Blackenstein

During the blaxploitation craze of the 1970s there was a sub-genre of blaxploitation horror films.  Blacula kicked it off and was soon followed by Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, Voodoo Black Exorcist, Abby, Scream Blacula Scream, and Blackenstein.  I remember hearing rumors they were making Black Creature from the White Lagoon, but apparently that was just a rumor.  Unfortunately the same cannot be said about Blackenstein.

Blackenstein concerns a black man who has returned from Viet Nam after losing both arms and both legs.  His girlfriend (Ivory Stone) studied under Dr. Stein (John Hart), who has done some remarkable work with limb replacement using a secret DNA formula.  She asks the doctor to help her boyfriend, Eddie (Joe De Sue) and he agrees.  Eddie begins receiving treatments and has new limbs attached.  Everything appears to be going fine until the doctor’s servant Malcomb (Roosevelt Jackson) confesses his feelings for the girl and is spurned for Eddie.  He switches the DNA serum and Eddie begins to change.  He develops a high forehead and soon is reduced to grunting like the Frankenstein monster.  His mind and head may have changed for the worse, but the new arms and legs work out nicely, allowing him to begin a killing spree that leaves three people and a dog murdered on the first night.  Unlike Universal’s Frankenstein, Eddie doesn’t just stop with strangling his victims.  He rips them open and plays with their intestines for some reason.  As the body count rises, the doctor and the girlfriend remain clueless as to Eddie’s other activities.  As the film gets closer to the end, the filmmakers decide to up the score by having the female victims get their blouses torn open to expose their bare breasts before Eddie kills them.  Eventually the police track him down and attack him with Dobermans that tear him open, leaving him laying with his intestines hanging out and one of his new limbs ripped off.

This is not the film to watch if you want good acting (or even competent acting).  This is not the film to watch if you want any sort of editing skill displayed or a semblance of intelligence in the script.  This is the film that you pop in when your friends are over, they’re all half drunk (or further), and you want a good laugh.  If Ed Wood had made this film, even he might have been ashamed of it.  It is that bad. 

As a movie, I give Blackenstein 1 1/2 stars.  As trash cinema at its finest, this would rate a 9 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.

Bill Maher Be More Cynical

Did you ever look at an old picture of someone and think, “Wow, they look totally different”?  Or maybe you see your son getting serious about a girlfriend and you think about how it was only a few short years ago that the only thing he was serious about was collecting Pokemon cards.  That’s the way I felt when I sat down to watch Bill Maher Be More Cynical.  Be More Cynical was shot in 2000 before the election.  Clinton was still in office.  We weren’t at war in Iraq or Afghanistan.  George W. Bush was a fairly unknown commodity.  The twin towers were still standing, and Bill Maher was still the host of Politically Incorrect. 

The world was a different place and so was Bill.  Many of the more controversial stances he would take were not fully formed or else were hidden because of the state of the world and his presence as a late night network talk show host.  He discusses in the show how the network forbade them from making jokes about drugs.  They had to make sure that nothing they did or said might possibly cause children to experiment with drugs.  He also had a toned-down approach to religion.  On Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, Maher openly states that he is an atheist.  He even made a documentary with Larry Charles that dealt with the world’s religions and his stance as a non-believer.  During a section in Be More Cynical concerning religion it is shocking to hear him state, “I believe in God.”  Not because it’s such a radical concept, but because Maher has been so outspoken on his belief that there is not a God in recent years.

Another topic where Maher’s views have changed is on the subject of Al Gore.  In Be More Cynical Maher tells the audience that he “hate(s) Al Gore”, but during the run up to the 2008 election he spoke highly of Gore and even had him on the show to discuss climate change.

Of course people don’t watch a comedy special just to see how a performer has changed over the years.  They watch to laugh at the performer’s material.  So does Be More Cynical score in this area?  Yes, it does.  Maher is a gifted stand up in the tradition of Lenny Bruce and George Carlin that can mix social commentary with humor.  He has sections in his show dealing with then candidate Bush as well as then president Clinton, but he also has sections dealing with drugs and religion, as I mentioned, and with women and death among other topics. 

