Trick or Treat (1986) is the worst movie of all time

Demonic beasts. Whatever happened to the good old simple love song? "I love you." That's what good words use. Nowadays they have to write some sickness. It's just absoultely sick and bizarre... This could kick you off into becoming an absolute pervert.

Before I watched this, the idea I had in my head was that Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons had some evil rock off. That is not what this is about. The two of them, Ozzy and Simmons, have about two minutes of total screentime combined. Obvious that both filmed their parts in one take and were on set for 10 minutes. Ozzy plays a televangelist railing about the evils of rock. The above is a rant he goes on. His shit is broken up into two scenes but the second was an extension of the first rant and then he is murdered through the TV. Simmons seems like he is going to show up again at the end, he plays a radio DJ, when the main characters go to the radio station. Seeing how this shit is going though, you know he will have been killed off by the time they get there and he is, turned to dust. Couldn't get him a second time, obviously. But both these guys throw 100 miles an hour every second they are on screen. Simmons doesn't blink and is intense as shit. I assume he was coked out of his mind. Ozzy is funny for railing against how evil heavy metal is. But those two minutes do not save the movie. Overall, it was bad. Plus there is some ghost rape in here that was really disgusting. Worst movie of all time. An incredible amount of blue lightning though. 

Totally normal

Gist of the movie is that a bunch of raging meatheads bully the fuck out of this teenager, one Eddie Weinbauer played by Marc Price, who is devastated when his heavy metal idol, Sammi Curr played by Tony Fields, dies in a freak Satanic ritual. You know, like normal people. But Sammi comes back to life through the playing of the only copy of his last record, which Eddie has on loan. At first Sammi helps Eddie with his bullying problem, but then ends up just rampaging and killing whoever, eventually turning on Eddie and his new little girlfriend, played by Lisa Orgolini, who I've never seen. Actually, other than the two rockers, I've never seen anyone in this movie except for Large Marge from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure who has a bit part. 

Though the movie was complete trash, it was fun in a very, very trashy way. Never going to watch it again, but I'm glad this is what I spent an October COVID Friday doing. Marc Price is definitely the MVP. He does pretty well with the in-over-his-head bullied teen bit. He never really becomes cool or anything, which is a relief, but does start dating a cute a little chick who just lie starts to appreciate his weirdness. Tony Fields, on the other hand, is playing some serious hero ball. Might be worth watching just for his crazy dancing. I'd say maybe just watch that part, which you can see here. This song I've not been able to get out of my head either, which is unfortunate. Quite the earworm. 

Chopping Mall is the worst movie of all time

Chopping Mall. Let's send these fuckers a Rambo-gram. It is bad. Also, it is very bad. Not a single chop was made in this film. Was pretty sure they came up with the name of the movie, which is amazing, and then built a film around it. That, however, was not the case. Laser Mall or Fire-Extinguisher Throwing Robots Mall doesn't have the same ring to it. But yeah, worst movie of all time.

Gist of the movie is a shopping mall installs a trio of robots to police the mall at night, killing anyone that isn't an employee that is there over night. But them shits malfunction and then just kill anyone in the mall. Alright to kill anyone breaks in in this universe. Killing employees of the mall that are there to bone in a furniture store, that shit is fucked up and wrong though. Instead of smoking cigarettes and drinking, though, post-coital activities for these kids includes shooting at robots trying to kill them and dying. The robots malfunction after the building gets struck by the infamous blue lightning, ever present in the 1980s, which gets featured a lot in electrocution scenes in this flick.

Directed by one Jim Wynorski, a guy out of the Roger Corman school of film making, has over 150 titles to his name. Kelli Maroney, who plays the part of Alison, and Tony O'Dell, as Ferdy, are the survivors who are notably the only pair of "teens" that don't get it on. O'Dell is one of the Cobra Kai punks in The Karate Kid and is also in the YouTube spinoff Cobra Kai. You may recognize Maroney from Fast Times at Ridgemont High or as one of the leads in dope 80s horror flick Night of the Comet which I'm going to have to rewatch. Director Wynorski claims to have cast her because he wanted to date her. That is one way to do it, I guess. Get a Dick Miller cameo. He was the guy that knew what gremlins were in the movie Gremlins. There are a couple attractive ladies in the film who have a little bit of gratuitous nudity but the only one I recognized was Barbara Crampton who is horror royalty in my book. She was the lead chick in Re-Animator and Castle Freak and more recently was in You're Next. She is great and very beautiful but was pretty annoying in this flick. She completely gets herself killed in a grossly unnecessary way. Her and the other girls are on their way out of the mall via the air duct but she keeps saying shit like, "my boyfriend needs me, I have to go help him!" She tries and immediately gets herself killed although the dudes have the situation sort of in hand at that point.

There is this raging asshole who is boning the mall owner's daughter who I thought was funny as a character. This was the guy with the mullet played by one John Terlesky. Oh he is over-the-top unlikable and offensive. You don't mind when he gets killed after going out to get the lady he just boned smokes out of an old fashioned cigarette machine. He has a super solid one-liner to the robots when they ask for his badge which is what I think set them off to rampage. When he shows them his badge he tells it "Klaatu barada nikto" which was the phrase used to stop Gort, the robot in the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, from destroying the world. It was also the line that Bruce Campbell flubs when he picks up the Book of the Dead in Army of Darkness which I am sure is also a reference to the Cold War-era film. This guy's girl's death is pretty solid, too. She gets shot with a laser and her head explodes. Always solid.

With a brief 77 minute run time, I still felt they could have tightened this movie up. Not a great sign. Also, nothing with the killer robots really makes sense. Deploying killer robots to work security at the mall, what could happen, am I right? Pity, that this movie isn't more watchable with a cast that includes Crampton and Maroney. Maroney, I guess, wins the movie though there really aren't what you would call winners here. She also has the worst camel toe I have ever seen in khakis of all things. It is fucking crazy. Googling that I see there was a How Did This Get Made? where this phenomenon in the movie was discussed. Will need to give that a whirl.

Waxwork is the greatest movie of all time

The cover of Waxwork scared the piss out of me as a kid. Have distinct memories of looking at it and thinking "fuck nope" as a child when we went to the video rental place down street. I maybe didn't like little people (or something) as nothing really scared me back then. But this cover, main, was too much. Up until I watched this flick I was sure that was Tattoo from Fantasy Island (the "de plane, de plane!" guy), but it's Alf (for real). I had ongoing dreams about a movie that I had mentally constructed based on this image up at least through junior high, which is just nuts. So I finally got around watching it and holy shit balls this movie was amazing. Not your typical wax museum movie, this shit complete blew me and my female companion away with its unexpected greatness. In fact--"is he gonna?" you ask--Waxwork is the greatest movie of all time.

