The Last Starfighter

“By the order of Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada, I command you to pull my finger”

Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) is a depressing teenager living in a low scale trailer park. He has vague dreams of getting somewhere in life because he likes to stare wishingly at his planet mobil hanging in his bedroom and to stalk the mailbox for rejection letters from community colleges. Between unclogging toilets and ignoring his girlfriend Maggie Gordon (Catherine Mary Stewart) he spends an obscene amount of quarters on a nearby mammoth sized arcade game called “The Starfighter.” to dull his pain. His apparent short term life goals are realized late one night when he beats the scoring record which brings out all residents of the trailer parklike it was a soccer game final in Brazil. I don’t think the guy that cured polio got this much fanfare.

After the night long celebration of parades and fireworks in his honor, Alex is approached by the game’s flim-flam inventor, Centauri played by Robert Preston who kidnaps him in a pimped out starcar whisking him off to another planet. It turns out the game was actually a test for to find real star fighters much like the army games the government is churning out for recruiting. Because there’s nothing you want more than a white nerdy guy who sits in front of computer screens all day saving the galaxy or operating firearms.

Not too thrilled with the prospects of getting vaporized in a space battle, Alex heads back to Earth only to find a robot clone of himself has been getting busy with his girlfriend, creeping out his family, and is now target practice for lobster headed alien cops.

Alex must finally faces the challenge to fight as the remaining starfighter in a desperate battle against the armada to save the galaxy. With the help of his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle headed co-pilot, Grig, they wage a one ship war against an entire squadron of bad computer generated graphics.

A neat little sci-fi movie from the 80’s that was every Atari playin’ Geeks dream. Give it a try but bring lots of quarters.

Keep an eye out for…

– giant holographic balding aliens
– bifocals made of real eyeballs
– squid faced distempered co-pilots
– Outback steakhouse’s Onion “Death Blossoms”
– 9 year old Hugh Hefners
– grannies listening to pop music
– translator collar clips constructed from old digital watch parts
– aliens with Ed Asner hair cuts
– flash mobs of videogame spectators

“This movie is what destroyed Atari”

rated 8.9 out of 10 for the movie

Learn more about this movie at imbd.com

Check out the trailer for The Last Starfighter

Demons

“I don’t which hurts more…being eaten by a demon or you twisting my nipples like that.”

Dario Argento the Italian master of horror wrote this little 80’s gem of terror. Yes the same man responsible for movies with underwater zombie/shark fight scenes and close up eye gougings.

Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) is your typical American girl living in the big American city (which appears to be West Berlin but whose nit picking?) On her way home from her communist rally she is stalked by a chromed masked guy in break dancin’ parachute pants who is giving away some free movie tickets. This stalker-marketing approach seems to work as she asks for another ticket for her equally dim-witted big haired friend-Hannah (Fiore Argento.)

That night at the theater opening, a big frizzy haired workers dressed like a giant leprechaun works the ticket booth and patrol the audience with her annoying flashlight. Among the small audience there’s a blind man and his seeing-eye girlfriend whose job it is to explain what’s happening in the film. She also likes to sneak away to make out with the greasy stranger in the back of the theater. There’s also a pimp and a couple of his employees taking a break from a long day at work. I knew he was a pimp from his disco leisure suit and the giant satellite sized gold medallion around his neck.

While at the theater Cheryl and her friend encounter a couple yuppies in polo shirts and tennis sweaters just fresh from shooting their docker pants commercials. Anyone that wears a sweater wrapped around their neck deserve a demon attack. The movie-within-the movie begins and has some teens motor-crossing across some ancient ruins eventually encountering a burial mask that turns them into a pointy teethed demon creatures. While seeing this on screen one of the theater patrons also transforms into a drooling demon and goes on a carnivorous rampage turning other theater patrons into monsters via some vicious neck slashing, eye gougings (of course) and impromoto lynchings. The survivors try to flee only to find an apparently fast contractor built a wall over the exits trapping them in so they instead barricade themselves on the balcony hoping for a rescue.

Meanwhile in what seems and entirely separate film, some coke snorting cola drinking Billy Idol fans are cruising the streets in on of their mom’s station wagon. Exchanging witty banter and eluding the cops through a series of carefully signaled right turns, they break into the now demon possessed theater. But unfortunately they get turned into demons themselves….so not really much of a character change for them. The movie continues into a cat and mouse chase ending with a helicopter crash. Yeah I was confused too.

