The Stars Shine Bright…OPEN THREAD

Updated on August 18, 2010 By Ken Begg 47 Comments

Off to Texas!  Treat this as an open thread.  If it gets out of control, remember we still have the message board over at the old Jabootu.com site.

Oh, and here’s an Amazon link for people to use. It’s for B-Master Nathan Schumate’s (of Cold Fusion Video) books. Grab a copy! It’s cheap, and it helps to support one of our own. Or put it on your wishlist, and maybe you’ll get a copy for Christmas or something. Good stuff, though, you won’t be disappointed. There’s also a really cheap Kindle copy if that’s your bag.

I’ll check in if I can; otherwise, everyone, have a good week.

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  • John Campbell

    And the faithful did sense a vast emptiness upon the void…mighty Jabootu had stepped out…

  • Okay for your critiques – i just got back from Germany, where I was (among other things) expected to put on a film show every night for convention attendees, none of which were jaded Americans.

    First night – SARS WARS (Thailand) a barking mad Thai “zombie” movie which every Jabootuite ought to be required to see. It’s stellar. The main star looks like the little old guy from Bennie Hill, except he can act. The Brazilo-Icelandic-Anglo-Finno-German audience was exceedingly puzzled but seemed to enjoy it.

    Second Night – double feature of THE WARRIORS and THE STUFF. Since these are, technically, “good” movies, there was much rejoicing. But really I just showed these to lull them into a sense of security.

    Third Night – BLACK SHEEP, which the con attendees basically forced upon me by demand. It was much beloved of course, but in the end served as just another stepping stone to …

    Fourth Night – NIGHTMARE CITY, a glorious victory for us all. Of course they expected it to be bad – my actual words were “Umberto Lenzi does for the zombie movie what THE GIANT CLAW did for the kaiju movie”. But when the awful awful ending of this movie hit the screen, I giggled like Renfield while the entire audience, to a man (and woman) shrieked “NOOOOOOO!” in agonized comprehension. It was a massive success. If you haven’t seen this stinker, I’ll leave the end a mystery, but the hapless Europeans needed like an hour after the movie to decompress, whining non-stop about how terrible it was. They reiterated that it was the worst movie they’d seen which means they have not seen enough bad movies. IMO. Suggestions for next year?

    Oh yeah, the fifth night I showed HAUSU to a puzzled-yet-entertained audience.

  • fish eye no miko

    Sandy Petersen said: “Third Night – BLACK SHEEP”

    The David Spade/Chris Farley comedy, or the killer sheep horror comedy?

    “Fourth Night – NIGHTMARE CITY …
    But when the awful awful ending of this movie hit the screen, I giggled like Renfield while the entire audience, to a man (and woman) shrieked ‘NOOOOOOO!’ in agonized comprehension.”

    Well, in all fairness, the title of the movie actually gives away the ending, if you think about it… (-:

  • Gamera

    I’ve been told Germans have a different sense of humor than us yanks. I am curious if they react to different things in a bad movie than an American audience would?

  • Rock Baker

    So long, Ken, safe journey!

    I’ve not seen Nightmare City, but can it really be worse than Panic? Come to think of it, I’m sure Panic is one of those movies that goes under several titles. Panic is an Italian movie posing as a British movie about…well, things happen. There’s a giant rat in one scene, a drunken bum who apparently lies in the gutter making “Rar! Rar!” monster sounds, and so on. English movie theater audiences in Italian movies watch some of the most boring movies you can imagine (just endless driving footage apparently), probably just waiting for a monster to come along and spice things up. On the other hand, the film offers one of the seemingly few post-70s European movie Catholic priests who is actually a heroic character.

    You really want to watch people rip their eyes out you strap them down and show them Sin You Sinners. Nothing says sheer unadulterated terror like an ugly old woman playing a stripper (she posesses a mystical amulet that projects youth and beauty to the stripclub patrons, but this power doesn’t extend to the theater patrons).