This was one of Maher’s earliest stand up shows for HBO.  His next special was Victory Begins at Home which was filmed 3 years later.  I picked it up at Big Lots but haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.  I figure I’ll be catching it fairly soon while this performance is still fresh in my mind just so I can compare.

Bill Maher Be More Cynical gets a pretty solid 9 on the Night Flight scale.  It’s a funny show, and it’s also helped by the nostalgia factor for a time when we were more concerned with the sexual indiscretions of the commander-in-chief and had a booming economy as opposed to today where the economy is in the toilet and people have to make up presidential controversies (the birthers for example) because no one has gotten a blow job in the White House since Clinton left office.

Tunnel Vision (1976)

When Tunnel Vision first came out, a local music retailer and I believe a local radio station went in with the theater showing the film to produce and give out iron on t-shirt transfers of the image from the one sheet of a television set (with arms, legs and a face) sitting on a toilet with the tag line “Laugh or get off the pot”.  I believe I got my copy at the Saint Albans Mall at National Record Mart.  I never ironed it on to anything, and it may still be floating around in my collection somewhere, but the image was burned into my mind.  I was too young to see the actual movie and there is no way I would have gotten most of the jokes, but a TV on a toilet, that was funny stuff and a little bit edgy too.

It was years before I actually got to see Tunnel Vision.  I think it was one of those films I ended up ordering on VHS from Mr. Robinson’s Comics and Cards.  I watched it and thought it was pretty funny.  Several more years went by and I bought a DVD copy off eBay.  It was a double feature DVD along with The Boob Tube.  I popped Tunnel Vision in to watch and was horrified at the absolute crappy condition of the transfer.  There were bad splices and several scenes were missing.  I found out that Cult DVD (also known as Eclectic DVD) had released it as well.  I got a copy of that edition and it was a major improvement.  The only fault I could find with it, other than lack of bonus features, was the odd removal of the sound of a fart in one sketch.  Even stranger is the fact that the fart can be heard in the trailer which is included on the disc.

As I have mentioned several times, I loved the 70s sketch movies like this and Groove Tube and Kentucky Fried Movie.  Tunnel Vision was one of my favorites because it had a wrap around storyline set in the future of 1985 concerning a Congressional hearing into the programming of the upstart Tunnel Vision television network.  The network pretty much ignored the FCC and broadcast what the public wanted to see.  There was nudity, racism, foul language and all the things the public publicly decries while privately they eat it up.  Some of the humor is dated, but some of it could almost pass for real now.  A fake television show called Remember When asks contestants to reveal embarrassing secrets about themselves while wearing idiotic costumes and performing humiliating stunts.  All three of these elements have been used several times in recent reality series and game shows.

Tunnel Vision is also famous for the many cameos of then unknown comics like Chevy Chase, Joe Flaherty, John Candy, and Senator Al Franken just to name a few. 

Tunnel Vision isn’t as funny as the first time I watched it, but it is still fun.  I give it 2 3/4 stars, but if I had never seen it before, it could have easily been 3 stars.  Unfortunately if you haven’t seen Tunnel Vision and decide you want to buy a copy, be prepared to pay.  It is apparently out of print, and copies on eBay are going for around $80 to $100 on DVD.  Even the crappy double feature edition.

Saturday Night Live The Best Of Chris Farley

I started watching Saturday Night Live somewhere around the second or third season.  At the time our local NBC affiliate was running Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in the late night Saturday slot.  My nephews in Illinois were fortunate enough to get SNL from the beginning.  I saw a couple of episodes while we were there on vacation one year and was hooked.  Once the series started airing locally, I was a faithful viewer up until the end of the 5th season when the original cast all departed.  I watched a few of the shows with the new cast, but I just wasn’t as captivated.  I didn’t start watching again until season 11.  That was the year Lorne Michaels returned to SNL.

