B," unveiling their first original tunes such as "I Can't Explain" and "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" whilst still performing electrified James Brown funk ("Shout and Shimmy"). But compared to contemporaries The Kinks and Brown's own skin-tight rhythm section, The Who were eager to color in the margins of their harmonic pop tunes with rapid-fire drumming and squealing, feedback-laden guitar heroics.

"My Generation," the stuttering, slinky signature song which defined The Who in and beyond the 1960s, is the very first number heard in the Smothers Brothers excerpt and is reprised throughout various points in their repertoire. Both their Monterey Pop and Woodstock sets are represented by "My Generation" and a 1975 stadium performance in Detroit, played to a record 78,000 attendees, repurposes it as a blues song which fits it snugly into a medley alongside Bo Diddley's "Road Runner." It serves as a place-holder of sorts which charts the evolution of The Who from bratty Brits of cultish fancy to mainstream rock royalty.

The Who's assimilation could best be chalked up to the successes of concurrent albums Tommy, Who's Next and Quadrophenia, only the latter of which is not represented in any of the song selections. Maybe they were afraid of teasing Franc Roddam's impending, impeccable feature-length film adaptation of that classic double-LP. Also, there was a dearth of professionally-shot live footage for much of the early 1970s, which means the two most famous rockers from Who's Next were captured exclusively for this film. "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" sound monstrous in the takes recorded for posterity on The Kids Are Alright, even with Moon's diminished abilities. The first appears early enough and benefits from seeing Townshend's strutting, spastic energy up close, whilst the laser-light spectacle which accompanies the latter ably leads you into the vocal-shredding, power-sliding conclusion of the film.

Sadly, not every glorious note of the band's past can fit into this one film. Their 1970 performance at the Isle of Wight, which has since been well preserved and issued commercially, had tracks such as Entwistle's "Heaven and Hell," "I Don't Even Know Myself" (a prelude to Townshend's bloodier midlife crisis confessionals) and their pulverizing cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" (immortalized on Live at Leeds) which are indispensable. But it's a treat to hear the likes of "A Quick One, While He's Away" (from a ‘68 slot on The Rolling Stones' Rock ‘n' Roll Circus which wasn't officially released until 30 years after; ironically, the widely-available European cut it to a fifth of its full-length until the 2003 special edition DVD of The Kids Are Alright restored it right), "Success Story" (Entwistle's satirical contribution to 1975's The Who by Numbers) and the Moon composition "Cobwebs and Strange" (played over footage shot for a promotional video to accompany the obscure non-LP single "Call Me Lightning" among other such debauched ephemera).

Throughout it all, the band members are presented mostly self-effacing in their off-stage moments. The team-up of Keith Moon with Ringo Starr proves doubly cheeky when the Beatle drummer inquires about Moon's relationship to his band mates, whilst Entwistle is the subject of a mock-fantasy sequence where he skeet-shoots his platinum and gold records. Ever contradictory, Townshend's attitude changes with the weather during his many interviews, from catty (slagging off The Beatles to a teenybopper crowd) to bored (nodding off during a long-winded interview) to mischievous (recalling his childhood adventures in shoplifting to Melvyn Bragg) to deadly honest. Even in his earliest comments, you can clearly sense the discontent which he exercised lyrically throughout the later half of the 1970s. But along comes Roger Daltrey at the end to remind you that "Rock & roll's never ever stood dissecting or inspecting it at close range...It doesn't stand up. So shut up."

That's it, review over!

No, Daltrey and Stein clearly share the same "let the music do the talking" ethos, the thing which makes this such a compulsive watch. Songs like "Substitute," "See Me, Feel Me" and "Happy Jack" don't need me talking about the context and clips in which they are presented, as they are simply three of the most levitating slices of prime sixties rock any band would kill to have written. I don't need to delve into the primal frustration of Pete and/or Keith destroying their instruments onstage, as it's just an awesome way to end a show. And why should I prattle on about how poor Keith sounds out of his element taking the lead vocal on an impromptu cover of The Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann," when it's far more rock & roll than the finale of Surf Ninjas?

The Who Are You (who-who, who-who!). If you really wanna know, The Kids Are Alright will be more than happy to show you. You run less of a risk of jumping on the stage and having Pete's foot join together with your balls.

Used Cars

USED CARS
(R, Columbia Pictures, 113 mins., theatrical release date: July 11, 1980)

If I told you about a movie which was from the creators of Back to the Future, with Steven Spielberg as executive producer alongside maverick story writer John Milius, and starring Kurt Russell in one of his first major breakaways from his Disney child star past, the unspoken assumption would be of a prestige picture so massive that Tom Hanks himself would've hopped in the magical DeLorean to covet it if given half a chance. Alas, the Academy Awards weren't quick to acknowledge the result of such a lofty-sounding collaboration, which turned out to be the 1980 cult film USED CARS, a scrappy but satirically-blessed comedy in the rude, crude model of Slap Shot, Animal House and Caddyshack. A screwball comedy with a liberal dose of T&A and roiling patriotic pessimism from the man who later gave us Forrest Gump. Go figure!

Remember Daffy Duck's sing-songy disdain of "honesty in business affairs" from Quackbusters? Well, here's a feature-length, live action extension of that scoffing attitude, with enough double talk and dirty deeds to forge the establishment of a whole new colony. It's the tale of two dodgy motor salesman so full of B.S. that they each, naturally, have political aspirations. On the one middle finger, you've got Rudy Russo (Russell), who wheels and deals at the disreputable New Deal Used Cars lot owned by Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden), a paternal but ailing old gent who disapproves of Rudy's conniving but prefers those to the schemes of his twin brother Roy (Warden again), who runs the Auto Emporium across the way. Rudy is ten grand behind on buying a seat in the Arizona senate for grafts and gratification, whereas Roy has bribed the mayor in an attempt to advance the construction of a highway overpass which will cut a swath in his sibling's business.

Impatiently, Roy decides to stir Luke into a fatal stroke with the aid of demolition man Mickey (Michael Talbott). After a chrome-plated funeral for Luke in the driver's seat of an Edsel, Rudy and his associates concoct an excuse to prevent Roy from seizing the property, namely that Luke has driven to Miami Beach for some R&R. This gives them free reign to start jamming television broadcasts and hiring strippers (including Hill Street Blues star/future filmmaker Betty Thomas) to boost their flagging sales, but Roy is hardly deterred. Rudy, meanwhile, develops guilt when Luke's long-lost daughter Barbara (Deborah Harmon) arrives for a go-nowhere reconciliation with her pappy and a budding romance with Rudy.

But first there's both a football game and a presidential address to sabotage with the assistance of Michael "Lenny" McKean and David "Squiggy" Lander as electronics wizzes Freddie & Eddie, the latter boastful of his DIY $12.95 pacemaker for the former. In the midst of a colorful cast of character actors (watch out for Al Lewis, Dub Taylor, Alfonso Arau, and Dick friggin' Miller) as well as Kurt Russell, both these moments as well as several others are duly stolen by Gerrit Graham in a typically offbeat, outlandish supporting role as Rudy's right-hand man Jeff. Superstitious to the point of self-loathing, he has an FCC-violating meltdown on the first go when posing in front of "a red chariot to take my ass straight to Hell!" And that's before he gets hopped up on valiums and decked out in cowboy garb as Marshal Lucky for an orgy of shotgun and dynamite destruction which even Jimmy Carter hears with unmistakable clarity.