    I did see Sars Wars (repress, repress, repress, repress, repress, repress, repress, repress, repress, represss… Okay, I think I’m better now), er, what were we talking about?

  • BeckoningChasm

    I watched “Destination Mars” on Netflix last night. It would have been a lot more fun without that sad, depressing opening.

  • Knowing what you do about my tastes, or lack of same, which Black Sheep do you suspect me of showing.

    NIGHTMARE CITY

  • Oops. I hate it when I accidentally “submit comment” before finishing.

    NIGHTMARE CITY is Umberto Lenzi’s magnum opus. It is so dumb that after showing it at T-Fest last year, a petition was circulated, signed, and handed to me that read “This movie sucks. You suck.” I now keep the petition in the DVD case with the film. It’s appalling throughout (example: in one scene the same girl gets killed twice), but the ending is really what brings it to the pinnacle of anti-genius.

    Germany humor is somewhat different than American humor, as is abundantly clear whenever I watch a Krimi’s “comic” relief, but they still ilked the Stuff and hated Nightmare City.

  • The Rev.

    One of my top three moments at a T-Fest was the reaction, and subsequent petition, after Nightmare City. I did not sign it because:

    1. I’d seen it before
    2. I think it’s a hoot, as bad as it is
    3. As Ken has said, their pain was like sweet sweet candy

    I think I’d laminate that petition and put it on the wall.

    Still, if they think that’s the worst movie ever…. geez. It’s not even the worst 80s Euro-zom movie ever.

    I wonder if they’d react the way we did to *shudder* Funky Forest? Theodore Rex and The New Gladiators would also be good bets.

  • P Stroud

    Next year just try anything with Diane Keaton in it.

    Or if you just want to be cruel then show “The Trial Of Billy Jack”. Though it might contravene the Geneva Accords.

  • Gamera

    Thanks Sandy.

    I can’t even imagine the Italians liking Nightmare City. Only good thing I can say about it is Gangrene Widescreen’s video spoof of it is a riot.

    I don’t even want to go near the movies you guys are listing as worse than NMC.

  • Rock Baker

    I may have to see Nightmare City just to see for myself, though I can’t say as I’m in any kind of hurry, it almost seems impossible that it could be worse than Night of the Zombies, Zombies’ Lake (which was a hoot, I must admit), or Oasis of the Zombies (those last two I actually have copies of).

    I should probably throw in the Thai flick Crocodile, as it may be the worst edited film I’ve ever seen (made even more cryptic by the cropped video I own -a film where the same TWO girls get eaten TWICE several minutes later!), but I’m not sure how you’re judging Nightmare City. Is it inept bad (the kind which can be sorta fun), or boring bad (which just hurts)?

  • Sandy Petersen’s “guarantee of quality” is that he tries never to show movies that are dull. That was my promise in Germany too. I didn’t promise good movies, only non-dull ones.

    NIGHTMARE CITY indeed holds your interest throughout. And I agree there are many many worse movies than NIGHTMARE CITY, but I guess my hapless European friends had encountered none of them. Everytime I watch NIGHTMARE CITY it just gets funnier, and I find new causes of delight.

    one of the big hits at the last T-fest was to count the many ways in which NIGHTMARE CITY failed to convince us that it was taking place in America.

    If you like any zombie movies at all you owe it to yourself to watch this film. It is like whatever the opposite of Mount Everest is in quality for zombie movies, but every single minute of it is a hoot.

  • The Rev.

    Believe Sandy on this one. It’s truly, outrageously fun-bad in so many ways. I can’t compare it to Zombie Lake as it’s on the very short list of ’80s Euro-zoms I’ve yet to see, but from reviews I’ve read I think it’s of a similar vein, albeit much less nudity. True, the ending’s pure agony the first time you watch it, but then you can inflict it on unsuspecting victims and feast on their misery.

    If you want good Euro-zom, you watch Let Sleeping Corpses Lie or Zombi 2. If you want painfully bad, you watch Zombi 4 or Night of the Zombies/Hell of the Living Dead (or probably Oasis of the Zombies; also on my to-see list). If you want hilariously bad, you watch Nightmare City (and probably Zombie Lake.)