I watched the first few episodes of season 11, but I realized that it was not nearly as funny as it had been and drifted away again by season’s end.  I returned once more at the beginning of season 14.  This was the season premiere with Tom Hanks and Keith Richards.  There was something different about the show this time.  It was actually funny.  The next week was also funny.  They had a great cast and talented featured players.  I watched for several seasons and saw new members join the cast.  One of these new members was Chris Farley.

I can’t say that Chris was my favorite member of the cast, but I thought he did some good work.  He was funny and seemed very adept at physical humor.  I was surprised to hear he had passed away when the news broke in 1997, but I shouldn’t have been.  The DVD containing The Best Of Chris Farley is the original Trimark DVD.  It contains a tribute show that SNL aired to Chris containing an opening from Tim Meadows and a collection of some of Chris’ best or most popular skits.  At one point these best of compilations were the only way to get SNL on DVD.  A few classic episodes had been released on VHS years ago, but no one had tried to issue the full seasons.  NBC Universal did finally start releasing the season sets and the first 5 seasons have been issued in very nice box sets.  I’m hoping that they continue this year with the shortened and much maligned season 6.  Season 6 is famous for introducing Eddie Murphy and for the episode where cast member Charles Rocket uttered the F bomb live from New York at the end of the Charlene Tilton hosted episode.  Only 13 episodes aired that year and only 2 of them after the Titlon episode.  The show returned the next fall with a new producer, a mostly new cast and a star in Joe Piscopo and a superstar in Eddie Murphy.  I’m hoping they don’t skip over the sixth season and move on to a more popular cast.

So how was the Chris Farley compilation?  Not bad.  It featured several full skits with Chris’ most famous characters and some clips of other famous bits including the alien ship landing where Chris’ tear away costume tore away too soon.  It’s a nice collection, but it’s only a taste of what Chris brought to the show.  Perhaps if NBC Universal continues releasing the SNL seasons, you’ll be able to see all of his work in another 10 years or so.  Until then, The Best of Chris Farley is a decent sampling.  I give it 8 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.

The Descent The Fine, Fearless And Feisty

I saw The Descent in a theater in Pittsburgh while I was doing some training for my job.  The theater that I saw it in had one of the most annoying seating patterns I have ever encountered.  The seat all faced slightly east while the screen faced slightly west, so to see the screen straight on, you had to twist in your chair to look off to your left.  If the film hadn’t captured my attention, I don’t think I could have stood to sit through the entire film.  Fortunately The Descent was a very well made horror movie and I was captivated.  The movie managed to give the audience the sence of being in a closed in dark space with these mysterious creatures roaming around.  I loved it, and when the DVD came out, I went to Circuit City and bought a copy so that I could see the original, much darker ending that everyone was talking about.  I bought it at Circuit City for two reasons.  One it was on sale, and two there was an exclusive bonus disc packaged in the box with the movie.  The next day I was in Wal-Mart and found out that they too had a bonus disc with The Descent and their edition was on sale as well.  I really didn’t want to buy the same movie again, just to get the other bonus disc.  I wasn’t even particularly keen to buy the R rated edition to supplement my unrated edition from Circuit City.  I just wanted the other exclusive bonus disc.  A long time later, I was prowling the DVD stacks at Wills and lo and behold I found the elusive Wal-Mart bonus disc.  It was still shrink wrapped.  I paid for it and took it back to add to the collection.

On Tuesday night my daughter’s boyfriend was visiting.  I was called upon to pick up dinner and to drive said boyfriend back home.  I had no problems with this as I am a good daddy, but it did make for a late start watching my movie.  I was scouring titles trying to find something short when I noticed The Descent Wal=Mart exclusive.  I decided to break the wrapping and pop it into the DVD player.

