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| "Feliz Navidad. Soy Santo Claus." |
The Duke and the Vicar would like to wish their subjects and parishioners a very merry Xmas, happy Hanukkah, super Kwanzaa, Wonderful Winter Solstice, fantastic Festivus, and Atheistic Another Day. May your presents be what you wanted, and may all your vampires be lesbian.
Please enjoy this exploding head as our gift to you.
Bunnies,
The Vicar and the Duke
In honor of the holiday, a sonnet I wrote some time ago imagining the darker side of the old Irish legends (as if there were a *brighter* side!). Not related at all to the movie starring Jennifer Aniston, except for the fact that Warwick Davis has already agreed to star in the film adaptation of this poem.
The Leprechaun
The little man slips sly out of the wood
and knocks the dirt clods off his hobnail boots.
Westward, the sun becomes an orb of blood
and creeping shadows blanket hard, gnarled roots;
His coat is road-worn, holes in the elbows;
his tattered trousers: mud-caked as his shoes.
Burst vessels spiderweb his swollen nose;
his face, once jolly, darkens like a bruise.
The bottle in his fist helps him forget
the shame and pain he's left, the stories told
about him in his former village yet:
how he, of all his kind, first lost their gold.
He spies the thief, asleep in his back yard,
fingers the knife, and smiles--this won't be hard.
Valentine's Day is a time when we're obligated by the might of the Romantic Industrial Complex to spend some time (and an insane amount of money) thinking about the ones we love. Because I, the Vicar, love you, my parishioners, in a very real, deeply emotional, and possibly legally actionable way, I thought it only fitting that I offer you a little gift as a token of my carnal esteem.
But since candy is bad for me (and I know you'd want to share), flowers are cliched, and jewelry costs more than I'm frankly willing to spend (what, you think the Church of Antique Video Formats pays that well?), I've decided instead to give you the gift that keeps on giving: a pictorial bouquet of some of the most Zangworthy Actresses to grace the pages of Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies so far! And if you prefer your bacon a little beefier, stick around...there's a bonus.
Get the lotion and click away!
1. Edwige Fenech
Possibly the woman for whom the term ZANG was invented, Edwige improves the quality of any movie she's in by sheer force of smokin' hawtness. Her acting chops aren't bad either.
MMMMMovie Reviews: All the Colors of the Dark, Ubalda, All Naked and Warm.
2. Yutte Stensgaard
Ever since the lil' Vicar first saw Ms. Stensgaard covered in blood in a book of horror movie stills, it's been love. A formative influence on the Vicar's future attributions of scream queen zang-worthiness, Yutte is a beaut (in her birthday suit).
MMMMMovie Reviews: Lust for a Vampire, Zeta One
3. Rosalba Neri
So hot that the sadistic warden of a women's prison STILL allows her to wear her sheer stockings with her jailhouse uniform (strangely, it totally works) and smart and ruthless enough to seduce a retard, put another man's brain in his body, and use the resulting monster to avenge her father's death, Rosalba Neri (aka Sara Bay) just may be the perfect woman. If not, she's close enough for me.
MMMMMovie Reviews: 99 Women, Lady Frankenstein
4. Barbara Crampton
We can't talk about formative influences on the Vicar's scream queen tastes without mentioning the gorgeous and talented Barbara Crampton, whose fearless work in Re-Animator has rightly made her a movie legend. I don't know how many VHS tapes got worn out at one specific moment in that movie from excessive rewind/replaying, but I know about at least 3 for a fact. (The Vicar ALWAYS springs for Movie Protection Insurance!) I actually got to meet Ms. Crampton a couple of years ago and a horror con, and she's a delight in person as well as on film. Plus, she smells nice.
MMMMMovie Reviews: Chopping Mall, From Beyond
5.Helga Liné
A memorable collaborator of Paul Naschy's and a dominating presence whenever she's onscreen, Liné is paradoxically cold as ice and hot as lava. With aristocratic looks and a sneer of command you wouldn't even THINK of refusing, Helga is the Ice Queen of my dreams.
