Old Movie Review - Meatballs (1979)

I love having a blog!  I can review old movies like they JUST CAME OUT!  :-D

Meatballs (1979) is not about spaghetti, or about some scientist who created living food items.  No, Meatballs is a tale about summer camp!  I know, I know, ANOTHER story about summer camp?  Jesus!  Who the fuck goes to summer camp?  That's for rich kids!  Most of middle america doesn't go to summer camp!

Well, all that's true, and not only did I never go to summer camp myself, but I never met anyone who ever went to summer camp.  Honestly, I think the whole "Summer camp" concept is a lie told to kids to make them feel bad about not having friends.  Or maybe that's just me.

So, Meatballs!  Basically, it's a tale of Counselors In Training, and a bunch of not-well-to-do kids facing off against a team of very well-to-do kids.  And losing.  Horribly.  Bill Murray plays the head counselor for the guys, and a completely unknown actress plays his love interest.  Chris Makepeace, who had some small fame in a series of 80's movies, plays a poor lonely kid named Rudy who bonds with Tripp (Bill Murray) and ends up filling in at the big all-star end-of-summer-olympics.

There's no monsters in this movie.  I don't know why I like it so much.  Maybe because I always identified with Rudy, the lonely poor kid who has no friends.  Probably because I first saw it when I was 10, and wished my parents had enough money to send me to summer camp so I could make a friend.  Maybe because Bill Murray is hilarious enough to want to hang out with all summer long.

Definitely because there's a lot of cute 1970's chicks in this movie.  I think my hormones kicked in around the age of 9, so by 10, I was already fully in their grip.

This movie made a lot of things popular.  It started the whole summer camp movie trend, and spawned 4 sequels of it's own.  I watched them all.  None of them were as good as the original.  One even had an angel in it.  I think she was played by Sally Kellerman.  This movie either coined the term "Spaz" or made it popular (or maybe it didn't, this was 35 years ago, who can remember?), associating it with being extremely clumsy, geeky and otherwise uncoordinated.  As a spaz myself, I've heard this term a lot.  It also coined the phrase "Wudy the Wabbit" which, I'm sure you never heard of, but I still use it to this day!  Okay, I don't, and that would be weird, but I did use it for at least a decade or two after this movie came out.  Also, it launched Bill Murray's movie career, was the first movie he ever starred in, and made him the man he is today!  Or, maybe that was the substance abuse.  Only Bill knows for sure.

Let me sum up the good points about this movie, and why you should watch it despite it not having boobs, nudity, monsters, martial arts, aliens, gunfights or explosions in it.  Jesus Christ.  It has none of those things?  Wtf.  I think one of the sequels at least had an alien.  Uh, anyways.  It's funny, and a feel good movie.  At least, it makes me feel good when I watch it.  I don't want to give too much away about the movie, but Wudy the Wabbit makes friends, and is lifted in the air by his team-mates.

Have you ever been lifted in the air by your teammates for winning the game?  I have.  It's awesome.  It hasn't happened lately, because, well, I'm a pretty big guy nowadays, but back then I was a little kid.  And goddammit, I felt just as good about it when it happened to me as Rudy did when it happened to him.  What can I say?  I'm a winner.

If for no other reason, watch this movie for the pep talks by Bill Murray.  I swear to god the man should have become a professional sports coach.  Absolutely brilliant.  And the pranks they played on Morty?  HOLY SHIT.  HOLY.  SHIT.  I'd have been laughing too damn hard just trying to get him into the awkward spots they put him in to actually finish getting him there.

Well, enjoy the movie if you can find it.  It's currently playing on Sundance Network.