  • zombiewhacker

    And if you want GREAT Euro-zom, rent [REC].

  • Rock Baker

    I’m intrigued enough to give it a watch someday (and I know who to haunt if it kills me). Can’t see myself going out of my way to track it down, but I’m game if it turns up.

    Zombie Lake was an incredible movie, in its way. They seemed determined to make the most inept motion picture in history, words can’t describe it. Ken’s nugget review didn’t even begin to imply how weird it was. It stands right along side Fury of the Wolfman and Genocide for having something wrong in every single shot. If they achieve technical competency, they’re crippled by the script. (Amusingly, this reaches over to the poster art, where a zombie is dragging a girl into the water, and his thumb is on the wrong side of his hand!)

    Oasis of the Zombies was similarly plagued by poor construction (I think one of the characters in the film was lifted entirely from another movie!), and also details decomposed Nazis returning to attack young women (rising from sand instead of water, and attacking clothed victims instead of naked ones), but lacks the energy of the Lake movie. Long, long stretches here where nothing really happens. But if you stick it out, (you get to see flashback stock footage from a much better produced war movie at one point) you get one of the best nonsencical end lines you’ll ever hear. Not so much that it’s a bad line for a movie, but that it reflects absolutely nothing else in the film!

    I know the Europeans (mainly the Italians) were swept away with Dawn of the Dead and started churning out zombie movies with the ferocity they’d earlier made Hercules epics and westerns. Did this catch on in the Orient? I figure Dawn of the Dead was a huge hit in Japan and China, but I’m not familiar with dozens (or any) Asian zombie movies from the lates 70s/early 80s. They had to’ve made a few, at least.

  • The Rev.

    I should actually amend my little list. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is far and away the best of the ’80s Euro-zoms, and honestly I should’ve probably noted it as “great”, not just “good.”

  • Petoht

    Open thread, huh? Well, the local late night critic on WGN just called Piranha 3D “the greatest film ever made”. Sure, he’s prone to hyperbole, but at least somebody on a 50,000 watt radio station loved it. But maybe he just liked the 3D boobs…

    Going to Sandy’s post, I saw Black Sheep about a year ago and laughed myself silly. It was almost like someone had a dart board and a few darts. “Huh, killer.” “Transformation? Okay, I can do this…” “SHEEP?!” Honestly, I think I laughed at it more than I did at the David Spade/Chris Farley comedy.

  • Rock Baker

    I’m going to see Piranha 3D this afternoon, my first trip to the theater in five years. I’m not expecting a GOOD killer fish movie, but I’m hoping for a FUN killer fish movie. The theater must be expecting good business, Piranha 3D is the only film they’re adding a midnight showing for.

  • Rock Baker

    Okay, I just got back from Piranha 3D……..

    I need to go watch a Disney flick to clean my brain.

  • Rock Baker

    Okay, now that I’ve had time to regain my land legs, so to speak, here’s my beef with Piranha 3D. The first half actually wasn’t bad, even if everything here was strictly stock, and the 3D effects were nice. Where things turned was during the big attack scene, which started off pretty good. The problem was the need to make things bigger and bigger and still bigger until it became cartoonish. But I could’ve lived with that. No, what killed it for me was that it quickly turned sadistic. Even my brother, seated next to me and who loves gory Japanese fare, felt it was too much. By the time it was over (horrible ending too, but I won’t spoil it for you if you want to see it), we both felt like we needed a shower and even left before the credits had finished (and I’m well-known for sitting through the entire credit sequence when I see a movie). I felt like I’d just sat through one of the nastier Italian zombie movies. My first trip to that theater in five years. I don’t think I’ll be going back again.