Not to diminish Russell's rakish charms, which were as plain as plaid even before his string of Carpenter classics, or the brazen villainy of Warden as Roy L. Fuchs, but Graham is in top form for the many set pieces he's called on to carry. When a down-and-out Rudy wagers his life savings on the opposite team in a football match, Jeff (sym)pathetically springs into action to turn the odds against himself, spilling every salt shaker and opening up every umbrella within reach ("Is there a black cat in the house? How about a ladder?"). In a ploy to guilt trip a bulky family man into driving off in a pre-owned Gran Torino station wagon, he feigns the death of beagle mascot Toby ("I raised him from a puppy!"). And it's Jeff who holds the fate of New Deal Used Cars when Roy finally comes within crushing distance of his competitors. In short, Gerrit Graham makes every moment he's in a joyride.

Robert Zemeckis, scripting with occasional partner and producer Bob Gale, would go on to helm two more decade-defining comedies, including the masterful Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but even within the confines of a rare R-rated romp such as this, the esteemed Spielberg protégé gets a surprising amount of mileage from perceivably junky materials. The aforementioned Marshal Lucky commercial provokes some hysterical impromptu reactions from Graham, Warden and Russell, who distracts the unaware Harmon with a ridiculously prolonged kiss. There is a memorable gag which deploys a cadaver pre-Weekend at Bernie's as well as an action-packed finale where 250 cars are piloted by drivers ed students, with a chain-whipping Roy hot on their trail. Credit is especially due to film editor and Spielberg stableman Michael Kahn, who is expertly fluid in making a two-hour trip.

But at the center of it all is Russell, one of those boisterously funny gentlemen who can perk up many a commentary track (including the one he shares with Zemeckis and Gale on this film's DVD/BD releases), but whose CV in hindsight is more action and drama-oriented. Embracing the profane rat-a-tat dialogue and cocky duplicity with an élan akin to freedom, you wonder why he as well as Zemeckis haven't returned to that embellished form of japery in so long. Used Cars is the kind of movie whose opening montage of a lemon being twisted into a cherry (a twist of the pliers here, a wad of bubblegum there, don't forget that store-bought spray of factory freshness) pretty much sums up the talents of its makers. It's one of the funniest films of its era. Trust me.

Boutique label Twilight Time, known for their limited-to-3000-copies pressings of various catalog titles, ported over this one from Sony and retained several of the original DVD extras, namely the outtakes reel, vintage radio/TV adverts (see Russell cameo in a plug for the real life Mesa Chrysler lot which doubled as Roy Fuchs' Auto Emporium) and that indispensable three-man commentary track, in which the participants are stunned that Columbia Pictures let them make this movie, although their marketing wing ultimately proved ineffectual. Exclusive to this edition are an expanded photo gallery, an original theatrical trailer and two isolated score tracks, including one which restores several alternate, grandiose music cues from an unaccredited Ernest Gold.

Circus of the Dead

CIRCUS OF THE DEAD
(116 mins., screened May 2-3, 2014 at Texas Frightmare Weekend in Dallas, Texas)

Whatever happened to Junior Healy?

I ask this because of all the axes Michael Oliver's titular hellspawn from the Problem Child movies had to grind, do you remember what his biggest pet peeve was? Clowns.

It wasn't that Junior was merely afraid of clowns in the traditional sense, the kind of primordial dread which has become fodder for many horror filmmakers to latch onto. No, he had an intense loathing of circus performers hardwired into his DNA. He despised clowns genetically, so much so that the most heartwarming moment in Dennis Dugan's 1990 original involved Michael Richards' "Bow Tie Killer" socking one poor Jocko right in his big red nose. There's no room for treacle when you're staring down the barrel of a crazed children's entertainer who has the alarming power to scare kids as much as amuse them.

Movies have been downright relentless in their treatment of clowns as pesky nuisances or worse. Even if there was one positive example of a film about a sympathetic circus clown, it would have to contend against at least ten depictions of face-painted monsters wreaking trails of fear and carnage away from the confines of their three-ring tents. I've seen movies in which clowns were in actuality asylum escapees (Clownhouse), bloodthirsty aliens (Killer Klowns from Outer Space), bitter alcoholics (Uncle Buck, Shakes the Clown), mass murderers (Gacy), vengeful bogeymen (It, Drive Thru), and perverted psychos (any appearance of Sid Haig's Captain Spaulding). And it's the last type of terror which is loose from its cage in Billy Pon's feature debut Circus of the Dead.

Papa Corn (Bill Oberst, Jr.) is the ringleader of the tormentors this time around, with his albino face paint relatively clean save for some touches of black around his eyes and chin as well as a proper blue dot on his nose. He also wears a hood which sports one lone curly tuft peeking out from the top, and is quite formally dressed. If such an appearance is subtle compared to his peers in the Creepy Clown contest (he could pass as a member of Kiwi new wavers Split Enz), then Papa Corn's behavior is enough to make even Pennywise vomit into a balloon. He's even nastier than your own worst impressions of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope.

But Papa is also cut from the same cloth as Jigsaw, preferring to channel his sadism and sickening impulses into showing morally-stunted victims the error of their ways. His latest candidate is bored family man Donald Johnson (Parrish Randall), who takes a rare opportunity to treat his wife Tiffany (Chanel Ryan) and daughters Alyssa & Hillary (Jordan Bell, Madi Lane) to a night out at the circus. As they watch the quartet of clowns dress up as policemen to assault a sap dressed in prison stripes, little does the family realize that they're laughing at a man who had just had both his hand and his tongue severed in the clowns' trailer. And Don himself is soon going to experience his own extended degradation at the hands of Papa Corn and his minions.

Papa none too subtly eavesdrops on Tiffany's extramarital tryst with well-respected lawman T.C. (Roger Edwards) before descending upon the duo post-coitus. Don arrives home later than his daughters and is at first duly oblivious to the sight of his murdered wife upon stepping through the door. But Don soon finds himself the center of Papa's depraved attention, as he promises to let Don see his kidnapped brood with the Catch-22 being that he go for a Frank Booth-style joyride dotted with rape and murder.

Having started out as a fake trailer completed for that Grindhouse-spawned short subject competition back in 2007, Circus of the Dead is in the grand yet recent tradition of exploitation movie throwbacks such as Cabin Fever, contest victor Hobo with a Shotgun and Rob Zombie's first two flicks. Indeed, the opening sequence with four old men in a greasy spoon debating country performers, including an emasculated Conway Twitty, is very reminiscent of the many salty exchanges found in The Devil's Rejects. Co-writer and director "Bloody Bill" Pon wears his influences on his sleeve, which includes one of the most random allusions to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre I've ever seen.

But my real frame of reference in talking about Circus of the Dead isn't Rob Zombie, Tobe Hooper or any of the older killer klown movies, but instead the early screenplays of Eric Red, the man who in the 1980s wrote The Hitcher and collaborated with Kathryn Bigelow on both Near Dark and Blue Steel. Those three movies thrived on the psychosexual allure of the violent sprees which involved naïve protagonists and unhinged villains, so much so that they are like little Stockholm Syndrome passion plays. They are also coming-of-age stories, if you'd afford them to be, albeit ones steeped in savagery and graphic violence. That hangs over the bi-play between the eloquently evil Papa Corn and the colorless if sympathetic Donald. Not to say that the convenience store scene will surpass the barroom bloodbath from Near Dark, but Pon, co-writer Lee Ankrum and his actors give moments like these a dangerous, disturbing edge.