The Wal-Mart bonus disc is a mini-documentary/featurette called The Fine, Fearless And Feisty.  It features an interview with writer/director Neil Marshall as well as the female leads.  It includes some footage of the actors going through their training to be able to climb rock walls and starting to bond with each other as a group.  I didn’t really find any breath-taking information on the disc, but it was interesting listening to Marshall describe the different way that men and women in the audience react to the scene where Sarah stabs Juno in the leg, effectively serving her up to the underground dwellers.  The rest of the disc is pretty basic stereotypical commenting on the film.  The girls got bruised up doing some of their own stunts.  Wow, imagine that.  I’m glad I got the DVD, and I still love the movie (a definite 3 1/2 horror movie), but there really wasn’t much content here.  In the interest of giving Wal-Mart an exclusive DVD to promote with their copies of the movie, it seems the DVD makers simply pulled off one of the bonus features and stuck it on a disc by itself.  It’s nothing special and I give it only a 2 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.

Military Intelligence And You

In the early 1980’s Steve Martin made a comedy called Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.  In it the filmmakers took footage from old black and white crime noir thrillers and then cut in new footage of Steve Martin and his modern co-stars also filmed in black and white to make a brand new film.  In 1979 Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman did a similar stunt to create J-Men Forever although they actually wrote new dialogue for the old footage and over dubbed the soundtracks of the old serials from which they had gathered their footage.  Military Intelligence And You is the most recent attempt to make a film using this technique.

Miltary Intelligence and You uses old black and white war films, most of them shot for the servicemen of World War II, and cuts them in with newly shot black and white footage to create a spoof army training film.  Patrick Muldoon plays Major Nick Reed part of the intelligence gathering crew.  Some American soldiers have been shot down by the German “Ghost Squadron” and the Nazis are attempting to wrest information from the men about America’s war plans.  Reed and his crew are trying to find out where the Ghost Squadron is based so that they can take them out and protect the big mission the Americans are planning to carry out.

Military Intelligence and You pokes fun at some of the conventions of WWII films as well as the overly narrated training films of the day.  When the Nazis bring an American soldier in and treat him to a good meal to trick him into releasing information, the narrator notes that the actual chances of the enemy serving you a nice meal are extremely slim as they will most likely torture you to get the desired information.  Many satirical pokes are also made at the Iraq War with characters discussing how the country would never go to war with faulty intelligence and casting off the idea of doctoring the military intelligence to make their case.

Military Intelligence and You has some funny moments, but I didn’t find it laugh out loud hysterical either.  Some of the humor is very subtle.  Some of the movie, however, doesn’t feel funny at all, at least to me.  There is a subplot concerning a tug of war for the affections of Lt. Monica Tasty (Elizabeth Ann Bennett) that feels like a bad movie cliché rather than a parody of a bad movie cliché.  It’s like the writers let the guys behind Meet The Spartans come in and write that section.  It’s not about finding the humor in the action, it’s about reminding you that you’ve seen this bit before and so that should make it funny.  Sadly that approach is rarely funny as anyone that has sat through Date Movie can attest.

Overall Military Intelligence And You is not a bad film, but it’s not as good as it could have been.  I give it 2 stars.

The Chubbchubbs!

Forgive me father for I have sinned, sort of.  On Friday morning my wife, my daughter and I all packed up and drove 500-600 miles to visit my sister and her family.  We stayed for the Memorial Day weekend and drove back on Monday.  For those 4 days I didn’t watch any DVDs.  I love my DVDs, and I have been enjoying this little project, but when I have to choose between watching a DVD or spending a couple of extra hours visiting with family that I’m lucky to get to see once or twice a year, family wins out hands down.  So for 4 days, I didn’t watch a DVD.  Today I’m playing catch up.  I have watched 4 DVDs for the days I skipped and after my eyes rest a little, I’m going back to watch today’s disc.  All four of the DVDs I watched today came from the great Illinois vacation.

First up is The Chubbchubbs!.  When I decided to catch up by watching five discs today, I began looking for some short films.  The Chubbchubbs! was a DVD I found at the Big Lots near my sister’s house.  I remembered The Chubbchubbs! being nominated for an Oscar a few years ago.  Turns out it won the Short Film (Animated) Oscar in 2002 and that the DVD was only 5 minutes and 27 seconds long.  It’s short, but boy does it pack a lot into those 5 and a half minutes. 

