Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell

1968 space vampire movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: After the sky turns red, a plane crashes in the middle of nowhere. Space-age bloodsuckers launch a fiendish attack that dooms the entire universe! Ok, so I ripped that off directly from the above poster. What's going to happen? The makers of Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell are going to sue me?

Bonus points for a sweetly bleak ending. Oh, and another bonus point for the cool title. I don't know where "Goke" comes from because, as I recall, that name isn't mentioned in this one at all. The titular hell is actually just generic outer space, too. There is some body-snatchin' going on though, so I guess it's all good. This is a weirdo horror movie from Shochiku studios, and although its plot, characters, or really anything else aren't anything special, there's a strangeness to the proceedings that keeps you interested. Start with the effects. The shot of the airplane swimming through this red sky are really cool even if they make you think the color's all messed up on your television which makes you wonder how you even change the color on these new televisions. There are glowing orbs, forehead gulches, and cheap avalanches. For such a simple plot, there sure is a lot going on. None of it makes much sense and all of it is pretty goofy, but for a movie that isn't bad enough to be funny or good enough to be really stand out from similar movies about body-snatching or vampire aliens, this is actually fairly entertaining. It might be worth it for the Blob-esque face attacks that leave slightly embarrassing facial scars alone. And it does have that stunning ending that puts a morbid capon all the goofiness.

Tarantino borrowed a shot from this for Kill Bill Vol. 1.

The Exterminating Angel

1962 comedy

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Some fancy-pants attend a dinner party. Afterwards, they are unable to leave. Things get desperate. Sheep enter the room, and later, there's a bear.

Subtle surreal shenanigans! This movie isn't uproariously funny, but there's a tone of humorous tension that I really like. Apparently, this was banned in the Soviet Union because the idea of characters unable to leave a party was considered anti-Communist. That's funny, too. It's casually surreal stuff, probably my favorite movie of one of my favorite directors. I like how the surreal touches--a woman with feathers and bird feet in her purse, the aforementioned animals, a scene with a hand--are things that none of the guests pay any attention to. I suppose there's a point there just like there's a point to all the repetition. Some of that repetition, like when characters say the exact same things or how the guests arrive at the party twice, almost seem like errors in editing. The cinematography is wonderful; the camera moves from person to person so fluidly during group conversations. There's a rhythm and choreography to the whole thing. Shots in mirrors of shoes being tied or apathetic faces are also cool. It all builds elegantly to a funny subversive and memorable punchline. I prefer this movie to its most likely companion--Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, a movie where characters also attempt to have dinner.

Goon

2011 hockey comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A dumb guy in a family of smart people amazes a hockey coach with his fighting prowess and is signed to the team despite his inability to skate or play hockey. He's the titular goon, a guy put on the ice not to score goals or even do much at all related to hockey but instead fight opposing players and protect his team's talent.

Doug Glatt. Hasn't that name been used in another movie comedy? I know I could Google this and get an answer, but I'd rather somebody else do the work for me. This is one of those dumb comedies that seem to attract Eugene Levy, so it's no surprise that Eugene Levy is in this. And Eugene Levy's eyebrows. Seann William Scott is our protagonist, and I don't like him or any of the dumb movies that he's in, mostly stuff with Eugene Levy's eyebrows. As I wrote in my Dukes of Hazzard review, Scott has too many first names and too many n's in his first first name. That's reason enough to not like him, but he also plays simple-minded goofball too naturally. Having said that, he's a likable doofus here, and this movie, though not really very good, is frequently funny. Raunchiness abounds ("We have not pissed together since last time we double-teamed Belchior's mother.) as the characters all seem to have Tourette's Syndrome or something. The goalie gets the best lines, likely improvised although the announcer is pretty funny, too. There's never too much hockey. A love subplot, likely forced into the screenplay to get the ladies on board, succeeds in making the main character more likable but is other pointless. My favorite line: "It was Doug Glatt in the conservatory with his ass."

Doug Glatt. Seriously, where have I heard that name before?

Shane Reviews the Greatest Movies Ever Made: Sunrise (A Song of Two Humans)

1927 silent melodrama

Rating: 19/20

Plot: A horny farmer meets a whore from the city, and she convinces him to drown his wife and sell his farm so that they can be together. His penis tells him that it sounds like a terrific idea, but he's unable to commit the act and the married couple falls in love all over again in the big city. But then there's a storm! Oh, snap!

Again, in order to avoid ridicule from cinephiles, I feel the need to give these movies on the Sight and Sound list a 20/20. [Edit: I have since changed my mind! I welcome ridicule.] I'm not sure if this makes me a more credible movie blogger, but admitting that I do it probably takes away every tiny bit of credibility I had left. I want to start this off by saying that I really do love this little movie, however. Oh, and you should consider, when deciding in your head just how much credibility I do have since I know you're doing that right now, that I am posting this entry in the "Shane Watches the Greatest Movies Ever Made" series on the exact day I said I would which is worth something.

Enough about my credibility or lack of credibility though. There's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans to discuss. Everybody who knows me knows that I like silent movies. 1927 was a huge year for film, one that started with Metropolis and also saw the release of The Jazz Singer, a movie that ruined movies for several years. If my shoddy research is correct, this movie came out soon after that first successful "talkie," timing that unfortunately made it interesting to almost nobody. It did win a special Academy Award though, and it's now regarded as one of the best of the silent era. Deservedly so actually.

The story's in three chunks--a haunting first act where The Man (that's his name, just like it should be in a fairy tale) and city gal conspire to off The Wife, a much lighter and sweet and humorously cute second part where the love between the husband and wife is rekindled, and a third classically melodramatic final third that features some action, some surprises, and the exact ending that it should have. It's a silent film, and Murnau doesn't lean on title cards at all, forcing his mute characters to let us know all about themselves in other ways--the way they smoke their cigarettes, flash leg, or walk; the way they tuck their husbands into bed or frown at an abandoned kitchen table; and the way they clutch bundles of sticks, offer a plate of bread, or lumber about like their legs are too heavy. Those heavy legs, you should know, were allegedly because actor George O'Brien was forced to wear lead boots to help him walk in a more guilty way. Apparently, guilty men walk a little like Frankenstein's monster. O'Brien is good, even shedding some tears during one beautiful scene. His character's dopey though. Buying cheap flowers for your wife to make up for looking menacing during a boat ride? Janet Gaynor's also great, though often with that typical 1920's staginess. Margaret Livingston plays the woman in the city, and even though she's the third most important character in this, she's not in it all that much. She does look good in lingerie, however. That was appreciated. Oh, and there's a scene where she dances after she and lover daydream of life in the city, and that might be the worst thing I've ever seen. No, I'm not just talking about dancing. I'm talking about the worst thing I've ever seen. Of course, I always like the periphery characters, and there's a pair of guys in the city--a barber played by Ralph Sipperly and a randy photographer played by J. Farrell MacDonald--who play their parts like they really want to be noticed. And there's a dog that is not credited, but I was wondering if it was the same dog who played Homo in Murnau's The Man Who Laughed.

