Devin says: Can you dig it? Before things got hairy for The Warriors, this gang from Coney Islandheaded to the big gang meet-up with their nine original members. At
this holiday time let’s remember these nine brave, subway-illiterate
bangers…If you’ve never seen this amazing movie – the best film ever made about
New York City, in my opinion, despite being set in a fantasy version of
New York City – skip the ‘Director’s Cut,’ which ruins many of the best
scenes, adds an extraneous intro and lays comic book panels over scene
transitions. Rarely has a ‘Director’s Cut’ fucked up a movie this
badly…
Russ says: Pick and choose your hated elements in Temple of Doom,
but stay the fuck away from the rope bridge sequence. The setup is
simple and classic; Indy’s stance, machete in one hand, whip in the
other, is my favorite vision of the character, and one of the most
iconic. This is a pristine example of Spielberg and Lucas bringing
their beloved adventure serials back to life — the hero with treasure
in hand, stuck in an impossible situation. But we don’t have to wait
until next week to see how the cliffhanger ends. Instead we get to hear
Amrish Puri deeply intone ‘welcome!’ and then see him chewed up by
crocs minutes later…
Russ says: When
a traumatized kid dons a Santa suit, Christmas runs red. Eleven people
(not counting the snowman) are killed by one of two psychotic Santas in
Silent Night, Deadly Night, the holiday horror film that is one of the few films in the US as reviled as the legendary ‘video nasties’ in England. Charles
E. Sellier Jr’s low-budget slasher flick earned loads of controversial
press (and a scathing review from Gene Siskel) for featuring a criminally deranged Santa who violates a family
(after killing a convenience store clerk) and for the carnage that
follows when one of the family’s surviving children snaps on Christmas
Eve. It’s also notable for Linnea Quigley’s denim shorts, which might
be the shortest in holiday history. All the kills (counting the
snowman) are cheap, and more fun than they have any right to be…
Devin says: Whenthe Ghostbusters’ containment unit fails, the many spooks they’ve
captured wreak havoc in the streets of New York City, all set to the
bizarrely unforgettable Magic by
Mick Smiley. Horrible apparitions swoop out of the subway and zombies
commandeer taxi cabs, but the really memorable moment is Slimer coming
out of the hot dog cart with a dozen franks in his mouth…
Devin says: There’s a lot that’s brilliant about Shaun of the Dead,
but the thing that really blew me away the first few times I saw it was
how the tone shifts so very subtly at the end in the Winchester. As
Shaun’s mom lays zombifying the five remaining survivors – Shaun, Ed,
Liz, Dianne and David – argue and get violent over what to do next. The
comedy steps aside for a moment and things get legitimately tense and
heartfelt. What’s even better is that the fight isn’t a bullshit one:
you can see everybody’s side of the equation (even if Shaun and David
are both coming from less than logical places as they fight). And then
things get really gory…
Nick says: Can you do a Southern accent?
You’re clearly one of the best auditions we’ve ever had but the script
calls for this character to be a kid from the South. It may have been smoke up a 9 year-old’s ass [HOT!],
but those words were uttered to me shortly after moving South from the
icy expanse of New York City after I auditioned for a role in a then
untitled feature film to be shot in Atlanta starring local legend Sir
Kenneth McSteady-Greenheart Rogers III, esq…The film became Six Pack
and it went on to gross dozens of dollars. One Kenny and Six little
assholes apparently was not the elixir for the fickle beast known as
the Boxofficeasaurus. My life continued as a non-actor, a streak I keep
alive to this day.
Devin says: In Omen III: The Final Conflict (originally just called The Final Conflict,
but I sort of like the franchise numbering system), jackal spawned
anti-Christ Damien is all grown up and has become Sam Neill. He’s the
US ambassador to England and he has his eyes on the presidency, but
first he must contend with the fact that an astronomical event that is
described as ‘the second Star of Bethlehem’ heralds the arrival of the
Second Coming. Add to that hassle the fact that a bunch of priests have
uncovered the seven daggers of Megiddo, the only things that can kill
him, and he’s got quite a few problems. Sure, Omen III is the worst of the bunch (I’m not even counting Omen IV: The Awakening as so much as existing), but it’s still got plenty of fun bits. And we tend to love the underdog around here.