Bill Oberst, Jr., already one of the most prolific indie horror actors today (and no stranger himself to coulrophobia thanks to Scary or Die), might just net a franchise-worthy character in Papa Corn. It is a role which he embraces with the kind of fearless, demented gusto that turned Robert Englund into Freddy Krueger or Anthony Perkins into Norman Bates. It is unforgettable, through and through, the extent of his commitment to Papa Corn's persona, one which Oberst himself has described as "A homicidal serial rapist with a taste for necrophilia whose day job happens to be as a circus clown." It would be saying too much to go any further than that. And the equally prolific Parrish Randall finds all the right grace notes as Donald, not making him overly simpering but worthy of investment and the slightest hope of redemption which you probably shouldn't get too hung up on if you are as versed in B-movies as I am.

Pon doesn't quite follow through on the eroticism inherent in Red's writing, though, which ultimately reduces the film to the level of nihilistic comfort food, like a bowl of popcorn drenched in plasma-colored butter. Not to mention that the novelty of clowns acting as psychos has already decomposed, leaving a series of brutal set pieces which go over-the-big-top to shock and amuse, but are likely to leave many cold since the flagrant amorality effectively drowns out whatever revelations Donald is supposed to have. His complicity simply adds to the body count and any attempts to moralize on how he has effectively killed the things he loves somehow doesn't approach real tragedy. Instead, there is an omnipresent irony in the Coliseum-style prurience of spectators cheering on the clowns in their twisted displays of retribution, in which they prove themselves the equivalent of Rodney King's tyrants.

The overlong if decidedly unpretentious Circus of the Dead is not too concerned with indicting the gorehound masses as much as whipping them into a frenzy. For anyone eager to see the grisliest show on earth, Pon's maiden effort ought to fill quite a lot of seats, especially if you have sensitive bowels.

Hardbodies

HARDBODIES
(R, Columbia Pictures, 87 mins., theatrical release date: May 4, 1984)

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My name is John Bishop, and I like Hardbodies.

The early 1980s sex comedy is one of the least reputable genres in existence, second only to slasher movies in its ridiculous prolificacy at the time. Both were very cheap to make, required no star power, relied on the basest of audience-baiting elements, and were released in such assembly-line succession that it was almost unbelievable that there were any other types of movies in theatres at all. Once the Canadian production Porky's passed the $100,000,000 mark in America alone, all bets were off as to the next big trend in cash-in cinema. And while not all youth-oriented fare was necessarily disposable, what with movies like WarGames, Risky Business and Sixteen Candles on the horizon, the screens were dominated by the hedonistic antics of moronic teen boys to the point where even National Lampoon's Animal House was like some wistful summer fling in the mind.

Nostalgia plays a large part in the story lines and audience identification of films like Porky's, The Last American Virgin, Losin' It, and others. Video rentals, cable airings and burgeoning superstars allowed for cult audiences to grow around these titles. And I am not immune myself, because having grown up consuming VHS tapes and the USA Network fervently, Mark Griffith's 1984 romp Hardbodies was inescapable. It was the definitive Beach Party incarnation of this comedic subgenre, even more so than the official Frankie & Annette reunion film Back to the Beach from a few years later. And aside from its sandy, surf-and-turf scenery, there was another reason Hardbodies stood out from the pack...

BOOBIES!

Glory be, there was more exposed areola in this one film alone than any handful of these movies combined. This is also the skinniest sex comedy of its era, as virtually every female cast member is rendered topless to the degree where you imagine Southern California as one of the premier nudist colonies in your head. And the weirdest thing about Hardbodies is...it's shameless in ways that go beyond critical condemnation. There is a curious, consistent innocence to the proceedings and, most refreshingly, a clear absence of malice and lack of pretension that even the film's marketing campaign played to the hilt.

Back when Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert devoted an entire episode to the teenage sex comedy in 1983, the duo were equally appalled by the misogyny inherent in most of these films. They wondered why boys and girls weren't allowed to develop convincing friendships, metaphorically likened these conquests to dartboard games and chided the familiar trope of the boys having to pay hookers for sexual knowledge instead of indulging their curiosity with their significant others. More so than they did with their rather hysterical "Women in Danger" expose, the veteran critics did make some valid, grounded points. Immaturity became equated with flagrant imbecility all too often, and none of these movies gave their female characters any real identity other than love/lust object.

When it came time to talk about Hardbodies, though, here was a movie which they lumped right in with its mindless forebears despite some clear strides made in the handling of these stories. Keep in mind a product designed originally for Playboy Televsion was never truly going to rise above the typical male glut of soft-core sexcapades. But here was a movie which did not exactly devote itself to the
degradation of female sexuality, and sure enough has plenty of humorous exchanges between the equally promiscuous genders. One of my all-time favorite lines from the entire sex comedy bandwagon occurs when Carlton Ashby (Sorrells Pickard), a middle-aged cowpoke with a fortune in the fertilizer industry, stimulates aerobics instructor Michelle (Kristi Somers) to the point of arousal:

Michelle: "Robert E. Lee."
Ashby: "Ma'am?"
Michelle: "Well, you remind me of Robert E. Lee. I like to nickname my men before I f--- them."
Ashby: "Just like that? Whatever became of romance?"
Michelle: "Why, Ashby, darling...You want romance? Go read a novel. You want me? I'm upstairs."

Rarely does a movie like this get recognized as genuinely witty, but Hardbodies makes more of an effort than most of its ilk. Michelle is a smart, spunky, sexy character who remains Ashby's steady despite bearing more stamina than the burnt-out Southerner, a colloquial chap who gripes that his liver is "staging a major coup d'etat" in the midst of a dawning hangover. Ashby himself proves quite a catch with his uncomplicated, good-humored demeanor. They make swell company for 90 minutes is what I'm trying to say, which is the deal-maker for me as far as I'm concerned.

And that is Hardbodies in a nutshell, which proves that aiming for the lowest common denominator doesn't always have be so miserable. Principal character Scotty Palmer (Grant Cramer), self-appointed "head of the Geek Patrol," is a scam artist who champions a sense of community among the female species and has a healthy, sexually-active love affair with a brunette bunny named Kristi (Teal Roberts), who is impressionable but not wholly idiotic. The key to his success is to "dialogue" the women, steering clear of antiquated one-liners and instead flirting with candor and style. On the opposite end are three vacationing squares: Ashby, the bluntly-named Rounder (Michael Rapport) and the even more on-the-nose Hunter (Gary Wood), the alpha of the over-the-hill trio. Their efforts to chat up young women routinely end in humiliation ("I don't f--- fossils for free"). When Scotty falls three months behind in back rent and is duly evicted, the geezers entice him to become a mentor (read: definitely not a pimp) in exchange for walking money and a more luxurious place to live for the time being.

Cue the obligatory array of pick-up montages, house parties and pratfalls, with Ashby emerging as the clear victor amongst the gang. Hunter proves a bit too reliant on spilling wine on girls' dresses to get them to disrobe, whereas Rounder bluffs himself into snapping bogus modeling photos for a gaggle of overly eager babes. Since this is Scotty's brilliant idea, Kristi rightfully blows him off out of frustration, but forgives him in time for a quintuple date at the club owned by body-building guru and potential business partner Rocco (special appearance by Antony Ponzini).

