Brainscan

Brainscan

1994

Dir; John Flynn

"Wanna play? I dare you"

Post T2 Edward Furlong gets the worlds greatest computer game through the post and goes on a killing spree to celebrate.

To say that I wish I lived in this movie would be an absolute understatement. It is a world in which teenagers are left to their own devices, lame 8-bit computers can interact with humans, chicks like nothing more than secretly photographing boys reading Fangoria in their bedrooms and really awesome things are sent to you through the mail. Somebody find me a computer game that sucks me into this reality please.

A still compos mentis Edward Furlong (seriously, have you seen this guy recently? He looks like he spent the last 10 years bathing in a bath of crack and aids) stars as Michael, a teenager with the coolest bedroom in movie history. His computer talks to him, he answers the phone by saying "talk to me" and hangs it up by saying "later", his walls are covered with old horror movie posters, he even has a picture of Alice Cooper on his fridge! Whenever Michael looks out of his bedroom window he see's boobies which he naturally videos. The boobies in question belong to Kimberly (Amy Hargreaves), who along with Kyle, his best bud, appear to be Michael's only semblance of friendship. It is Kyle (James Marsh) who introduces Michael to the new video game, Brainscan, which he naturally finds in the classified section of Fangoria magazine.

Kyle personifies 1994 with aplomb. He seems to start and finish every sentence with the word "dude" and rocks a ludicrous post cock rock fashion aesthetic mixed with some even more ludicrous grunge plaids. Basically he is the best friend everyone should have. Michael and Kyle's friendship is the real deal, neither of them will get off the phone until both have repeated the catchphrase, "buddies forever".

Michael orders himself a copy of Brainscan and heads off to school where his free period is spent watching a film called "Death, Death, Death Part 2" with his horror club buddies (one of whom wears a monster mask for the occasion). The school principle is not impressed and compares the movie to a "pornographic sex film". He insists that in the future all horror club movies have to be screened by him first. A rule he will live to regret soon enough.

Michael receives his Brainscan package and, that evening, whilst he watches Kimberly and her friends partying to the sound of Rob Zombie's half arsed white rapping he decides to give it a whirl. The game is made up of four challenges, all of which involve him planning and carrying out the perfect murder. Michael carries out the first challenge by murdering a Kelsey Grammar lookalike with a carving knife and stealing his foot as a memento whilst synth industrial jams fart annoyingly in the background. Inevitably the next day Michael finds that the man from the game has actually been murdered and his worst suspicions are confirmed when he finds the disembodied foot in his fridge freezer.

Without warning, a character from the game called "The Trickster" (an awesome T.Ryder Smith), appears from Michael's TV. He sports a lovely velvet sports jacket and shiny PVC trouser combination. He has the face of Sloth and the hair of Toyah. He makes Michael listen to Primus whilst he does a spazz dance on a table before exclaiming "no country and western please, every man has his limits". I think we can all empathize with that. The Trickster electrocutes himself and breaks his own fingers to prove he is loyal to Michael. He also tells him that he needs to play the game again because he left a witness behind. Michael agrees and this time when he finishes the game it is Kyle's necklace that he finds in the fridge freezer. His newest victim was, indeed, his "buddy forever".

Bad ass Detective Hayden (Frank Langella) already has his eye on the "weird" and "frightening" Michael (because he is, well, weird and frightening) but when his best friend becomes a murder victim his interest is piqued and he heads over to question him. Michael acts like a guilty man. Whilst the police are questioning our hero, the Trickster is busy making a mess of his bedroom and eating a frozen chicken. He convinces Michael to go back into the game by giving him an amazingly negative pep-talk in which he basically just lists all of his bad points. Michael believes that he is only going into the game to get rid of a footprint left at Kyle's house but he actually becomes responsible for the death of a member of worlds most bad ass neighborhood watch team who are out looking for the killer. Michael see's Valerie on his way home from the killing making her the final witness to be knocked off.

Of course, Michael doesn't want to go back into the game and kill Valerie, otherwise whose boobs would he oggle on those long, lonely winter nights? Again, the Trickster convinces him to go but when he gets into Valerie's bedroom he cannot carry out the deed. The Trickster unsuccessfully tries to convince him to follow through on the murder by eating Michael's head in a terrible CGI sequence.

Michael wakes up to find that the entire experience has been a part of the game. He is so upset that he smashes up his bedroom in slow motion. This means that the party next door is still going on and that Kyle is still alive enough to call Michael a "dick lick" before the pair head over to Kimberly's to join in the festivities. The next day at school Michael tells the principle that he plans on showing his horror film club the Brainscan game. The principle insists on reviewing the material before hand and as Michael leaves the office we see the Trickster relaxing into the principles office chair, ready to take him on the ride of his life.