    If I may borrow the Things I Learned bit, here’s what Piranha 3D taught me:
    -Prehistoric Piranha leave a body only half eaten, maybe that’s why they’re always hungry.
    -Any clogged boat prop, be it by seaweed or human hair, can be cleared by turning up the throttle.
    -A severed penis will remain erect despite complete loss of bloodflow.
    -A 3D close-up of a floating penis that gets eaten by a piranha, then burped back out at the camera, is not fun to watch.
    -Guys who shoot pronos are young and charasmatic, and are in it for the chance to bed the ‘actors.’ Before this I assumed porno filmmakers would be older hacks with an eye on the bottom line, silly me.
    -Frat guys couldn’t care in the least if a state of emergency has been called, so long as they have plenty of beer. (Actually, the movies taught me that one long ago.)
    -Ving Raimes (sorry if I didn’t spell that right, Ving) in a uniform doesn’t command near as much respect as you’d think.
    -Its possible to cop an attitude while being denuded by pirahna.

  • Blink.

    Blink.

    You mean to say… that Nightmare City… was supposed to take place in the USA?

    I’ve seen it three times, and that never even occurred to me.

    Wow. Just… wow.

  • The Rev.

    The Rock sez:
    “-A severed penis will remain erect despite complete loss of bloodflow.
    -A 3D close-up of a floating penis that gets eaten by a piranha, then burped back out at the camera, is not fun to watch.”

    ………………………..WHAT.

    Normally I’d be upset by a spoiler of something shocking like that. In this case, I am very very glad to learn about it, because now I know there’s no way in hell I’m taking any underage relations to see this.

    DJF:
    Yes, “wow” indeed.

    I adore that stupid, stupid movie. Except for the nipple scene. And the ending (well, only the first time.)

  • Gamera

    You mean to say… that Nightmare City… was supposed to take place in the USA?

    D. Jason Fleming

    Ditto on that, when I saw the film I thought it was supposed to be happening in ITALY. Guess the English signs should have tipped me off it was instead supposed to be in the States. Geez…

    So is Shockwaves the only good National Socialist Zombie Movie (NSZM)???

    Rock just pretty much destroyed any chance of me seeing Piranha 3-D with the words ‘severed penis’ OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH.

    I did notice the local theater is running ‘The Expendibles’. Anyone have an opinion on it?

  • John Campbell

    I say “The Expendables” is good simply on the merits that the “The Turd from Brussels” declined to be in it.

    Plus it just looks darn good!

  • Rock Baker

    Somehow I thought I wouldn’t be too much in error if I warned potential viewers about the Floating Penis Scene (sorry if I put anyone off their lunch). If I’d known it was going to be in there, I would’ve skipped the movie. I can’t call keeping kids away from the movie a bad idea.

    The more I hear about this Nightmare City, I become more curious. If the chance comes, I’m deffinetley going to watch it!

  • Rock Baker

    “The more I hear about this Nightmare City, I become more curious. If the chance comes, I’m deffinetley going to watch it!” Which stands true, but I got nervous again reading the words “Except for the nipple scene.” It just brings so many horrible ideas to mind….., a condition not helped at all by my recent encounter with 3D killer fish…..

  • Gamera

    Rock: I think the guy at Gangrene Widescreen picked out the best scenes in the movie.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OljhU7Ss9qA&feature=related

    Since this is an open thread – my copy of Matango came the other day and I have to say I loved it! I thought it was going to be a great little cheese movie but it was a nifty atmospheric horror film. Although a little slow in the middle it had a great creepy ending. And I think it may be the best role I’ve seen for the beautiful Kumi Mizuno going from swimsuit clad, ukulele playing, bathing beauty to mushroom munching temptress.
    One thing that I found interesting is the castaways consisted of the captain, first mate, millionaire, glamor gal, nice gal next-door, and the writer. Reminds me of a vintage US TV series somehow (well except the millionaire was single with the glamor gal being his mistress and having a writer instead).

    And the other night I went to our local Korean restaurant and had some mushrooms! I think they’re safe since they’re Korean ‘shrooms instead of Japanese ones. Though I do feel a little woozy……

  • The Rev.

    RE: the “nipple scene”–I haven’t seen P3-D, but your description makes the penis scene sound quite a bit worse than the nipple one.

