Archive for August, 2012

28
Aug
12

Uncle Grumpyfuk Remembers ‘The Sadist’

A Review by Uncle Grumpyfuk

Ahem,cough,cough,haaaack, fa-thoo!!! Aht-heh-hem…and I call to order to this month’s meeting of the fellowship of the Enormously-Endowed Blonde-haired Blue-eyed Vegan-Hatin’, Cop-Car Vandalizing, Chicken Hawk Purple Dragon Society of middle-upper Mississippi- otherwise known as ‘Big Brothers’, wink! I’d like to open with …hey! …SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LOUSY SCRODUM-SUCKERS, take her to one of your rooms if you can’t wait! There’s a large bottle of roofinal by the anchovy ambrosia …heh, boys WILL be boys! lol ..and.. a warm, sunny new day begins my friends! To one’s mind instantly spring the lyrics from that ‘classic’ (tragic!) animated movie(*), by that McCarthy-lovin’ finger-pointing rat-bastard whose head appropriately lies cracked and frost bitten in some innovative con artist’s fucking Igloo cooler!(**)

High high ho, it’s off to work you go,
so sell that snatch I need some scratch,
then on your feet and down the street,
high-ho, high-ho,high-ho, high-ho, high-ho,
it’s back to work you go,
so find a trick and work that dick,
stick up that ass and make it fast,
I need some dough to buy my grass,
High ho, high ho,high ho, high ho, high ho,
your flabby ass in tow,
go work those Spics and do your tricks,
pick up that pace or I’ll let that crazy-ass zombie-wannabe motherfucker eat your face,(***)
high ho, high ho, high ho,high ho…

(*)You know the ‘children’s classic’ I’m talking about, about the beautiful virtuous raven-haired, porcelin-skinned Queen who was tricked and murdered most foully by the devious and meddling runaway princess, with the help of the 7 gargantuan-choaded midgets she’d shacked up with and whored herself out to for their cooperation..that…that shameless young jezebel whom the Queen had adopted through the kind charity of her generous heart, who had given the little trollop everything in the world to make her happy- a brand new scrub-mop and shiny new pail, a sweet smelling oil rag and as much luxurious lye soap as any young maiden could have wanted, to clean the rancid piss-puddled floors of the dank and ancient castle, only to be betrayed in the end by the little walking yeast infection! Yes my friends, the filthy ungrateful peasantry, always conspiring against their superior and generous benefactors, ultimately dragging them down in a bloody fit of lice-ridden animal rage, invading their crystal palaces, fouling the pristine and sweetly-scented air with the gut-wrenching stench of breaded buffalo wings, 5-hour energy drinks and anything on the Hardees menu list you care to name, destroying all, leaving a bare and ravaged wasteland where once stood the lofty  towers and glittering accomplishments of their poor, former slave-masters. Typical liberals.

(**) Shit, I wish I’d thought of that ingenious scam – milking bereaving loved ones out of gobs of dough on a continual basis for lopping off the heads of their recently-croaked loved ones and tossing them into a dressed up Frigidaire for the fantasy of their being thawed in the future for something other than food! Ha! Fuck me it’s downright brilliant! I could be richer than Whitney Huston’s coke dealer, (ah it’s old news now,don’t even try) and be pissing on Walt Disney’s frozen and cracked fucking snitch-head every morning along with my hot chai and smoked mullet biscuits!!! Sometimes it almost seems like the shit-eating universe doesn’t appreciate you one little bit, you feelin’ me? Sigh,thanks.