MMMMMovie Reviews: The Dracula Saga, Horror Rises from the Tomb
6. Marisa MellIf she'd never made any other movie appearances after Danger: Diabolik, Marisa Mell would still appear on every unbiased list of OMG SMOKIN HAWT-ness compiled ever after. She did appear in other movies, but for my money there was never anything hotter or groovier in the history of cinema. I want to cover my bed with ten million dollars just in the hopes she'll stop by.
MMMMMovie Reviews: Danger: Diabolik
7. Tura Satana
The definition of Bigger Than Life: warrior goddess, anti-hero, and happy dream all rolled into one. Russ Meyer's enduring contribution to American Myth is a figure he didn't even create--he just pointed the camera at Satana and she did the rest. Never has beauty been more terrifying. Hurt me, Varla, hurt me!
MMMMMovie Reviews: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
8. Françoise Blanchard
One of my favorite parts of one of my favorite movies, Blanchard floats across the screen like an endlessly beautiful, endlessly sad ghost. Her performance as Catherine in Jean Rollin's gorgeously tragic fairy tale is absolutely transcendent. Her smokin' hawtness is almost beside the point. Almost.
MMMMMovie Reviews: The Living Dead Girl
9. Valerie Leon
You need an explanation here? I mean, come on, just LOOK at that. So beautiful it makes you want to defile an ancient tomb, IYKWIM.
MMMMMovie Reviews: Blood from the Mummy's Tomb
10. Alexandra BastedoEurocutie Maribel Martin is nothing to sneeze at in Vicar-fave Blood-Spattered Bride, but for sheer otherworldly gorgeousness she can't hold a candelabra to Bastedo, who is so exotic and sexy you almost forget she's an undead creature bent on the destruction of the patriarchy. Or else you don't care--deconstruct me, baby!
MMMMMovie Reviews: The Blood-Spattered Bride
11. Candace Glendenning
Those eyes, that hair, the beautiful smile--oh Candace, can't you see that it's kismet? Working with the likes of Brit auteurs Pete Walker and Norman J. Warren, Candace is worth staying up to watch the late late show for any time.
MMMMMovie Reviews: The Flesh and Blood Show, Satan's Slave, Tower of Evil
12. Marianne Morris and Anulka
Stars of another of my favorite flicks over and apart from the titillation factor (which is SUBSTANTIAL), these two women are impossible to choose between. Their chemistry and strange relationship is the central crux of the movie, and director José Ramón Larraz uses it to craft a real horror masterpiece. Plus, I mean, really--DOUBLE ZANG.
MMMMMovie Reviews: Vampyres
13. Soledad Miranda
I'm still not sure how I feel about Jess Franco's work by and large, but you cannot argue that Soledad Miranda is a picture of 70s hotness. I know vampires are not supposed to sunbathe, but as long as the vampire is Soledad, I find myself not too worried about the mythos here.
MMMMMovie Reviews: Vampyros Lesbos
BONUS: Jean Rollin's Fur Bed
Rollin is one of my favorite directors, and this image from Shiver of the Vampires (which he recreates in Requiem for a Vampire, to lesser effect imo) is one that will forever be burned into the beauty section of my brain. Thank you, Mr. Rollin, from the bottom of my heart.
And if chicks ain't your thing...
1. Paul Naschy
What, you thought I could leave Jacinto off a list of heart(?) throbs? Manly, suave, and with an undying love for old-school monsters, The Mighty Mighty Molina brings all the girls to the yard, and boys too, if reports are to be believed. If you don't see why...well, just get (the fuck) out of my club.
MMMMMovie Reviews: Lots of 'em!
2. The Hoff
Nuff said!
MMMMMovie Reviews: Starcrash, Witchery
Happy VD from the Vicar!