    Here, I’ll just tell you: a woman gets her nipple hacked off by one of the “zombies.” I don’t think he eats it, but I could be misremembering.

    It’s not particularly realistic, but it’s pretty nasty and gratuitous (and this is in relation to the rest of the Italian zombie movie it’s a part of). The movie, despite being full of stabbings and throat-cuttings and “zombie” heads being blown apart, is hard to take seriously. It’s not well-done or mean-spirited enough to be offensive. The nipple scene is the exception to that. I have never shied away from violence in movies (with the exception of ones featuring real animals being killed), but I found myself asking, “Was that really necessary?” after the scene was done.

  • Ericb

    Gamera, have you seen The Flesh Eaters? That one’s pretty much Giiligan’s Island as well except in the movie the professor is a Nazi.

  • Gamera

    Ericb: Sounds pretty darn cool, am adding it to my movies to see list. Thanks!

  • Rock Baker

    The Flesh Eaters was a pretty neat flick, Dark Sky or whatever they’re called released a really nice DVD version with a nice, sharp print. Pretty gory for, what was it, 1963? Slick low budget stuff, nice pace too, hope you enjoy!

    I don’t know how this will sound, but I don’t like seeing scenes from a movie unless I can watch the whole thing. I’m debating watching the video…

    Having a nipple hacked off does sound pretty mean, not to mention more than a little odd. Were the writers sitting around wondering what to throw in there, and were just going for the most out-of-left-field idea they could?

    Some of the edge was taken off the Floating Penis scene because of the cartoonish CGI (can you imagine being paid to sit at a desk for months and animate something like that?). Had it been more realistic, it would’ve been worse. It was bad enough though, I still have occasional flashbacks. The audience didn’t seem quite sure how to react. There were only about a dozen people there, about half of them young women(!) and the sounds were a mix of giggles and puzzled grunts and “eeewwww” noises. Even the giggles from the girls seemed half-hearted, as if they weren’t sure the movie meant for them to be giggling (like they’d heard someone tell a story that they weren’t sure was meant to be funny or not so they giggle to their friends looking for their reaction). I’m just glad I was at the matinee and didn’t have to pay full price!

  • The Rev.

    Rock–Yeah, it’s like the movie goes along its laughably horrible way, and then all of a sudden, WHAM!! Hacked-off nipple! Then it’s back to the laughable horridness. It really sticks out compared to the rest of the movie. I have no idea what possessed them.

    Also, The Flesh Eaters is a pretty nifty little movie. Not a classic, but an enjoyable bit of fun. Don’t think too hard about the monster’s weakness when it’s revealed, and just enjoy the show. Especially the villain, he’s pretty great.

  • Rock Baker

    I watched the Nightmare City trailer and the review on YouTube (didn’t finish GW’s second half of the review because the video got hung up, but I didn’t want to see the infamous twist ending yet anyway, just in case he showed it).

    It does look pretty beserk, but it also seems to show some twists on the genre -such as zombies being tactical and arming themselves- that in a better movie might’ve worked rather well (a mysterious plane containing the menace landing at a runway is a nifty way to get things rolling). It doesn’t look quite as wacky as Zombie Lake, but it does look lively! My favorite bit has to be the exploding television set. (One quibble GW had that I can’t really share is the extended sequence featuring young women clad in spandex and dancing. That seems more a treat than anything else!)

    And that was supposed to be America, huh? I suppose if you squint real hard, it might pass. Yeah, it looks quirky enough that I might enjoy it, even if European zombie flicks aren’t really my thing.

  • The Rev.

    The intelligence and speed of the “zombies” is due to the fact that they’re humans mutated by radiation. Although they have the resilience of true zombies (only head shots seem to kill them), I believe they’re technically still alive–they need to feed on blood to replenish their own radioactively-damaged blood supply. (No, I don’t know how that would work.) I would guess if they couldn’t feed, they would die for good.