What is the mystery of the creepy theater? Who will survive the night? Why do movie snacks cost more than the tickets? How many times did I mention the word “demons” in this review? All these questions and more are answered in “Demons.” This is one of few “Italian made, English dubbed, movies filmed in West Berlin that is supposed to be an American city” movies that I’ve enjoyed, so I say check it out and always be sure to check your pimps and ho’s for demon scratches.

Keep an eye out for…

– ticket scalping Phantom of the Opera rejects
– bald pimps in white leisure suits
– face scratching Halloweens props
– motorcycling samauri lobby displays
– illegal use of Billy Idol music in a station wagon
– eye gouging, neck scratching, leg chewin’, finger choppin’ demon party animals
– the handy-dandy Ginsu demon slicer

If gold medallions are a sign of being a pimp would Mr. T be the king of all pimps? I pity da pimps.

rated 8.4 out of 10 for the movie

Learn more about this movie at imbd.com

Check out the trailer for Demons

Phantasm

“Don’t even mess with me…I have balls of steel!”

Before Elvis met the mummy in Bubba-Ho Tep, Don Coscarelli directed his first and finest legendary cult horror film known as Phantasm. A touching family tale about a boy, his brother, and a balding ice cream truck driver. Actually it’s more of a horrific story about a creepy mortician who steals bodies and makes them into dwarf slaves and protects his lair with flying head drilling sphere of death…but that’s splitting hairs (and heads in this case)

Jody the younger brother sees some weird things happening at the local cemetery when his buried uncle is dug back up and hauled back into the mortuary. Apparently a victim of a voided warranty. I was at first concerned that Jody was actually a motorcycle riding ugly girl due to his extremed feathers 70’s hair style…and the fact his name was “Jody” but luckily I figured the truth out after a while. Jody discovers that the recently buried are being shrunk down like human shrinky-dinks to fit into handy dandy dwarf containers for inter-dimensional slave trading. Shockingly his brother Michael doesn’t believe this totally plausible story. Jody brings back proof in the form a sliced off finger from the Tallman that mutates into a giant bug. A bug by which even the Orkin man would cower from.

Michael enlists the help of his local hippy friend Reggie. Reggies is a local ice cream salesman who cruises around in a pimped out ice cream truck convertible never seeming to actually sell ice cream but he does like to stop to play guitar solos on occassion. Michael, Jody, and Reggie fight the tall man along with his dominion of star wars inspired sand people in the cemetery mosoleum, all the while dodging brain drilling spheres and avoiding creepy ladies in purple dresses who are turned on by tombstones. The Tall Man played by Angus Scrimm, a great evil actor’s name if I ever heard one, stalks the two brothers in his hearse while they race to save their friends from the fate of slaved Oz munchkinism in their muscle car Barricuda. Some generally creepy moments and overall weirdness make this a must see. I say check it out as well as the great sequel Phantasm II.

Keep an eye out for…
– vague palm readers with cigar boxes
– sand people from Star Wars
– head drilling flying spheres
– t-top ice cream truck cruisers
– feathered hair styles that would make Donnie Osmond jealous
– gratuitous use of a guitar solo
– Hemi-Cuda coolness
– cemetery motorcrossings
– creepy women who hang out in cemeteries
– dull bladed garbage disposals
– barrels-o-dwarfs

You can’t fake a Phantasm.

rated 9.2 out of 10 for the movie

Learn more about this movie at imbd.com

Check out the trailer for Phantasm

The Stuff

“When good smores go bad….real bad.”

How intelligent can snack food get? I often pondered this question while staring blankly into my nearly empty refrigerator late at night. A small cup of vanilla pudding mockingly stares back at me as the only remaining item that’s edible. Fortunately not only is vanilla pudding delicious and packed with sugar, it’s also not an alien life form that oozed up from the earth’s center to take over my mind….   or is that just what the pudding wants me to think?

In “The Stuff”people aren’t so lucky to have passive desert snacks. Instead some backwoods hillsman decided to taste something he sees bubbling up from the ground…because when you can’t identify something it’s always a good idea to taste it! Before you can say mass marketing, the yogurt like substance is on every shelf and in every refrigerator in America and appearing in lots of bad 80’s commercials.

