The above is a touching duet performed by David Hasselhoff and Marla Maples-Trump, well at the time she was Mrs. Angry Orange, from his 1994 pay per view concert special that OJ Simpson's slow white Bronco car chase ruined! That bastard stole all of the Hoff's audience. Below is a mind blowing video from Corey Feldman that for some reason the public at large refuses to acknowledge as a classic.
Gift idea #17: This has to be the classiest commercial for the worst smelling perfume. It's the perfect gift for the woman in your life that you loathe.
Only 17 days left until Christmas, need last minute ideas for the people in your life that you hate? I'm here to help, so check daily for the best of the worse.
Foreign films, they always address the hard hitting What Ifs? in life. Take the movie Force Majeure for instance. It asks the question What If? you're on a ski vacation with your family and one day at lunch a you see an avalanche heading towards you? There you are sitting on the deck of a fancy restaurant with your family at your fancy ski resort. Suddenly you see a wall of snow falling towards you, your husband says don't worry about it, it's controlled. But it looks like the snow is gaining up speed, all around you people are yelling crying and panicking and sudden rush to get off the deck breaks out. You grab your children and your husband, your husband... he grabs his phone and pushes someone out of his way and leaves you and your children behind to die. That's just what this jerk of a husband/father does. As it turns out it wasn't an avalanche but some kind of white out snow cloud. The rest of the movie the wife is trying to work out her traumatic experience and fear and disbelief that her husband could leave them behind to die while her husbands at first denies denies denies and then allows the full shame of what he did sink in. Naturally you would think that the wife has the moral upper hand the whole time, but not so fast. At the end her fight or flight and self preservation instincts kick in and it evens everything out. Edited to add that this film even has a surprising "Hey it's that guy!" moment. Actor Kristofer Hivju from Game of Thrones (so the internet tells me, never watched it) and the Wyndham Rewards Wizard plays a friend of the couple. At least I think he's a friend and not someone they just met during their stay.
You know that the zombie trend has hit the wall and started its long slow slide down to the floor. And Zombeavers is the movie to prove it.
Two idiot hazardous waste haulers hit a deer and cause a barrel of toxic waste to roll off the truck and float down stream to a beaver dam where it explodes onto two beavers and infects them. Meanwhile three generic looking college girls are on their way to a cabin in the woods to spend a girls weekend so the blonde one can get away from her cheating boyfriend.
From left to right the smart one, the blonde one and the slutty one.
At the cabin the girls do the typical stupid girl things done in bad schlock films, swim, whine, go topless and get scared by their douchey boyfriends. Later that night the smart one and the slutty one have loud sex with their men while the blonde one cries in the living room with her cheating hussy of a man who is looking all teary eyed. The blonde one decides to shower or maybe to take a piss I forget which, and this happens.
So instead of doing the smart thing which would be to hightail it out of the woods, the men try to kill the zombeaver and decide to call it a night and take a swim the next morning. Wanna see how that dip in the lake turns out? Sure you do!
So this happens and then this happens...
So the kids make a run for it to the cabin where they're greeted by this horror...
Still the morons stay and spend one horrific night fending off zombeavers and fighting with each other. I love bad movies, I wasted my childhood and teen years every Saturday watching bad movies like Godzilla and whatever Z grade fare TBS or WPIX would show. While my peers were out there making memories with their friends I was holed up inside trying to find the next trashy movie to delight in. I didn't delight in Zombeavers, it was just okay and predictable and the acting was just meh. I think maybe that was the problem, the actors actually tried. This is a movie about zombie beavers for fucks sake. The actors should have camped it up and delivered their lines in a wooden manner. Instead this is a once in a lifetime kind of movie because watching it once is more than enough.
Just because I'm bored, here's an old clip from the Today Show about tabloids (tabloids from the 80s were really awesome) and a woman who could proudly boast that Satan was her short order cook.
When I'm sick I like to lay in bed and watch movies and sometimes reruns of beloved TV shows to lull myself to sleep. This morning I watched Roller Boogie, I knew it wasn't a masterpiece and that it was going to be a piece of late 70s cheese. But would it be a piece of moldy cheese? Thankfully it wasn't, it was a silly time waster with an ending that truly surprised me. The plot is a basic one, a group of fun loving roller dancing teens band together to save their local roller disco from being shut down by group of rich thugs who want build a strip mall. Rich girl played by Linda Blair, wants nothing more than her parents to pay attention to her and to learn how to roller dance. While slumming it down at the beach she meets the best roller dancer in town, played by Jim Bray. As you guessed it, sparks fly boy teaches girl how to roller dance, rich girl gains new but poor friends, they save the roller disco and girl's parents start to pay attention to her and see that she's growing up.