I've gone on record before as saying that I generally just don't "get" the appeal of the Killer Santa movie. I mean, I get the whole "twisting something innocent and childish into something dark and wrong" thing. I can appreciate the fact that Silent Night, Deadly Night got a lot of squares bent out of shape when it came out in 1984, and the idea of people picketing a slasher flick because the killer dresses as Santa does give me a little bit of holiday cheer. (Come on folks, we're not saying he WAS Santa--that would have to wait until Goldberg's turn as St. Nick a couple of years back.) But once you get past the "OMG It's Santa and he's KILLING PEOPLE!" idea, there's really nowhere to go but down in my experience.
That's why for my nod to the season I chose Edmund Purdom's festive holiday offering, Don't Open Till Christmas. Also released in 1984, this is a Santa Killer movie with a twist--rather than centering around a Santa who kills a la 1980's Christmas Evil, this British production turns the formula on its head and gives us a killer who only kills Santas! You see what they did there?
I know, the plot sounds like it would be just as one-note as its inverse, and in truth it easily could have been. But due to some likable actors, a breezy pace, a serviceably intriguing plot, and an absolute barrage of entertaining and creative Santa kills, Don't Open Till Christmas manages to keep the Vicar smiling from start to finish. And that's more than you can say for last year's rancid eggnog--I speak from experience.
The movie wastes no time getting down to business, as we open with a drunken party-goer in a Santa suit stumbling out into the alley with his date, heading for his parked car and a backseat tête-à-cock. As they climb in and climb on, the previously stationary camera becomes a hand-held pov, the soundtrack fills with heavy breathing, and we approach the unsuspecting lovers--all to the tune of an obvious and hilarious synthesized Jaws score rip-off. After circling the car once, the POV character is shooed off by the annoyed and horny Saint Nick, who gets a knife in the ribs for his trouble! Which of course drops him like a rock according the b-movie biology rules. Ms. Claus manages to escape from the car and plaster herself against an alley wall before meeting the same fate.
After a credit sequence featuring a flaming Santa gnome, a nice minor-key music-box rendition of "Jingle Bells," and a mysteriously missing apostrophe, we're right back into the action. A fancy dress party is going on at the local discotheque, where Kate (Belinda Mayne) and her boyfriend Cliff (Gerry Sundquist) are helping Kate's father dress as Santa for the party-closing skit. Unfortunately Dad's delivery is interrupted by an unscripted SWORD THROUGH THE BACK OF THE HEAD, right there on stage in front of his horrified daughter! Someone is DEFINITELY on the naughty list!
"Ho-ho-HO-LEE SHIT!"
Next we cut to Scotland Yard, where Chief Inspector Harris (Edmund Purdom) and Sgt. Powell (Mark Jones) are discussing the recent rash of one-horse open slayings. "It was the costume he was wearing," the velvet-voiced Harris intones. "He was the victim...of another SANTA MURDER!"
And there you have the flick's set-up almost in its entirety. There's a maniac loose in London, raining jolly death upon anyone with the misfortune to cross his path dressed as St. Nick. Harris and Powell do their best to get to the bottom of things, but since "the whole of the West End is crammed with Santa Clauses!", containment proves difficult. The cops question Kate and Cliff, and it's clear that Harris counts Kate's flute-playing Significant Other as one of the top suspects. The herrings get redder when investigative journalist Giles (creepy Howard Stern/Jeff Goldblum hybrid Alan Lake) advises Sgt. Powell to keep a close eye on his superior officer. Powell laughs it off at first, but when Harris starts acting strange and proving oddly elusive to the tail Powell orders, the sergeant has to widen his net.