This isn't great because of the acting or rather simple story though. This is all about technical prowess. The visual experimentation makes this a stunning movie-watching experience. Watch that fuzzy moon and farmland melt into big city excitement, a scene witnessed through a moving trolley that transitions from a rural setting to an urban one, the lighting during a scene post-storm, a title screen that chillingly says "Couldn't she get drowned?" before even-more-chilllingly melting away, long tracking shots of characters walking through these sets including one spectacular sequence where the camera follows the guy as he meets his mistress. I can't remember seeing a silent movie where the camera moves this gracefully. It does it on the outdoors sets and again through the busy streets of the city. There are also some special effects, mostly superimposition, and it looks quaint but also like a labor of love. There's a craft to putting the model trains, dancing women, and musicians on the screen with dreaming lovers in a field of wheat. The goofiest effect is during a slow careless but loving walk that ends up humorously causing a traffic jam. It looks silly but still manages to add to the fairy tale-ness of the whole thing.

I also want to mention the music, something I almost never do because I don't really understand how music was done for movies in the 20s. It sounds to me that a lot of this music may have been used just for this movie although I did hear that Alfred Hitchcock television theme music in there during a scene with a broken statue. Generally, silent movie music is at best dull and forgettable or at its worst irritating. Here, it's really terrific, adding to the tension in the early and later scenes of the movie.

And speaking of the sound, this one is not technically a silent movie. It's one of those late-20's movies that use synchronized sounds. I really wish that era of movie-making would have been longer because it's delightfully goofy, especially here when the characters go to an amusement park and later with the wind and thunder during a violent storm. I can't understand why some things get sound and some don't. There's a scene where some incessant pig squealing is audible but a dropped bottle is not. It's weird.

I should have watched this with my wife, but I'm afraid she would get ideas and try to drown me afterward.

Next movie in the Shane Watches the Greatest Movies Ever Made series: Tokyo Story. I'll write about that one on the 26th of January unless I decide to shut this thing down before then.

Django Unchained

2012 spaghetti blaxploitation flick

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 19/20)

Plot: A dentist-turned-bounty-hunter buys the titular slave in order to hunt down some white guys. Django does such a good job, that the bounty hunter decides to work with him throughout the winter and then agrees to help him locate his wife Broomhilda. That leads to lots and lots of violence.

Tarantino blends genres effortlessly and gloriously. Here, you get historical drama mixed with Italian Western with a pinch or three of blaxploitation, and I'm really not sure there's ever been another director who could put all that together so well. Being part-spaghetti, you might expect meandering with some bits drawn out enough to try most people's patience. Of course, Tarantino does that anyway. This does meander and go a few places that I might--upon further viewings--wish it didn't. From my theater experience--rare enough that I often have to curb my enthusiasm--I can tell you that I enjoyed every single minute of this bloated near-masterpiece. The movie looks beautiful, individual shots that you could probably show somebody and trick them into thinking they came from a Leone movie. A Wild West town drowning in mud, a few plantations, lots of good interior shots with what might be accurate period details. I'm not sure where any of this was filmed, but it was all great to look at. And with Tarantino, you expect certain excesses--blood, cursing, the n-word, and dialogue. This doesn't disappoint there if you're type of person who would be disappointed by a lack of those. The dialogue's rich and often funny, and the violence is quite possibly even more ridiculous than the House of Blue Leaves sequence in Kill Bill. It was definitely more shocking for me to see all that red, and I really wasn't aware that guns in 1858 were capable of making people explode. It felt weird to let out a little chuckle during one out-of-control shootout scene when an already-shot-to-death villain gets shot in the crotch again. Tarantino's boldness with inserting humor in all this violence and in a topic that there's really nothing at all funny about definitely helps this stand out, gives it that unique feel that makes Tarantino's movies so rewarding and special. It's all those minor touches. That wobbling tooth-on-a-spring makes me laugh just thinking about it. (Note: It's an LOL, not a real laugh.) And there's a scene featuring the Klan (or some sort of Klan prototype--I don't know their history) that might surpass the one in O Brother, Where Art Thou? as my favorite KKK movie scene ever. That's difficult to pull off even if Jonah Hill isn't involved. There are all kinds of funny asides that make me want to see this again. The characters' interactions are often troubling, of course but they sometimes manage to be both humorous and troubling at the same time. The actors portraying these characters at times make them seem like caricatures, but they do a terrific job making them semi-realistic, completely entertaining, and most importantly just fucking cool. Jamie Foxx gives a perfectly quiet performance as the hero, but he's not helped by how completely awesome Christoph Waltz is as Dr. Schultz. This guy's one of my new favorite movie heroes ever, and although a lot of it is how the character is written, a lot of it has to do with Waltz. I think it's because he kind of sounds like Werner Herzog. DiCaprio's good enough as the villain although he might be a bit too pretty. Prettiest villain in any spaghetti Western probably. There is a really intense scene that Leo pulls off really well, however. Tarantino-regular Samuel L. is also great in a much-different role. He's very funny here. And there are loads of filthy ruffians and rough-faced thugs that look like they came straight off the set of a late-60's Italian western, all craggy and with skin that looks well lived in. Also typical of a Tarantino movie--you're going to notice the music. You do here, too, and I loved hearing a lot of borrowed Morricone. I'm not sure if I loved hearing the modern hip hop or the Johnny Cash. It just didn't feel in place here. Still, it's a minor complaint. It's early January, and I doubt that I'm going to see a new movie that is this consistently entertaining.

For all you spaghetti-philes, Franco Nero does make a cute little appearance. You probably would have guessed that though.

Nicolas Cage Birthday Celebration: Bringing out the Dead

1999 Scorsese movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A paramedic in New York City loses his mind as he watches ghosts and tries his best to save souls. John Goodman changes his mind about the Chinese food.

"What's that?"

"It's three legs."

"That's too many!"