Still terrifying

Pros: Super self-aware and humorous. Meta-horror is the big draw here, knocking it out of the park long before Scream or New Nightmare. Solid acting (with a few exceptions) with some horror chops. Unique premise.

Cons: Can't think of anything other than it's not better known.

Basic gist is that a group of unlikeable idiot college students meet an immortal/evil owner (played by David Warner from The Omen) of a wax museum who invites them over to check out his collection. The displays end up being magic death traps that ensnare most of them one at a time. If the magician/owner dude completes the set of the 18 most evil beings to ever "live", then the evil spills out into the real world and what have you.

The evil being are as follows: the Marquis de Sade, the werewolf, Count Dracula, the Golem, the Phantom of the Opera, the Mummy (which curb stomps his dude), zombies from Night of the Living Dead, Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper, the Invisible Man, some voodoo guy, a witch, a snake dude, pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Rosemary's Baby, a generic axe murderer/lumberjack dude, an alien, a Little Shop of Horrors style giant talking venus flytrap, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There were supposed to be three other displays that ended up getting left out for legal reasons: Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th franchise, five children from Village of the Damned (1960), and The Thing (1982). Those would have been awesome but they didn't happen.

The movie managed to intrigue right from the get down, opening with murder/robbery, followed by a rich piece of shit, played by one Zach Galligan (who was the dip shit pet owner in Gremlins that got them wet and fed them after midnight), named Mark Loftmore who wants his fucking ciggy and his coffees. His mom, a real buzz kill, tells him no for some reason as he is going to be late for college like he gives shit. But his butler brings that shit out to him and he makes his way off in his Rolls Royce or whatever. Totally relatable, this guy.

Muffy from April 1

Anyway, he makes it to class and is fucking late. He gets called out for it, the professor yells at him, telling him that he looks forward to reading his research paper on whatever dude is droning on about that next morning. He doesn't give a shit though and just starts openly talking with his buddies which leads the professor to just keep tacking on pages to the punishment essay. We later see why he doesn't give a shit as he outsources the assignment out to some chick who can barely speak English. He reads it, it's all gibberish, he turns it in and the work is so bad that he gets expelled which is all kinds of funny.

Dudes friends consist of China Webster (Michelle Johnson), Sarah Brightman (Deborah Foreman who was Muffy/Buffy in April Fools whom I will be referring to as Muffy forevermore), Gemma (Clare Carey), James (Eric Brown), and Tony (Dana Ashbrook who is Bobby Briggs in Twin Peaks and, yep, I'm just going to call him Bobby for the rest of this thing here). Both Muffy and China are real lookers. They all go to watch China's, who Mark like might have dated and is still into, boyfriend play football while they just enjoy their obscene wealth or whatever. China talks about doing him, openly, while Mark gets pissed. First off, this guy is such a goddamned meathead and is revolting and vulgar AF the moment we meet him. Second, this football practice is fucking insane. They are going all out like they are playing for the Super Bowl while simultaneously never playing before. The hits are brutal and completely illegal and likely to end in injury and possibly death. Like how China's dude just fucking sucker punches a teammate during a random practice the day before a game. If you've played football you know how fucking crazy this is. This scene alone is worth the watch. I'd link it but I couldn't find it online anywhere.

Grr

Per David Warner's invite, the group shows up at the mansion at midnight. The creepy midget lets them in and acts pissed that there aren't more of them. They go explore the museum each on their own like idiots. Bobby, who is a fucking tool in this movie, is the first one to fuck up when drops his zippo behind the rope of a wolfman exhibit. When you pass through the ropes you enter that dimension is how this works. So what happens to Bobby is that John Rhys-Davies, aka Gimli from The Lord of the Rings, shows up, turns into a werewoof, and bites him. He starts to turn and some dudes come and shoot him. He is now part of the exhibit. That's how they get you, apparently. Meanwhile, China is in the Count Dracula exhibit where she is served raw meat drenched in blood. They keep saying stuff like "the sauce makes the dish," and "our guest doesn't like the sauce." She does eat it in the end (IRL it was plums and corn syrup) which she later finds out was the leg of her fiancee in the wax world (don't ask). She ends up killing a bunch of vamps but Dracula hypmerizes with his eyes and mullet.

Gimli, out of nowhere

Muffy and Mark, for their part, get locked in the Marquis de Sade exhibit and the George A. Romero rooms respectively. Mark gets out and pops into Muffy's Marquis de Sade room. He is whipping her and she is super into it. She's into some kinky shit and the Marquis de Sade boasts that he just gave her her first orgasm. Mark snaps her out of it though and they escape leaving the evil folk two short of their set but their idiot friends eventually come around to die, basically. In the meantime Muffy and Mark figure it all out with the help of some old-timey locals who are part of some secret society. Once shit hits the fan at the end with all the monsters on the loose and what not these guys show up out of nowhere and help save the day. In the battle at the end we see a dude shooting a baby and another killing a vampire bat with a shotgun at 0-range whilst throwing in a "make my day." The ending is pure chaos with ridiculous fighting, a horrible looking fire which is just like a poster with holes poked in the windows, a zombie hand that sets up Waxwork II: Lost in Time, and they throw in some blue lightning in there too as it is 1988. Again, greatest film of all time.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is the greatest movie of all time

Here we are, months after I started watching the Friday the 13th movies, still making our way through another franchise with Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, more or less universally considered the worst of the bunch, this movie is garbage... but also the greatest movie of all time. On one hand, these things have been getting exponentially worse with each sequel. On the other, they have getting exponentially more watchable. This movie gets off course early and is a total free fall into what the fuck by the end. Holy shit this movie is weird even by this franchise's standards.

Gist of the movie is that a bunch of high school students go on some weird boat trip to New York, Jason tags along, kills most everyone on said boat, reaches Manhattan, and then kills most of the rest of them there (as well as some of your average 1980s New York thugs) before getting drowned in toxic waste and reverting back to child-form. Again, what the fuck? How? Believe the hype surrounding this movie, greatest fucking movie ever. Especially that boxing scene. That was fucking amaze balls.


Pros: The boxing scene is hilarious. Jason looks cool. The change of locale is sort of interesting and we get a really cool shot of Jason in Times Square. They don't kill off the dog.

Cons: The plot is all over the place and makes no sense. There aren't really any good kills. They change the rules of the game (Jason can suddenly teleport). The ending is really bad and really insane.