As I mentioned above, the flick moves along at a breezy pace, with plenty of amusing dialogue and off-the-wall character moments (such as the disappointment of Harris's sweet-old-lady housekeeper when she doesn't get to peek at the police photos from the murder scenes) to keep you smirking. Director Purdom does a great job as the harried but grimly jocular Inspector Harris--his voice and looks remind me of Albert Finney's best roles, and he carries a similar gravitas. Belinda Mayne is appealing if stiff as the grief-stricken daughter (though it has to be said she recovers pretty quickly from seeing Dad shish-kabobbed before her eyes), and Mark Jones also does well as the capable, wry sergeant. In fact all the actors are very likable, except for Sandquist (whose character is kind of a twat, so that's no fault of his acting) and Lake, who it's not much of a spoiler to say comes out of the herring barrel and into the open water fairly quickly.
Merry Christmas, kiddies!
The movie was never going to win any awards on technical merit. Besides a few good pov hand-held sequences and one or two effective lighting set-ups, the cinematography is fairly static, the shot-framing uncreative. To call the editing "slapdash" would be kind. And while many of the actors are likable enough, their delivery is often stilted and the dialog clumsy--sometimes hilariously so. Plus, with the killer's identity revealed definitively 2/3rds of the way through the flick, the movie's one claim on suspense goes out the window.
But Don't Open Till Christmas manages to overcome all these drawbacks with sheer entertainment power, thanks largely to the sequence of darkly hilarious Santa kills that pepper the plot development like bloody commercial breaks. Whenever you see a guy in a Santa costume stumble into frame, you know he'll soon become a cooling Corpse Kringle--and yet the kills are so varied and creative that it never stops being fun. For instance, in addition to the aforementioned opening stab and sword-through-the-head shots, we also get:
The movie also throws us a few curves once the killer is revealed, as a couple of major characters make rather surprising exits, one character disappears entirely and is never mentioned again, and the killer meets his fate in a surprising but satisfying way. Tack on a slam-bang ending and this movie definitely goes out on top.
Somebody spiked my punch.
Maybe some day I'll give one of those other Santa Killer movies a go with a more open mind, but it's hard for me to imagine enjoying any of them more than Don't Open Till Christmas. 3 thumbs for pure entertainment value. It's been released on its own and as part of dozens of public domain cheapie sets, including the so-far pretty good Mill Creek 50 Drive-In Movie Classics set. So if you're in the mood for some holiday cheer, pour yourself some egg nog, grab a candy cane off the tree, and settle in to watch Santa die, over and over again. You'll be glad you did.
It's easy to get entrenched in a specific point of view, to an extent beyond the weightiness or even usefulness of the original argument that occasioned it. I'd wager we can all think of times-- whether we were discussing politics, religion, or the whether the responsibility for one party's having nearly dipped her ass in the toilet water is more appropriately assigned to the party who left the seat up than to the party who couldn't be bothered to even take a freaking LOOK at the thing before plopping right down*--where the question itself takes a back seat to the emotional investment both sides have in their stated, taken positions. Heels get dug in, battle lines get drawn, and the war rages independent of the larger considerations of right and wrong.
*Hypothetically
In such cases one runs the risk of becoming intractable, locked into not only a point of view but a moment in time, so that even when circumstances, tastes, or experiences bring new interpretations to the old data, one feels he cannot, MUST not abandon the argument into which he's poured so much time and energy. It takes an epiphany, a special kind of leap to climb out of the trench and reconsider things with a fresh, open mind. And, as it is often said, it takes a big man to admit he was wrong.
I am, if nothing else, a big man.
Also, hairy.
I decided shortly after my first viewing of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, more years ago than I'd care to admit (so long it might actually pre-date the film's production in a weird Dr. Who kinda way), that I just didn't like it. It wasn't because of the lack of Michael Meyers--while I do like the big guy, I'm not as emotionally invested in him as many around the horror blogosphere seem to be. It just failed to click for me, failed to coalesce into anything that stuck in my brain and said, "Hey, check me out--I'm awesome." Apart from a few clips on the requisite Halloween retrospectives and the occasional internet paean to the third flick's undiscovered genius, I thereafter avoided giving Halloween III much thought at all. When it did pop up, my thoughts usually ran, "Oh yeah, that's the one I don't like," and promptly dismissed it.