Alas, the morning after proves troublesome when Scotty intervenes on behalf of secretly coy exhibitionist Candy (Crystal Shaw) after she's manhandled by the lecherous Hunter, who retaliates by zeroing in on Kristi. Candy's confessional moment, in which she breaks down over the negative stigmas associated with being sexually curious, feels more natural and sweet-hearted than one may expect. Things wrap up in a marijuana-fueled haze and several embarrassing comeuppances for "Hunter's orgy gang," which Ashby indignantly refuses to be part of.

The trouble with most of these 1980s sex comedies is that they exist in such a moral vacuum that when it comes time to sermonize, such concessions to ethics come across as disingenuous and equally dumb. Hardbodies finds a consistent tone which the flagrantly bitter The Last American Virgin failed to exhibit, mostly due to the fact that it doesn't hold its characters in outright contempt. Even nominal antagonist Hunter displays enough integrity at the beginning to turn down underage sex before he goes full-on capitalist cretin. Add to that several endearing performances from both sexes and equal time for amiable introspection both girl-on-girl and guy-on-guy, which leavens the kitsch with considerable soul and wisdom.

Hardbodies still finds room for plenty of below-the-belt humor, with the most obvious being when Rounder takes a few blows to his "love nuts" and the most clever during a triple-intercourse montage wherein Ashby interprets oral sex by playing a heightened flamenco rhythm on his acoustic guitar, climaxing in a sudden breaking of strings. Even the persistently gratuitous nudity is not as vehemently irresponsible as most people give it discredit for. If there is a curious lack of variety in regards to the women (by tradition, Hardbodies exists in the same white bread world as the rest of the teen sex comedy genre), then at least one won't forget the sight of one of Roscoe's buff beauties performing a playful tease in view of the slovenly Rounder. Even Grant Cramer isn't too shy amongst the male cast to go the full monty.

Cramer, who would go on to camp up his lothario persona here in Killer Klowns from Outer Space, proves effortlessly likeable in the lead role. The fictional garage band Diaper Rash (whose set list includes such gems as "Computer Madness," "Mr. Cool" and "Give it a Chance") is filled in by the lady rockers of Vixen, who enjoyed late-blooming success in the 1980s hair metal scene with the Richard Marx composition "Edge of a Broken Heart." And aside from Roberts, Shaw and Somers, B-movie fans ought to enjoy seeing several name cult actresses amongst its cast, including Kathleen Kinmont (Renegade), Darcy De Moss (Reform School Girls) and the late Roberta Collins (Death Race 2000) as Kristi's estate-selling older sister Lana. And yet, even with all of these lovelies, it is both Sorrells Pickard as the easygoing Ashby and Courtney Gains as the dweebish Rag who help make this a not-so-guilty pleasure. Already fresh from his mutinous, menacing debut as Malachai from Children of the Corn, Gains particularly appears to be having the time of his life in more comical surroundings; not everyone can flip off people in 48 different languages, dress in unflattering drag or fondle a grossly-realized pair of fake DDs with as much enthusiasm as him.

I can't in good faith give this movie even a four-star rating, simply because it is very tacky and tasteless in ways that often times have little to show other than skin. The appearance of a noxious bunch of fart-lighting morons (including an unflattering early role for stuntman/horror icon Kane Hodder) who turn from nemeses to accomplices rings false and proves more uncomfortable than the admittedly queasy-making antics of the three "fossils." This is a fantasy of mid-life crisis in which the audience is expected to be on the side of a bunch of old bulls. At least those had affluent voices of reason sounded by Ashby, Kristi and her best friend Kimberly (Cindy Silver), who finally comes around to making love with the long-suffering but noble Rag out of genuine solidarity.

"Genuine solidarity," two words I've always wanted to use in describing a dopey sex comedy but never had the chance to. Shouldn't good sex arise from good vibes, the kind which the vast majority of 1980s movies mostly demonized? Oh, Hardbodies...I give in. You are that rare sex-related 1980s film that inspires people to want to have actual sex. Just like Candy, you really don't deserve the ditzy rep you have gotten over the years. I guess you'll always be my bigger, better deal.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II
(Unrated, New World Pictures, 99 mins., theatrical release date: December 23, 1988)

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"Fairy tales. My father didn't believe in fairy tales, either. But some of them come true, Mr. Ronson. Even the bad ones."

Well, that's mighty clever of Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) to recognize one of the many allegorical strands of Clive Barker's sepulchral sex 'n' splatter classic Hellraiser. Having survived the ordeal of the 1987 original, albeit with a few confusing contrivances, this is one of the first lines of dialogue Kirsty relays to a skeptical cop upon waking up at the Channard Institute. It establishes the traumatized ingénue as having more of a level head than the authorities around her, no small feat for a teen girl whose father was skinned in a crime of passion by both her stepmother and rogue spirit uncle, who required the disguise to trick his demon/angel captors, a quartet of undead fetishists known as the Cenobites.

Kirsty's worst fears now involve a blood-stained mattress from the scene of the slaughter, the literal death bed of reluctant murderess Julia Cotton (Clare Higgins). But even though she is smart enough to know she survived a Brothers Grimm nightmare made flesh, Kirsty is powerless to stop the déjà vu which she should have seen coming ("It's not fair"). For her caretaker is the chief of medicine, Dr. Phillip Channard (Kenneth Cranham), and like Uncle Frank (Sean Chapman) before him, his malevolent curiosity will compel him to raise Hell. Only he wants to go even deeper than this...

Hellbound: Hellraiser II saw Clive Barker relinquishing his screenwriting and directorial duties over to a pair of newbies, close friend Peter Atkins and New World Pictures ladder climber Tony Randel. The now-famous novelist and first time filmmaker instead hatched the story idea, which was naturally compromised by issues with budget and casting. Gone was the hope of Andrew Robinson reprising his role as Kirsty's cuckolded carcass of a daddy, so the thread involving Larry reaching out to Kirsty from supposed Hell (which already makes no sense, since the feebly milquetoast Larry Cotton was hardly a sinner) was resolved with a thud. In was the notion that Kirsty and Channard would be driven into the Infernal labyrinth which the Cenobites call their kingdom, and also some back story in regards to their prior human existences, chiefly the central figure of Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his past life as WWI captain Eliot Spencer. The Black Monday stock market crash of 1987 dealt a blow to such ideas, although these are still realized to a minor degree.

The real crux of the sequel turned out to be an even more sadistic spin on the Mad Scientist trope. A brain surgeon introduced dissecting a conscious patient whilst espousing on "the lure of the labyrinth" that is mind within the gray matter, Phillip Channard is in dogged pursuit of absolute knowledge. He's also a latent sadist with a Ph.D. whose sanitarium is pretty much its own Hell on Earth, with a whole sub-basement wing where he keeps the nuttiest of his charges celled in. Having already pursued the mystery of the Lament Configuration box, Channard tests Kirsty's theory of resurrection by allowing a far-gone inmate called Browning (Oliver Smith), who imagines maggots feasting on his skin, to go at his body with a razorblade atop the cursed mattress.

Out of the gory mess bursts Julia, now in the same half-formed condition as her illicit former lover Frank. But one of the hospital orderlies, Kyle (William Hope), has followed Channard and bears witness, sympathetically freeing Kirsty for further investigation. Also caught in these machinations is teenaged Tiffany (Imogen Boorman), who is mysteriously autistic and spends her time solving puzzles, the perfect key to calling forth the Cenobites and opening the doors to Hell. But Pinhead demands his minions stand down, aware that "It is not hands that call us. It is desire."