What's that you ask?  What did I do all summer when I wasn't going to summer camp?  Roasted.  Never had a pool.  Never went to summer camp.  Aside from a short two weeks of vacation time per year when my parents had off and we went camping, I spent the summers moping around, dreading the return to school in the fall, and avoiding the bullies prowling my street, looking for little geeks like me to beat on.  Life was tough when I was a kid!  :-o

That's all for now, campers!  Are you ready for the summer?  Hope you're looking forward to it.  After the unusually harsh winter around the states, all the forecasters say it's going to be a cold and wet summer, but I'm going out on a limb here and calling it as one of the hottest summers ever.  June will be sweltering, July will be the hottest and driest my area has ever seen, and august will be stormy and full of hurricanes.  Just glad I live in NY and not down south.  Poor bastids down there are in deep shite.  And the weathermen say they get it right 75% of the time.  Suuuuuuure.  Well, we'll see who's right.

I'm going to be moping around without a pool.  Sweating.  I already had to break out my fans and get them running and it's only mid May.  But don't worry!  May and June around here is Spring, July and August is Summer, and September and October are fall.  Then I have six months of snowy winter to cool off in!  And yes, we get snow from november to april.  Every year.  So it's winter, no matter what the calendar says.

I need to move somewhere warm.  Somewhere with a pool.  This being too cold for six months and too warm for the other six months is getting old.

TV series and the men who love them, on the next Oprah!

Otherwise titled, What I Watch Every Week.  Come to think of it, Oprah doesn't even have a show anymore, does she?  Just a network.  Well, I guess that's a step up.

So here's the stuff I watch.  Sunday nights, Game of Thrones!  Of course.  Quick review of game of thrones this season (so far, because it's still ongoing)...  Queen Daenaerys decides NOT to take Westeros right offhand, which was probably a bad idea.  Her Dragons are growing hungry and the political forces of her enemies are aligning against her.  Tyrion, the smart little dwarf, is on trial for the killing of the High King!  :-o  He didn't do it, but it doesn't matter.  He's being framed.  The White Walkers continue to advance towards the Wall, driving the untamed wildlings before them.  The Night's Watch, defenders of the Wall, number less than a hundred, and can't hope to stop the tens of thousands of wilding men, let alone the White Walkers behind them.  Things look grim indeed for the kingdom of Westeros, because no one is prepared, and Winter is Coming.

On a side note, I've been waiting for some time for a movie or series that does justice to dragons.  Frankly, the idea of a huge feral flying reptile that breathes gouts of fire from it's mouth should be enough to scare the bejeesus out of any hundred strong men, let alone one of them.  So why is it when Dragons are generally portrayed on-screen, they're small, insignificant CGI creations that nobody is really afraid of?  I mean let's think about it, you turn a corner and come face to face with a fast, armored predator the size of a subway train.  After you've shat yourself, you turn to run, and the dragon burns you to shit-smelling ashes.  Where does the bravery come in?  Where do you have a chance to be all brave and noble, fighting against a dragon?  You don't.  The dragon kills you.  That's how it ends.  But, the scrawny CGI dragons in game of thrones really don't live up to the name.  I'm hoping the next couple Hobbit movies really play on how fearsome an actual fire-spouting reptilian predator would be in real life.  For inspiration, feel free to look to the movies Reign of Fire (2002) and Dragonslayer (1981), both of which feature dragons that are actually pretty terrifying.

Once Game of thrones ends for the season, I'm hoping Under the Dome takes it's place on sunday nights, but frankly I didn't like the book and the series is leaving a lot to be desired so far.  Can't eve remember what happened in it last summer, seems like.  It WAS a year ago.

Moving on, there's not really anything good on monday nights.  I was surprised by the return of 24, with Keifer Sutherland.  I guess that's on monday nights, but 2 things prevent me from watching it regularly.  One, there's no monsters in it, and two, Jack Bauer lost his ability to surprise me in the second season, when his wife or daughter or whatever was kidnapped and escaped during an accident, and I thought: "Well, Jack HAS to know who's behind everything now, once his wife or daughter tells him who kidnapped her.  The only way she couldn't possibly identify them is if she suddenly gets amnesia!"  and then... she's looking around confusedly for a moment, and i said to myself "OH YOU DID NOT JUST GIVE HER AMNESIA YOU PREDICTABLE BASTARDS!"  But, yes.  Yes, they did.  Amnesia, failing an actual lump on the head the size of a watermelon, personality-altering-brain-damage, went out with the soap operas back in the 70's.  No one should be using it as a plot twist anymore.  It's just simply out of fashion, aside from being absolutely ridiculous.  So that's when I pretty much stopped watching 24.