This underrated doozy of a film is very highly recommended. Edward Furlong isn't as annoying as you'd expect in the lead role and the set design and digital effects are very atmospheric. The films score, by George Clinton (no, not THAT George Clinton!) is very effective, mixing John Carpenter synths with Twin Peaks atmospherics, its just a shame that the soundtrack is about as lame as you would expect from the era (Tad and Mudhoney being the exceptions). I think if you've ever been a teenage boy you're going to have a good time with this movie, particularly if you were a teenage boy in 1994 (which, thankfully, I was). The evil video game plot was a relatively new idea at the time and the entire game within a movie is executed very effectively. If you haven't caught this one yet, I'd advise you to seek it out.

Dollman

Dollman

1991

Dir; Albert Pyun

"Thirteen inches... With an attitude"

The worlds tiniest bad ass gets dumped in the South Bronx and becomes a member of the local Neighbourhood Watch

Keeping with type, director Albert Pyun makes another failed attempt to fuse together two disparate movie genres with underwhelming results, (see also, Radioactive Dreams for his attempts to mate Film noir and Mad Max making a right fucking mess of a child). Here we have a largely unsuccessful mixture of futurist science fiction and hard boiled inner city drama with an idea so incredibly ludicrous that we should probably add "comedic" to the start of one of those descriptions despite the fact that there is nothing funny about this shit sandwich. Pyun really has earned his reputation as a modern day Ed Wood Jr, churning out numerous cinematic wonder turds, each idea crazier and less likely to work than the last.

Here, Mr Pyun thought it appropriate to take a hard boiled, no nonsense cop from a far away planet who speaks exclusively in an intense whisper, shrink him down to 13 inches and send him to the South Bronx to have some shoot outs with a racially confused drug gang. Although the idea could be good fun, the film lacks a certain amount cohesion in its tone, neither playing it too seriously or accepting its true fate and playing up the laughs. Overall, the production values are acceptable for this level of film although it is occasionally let down by atrocious green screen effects which are timed badly and poorly lighted. Its a shame because hidden behind the nonsense there is a vaguely enjoyable movie trying to get out.

The film opens on the far away planet of Arturous, 10000 light years away from Earth. The planet looks like a noir netherworld, its sepia tones and futuristic cityscape provide a really effective atmosphere only broken by the occasional nugget of shit dialogue. A man with a complexion so white and a jew-fro so voluminous that he looks like an albino clown is being chased by the police. He hides out in a laundromat where he stumbles across a gang of fat middle american women and children and exclaims "oh my god, I'm so angry with my life". He takes the chunkers hostage and forces them to stand around him in a circle to give him a full ton of human shield. The police officer outside (whose name is Captain Starburst for christ sake!) decides he needs to bring in the Mayor for some reason who insists on giving the criminal all of his demands because he doesn't think a pile of dead fat ladies is going to help him get re-elected. The plan goes awry when Brick Bardo (Tim Tomerson) arrives on the scene.

Brick is a suspended cop who appears from nowhere. He is a dead ringer for a middle aged Dee Dee Ramone and has a very filthy mouth. He wears a lovely flat top. When asked how he is going to tackle the situation he reply's "I'm gonna use hot water for my whites" before going into the Laundromat and completing a full cycle of washing under the gaze of the hostages. The criminal is not impressed so Brick threatens to shoot him through a fat lady. This makes the whole crowd panic and fall over crushing the criminal under flabby woman meat. As Brick leaves the scene, the Mayor is so angry he tells him to "take off those sunglasses, its night" which is probably the most sensible thing anyone says throughout the entire movie.

For no apparent plot development reasons Brick is framed for the deaths of some of the fat ladies, he seems as uninterested in this as the writers obviously were because it is not mentioned again. He returns to his futuristic apartment where he is accosted and kidnapped by Sprug (Frank Collinson's head) who plans to kill him in revenge for Brick apparently shooting his body off in some previous escapade. Brick refuses to go down without a fight. His gun literally makes men blow up. The effects in this scene are very effective, gore explodes across the screen and body parts splat across the rocks. Sprug gets in a rocket and flies away with Brick close on his tail. The pair both fly through a black hole and end up landing in the South Bronx, unscathed but inexplicably tiny in comparison to the natives.