Well now I'm older, hopefully wiser, and definitely more understanding and forgiving of cinematic craziness than I was in my younger, overly serious days. So after listening to the Duke wax poetic on Tom Atkins's moustache for the umpteenth time, receiving a sealed command to the effect from the Administrative Offices of the Tenebrous Empire, and generally failing to find anything else appropriately holiday-themed and MAD sounding for my Halloween viewing this year, I decided to put the past behind me, swallow my pride, and give Halloween III another chance.
Internets: I was wrong.
For the two or three people out there who don't know the story already, here's a quick and probably not entirely accurate history lesson: legend has it that after successfully ripping off--er, improving upon the holiday slasher formula pioneered by Bob Clark's justly revered Black Christmas, a young John Carpenter had Hollywood by the tail, not to mention a trailer full of empty Marlboro cartons. Dutifully cashing in with the relatively quick, right-where-we-left-off sequel Halloween II (a movie that unlike H3 I have *always* liked), the most successful indie filmmaker in history hatched a new and exciting plan for the series--rather than focusing on The Shape, each sequel would focus on the holiday of Halloween itself, delivering a new spook story every year or so, raking in the holiday horror bucks and allowing the directors and writers to flex their creative scary muscles while not being tied to any one set of characters or situations.
Tom Atkins does more drinking and smoking before 10 am than most people do all day.
It's actually a very sound plan--a sort of "movie series as extended anthology" of the kind attempted by the HBO Tales from the Crypt movies.* But while we can safely blame Dennis Miller for the failure of that latter day series, John Carpenter's scheme was doomed by its progenitor's massive success. The Halloween brand was already locked in moviegoers' minds as "The One with Michael Meyers," and audiences proved unwilling to go along with any plan that did not involve his unsmiling, paleface-Shatner mug. The plan was abandoned and other writers and directors brought back The Shape in a series of profitable but largely bad sequels, leaving John Carpenter to pursue other projects while not sitting home smoking or cashing his steady royalty checks. Therefore Halloween III: Season of the Witch now stands as the only cinematic evidence of what might have been.
*The similarity of these movie-making schemes has led some conspiracy theorists to suggest that The Crypt Keeper is in fact an aged, tobacco-withered John Carpenter himself, trying to give the plot another go. Extensive investigations in comparative photography have not yet ruled out the possibility that the two entities are one and the same.
I'm not going to go through an extended point-by-point summary of the plot; the Internets are lousy with them, and I don't need to add to that. In compressed form: the manufacturers of the most popular line of Halloween masks of the season turn out to be evil Druids from Ireland, who have stolen a piece of Stonehenge and are using chips of the magic rock along with modern technology to turn each mask into a Black Magical Head-Bomb! When triggered by a special television broadcast on Halloween night, the masks will kill all the little ghoulies watching by turning their brains into venomous snakes, spiders, and flesh-eating beetles, which will then presumably kill everybody else. Local alcoholic divorced doctor Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) uncovers the mask company's wicked scheme and must fight the CEO's army of superstrong clockwork automatons to prevent all the little monsters (including his own kids!) from getting a treat that would make Charlie Brown's rock-bag look good.
"Power Rangers? Iron Man? Don't be gauche."
And there's no Michael Meyers. Get over it.
Revisiting H3 after all these years, I can see where it lost the younger me. It starts off silly and just gets progressively more insane until energetically leaping over the line into gleeful batshittery at the end. It does not operate by the same rules that apply to real life, or even cinematic life. It works instead by what La Belle Dame Tenebrous has called "kid logic." For instance, the villain's motivations are never quite clear--basically he's doing this because he's eeeevil, and that's good enough. The logistics of stealing a massive slab of granite from one of the best-known archeological tourist attractions in the world (and somehow smuggling it to a small rural town in California completely under the radar) are brushed aside with a throwaway line of dialog. ("We had a time getting it here--you wouldn't believe how we did it!") And the automatons--entirely gearwork and oil, they somehow have the power to crush skulls and rip heads off spines--that's one tightly wound mainspring! And with a single anonymous phone call, an unknown doctor is able to change the nationwide programming of 2 out of 3 major television networks. To the younger me, it's all just too many pills to swallow.