    This is why I refer to them as “zombies”–they’re of a kind with the infected in 28 Days Later. Which is the only comparison the two movies have, other than, “28 Days Later was pretty damn great. Nightmare City lived up to its name because WOW it sucks.”

  • Gamera

    The GW video doesn’t show the ending so you don’t have to worry about that. Part II is worth watching simply due to the song ‘Zombies Wearing Sweaters’. The ‘An oatmeal cream pie for a head’ lyric cracks me up everytime.

    BTW: Saw ‘The Expendables’ the other night. I’d give it three out of five stars. Some cool stuff like a small surprise appearance from two ’80s action stars (no nether is van Dam (sp?)) and a great Davey versus Goliath fight between Jet Li and Dolph Lungren.
    On the downside they had to go with the shaky cam, jump cutting fad and I couldn’t follow half the action scenes and ended up with a headache. And apparently Hollywood can’t even make a dumb shoot-em up action film these days without anti-American rubbish in it (sigh).

  • Rock Baker

    They sound like they have a lot in common with The Horror of Party Beach ‘zombies’ who needed human blood becasue their bodies needed it but could no longer produce it. It also seems to thematically marry The Crazies more than Dawn of the Dead. That the zombies in Nightmare City are actually still alive is a neat twist. Maybe instead of pointless remakes of good old movies, they should take these few possitive crumbs and build a remake of Nightmare City that’s a good movie…..

  • The Rev.

    Good connection on Horror of Party Beach! That’s pretty much it exactly as far as the feeding goes. I haven’t seen The Crazies so I can’t comment. I mostly compared them to 28 Days Later in that they’re both alive, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be zombies.

  • Elizabeth

    I, for one, loved Piranha 3-D like it was my very own child. A retarded, mouth-breathing child who likes licking the pages of Hustler and setting kittens on fire, but my child nonetheless.

    The Floating Dong was more of a groaner for me than anything else. Reminded me of the game of catch from Street Trash, and reminding me of that movie is never a good idea. Those were Riley Steele’s breast implants drifting by in the background, though, weren’t they? Nice touch.

    As for the great attack sequence, they included someone getting sliced in half by a wire and then slowly falling apart, which is a surefire way to win my approval. Reminded me of Ghost Ship, and reminding me of that movie is always a good idea.

    I wonder if they can go back and add 3D to Snakes on a Plane?

  • Rock Baker

    To each their own, as they say. If you ennoyed the picture, believe me I’m happy for you. I’m sure you can see how it wouldn’t be for everyone. I had pretty much the same reaction to the girl-caught-by-her-hair-in-the-boat-prop as Rev had to The Nipple Scene in Nightmare City. You can be TOO cruel in killing off extras, even in zombie and killer fish movies!

  • Rock Baker

    I caught The Crazies one night on TCM, JUST before I had my service cancelled. Not a bad movie for what it is (in a way it seemed similar to They Came From Within but not as nasty). One thing in its favor is that is moves like greased lightning. The only other film I can compare it too in terms of breakneck pacing is Cannon’s version of King Solomon’s Mines (a film I love by the way, obvious ripoff-ness or not).

  • Elizabeth

    Rock: Oh, definitely. I mean, for instance, I know that a severed dong is not going to have quite the same effect on me as it would on a man. And not everybody has a taste for comically overdone gore. I just kind of felt like speaking up in the film’s defense.

    Also… *ENDING SPOILER IF ANYONE CARES*

    … the big daddy piranha at the very end was probably meant as a reference to Deep Blue Sea, but it reminded me of nothing so much as the giant mutant fish in Frankenheimer’s Prophecy, which became my spirit animal several years ago after a guided meditation gone wrong. (When you have just watched a movie with a giant fish that eats a duck, and the instructor tells you to visualize a beautiful lake with a fleet of swans swimming by, the results are about what you’d expect. I chose to honor the fish as my spirit animal, and I was thrilled to see him getting work again.)