 

Nicolas Cage should consider himself lucky. There's only one person who gets special birthday recognition on this blog, and that's Cory. This, in fact, might be the highlight of the man's career. I wanted to watch a Cage movie on his birthday, and I hadn't seen this one. Now that I've seen it, I have no idea why I went over 13 years without seeing it. 

 

I'll get my gripe out of the way right off the bat--there was way too much music in this. I dug the Van Morrison played along with Scorcese's flashy images of New York bathed in colors. Van Morrison (I think just one song) fades in and out like you're losing radio reception, and wherever he pops up, it's appropriate. I could have done without the REM or Janes Addiction or The Who or 10,000 Maniacs though. That music might be timeless, but for me, it cements this in a very specific time and place. Plus, there were so many snippets of these songs that it sounded like somebody flipping the radio dial in the middle of songs just to be mean. Or in the case of 10,000 Maniacs, to be nice.

The first thought I had while watching this was, "What? A Nicolas Cage movie with narration?" The narration in this is especially poetic though and paints this wonderfully abstract picture of the character's mind. 

 

"Saving someone's life is like falling in love, the best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterward, you walk the streets, making infinite whatever you see. Once, for a few weeks, I couldn't feel the earth. Everything I touched became lighter. Horns played in my shoes. Flowers fell from my pockets. You wonder if you've become immortal, as if you've saved your own life as well. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there, why deny that for a moment there, God was you?"

 

It's stylized 1st person narration for a stylized movie. I like it. And it just perfectly captures the thoughts of this poor dude wandering in this nightmarish limbo, an urban purgatory with ghosts, well-lit ghosts that occasionally boogie to Van Morrison songs. This movie looks so good, crisp when it needs to be crisp and more viscous when it needs to be viscous. Sometimes, the buildings and streets and skies and people are oily and indistinct, and you just have this white ghostly ambulance cutting through it all. Sometimes, things focus on the worn expressions and bad postures of these damned souls. It's all beautifully hideous, and Scorsese isn't shy about using the tricks of his trade to show us this world or how one man's mind is deteriorating as he moves through it. At times, it feels like too much, but it's an experience and a half. The birthday boy's performance is one of his better ones. Combined with Scorsese's trickery, Cage's acting perfectly shows this character's descent into madness. It's a more careful performance than you might expect from Cage although there are a couple of Nic Cage freak-outs ("Why's everything a cardiac arrest? Come on, people!" or his laugh after an accident involving the ambulance), but watching a Cage character gradually lose his mind is about as perfect as it gets for a fan of his work. Also shining in this E.R. on hallucinogenics: Ving Rhames as raucous Marcus with his sweet-talkin' and cries to Jesus; John Goodman as Cage's partner on the first night, a guy who just wants some food; Tom Sizemore as his absurdly vicious co-driver on the third night; an unrecognizable Marc Anthony, a guy I probably wouldn't recognize anyway; Arthur J. Nascarella, the barking (literally) captain; Mary Beth Hurt as a sarcastic nurse; and of course Afemo Omilami as Griss, a guy super-cool enough to be allowed to speak about himself in the third person. "Don't make me take off my sunglasses" might be my favorite line ever spoken by a guy named Griss in a movie. It all adds up to something that is devastating but at the same time enormously entertaining. There's a dark humor that's impossible to miss. Scorsese himself provides some of the chuckles as a dispatcher, sending the ambulance to help people with roaches in their ear, a man setting his pants on fire, a three car accident with "two taxis and a taxi," an elderly woman abducted by her own cat, and a man at the bus terminal who was shot three years ago but now says his arm hurts. 

 

I don't completely understand what this movie's about, but I'd love to see it again to piece things together. Three nights? A guy trying to save people? Is Cage's character a Christ figure? 

 

Other things I liked: 

 

1) I.B. Bangin. What a name!

2) The volcano art in that dude's apartment. I wonder if my wife would let me put something like that up.

3) As much as I hated the music, the song by The Cellos where a guy claims that he's "the Japanese sandman" is bitchin'.

Little Cigars

 

1973 little person crime caper

Rating: 12/20

Plot: On the run from gangsters, regular-sized Cleo hooks up with five diminutive performers who use their stage show as a front for some thieving. She and their leader Slick Bender strike up a romance as their crimes get more and more ambitious.

I love watching things that make my wife ask "What are you watching?" in a way that makes me think she'd ask "What the hell are you watching?" if she cursed more. She did that twice for this movie. I had to watch it in two installments, and she was confused by it twice.

The appeal for me, of course, was all the little people, especially shane-movies favorite Billy Curtis from The Terror of Tiny Town. Little Curtis is so angry through most of this. Look at this collection of lines:

Billy: Don't ever call a midget a dwarf.
Guy: What's the difference?
Billy: (in a whispery voice) Broken arm.

"Alright, you little perverts!"
"Is that the name of the game today? Teasing midgets?"
"If there are any heroes in here today, they're gonna be dead ones."
(After emerging from a crate with disheveled hair and a giant sweat stain on his shirt) "Boy, am I glad to be out of that son of a bitch."
"You don't have to tiptoe, you slut."
"Put me down!"

He also gets to fight a little bit in a bar, and it looks more realistic than half of Hollywood's fights. But there are other little people fights--including one where they gang up on one guy, another that is little-person-on-little-person, and a water fight that might be the hottest thing I've ever seen--and other little people. There's mustachioed Cadillac played by the great-voiced Jerry Maren who worked with the Marx brothers and got the chance to hand Dorothy a lollipop. He was also in the "Yada Yada" episode of Seinfeld. Frankie (Felix Silla) has the best voice of this crew. He fixes things in this movie but also played an Ewok, several aliens, Misquamacus in The Manitou, and Twiki in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century which is a pretty big deal if you ask me. Hugo is one muscular midget (I can use that word if there's alliteration--it's a rule.) and is played by Emory Souza who wasn't in a lot of movies but did do stunts in Dirty Harry. And there's Frank Delfino who looks a lot like Walter Matthieu and who played the Hamburglar in McDonalds commercials for over 20 years. A little guy named Buddy Douglas plays an attorney and is really awesome.

But who else is in this, albeit in a limited role? Angelo Rossitto, from Freaks. He's the smallest of a bunch of little people in a police line-up, and the only one of those guys to get lines, ramblings about being an honorary sheriff. Man, I love all 2 feet and 11 inches of that guy!