The ending while a mixed happy and sad one was more realistic than any of these sappy happy teens fall in love and end up together forever kind of films. Rich girl Terry actually follows through with her plans to attend Juilliard, because she is a very gifted flautist and that was her plan before meeting Bobby the roller dancer with dreams of making it to the Olympics. Bobby stays put where he can continue to pursue his dream winning a spot on the Olympic team and the two seem to know that it's the end of their summer romance and more than likely any contact with each other, and while sad about it they accept it. Sure they could have ended it with the duo winning the big Roller Boogie contest knowing they helped saved their favorite roller disco but the writers didn't cop out and went for it. I do recommend this film if you have down time and just want to watch something you don't have to think about. Also the roller dancing scenes were fun.
Now for a stale piece of cinema from 1972 disguised as a horror film, Deathdream aka Dead of Night
I first read about this film about a week ago, it was an old post from Rolling Stone about the ten best horror films you've never seen. And honestly, you shouldn't see it, because it's not good. The Brooks family only son Andy is away fighting in Vietnam, one night during dinner the family is informed that Andy was killed, understandably the family is upset but his mother spends half the night in his room sitting in a rocking chair chanting that he's not dead because he promised not to get killed or something like that. Meanwhile a truck driver picks up a hitchhiking solider just returned from the war, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished and the truck driver ends up dead. Back at the Brooks home, little sister Catherine hears something downstairs and as the family goes to investigate, right there standing the dark is Andy himself. Andy is just standing there with a creepy half smile on his face not seeming right, when mentioned that the government had declared him dead, he tells the family that he was and then does a creepy laugh. So overjoyed that he's "alive" they think it's just a joke and just laugh their fool heads off about it.
There is no tension or build up to anything that happens. The following day dad gets angry that Andy just sits around outside and in his room in the dark rocking in a rocking chair and his parents fight and fight and fight. This film is nothing more than screaming parents, an obsessive mother and low monotone dialogue from creepy Andy. When the "horror" began I was begging it for it to be over. I will admit that the early 70s interior decorating was distracting. Lime green walls and mustard yellow carpet? Blech. I do not recommend this film to any horror fan.
Ellen is beautiful but evil, Richard is stupid and thinks with his penis, and this book is nearly 200 pages too long.
I was excited to find out that this was a book, I only have the vaguest of memories of the 1945 movie and the 1988 made for TV remake, Too Good to be True, starring Patrick Duffy and Lonnie Anderson and those memories are only of Ellen sitting in the boat while Danny drowns and throwing herself down the stairs to miscarry. I remember enjoying both movies, but this book eh.... I didn't enjoy it.
Firstly Richard really is a dumb fuck, shortly after meeting Ellen on a train to New Mexico he discovers that they're both staying at the ranch of a mutual friend. From the moment he steps off of the train there are red flags and warning bells everywhere to stay the hell away from Ellen. Her own mother seems to hate her and even says to a bunch of strangers that her daughter was so possessive of her recently deceased father that she wouldn't have been surprised if she found out Ellen had slept with him. This is coming from her own mother, her own mother. How much more of a warning does one need that this bitch is damaged and just aint right in general?
Ellen plays it cool and aloof to pique Richard's interest and it works, then she somehow manipulates Richard into marriage. The honeymoon is a short one for Ellen as she quickly remembers that Richard has a disabled little brother named Danny whom he adores, she decides she hates his guts even before meeting him because Richard not only loves him but he also knows Richard better than she does. Get this, Ellen tells Richard several times that she doesn't like Danny and that she's jealous of him. Richard doesn't seem troubled by this confession, he just takes in stride and laughs it off.
Goodbye Danny, we hardly knew ye.
After Richard witnesses her allowing Danny to drown, she lies and tells him that she's pregnant to keep him from ratting her out. And that's when this story completely lost me. What fun is there when Richard knows what she did instead of just merely suspecting it? The rest of the story comes hurtling at you like a freight train at a car stranded on the tracks. It's predictable and boring, so very boring. Save yourself the trouble and watch the movie.