The Walking Dead suffered the same fate it's second season, when the deer in the woods trick alerted me to the death of the boy instead of getting the group back on the highway where it should have been.  Too goddamn predictable.  I haven't watched it since.  I guess the return of 24 means Keifer couldn't find any other acting roles, and needed some money.  Sad.

Tuesdays are good nights.  Marvel's Agents of SHIELD followed by Dusk Til Dawn on the El Rey network.  So you've got government agents vs super-villains followed by humans vs vampires in a no-holds barred cage match double-header TO THE DEATH!  Yea baby!  Now we're talking!

Short summary of Agents of SHIELD, if you know anything about the marvel universe.  Shield is a government agency formed to protect normal humans against super-powered villains whenever a superhero wasn't around to do the job.  So basically it's normal guys armed to the teeth going up against unstoppable killing machines like Deathlok, a cybernetically enhanced super-soldier.  And thus far SHIELD is losing horribly, decimated by an evil organization known as Hydra that's been around since world war 2.  The few survivors left who even still consider themselves SHIELD agents are living out of a hotel room, being hunted near to death by every other agency out there, reeling from a betrayal by one of their own agents.

As for Dusk til Dawn, if you've ever seen the movie with George Clooney, it's pretty much following the same plot.  the guy who made the movie is basically just expanding on his original work, in essence copying himself as far as the story, setting and plot goes, and just adding a few details here and there.  I guess if you can't come up with new ideas, falling back on your own work is better than copying someone else's.  (shrug)  Still, there's a lot of blood, nudity, guts, gore and shooting going on.  So, there's that.  And the vampires are actual bloodsucking beasts, not champagne-swilling sparkly-assed pussies wearing dusty french shirts.  The only thing that could make it more exciting would be if they listened to me when i say BRING ON THE WEREWOLVES and let them eat the fuck out of the dead vampire things.  Yea.  At this point in the series, the Gecko brothers and the innocent family they abducted are now being hunted through te bowels of the bar-slash-temple called the Titty Twister that is actually a holy place to the aztec vampires.  If they can survive til dawn, it will be a miracle!

Wednesdays...  forget it, nothing on.  But on Thursdays, also on the El Rey Network, is... you guessed it....  FLYING FIVE FINGER ONE ARMED EIGHT POLE SHAOLIN EXPLODING DEATH TOUCH THURSDAYS!  Where they play old kung fu movies from the 70's and 80's.  Kung Fu theater at it's finest.

Friday's it's Grimm on NBC!  I have been watching Grimm since the first episode.  It's about a detective who can see the monsters living among us, disguised as normal humans, some of whom are okay, but most are bad.  He hunts them down and kills them until they die from it.  When he's not busy being a cop, that is.  Season finale is next week, i think.  I'm pretty sure the planned wedding between two of the Grimm's friends is NOT going to go as expected.

After Grimm, it's usually back to the El Rey network to watch Grindhouse theater on El Rey.  Again, sex and violence are fun to watch because El Rey does not edit them out, and thank you for that, El Rey.  It almost makes me forgive you for putting soccer on all sunday afternoon.  Wtf.  Soccer?  Really?  Sigh.  Reminds me of Syfy putting on wrestling on friday nights.  Blech.