The CGI animation is fantastic; some of the best I have seen.  The story is cute as well.  A loser alien who works as a janitor at a popular bar called the Ale E Inn is mopping the floor while a female alien singing Aretha Franklin performs on stage.  One tipped mop bucket later, the poor little guy has nearly fried the singer.  He is fired and thrown out of the bar where a dying alien crawls up to warn him that the Chubbchubbs are coming.  When the little alien looks over the horizon, he notices a dust cloud with these armoured marauders quickly approaching.  The alien makes several attempts to warn the patrons of the bar, but they all turn out the same.  He ends up injuring the singer, stopping the show and getting tossed back out.  When someone else shows up and delivers the warning, the place clears out in an instant.  The little alien tries to leave too, but now he notices four little fluffy baby chicks.  He rushes back to save them and in the process is unable to leave before the marauders arrive.

The Chubbchubbs features a plethora of science fiction cameos in the animation.  The alien from Alien is sipping a drink, Yoda and Darth Vader are arm wrestling, Robbie the robot and the Lost In Space robot are dancing (what else) the robot.   Even ET and Jar Jar Binks manage to pop in for a quick gag.  The short was so good I had to call the wife back in to watch it.  She loved it as well.

The DVD is extremely bare bones.  Some trailers and the short and that’s it, but I’m still very happy with it.  The Chubbchubbs! gets a perfect 10 on the Night Flight scale.  If you don’t want to run out to Big Lots and pay $3 for a 5 minute DVD, I understand it is also available on the Surf’s Up DVD.

Eminem: Live From New York City

I like Eminem’s music.  I know I’m “too old” to be listening to Eminem, but I don’t buy that.  I listen to all kinds of music.  In fact my CD collection is about half as large as my DVD collection and it’s even more varied.  I have rap, hard rock, country, punk, reggae.  I have an entire CD of Elvis songs sung in Latin and a CD called Oink, which is a chant CD in pig latin.  I don’t discriminate when it comes to music. 

I purchased the first three Eminem CDs and enjoyed them.  Encore came out in a special edition and since I couldn’t find it, I ended up not getting it.  Then I didn’t pick up Curtain Call or Relapse since I had missed Encore.  That’s not to say I wouldn’t buy them if I ran across them at a yard sale or flea market or pawn shop, but I just can’t pay retail for them until I pick up Encore, preferably in the special edition.

The Live From New York City DVD was originally filmed as a live special for Showtime on December 3, 2005.  I never got around to watching it on Showtime, but I found the DVD at KV Fine Jewelry and Loan in St. Albans and added it to the collection.  Tuesday night I decided to pop it in.  The concert has a series of back stage skits that play out as well.  They all deal with Eminem getting ready to commit suicide by shooting himself.  Em’s music can be a little dark, but these bits just suck the fun out of the disc every time they come on.  As for the music, many of the songs are chopped down to a shortened version so that he can fit in as many songs as he can in the 79 minutes.  You might get one verse and the chorus and then he starts on the next song.  I found this disappointing, but what was even more disappointing is that instead of performing more of his greatest hits, at least a third of the show is performances by D12 and guest artists Obie Trice and Stat Quo.  That would be fine if they were opening for Eminem or if the show was billed as Eminem, D12 and other rappers, but it’s not.

One other thing that irritated me about the show was the way they went about trying to get the audience to sing.  I know it’s a staple of the live show to let the audience belt out a phrase or two here and there, but Eminem seems to do it on almost every song and multiple times in every song and most annoying of all, he would have the audience sing part of the sample tracks he uses as backing.  The drop out of the music so that the audience can sing Toy Soldiers for example is just jolting and incredibly distracting from the music.  Let the audience sing over the sample, turn the volume down slightly on the samples vocal track if you must, but don’t drop out everything for two lousy words.