In another very effective sequence the South Bronx is introduced in a montage and is painted as an urban wasteland. We see a collage of Tenement blocks, prostitutes, a homeless man wearing a plastic bag on his head, graffitied walls and Mexican gang bangers. The sequence has a rain soaked ambiance to it which really does feel depressing and gritty. Sadly all this good work is undone when Braxton Red (Jackie Earl Haley), the worlds whitest Mexican gang lord, is introduced carrying a machine gun which could have been a left over prop from Apocalypse Now. His character is so out of place within the context of the genuinely gritty surrounds that he feels like a comic book villain stuck onto a Polaroid with a prit stick. Despite this, I have to take my hat off to Haley, who puts on a genuinely convincing and unstable performance considering his character description must have read "white child with mullet who runs a Mexican gang". His performance is enhanced even more by the cardboard blockhead he has to act against.

Inevitably, Sprug gets friendly with the drug dealers whilst Bardo gets friendly with the local neighbourhood watch. The community group is led by annoying busy body Debi Alejandro (Kamala Lopez) who, if his legs and penis were longer, Brick would surely like to get busy with. She gets beaten up by the drug gang but is saved by Brick so she takes him and his tiny spaceship home with her. As she walks along the road with it Brick wobbles around inside in comedy fast forward. Once home, Brick has to put up with Debi's annoying child and his friend Gerald, who comes over to fiddle around with Bricks spaceship. Brick uses his most intense whisper yet to mutter "back away Gerald". Debi goes out to her job at the local toxic waste factory where her boss gives her shit because she refused to "go to the Guns and Roses concert" with him.

Whilst our hero is getting settled in his new pad Sprug and his new found friends head back to the gangs drug den where some women in bra's are counting large sums of money. Sprug and Braxton make an agreement to help each other take over the world but first they need to do away with Brick, or Dollman as he's being referred to by the local, apparently unsurprisable, Bronx residents (they don't seem bothered to see a 13 inch man angrily walking around on Debi's kitchen table). Sprug has a "Dimensional Fusion Bomb" which he would like to use. Unfortunately as soon as he hands it over to the gang, Braxton squishes him into mush and decides to go and kidnap Debi to lure Brick to his lair.

Brick goes to save Debi. He finds the gang and stealthily crawls through a very muddy drain pipe, coming out the other end looking like a minstrel. His tiny gun doesn't do quite as much damage on Earth as it did on Arturous but he still quickly dispenses with most of the gang bangers. He calls Braxton a "fucking puke" and a "sack of puss" but silly liberal Debi doesn't want anymore blood shed on her hands so she stops Brick from finishing him off. This gives Braxton a chance to set off the Dimensional Fusion Bomb which sends them all back to the planet Artuous.

Once there Brick and Debi's sexual organs are of a somewhat equal size. Hazzah!

Leprechaun

Leprechaun

1993

Dir; Mark Jones

"Your luck just ran out"

Rachel from Friends gets chased around a bit by Willow.

Future big shit, Jennifer Aniston, stars in this surprisingly competent and occasionally spooky little horror movie about a disgruntled Leprechaun who is willing to go to any lengths necessary to find his lost pot of gold. The film opens as big suited, mock oi-rish Dan O'Grady (Shay Duffin) drunkenly returns home to his unimpressed wife with a bag of gold coins which he claims to have taken from a Leprechaun. O'Grady celebrates his new found wealth by getting a lift home in a limo. His celebrations are cut short when the films namesake (Warrick Davis, the busiest dwarf in show business) comes to get his pot of gold back.

A genuinely scary moment introduces Davis' character as an eerie child's voice calls to O'Grady from inside an old suitcase and the tension slowly builds as he walks towards it and starts to unlock its clasps. The tension quickly ends, of course, when a tiny man in ladies shoes pops out of the case and starts wisecracking with the old man. The Leprechaun kills O'Grady's wife and has bad intentions for O'Grady too if he doesn't give him back his pot of gold. Luckily, the old man has a handy four leaf clover and manages to lock the evil little bugger up in a crate.

Fast forward 10 years and the Leprechaun remains imprisoned in the crate. That is, until father and daughter duo JD and Tory (a pre-op Jennifer Aniston) start sticking their noses where they don't belong. Tory is a rich bitch from LA, her father has apparently bought her the O'Grady house so that she can learn about the real world and gain some valuable life lessons (like money isn't everything and Leprechauns are bad). The house is an absolute mess of joke shop cobwebs and creaky floor boards. Tory disagrees with her fathers tough(ish) love and wants to take herself to the nearest hotel and get back to LA as quickly as possible. Her attitude soon changes when she runs into Nathan, a local part red neck, part male model type who sports an attractive Lady Diana haircut and Keep The Fath era Bon Jovi wardrobe and dead eye combination.