(***) DAMN IT!!! I am so fucking beside myself, that should have been me eating that homeless dude’s face! That should have been ME!!! Now it’s old hat! Shit!!!
…yes sir, that’s what kind of beautiful Spring day it is today! why just listen to my cat and the neighbor’s fucking underneath their window! It makes you want to grab the digital camera and head down to Orlando to Nickelodeon Studios,yessir!
Well today we’re going to be reviewing another classic piece of cinematic wonder,few seem to know about this gem, makes you want to get a shotgun and ‘take ‘out’ one of their loved ones to teach’em a little lesson,you know what I mean? Heh-heh, just joking folks, there are much better reasons to do that. Wink! This month’s review is of the Arch Hall Jr. classic, “The Sadist” or ” My Nephew Timmy” – Heh, that’s a little inside joke folks, Timmy’s been in the Little/Big House since he was 7 for stabbing his 2nd grade teacher in the liver(*) with his No.2 Squidbilly pencil for not giving Tim a ‘B’ on his report card, and here he’d told that scumbag what would happen otherwise. People just don’t take young children seriously,you’d think a teacher would know better. Yep,after that and that series of pet mutilations -you all remember- from a while back, that bitch judge sent him to juvie until he became ‘of age’,but he’s gonna git her, don’t you worry folks! He’s been taught what to do! 😉 He aaalmost escaped last July damn it, would have made it if he’d smashed that prison guard fuck a few more times but,eager youth, he saw a cat at the edge of the woods and off he went like an arrow,what can you do? Ha, I miss that little scamp…aaanyway!
(*) I taught him that one,yes I did! That rascal always was a quick learner- nevermind what the teachers said about him! Just remember, ‘Right side – liver, makes the pecker quiver, left side’s the kidney, uh, …I don’t know, makes you want to move to Sydney.’ Hell I’m no fucking poet! Fuck you, he got the gist of it! Jesus Christ!

OK, I tend to digress a tad at times, excusem-fucking-wah! Ahem. Ok, the film begins with a pair of eyes, illuminated in the darkness and a chilling voice claims, “I will hurt them. I will make them suffer as I have suffered.” and we naturally assume it’s an episode of Biography featuring Mel Gibson or Andy Richter ,but you notice quickly the eyes aren’t the dark subhuman eyes of an Aussie criminal nor are they the repulsive, tiny evil porcine eyes of uh..Andy Richter , they are in fact the bright and maniacal peepers of our hero and the protagonist of this film Arch Hall Jr., son of Arch Hall Sr.(go figure!) who directed several films, trying unsuccessfully to make the fruit of his gonads a star. Such a waste that people just didn’t catch on – but homo sapiens suck each other’s crusty anal cauliflower so what a fucking surprise,right? Oi. The narrator explains that ‘a sadist is one of the most disruptive elements in society,taking pleasure in the enslavement and debasement of his fellow man.’, heh, and still we allow a group of them to play reruns of Kate and Allie without releasing our shared rage upon them. Fools.

 

Alternate poster art under the title ‘Sweet Baby Charlie’

The credits end and the first act opens with a sputtering old car pulling into an isolated junkyard/ repair shop out in the desert in the middle of nowhere, heh-heh-heh, perfect. Then we learn, how’s this for a sweet little touch- they’re all school teachers,eh-heh, eh-heh-heh-heh-heh! There are two men and a totally humpable ditsy blonde who really plays up the innocent virginal angle so that you just want to throw her down on all fours,rip that cheap Penny’s dress to shreds and attack that ol’ browneye like a rabid gibbon, and then you know what comes next! That’s right, tea with lemon. Ha, some tissues for the ladies usher, those panties are dripping already! Whoo! As Courtney Love once sang,and that’s using the term loosely; ”Oo-oooh that smell!”( ‘…is grossing me out, someone hit my yawning box with some freaking Lysol already!’) Anyway, teachers, heh, priceless,but this is a childrens’ educational film so you want to make it fun for the kiddies, right? Sure we do! 🙂

 
The older male member of our endangered educators looks like Eugene Levy’s dad so we’ll call him Papa Jewb, get it? Ah-ha-ha-ha!! …hey,that’s a Hills Have Eyes refference you lousy racist fucks! What is this world coming to people? Fucking Pollacks. Now, the younger macho teacher looks like a llama so we’ll call him Crunchy, and we’ll refer to the porkable female math teacher as Bjork who also has that similar rimmable quality, and because we’d also like to throw Bjork down on all fours and..but I repeat myself. How do you say “I am so very sore!” in Martian, or wherever that shrieking imp comes from? Anyway, the trio looks around for the proprietors but can’t seem to locate anyone, and we’re allowed to see a clue they missed – the phone chord was torn out of the wall, known as step 3 to the knowing. 😉 After searching they decide to find a spare part,fix the car and leave the money on the table like good little school teachers. Snort,they’ve got it coming to them! ..but you know, that’s how it was back then, Uncle Grumpyfuk remembers, folks would leave their houses open and unlocked on a hot day, no ac back then unless you had money. You’d even leave the house like that when you went out to eat or somewhere because no one would break in and put your pets in the George Foreman Rotisserie Grill, to think of it nowadays, all of those unguarded plums,sitting ripe for the picking, just like after Katrina!! You sometimes start to drool just thinking about it.
After Crunchy finds a car with a compatible part Papa Jewb looks around in the house and finds still-warm meals on the table. He goes back to tell the others, then, we see a .45 auto being raised. Oh yes boys and girls, it’s party time. 😉

