Weirdo Stuff

The Greatest Movie I've Never Seen

2006-02-17T14:23:00.000-08:00

Star Crash is the greatest movie of all time.

Once in awhile you see a movie that's got it all. Unfortunately I haven't seen that movie, but I have seen its trailer.

The trailer is a strange collage of time periods and genres. The title cards are pure 50's sci-fi.

"You are about to be hurled..."

"Through the blackness of a hundred million nights..."

"Into the farthest reaches of space and time!"

Sounds good to me.

This trailer really does have it all.

Spaceships,

Lasers,

Babes,

Babes with robots,

Babes holding other babes captive,

Cavemen,

Robots fighting cavemen,

Everything. Even Christopher Plummer!

What this trailer does best is hit you with cool imagery.

Dig these rad effects...

There's an occasional homage to other films (that's a nice way of putting it), like 2001,

Star Wars (just a bit),

Zardoz,

and Jason and the Argonauts. (Yes, those are robot nipples...)

There's some more Ray Harryhausen style animation in there as well.

Star Crash is either a lost classic or a debacle. I'd better not ruin this movie by actually seeing it.

Pakistani Jihad Musicals Vol.1 : International Guerrillas

2005-12-09T15:01:00.000-08:00

Pakistan is bizarre.

International guerrillas is an odd combination of the hilarious and the disturbing, and it gives a fascinating insight into modern Pakistan. Pakistan is a country the average American knows very little about. What better way to discover it than a three hour long action adventure musical?

Pakistan lies somewhere both physically and socially between Afghanistan and India. The structure of the film mirrors this. It's about a jihad against supervillian Salman Rushdie, but takes the form of a Bollywood musical. It's a bizarre combination of Muslim vengeance and midriff baring dance numbers. Clearly were not quite dealing with the Taliban here.

The film is extremely low budget, but not quite Turkish cinema low. They don't clip footage from other films like the Turks. The action is terrible, and they repeat shots frequently, but it's passable. You aren't slapping your forehead in disbelief as you might during a Cuneyt Arkin classic like Death Warriors.

The mood is established in the first few seconds of the film. The opening shot is of the Koran on a stone pillar with smoke billowing around it like it was the altar of Crom. This isn't your grandpa's Koran.

Then it abruptly switches to the glitzy palm tree covered coast of Karachi. Hey, who knew Pakistan had beaches?

All the biggest crooks of the world have gathered together to destroy Islam. All the small Islamic states could join together to form a superpower, and that might cut in on their action. The biggest faction is Alim-E-Islam in Pakistan (our boys!). The leader of the crooks looks remarkably like Borat, complete with red cowboy hat. A little theme is started here with crooks wearing cowboy hats. Come to think of it there's another theme being started here where everyone looks like Borat.

Cut to Pakistan. Some local thugs have gathered together in an ultra-modern disco for a little entertainment.

There's no burkas over here! Cue the first musical number.

The hottie dances and sings, distracting the crooks until our hero, quite literally, crashes through the ceiling.

Our hero is there to rob the robbers. In two seconds he empties the safe and joins in the dance number.

What better way to take out a criminal faction than with a musical number. Note : You can tell he's a crook by his cowboy hat.

He has toys that help him like a spraycan to gas everyone , and a stopwatch that makes people explode.

He also has some sweet moves like the rodeo.

There's only one problem. Only the thug leader knows the way out of the disco. I guess the audience just has to accept this as reasonable. Not to be outdone, our hero's brother crashes through the ceiling and lands on the shoulders of the thug leader. Naturally the song and dance continues. If they had more entrances to the disco people wouldn't have to crash through the ceiling all the time.

Finally something everyone can unite their hate against! Someone has challenged the honor of the prophet! Supervillian Salman Rushdies has called the Koran the Satanic Verses! Well, not really, but who needs to read more than the title to know all about it? It's jihad time!!!

The movie is nearly three hours long, and it tends to get bogged down in minutiae. So I'll summarize a few things. Turns out hottie is a cop, and so is our heroes' older brother. The people of Pakistan are so infuriated by The Satanic Verses that massive protests are expected. The corrupt deputy would rather open fire on the crowd than allow disorder (makes sense) and that bothers cop bro. Turns out our heroes aren't huge criminals. They are educated guys who were forced into a life of crime because of the corrupt system and rampant cronyism (perhaps we aren't so different after all!). They decide to give up hood life and go straight. Apparently "going straight" means changing from thief to assassin.