Nathan is one third of "3 Guys That Paint", a decorating team who have been hired to help make the old house liveable for Tory (so much for all that tough love). The other two guys that paint are Nathans 12 year old brother Alex and a simpleton by the name of Ozzie (Mark Holton who had long been an expert at playing fat men-children, most notably as Pee Wee Herman's nemesis, Francis, in Pee Wee's Big Adventure). Tory thinks that guys that paint houses are "weird and strange". She reminds them that "this is the 90's" before changing into a pair of high tops and stone washed denim short shorts. Inevitably our gang stumble across the crate that O'Grady left in his basement and let the Leprechaun out. Then the real fun begins.

Ozzie and Alex find the "pot" of gold (which is actually a bag of gold, presumably because a pot was just out of budget). Wacky old Ozzie decides to eat one of the coins. Alex tells him that they can sell the lot and use the money to get Ozzie an operation to fix his brain. Ozzie just wants to use it to buy comic books. Unaware of the discovery, Nathan is busy teaching Tory how to paint the house, he does this by dry humping her bottom whilst she does all the hard work. He claims to be impressed with her "nice even strokes". Tory's father seems less impressed by his daughters burning loins but soon forgets when the Leprechaun appears and bites him on the hand.

The mildly comedic slaughter is ready to begin. The Leprechaun threatens to bite Ozzie's ear off and make a pair of boots out of it. He bites a mans nose and then kills him by jumping on him repeatedly with a pogo stick. He breaks a police officers neck. He is given inumerous wheeled vehicles to ride, (a child's trike, a tiny sports car, a skateboard, roller skates, and, the real money shot, a wheel chair). He rides them all in comedy fast forward.

With all the killing that's going on, Tory and the "three guys that paint" lock themselves away in the house. Nathan gets his denim clad leg caught in a bear trap and has an amazing sit down punch up with the Leprechaun. At a glance it looks as if Jon Bon Jovi is having a fist fight with a toddler. The gang try to get away in a pick up truck but the Leprechaun somehow manages to turn it over by driving a child's toy car into the side of it. The gang get out without a scratch. Tory hands the gold over hoping that it will placate our little evil friend but there is a coin missing (the one that Ozzie ate earlier). Rather than waiting for him to shit it out like any reasonable person, the Leprechaun decides he's going to cut it out. In the process he grabs Nathans balls and performs an impressive skateboard routine along a hallway.

Tory goes to see old man O'Grady, who now lives in the local nursing home, to find out how to kill the Leprechaun. When she arrives, the old man is not in his bedroom and instead she finds the Leprechaun riding around in fast forward in that wheelchair. Tory manages to get away and into an elevator where, without reason, Old Man Grady's bloody face smashes through the ceiling. With his last few breaths he tells Tory to find herself a four leaf clover. She rushes back to the house where Nathan's bear trap inflicted limp is becoming less and less pronounced. The gang find a four leafed clover amazingly quickly. Alex produces a slingshot and fires the clover into the Leprechauns face with the immortal line "fuck you, lucky charms". Our titular hero proceeds to melt, fall in a well and get blown up for good measure.

This is a fun film, plain and simple. There's not a lot of characterization going on, some of the performances are a little wooden and nonsensical plot twists are the rule of thumb here but there are a couple of genuinely creepy moments early on, the Leprechaun is a great character and the mixture of horror and comedy is pitched just at the right level.

We can see flashes of why Jennifer Aniston's career skyrocketed shortly after this film came out. She is likeable, if a little wooden in the role of Tory and, in fairness, she isn't given much to work with. There are suggestions of the rich bitch, big city girl character (she threatens to leave a couple of times, she asks for a water cress salad and bottle of Evian in a redneck bar and describes Nathans Meat loaf as a "cut up dead cow") but shes far too nice and far too capable to fully encompass this type of character (she plays nurse without batting an eyelid and never acts superior to the other characters in the film, even the simpleton). Without doubt, this is Davis' film, he hams up the Leprechaun character with absolute glee and the screen lights up every time his little legs pigeon step into view. The Leprechaun make-up is very effective, his dialogue never gets overly tedious and watching him drive things in fast forward never gets old. Its no wonder that Davis returned for five further sequels (in the years following this movies release the Leprechaun would get to go into space and hang out with Ice T in the 'hood).

Director, Mark Jones, would go on to gain writing credits for a number of the Leprechaun sequels and would also return to the directors chair two years later for "Rumplestiltskin" also starring Davis. The franchise may not be dead yet either, with rumors of an upcoming "Leprechaun Vs Chucky" (god help us all) proving that there might still be life in the little fella yet.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

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License To Drive

License To Drive

1988

Dir; Greg Beeman

"Some Guys Get All The Brakes"

One Corey drives the other Corey around in his grandfathers car for a bit.