This movie's a hit 'n' miss affair. The biggest problem is that its makers don't seem sure what kind of movie they're even making. A black comedy? An action crime movie? It's dark without being funny too often. The capers don't make much sense, and the five little people and one statuesque blond woman seem a little conspicuous. It seems that the writers are playing a little game of "Let's see how many interesting places we can fit a little person," but all of the capers could be accomplished by just walking into a place with a gun and saying, "This is a stick-up!" like they end up doing anyway. The only thing silllier than their crime spree is the Little Cigars' act which might be the worst thing ever. Speaking of the statuesque blond, I do like her. She's Angel Tompkins and gets to be on screen in a towel and her underwear. Such a tease. She calls Billy Curtis a "piss pot" and has a fantastic wink. She's in this to look sexy and manages to pull that off. I loved one line of hers spoken to Curtis: "Because I'm an old lady, and I dig your little ass."

One other thing I really liked about this one was the ridiculous amount of off-screen asides, what I'm going to refer to "Attaboy, Luthers" from now on:

"Why, that cigar's bigger than he is!"
"That guy's shot!" (I love that one!)
"Watch out! Crazy driver! She's out of her head!"
"Hell, that's better than a waterbed." (during a Billy Curtis pillow demonstration)
"I'm gonna feed it to my bull!" (this one has to do with fertility candy bars)
"Like people with toy guns."

I enjoyed this, but it's not a very good movie. Check it out if you like little people in cinema as much as me. If that's possible.

Detour

1945 film noir

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A piano player on his way across country to visit his girlfriend in Los Angeles runs into some trouble after the man he hitches a ride with dies. The piano player assumes his identity and picks up a really mean passenger.

Such a fascinating little movie. On the one hand, it looks really cheap and the characters are generic. Edgar G. Ulmer directed the thing on a nothing budget in just six days. Tom Neal is awfully whiny as our protagonist and narrator and lacks punch, but he's an acceptable dupe. Ann Savage with her "homely natural beauty" is a vicious little bitch, squeezing pulpy insults out the sides of her mouth ("Kiss him with a wrench," "You'll pop into jail so fast it'll give you the bends") and bringing the feisty a little too hard. He's mopey and she's nasty, but together, they approach something close to noir magic with their hateful exchanges that dominate the second half of this movie.And Ulmer does a whole lot with his little. This storytelling's got lots of style with all these sneaky voyeuristic camera movements, hazy exteriors, a great use of shadows and light, and a terrific scene following a death with an in-and-out-of-focus glance around the room. With an interesting though less-than-plausible plot and a handful of damned characters, some who even realize they're damned, this is pretty far from perfect but still a good example of the genre made during its golden era. I would have preferred a less obvious ending, however. This should have ended with a shot of the protagonist walking on the shoulder of a highway, a lost doomed soul completely alone. It's too bad the lost doomed soul had to be arrested at the end because this movie was made in 1945.

Note: I'm surprised film noir classics I watched as a toddler didn't turn me into a smoker. I almost want to start smoking now so that I can talk with a cigarette in my mouth like characters like Al do. How did these movies not turn me into a smoker when I was a lot more impressionable?

Fubar

2002 mockumentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A documentarian decides to chronicle the pointless misadventures of a pair of Canadian headbangers. One of them gets cancer.

First, there is a Zubaz sighting in this movie. I'm not even sure why I'm still linking to that company's website because they haven't given me a dime for my efforts. Obviously, they're not aware that my end-of-the-year post had nine readers.

This has a different feel from the sequel which, for whatever reason, I watched first. The other one doesn't even pretend to be a documentary. That leads to one flaw actually. While the work of the two leads Terry and Dean played by David Lawrence and Paul Spense are natural enough to maybe fool people that this whole thing is for real, Gordon Skilling's performance as the beleaguered director Farrel won't. He's pretty bad although a big surprise with that character later in the movie is so beautiful. Like the sequel, this has an improvisational feel that really works with an onslaught of funny lines. This would be oft-quoted by college kids if it was more well known, I bet. Of course, what do I know? It's not like I'm a prep school student in the 1950s or something. I also like minor details--some setting additions, duct tape use, a shot of a tattoo--that aren't thrown at the audience in a cheap or obvious way but are rewarding for viewers willing to pay enough attention. Funny movie.

Dead Poets Society

1989 anti-conformist propaganda

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An unorthodox literature teacher at the Welton Academy clashes with the "tradition, honor, discipline, and excellence" ideology of the all-boys prep school. He's a terrible influence on his students, encouraging them to tear up their textbooks, stand on their desks, read poetry, and shoot themselves in the face. They form the titular poetry-reading club and start learning to think for themselves.

How dangerous is it to start a movie with bagpipes? And how many misguided and just plain awful English teachers did this thing spawn? As a high schooler who liked to imagine himself as a burgeoning nonconformist, this movie appealed to me, but I wondered what my stuffy middle-aged self would think. Well, it's a bit manipulative and pretty stuffy (despite the bagpipes), a movie that does often seize the cliches, but Robin Williams' subdued and exceptional performance and two handfuls of key memorable scenes make this an entertaining and downright inspiring motion picture. Most of the classroom (or sometimes out-of-the-classroom) scenes with Williams teaching are really good. The first class scene in the hallway with the ghosts of Welton's past and their similar haircuts, the barbaric yawping scene's, the anti-Pritchard page-ripping, the desk-standing perspective lesson. It's good stuff, all things that I've tried with my teaching jobs but have been reprimanded for "making too much noise in the hallway," touching kids' faces, vandalizing textbooks, and "encouraging dare-devilism." I like that this is more about the kids than it is Robin Williams' character. He's the instigator or catalyst, but Peter Weir wisely focuses more on the boys and this moment when they're ready to challenge authority and have their own ideas. The boys' performances seem authentic to me, a guy who did not attend a fancy-schmanzy prep school in the late-50s, and the adult antagonists--Norman Lloyd as Nolan and Kurtwood Smith as Neil's dad Mr. Perry--are also really good. This isn't as consistently great as Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris but it's still a really good movie.

Blood Bath

1966 horror movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: An artist who may or may not be a vampire kills attractive women and then dips their bodies in hot wax.