 

There, standing gun in hand is our hero of the film, Arch Hall Jr. and his ravishing and hauntingly silent girlfriend, the dark and mysterious Judy. Cash tells Crunchy to continue fixing the car and has a little fun spooking the trio with the .45, you know, just fucking with their heads a little. (wink!) He takes Papa Jewb’s wallet and gives him a little tap on the noggin for having so little cash, then Papa Jewb does a very foolish thing, he lets on that they’re all school teachers! Can you believe it?!? Bing bong, big wrong! In response Arch gives him a slightly more substantial tap on the noggin and smashes ol’ ‘teach’ a good one across the temple and down he goes. Little Jimmy would be so proud, someone just might find a pirated copy of this film in his Christmas stocking, to share with the other juvies! Ho,ho,ho!

 
Arch then does the Zombie Stomp on Bjork’s purse and hands it to Judy who gleefully rifles through it, the little cutie! Ah youth. Bjork asks for some water, pretending it’s for Papa Jewb (but she’s just thirsty) so Arch,after handing the pistol to Judy, gallantly escorts her to the well to fetch a pail of wah-ter. Bjork cops an attitude however so Arch dutifully casts her in the dirt and rubs her face around in it a little, you know, to teach her a little proper respect for a psychotic gun-weilding maniac, I mean jeez people, for educators these folks just ain’t too bright! Bjork, fortunately, responds quite favorably! Good to see a man who knows how to handle a woman with an attitude, and a woman who knows to stay in her place when put there – the shade of John Wayne smiles and continues to give the shade of Heath Ledger a good ol’ ‘cowpoke’,side-saddle…get it?!? Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh man I kill me…fuck I hope Tommy Morrison doesn’t!


At this point something simply must be said of Arch Hall Jr’s fantastic acting throughout. He plays the giggling psycho-killer just…just perfectly, like a true sociopath, and his leering and heckling of the trio is just superb! Bravisimo!!! ..and his laugh! His laugh has a truly wonderful unhinged quality like a mix of a young Bruce Dern, a moderately medicated Danny Bonaduce, and Butthead. (I made it my ringtone! I relish in the uncomfortable glances I receive. Life is fun!)
After returning to the others Crunchy commit’s another bungle in a long list of dumbass moves and lets on that he knows Arch is really Charlie Tibbs, a thrill killer on the run from the fuzz…remind me again how these people became teachers! Arch just about goes balistic when Judy whispers something to him and Arch turns his attention back to Papa Jewb, telling him to get down on his knees and we think woo-woo! ..but instead of the ‘purty mouth’ comment we’re expecting next Arch just starts to laugh and laugh with that great disturbed timbre, like that of a nasty disgusting retard who sees something it percieves as ‘funny’ ,like a phone book, or Mel Gibson reacting to that great bit about the 5 Kikes and the Mau-mau! (That IS a good one! “..so shove that up your fucking lemon tree Mustafa!” Ha-ha-ha! Mercy!

 
Anyway Arch informs the trembling teacher that his life is going to last no longer than the grape Nehi he’s gulping down. The guilty memories of a thousand confiscated love letters, pocket knives, small explosives and condoms rush forward in the mind of the helpless educator and it seems the cosmic whodawhatsits just isn’t playing ball with him today! Papa Jewb begs and wallows and crawls and sobs (I think he wallowed the best) in front of Arch and Judy,to their total amusement, just asking for it all the more. Meanwhile Bjork and Crunchy, limp with relief at not being chosen, play it up nonetheless. Arch offers the opportunity to take Papa Jewb’s place and they promptly tell him “Fuck that!” You can’t blame them, survival of the fittest,right! Then, the last sip, Nehi all gone! Uh-oh, Spagettios! ..and with sheer delight Arch plants some lead right between Papa Jewb’s eyes, point blank, and if you listen closely as his lifeless body hits the ground, he farts. Class dismissed..permanently! Pure hilarity! Once again, bra-vo! Crunchy and Bjork congradulate themselves.