Aw

Notes: Here's some shit about this piece of greatness... Obviously, again, intended to be the last in the series (shockingly, it wasn't), some say this shit show was fucking doomed. When Paramount first started marketing the movie, the original poster was Jason tearing through an "I ❤ NY" poster with a bloody knife. Yeah, the New York State Department of Economic Development (or whatever it was called then), which owns the trademark to the logo, was pissed the fuck off. Paramount toned it down by making the knife not bloody, not really the point, and the committee filed a formal complaint resulting in the studio retracting the image. What's worse, in following previously established precedent, Lar Park-Lincoln, the Carrie type survivor girl from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, apparently asked for a modest increase in pay from nearly nothing to dirt. The studio, as they had with every single survivor from the previous seven films, said "fuck no!" and they let her go. And that was that. Paramount really didn't give a shit about these goddamned movies.

Looking at the film itself, some bizarre decisions were made. Opening the movie we get a couple hooking up on a boat with one exposed breast. They suddenly stop so the gentleman here can tell the Jason story. During this tale they coincidentally bring Jason back to life unearth blue lightning when their boat anchor hits a 3000 volt power line that runs from the mainland to the camp at the bottom of the lake. They dead. Also early on we get this really strange side story with the hunky love interest guy. He is maybe out of high school and working as an assistant captain or is in high school and working as an assistant captain while his classmates party and get murdered below deck. What a fucking loser. Am I right? His old man relinquishes command to him, strangely, and he immediately fucks up because he is not qualified to do this job. Nice. Nepotism and incompetence. Immediately following this scene, after the kid storms out, the standard old crazy guy comes up and tells him that the voyage is doomed. I suspect with amateur hour here that even if Jason weren't on the boat that this would still be the case.

Now we start getting a bunch of kills on the boat. Most of them are lame city they make it clear that Jason can definitively teleport in this one. This is most apparent when he is the disco room with the Asian girl as Jason totally teleports around the dance floor before killing her. In sum we get kills with the following implements: a guitar, a sauna stone, a harpoon, Jason's mitts, and a navigation system (Jason throws a dude into it who catches fire before he hits the fucking thing), among other things. Eventually chaos ensues and the ship starts to go down. But not before Jason teleports up the mast one last time to throw some loser off down onto the decks below. He also T\tosses the black dude in the ocean before the boat actually sinks.

Only ones to make it off are the old dude, stupid heart throb, the survivor girl, her mom or whatever (who disappears at some point), the black dude (who they pick up in the ocean), and the dog. As they approach the city, the black dude explodes with a burst of horrible acting. It's fucking insane.

Some further ridiculous stuff with Jason becomes apparent here. First, Jason crawls out of the ocean behind the lifeboat. Apparently Jason swims to NYC. Funny that a kid that drowned is now able to marathon it from the middle of the sea. Second, on the docks of Manhattan he sees a billboard with his hockey mask on it and is weirded out. We also see a young Jason a couple of times. He looks completely different than he did before but whatever. This is foreshadowing to the end or something.

Back to the survivors. They have now discovered that New York is a 1980s hellhole, per usual. Before they even realize Jason is on the island with them they get robbed and the survivor girl gets kidnapped. These kidnapper guys don't give a fuck. This is how my parents think of New York right now, by the by. These dudes shoot her up to rape her. It's insane. Jason actually intervenes and saves the day here. Out of nowhere he pops up and stabs one of the guys in the chest with a hypodermic needle filled with drugs. The other guy, however, is not impressed with Jason who tries to fight him. Jason smashes his head through a steam pipe. He dead. Also, heroine has no affect on the girl who is up and on the move while Jason gets his killing on.

Around here we get what is easily the best scene in the movie: Jason boxes the black guy on the top of an apartment building. It was fucking insane (see the first gif). The guy connects like 400 straight punches before tiring himself out just when he has Jason with his back to the wall where he could potentially punch him off the side of the building. The rope-a-dope works pays off. Jason was down on points but wins on a knock out. Jason literally punches the dude's head off. It looks terrible and is amazing.

A cop shows up to arrest Jason and immediately dies. The remaining boaters hop in the cop car and hit Jason who appears as a child as they make their getaway causing the car to crash and eventually  explode. This conjures up a repressed memory from the survivor girl's childhood where the teacher chaperone dick bag guy scares the piss out of her about Jason being in the lake and throws her in off a row boat. Child Jason is at the bottom of the lake and pulls her down. She is like "you almost made me drown." He is like "uh... oh, when I taught you to swim?" The love interest dude is like "you son of a bitch" and the dude is kicked out of the group just in time for Jason to wake up. The old dude runs away into a building. Jason teleports in and throws them out a window. He then drowns him in toxic waste which is just chilling there like barrels of toxic waste do outside of industrial buildings.

Now we are at the beginning of the end which is quite the journey. Don't remember how they got there exactly but dream boat and survivor girl start making out in a big pile of trash, great time for a first kiss. It's short lived as Jason busts through knocking over a bunch of garbage. They flee and take the subway. Jason is on there. The teleporting thing. This begins this amazing montage of Jason just being an aggressive asshole. First he tools and a bunch of losers. The teeny bopper dude, I think, tackles him at the end of the line and knocks him into an electric grill. Sort of slows him down for a minute. Next thing you know you get Jason in Time Square, my second favorite scene in the flick. Punks see this and rage, for some reason, and decide to fuck with him. All he does is take his mask off which scares the shit out of them. Everyone is still running. They end up in Monk's Diner, maybe. People are barely fazed by Jason. Just another day in New York for them, I guess. Jason, on the other hand, seems to struggle with this many people to kill. Instead of slaughtering indiscriminately, which is what you would sort of hope for, he just focuses on these two.

Makeup Artist: Nailed it

STILL RUNNING, they end up in the sewer. Some guy, a sewer laborer, pops out of nowhere just to tell them the sewer fills up with toxic waste every night at midnight. Why? That seems dubious. New York in the 80s, yo. The boaters figure this is good time to bring up their issue and tell the guy about Jason who suddenly shows up, no surprise there, and pipe wrenches the laborer to death. To get away the girl splashes Jason with toxic waste that is just laying around. Jason takes off his mask. His face looks comically shitty and completely different than it has in all the other movies (it's never the same twice, strangely). This gives everyone enough time to escape as toxic waste starts rushing at Jason. You hear Jason's child voice saying "mommy, don't let me drown." That's fucked up. Then he throws up and drowns in toxic waste with his head turning into a rotting pumpkin. From there we get some more blue lightning and voila, Jason turns another child version of himself. What the fuck? I'd just leave him in the sewer. What the fuck did I just watch?

Researching what the hell that was about, I found an interview with director Rob Hedden where he explained the ending thus: “In the first film a young boy drowns and we find out it is his mother who is the one that has been killing everybody.  It’s not Jason.  That was a great twist, but young Jason still propelled the whole thing.  So, in our movie, he drowns in the toxic waste and turns back to that young boy.  I wanted to have it come full circle.  His soul has finally been released.”