I may have been the only person with these complaints as the camera at the event showed an audience having a great time.  One girl that they kept cutting to was so excited that she literally cried through the entire show.  Every time they showed her, she looked like she had just watched her entire family get slaughtered in front of her.

At 79 minutes, Eminem: Live From New York City is too long for me to rate on the Night Flight scale.  On the 4 star scale I’m afraid Eminem only gets 1 3/4 stars.  I wanted more of the songs, more of the hits, and less D12 and guests.

One Night Stand: Louis C.K.

I remember when we first got HBO.  One of the greatest things about it was watching the stand up comics.  The first one I saw was On Location: George Kirby.  I thought it was incredibly funny.  Through the years I saw some classics and some truly boring sets.  I remember Norm Crosby being particularly funny and Redd Foxx being hysterical.  Amazingly I don’t really recall the horrible ones.  I might be able to point them out if I looked back through my HBO guides, but none of them etched a place in my brain. 

Chick McGee on the Bob & Tom Show once called Louis C.K. one of his favorite comedians.  I wasn’t really all that familiar with Louis, but when I went to Big Lots last fall and found a bunch of HBO DVDs, I took Chick’s advice and picked up One Night Stand: Louis C.K..  Monday night I decided to put Louis’ stand up DVD on and see what I thought.  The DVD features his One Night Stand appearance as well as an earlier appearance on one of the Young Comedians Specials.  The One Night Stand is very funny.  Much of it deals with his struggle to be a good father.  Lots of it deals with sexual topics.  All of it is pretty darn funny.  His bit on the guy with the “Honk if you love America” sign standing by the road presents a counter argument that I had never thought of before, and his discussion of his wife asking him why he didn’t start the washer after he loaded it and put in the cleaner, contains observations that only a husband can sympathize with.

The DVD seems to have been released originally to coincide with the launch of Louis C.K.’s show for HBO, Lucky Louie.  The DVD features a behind the scenes look at the show as well as a sneak peek.  Ironically, I also picked up the entire first season of Lucky Louie at Big Lots in that same sale.

One Night Stand: Louis C.K. rates a 8 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.

The Amazing Johnathan Wrong On Every Level Uncensored

I saw part of The Amazing Johnathan’s special on Comedy Central one day as I was getting ready for work.  I thought it was pretty funny, and wished that I had more time to watch it and that it was censored.  Imagine my surprise when I was looking at Books A Million on Saturday and ran into the uncensored DVD of the show.  I snatched it up (along with a copy of Howard The Duck) and added it to my collection.  Of course since I still needed to watch a DVD for Saturday, guess which one I chose.  Yes, The Amazing Johnathan Wrong On Every Level Uncensored.

If you’re not familiar with The Amazing Johnathan, he is a comedian and a magician.  His magic is pretty good, but he never lets it stand in the way of a good joke.  He starts a card trick at one point, but he has no intention of actually performing a typical magical card trick.  The whole set up is part of a joke, actually a series of jokes, all based around magician’s card tricks. 

Johnathan is not afraid of a little blood and gore either.  His ring trick ends with his “volunteer” getting his tongue ripped out and blood flying everywhere like watermelon at a Gallagher show.  He does tricks with razor blades as well.  His act is not for the squeamish.

Another part of Johnathan’s show that I really enjoyed was his ditzy sidekick Psychic Tanya (Penny Wiggins).  Penny allows for Johnathan to do some dumb blonde jokes, but she also delivers a very funny bit involving Blue Man Group tickets.  The first time I saw it, I laughed my ass off. 

The DVD is a great bargain as it also contains a bunch of deleted scenes, Johnathan’s performance on Premium Blend and his other Comedy Central show, Comedy Central Presents The Amazing Johnathan.  If you like stand up and you like magic, I can’t recommend this enough.  It’s hilarious.  At 42 minutes, Wrong On Every Level earns a 10 on the Night Flight scale.