 
While Arch and Judy chow down on some of the dead property owner’s pie and another Nehi, Bjork babbles on and on and Crunchy, realizing what a fucking ditz she is, inform her of the fact and of the additional fact that they are totally fucked. Crunchy then thinks of another inept plan and tries to get Arch to unwittingly let on how much ammo is left in his pistol, but detecting the ruse Arch goes one better, fires the gun then challenges Crunchy to attack, claiming the gun may be empty! Crunchy however tucks and chickens out,then Arch shows him the gun was out of ammo! Ha! That really had to singe Crunchy’s nut-sack hair, eh folks!

 
Suddenly the background silence is broken by the roar of two motorcycle engines and as Judy keeps guard Arch walks out front to find a pair of motorcycle cops. He plays it cool and bluffs them good, pretending to be a friend of the family, then Judy and Bjork start to fight over a bottle of Charlie and as the cops turn towards the ruckus Arch pulls out Mr. 45 and Bang!Bang! he takes them both out lickety split, easy as pie! ..and he’d just had some pie! Ha! Now that’s ironic comedy folks! He and Judy climb aboard the motorcycles and play and frolic over the dead bodies of the slain pigs, the little rapscallions!

 
They go back to the car and Arch tells Crunchy to continue fixing the pump. Bjork and Crunchy try helplessly to come up with a plan, they totally fail of course when back luck strikes! Crunchy manages to spray Arch in the eyes with some gas,dirty pool! He and Bjork take off like jackrabbits and, here’s the saddest part of the film, as Arch staggers around blindly firing he vaguely makes out a figure running up and shoots Judy! Fuck! No! Arch lets out a truly admirable scream of sorrow and primal rage and sets off to find the cursed couple and exact a Klingon’s revenge upon their mortal bodies. We can hardly wait!
Bjork meanwhile finds what she thinks is a possible refuge but stumbles upon the bloody corpses of the property owners and ‘Peow!’ makes like the friggin Roadrunner and takes off down the dirt road without a backward glance or thought for Crunchy’s sorry ass!


Crunchy’s luck isn’t so swell however and he finds himself cornered with Arch and Mr. 45,but as he raises his pistol to dispatch the pussy teacher the hammer falls on an empty chamber! Out of bullets! Crunch emits a bleat of fear and desperation and charges and we think “Arch, look out!” but Arch quickly reloads and plants two shots into the oncoming shmuck. As Crunchy lays dying and crying Arch smiles and puts three more slugs in him, ha-ha, yeah! Buh-bye Crunchy, we hardly cared to know ye. Two down, one to go!

Arch takes off after Bjork who leads him on a merry chase and you have to be impressed. She kicked off her shoes earlier and has been hauling ass all over the fucking desert barefooted and you think, shit, she might take to being thrown down on all fours and …you never know! Yep,it’s those quiet reserved types that turn into wanton animals when put in the proper environment, or chains! …like a rabid gibbon! Woo! She sprints all over the place with Arch hot on her heels suddenly he veers away from her path to intercept her when again, tragedy occurs! As he runs Arch falls into a concealed well which now seconds as a flop-house for diamondback rattlers! Oh no!!! Arch throws a shit-fit and tries to fight them off but to no avail as several sink their venomous fangs into his hide, he lets out one more agonized scream and succumbs to the poison while Bjork, hearing his cry, says “Fuck you Charlie!” (and his name IS Charlie, ha!) and heads down the road, once again just like the Roadrunner kids. Beep,beep! The End.

 

Let this story be a lesson about procrastination children, if Arch and Judy had simply slain Papa Jewb and Bjork right off  the bat, made Crunchy fix the car then killed him,they’d be off in another state with the car before the bodies were ever found, enjoying a much longer spree of mischeif, mayhem and murderlation! Don’t forget!

Ol’ Uncle Grumpyfuk is outta here kids, Saturday morning kiddie show time, as Pete Townsend wrote “The Kids Are All Right and The Little Boys Are Oh So Scrumptious!” Bye!