So that was Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, a movie that really tested my Greatest Movie of All Time pledge. But it was totally awesome in a bizarre, train wreck kind of way.

Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood is the worst movie of all

Good god. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is the one where the wheels come totally off (i.e. where the magic happens). Finally moving past the character Tommy, who was the survivor boy in the previous three installments, this one pits good old immortal Jason Voorhees, played by Kane Hodder for the first time (he would play Jason in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday), against telekinetic Tina Shepard who brings him back to life with her mind which results in the death of mother, shrink, and the teens that have come to Crystal Lake to celebrate this idiot bro's birthday.

This one was originally conceived as a potential Freddy Vs. Jason but was too ahead of its time. While we would get that flick 15 years later, New Line, the production company behind the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and Friday the 13th's Paramount, couldn't get their shit together in 1987. Nightmare was at the height of its popularity and the deal that Paramount brought to the table didn't impress Bob Shaye, CEO of New Line. What they offered was they would keep creative control of the film as well as handle domestic distribution while New Line would retain international distribution, which was basically offering them next to nothing. New Line would pass, going on to make Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master which was also trash.

That having fell through and with the series pretty much DOA, Paramount decided to brainstorm other famous foils that they could have Jason go toe-to-toe with. The screenwriter, Daryl Haney, basically just threw ideas at the producer until something stuck, saying "I notice that at the end of these movies there’s always a teenage girl who’s left to battle Jason by herself. What if this girl had telekinetic powers?" Hence this is the one that sort of became known as Carrie vs. Jason which is insane.

Pros: Another giant leap toward comedy. One solid kill in the infamous sleeping bag death. The telekinesis stuff has some potential.

Cons: More or less completely diverges from the previous films (though Jason does sort of hold it all together). Out there in a bad way. It's bad acting, irritating character, and a crappy plot even by Ft13th standards. Shitty kills and very little nudity.

Same damn person

Notes: If I've said it once I said it a million times, or maybe never, but franchises really start to peak around part seven. In that vein, in this part seven we get telekinesis for no reason. Fuck it, man. We get it with the survivor girl who is a small child at the beginning of the film. Her dad is being an abusive asshole. He beats the mom and is just a dick in general. The little girl goes out on a little boat to get away from him and when he follows to the edge of the dock, she psychokinesises the platform, sending him into the lake where he drowns. She immediately regrets it although her dad was a raging dickhead. She ultimately grows up to be the girl from Road Trip (Amy Smart, who is also a very pretty lady).

Part of what makes this movie so bad were all the horrendously unimaginative the kills were. Most of the kills are just Jason grabbing and stabbing. At several points in the film, Jason does the thing where he just walks up behind someone and you think, "huh, this is too obvious, of course this isn't how he is going to kill this person," and then he does. The only really memorable kill is the infamous sleeping bag death. In this one, Jason first kills the dude, Dan, with a machete by, of course, just walking up to him and murdering him. Meanwhile, the girl is getting ready for bed in their massive 30 person tent when Jason walks up. She sees him and her dead dude, maybe, and decides this is too much, she needs to hide. Going on instinct, I guess, she zips herself up in her sleeping bag. Jason grabs her, walks her over to a tree, and smashes her into it. Fuck yes.

Not a lot of nudity in either. We get a skinny dipper who just swims in place when Jason comes at her, then we get one other set of breasts from the stoner chick late in the movie. Both the chicks are super attractive though. Speaking of swimming, I guess we are just gonna ignore that Jason is now an excellent swimmer. The kid drowned and in every movie now we see him fly by Michael Phelps.

The movie also has some of the most irritating characters in the whole franchise which says a lot when alumni include Kevin Bacon, Corey Feldman (who did a fine job), Crispin Glover gyrating about, the character with the lowest self-esteem in all of cinema, a guy that walks on his hands, a mother-son neo-Nazi duo, a rapey coroner (giving us a bad name), and a punk chick who only gets screen time so that she can do the robot. The two worst offenders are the desperate homely girl and the fucktard writer guy. First we'll start with the less offensive homely girl. The dude she is interested in, some rich dude, maybe the writer dude, I don't remember, goes with someone else. Most the people are dead at this point and everyone else is dead drunk. She decides this is an appropriate time to try to make an all out effort to get the dude to notice her. She gets completely dolled up at like two in the morning and goes out looking for him. She is just like wandering about saying his name. It's the weirdest and craziest thing I've ever seen. No wonder she is single. She ultimately dies alone.

Now for the writer dude. Fuck this guy. The writer dude has to be in the running for the most irritating character of all time. This rich bitch, Melissa, played by Susan Jennifer Sullivan (who was long rumored dead but is in fact alive and well) who is Jenna from 30 Rock except serious, leads him on and makes out with him to make this other guy who is more interested in the telekinetic chick jealous. When she finally tells him, "hey, I'm not going to have sex with you," he loses it and says some down right weird shit. "I know about rejection," he says at one point, "I've been rejected by the finest science fiction magazines in the continental United States!" Then he goes down stairs, opens the birthday dude's gifts, and, thankfully, dies.

Though the shit I have already mentioned has already ruined my opinion of the movie, I sort of don't mind the telekinesis stuff. I'm sort of in the if you have an unkillable zombie who has magically learned to swim despite originally drowning (maybe) that has the ability to teleport (unconfirmed until Part VIII), then fuck, I can buy psychokinesis. Her psychic ability, on the other hand, is basically useless. She sees the future but is either unable to change it or she fucks it up and doesn't because she is an idiot. Like when she sees her mother die and then she dies like in said vision. This leads to some ridiculousness. Psychic girl flees her cabin when she finds out her like live-in shrink or stepdad or whatever is fucking with her head. The mom and said shrink or whatever start chasing her so she hops in the car and takes off, ultimately crashing it when she has the vision of her mom getting killed. She then heads to the cabin to find her love interest to help. When she gets there, she says to him, "I just saw my mom; I have to find her," which is nonsense. She could have just stayed where she was since her mom was just looking for her and came up to the car immediately after she ran off.

So they go out to find her. The asshole stepdad or what-have-you throws the mom in front of him so that Jason kills her instead of him--what a guy!--but he eventually gets his when Jason walks up on him (maybe teleport) with a buzz saw and disembowels the prick. The chick finds her mom and is pissed. Comes up on Jason just sort of moseying down the street. The girl sort of telekinesises Jason into a mud puddle and then downs a power line that electrocutes him with the infamous 80s blue lightning. Doesn't work though and they end up back at the cabin somehow. She also smashes a house on him around here. This only causes mild irritation.