"Its a long complicated story" is how the main character describes the plot of this movie in one of License to Drive's final scenes. This is not true. Boy fails his driving test. Boy takes Dad's car anyway so that he can impress a girl. Car gets smashed up. No hilarity ensues. Throw in a passed out Heather Graham getting her boobs photographed against her will by Corey Feldman and you've got yourself a really shit movie!

License To Drive stars both Coreys, Haim and Feldman respectively, who were both huge stars at the time and also weird Hollywoodized best chums. Here they underact each other to terrible effect. Future Corpse, Corey Haim plays Les (who the hell calls a teenage character Les?), a tedious, over confident ass monkey who has life really hard because he has to put up with the school bus and his parents incessant lift giving. He needs his own ride, but first he needs a driving license. Unfortunately his amazingly confident attitude is not backed up by any skill or ability so he fails his driving test (could this be a metaphor for both Corey's actual lives? Well done Mr Beeman... Here, have some regular TV work). This does not leave him with much chance of dry humping the girl of his dreams because guys without wheels are lame-o dude.

Les' best friend, Dean, unabley portrayed by Corey Feldman, is possibly an even bigger douche than his best bud. He calls a geek a "spasticated idiot" and refuses to take off his Blues Brothers Sunglasses indoors. Feldman appears to have accidentally gone half-retard for his portrayal of Dean, who, I'm pretty sure was written to be played straight. He must have figured that Rain Man was actually being portrayed as a cool leading man and decided to steal Tom Cruise's best moves. The only thankful thing about Dean is that he has surprisingly little screen time for the first half of the movie. 

Sadly, the same can not be said of the other Corey brother who is all over this hunk of Hollywood pant dirt. He goes for a drive with his embarrassing father (Richard Masur), spots Heather Graham and gets a hard-on. He pleads with his Dad to let him drive the car and manages to talk hm into letting him give her a lift. He does a weird half jump, half body pop round the back of the car to celebrate whilst his Dad watches proudly from across the street. He drives her home and arranges a date. She seems impressed despite the fact that the cool new ride has a personalized number plate that reads "GRANDPA".

Dean belches loudly into an intercom to impress Les' sister.

Every sentence uttered by every character in this film seems to refer to driving in some way. The girl Les wants to stink finger is named Mercedes for christ sake! Les lies to his friends and parents and tells them he has passed his test so that he can arrange a date with Mercedes, unfortunately for him Mum and Dad discover the ruse before he leaves and ground him for his deception. Les has already spent time making mix tapes for the journey called "Mercedes Date - Fast Songs" and "Mercedes Date - Make Out Songs" and he is not about to let all that hard work go to waste so he waits until his heavily pregnant mother and heavily moustachioed father are asleep and then sneaks out with the car.

He takes Mercedes to a hipster synth club where she meets up with her ex boyfriend, another sleazy grease ball who shows further evidence of the fact that Mercedes has a really bad taste in men. Maybe that was a clever ploy by the film makers to make the audience believe that she would be willing to stoop to the low standards of Corey Haim's girl arms. The sleaze ball has found a new woman which doesn't sit well with Mercedes who proceeds to get drunk on Champagne. Time is burnt with twists that don't go anywhere (the car is towed, then it isn't towed, They go to a make out spot but Les doesn't get so much as a hand job, Mercedes dances on the car and ruins the paintwork, then its fixed, the car skids all over the road but luckily stops in a parking space etc). They pick up Dean and one of his geeky friends. Respectfully, when Mercedes passes out from the booze the gang decide to put her in the boot for safe keeping.

Luckily for the viewer, a drunk man briefly steals both the car and the movie in one fell swoop. As he's driving away with Corey's wheels, he lines up shots on the dash board. He attempts to steer whilst cutting up a lime to garnish his drink with before falling asleep at the wheel and smashing up the Les-mobile. Morning arrives and Les gets the car home. His father is so mad that he threatens to take away his baseball mit as punishment. There's no time for this harsh act, however, because Les' mum is about to shit out another Haim brother (just what the world fucking needs). Les uses the skills he has picked up during a night of illegal joyriding to reverse his mum all the way to the hospital (forward drive is "broken"). In the process he almost runs over a waiter with a lovely five o-clock shadow. Why doesn't someone with a license drive her? His fucking Dad is in the back seat! Well hell, then the film wouldn't have a redemptive happy ending would it, smart ass.