The protests do happen, and the authorities open fire on the crowd. A few relatives are gunned down, so hottie and cop bro throw away their badges and vow the demonstrations will continue until Rushdie's death. The protests ignite a patriotic fury. Instead baking apple pies and slapping jingoistic ribbons on their SUVs, normally secular Pakistani women start wrapping their heads in shrouds. Nothing inspires regression of social norms like unified hate. Everyone decides to ignore the guys that just mowed them down, and go after Salman Rushdie. In fact, one sister-in-law's final wish is for Rushdie's head. So clearly their priorities are in order.

Salman Rushdie isn't a mild mannered author, no sir. He's a criminal mastermind living on his own personal island fortress. Our first glimpse of him is decapitating "those who love Mohammed" so he'll become immortal with their blood. Way to make an entrance.

His top two henchmen are Chief Batu Batu and hottie #2.

At one point Batu Batu dons a Ringo Starr costume.

Hottie #2 gets the next song and dance number and Chief Batu Batu joins in. He does the strangest dance move of all time. He really gives Billy Squire a run for his money. He bends over and hops on one foot spinning around in a circle flapping his arms. In a three hour movie filled with incomprehensible dance moves, this one stands out above them all.

After this bizarre number, what the hell??? The opening credits don't come until 50 minutes into the movie???

In a three hour epic like this one you need a little filler. Filler like motorcycle chases. Our heroes get chased after stealing a truck with at least five antennas on the front of it.

It wouldn't be crappy action film without the staple of Turkish cinema, kicking guys off motorcycles.

Not even an evil genius like Salman Rushdie can survive without allies. Enter : the sheik (with the biggest cigar of all time).

International Guerrillas gives some interesting insight into how the average Muslim feels about the Saudi oil barons. In this film they are portrayed as gross caricatures with giant sunglasses. The Shiek's son's sunglasses even have windshield wipers on them.

At one point even Salman himself says of them, "These two are not Muslims, they are profiteers. Those who love Mohammed do not become the slaves of others for money."

Rushdie didn't get to be the number one criminal mastermind without being savvy. Just when you think you've finally stabbed him to death it turns out to be a body double.

The guerrillas track Salman down to a modern glitzy casino. And not just any casino. The "worlds largest casino cum disco." Huh???

When sneaking into the worlds largest casino cum disco, you want to be discrete. What's more discrete than wearing a Batman costume?

Salman, that sneaky guy, has cloned himself, allowing him to escape yet again. After all, it's only been two hours at this point.

Masters of disguise that they are, the international guerrillas dress up like a hippie street band, complete with keytar.

Their disguises are so good that their sister-in-law doesn't recognize them. She passes right by them, and manages to get herself kidnapped by Salman.

It's pretty interesting. A bunch of the family members in this film are in-laws. I like my in-laws and all, but if they get kidnapped by a supervillian they are on their own.

Salman decides to torture poor sis-in-law with the audiobook of The Satanic Verses.

Sis-in-law would rather be deaf or dead than suffer such a fate. I have to agree with her there.

Rather than let sis get executed, the international guerrillas give themselves up.

Just when we think all hope is lost, sis calls upon Mohammed to save them with what else? A song. They all join in the song, and soon lightning from the sky strikes down and releases them from their chains. There's a giant shootout and all the henchmen are slain.

Verses from the Koran appear in the sky and a booming voice from the heavens commands, "Believe in the Koran!"

In case that wasn't enough to convince him, the Koran itself appears.

It circles above Salman.

Shoots him with lasers.

Finally burning him to a crisp.

Chalk up one for the Koran. The End.

Guys who rule Vol. 1 : Warren Oates

2005-11-28T14:18:00.000-08:00

Warren Oates rules.

Has there ever been a better character actor than Warren Oates? You never once think to yourself that you are watching an actor. You just believe him.

He had done a few films, but got his first real break when Sam Peckinpah cast him in Ride the High Country, one of the best westerns ever, and probably my personal favorite. Oates and Peckinpah struck up a lifelong friendship. When you're the drinkin' buddy of a legendary alcoholic like Sam Peckinpah you really must be a talented boozer.

Oates had a gritty realism about him that was perfectly suited for the shift that was happening in the western genre. Westerns mirrored the social climate of the sixties, and shifted away from unconditional moral positions. Oates personified moral ambiguities. Mostly by being covered in filth.
Check out the guy's resume.