  • Rock Baker

    On the whole, violence doesn’t really bother me (and outright gore tends to be more silly than anything else) unless its unmotivated and cruel. To echo something Ken has stated before, I grew up seeing movies where death was punishment, or at least treated as seriously tragic. Heaving horrible death and mutilation on random characters without justification just rubs me the wrong way (and I’m finding that I enjoy it less and less as I get older). The Piranha attack scene started out pretty good, I thought, and I started thinking that they’d done a good job of depicting what such a catastrophe might really be like. The floating stage began to tip over from so many people climbing aboard and I was thinking “Ooh, nice touch.” Then the cable snapped and things quickly got nasty. If the girl getting cut in half by a cable had been the extent of it, I might still’ve enjoyed the rest of the movie. It was the hair-in-the-motorboat-prop scene that turned me against the film. Piranha 3D really drove home the point that if I want to see the kind of movies I’d like to see, I’ll have to start making them myself…..

  • Elizabeth

    Rock,

    Here’s one where I don’t know how old you are, so I’m not sure if you have the same perspective as I do. Being not terribly far removed from the Spring Break Lake demographic, I basically regarded everybody at that party as fair game. This is certainly classist to some extent, as my parents surely had the resources to send me to Lake Havasu if I had wanted it, but they would never have done so. It’s very much a matter of upbringing.

    I trust that I have cured myself of most high-school/college resentments, but at the same time, I cannot but enter into the movie’s lack of compassion for the young people portrayed. The girl whose hair got caught in the propeller was, to me, a deserving victim solely because she was the sort of girl who would be there at that time.

    The recent trend in slasher/gore flicks is to victimize young, rich, white people. I know what they’re up to, and I don’t necessarily hail this trend as liberating, but there’s a small degree of satisfaction for anyone who has dealt with such people before.

  • Rock Baker

    On the other hand it was a public lake, so she may’ve been an unlucky local who just happened to be there at the same time… Either way, it really didn’t strike me as a Punishment Fitting The Crime kinda moment, not unless she was secretly a murderess who ripped people’s faces off while they were still alive (hey, there’s a good crime flick right there)!

    For what it’s worth, I’ll be 29 in November. In high school I didn’t pal around with any of ‘the rich kids’ who might actually go to a bash like the one in the movie, or anyone else who might throw a party simply because I didn’t like the kind of music they’d play. Being a rabid Dragnet fan, I also made it clear that if I were out and anyone in the group was toking up that I would turn them in. I always try to do The Right Thing, so I didn’t spend a lot of time socially with any of my peers, who at the time seemed to universally party down The Wrong Path. As the years pass and they are forced to grow up, their own reflections on their youths may be punishment enough for many of them who are trying to build families and the like. In a way, that very thing is their punishment, since they now have to raise kids of their own, and somehow the party animal grows into the guy who wants to raise his kids The Right Way. Somehow I find that idea far more humorous.

  • Joe11

    To Gamera:

    I finally saw The Expendables this weekend & I agree with most of your criticisms (shaky cam, jump cutting, etc.) of it, but I disagree about it featuring an Anti-American message or rubbish.

    Sly Stallone wrote & directed this & he’s definitely not the typical Hollywood liberal. His politics definitely lean right. He supported McCain in the last election & has been on the Rush Limbaugh show a couple times. The main reason he had the rogue U.S. CIA agent & soldiers in the movie was so he could work Eric Roberts & Steve Austin in as the main bad guys. It’s get 3 stars out of 4 for being a big, dumb, & fun homage to the action flicks of the 80’s.

  • Gamera

    Joe,

    Hmmmmmm, interesting. I’d seen good reviews on several conservative websites and yeah Stallone has always come off to the right of most of Hollywood. Still just seemed to me that it was stated that the problems with the island were from the CIAs meddling. Then again the music was so loud I missed part of the dialog there so I could very well be wrong. I could certainly be viewing the film though with more of an agenda than I should have. I guess I just wanted to see the heroes go in and kick some butt and no politics at all. As said my major problem with the film was more the camera-work than anything else. I enjoyed the film though not really enough to pick it up on DVD.