24
Aug
12

Wicked Stepmother: Low Rent Surrealism

a Primal Root written review

I’ve never seen a movie like it. That’s probably the most accurate critique I can give Larry Cohen’s jaw-droppingly bizarre and nonsensical 1989 supernatural comedy opus, ‘Wicked Stepmother’.  A forgotten oddity of the VHS era,  probably best known for containing Hollywood empress Bette Davis in her final screen performance, ‘Wicked Stepmother’ has got to be some kind of hallucinatory cinematic comedy milestone. Who knows if Cohen & co intended this movie to be such a rapid-fire array of awkward moments, dumbfounding performances and cheesy effects. All I know is that it all comes together as an if not totally enjoyable film, certainly an outlandishly botched witch’s brew movie delight. One thing that may be said with total confidence for ‘Wicked Stepmother’, you will never, EVER see another like it.

This fiasco begins with a police investigation led by TV’s Tom Bosley who you may remember from ‘Happy Days’ (RIP) or if your grandparents were fans of the ‘Father Dowling Mysteries’.  His mission? To locate an evil witch with a penchant for marrying her way into families and using her powers to make them unimaginably wealthy before robbing them blind, shrinking them to the size of plastic army men, and stashing them in shoe boxes under the bed.  It sure seems like a waste of time for a witch of such immense power. There’s just gotta be a more effective way to maintain a steady cash flow.

The witch in question is Miranda Pierpoint, played by the legendary Bette Davis (RIP) putting forth a stiff monotone and (we can only assume) unintentionally  disturbing performance. Miranda has just gotten hitched to an elderly widower, Sam  (played by the late, great character actor Lionel Stander with that unmistakably gravely voice). In one of my favorite sight gags of the movie, we see images of Sam’s first wife on his night stand.  Low and behold, it is Joan Crawford,  Bette Davis’ long time rival.

The new marriage comes as a shock to his adult daughter, hyper-allergenic and moderate psychopath, Jenny (Colleen Camp, who should win some kind of lifetime achievement award for this one, single cringe-inducingly campy performance).  Her husband Steve (David ‘I’ve gotta’ Rasche, desperately try to keep up with Colleen’s camp) though surprised by the sudden change in homestead seems to be taking things well, and attempts to mediate between his wife’s control freakery and his new chimney stack of a mother-in-law.  Their son Mike (Shawn Donahue, who would play his final role the next year in 1990’s immortal classic, ‘The Willies’) is appropriately willful and mainly just refuses to refer to the new addition ‘grandma’.

To Jenny’s fury, Miranda smokes more than the entire cast of Mad Men, combined, in the families’ WASPy digs. She also cooks, eats, and tempts the family with nothing but grilled meats despite Jenny’s insistence in that everyone bow to the nutritional excellence of her broccoli souffle. Although Steve is clearly inclined to give into Miranda’s politically-incorrect ways, Jenny throws her hubby one of her well-practiced psycho glares and puts the guy back in his place. He hunches over the dining room table to choke down his helping of lettuce and oatmeal while thinking about his genitals and how nice a home Jenny’s made for them in her handbag. Miranda also has a cat which unlocks an avalanche of comedic potential as Jenny is…get this…ALLERGIC to cats!  So she spends much of the movie sneezing at inopportune moments and standing around sniffling and delivering her lines with her stuffed up, mongoloid voice. Really. It is a laugh riot. Yeah.

However, my favorite scene in this mayhem shows up early as young Michael is at a beach, unchaperoned, watching some coeds in bikinis bounce & bop around via a game of volleyball.  Earlier, Michael has told Melinda he’d never call her “Grandma”, that she can, basically, burn in hell, then proved himself the deeply cool thug he is by popping the collar on his jean jacket and walking away. Apparently he was strutting his way to the beach where his requests to join in the volleyball game were denied.  However, as luck would have it, the lovely young witch Priscilla (played byTia Carrera’s sister, Barbara! SHWING!) shows up, complete with beflowered sun hat and black veil and winks at Michael, which apparently bestowed upon him with the power to do front flips over the volleyball net. For what purpose? Who knows. It impresses no one in the game and even seems to piss off the more hyper-hormonal boys of the pack. And yet, poor little 12 year old Michael has caught the eye & libido of a twenty something beach bunny. Unfortunately, as often happens at movie beaches,  two buff, blonde dickweeds start kicking sand in Michael’s face while he’s chatting up his new dish.  Again, the young lad is in luck as Priscilla gives him yet another power of Filipino Flip fighting through which Michael hops around cracking bimbo dude skulls.  All of this results in a scene of total prepubescent wish fulfillment, the busty beach bunny takes off her modest shirt to reveal her ample cleavage and offers herself up to the young man with the unmistakable innuendo, “Come here, I’m gonna show you something…” A goofy grin spreads across Michael’s mug as she leads him off to rock the freckles off his face.