This one recalls the superior and more comedic (blackly) Bucket of Blood with its sculpting techniques and beatniks. Blood Bath, a movie that unfortunately isn't as interesting as the above poster makes it look, has an interesting history which explains why it's kind of a mess. Corman produced this movie and wanted Jack Hill of Spider Baby and The Wasp Woman fame to use footage of a movie Corman released in Europe but not in the U.S. He wasn't completely happy, so another director (Stephanie Rothman) came along and added a few scenes and changed the story around a little. So it's no wonder that this is disjointed and confusing. And it's too bad that it's slightly incomprehensible because the movie has so much style. There's great atmosphere early in the film with greasy atmosphere and impossible architectures and creepy bells, great black and white shots that look like they could have been in The Third Man or something. Later, there's a cool desert "He was mad!" scene and a nice shot of floating high heels in a swimming pool. The climactic scene, the only thing that even approaches horror, is effectively and efficiently dark and creepy. There's some cool movie artwork and even a little satire with some beatniks discussing the application of quantum physics to painting. This doesn't really overcome its convoluted production history or problems, but it is interesting enough to take a peek at.

Note: Like A Bucket of Blood, this has a very misleading title. There's sort of a bath, but no blood. And remember, you're not quite getting the cleavage or "the shrieking of mutilated victims caged in a black pit of horror" promised on the poster.

Disco Godfather

1979 disco anti-drug movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: The titular hero, a platter-spinning cat at a discotheque, declares his own personal war on PCP after his nephew runs into trouble.

This is Rudy Ray Moore but not with his Dolemite character. It does have plenty of tackiness, 70's jumpsuit sequin action, and a few terrible kung-fu scenes though. Oh, and a Rudy Ray Moore sex scene, of course. The best of those fight scenes (and by best, I'm really meaning the worst) are a pair with some telephone repairmen, the second of those accompanied by this "One Way Ticket to Hell--Shermanizin'" song that made me want to get my own jumpsuit, preferably a crotchless one. Interesting that this has such a strong anti-drug message since I assume the only people who would really like this movie would have to be on some sort of drug. Maybe Angel Dust. PCP must be a hell of a drug, apparently one capable of transforming a disco into Night of the Living African American Dead and turn Rudy Ray Moore into a skeleton. This whole thing starts with a ton of disco dancing mayhem with a great entrance by Moore in this blue outfit and a whole lot of cries to "Put some weight on it!" whatever the hell that means. Moore apparently thought that little catch phrase would be huge because the credits point out that he did copyright it. Things really get interesting when this turns into a 1970's black version of Reefer Madness. Moore's performance is something to behold--the early delivery of a "Where is Bucky and what has he had?" line, the mispronunciation of the word clandestine, and a scream at about the hour and twenty-nine minute mark that might be the best acting I've ever seen. My favorite moment might be during one of Rudy Ray's curse-filled ramblings about PCP that ends with a reporter asking, "Can I quote you on that?" The most exciting moments are during the PCP freakouts, scenes that almost reminded me of an urbanized Coffin Joe or something. And when animation is added to the freakouts, it was suddenly like outsider art or something.

Notable moments: An awesome performance by John Casino--Kurt Russell's stuntman for the last 25 years--as a cowboy. His death scene is one of the more ludicrous things you'll ever seen.

Best line that isn't "Put some weight on it!": "She claimed the ham was crying and didn't want the ham ruining her party."

2012 Year in Review! (The Last Part)

Best Movie Moment of the Year, the Movie Moment That Makes All Other Movie Moments Seem Like a Waste of My Time Because I Could Just Watch This One Movie Moment Over and Over Again and Be Happy: Nicolas Cage urinating flames in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. It’s that look back at the audience that seals it!

Best Classic Movie Moment: “Get him a body bag! Yeeeeeeaaaaah!”

Best Silent Movie I Saw This Year: Unless I missed something, The Phantom Carriage was the only classic silent movie I saw this year. How did that happen? The Artist is a silent movie and that edges out the real silent movie because Berenice Bejo wasn’t alive in the 1920s. Oh, and Guy Maddin’s Cowards Bend the Knee was a silent, but it was also missing Bejo.

Best Crispin Glover Moment: He rocks a red velvet suit, sings a song, gets beaten up by a young Tim Robbins, and has a fight with a wall in Twister. He’s a force in River’s Edge. But he creates something insane and magical in Simon Says. Seriously, stop reading this (like you haven’t already!) and watch that movie.

Most Ridiculous Orgasmic Moment: What follows a “ding” in The Cabin in the Woods.

The Torgo (Best Worst Acting Performance of the Year): This was the most impressive list of nominees ever! Robert Williams from The Giant Claw, Kon Ohmura from Gamera vs. Guiron, Alan Bagh or the gas station employee or the guy in an Easy-E shirt in Birdemic: Shock and Terror, Ray Milland or Adam Roarke in Frogs, Jack Woods who directed himself in Equinox, Ray Sager in The Wizard of Gore, Isaac Kappy’s small role in Thor, Angela Boyd’s small part in Rocky Balboa, Antonia Dorian’s Princess April in Dinosaur Island, Tom Jarmusch (Jim’s brother) as Conan the accordionist in Johnny Suede, Marjoe in a couple movies, Jack Driscoll as the bus driver in Trip with the Teacher, Elizabeth Berkley’s awe-inspiring performance in Showgirls, John Gatins off-the-hook work in Real Steel. Seriously, any of these could win the Torgo this year, but this award can only belong to one fine thespian—Gary Busey for his remarkably terrible work as both a person and a dog in Quigley. Absolutely amazing.

The Most Painful Movie Experience of the Year (Worst Bad Movie): Transmorphers, Dark Shadows, Hearbeeps, Period Piece, and The Secret of the Magic Gourd were all painful. Mighty painful. But only one movie made me want to take my own life before the end credits—Chipwrecked.

The Manos (Best Worst Movie): Look at this list of bad movies that I loved watching:

The Devil’s Sword

The Giant Claw
A*P*E
Gamera vs. Guiron
The Man Who Saved the World
Viva Knievel!
Frogs
Deathsport
The Godmonster of Indian Flats
The Wizard of Gore
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter
Monster from a Prehistoric Planet
Starcrash
Showgirls
Simon Says
Samurai Cop
Santa with Muscles
Quigley

If somebody told me that any of the above movies was the worst movie they’ve ever seen, I wouldn’t be able to argue with them. But there’s one movie I watched this year that was just special, the only 1/20 that I gave out this year. I watched it early this year and knew nothing would beat it. I’ve talked about this movie with everybody I know to help spread the word, and I eagerly anticipate the sequel which is coming out in 2013. That movie, friends, is Birdemic: Shock and Terror. It’s the best worst of the best worst and well deserving of the Manos this year.