Down to three survivors now. The psychic, the love interest dude, and the rich bitch. Rich bitch has no idea what's going on and is obviously not long for this world. Awfully late in the movie to be alive and clueless and a bitch. She tells Melissa what is going down but Melissa is like, "uh, this is fucking crazy, let's go, guy," and she goes to leave. And... she's dead. Axe to the face. Not coming back from that. Now Jason comes at dude and psychic chick. She mentally keeps chucking shit at him like couches, potted plants with severed heads in them, bits of cabin, so forth. Eventually she smashes his hockey mask. The straps cut into his skin. It's all puss filled and fucking gross. Made my stomach turn a bit. They get it on. Jason dies and comes back like six or seven times. Eventually explode the cabin with him in there. Again, redness and slight irritation.

So Jason has the girl cornered at the edge of the dock. She is fucked. He has his knife raise and ready for that sweet, sweet final kill. But the girl has one last trick up her sleeve that comes about when she is freaking out as she unconsciously summons her dead father. He bursts up through the dock--looking surprisingly good for being dead in a body of water for over a decade--and pulls Jason down into the water, chaining him at the bottom of the lake. Man, didn't see that ending coming because it is insane and is completely out of nowhere. That is the whole movie. Insanity out of nowhere. Three more to go before Freddy vs. Jason. Fuck.

Aw, look at that face. So cute. Just want to cuddle him.

Lifeforce is the worst movie of all time

More Tobe Hooper. This one is infinitely weird and completely incoherent. People feel strongly about this movie. I am one of those people. It is trash. Except for that ending which really got my dick hard (metaphorically). 

So, the movie follows these three alien beings that are found riding this space ship near Halley's Comet. They end up possessing some of the crew and kill them minus one poor man's Harrison Ford. He torches the ship and exits out an escape pod. With everyone on the ship dead, the British space program goes up and brings it all back down including the three naked aliens. From there the vamps bounce and cause extreme mayhem on their way to stealing half the people of London's souls to fuel their ship. The city basically comes down to the work of this detective guy and the lone remaining astronaut. This is the most what the fuck movie I have seen in a long time and I seek out what the fuck movies. The end, however, was fucking amazingly cool. 

Ger

Pros: Completely unique. I don't you see a better alien vampire movie any time soon. The vampire lady is attractive and naked basically the whole movie. Young Patrick Stewart. 

Cons: Incoherent as shit. Most of the movie I was all, "what the fuck is happening?" Not a taut movie. Lots of pointless dialogue. Felt so fucking long. 

Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain some spoilers but I rarely give away the ending.

Notes: Like the way this moves along early. Space ship going to Halley's Comet where they find an alien space ship. Convenient earth gravity on the one ship which they feel the need to mention. Captain is a Harrison Ford lookalike. Don't waste a lot of time getting to the space vampires. Get out of their ship to space walk to the alien one. They float there, it looks ridiculous, and find these giant bats that are all dried up, they say. This movie came out in 1985. Halley's Comet showed up in 1986. There is one year later and they can swim untethered in space and land on a comet. Taking one back to the ship because why not. The vampire ship comes alive. Looks like a space octopus or umbrella. Later we learn it is a soul harvester. It stops suddenly. Everyone is like, “huh, is that bad? It's fine, I guess.” Farther in the ship they find naked people. Two Ps. One V. One guy practically ejaculates at seeing this naked lady. He keeps saying she looks perfect. She is super pretty by 80s standards. Taking them back with them as well. Again, why not. 

Three days later. Back on earth everyone is pretty sure the crew is dead. No idea what is going on. Send up another ship to figure it out. The inside looks like the ship was abandoned millions of years ago. Fire, apparently, and they are indeed all dead, it appears. They don't bother to count them up or anything though. Get the equivalent of the black box which was destroyed. Three naked people are still cool though. Bring them back to earth. Hell, why not. Another guy gets rapy with the girl one. She wakes. Starts making out with him. Steals his “lifeforce” which involves infamous blue lightning. Dude is now all withered up. Guy watching the video runs down. She makes out with him now. Another guy sees that on the monitor. Is this just going to keep happening?

Still naked. She is just walking about. Security guards are like, “holy shit!.” One offers her a cracker. She telepathically chokes him to out. She finds his lack of faith disturbing. Blows her way out these giant glass windows. She casually moseys on out. Did I mention she is naked?

Keeping an eye out on the dudes, the soldiers are like, “no big, they dead,” and immediately they explode out of their tubes. Are basically invincible except for grenades which sort of slow them down. The guy who had his lifeforce drained during the makeup sess wakes up suddenly and like makes out with the doctor. Sucks out his lifeforce. Now he is back to normal. Now this other guy probably needs a lifeforce since he looks withered and raison esque. Have a real lifeforce situation on their hands here. The one guy deflates again. He doesn't get lifeforce and combusts in a poof of dust which was totally insane. Find another naked, deflated chick. She gets no LF. Dies. She isn't going to combust? When I give up it finally happens. Harrison Ford looking dude shows back up in the escape pod. He disappeared like three days ago and now has a three month old beard. Cut to his debriefing. Completely clean shaven. Maybe in the next scene he'll have a beard again. 

Get the official word with what happened with thems on the spaceship from the source himself. It's pretty obvious but when he tells the part about how he got off the ship it looks like he puts a quarter in the slot of the escape pod and off it goes. Telling this stuff Harrison Ford dude is at home now maybe. Might be in Transylvania or a graveyard or church. Vampire busts in. Or more explodes in in bat form. What the fuck is happening. They get it on. Took some of the life force telepathically. He can sort of see what's going on with her too. Feel like most of this movie is doctors and police investigators talking. Around here I keep waiting for Patrick Stewart show up and decide I am watching the wrong movie.

And here is Stewart in all his glory. Looks exactly the fucking same, as expected. A doctor, of course, so it would appear that doctors consulting each other is on the way. Main dude tracks this redhead down. They make it out and she passes out. I'm not sure if she's one or not. Maybe I missed something? Anyway, this guy she may have turned is locked away somewhere. They are talking about giving him truth serum or hypnotizing him or something. Sort of feel like all this is happening in real time. This is Stewart's patient. Get into a long discussion on patients rights and medical ethics. They are apparently doing this against his will. And fake out, they give it to Stewart. He's the vampire alien I guess. He screams like a mad man for like a long time and eventually seizes out. In a wheelchair now. Looks like he did in Logan. More truth serum is pumped into him. Lulls me in with whispering. Crank up the volume to hear what he saying and he starts screaming. Sneaky bitch. Start seizing and now he has the vampire chick's voice. What the fuck is happening? Things are infinitely fucking weird. I'm not sure what the vampire is. Claims to be the feminine part of HF dude's brain. Now Stewart opens his mouth and blood starts pooling out. The main vampire/alien chick then briefly materializes from said blood. I don't even know. 