In all fairness, this film is probably exactly what you would expect from a nonsensical 80's mainstream two Corey's vehicle (shit I've started with the car references myself now) so its difficult to complain too much about its content. However, this movie really has very little to offer. Its as if the film makers thought that a couple of half assed car chases and a jail bait Heather Graham wearing various porn starlet outfits was going to be enough to keep our attention for 90 minutes. It didn't work. The film is topped off by a horrible soundtrack filled with mid-paced throwaway bore-jams including a final scene fade out to "Get Out Of My Dreams (And Into My Car)" by corporate race traitor, Billy Ocean. The worst crime against music opens the film however, as a band called the Breakfast Club (seriously?) perform a cover of "Baby, You Can Drive My Car" which is so bad it would even make Paul McCartney blush and he's the worlds most shameless man. Oh, and yes, even all the songs in this movie refer to cars, (we get Jane Weidlins "Rush Hour" too so its not all bad) otherwise how would the viewer remember what this fucking mess is all about?

Its sad to think that by 1988 both of these, still teenage, stars were already showing signs of what was to come in their futures, ie. addiction and obscurity. Both of them vomit out dead eyed, half assed performances that should have put them both to shame. Haim, who is undoubtedly the star here, seems to have two acting moves; the open mouthed, overly dramatic chewing gum chew and a strange happy smile followed by too cool to smile bemusement face (see the scene in the Lost Boys where his brother suggests his Grandpa smokes weed for an explosion of this move). Neither of these are effective. Luckily Haim's greatest moments were not entirely behind him as two years later he would put a great deal more effort into his starring role in the excellent, "Prayer Of The Rollerboys" before his life and career really disintegrated.

Feldman, on the other hand, was as good as finished. He would have a small part in Joe Dante's "the Burbs" the following year (great film but his performance stank of alcoholism and despair) but otherwise Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and obscurity were all that could be seen in his future. The pair of them teamed up again in 1989 for the terrible "Dream A Little Dream" and more recently (and far more depressingly) for a reality TV series. By the time this TV show was made both had been through various combinations of addiction, failed German-based pop careers, shit movie choices, no movie options, internet hair selling, mental illness, Jason Stratham vehicles and terrible Lost Boys sequels. Any future plans for them were cut short by Haim's premature death in 2010. As sad as his death is, the upshot was that it halted plans to produce a sequel to License to Drive called License to Fly in which the Corey's would reunite for more hilarity, this time piloting a plane. Who's fucking idea was that? Two crack faced 40 year old's learn to fly a plane? Is Hollywood that desperate?

Yes.

Not Of This Earth

Not Of This Earth

1988

Dir; Jim Wynorski

"The Science Fiction Chiller"

Big boobs are no match for bad aliens.

Every pedophiles favorite porn star, Traci Lords points her ginormous boobies at a "serious" acting career and takes a punt at pretending to be a human being in this Roger Corman re-make. Its neither Lords' nor Corman's finest moment but it certainly has its plus points if you dig big boobies and nonsensical goings on. Not Of This Earth is a pretty typical 1980's Cormon retardo-fest that must have been churned out quicker than a post death Jade Goody documentary. Corman even uses scenes of monsters from some of his other films for the opening credits. Its by far the most enjoyable portion of the film.

Mr Johnson is a mysterious man (read; obvious alien) who goes to a poorly dressed film set to see a doctor. He meets a nurse, Nadine (Traci Lords), and uses crap mind control to convince her to come to work for him. He also offers her $2000 a week so I'm guessing the mind control wasn't really necessary. Nadine moves in with Mr Johnson and her job is to give him a blood transfusion every evening. Also living and working with Mr Johnson is Jeremy, an ex hood whose job description is "bodyguard, chauffeur, chief cook and bottle washer". Nadine and Jeremy exchange stunted, drama school dialogue with one another whilst Jeremy oggles Nadine's bottom.

Mr Johnson is shown to be an alien in a number of unsubtle ways, he doesn't understand a number of human customs, asks why a cop is being so aggressive, and has neon blue eyes which are continuously covered by dark glasses. He sucks blood out of a copulating couple before communicating with his home planet, Davanna, through a blue neon corridor. He plans to study the human race, steal their blood and ultimately, conquer the world. Nadine is having too nice of a time swimming around Mr Johnsons swimming pool in very high waisted bikini bottoms to notice that anything is amiss but Jeremy realizes something is wrong when visitors to the house start disappearing mysteriously.

Jeremy takes Mr Johnson out to pick up three of the sloppiest prostitutes ever committed to celluloid and brings them back to the house. The alien takes them down to the cellar and refuses to let Jeremy have a go on any of them. Once in the cellar, the girls, who look exactly like 3/4 of "look what the cat dragged in" era Poison, complete a striptease for an uninterested Mr Johnson. Two of the girls really throw themselves into it but the third seems to think that a striptease involves lifting up one leg of her short shorts whilst pouting. All three are slaughtered and their blood is stored ready to be sent back to Davanna.