Best Movie of the Year: As always, old favorites are not considered. That excludes Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Withnail and I, Young Frankenstein, Papillon, Once Upon a Time in the West, Taxi Driver, Cool Hand Luke, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover, Rocky, Citizen Kane, Midnight Cowboy, Down by Law, Stranger than Paradise, L.A. Confidential, Fargo, Barton Fink, Freaks, Fight Club, M, Five Easy Pieces, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Bride of Frankenstein, The Love Bug, Squid and the Whale, Memento, Smokey and the Bandit, You the Living (former best movie award winner), Amelie, The Karate Kid, Schindler’s List, Pi, The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, and Vertigo which is my favorite movie of all time. Wow! That’s a lot of great movie-watchin’ there! Here are the best new-to-Shane movies that I saw this year in alphabetical order:

Cowards Bend the Knee (or, the Blue Hands)

Death Rides a Horse
How to Get Ahead in Advertising
Ju Dou (a fine recommendation from Cory)
La Havre (from shane-movies favorite Aki Kaurismaki)
Moonrise Kingdom (on a date with my favorite person in the world not named Crispin Glover)
Pepe le Moko
Purple Noon (the third Cory recommendation here)
Ridicule (another Cory recommendation)
Smoke
Sound of Noise (my favorite little surprise)
The Artist
The Ruling Class
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
The Virgin Spring (It’s possible that I’d seen this before.)

 The best new-to-me movie I saw this year: Hugo

Finally: The following list consists of movies that I liked but that nobody commented on. I reckon that might be because they’re obscure and people haven’t seen them. I think they’re worth watching!

Trollhunter (great found footage horror-comedy from Norway)

Parents (very black comedy featuring a Quaid brother)
Fish Story (clever apocalypse movie from Japan)
Street Thief (pretty good mockumentary)
[Rec] (more found footage, this one pretty much straight horror)
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (spoof comedy with Bejo and that guy from The Artist)
Trees Lounge (quiet little movie with Steve Buscemi)
Thieves Like Us (Depression-era Altman flick)
The first 2/3^rd of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (good horror comedy but it loses steam)
Sleepwalk with Me (sweet little romantic comedy starring and directed by a good comedian)
The Favour, The Watch, and the Very Big Fish (Goldblum gets to play Jesus in this black comedy)
Smoke Signals (Native America-directed comedy with some funny moments)
The Fall (longish fantasy that’s a nice tribute to silent-era stuntmen)
I’m a Cyborg but That’s Ok (a bizarre little treat, like a Japanese Cuckoo’s Nest)
Leaves of Grass (far-from-perfect Coen-esque black comedy with Ed Norton playing twins)
Hands on a Hard Body (cool little documentary)
The Living Wake (a fun little irreverent black comedy with an Eisenberg)
The Bunny and the Bull (quirky, bizarre comedy that burbles with creativity)
Submarine (I must like black comedies—this one reminded me of Amelie and Wes Anderson)
Zazie dans le Metro (Louis Malle gets really goofy in this stream-of-conscious non-animated cartoon)
The Puffy Chair (simple comedy from the Duplass brothers)
Good Morning (simple Ozu drama with a lot of farting)
Mousehunt (fun family slapstick that isn’t afraid to get a little dark)
Rat (cool little Irish comedy with a lot of clever moments and a great Imelda Staunton performance)
Klown (hilarious and probably offensive comedy from Denmark)
The Great Buck Howard (not great at all, but it has a fun Malkovich performance)
The Cabin in the Woods (as I wrote about this one, it's either really clever or really stupid and probably a combination--loads of fun though)
World’s Greatest Dad (very dark but as I said before, you get to see Robin Williams naked)

Good bye.

2012 Year in Review! (Part Two)

Best Scene Featuring a Woodchipper: A three-way tie! Fargo’s famous woodchipper scene, of course, but also a great scene in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and another in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The latter, however, does not involve a woodchipper at all. It’s a snowchipper. But none of you have made it this far in my year-in-review, so it doesn’t really matter.

Best Scene Featuring a Nipple: Lots of candidates here as I’ve seen my fair share of nipples, but Jeff Goldblum tweaking his own while looking at dinosaurs in Jurassic Park takes the prize.

Best Monster: Various trolls in Trollhunter, crocodile men and a bitchin’ Cyclops in The Devil’s Sword, that bird puppet in The Giant Claw, Godzilla or his enemy Destororah or whatever the hell that thing’s name was, Gamera’s knife-headed opponent Guiron, Alice Cooper’s monster dog, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, the stop-motion gems in Equinox? They’re great monsters, but the titular Godmonster, a deformed sheepish thing, was the best monster I saw this year. And by that, I mean the worst.

Favorite Movie Moments That Don’t Fit Anywhere Else in This Mess:

“I’ve got you now, little guy” from Mousehunt
Rosemary and Herman sharing a carrot in Rushmore
The chase scene involving a bicycle and a frog running on its hind legs in the otherwise dreadful The Secret of the Magic Gourd
Jackie Chan imitating Keaton in Project A II
Richard E. Grant eating fish sticks in How to Succeed in Advertising
Gordon-Levitt reenacting the Star Wars trash compactor scene in Hesher. . .also a scene where he farts.
Loch Ness monster eating a cowboy in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao
Gene Wilder going bonkers over his blue blanket in The Producers
Doctors trying to save a girl’s life in Hobo with a Shotgun
A one-armed man making air quotes in Brief Encounters with Hideous Men
A dough-juggling scene in A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop
The breastfeeding of a unicorn in Black Moon
Liam’s prayer in The Grey
The Orlac-esque shower butt-poke scene from Guy Maddin’s Cowards Bend the Knee
Nicholson orders food in Five Easy Pieces
All the wonderfully disturbing places Noe takes the viewer in Enter the Void
Frankenstein’s sexy sexy bride twitching and chirping
Bill Murray’s bowling

Most Outrageous Claim That I Made All Year: That John Carpenter is somehow responsible for 9/11

My Best Idea of the Year: Taking A Night to Remember, digitally remove the iceberg, and digitally include Rip Torn throwing wrenches at the ship.

My Worst Idea of the Year: Goonies 3: Mama Fratelli’s Bedroom Adventures in 3-D

Best Comment I Got All Year: “Whatever your an asshole you don’t even get the fucking brilliance of this movie. it is a parody douche bag. GO watch NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE or something that you can get because WET HOT is obvously over your fucking head.” From Anonymous.