Sometimes my desire to read trash is so strong it leads me down a path that is either good, bad or just plain awful. More often than not that path ends in bad and at times just plain awful. I have no clue as to what on earth possessed me to read Endless Love. One moment I'm reading a good book and then suddenly I think to myself "Hey, why not read Endless Love? It's been on your list of books to read since forever." I should have heeded the warning sign that this book was going to be a puddle of sticky dog doo after reading a piece on how Scott Spencer feels his novel is beyond reproach and that both film adaptations were pieces of trash that missed the point. Please, bitch, please. Mr. Spencer needs to have several seats because his novel is nothing more than a self indulgent love letter to the art of stalking and to its practitioners. Our stalker, David, tells us his tale of woe, of how he was brought into the bosom of the Butterfield family then so coldly discarded, actually he was sent to banned camp for thirty days, but I guess thirty days in the life of a horny teenaged boy is a lifetime. David loves the Butterfields, he loves mama Butterfield, poppa Butterfield, older brother Butterfield and little brother Butterfield, but mainly he loves Jade Butterfield. He loves Jade Butterfield with a fiery passion, a passion so strong the two teens create their own little world and have marathon sex sessions, David can stay hard for hours on end as he tells it. Because of these every night all night long sex sessions, delicate snowflake Jade isn't getting enough sleep. Poppa Butterfield tells David to get lost for at least thirty days, well David thinks so much with his penis he gets the brilliant idea to start a fire so the family will have to leave the house and then be forced to talk to him. Too bad he choses the very night the Butterfield family decided to trip balls together. The Butterfield parents are very permissive open minded parents of the late sixties, they allow their daughter to have sex in the house with her nearly live in boyfriend, they smoke marijuana and drop acid together all the while taking in a collection of freaks and granola munchers to gawk at and possibly learn from, or something "progressive" and "enlightened" like that. Like the whinging self involved moron that he is, David readily confesses to his crime in a bid for redemption. Instead of redemption, he gets institutionalized. Thus begins his incessant crying and moaning and ruminating thoughts about the Butterfields, Jade, his sex life with Jade and his need to belong to the Butterfield family. Poor David never knew that a family could be so close and loving because his parents, mainly his mother, are self possessed cold ex communists. They may have quit the party, but the party never quit them. Upon his release from the hospital David only has one thought and that's to find his letters to and from Jade. Day and night and night day this all he thinks about. When he finally gets a job enrolls in college and gets his own apartment he then only thinks about finding the Butterfield family. He searches in every phonebook in the country for Butterfields until he finds one then he skips parole to visit mama Butterfield. Mama Butterfield has divorced poppa Butterfield and embraced her inner cougar. She tells David that everyone in the family thinks that they were lovers so why not prove them all right? Of course he rejects her advances because he's saving himself for Jade. During his stay in mama Butterfield's city, poppa Butterfield sees David crossing the street, this makes poppa run after him causing him to be hit by a car. Somehow this is David's fault, I don't know how that is, but later in the story the blame is put squarely on his shoulders even though poppa Butterfield was crossing against traffic in order to get his hands onto David. What follows is a reunion with the Butterfields to mourn their fallen patriarch, David finally meets up with Jade and then a long very detailed blood drenched fuck fest takes place. Reunited and it feels so good then secrets are revealed and then it all falls apart then an arrest is made and then punishment resumes. After years of sexual fidelity David decides that sexual healing is what he needs after learning that Jade has married some French guy. This story is not romantic, it's creepy and gross. David is a creep, the Butterfield parents are just awful. What kind of parents let their children drop acid with them and let their underage daughter have sex with her underage boyfriend in their home? I don't care if this took place in the late sixties, bad parenting is bad parenting. David alludes to some kind of inappropriate incesty type relationship between Jade and her older brother Keith, their mother Anne alludes to the fact that her husband Hugh may have had some incestuous feelings for Jade and Anne admits she could only get off with her husband after watching Jade and David have sex. The characters are just flat out unlikeable. Anne is some kind of pompous cougar who harbors a desire for David and writes long winded wordy to the point that they make no sense letters, Jade is a slutty harpy faux lesbian tease and David is just all sorts of awful and creepy. And clocking in at over four hundred pages, it truly feels endless. But you don't feel endless love for this story or it's characters, you feel endless annoyance and a wish that they all died in the fire at the beginning.
This is the story of the sick fuck who inspired the basement pit in Silence of the Lambs. Gary Heidnik kidnapped six women, raped and beat and imprisoned them. His goal was to impregnate the women and then raise a family in his basement.
Englade covers Heidnik's crimes but he fails in creating a full profile of Heidnik quickly glossing over his childhood and claims of physical abuse at the hands of his father and his mother's alcoholism to his multiple hospitalizations for his mental illness. On that note, I would like to point out Englade comes off as insensitive dick, he uses terms like nut job to describe Heidnik's psychiatric condition.
After Heidnik's arrest this book turns into a boring courtroom procedural which makes this book feel longer than it actually is, at two hundred seventy-seven pages this should be a quick read, even for someone who reads as slow as I do, but Englade includes unnecessary courtroom details such as how hot the courtroom was and what the jurors were wearing, these details ut me to sleep.
Also called into question is that of victim Josefina Rivera's role in the death of another victim and her treatment of her fellow captives. Was Rivera truly an accomplice to murder and the torture? If so was it because she grew sympathetic to Heidnik or was it a desperate attempt at appeasement to save her life? How desperate does one have to be to want to survive to live out another day of torture, rape and being forced fed human flesh?
So was Heidnik insane or did he know right from wrong? I would say yes to both, of course you have to be mentally ill to kidnap six women and turn them into unwilling sex slaves to fulfill your personal goal of having a large family, but at the same time you can still know right from wrong. Heidnik did exhibit behavior of knowing what he was doing was wrong by disposing of a dead body by dismemberment and cooking some of the body parts to destroy physical evidence, he blasted a radio at full volume to cover up any cries for help that his neighbors might hear, he forced a victim (a woman that he knew for years) to write a letter to her family that she went to New York to throw them off of his trail and he mostly chose women who were mentally handicapped.
The following is an interview with Josefina Rivera.