Mainly it is the desires of three individuals, including Tiffany, who has repressed her dark past through a possible lobotomy, and Kirsty, who seeks to rescue her father only to be once again taunted by the Cenobites and take part in a rather more unsavory family reunion. Yet it is Dr. Channard who pays the ultimate price, as Julia leads him to Leviathan, the diamond-shaped figurehead cum storage shed for souls, and sacrifices him out of maniacal obligation. The born-again Channard, his brain scrambled not unlike his patients via a demonic tentacle, is freed from all pretense of Hippocratic decorum and relishes his Cenobite status vengefully.

The filmmakers were clearly keen to begin building an intricate mythology, one which would be worth learning more about along the path of subsequent sequels. Alas, the only story line with any intrigue and weight here is Dr. Channard's arc, conveyed mainly thanks to Ken Cranham's jolly professionalism. It is his grotesque Frankenstein-as-monster metamorphosis ("And to think...I hesitated") which helps to humanize the four principal Cenobites, just in time for an impotent showdown. Kirsty remains ingenious as ever in the face of immortal danger, but much of her screen time is spent calling out to either her daddy or to Tiffany. Her confrontations with the Cenobites are also pretty limp and insensible; given that she was right about Frank's escape, the Cenobites go from chaotic neutral to kangaroo court bullies with woeful absurdity. You'd think they'd be wiser to sense Channard's destructive impulses over Kirsty's stubborn naiveté. No wonder they prove so easily vanquished. Julia's newfound nefariousness is also good for a few distractions, as Higgins ably matches Cranham's grandiose commitment, but fizzles out rather unspectacularly.

The first half of Hellbound: Hellraiser II is quite potent in spite of its redundancy, which makes the clichés abundant in the latter section seem unflattering. Returning crew members such as composer Christopher Young and cinematographer Robin Vidgeon have clearly stepped up their game, building upon the style evident in Barker's film. And there is much in the early going, particularly the sick humor of skinless Julia's seduction of Channard, which is as engrossing as it is plain gross. There is a broader yet welcome sense of wit going on when Julia moans "I'm cold" so that Randel can cut to multiple high-burning ventilators and Julia bleeding through white formal clothing. You do appreciate the subtleties more than the hysterics, which sadly end up engulfing the movie's focus.

There's plenty to admire technically, from the grisly make-up effects, handled once again by Bob Keen's team, and set designs teeming with lonely corridors and evocatively doom-laden palaces of pain. Not for nothing is this film's greatest subtext in regards to medical malpractice, as the parallels between the Channard Institute and Hell are ripe for the reaping. Kirsty and Tiffany are confronted with their own past torments in momentary tableaux of exquisite suffering. But these visions are all too fleeting and buttressed by a whole lot of hoariness.

Maybe rushing into this sequel so hastily, as per the opportunism of its American distributor, was like running into the open arms of a succubus. As it stands, Hellbound: Hellraiser II draws tons of blood, but not enough to conceal the lack of real ideas on the drawing board. It's less Clive Barker and more Carnival Barker.

The best release of the film thus far remains Anchor Bay's 2008 anniversary edition of the unrated cut, coming roughly 20 years after its Christmastime theatrical premiere (expect something similar for Wolf Creek in 2025). The package never received a proper Blu-Ray upgrade in time before Image Entertainment took control of the AB catalog, which means their hi-def release is comparably bare-bones. Both the previous cast/crew commentary, vintage EPK reels and 20-minute "Lost in the Labyrinth" retrospective make return appearances where they are joined by several new interview pieces which spotlight director Tony Randel, star Kenneth Cranham and the three peripheral, non-Pinhead ghouls, reprising performers Nicholas Vince and Simon Bamford as well as Barbie Wilde, who took over the Female Cenobite costume from Barker's cousin. Both Wilde and Vince seem to be writing their stories of Hellbound Hearts, so allow me to say this once again with feeling: "I have such sights to show you."

The Slumber Party Massacre Trilogy

THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE
(R, New World Pictures, 77 mins., release date: Nov. 12, 1982)

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II
(R, Concorde Pictures, 75 mins., release date: Oct. 30, 1987)

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE III
(Unrated, New Concorde Pictures, 87 mins., release date: Sept. 7, 1990)


You have to admire the Roger Corman-produced Slumber Party Massacre series in providing the exploitation cinema's equivalent of affirmative action. The glass ceiling of schlock was shattered in 1982 when Amy Holden Jones made her feature debut, having worked up the ladder from assisting Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver to becoming a prolific film editor, even turning down the prospect of cutting together Spielberg's stellar E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial to have a go behind the camera. Not only that, but Jones was fascinated by a script from Rita Mae Brown, an activist/novelist in the feminist and lesbian societies. Never mind that in the same year, another first-time director named Amy was at the forefront of the definitive teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High (whose most memorable song cue is recycled in the trailer for the first film, suprisingly), as we were still in the era of the Dead Teenager Movie, and there was a marked estrogen famine in that quick-buck field.

Thus New World Pictures' original The Slumber Party Massacre, with its familiar-sounding title and proverbial slasher scenario, managed a cult reputation as subversive and satirical. Jones and Brown have made a film with a predominantly female cast, all of whom are uninhibited in their bodies and attitude to the point of parody, and their persistent panicked screams are matched by the rather wimpy male characters. Even the killer, an unmasked sanitarium escapee brandishing a portable power drill, is taken down a beg by Freudian means.

It all begins so demurely, as Trish Devereaux (Michelle Michaels) rises from bed on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, inspecting her budding figure in front of the closet mirror and clearing her dresser drawer of girlish trinkets like stuffed animals and plastic dolls. Trish's parents are heading off for a vacation, conveniently affording her the chance to invite her close friends on the basketball team over for a pajama party with plenty of alcohol, marijuana and pizza. One of Trish's pals, the catty Diane (Gina Smika), jealously tears into a luminous transfer student, Valerie Bates (the late Robin Stille), who declines Trish's gesture of atonement, deciding to spend her night babysitting her firebrand kid sister Courtney (Jennifer Meyers). But they are all uniformly ignorant of the news of a killer on the prowl, Russ Thorn (Michael Villella), who stalks the night hoping to put his depraved love into the chicks.

Around the halfway point of Thorn's massacre, the withdrawn Valerie switches on the TV to watch Hollywood Boulevard, the 1976 Allan Arkush/Joe Dante patchwork picture on which Amy Jones served as co-editor. The moment resembles an inversion of Laurie Strode's desperate pleas for rescue at the Doyle house from Halloween, with the damsel-in-distress here being one of the leery boys who crashes Trish's sisterly soiree. It ends with Thorn stabbing the kid to death out of Valerie's sight as Jones cross-cuts between that and clips from the televised film, thus sowing the seeds for Scream a good decade or so early.

But Jones' overall approach is less post-modern than Wes Craven's, which means that most of The Slumber Party Massacre is pro forma pandemonium, replete with an synthesizer-based suspense score akin to Rick Wakeman's soundtrack for The Burning and a handful of "Psyche!" scares not limited to suspicious-seeming hands over unsuspecting shoulders, characters feigning death for practical jokes and, lest you forgot, the classic "It's Only a Cat" standby. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with such tactics, as they sometimes are followed by a traditionally grisly pay-off, but wasn't this supposed to be more clever than this? The deadening devotion to cheap tricks coupled with the rigid interchangeability of the film's starlets, all of whom given short shrift by a screenplay stuck between the poles of dry academia and dull convention, allow for instances of compromise to leap out of the shadows just as much as the villain does.