Best Fight Scene of the Year: Nothing beats the titular monkey from A*P*E fighting that rubber shark although Edward Norton fighting himself in Fight Club, Singh’s multi-jointed contortionist kung-fu moves in Kung Fu vs. Yoga, and the seemingly endless gun fight at the end of Samurai Cop are all pretty good. And if you’d call it a fight, the scene where Samurai Cop throws a sword and chops off a guy’s arm is great, too.

Worst Special Effect of the Year: The candidates: Most of A*P*E, the Darth Vader-esque wizard getting his head chopped in half in The Man Who Saved the World, the exploding birds in Birdemic: Shock and Terror, the play-doh heads in Riki-Oh. Wait, that can’t be all the candidates. I’ll have to come back to this one later.

Best Sound Effect: A slide whistle accompanying a nutsack grab in Kung Fu vs. Yoga. The worst sound effect is probably the chomping of that bird puppet in The Giant Claw.

Top Things That Would Get Me in Trouble If My Wife Read My Blog (aka A Year of Randiness):

Watching the x-rated Alice in Wonderland
Typing that I have a “thing” for Marion Cotillard
Claiming that Jennifer Aniston’s character saying “I love kung-fu” is the most arousing thing ever
How I’d like to pat Claudia Cardinale’s behind
Admitting that I was sexually aroused by a taxi
Fantasizing about 6 Shelley Duvalls at one dinner table
Joy Hammon’s car washing abilities
Speculating on how I’d probably consider dating Berenice Bejo if the opportunity presented itself
Whitney Moore “as cute as can be”
“I like animated nudity as much as the real thing.”
“I’ve been looking for a good tentacle rape scene.”
Admitting that I was aroused by Audrey II
Claiming that Sally Fields was my first lover
Adding Caroline Munro’s winking to my masturbation rolodex
Waxing poetic about the way Uma Thurman moves in Pulp Fiction
Writing about how I have no use for period horror movies except for the cleavage
Raving about Jannis Farley’s posterior
“I may have a crush on Bradley Cooper.”
Writing about lovely Genesis Rodriguez’s “actual buttocks”
“All the points I’m giving this are for the boobs.”

Best Sex Scene: So many good ones that I can’t pick just one. There’s FDR having his mistress squirt mustard and ketchup all over his “little polio legs,” Victoria Abril getting it on with a diver toy in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, Levitch’s simulated (I think) orgasm in The Cruise, a teddy bear and clam chowder can sex scene in Period Piece, Kevin McDonald’s attempts to sodomize a ghost in that Guy Maddin movie, and a man having his way with a library book return slot in The Onion Movie. Seriously, what kinds of movies am I watching? Anyway, Elizabeth Berkley’s swimming pool scene has got to win this one.

Best Documentary: It’s Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I although I really liked her other documentary that I saw (Beaches of Agnes), The Times of Harvey Milk, The Cruise and Atomic Café which I’d already seen, Hands on a Hard Body, Dark Days, and The Gods of Times Square, the latter which I wrote about in a way that seemed to piss off the director.

Best Animated Movie: When the Wind Blows, topping that stop-animated pirate movie.

Worst Animated Movie: It wasn’t going to win the Manos, so I wanted to mention it somewhere else. Titanic: The Legend Lives On. . . really has to be seen to be believed.

Best Dance Scene: Chris Marker almost makes Jarmusch’s early go Permanent Vacation worth the effort. Bill Murray’s dance in Zissou is a thing of beauty. “Moses Supposes” in Singin’ in the Rain is terrific. Salma Hayek does some good work in From Dusk till Dawn. A nude Claudia Jennings sort-of dances in a disco torture chamber in Deathsport. Madsen’s dancing in Reservoir Dogs is one of the reasons I watched that movie twice this year. Gamera dances, but he isn’t as good as Godzilla in Monster Zero. Oldman doesn’t dance, but he does conduct an apartment trashing in a way that’s almost like a dance. The winner? Obviously, it’s got to be Matthew McConaughey in Magic Mike.

Something I’m Still Confused About: That fucking cube in The Avengers!

Best Actor: Goldblum as Jesus, Goldblum as Freak 1 in Death Wish, Richard E. Grant in both Withnail and How to Succeed in Advertising, Tony Randall’s tour de force in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, Kingsley in Hugo, Albert Brooks in Drive, Bronson Dudley’s small part in Trees Lounge, Gambon in The Cook. . . (one of my favorites ever maybe), Norton as twins in Leaves of Grass, Mike O’Connell’s hilarious work in The Living Wake, Craig Roberts in Submarine, Alain Delon in Purple Noon, Ossie Davis as JFK, Peter Stormare from Fargo, Gleason as Smokey, Schwartzman in Rushmore. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but when you call two Gene Wilder performances (Frankenstein and Wonka) the “greatest ever,” you sort of commit yourself.

Best Actress: Caroline Munro (twice!), Whitney Moore from Birdemic, Catherine Keener in Johnny Suede, Imelda Staunton from Rat, Bejo in a pair of performances, Anita Ford and Pam Grier, both in The Big Bird Cage, Catherine Spaak in The Libertine, the hilarious Melissa McCarthy from Bridesmaids, Anais Reboux in the tough Fat Girl, Katie Aselton in The Puffy Chair, Cecillia Stark in her lone performance in Strangers in Paradise, Marie-Josee Croze from The Barbarian Invasions. What a list! The winner? Una O ‘Connor’s brilliance as Millie in The Bride of Frankenstein!

Best Musical Moments of the Year:

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem rock on a bus in The Great Muppet Caper

The “Dingaling” song in that x-rated Alice in Wonderland
Crispin Glover’s little song in Twister
Rapping dogs on the Titanic in that awful cartoon
“Puttin’ on the Ritz” from Young Frankenstein
Wesley Willis’s song about Jar-Jar Binks in the George Lucas documentary
A shirtless Tony Randall playing a pan flute, a runner-up in my nipple category
“Satisfaction” from Riki-Oh
“Come Out and Play” from The Warriors
The talent show from Revenge of the Nerds
 
The best musical moment? That would be the Muppets’ cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

2012 Year in Review! (Part One)

I'm breaking this into parts this year because it's too long. Here goes:

For the first time in 5 years, I fell short of the 365 movie goal. Not even my 50 movies in December for the second year in a row were enough to catch me up. I also had 50 in July and a nice 38 in April after giving myself a little more free time with my horrific accident. Unfortunately, life got busy August through October when I watched a combined 36 movies.