Jeremy shares his suspicions with Nadine so, as any reasonable person would, she takes a sample of Mr Johnsons sputum to a doctor, who is ably assisted by Night Of The Comets' Kelli Maroney. The doctor is so astounded by the test results from the sample that he turns up to a posh restaurant to tell Nadine what he has found whilst she is trying to have a date. He excitedly tells her that Mr Johnson is not human before settling down with the couple and ordering the breaded veal cutlets. Luckily for the progression of the films narrative, Nadine is dating Harry who is a cop. Harry is good at sex because he "practices a lot on his own". Nadine "likes a copper whose pistols are always loaded". Harry agrees to pay Mr Johnson a visit but not before he gets his hands on Nadine's jugs.

Another Alien arrives through the portal. She also clothes her shapely bottom in high waisted bikini bottoms. By this point, there have been so many large breasted women in this movie that even Russ Meyer would have been touching his winkle. Mr Johnson is obviously not very happy to share the earth with another alien because he feeds her rabid blood and sends her out on the town. She bumps into some confused punk rockers who wear mohicans aloft glam rock face makeup. They ask her for "bread" but she claims to not have any "edibles" so they attack her just as the rabid blood kicks in. She slaughters the lot of them before chasing a random woman through dry ice. It must have been a cold night of filming because the woman's pokies penetrate her knitwear. The alien stabs the woman before randomly turning up at the doctors office just in time to collapse and die. Her eyes are missing so the Dr wants to call for an Ophthalmologist which would surely be a pointless exercise. Instead they call a now empty-balled Harry.

The alien woman is wearing one of Nadine's "one of a kind dresses" so Harry quickly links her with Mr Johnson. He goes looking for the alien who at this point is busy trying to send Nadine back to his home planet through the portal. Jeremy shouts "hey Klingon" and a budget car chase ensues in which the cars only hit items which are clearly not going to damage their paintwork (plastic cones, fake garbage cans etc). Mr Johnson appears to be invincible but, luckily for the plot, we learn that he doesn't like high pitched noises. Harry turns on his police siren causing the alien bastard to drive off a bridge to his death. His gravestone subtly reads "Here lies a man who was not of this Earth"... Imagine finding that out of context.

This movie is a pretty decent way to spend 80 minutes, there's no doubt that if you're a fan of Ms Lords you're sure to have a lovely time looking at her. Innumerous huge sagging boobs abound throughout which serve their purpose of making Traci Lords slightly less sagging boobs the star of the show. For the soundtrack, Mr Corman obviously just decided to press the "sci-fi" button on his casio before plink plonking out a couple of notes and smothering the whole thing in reverb. Hell, even the sound of a dog barking is smothered in so much reverb it sounds like its coming from a distant galaxy. The theme tune is a fairly effective, if overly upbeat, 8-bit tune that sounds like its coming out of a Game Boy's tiny speakers. How the hell did they manage to release a soundtrack album for this movie?

The credits provide an abundance of joy. Ace Mask (Chopping Maul, Ghoulies 4) plays the doctor and has the greatest name I have ever heard. They claim that "Mr Motivation" plays "himself". Did I miss something? They also thank Madame Zolta for playing the role of Reader/Advisor. Is this a joke? They couldn't even hire someone to competently edit this thing and yet they hired a fucking psychic? I wonder if she needed two crystal balls for this one. One for each boob.

No Holds Barred

No Holds Barred

1989

Dir; Thomas J Wright

"No Ring. No Ref. No Rules"

The Hulkster try's to do an impression of himself being really cool and nice and stuff.

Hulk Hogan, the biggest usurper of autistic merchandise collectors disability living allowance since Kiss, stars in professional wrestling's ultra glossy, ultra brainless answer to the Rocky films. Hogan plays Rip, the worlds most popular professional wrestler and world champion who puts family first, gives money to charity and spends his time giving young children pep talks about being the best. Even when wearing casual clothes Rip's arms are eternally oiled. He's a bit like Hulk Hogan but without the steroid abuse, extra-marital affairs, homemade sex tapes and inflated ego.

Brell (Kurt Fuller) is an evil television executive who wants to sign Rip to a contract because his channel, World Television Network, just can't compete with Rip's ratings. He invites our hero to a meeting and offers him a blank check if he signs with his network. Rip is far too moral and upstanding to break his current contract so he shoves the cheque right down Brells throat. In response, Brell tries to kidnap Rip by driving his limo to a deserted farmhouse and giving him some hoods to beat up for a little while. Rip destroys the inside of the limo before literally exploding out of the roof just in time for some super positive Bon Jovi-esque soft rock to kick in. The more the hoods punch him the more dramatic Rip's gurn becomes. He does some vocal impressions of an angry rottweiler before beating them all up. Once he's finished with the hoods he drags the limo driver out of the car but doesn't pound him because he has pissed himself. He asks him what the smell is and the driver starts blubbering and repeating "coo-key, coo-key". Which I guess the script writers thought meant "piss" in hipster talk.