Saturdays, well, the end of the weeks is a mixed grab bag of movies.  Sometimes Syfy has monster movies all day.  Sometimes I'll catch a series of decent movies on CLOO or CHILLER some other second rate network.  Sometimes El Rey runs movies all day saturdays, sometimes they run starsky and hutch all day.  I don't stick around for the starsky and hutch marathons.

HBO has a new movie every saturday night.  I got to watch We're the Millers last week.  I guess it wasn't completely horrible, but it certainly wasn't fine entertainment.  Jennifer Aniston plays a stripper and at some point she has to dance in a fairly deserted warehouse to prove it.  Which, is always nice to see.  It was kind of funny in spots.  However, one thing that puzzles me, and i don't want to spoil it for you, but honestly, the movie wasn't that good where you'd be offended by me spoiling it.  The drug dealer guy (and I can't even remember his name, at the moment), the actual hero and protagonist of the story, abandons his fake family to drop off the drugs and collect half a million dollars from his friendly neighborhood drug kingpin.  And then decides to turn around and come back for his fake family, abandoning the money.  But they never say why.  Why does he do it?  They don't ever really tell you.  Just a puzzle to figure out, i guess.

Last night's movie was Prisoners, and frankly, I think Hugh Jackman should stick to playing Wolverine.  Prisoners is about what happens when a pair of little girls are kidnapped on thanksgiving, and how far one of their fathers goes to save his daughter.  Only trouble is, I guess it didn't do well at the theaters because of some minor plot holes.  I won't go into them because I actually did miss about 45 minutes of the movie, and maybe the things that happened after that time were hinted at during the parts I missed, but they certainly weren't clarified after the fact, because I was all like HUH WHAT after that.  Otherwise, the movie is pretty straightforward, except that Hugh plays a bad drunk and Jake Gyllenhal does not play a very heroic detective.  Maybe that's why it didn't do well in theaters.  As for the movie, it seemed to start out very promising, then just kind of went downhill steadily from there, with no redeeming features or surprises.

Why did I miss 45 minutes of the movie, you ask?  Because my mom wanted flowers for mother's day, that's why.  Which was today, or technically, yesterday, since it's 1:20 am as I type this.  So if you didn't get your mom something, it's TOO GODDAMN LATE NOW.  Good job, you dick.  Ready your apologies for tomorrow and buy her something nice.  No, no!  Don't drunk dial her now, for god's sake!  Stop, what are you going to do, just wake her at 1:30 in the morning with a drunken I LOVE YOU MOM speech?  Wtf is wrong with you?  Put the phone down, you jackass.  Let her cry herself to sleep and promise her you'll never miss another mother's day as long as she lives.  But promise her TOMORROW.  And buy her a car or a dishwasher or something nice to make up for being such a putz.

Now keep in mind, this list of stuff that I watch, only applies when I am home.  I, uh, have an extremely hectic social schedule, involving at least one night out per year.  Maybe two.  So.  This is what I watch on TV, when I can fit it in.  Yea.  Because I am a PARTY ANIMAL, that's why.  Yea.  Those one or two nights a year, I just, go wild.  Yea.  What do I do on those wild nights?  Uh.  I don't know.  Am I supposed to remember them?  I probably have a beer.  Maybe even two beers.  Yea.  I live on the edge.

That's all for now!  My next post will be "Why You Need Your Ass, and Ten Reasons to Fondle it Hourly!" *

*May not be the actual title of my next post.

Old Movie Review - Night of the Comet (1984)

I may have reviewed this movie before, but there's something I just noticed.  Before I get into the details, let me sum up the movie.