Not everyone is not hooked on it though. Our pint size protagonists, Jason, in the obligatory “annoying kid who can’t get killed” role first realizes the sinister nature of the snack when he sees it crawling in the fridge. His family is hooked on The Stuff trying to get him to join their new diet plan but Jason thinks fast and fools them by eating some shaving cream instead. Jason is really the McGuiver of his time. Meanwhile A coalition of ice cream executives decide to hire an industrial spy, David “Mo” Rutherford…where the Mo stands for “needs mo acting lessons.” David’s southern charms his way into the corporate headquarters of the Stuff to try to find out how it’s made. Things are not as they appear though. The townsfolks are always eating cups of The stuff, have apparent gastoral problems and constantly spray yogurt out of their faces. That eventually makes David a tad suspicious. The laid back way Dave just matter-of-factly reacts to the horrifying events around him is pretty hilarious to watch. It’s like southern charm and witty southern banter are his only defense.

We also have some militia army guys hiding out in an abandoned renaissance festival castle just itching for the opportunity to fight vicious snack-food. David and his girlfriend enlist them to help fight “the Stuffies” and let the rest of the world know the truth. but as you well know fighting alien yogurt with bullets is like trying to nail jello to a tree.

There’s a special cameo of The Chocolate Chip Cookie King who steels the show among the various annoying standout characters most of which we find out have creamy nugget centers and there’s lots of blob-like marshmallowy evilness trying to stop our heroes fight to save humanity. All in all, a fun time so I’d say check it out. You really can’t make attacking yogurt very scary, but you can often make it hilarious.

Keep an eye out for…
– human smores
– way too southern southerners
– toasting marshmallows with no campfires
– grocery market snackfood vandals
– attack of the albino blob
– the ice cream mafia
– the evil land of dairy queen…a gravel pit of non-fat yogurt
– shaving cream eating
– The Chocolate Chip cookie King

“Come ‘n listen to my story ’bout a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed
And then one day, he was shootin’ at some fools
And up through the ground come a bubblin’ food.
The Stuff that is. alien yogurt, evil ice cream”

rated 8.4 out of 10 for the movie

Learn more about this movie at imbd.com

Check out the trailer for The Stuff

Troll 2

“We have a strict no plaid…no hat…no service policy here in the town of Nilbog.”

Well after seeing what I thought are some of the worse films captured to celluloid, this barrel scraper actually lifts up the barrel to find a scummy underlining of cinematic excrement. It’s legendary among b-movie fans for it’s pure awfulness and it really does exceed it’s reputation. It’s not actually a sequel to Troll 1 as this films contains no story, no acting, and amazingly no trolls! There are however midgets dressed in cheesy goblin masks prancing through the woods and eating people they turned into green goo. This Italian directed American horror film is so bad it’s like it’s some sort of weird alternate universe of movies where actors have only 3 emotional responses…. dull, apathetic, or wooden. The cast obviously needed to get back to their day jobs at Arby’s.

It starts with the world’s dumbest family who decide a neat vacation would be to switch houses for the summer with a farmhouse family. “No Dad we don’t want to go to Disney world…let’s go stay on a farm instead!” They travel to a town called NILBOG. Yes they named it NILBOG…the creative writers really burned out a few brain cells coming up with that unique name.

The family’s creepy kid Josh, played by Michael Stephson, sweats and grimaces like he’s constipated. He hallucinates that he’s turning into a tree or sees the floating head of his dead grandfather who warns him of the evil that lurks in NILBOG. Josh tries to warn his parents of the goblin threat through constant whining and some food urination but that surprisingly doesn’t get him very far. Also making her debut is the popcorn goblin queen Creedence played by Deborah Reed. Her acting style can best be described as excruciating and her overacted monologues would make William Shatner jealous. Along for the ride is Josh’s sister who can only be calmed by a round of singing “row row row your boat”, a song the mom “likes so well.” She must be on the same medication as her constipated son. The Dad just drives the car and threatens his children with food strikes if they don’t shape up which is an effective if not weird form of punishment. There’s also a gang of annoying teens that camp nearby in a big old RV . This is convenient for the dim witted yet still much smarter goblins who end up turning them into walking salad bars. I never knew goblins hated meat before I saw this movie and I still don’t I care.