The kind of Wicked Stepmother all young boys dream of.

It was around this moment I began to wonder just who was the projected market for this film? It’s a wicked stepmother, fairy tale kiddie charm, sure, but the focus is primarily on adult relationships. In fact, Michael is led off to be statutorily raped, and that’s pretty the last we see of the kid with the exception of him showing up for group shots  lasting mere seconds in the final scene. This thing’s obviously not quite for youngins… but the humor is on a pretty even keel for adolescents despite it meandering between adult issues (i.e. marriage difficulties & geriatric homicide) and it’s unchecked childish hokeyness.  99.9 % of the films run time is spent dealing with figuring out how to murder an elderly woman and a married man fantasizing about/having adulterous sex with Tia Carrere’s sister while a writhing cat tail wags around out of her pooper, growing vines in the yard against an painfully-obvious blue screen under the guise of “decorating for the holidays”, answering trivia questions on game shows, and figuring out a way to write Bette Davis out of the movie since she walked off set about two days into production.  The leave was publicly attributed to her disgust with the script, though it was later stated that the true cause was her deteriorating health.

How do they write her out, you ask? Remember Priscilla? Well, she and Miranda apparently share the body of a black cat. But, see, both spirits can’t cohabit in one body at the same time. “There’s no room for two people in one cat!” a witch academy instructor exclaims revealing this terrible piece of plotting. So,  after Miranda’s 11 minutes or so of screen time are up, she vanishes to be replaced by Priscilla.  Don’t fret, gang, the cat Miranda inhabits also smokes as much as she did, so it’s like she never left! In fact, one of the most bizarre moments of the entire film are cutaways to a black cat hand puppet paws holding cigarettes up to it’s little feline mouth and puffing away, it’s unnaturally large, bugged out yellow eyes and dilated pupils nervously darting around in their sockets.

Eventually the detective character shows back up at a clandestine witch class where Jenny also happens to be attending so she can look for answers as to how to get rid of Miranda/Priscilla for good. Priscilla learns a couple words in Latin and is ready to take on Priscilla in head to head in the ultimate blue screen combat! It’s a breathtaking sequence that pulls no punches in the bargain basement action and effects arena.   Will Jenny be able to banish the money hungry witches from her home? Or will her family end up pint-sized, broke, and shoe-boxed? To be honest, I was too busy laughing my ass off to care.

The bottom line is that ‘Wicked Stepmother’ is one of those films that must be seen to be truly understood. It’s terrible. I mean, this thing is bad. This sucker is Samurai Cop, Troll 2 level bad. But it is still ridiculously entertaining. The intended jokes all fall flat on their faces, but it is totally made up for with unintentional hilarity. It’s like some kind of surrealist fever dream that just keeps getting more absurd and illogical as it progresses. None of it makes a lick of sense and there are an abundance of moments that will leave you wondering if you just actually witnessed what you did.  Better Davis’ performance alone make up for the absurdity of the opening portion of the film.  She is never without a cigarette in her hand and recites her dialog in the emotionless drawl of a late 60’s TV robot.  Once Bette departs the film, the hammy acting, and cheese ball effects really become the stars of the show and lift this sucker up onto another plateau of Trash Cinema altogether.

I may have said too much already. I don’t want to spoil this sucker for you. But when I look back lovingly upon ‘Wicked Stepmother’,  no words can really do this acid trip of a film justice.  I’m not sure if exactly if it’s my strong palette for trash that allowed me to enjoy this thing or if it can be experienced by others and be loved just as thoroughly. I was not expecting myself to end up with the affection I now have for this piece of wack-o film making. Please, if you haven’t seen it, do so. And if you have, please, share your thoughts with us here at The Trash Cinema Collective.  Again, in the annals of cinema, there is nothing like ‘Wicked Stepmother’.

Stay Trashy!

-Root




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