A comet that hasn't been seen in 65 million years heads back around and passes close by earth's orbit.  The radiation from the comet (which, according to the movie voice over, may have been directly responsible for the death of the dinosaurs) turns every living thing not completely shielded into a pile of red dust.  Hmmmm, reminds me of Mars...  I wonder if that's what they were trying to imply?  Anyway, so we're focusing on a very specific set of survivors, starring one Regina "Reggie" (Catherine Mary Stewart) and her little sister Samantha, who meet up with this trucker, Hector (Robert Beltran).  The survivors, who variously spent the night in a tool shed, a semi truck, and a metal theater viewing room, are fine.  However, many other survivors were only partially shielded, resulting in a much slower transformation into red dust...  leaving them vicious, dehydrating, decaying zombies with a thirst for blood.  Also amongst the barely survived but slowly turning into zombies group, aside from the random mushy zombie appearance, is a group of scientists who managed to somehow forget to close the air intakes in their underground compound.  I'm... not sure why that would make them zombies as well, since the truck, tool shed and theater weren't exactly airtight either, but wtf.  It was the 80's.  There were a lot of drugs floating around.

So let's chat this movie up and get it naked so we can have our way with it.

The first thing I noticed was that Catherine Mary Stewart was really hot back in the 80's.  She kind of fizzled out in the 90's, and despite a few movies here and there, she's almost completely vanished from the B-list actress she was back in the day.  Aside from Night of the Comet in 1984, she also made The Last Starfighter, which some of you older people might remember as a pretty decent sci-fi alternative to Star Wars back then.  And yes, I guess today, or technically, yesterday since it's after midnight here, was May the 4th be with you day, otherwise known as star wars day, so there, I worked a valid Star Wars reference in almost on the right day.  After her banner year in 1984, Catherine Mary Stewart, who has a very catholic name, I might add, was in Nightflyers in 1987 (another sci-fi excursion in which she had a short but memorable gymnastics scene...  hey, I was 17 at the time, how could I forget that?), and then was in Weekend at Bernie's in 1989.  Weekend at Bernie's was probably the closest she'd get to being an A-lister, though.  Acting alongside Andrew McCarthy (of Brat Pack fame) and Johnathan Silverman of...  uh...  well, I'm sure he was famous for something.  Anyway, that movie was hilarious and I never get tired of watching it, but poor Miss Stewart kind of fizzled out after that, appearing in a string of made for TV movies, probably on lifetime.  Lifetime, as you know, is like a graveyard of has-been attractive actresses and male heart-throbs.  I don't mean to insult miss Stewart on this, she was smoking hot and a decent enough actress, but I haven't seen her in anything good in about 25 years, sooo...  (shrug)

One cool thing I noticed, as Reggie is coming out of the theater where she works (and managed to survive the night by spending it in a metal-lined viewing room), is the name of the theater: EL REY!  And I'm watching this movie on... The El Rey Network!  I was like :-o  I admit, I was mildly shocked.  I don't know if that was the actual name of the theater in the movie or if the El Rey network digitally went back and renamed it to enhance the cool factor, but either way, it was cool.  I was slightly weirded out, man, and not just because I watched "Heavy Metal" (1981) right before this and would have had LSD flashbacks except I had never actually taken any LSD.  At least, none that I am aware of.  If there was some that I had taken, however unknowingly...  well, that would explain a lot.

Another thing I noticed, and this was probably the greatest thing about the 80's...  The music.  Now, it's one thing for you to go to a radio station or a music TV channel nowadays and listen to 80's music.  This is completely different to what was played in the 80's.  Let me explain the difference so you can relate.  What plays on the 80's music station now is the popular songs from the 80's that sold well or were popular or were well remembered from that decade.  But take a moment to think about this...  back in the 80's, aside from a couple stations that were playing big band music from the 50's or a few songs from the 70's, every single radio station you tuned to, was playing 80's music.  And not just the popular stuff.  When every single station is playing the same music, they pretty much play anything they can get ahold of, even from the less popular bands.  So back in the 80's, you were literally BOMBARDED with 80's music, from every station, in every store, from every radio, and every, forgive me for using the vernacular...  Boombox.  That's right.  People carried gigantic radios around with them wherever they went, listening to loud volumes of 80's music.  Why?  Because 80's music is cool, that's why.  Think about it.  Boomboxes back then were about as ubiquitous as cell phones are nowadays.  You were naked if you left the house without one.  I had one so heavy i couldn't even lift it at first.  I had to work out and get ripped and buff just to carry the damn thing.  True story, as far as you know.