You'd think a spaceship hitching onto Halley's Comet, alien/vampire movie would be more straightforward. Getting near the endish (there is still so much movie left) London is in freefall. The astronaut and cop end up in the talks with the military who are talking about nuking the city. The military guys are fucking jazzed about it. Meanwhile the naked chick is collecting energy from human souls and sending up to her ship using that umbrella thing from the beginning. Someone explains that the two male vamps build the energy by killing while the female transmits it. Some such shit. HF, whose name is Carlson, goes into London, where shit is going down, to kill her. The cop one goes back in too. Both of them are just driving over zombies for like 10 minutes. Cop dude kills his old chief inspector guy after he vague talks for awhile about being a zombie, and then he is on foot running from zombies. London is still completely insane.

The HF looker is getting it on with the vamp in a church while the cop approaches. One of the dude vampires, the other died at some point, says, “it will much less terrifying if you just come to me.” Dude is like, "ok," and walks up to him and stabs him with this sword he got from his old boss right in the chest. Vamp briefly turns into a bat before exploding. It was dope. Then he goes in the church. They are getting it on in the church still. This is where shit goes the fuck down. I watched this part while on substance and it was fucking awesome. Blue lightning, swirling souls, naked stabbing. Twas a sweet ending. Maybe check it out. Mayhap not. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors is the greatest movie of all time

Three Nightmare on Elm Street movies in and this one is my favorite thus far. Wes Craven returns as writer, which is obviously a positive, and they more or less ignore the previous movie, which is also for the best. Just missed the 30 year anniversary for this solid piece of horror kitsch.

In this NOES iteration we have good old Fredrick Krueger going after the last of the kids whose parents murdered him all of whom are staying at this mental hospital for reasons. Nancy is there in an official capacity, she must have been a real go getter at school to already be some sort of psychologist three years after the original NOES so just roll with it, to teach the children how to lucid dream. As such, each of these kids basically develop some sort of superpower that they use whilst in dreamland to combat Freddy scissor hand.

Heather Langenkamp returns as survivor girl Nancy from the first one. Her pops, the ever cool John Saxon, he back as well. Also features a very young Patricia Arquette. Others making appearances that you would know are Lawrence Fishburne and the guy from Body Double who looks exactly like Bill Maher, Craig Wasson. And of course Robert Englund. A lot to like about this one. After Freddy's Revenge this was sincerely welcomed.

Interesting piece of trivia about this film.Sam Raimi stole Freddy's glove and used it as a prop piece in Evil Dead II, my all time favorite flick, which came out that same year. Wes Craven and Raimi had this thing where they would have little nods to one another in their movies throughout the decade as a way of saying "my movie is scarier than yours." It all started with Craven putting a Jaws poster in The Hills Have Eyes. Raimi, thinking that was cool, decided to do the same thing when in The Evil Dead he featured a scene with a torn The Hills Have Eyes poster to basically say the same thing. Next, Craven had Nancy's character in A Nightmare on Elm Street trying to stay up while watching The Evil Dead It then culminated with stealing the glove which you can see in the shed above the door.

Should have been flipping the bird

Pros: Cast is fucking dope and surprisingly well acted for a NOES flick. Effects are also solid. Fantastic kills. Dream sequences are eerie and cool.

Cons: Freddy's backstory is pretty weak. A few of the effects don't age very well (the fighting Freddy bones). Also, Freddy at one point coexists both as a physical skeleton and an ethereal dream killer which is sort of problematic (like, is the skeleton on autopilot while fights with kids or what?).

Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain some spoilers but I rarely give away the ending.

Notes: Movie opens with Arquette. Good call more or less building the movie around the young starlet who looks like an adorable child at this point in her career. Dreams that Freddy is chasing her about in some shitty house. He comes at and slices her wrists before she comes to. Her mother, a real Mommy Dearest type, thinks she tried to eliminate her own map and sticks her in an institution where Nancy is on staff as some sort of intern or something. Her methods are not conventional.

Is she not adorable? Also, Feddy totally looks like a phallus

A couple of really fucking cool early deaths. Probably the two best in the franchise and they run back-to-back. The first is this sleepwalker dude. With this poor bastard Freddy basically pulls out the tendons on his arms and legs and fucking walks him around like a puppet. He then takes him to the ledge of the building and cuts the "strings" which causes him to splat below. In the second, the other blonde one that is not Arquette earns a spectacular death that ushers in the era of Freddy dropping one-liners before every kill. She starts the scene by watching TV in the common room. The Dick Cavett Show is this evening's chosen entertainment. How they got Cavett to do this cameo is beyond me. That night he was interviewing Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was an actress at one time, of course, but by this point, and the way I remember her, she was little more than a socialite, sort of like Paris Hilton, whom she was actually related to by marriage. He was supposed to interview Sally Kellerman for the bit, I always thought she was really pretty, but she didn't end up doing it for whatever reason. Cavett was then allowed to choose the person who he'd interview. He picked Zsa Zsa saying "she was the dumbest person" he'd ever met in his life, he'd never have her on his show IRL, and if there was one person he'd want to see killed by Freddy it would be her. Their back and forth is ridiculous. She is wearing this feathery boa thing. Cavett asks her how many animals died for that thing. Zsa Zsa is like, "I don't know. Is it real? I don't know where it comes from." Cavett is like, "Oh, it probably came from an artificial bird." They drone on about how to succeed as an actress and such, ironically, when he turns to her and says, "can I ask you something?" Zsa Zsa, "uh, ok." Then Cavett says, "who gives a fuck what you think," turns into Freddy, and fucking kills her. The girl is like, "what the fuck am I watching," which leads to the best of all of Freddy's one-liners, "welcome to primetime, bitch," and then this happens.

Led by Nancy, around here the group starts more or less getting superhero powers in their dreams. Arquette, for example, can pull people into her dreams and do gymnastics (which is next to worthless). The others include the black dude who is like a pudgy strongman, the wheel chair wizard kid shoots the infamous 80s blue lightning and dies, and the punk, drug addict chick who is “beautiful and bad” who looks fucking awesome with a ginormous mohawk.

Look at what we missed out on?

Other things of note in the movie are this horny idiot Joey who by some miracle makes it to the end to the movie. Freddy pulls ye olde pose a hot, big breasted blonde way out of the dude's league. Here he starts hooking up with this nurse that matches the above, gets literally "tongue tied", and held captive for most the rest of the movie. You'd think he would have learned something from this experience. No, he does not as we see in NOES 4: The Dream Warriors when the same fucking thing happens only this time the chick is on some beer poster and instead of getting tied to the bed by a rope, tongue obvious Bob Shaye addition, he gets pulled into and drowned in his waterbed. Also, the blonde in this one almost turned into Freddy with boobs which was just too much for everyone.