Villella, who gives the film's liveliest performance as the rape-minded slaughterer, bears a striking resemblance to Mal Arnold, a.k.a. the psychotic caterer Fuad Ramses from H.G. Lewis' Blood Feast, his motivations distinctly Mansonite ("I love you"). He also affects a peacock's body language as he pursues his victims, and the demented mannerisms of this Method-heavy performance are admittedly humorous. Top it off with the phallic nature of his murder weapon, which dangles down his groin with every intent of penetration (Brian De Palma was surely watching when he recycled this in 1984's Body Double), and you can sense the female empowerment manifesto teased at in the film's distinct pedigree.

The movie does have some particularly entertaining, borderline-camp ideas about female sexuality, from the giggly small talk of Trish's clique, the lingering close-ups of butts (step forward and turn around, Brinke Stevens!) to prepubescent Courtney's restless curiosity, which prompts her to raid Valerie's stash of Playgirl mags. At times, it gets hard to believe this wasn't written by a gay man. Still, The Slumber Party Massacre is a clearly Corman affair, a tried-and-true amalgam of bared and bored flesh which has its rewards (one of the gags involves the therapeutic ingestion of cold pizza crushed by a dead delivery boy because, hey, "life goes on") and is not too shabby for a 77-minute hunk of nostalgic ephemera. It's just a shame it's too leaden to truly embrace its playful side.

Deborah Brock, on the contrary, puts an even more outlandish spin on the original with her Slumber Party Massacre II, writing/directing a phantasmagoric quasi-musical which may as well be one of the guiltiest pleasures I've ever witnessed. In the spirit of Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II and Sleepaway Camp II, tragedy gets reborn as dopey farce with the surviving Courtney (Crystal Bernard, of TV's Wings) still traumatized by her encounter with the Driller Killer as she experiences her own Birthday Girl sexual awakening. Hormones and horrors kick in simultaneously as her fantasies of hunky athlete Matt Arbicost (Patrick Lowe) are interrupted by eerie flashbacks (many of which, naturally, she wasn't there for), premonitions and regular visits from both her insitutionalized sister Val (Cindy Eilbacher) and a perverted Elvis impersonator (Atanas Ilitch) whose guitar, which resembles a Satanic trident, has a functioning drill bit where the neck should be.

Courtney herself carries a six-string given that she is in a girl band with her best buds Amy (Kimberly MacArthur, 1982 Playboy calendar girl), Sheila (Juliette Cummins, from Friday the 13th V and Psycho III) and Sally (Heidi Kozak, from Friday VII and Society). The quartet arrange a festive weekend away at the condo owned by Sheila's dad, but Courtney's mental state continues to worsen until finally she and Matt are alone and the temptation to "go all the way" brings out the Driller Killer from her subconscious.

Despite not salvaging the original's squandered theme of sisterhood under pressure (once the kangaroo meat hits the grinder, its practically every woman and man for themselves), Brock's central characters have a greater sense of camaraderie at the start. Even better, the roles at played earnestly and with a measure of natural charm by the four ladies. Bernard makes for a fetching, sympathetic lead star, whilst Cummins has waaay more fun as the requisite exhibitionist than her previous credits allowed. Kozak gets the wildest acne-based gross-out gag in history, and even if Sally's songwriting prowess is hardly on the level of the solid power pop on loan from Wednesday Week (whose "If Only" and "Why" are mimed rather adorably), Kozak is bubbly cute, as is MacArthur. There is a more casual sense of sexuality (read: swimsuits), too, that makes up for the noted lack of T&A.

And then there's Atanas Ilitch, a real life Detroit Rock City underdog who cackles and preens his way into slasher film infamy, a homicidal goofball who fires off quotes classic rock song titles with deranged gusto ("I can't get no...satisfaction!") and even turns a routine murder into a sock hop ("Let's Buzz!"). Not even Pamela Springsteen's reconfiguring of Angela Baker as a cheery psycho-Puritan can compete with Ilitch, a nutty send-up of John Travolta's Greaser image. Call that description a stretch, if you must, but he's the most talented, charming Fred Krueger clone of them all.

You know what they say, "Trixters are for kids."

Brock's screenplay and direction are the right kind of unpretentious, although the ending is pretty much a doozy in what is already a succession of moments worth inducting in the WTF? Hall of Fame. What's better is that she's taken the original's fanatical insistence on love-as-rape and comes up with some jubilantly dark comedy in Ilitch‘s presence (listen to him sing "I can't stop loving you, I won‘t stop until I do" as he chases after Courtney and Amy in a construction site). Some of the visual effects are dodgy, especially the fiery conclusion, yet Slumber Party Massacre II produces a couple of nasty prosthetic delights and boasts more ingenious production design and camerawork for its low budget than the original. Forget about the film's curmudgeonly one-star reputation; this is certainly the most hummable, quotable and repeatable entry in the series.

If the first film had all the nudity and the sequel all the fun, Slumber Party Massacre III, made under Corman's bottom-scraping New Concorde banner, has all the unpleasantry. It's a blunt retread of the original that literalizes the maniac's impotence and his reliance on the power drill as substitute for his limp manhood. The very first drill kill in this one involves a young woman cornered in her car, with her hands bound behind the headrest and the murder thrusting his drill pornographically. Once again, we have a female director looking for her break in Sally Mattison, as well as an intellectually-gifted writer in Harvard grad Catherine Cyran, but watching this queasy-making, assembly-line gorefest only makes me pine for the minor subtleties of Jones and Brown's original.

What else is there to say about the plot? Much like the recent Texas Chainsaw Massacres, it's plug-and-play-and-slay stuff in which a gaggle of close-bonded girls try to enjoy a night of revelry, are interrupted by their boy toys and end up falling prey to a vicious killer. The few cosmetic differences include: hostess Jackie Cassidy (Keely Christian) is selling her childhood home and the party is kind of a long goodbye; there is a hapless dork named Duncan (David Greenlee) filling the woobie position, who trades places with the pizza delivery girl (Marta Kober from Friday II) to assert himself into the party; two red herrings are on hand to provide devious glares; and there is a back story for the psycho involving Uncle Touchy, also a recently suicidal retired cop.

The character roster is overstuffed with uninteresting characters, as there are now seven spunky girls and five horny guys in attendance. Mattison has trouble managing her cast of twelve, and after duly isolating a couple off for a quick bumping off, there are at least seven survivors by the time panic ensues. This is about 30 minutes until the end of the film, which means the last act is a protracted, tedious chase sequence where some will conveniently stand off to the side whilst one of their ranks is assaulted. The villain will continually have objects broken over his head to slow him down, and even takes a bucket of bleach to the face, but the girls continue to stand around like idiots. And this is even when poor Maria (Maria Ford as one of the two characters who doff their tops) desperately tries to reason with and console the killer to delay her inevitable death. You start to miss the proactive courage of Trish Devereaux and the Bates sisters something fierce.