Speaking of 80's music, there's a particular scene in which Reggie and her little sister go shopping, and are trying on various clothes and dancing around while Cyndi Lauper's "Girls just Wanna Have Fun" is playing.  Reggie is in this delightful little fashion statement that reminds me of french models from the era, and frankly, I'd have done her right there, she was so damn enticing.  But I'm a sexual beast with poor social skills, so I doubt I'd have gotten very far.  In any case, there's a lot of 80's music playing in this movie.

Honorable mention goes to Reggie's little sister, Samantha, who was played by Kelli Maroney, of Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and Chopping Mall (1986) fame.  She spends most of the movie in or out of her cheerleader outfit, showing off her legs.  Which, are nice.  That's all I can say about that.  Robert Beltran, whose legs I have actually never seen, went on to feature prominently in Star Trek: Voyager.  He was also Chuck Norris' partner in Lone Wolf McQuade, which was also made in the 80's.  Which begs the question, why is a movie called Lone Wolf McQuade, about a texas ranger called Lone Wolf McQuade, mostly feature the relationship he has with his new partner?  Wouldn't that make him, I don't know, not such a lone wolf?  Odd, innit?  I thought so.  I knew it wasn't just me thinking that, I KNEW IT.

Special effects in Night of the Comet were good for the time.  This was pretty much a b-monster or b-horror movie, but let's be clear, back in the 80's, Terminator was a B-horror movie.  Yes, the one that launched Arnold Schwarzenegger's career was a B-movie at the time.  Nowadays, B movies have a bad reputation, but honestly, what's an A movie nowadays?  Hunger Games?  Twilight?  Who the HELL wants to see that shite?  Exactly.  Back then, a B-movie meant you were going to see good special effects, aliens, monsters, boobs, and probably some kung-fu.  Maybe all five.  Nowadays, that's apparently a bad thing.  Just one of many things wrong with our country, I think.  Sad.

One of the nice things about this movie's zombies is, they don't last long.  Yea, literally, any partial exposure to the effects of the comet means that, 2 to 3 days later, you're a pile of red dust.  Doesn't matter how many brains you eat, how much blood you suck, you're pretty much a goner.  So all you had to do, assuming you survived the first night, was chillax somewhere out of sight for a couple days and you had the whole goddamn world to yourself.  Cool, huh?  Yea, I thought so.  But I was like 15 when I saw this movie, and what's cool to a 15 year old geek high on his own hormones?  EVERYTHING.  Yea.  Nowadays, I realize the gene pool would have been so horribly eroded that i doubt that human beings would have survived as a species.  But when are movies supposed to make sense?  That's right!  ALMOST NEVER!  Good answer.  Good answer.

Oh, and, and, in case all that wasn't awesome enough, this is a christmas movie!  That's right!  I didn't think you could squeeze more awesome into this awesome movie, but there it is.  The comet hits near xmas time and there's just xmas trees and a bit of xmas music tossed in here and there for flavor.  Which certainly qualifies it as a feel good xmas movie you can watch every holiday season, right up there with miracle on 34th street and Force of One, with chuck norris.  Ayup.

Though this movie does have hot chicks, zombies, comets and post apocalyptic themes, there is unfortunately no nudity in it.  Ah, well.  They didn't have internet boobies back in the 80's, one of the only drawbacks to an otherwise great decade, but they do now!  So, if you want great xmas time b-horror entertainment, watch Night of the Comet.  You want boobies, well, go to almost any other web page but mine.  lol  Hmmm, maybe I should add boobies to my page somehow...  Certainly wouldn't hurt my traffic counter any.

I'm planning on reviewing some of the current TV series I am watching, but that's for next time.  I'm done for now!