Lastly, the flick features Freddy's birth story which was a weird addition. Basically his mother returns to this hospital where she worked as a nun/nurse and Fredrick was conceived during a 100+ psychiatric patient gang rape. No one wants to hear that shit. Other than that and some 80s cheese, pretty solid. Would recommend.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is the worst movie of all time

What the hell, bro?

The gay one, as it is known. It's not great but was fun and apparently has a cult following among homosexuals, which I dig. Maybe a little less so after I started researching the production. So in the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy about the Nightmare franchise, pretty much everyone denies that the homoerotic subtext was intentional. Bob fucking Shaye was like, "we had no idea, what the hell, it was just a normal movie," which is typical. So were a bunch of the actors. But the writer, David Chaskin, that guy, he was like, "oh, yeah, it was totally intentional." Why all the secrecy I am not sure but speculate that most of the people involved didn't want to be culpable in more or less type casting actor Mark Patton, the movie's "final girl" who was closeted publicly but privately open meaning that the filmmakers knew his preference and decided to exploit it. The year before the movie came out, Patton stared in a movie overtly about homosexuality called Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean which I am unlikely to see and know next to nothing about. Patton, who comes off as unpleasant in the Never Sleep Again doc, has since blamed the film for ruining his career as an actor. When talking about Chaskin, though, you really feel for the guy: "Nobody ever affected my confidence—the boys that threw rocks at me, nobody—but this man did," and he also claimed that Chaskin told him he played the part "too gay" for his tastes. That's fucked up, main. But feel free to rock out to this infamous dance number from the first act...

But much has already been made of the movie's gayness. That stuff is something I'm on the fence about because of how Patton, the only openly gay person in the film, feels about it. Therefore, I will focus on my big gripe with the movie. Basically that they changed the rules for this movie and it's stupid. What made the original NOES fucking scary was that he existed on another ethereal plain. He wasn't human and didn't need a physical presence to murder you. In this movie, they shitcan that mess. Now, in order to commit murder, as Freddy does, he now has to possess someone and murder through them in the real world. What. The. Fuck.

Oh, cool

This shit has Shaye's stink all over it. Supposedly a lot the trouble from this film was the deadline. New Line had no money and needed to crank the picture out to piggyback on the success of the first one. Yeah, you can fucking tell. With fucking Shaye micromanaging everything and threatening to fire director Jack Sholder over every disagreement, there wasn't a lot of reflection. Plus, Shaye really liked this one liner, "You've got the body; I've got the brains," which led to Freddy exposing some brain. That became the fucking movie. And it's a fucking shit departure. It's all over the place, the acting is just weird, it's not scary, it's only mildly unintentional funny, and it departs from the original so much that it doesn't work as part of the NOES universe as anything goes as that is. This movie is trash.

Pros: The homosexual "subtext" is sort of cool in retrospect. Clu Gulager.

Cons: Shits on that world's rules. Not scary. Clunky. Characters are so flat they barely need names.

Notes: Freddy as normal guy is the bus driver. Three of them kids on the bus. Freddy goes rogue. Drives them into the desert. The ground falls away. Freddy is coming to the back of the bus. This is supposedly not Robert Englund. They didn't think he was the star and weren't planning on building the franchise around him, which seems insane. Anyway, dude wakes up fucking screaming and sweaty. He is so goddamn sweaty for the rest of the movie. Fam is downstairs. Sister is like, “he is doing it again.” Her serial is so racist. “Fu-man Chews” with plastic nails as a prize. Then a ring at the door. And there is... Meryl Streep. It's not her but looks exactly like her. Pretty sure this lady, one Kim Myers, can't fart into a paper bag and earn an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

Spitting image of talent

Off to gym class. Playing baseball. This aggressive jock, New Line loves an aggressive jock, nails one right at Jesse here and knocks him to the ground. Everyone runs to dude like, “fuck, man, are you okay?” This dick jock is fucking still running the bases. Coach is like, “don't be a fucking loser” to Jesse. Eventually he is up and playing again. Then after the next hit, dude gets the jock kid out and he de-pants Jesse and then fights him for no reason. Coach comes over. “Assume the position!” They do pushups forever which happens multiple times throughout the movie. Coach apparently is into S&M and young boys. Also, the house is the connection to the first movie. Was where Nancy lives. Is lame.

The stupid fucking line comes that night in his dreams. “You've got the body; I've got the brain,” basically the first thing Freddy says to Jesse. Shaye's infamous line that they built the movie around. He rips off his head's skin to reveal his brain like in the above gif. It's lame as well. One of those, oh, cool, I guess, moments. This is where we start getting this, “I need to become you,” shit. Jesse lets out this scream that is fucking incredibly girly. Jesse and Freddy's dynamic is sort of like that of the rapist and the prison bitch. They have some weird shit going on.

This happens

Next day in class he is passes out. Looks like shit, per use. Thought we'd get the NOES obligatory Freddy in school scene but it doesn't happen in this one. Wakes up when a snake comes out of its cage and wraps around his neck. Goes home. Going to meet his Meryl but his dad wants him to unpack his room. This all happens so that he has an excuse to go upstairs and gay out. It is fucking absurd. Meryl shows up which is something I haven't thought about for a while. That people used to call on a land line. Say “I'm coming over.” Then if you didn't show up within a reasonable time, then that person would show up and be like, “hey, what the fuck?” Anyway, they find Nancy's diary. She is the chick from the original NOES. They act like this was 20 years ago. This movie came out just a year later.

That night he goes to the basement. Sees Freddy. Finds the glove. Freddy wants him to try it on. Starting to become more Freddy like. Next day we have more locker room shit. At this HS they basically have gym and snake class, apparently. Now Jesse and the jock are homies. Talk shit about coach Snyder's “stick up his ass,” and he is standing right there. More assuming the position. Goes home. Bird goes insane and spontaneously combusts, randomly. It's weird. Don't dwell on it. Dad claims he rigged the bird.

That night, the enfamous 80's blue lightning comes in and destroys the dishes. He goes to an S&M bar. Fucking Bob Shaye is the goddamn bartender. In leather. Looks like an asshole. Coach is there. Of course. Makes Jesse go to the HS and run laps. Pretty sure this is not ok. While Jesse showers, coach, still in leather, is in the equipment room. The equipment like attacks him. He doesn't look phased despite obvious supernatural shit going down. Still chewing his gum and looking stupid. Jump ropes drag him to the shower. Clothes are ripped off. Towel whips his ass for a while then sliced up with the Freddy glove. He is wearing said glove now. Screams again. Most ridiculous fucking thing I've ever seen.