Ride the High Country

In the Heat of the Night

The Wild Bunch (in which he personally takes out a good 75 guys)

Barquero (with another guy who rules, Lee Van Cleef)

Two-Lane Blacktop

Badlands

Cockfighter

And of course, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Although he was a supporting actor in most of his films, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was his film. He reteamed with Sam Peckinpah a final time, and created his best role. A western in every respect outside of time period; this is one booze-soaked journey into hell. Oates plays the ex-pat bartender Bennie. Bennie takes what amounts to a sub-contracting job from gangsters looking to retrieve the head of a man. Bennie's prostitute girlfriend, Elita, goes with him. There is a deep tenderness and understanding between them. When she is killed, Bennie has nothing left to lose except his mind.

There are reports of a missing scene in which Bennie makes love to Elita after she has been murdered. He then buries her remains with Alfredo Garcia in his desecrated grave. This seems pretty reasonable considering the difference in his character's demeanor between holding her body and leaving the graveyard. He seems more disturbed than if he had just buried her.

He now only has one focus : revenge. The film captures the frightening core of the male psyche when every other driving force (love, tenderness) has been stripped away. The only thing left to do is die like a man should die; in a hail of bullets.

The Day Metal United and Saved the World

2005-11-07T10:42:00.000-08:00

Hear 'N Aid is the greatest thing that has ever happened.

The 80's were chock full of Aids. Bob Geldof created Band Aid, and kicked off the era with a benefit record featuring superstars like Bananarama, Spandau Ballet, and Shalamar. "Do they know it's Christmas?" they asked. The simple answer to that is, "Of course not." They don't celebrate Christmas in Ethiopia. But they didn't let little technicalities like that get in the way of the lyrics.

Quincy Jones ripped off the format with USA For Africa, and Bob Geldof continued his penance for the Boomtown Rats with Live Aid. They all had one thing in common. Megastars shedding their egos for one night, and coming together to record a lousy song.

Enter : Ronnie James Dio

All of human progress lead to this moment; this one moment where all of the greatest talents of the world met together at their artistic peaks and formed a perfect creation : Hear 'N Aid.

Look at this parade of genius.

Rob Halford from Judas Priest

Iron Maiden

Man 'O War

Blackie Lawless from W.A.S.P. and Kevin DuBrow from Quiet Riot

Eric Bloom from Blue Oyster Cult

Geoff Tate from Queensryche

Geoff's pompa-fro is worth another look

The Nuge

And, uh, Spinal Tap?

And so the fist-pumping began.
Normally at these benefit recordings you leave your ego at the door. You might think it would be a good idea to use some of the lyrics to mention the cause. Not with Hear 'N Aid apparently. They pretty much just repeat "We're Stars" the whole time. They throw in the occasional, "We are magic in the night!" Whatever this benefit was for is anyone's guess.

Guitar solos have always been a useful time filler in heavy metal. How else are you supposed to get to 3 minutes with only 2 verses and a chorus? Just like they pass each lyric to the next singer, they pass each lick to the next guitarist. There's a good 3 and a half minutes of guitar solo hot potato here. All the greats show up.

Yngwie Malmsteen

George Lynch from Dokken

That guy from Quiet Riot and some other guy

Then it's just a weirdo free-for-all starting with this guy.

This dude.

And this anomaly. This guy is like the Dan Aykroyd moment in We are the World.
Ok, so maybe metal can't put together We are the World type numbers, but at least they stand really close together.

Wacky games from Japan Vol. 1 : Poker Ladies

2005-11-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

Japan is cool.

Ah, Poker Ladies. The pinnacle in perverted Japanese videogames. Sure, there are newer, more outrageous games out there like Boonga Boonga http://www.sixsixfive.com/229.html but for my money, Poker Ladies stands above them all. The sheer strangeness of the payoffs puts it in a class all its own.

Poker Ladies is just that. It's video poker, but instead of money you play for ladies. The more you earn, the more they reveal. There are nine poker ladies to play for, and each has three stages of undress culminating in an "interactive mode" where you titillate them by pressing the deal button rapidly.

The game sets you up for success. You hardly ever lose a hand. I guess they figure we poor videogame guys need all the help we can get. So it's pretty easy to breeze through the girls. Sigh, if it were only so easy. The further into the game you progress the more you notice things are starting to get weird.

Who doesn't like pixelated boobies? There are a million different boobie games to come out of Japan, but what really sets this one apart are the truly bizarre interactive modes.