Brell sends in Samantha (Joan Severence) a sexy undercover marketing executive to keep an eye on Rip. He is not interested in her ideas about capitalism because he just wants to do some charity work. They go for a meal in a posh restaurant and Rip wears an entirely white suit which blends seamlessly with his hair colour.

Meanwhile Brell and his evil team of television executives (the least convincing job titles for baddies I've ever heard) go to the worlds craziest biker bar to find a suitable substitute for Rip. This place has everything; A smart assed midget in a cage, a VD room in the men's toilet, fat men in dungarees head butting each other, a "no hippies" sign on the wall, a tattoo artist working away and a bar maid who hocks up loogies. Watching the carnage, Brell comes up with the idea for a new show called "Battle Of The Tough Guys", a no holds barred wrestling competition set in this very bar with a $100,000 prize. During the first episode of the show a rather scary looking Zeus (Tommy 'Tiny' Lister) smashes through a wall, smothers the place in dry ice and picks a bar maid up by her face. He then enters the competition and wins comfortably. Zeus has a Z shaved into his head, one long eyebrow and a lazy eye. Brell figures he has found his new star.

Rip watches the show from his dull suburban pad before going on a publicity trip with Samantha. He saves the customers in a restaurant from a hold up by throwing pies at the assailants. He doesn't try to grope Samantha despite having to sleep in a double bed with her, he chooses to do press ups wearing nothing but a tiny pair of orange knickers instead. Possibly because of the above, Samantha starts to fall for his minimal charms. She decides that she can no longer double cross him because he's "such a nice guy" and tells Brell to take a hike. Brell slaps her and leaves her bruised.

When Rip see's the bruise he pulls a bemused face for what seems like an eternity before breaking the tension by initiating an impromptu tickle fight. This is interrupted when Rip overhears a television broadcast in which Zeus makes a challenge for the title. Instead of facing the challenge, Rip decides to attend a children's sports day in which he encourages and hugs various races of children. Again he is interrupted by Zeus who shows up in a helicopter which has been strangely adorned with a rainbow flag. Zeus slow motions his way over to Rip and has a stare down with our hero. Rip's stare down technique looks as if he's suffered a Bells Palsy.

Not satisfied with the helicopter stunt, Brell decides to send a goon to kidnap Samantha in a car park. Just as the dastardly act is taking place Rip arrives driving a Harley Davidson with a "Rip Em" number plate. He runs the goon over before throwing him into a tree with the immortal line "party with you and me, in a tree"... Hulkster poetry. Rip's thus far characterless little brother Randy (Mark Pellegrino) decides to go and see one of Zeus' fights which is inexplicably taking place in an iron work factory. Zeus strangles Randy and leaves him in the hospital. When Rip finds out what has happened he goes into a 'roid rage at Zeus' gym and accepts his challenge. Following the outburst, he goes to the hospital to check on his brother. In this scene, Hogan manages some very believable eye tears which are so out of context with the rest of his wooden performance that it is actually quite moving.

Strangely, the inevitable pre-fight training montages are kept to a bare minimum. Zeus has a brief gym montage in which he punches breeze blocks and tenses his large muscle sacks. Hogan's montage forgoes any training footage and instead shows him putting his brother in a bath and lovingly encouraging him to walk.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you the rest of the tale. The two square off in the big match. Brell kidnaps Samantha and tries to get Rip to throw the fight. Zeus starts the stronger but with a little crowd encouragement and a lot of heart Rip manages to fight back and win the day. The movie finishes with Brell getting electrocuted followed by a freeze frame of Rip hugging his brother and giving us all the thumbs up.

As a kids film I actually think this movie is pretty effective. I certainly thought so when my Dad got it out of the video shop for me in 1990. However, the main problem with the film is Hogans half assed performance. Here he is asked to play a loveable, caring character with a strong moral compass. Unfortunately Hogan is so obviously such a massive prick that he would have had to be an amazing actor to make us believe in him. He is not an amazing actor. He is the acting equivalent of a brain injury.

There are some enjoyable performances from Kurt Fuller and Tommy Lister and some of the fight scenes are fairly effective if massively overblown but overall the film suffers from being a vanity project for a man and furthermore an industry which is the epitome of egotistical nonsense. The film was obviously churned out to capitalize on Hogan's undoubted popularity at the time but he put such miniscule effort into learning how to work in front of a camera that his performance is absolutely laughable and doesn't come close to living up to his hype. Hogan would improve slightly for later films such as Suburban Commando and Mr Nanny but the guy was never going to win any Oscars lets be honest.