Of course the older me is ADDICTED to those pills.
Stick out your tongue and say AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!
Because the thing about Kid Logic is, while it's not heavy on explanation or logistics, it excels at the spooky, stick-with-you idea or image. Why would anyone give a known killer--in an asylum--a razor-sharp hook for a hand? I dunno, but think of that thing hanging on your door handle. It WORKS. Same thing here--only turned up to eleven and set on FIRE.
It helps that the kids themselves are the targets of the wicked, deadly scheme. Baddie Conal Cochran (an excellently elegant and creepy Dan O'Herlihy) is not screwing around here. HE'S COME FOR YOUR CHILDREN. I mean, clockwork guys ripping the heads off hobos and battle-axe women with blowed-up faces are creepy enough, but GRAPHIC CHILD MURDER? That's above and beyond. I would posit that Lil' Buddy Kupfer's icky demise in Testing Room A (why are they testing on the DAY of the event? It doesn't matter) is directly responsible for the continued dismal sales of Jack-O-Lantern masks in the United States to this day.
In lieu of plot summary, I offer you this catalog of awesomenesses, taken chronologically from my viewing notes. Please feel free to add your own geekery over favorite moments in the comments:
YEE-OWCH.
Geezer Geyser
That'll never come out of the shag."You don't really know much about Halloween... you thought no further than the strange custom of having your children wear masks and go out begging for candy... It was the start of the year in our old Celtic lands, and we'd be waiting... in our houses of wattles and clay. The barriers would be down, you see, between the real and the unreal, and the dead might be looking in... to sit by our fires of turf. Halloween... the festival of Samhain! The last great one took place three thousand years ago, when the hills ran red... with the blood of animals and children."
So there you go. I think the tally speaks for itself. I'm glad my friends forced me to give this one another go, because now I see what I've been missing all these years. While not perfect, H3 is always entertaining and even manages some creepy moments scattered amongst all the completely insane kid logic of the plot. So H3, I apologize. 2.75 thumbs. I'll be seeing you again...
Conal Cochran: "Suck it, Mike."
358 days till Halloween, Halloween, Halloween...
I guess by 1988, most of the holiday horror films had already been made. Halloween, Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine, April Fool's Day, Bloody New Year, Mother's Day...directors were rapidly running out of holidays during which to set their fear flicks. And though it would be a good five years before the trend (and little person celebrity Warwick Davis) would reach its nadir by settling on everyone's favorite Irish/American parade day, for director/writer John C. Hughes, pickings must have looked pretty slim. I can imagine the titles scribbled on wadded pieces of paper in his wastebasket: The Columbus Day Slayings? Violence on Veteran's Day? Washington's Bloody Birthday? Nothing quite clicked. Still, Hughes was determined to deliver a holiday-themed slasher, and it was only a matter of time before all the tumblers clicked into place and unlocked the door to filmic history--before Hughes' sleep-bleary eyes settled on the last Monday of May...
MEMORIAL DAY.
Suddenly, everything must have just flooded from his pen onto the page. A secluded campground, where legions of prospective victims come for fun and frolic...the dark secrets of a sinister past lurking out beyond the tree line...a park ranger who is the only man that can overcome the evil, if he vanquish his own inner demons first. And a killer driven to righteous rage by the inconsiderate campers who toss aluminum cans into streams and drive their ATVs roughshod over mountain trails, despoiling Mother Nature without a thought to the consequences...a killer dressed in animal skins...