I really can’t you give you much of an overview of the plot. There really wasn’t one. Maybe you can find it along with an actual troll. I consider this required viewing for b-movie enthusiasts but be prepared for some deep hurting. May I suggest downloading the rifftrax by MST3K Michael J. Nelson to make this movie much more bearable and even more hilarious. So check it out and “Be afraid be twice as afraid!”

Keep an eye out for…

– popcorn lovin’ goblin queens
– floating talking heads of dead relatives
– row-row-your-boat of terror
– pale green food topped with green goo..yummy.
– potted teens…and they’re not even high.
– trolls? where are the trolls? I see goblins but no trolls?
– a town named NILBOG? I knew this movie would be a big pile of PARC
– did I just see an evil monkey fart flames and fly into the air?
– demented Ewoks on crack wearing goblin masks
– RV cruising teen geeks
– 9 year old whiny kids with glandular problems.
– Gatoraid sweating
– the double decker bologna sandwich anti-goblin defense
– sheriff Freak…yes that his real name.

“There’re sandwiches for tonight! It’ll go easier on you if you eat’em. Otherwise, we’ll be forced to kill you VIOLENTLY!” -resident goblin

rated 1.4 out of 10 for the movie

Learn more about this movie at imbd.com

Check out the trailer for Troll 2

Ice Pirates

“Dude, you’re like a giant Q-tip!”

Before Johnny Depp stole the show with his drunken Keith Richards impersonation, there was the original great Pirate movie of the 80’s called Ice Pirates. In a galaxy gone dry where water has become the only thing of value, we can always count on watered down actors like Robert “made for tv acting” Urich to save the day. Mr. Urich plays Jason, the swash buckeling leader of the ice pirates that also include Ron Perlman and Angelica Houston (both of which must have accidentally wandered onto the wrong movie set.) Ice pirates are not a Canadian hockey team, nor is it a musical on ice, but is a gang of rebels who steal frozen water from the government to sell to the locals. They’re not really all that intimidating as pirates looking more like rejects from the local renaissance festival equipped with laser pistols and swords. They mostly rely on the swords for their pure swash buckeling-ness.

The crew attacks a local ice carrying government ship and yes the ship even looks like a giant ice cube tray. I swear my 7 year old kid could do these special effects better himself. While stealing the ice blocks they accidentally encounter a frozen princess named Karina who Jason immediately falls in love with. He attempts to steal her from the ship like she’s the last Swasons TV dinner left in the fridge but is captured by the ruthless overlord Zorn. We know Zorn is very evil and very stupid because he says things like “Killing you would be too easy. I have something better in mind for you!” ugh..typical dumb bad guy move.

So he delays their execution by sending them to the planet Mirtha to be castrated and lobotomized and used as slaves. Instead of the traditional years of marriage that would normally take to incur such a punishment for a man, they’re put on a assembly line given a shave and almost have their twigs and berries chomped off by an vicious looking crotch claw (Yikes!). Luckily the princess decides to help them escape before that can happen and uses them to find her father who supposedly knows the secret location of a lost water planet. Hmmm…what planet could that be? give you a clue It rhymes with girth.

Jason and his Crew arrive at yet another pit-stop planet, this one covered in fog to hide the fact the movie was probably running out of budget and is inhabited by Amazonian woman who ride magical white unicorns. I think had that dream once……anyways, princess Karina doesn’t find her father but does find an annoying body-less head that looks like the guy from tv hollywood squares who whines a lot. He reluctantly helps them find the time warp after a nose tickling Guantanamo-style torture. As Jason and the crew travel through the time warp they start to age rapidly. Old people turn to skeleteons, young couples get busy and have babies, guys grow big afros and long beards, it’s like Woodstock all over again man. Will they survive and find Girth? Will they have unlimited supplies of snow cones? Will they be able to clear up a vicious case of space herpies? Check it out for yourself. You’ll be glad you did.

Keep an eye out for…

– robot kung-fu
– unicorn riding amazon woman
– extreme afros
– jive speaking robot pimps
– crotch claws
– gopher shootin’
– frog-women who drink too much
– freshness sealed princesses
– space herpies
– robot family drive-bys

I always wondered how many people can you fit on a motorcycle…this movie dares to answer such an age old question.

rated 7.9 out of 10 for the movie.

learn more about this movie at imbd.com

Check out the trailer for Ice Pirates