I don't get how anyone could say this is an improvement over SPM II. At least the women in that had personality and pep and were distinguishable by virtue of their musical hobby. They were so appealing, I myself fantasized about crashing their party. The chicks in this film seem utterly directionless and ditzy. It gets so dire that one character (played by Hope Marie Carlton, the fantasy girl in the waterbed from Nightmare on Elm Street 4) leaps through a glass pane out of defiance and commits suicide. I guess that's supposed to be funny, but the cynicism and brutishness prevalent throughout the rest of the movie just made this particular viewer want to say "Lucky lady. Give me Atanas Ilitch or give me death of Preppy Terminator already!"

Slumber Party Massacre III doesn't quite know the drill as much as either of the previous films and just ends up coming across as straight-up boring. That pun-heavy sentence both sums up my final thoughts about this flick as well as provides the one chuckle the film failed to give me. The poster is art is also amusing, in that none of the models who pose for it bear any resemblance to the film's stars, including the likes of Ford and Carlton. If Roger Corman doesn't care, why should I?

With only the original being planned for a BD upgrade, all three films can be found in Shout! Factory's The Slumber Party Massacre Collection DVD set, which in the company's proud tradition goes the extra mile in supplemental material. Each of the film's have their own full-length commentary track, moderated by diehard fan Tony Brown (webmaster over at the Old Hockstatter Place), and twenty-minute retrospective piece which recounts the experiences of working for the notoriously thrifty Corman, the juiciest anecdotes going to Deborah Brock and producer Don Daniel of SPM II. The mogul himself is missing, but the stories told do a good job of making you feel like he's monitoring your living room, too. Amy Holden Jones and Sally Mattison provide frank remembrances of their own, and we also get to hear from the likes of cast members Michael Villella, Debra Deliso, Brinke Stevens, Heidi Kozak, Juliette Cummins, Jennifer Rhodes, Brandi Burkett, Hope Marie Carlton, and Yan Birch. Also included are original red-band trailers and photo galleries corresponding to each entry.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief/Sea of Monsters

PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF
(PG, Twentieth Century Fox, 118 mins., release date: February 12, 2010; SRP: $19.99)

PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS
(PG, Twentieth Century Fox, 106 mins., release date: August 7, 2013; SRP: $39.99)


Take your mind back to 2010, the year film adaptations of young adult novel franchises were in full swing. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter already rang the box-office bell five previous times and the grand finale was given the Kill Bill treatment with The Deathly Hollows, Part One arriving in late autumn. Stephanie Meyer's Twilight was on its third entry, Eclipse, and the first in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games series was in embryonic pre-production after Lions Gate secured the movie rights.

Lost in the shuffle was Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, based on Rick Riordan's own teen-oriented bestseller, relegated to the typically faithless dumping grounds of early 2010 by Twentieth Century Fox. This scheduling was a sign of avoiding competition with the teen lit titans, all boy wizards and bohunk monsters, as well as the final product being inescapably seen as a transparent clone of the inaugural Harry Potter films, most blatantly deduced from the employment of journeyman Chris Columbus as the director, someone who has embraced his hired gun status to the point where his production company is even named 1492 Productions. It's not like anyone was expecting a brave new world as far as Percy Jackson was concerned.

Bespectacled British yobs with wands were traded in for sullen Manhattan boys with swords, whilst Hogwarts and Quidditch morphed into Camp Half-Blood and junior cadet games of Capture the Flag. Instead of Ron Weasley, Riordan's best friend figure was a black teenage satyr/sensei/servant named Grover, which was more of a hard personality change than the rather traditional appearance of a feisty female warrior, Annabeth, a clear understudy for Hermione. The characters may have adopted physical deformities familiar to its Greek mythological trappings, as Dumbledore in this universe was Chiron, a centaur split between human and horse at the torso, but critics and audiences knew exactly where this film's true inspiration lied.

17-year-old Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) is introduced as oblivious to this strange co-existence between gods and men, and only when Zeus (Sean Bean) accuses brother Poseidon's (Kevin McKidd) demigod son of burgling his lightning rod staff (why, there's the magic wand!) does Percy gradually realize his secret identity. For Percy is indeed Poseidon's progeny from a love affair with a mortal woman named Sally (Catherine Keener), and on a field trip to the museum overseen by wheelchair-bound Professor Brunner (Pierce Brosnan), a gargoyle posing as a substitute teacher attacks Percy in private, inquiring about the missing bolt. Brunner and "junior protector" Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) intervene, whisking Percy and Sally away to the Half-Blood campgrounds. Alas, Sally is forbidden to enter being a pureblood and all and is kidnapped by a Minotaur minion of Hades (Steve Coogan).

Afflicted with dyslexia and ADHD which are revealed to be talents rather than stigmas, Percy is confronted with the rumor of his treachery and vows to rescue his mom and set things straight with the holy trinity of Olympians. However, time is of the essence as Zeus has threatened war on the eve of the summer solstice, which means catastrophic natural disasters shall engulf Earth in flames. Percy defies Chiron's orders and ventures out to locate the Underworld where his mom is imprisoned, with Grover the goat-boy and Athena's steely daughter Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) tagging along. Guided by a map handed down by the Luke (Jake Abel), the cocky absentee son of Hermes, Percy and friends travel cross country from Jersey to Nashville to Las Vegas collecting teleportation pearls to save them and all of mankind from premature damnation.

Chris Columbus, former screenwriter for Steven Spielberg (Gremlins, The Goonies) and protégé of John Hughes (Adventures in Babysitting, Home Alone), is quite a populist filmmaker at heart. I try not to level accusations of pandering at him, because I've seen worse hired gun filmmakers in my time and he at least knows how to make a film which is genuinely charming for all audiences. I grew up watching Home Alone almost on a Mobius-style loop and Mrs. Doubtfire remains a fun little diversion to this day. I even tout 1991's Only the Lonely as proof that Columbus was a generous actor's director on par with Hughes, who also helped prove John Candy was a multi-faceted, undervalued presence with Planes, Trains and Automobiles. But in the new millennium, I can't help but feel Columbus has calcified into a joyless groove, especially given that his previous film prior to The Lightning Thief was I Love You, Beth Cooper, a forced, unfunny attempt at recapturing the glories of both his and the late Hughes' pasts.

Having begun the 2000s with Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone as well as The Chamber of Secrets, the 2010 arrival of Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief feels like an Oracle's sad prophecy come to life, as Columbus' workmanlike reputation comes full circle to drag him down into uncut mediocrity. Columbus' slavish, Johnny La Rue-style devotion to crane shots, the minimal-stakes melodrama and his astounding lack of visual humor can be felt with all the finesse of a blow from Thor's hammer. Whatever touches he once demonstrated with ensemble casts has become an every-actor-for-himself Survivor Series where a lot of talented people get taken down for the count. Moments of striking spectacle which incorporate some effectively seamless CGI (I especially enjoyed a ferry ride down the boulevard of broken dreams) are taken to loud, repetitive dead zones which are as immersing as trying to dunk a cookie in a lab dish full of milk.

And then there's the matter of Craig Titley's screenplay, who apparently has invoked a powerful deity I never read about in all of my Homeric high school days: Diangellus, the God of Exposition. Whenever a mortal man has no faith in the sanctity of mise-en-scène, he seemingly prays to mighty Diangellus for a thudding line of over-explanation, thereby robbing any incident of magic, wit or intelligence. It makes the film seem more like a professor's waffling lecture than a majestic feat of storytelling, as everything has to be elaborated on with stern, mood-killing bluntness. Percy's newfound destiny is given to reams of tiresome specifics without any true feel for discovery or introspection, whereas revelations like the trio realizing the rat-infested garden shop is really Medusa's lair require a lot of thudding, literal exclamations that clutter and grate.