Devin says: The stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera encapsulates
the silly, absurd side of the Marx Brothers’ comedy. When Groucho takes
an ocean liner from Italy to New York, Chico and Harpo (along with
Allan Jones, replacing the now-gone Zeppo) stow away in his luggage. As
the four of them banter in Groucho’s impossibly tiny stateroom, more
and more people join the crowd (including an army of waiters, one of
whom is carrying the eight pieces of French pastry Groucho ordered),
until they finally come tumbling out in a torrent of limbs…
It’s the holidays and we’re feeling it even here in the Sewer. This
year we’re taking stock of the many gifts we’ve gotten from the movies
over the years and celebrating them in the form of a Christmas carol.
In our own special way.
While the traditional 12 Days of
Christmas counts up from one, we thought it was more fun to count down
between now and the big day. (And to the people who emailed complaining that we were doing that part wrong, how did none of your finely tuned holiday senses catch the fact that the twelve days of Christmas begin on Christmas day and run until Epiphany, rather than counting down to the holiday? Low points for the Catholics out there.)
The pages that follow collect all twelve items in our countdown, but because each entry ran fairly long I’ve only excerpted each one. You’ll have to click through to the original page to see all the goods. You don’t want to miss great Manitou screen grabs, Gene Siskel shredding Silent Night, Deadly Night and Devin’s roundup of all the Warriors, do you? Damn right you don’t.
Devin says: The landmark 1978 film The Manitou is one of the strangest movies ever made. And the final [or first!] entry on our 12 Days of CHUDmas list. Susan
Strasberg is a woman with a lump on her neck and, as sometimes happens,
discovers that it contains the evil fetus of a reborn Indian medicine
man. Tony Curtis is a phony psychic who gets involved, and Syrian
Michael Ansara plays the good guy medicine man who helps fight the
beast. As if the set up wasn’t weird enough, it includes Curtis in a
wizard’s robe and fake mustache and an old women possessed by an evil spirit who not only falls down a flight of stair to her death but falls THROUGH the railing on her way down. The
movie only gets stranger once the titular Manitou is born. The lump has
moved down Strasberg’s back, and he begins popping out of it…
Russ says: Douche supreme Bob Morton (the note-perfect Miguel Ferrer) is
celebrating his rise at OCP with a couple of willing ladies when
Clarence Boddicker busts in to lay down a little justice courtesy of
Dick Jones. You don’t need me to tell you that as Boddicker, Kurtwood
Smith gets most of the movie’s best lines. (“Can you fly, Bobby?”) But
his insistent, intimidating “bitches leave!” while pushing into Bob’s
home is one of the funniest, scariest and most memorable bits in a
movie that’s packed with dozens of rival moments…
Devin says: Conventional wisdom holds Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter
to be the best Jason Voorhees outing, but as I get older I find that
I’m more in love with the end of the trilogy which began with Corey
Feldman shaving his head. Part VI: Jason Lives picks up after Feldman’s character grows up and goes to a mental institution (which takes place in Part V: A New Beginning, the second F13th to
feature no Jason). He’s haunted by the spectre of Jason Voorhees, so he
heads to the cemetary to make sure the retarded serial killer is
actually dead. It turns out that Jason is in fact highly decomposed
worm food – but not for long. An errant lightning strike resurrects the
killer,and he immediately punches the heart out of Welcome Back Kotter‘s Horschack (Ron Palillo!). This is where our CHUDmas gift comes in…
Russ says: R.J. MacReady has problems. The remaining members of the team at
Antarctic research outpost #31 are tied to chairs. Petri dishes full of
their blood are on a desk ready to be probed with a hot wire. We know
that one of the blokes in the chairs is an alien in disguise. It seems
a pretty good bet that MacReady is right, that when he sears the
alien’s blood it will react to the attack just as if he’d attacked a
full-size version of the creature. So he goes down the line, heating
dishes of blood in succession — including his own — until one reacts. In a film that’s full of big gore the little shot of jumping alien blood is a great shock that gets almost everyone…