Hughes's finished product, Memorial Valley Massacre, is an almost perfect storm of b-movie cheese. Bad acting? Sure. Low rent effects? Uh-huh. Ridiculous, endlessly quotable dialog? Oh yeah. Casio keyboard score? Holla! Characters that could only exist in a silly 80s slasher? Check the hell out of that! It all adds up to about an hour and forty minutes of fun, a little slice of b-movie heaven.
John Kerry (not THAT one, sadly--though he would have been awesome in this role) plays Park Ranger George Webster, formerly "the best special forces tracker in Viet Nam!", now an alcoholic shell of a man reduced by personal tragedy to looking over Cameron Mitchell's corporate-sponsored campground development, Memorial Valley. Seventeen years ago Webster's infant son was kidnapped, and after a botched sting operation during the ransom payment, his son and the kidnapper vanished into Memorial Valley, never to be seen again. He's spent the better part of the last two decades scouring the woods (in between drinking binges) looking for his son. Perhaps alcohol has dulled his tracking abilities, or perhaps the Memorial Valley flora is harder to read than Viet Nam jungle bush, but for whatever reason, he's been entirely unsuccessful.
Not wanting to see his investment founder, Mitchell brings in his son David to keep an eye on Webster. The tension between the two is palpable, though through the course of the movie each earns the other's grudging respect. Memorial Valley Campground is set to open on Memorial Day Weekend, but someone is sabotaging the event--a construction worker is killed (prior to the opening credits) and the water supply is tainted with the decomposing body of the guard dog assigned to watch the equipment. Though Webster wants to cancel the opening, Mitchell insists they open anyway--and the campers roll in, heedless of the danger.
And what a group of campers we have: the independent, lone hawt chick, who at first rejects the young David's advances, but later embraces them fully; the middle-aged biker group, pining for the days when they were a force to be reckoned with, now just paunchy old guys trailing beer cans and carbon monoxide; the strange teen threesome there for a weekend of hormone-induced revelry, though the female of the groups seems content to pit the boys against each other and never "deliver"; the gravel-throated marine Lt. Mintz and his buxom wife Pepper; and the amazing man-child Walter, a delinquent with woman's voice and Sydney Greenstreet's physique who steals every scene he's in, as well as the viewers' hearts.
And then there's the killer himself, who we see less than 15 minutes in as he wrecks the camp's storage shed--and he's a caveman! Looking like a cross between the Ultimate Warrior and an extra from Quest for Fire, this friend of nature fights back against the destructive forces of civilization, with bloody results.
This movie is so much fun, I don't want to ruin it for anyoneby going into great detail, but here's a few things you can expect going in: a Casio keyboard score that is THE STAR of the movie; wanton destruction of nature; a crowd of "poisonous" garden snakes on a picnic table; the teen cocktease (who has chronic nipple-itis) doing a wet t-shirt dance in the thunderstorm (strangely without music); astounding caveman gymnastics; spot-the-continuity flubs; hilarious tent-sex shadow-humpage; a caveman befuddled by an ATV (attacks it with a club) but who later disables all vehichles by removing distributor caps (?); clumsiest attempted caveman seduction EVAR; greatest camper a'splosion EVAR; a multi-biker death scene that defies belief; and so much deliriously dumb stuff I can't even begin to do it justice.
Signature moment: the caveman, tracked by John Kerry, pushes down a tree to hinder him. In what is truly one of the finer examples of the magic of cinema I've ever witnessed, the effect of the falling tree is accomplished ENTIRELY through editing and sound effects! You WILL believe that a tree fell!
This one must be seen, definitely a 2.75 thumber. Be warned: this movie will make you stupider--but that's okay, because that way you'll love it even more than you could if you were smart. Surrender to Captain Caveman. Enjoy.
PS--more fun in the end credits. "Song by RAT PACK." "Thanks to Ticate Beer." And for some mysterious reason, the production designer's credit appears at the ABSOLUTE END of the credits, even after that little oval symbol and disclaimers, and in tiny, tiny letters--I'd love to know the story behind that. I bet the PD PO'd somebody.
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