The name of that death trap is "Auntie Em's Garden Emporium," by the way, a backfiring allusion which reinforces just how much this makes The Wizard of Oz feel even more like The Odyssey by comparison. The stifling blandness of the central heroic threesome is enough to make you want to click your heels thrice and long for home. Logan Lerman may have the face of Disney-period Kurt Russell and the coiffure of Zac Efron, but Percy Jackson comes across more like a Luke Skywalker figurine with such a colorless, angst-ridden arc to burden. Ditto Alexandra Daddario, who has the piercing blue eyes of a junior Meg Foster but little worthy motivation behind them. Brandon T. Jackson has to play deadly straight the stereotypes satirized in Tropic Thunder, thus his incessant jive-talking and nervous subservience have all the gallantry of Chris Tucker.

Columbus overcompensates with a top-flight supporting cast who put their money where their cheeks are. Uma Thurman's bitter, bitchy Medusa ("I used to date your daddy!" she righteously sneers at Percy) could evoke dreaded memories of Emma Peel and Poison Ivy, but she clearly relishes the job and gives it a seductively sinister glee. Pierce Brosnan's grizzled but still velvety charisma adds true nobility to the dialogue (well, most of it, although even he makes his obligatory "horse's ass" quip induce a strange smile) as much as Thurman conjures up alluring bile. But the real fun is to be had when the trio encounter Hades' Hollywood hideout, with a saucy Steve Coogan in arena rocker leather chaps and the smoldering Rosario Dawson (the Mimi of Columbus' Rent) as his reluctant bride Persephone, a trophy wife more voluptuously desperate than any of the fictional housewives on Wisteria Lane. One would love to see a black comedy spin-off starring these two mismatched myths.

The Lightning Thief, though, seems content to climb the peak of Mount Obvious, resigned to its Potter-by-numbers fate which effectively squanders the potential for a bankable franchise. Even the soundtrack lays it on thick, with ridiculous deployment of AC/DC when Luke mentions the "Highway to Hell" and a Vegas interlude at the Lotus Hotel & Casino pumping up "A Little Less Conversation" and "Poker Face" as the youths partake of a certain flower-shaped cookie which dutifully distracts them from their mission, given their inconsistent knowledge of Greek lore. Unfortunately, their obliviousness is shared by Columbus and Titley, who have no new tacks with the fantasy adventure material passed on by Riordan, who probably deserves better than to be aligned with the Potter plagiarisms. His Percy Jackson is reduced to a Half-Blood Fool.

1492 words later, and now here we are talking about the streamlined Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, a late-blooming sequel which jumps straight ahead to a foreign director, the amusingly-named Thor Freudenthal, and brings in Green Lantern scribe Marc Guggenheim to adapt the second of Riordan's five volumes. The Prisoner of Azkaban this ain't, with Percy Jackson still unresolved in his daddy issues and having regressed in his confidence and fighting skills. The three principal stars return fairly more seasoned, with Lerman having wowed in The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Daddario opting for the C-list scream queen route thanks to Texas Chainsaw 3-D. Brandon T. Jackson, meanwhile, is stewarded out of the picture quickly despite being written less gratingly than before, the better to make room for a few new trekkers in Percy's latest quest.

First is Clarisse (Leven Rambin), daughter of Ares and doppelganger for Katniss Everdeen. It's she whose stamina and arrogance puts her at the top of the Camp Half-Blood student body, as the newly-introduced camp owner Dionysus (Stanley Tucci with an amusing drinking problem; Chiron appears recast with Anthony Stewart Head) appoints her to head an expedition to locate the Golden Fleece, which is the only cure for the sickly memorial tree, erected by her father Zeus after she has fallen, that is the source of the camp's protective force field. But the culprit, once again being the blandly malevolent Luke, outs himself to Percy and drives the conflicted hero into further rebellious action alongside Grover, Annabeth and a one-eyed half-brother named Tyson (Douglas Smith).

Tyson essentially serves the bumbling sidekick role the MIA Grover did in the original, but with Chris Columbus receding into a production credit, Freudenthal's overall approach is more (non-union German?) Spielberg equivalent than even Columbus could claim. The film is like a less frenetic version of The Goonies, replete with intrigue on an abandoned, ancient ship (with Confederate zombies instead of pirates), but also cribs liberally from Jaws (the Charybdis is mistaken initially for a swarm of shark fins) and Raiders of the Lost Ark, especially in the finale involving a golden chest Luke uses to re-animate Kronos, the dreaded Titan who ate his own godly children but was foiled by the three Olympian brothers. Like the first film, the movie's set pieces involve some cute variation on a classic Greek figure, such as when The Grey Sisters appear as reckless, sassy taxi drivers (played by TV comediennes Missi Pyle, Mary Birdsong and Yvette Nicole Brown) who spill the beans about a numerical prophecy which concerns Percy. Also, in one of the minor nods to the star-powered stunt-casting from before, Luke's papa Hermes finally turns up, but less as Joe Pantoliano's boorish stepfather from the original and more in the form of a UPS clerk played by the dashing Nathan Fillion, the Canadian Bruce Campbell himself, thus making the resentful Luke seem more like the dull brat he really is when the former Captain Mal drolly steals his one big scene.

There is a way to make teenaged conflict work on a dramatic level which also incorporates time-honored folklore, but between both Percy Jackson movies, lackluster screenplays and badly-calculated direction are the main curses which prevent them from scaling such heights. Watching the prejudiced Annabeth belittle and berate the adolescent Tyson, who looks like the son of Encino Man, in such a shallow, unpleasant manner feels like a gross misjudgment, and when Grover finally reappears as the maid for gigantic cyclops Polyphemus (boomingly voiced by Ron "Hellboy" Perlman!), it's back to the old shuck-and-jive. Even Percy Jackson himself doesn't appear to get a fully-satisfying reaffirmation, a further shame considering Lerman is capable of greatness. Even more than the first film, whose fractured familial bonds were at least consistent with Columbus' not-so-auteur stature, this is dramatically stunted and as clockwork as the Colchis bull who charges the camp at the beginning. The movie brings Percy back to square one out of sheer laziness and the beats are all too familiar.

Say what you will about the Harry Potter, Twilight or Hunger Games film series, but at least they each created their own respective worlds and populated them with convincing analogues for their types of fan, allowing people to lose themselves in the stories. With the Percy Jackson duo, there is a crushing sense of impersonality and dreary obligation which goes against any types of vicarious thrill one could ascertain. At least Thor Freudenthal is a marked improvement over Chris Columbus, especially in regards to staging his action scenes and creating more indelible images. Such moments of marvel as Percy and friends riding a candy-colored Hippocampus as well as getting sucked into the Bermuda Triangle crackle with joy and tension, but ultimately the Diary of a Wimpy Kid director is fitted for the same strait-jacket as the over-qualified Lerman.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters feels direct-to-DVD caliber through and through, which will definitely not be enticing if there is a third installment. Too much time has passed between the first and second, and the cast are clearly getting too old for their parts. Much like Columbus and Hughes' own Home Alone series, don't be shocked if you find the second sequel recast and ushered out to an even more minute degree of fanfare. The gods are not that crazy, after all.