So Snider is dead. I assume physical evidence is everywhere but no one suspects Jesse. Police pick him up on the street, naked. Dad is like, “what are you on... and where can I get some?” This dad is easily my favorite character. He is such an over the top moron. Appliance catches fire in the kitchen; he is like, “huh, it's not even plugged in,” well what do you know? It took me the whole movie to realize he is Burt from The Return of the Living Dead actor Clu Gulager. Love when this guy shows up in movies.  Actually, I like the hotdog chef at the pool party better. It's best to just that scene.

Meryl is having a pool rager at her house. Jesse and her start to mess around. His tongue comes out all weird and gross. He leaves, goes to the meathead dude's house. She is crying. Not making his case for a hetero male. Jock even mentions this. Says Freddy wants inside him. Wants dude to watch him sleep. He goes to sleep immediately. They both wake up. Freddy like busts out of him slowly and painfully out of his stomach. Freddy sort of looks like Snoop. His dad is Ferris Bueler's dad, I think. He dead. Jesse's really amassing a mountain of evidence against himself. Shows back up at the party with blood all over him. Tells Meryl about the killing he's been doing. Some serious overacting going on from Jesse at this point.

Jesse turns into Freddy and starts massacring everyone. He goes on a fucking rampage. Bites a chunk out of Meryl's leg. Oh, the Freddy knives are coming out of his hands, I notice. He doesn't have a glove. Meryl half asses an attempt at self-defense. He starts killing the kids in the pool area. Some idiot tries to reason with Freddy. He kills him. Then Freddy just leaves. Goes to this boiler room place. Has these stupid dogs with human baby faces. Other weird animals keep popping up and eating each other. It's weird. Now Meryl and Freddy have their showdown which is basically the end of the movie. She basically makes out with Freddy. This lowers his control over Jesse for some reason. Then he catches fire, incases him in a stone Freddy, and he turns back into Jesse, sort of like in Ghost Busters. It sucks. Unless you have a high threshold for shit, which I am blessed with, don't watch it.  

Runaway is the greatest movie of all time

Runaway, set in the unknown future, follows Tom Selleck's mustachioed police office character who is some sort of authority on robots that kill and those who program them to do their bidding. The movie is absurd and amazing. There is so much to love. Selleck. Michael Crichton wrote and directed. Gene Simmons as the surprisingly cool antagonist. Kirstie Alley. And then there are the fucking robots.

This was a favorite from childhood. I remember this being god tier. While amazing, there were some things. But it did have acid filled, occasionally exploding, robot spiders. So there is that... But overall, I still fucking loved it.

Here is some cool shit Selleck had to say about the movie: “Jack Ramsay is not exactly a character whose name is on the tip of everybody’s tongue, but Runaway was a really great popcorn movie... It was very futuristic, it had robots and all sorts of stuff, and it was a nice movie. It was a good movie that I’m very proud of. It didn’t do very well, which was a great disappointment to Michael, who became a friend. And Gene Simmons was in it! Gene hadn’t been in a feature film before, but he was great.We had some great talks and good times... I know it [the plot] sounds hokey, but with Michael Crichton at the helm, it was pretty good stuff.”

The 80s loved themselves some robot butlers

Pros: Selleck's mustache. Simmons (believe it or not). Crichton. Have I mentioned the robot spiders?

Cons: Feels very low budget but can't be. Three or four 15 minute scenes of boring ramblings. I can't see my younger self being too into that. It also had way less action than I remembered.

Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain some spoilers but I rarely give away the ending.

Notes: This was Crichton's 1984 idea of what about now would be like. Fucking nailed it. This is in the 1980s so there is a lot just-make-up-all-the-tech. They throw a bunch of fancy tech nonsense around and then use giant cell phones. Most of the robots look like the Never-Ending Pie-Throwing Robot (Neptr) from adventure time.

Kojack, the early years

There are like five scenes that just drag on forever in this movie. The scene towards the beginning that is basically a 20 minutes standoff with a robot (which I will detail a bit), the scene where Simmons like negotiates with this guy (who he just ends up killing) for these “templates” for these heat seeking bullets that ultimately pays off with the first showing of a spider, the scene where Selleck and his lady partner go to his house and meet his fucking annoying kid, the scene where Selleck removes an exploding bullet from his partner's arm (one would assume that Selleck has medical training too or something), and the scene where the police are searching this bathroom for Simmons (they spend 15 fucking minutes in the bathroom and then don't find him).

In the future, they are also lax about interdepartmental romance

So the aforementioned scene at the beginning with the robot standoff is the most ridiculous thing I've ever fucking seen. A family lives at this house. Mom, dad, baby. The robot has killed the mom. The dad is out of the house and leaves when they start to ask questions (Simmons wants him dead and he freaks out and just bounces) and the fucking baby is still in the house with the robot who is in a murderous rage. Eventually, after like 10 minutes of procedural masturbation, Selleck goes in. The news is there. Selleck is like tiptoeing in all quiet. Then, all of the sudden, this camera guy fucking follows him in. He just walks in like an idiot. Selleck silently is like “what the fuck are you doing?” The guy silently is like, “go fuck yourself,” and this robot that has a gun and is set to murder immediately fucking shoots him in the face. Here we see Simmons for the first time. He looks like Telly Savalas with hair.

At the station, we see that in this future you can smoke inside. During this scene Selleck logs onto his computer and his entire file pops up. There on his computer we see that character is 35. He looks so fucking old. He's always been a grizzled old man. There we also get introduced to a young, bitchy, pre-nose job Kirstie Alley. Blame it on Scientology. She eventually gets held hostage by a rogue robot that shoots blue lightning. Lots of blue lightning and red lasers in this movie. Ah, to be a red laser or blue lightning salesman in the 1980s. You'd still be made. Anyway, Selleck beats that robot to death with a chair which is a little weird.

While transporting Alley, who was Simmons's girl who he now wants dead, we see another Simmons gadget. These are like these little wheeled honing missiles they call “lock-ons” and are not to be confused with “hop-ons” (Arrested fans?). They look fucking stupid. Eventually though he catches up to them and kidnaps Selleck's partner. What he does is so poorly thought out. He swaps Alley for this chick at a restaurant and immediately kills Alley which was insane. Now he has to jump two stories from the eatery into a fountain that is at most nine inches deep and hide out in the woods to make his escape. All of this is for these dumb fucking templates.

Getting toward the end here. Simmons, ever the kidnapper, nabs Selleck's kid. Goes to this tall building that is being constructed. There are spiders everywhere. At around this point I sort of realized that the movie is basically a less complex Vertigo with robot spiders. There is a bunch of stuff about Selleck being afraid of heights which he has to overcome to save the day in the end. That and doing a fucking pull up. So this movie, which I loved, can basically be skipped if you watch this one scene. If you watch this, then you get the gist.