Disembodied hands groping boobies. This says quite a bit about Japanese culture. The male prefers to be nearly invisible, acting upon, rather than with, the female. The videogame is a perfect medium for this.

The final WTF?! moment is where another set of bodyless hands squirts stuff out of a syringe onto a girl's butt. The game progression parallels one's descent into perversion. It's a metaphor for the deterioration of the psyche as one delves further into the nether regions of the mind. Either that or the makers had a sense of humor.

Oh Poker Ladies! You once again prove why Japan is so cool.

Good movies that suck Vol. 1 : Black Narcissus

2005-10-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

Black Narcissus sucks.

How can you say that??? It's Powell and Pressburger at their best! Jack Cardiff's cinematography was never better! I'll admit, it has all the makings of being right up my alley, yet for some reason it just doesn't work.

High altitude insanity? Sounds good.
Losing one's faith? Right on.
Futility of missionaries? Uh-huh.
Horny nuns? You betcha!

Then how can it possibly suck?

Exhibit #1 : The backgrounds.
Much fuss has been made over Jack Cardiff's cinematography, and rightfully so. The colors are striking. Has there ever been a better use of color in a film? Maybe In the Mood For Love, and Peeping Tom come closest.

However all of it is killed by the lousy backgrounds. They completely remove me from the film and remind me that this was all done on a set. Everything looks impressive until you take a close look at the backgrounds. They are quite obviously painted backdrops only a few feet behind the characters. Damn you Criterion. The transfer is so good it reveals too much.

Exhibit #2 : This clown
I know a convent in the Himilayas is about as remote as you can get, but come on. This is the guy all the nuns are going crazy over? Even this dude can't be sexy there. Look at those shorts! Rolled up shorts and sandals are sexy nowhere. It's wholly unbelievable. That guy should be getting laughed out of there.

Exhibit #3 : Deborah Kerr's makeup
She's supposed to be a nun yet her makeup is impeccable. She's my nunsploitation fantasy.

Too bad Black Narcissus. You had so much potential.

Behold, the MAME cabinet

2005-10-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

This thing took a ton of work to make, and I hardly ever have a chance to play it. Damn you family! It's sitting in my brother's basement, and he lives on the other side of town.

We started completely from scratch. It took both of us to run full sheets of MDF through the table saw. It was tough work. I ordered raw arcade parts off the internet and hooked them all up to a keyboard encoder. There are 4 microswitches in each joystick, and one with each button. So each press corresponds to a keyboard press. We also added a trackball and a spinner. They work a little differently. They have optical sensors so they essentially work the same way an old mouse does. If you really want to be a psycho you can manually create a spinner from old mouse parts.

From the pic you can see that we did the control panel layout ourselves too. That was pretty tough. My brother got a sheet of plexiglass for protection. So we drilled holes in everything, layed some artwork down on the panel, and wired it up. Those with a keen eye may notice the control panel artwork is from the original Space Invaders screen overlay. Old games only had a few pixels to work with, so to give the illusion of depth they added screen overlays. The monitor was actually down in the cabinet and it reflected onto a mirror with this art over it.

I took an image of the Dig Dug marquee down to Kinkos and had them print it out on backlit material. We stuck a little flouresent light behind it, and it looks great.

These pics are pretty amatuerish because my brother took them. It looks really good. The only thing missing is a bezel to hide the monitor. It's a 22" monitor. Typical arcade machines have 19" monitors so we have a pretty huge display.

Sooner or later I'll get around to reviewing some strange games from Japan like Poker Ladies.

God, his basement looks terrible in these pics. It's been cleaned up a bit since these were taken. It's a tragedy that thing isn't sitting in my game room.

You don't want to see her angry

2005-10-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

My baby is evil. She has her father's eyes!!!

Actually she's about as good as they come. All babies are difficult at first, but around 6 months she started sleeping really well, and we entered "The Golden Age." She was easily transported, she was calm and reasonable, and was a genuine pleasure to have around.

That's not quite the case anymore. She's acting much more like daddy now. If things aren't working the way she wants them to work she'll turn on a dime and start freaking out. This photo is untouched. It was taken right after I tried to take away her spoon.

The world needs me

2005-10-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

Goddamnit. I fought it was a long time, but I finally caved into the demands of humanity and created a blog. Here, I shall spew forth my brilliance. I guess I finally realized that it was just cruel to keep my genius all to myself.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, "You're welcome."