I did see a lot of good movies though. The average rating this year was 13.4, up .4 from last year. August was the highest-rated month at 16.1, but with only 8 movies, that doesn’t mean much. September’s 14.8 and June’s 14.6 were the next highs while October was the low at 10.7. Happy birthday to me. I gave 55 movies a 14/20 and only a single movie (the Manos winner for 2012) a 1/20. It was the first time 16/20 wasn’t my most popular rating for a year.

One interesting statistic: I watched 26 movies where a character urinates prominently, and about 1/3 of those featured one character urinating on another character. You can go through the year and verify this for me if you want.

Saddest statistic: I now have more years that I’ve done this blog (5) than readers (4 ½).

And here are my shane-movies awards for 2012:

The Billy Curtis Award (Most Outstanding Performance by a Little Person): The field’s limited, but the competition’s tough this year! Billy Curtis himself showed up in The Wizard of Oz (somewhere) and very briefly and almost perversely in Eating Raoul. Skip Martin tumbled his way into my heart and caught a guy in a gorilla suit on fire in The Masque of the Red Death, and former Billy Curtis winner Peter Dinklage was terrific in The Station Agent and the not-so-good Pete Smalls Is Dead. And Joseph Barry is unforgettable in Johnny Suede as a little cowboy who uses a wire to look up Catherine Keener’s skirt. His work is Johnny Suede is terrific, but it’s trumped this year by the work of Harry Earles. Hans with his little temper tantrums in Freaks and a member of the Lollipop Guild? Tough to beat. Congratulations, little fella!

Best Weapon: What could possible top the penis gun in Tokyo Gore Police? Lefty scissors in Moonrise Kingdom!

Most Memorable Performance by a Wrestler: Roddy Piper was surprisingly good in They Live while Amy Weber’s terrible performance was buried beneath a metric ton of other terrible performances in the terrible Transmorphers. This is all Hulk Hogan vs. Hulk Hogan though, and although his small part in Rocky III is so impossibly stupid that it’s impossible to forget, his work as the titular Santa in Santa with Muscles is almost too bad to be true.

Best Wrestling-Related Movie Moment: Terry Kinney watches wrestling on television in Fly Away Home.

Best Penis: A tie! Schwarzenegger’s little Terminator and Robin Williams’ impressive member in World’s Greatest Dad.

Most Touching Moment in Movie History: It’s gotta be when Evel Knieval heals an orphan in Viva Knievel! “You’re the reason I’m walkin’, Evel. You’re the reason I’m walkin’!”

Biggest Personal Disappointment: I saw David and Keith Carradine’s nipples in Deathsport and Thieves Like Us and was positive I’d be able to complete the impressive Carradine Nipple Trifecta with Robert. It was not to be.

Best Puppet: Mel Gibson had a beaver, Her Master’s Voice was a documentary that featured a scene with a ventriloquist dummy swimming, Audrey II hilariously killed everybody, and that bird in The Giant Claw was about the best thing I’ve ever seen. I also saw a couple movies with Muppets, and although you might think it’s impossible to pick a “best” puppet from one of those, that would only be because you have not seen hip-hop Fozzie with his “Wakka Wakka.” The Swedish Chef with his “little friend” reference is a very close second.

Reader Comment That I Want to Remind Everybody About: Matt said, “If Project Nim doesn’t win an Oscar, I will burn down the Motion Picture Academy.” Just have to make sure that’s not forgotten.

Movies I Saw That Had Will Ferrell in Them: 3

My Favorite Movie Quotes of the Year: (Feel free to guess the movie if you want!)

“Die, you dinosaur dick!”

“Put all hope out of your mind. And masturbate as little as possible.”
“Blame is for God and small children.” (same movie as the above quote)
“Start the Whoopie machine!”
“Whoa! I hear a mountain lion!”
“I am an expert on tits—tits and peanut butter!”
“Narcotics will make you blow all to hell.”
“Ok, we all know these [standardized] tests are gay.”
“Where is pancakes house?”
“You polluted bitch hound!”
“When you put your heart and genitals into something, it always ends up personal.”
“I’m just wondering what to do with your corpses.”
“Gentle? This is a God-damned rape scene and you want me to be gentle?”
“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake!”
“How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders?”
“Does daddy monkey have hard bones, too?”
“Do I look like an ickyologist to you? Big ol’ bugs—bugs as big as a peanut butter and banana sandwich. What do I care? I got a growth on my pecker.”
“Sometimes God just turns his back on his people and breaks wind, and the stench clouds the globe. I am the high-voltage man!”
“It’s Screaming Jay Hawkins and he’s a wild man, so bug off.”
“What’s that—horse? Fiendish! I won’t eat it.”
“There’s no way that you came from my loins. Soon as I get home, first thing I’m going to do is punch your mama in the mouth.”
“Give me a call whenever you want to cut off my head. I can always crawl around without it.”
“We’ll make Rock Ridge think it’s a chicken that got caught in a tractor’s nuts.” (The great Slim Pickens!)
“A clock with no hands is my kind of thing.”
“Now you’ve gone too far! Goddamn heads bouncing off of cars while families are singing ‘Found a Peanut’!”
“First, I have to wash this guy’s asshole off my face.”
“Your butt is wider than your mouth.”
“Jim got kicked in the head by a horse in February. He went around killing horses for a while. Then, he ate the insides of a clock and died.” (William S. Burroughs)
“You ever fight a dinosaur, kid? They can cause a variety of damage.”
“I didn’t mean that you literally had to chew his buttocks off. I meant it metaphorically.”
“The most beautiful failure is the pursuit of individuality.”
“But it is pointless!” “That’s my point.”
“You always giggle falsely. You don’t have a decent giggle in you.”
“If you stand with your intestines in your hand, will you know what to do?”

Best Conversation I Had about Movies All Year:

Me: Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein—greatest performance in movie history.

Jen: Gene Wilder? What happened to his career?
Me: He had cancer.
Jen: That’s not funny.

Thing That Still Needs to Catch On: A 10/20 rating being referred to as a “Goonie”—Barry’s idea.

Best Masturbation Scene: Yes, this is still an award. Daryl Sabara in World’s Greatest Dad, probably because he was one of the Spy Kids. Gainsbourg’s great work in Antichrist. My brother’s favorite in The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence. Mr. Cohen gets the award this year for his masturbation scene in The Dictator, one that manages to incorporate Forrest Gump in a way that still makes me giggle.

Stay tuned for Part Two!