About three years ago my friends and colleagues at Wizard decided to get together and watch three "manly" movies hooting, hollering, drinking and making jokes the entire time. For a more complete history check out Sean T. Collins' blog post about what we've dubbed Manly Movie Mamajama.
About a month ago we started exchanging E-mails about a Halloween-themed MMM and finally decided on a line up consisting of The Lost Boys, Slumber Party Massacre II (which I take full responsibility for adding to the line-up) and Dead Alive. So, Friday night we gathered together in manly fashion eating pizza and chili (some of us simultaneously) and drinking beer and Red Bull. I'd actually seen all three movies before, but it's always a new experience watching them with these guys.
We started with Lost Boys (1987) directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Corey Feldman and Kiefer Sutherland. There's a lot going on in this movie and I'm not sure how much of it was actually intended. As Rickey pointed out, it really seems like brothers Jason Patric and Corey Haim are in a budding romance. There's also the hilarity of the clothing throughout the flick. Between Haim's crazy jackets/robes and Sutherland's gang of mulleted biker vampires. Did this ever look tough? Ah, it was a different, simpler time.
Anyway, for those of you who haven't seen it Lost Boys is about a pair of brothers and their mom who move in with their grandpa in the town of Santa Carla, CA which looks like Coney Island on crazy pills (but sadly lacking The Warriors). Well, it turns out that Santa Carla has a bit of a vampire problem and may or may not be the murder capital of the world, depending on how much stock you put into billboard graffiti. As Jason Patric gets wrapped up in Sutherland's vampire gnag (which also includes Bill from the Bill and Ted movies), Haim meets the Frog Brothers, one of which is Feldman with seems to be doing his best Stallone impression throughout the movie. Their parents own a comic book store (probably the most disorganized store of all time). One of my favorite not-funny-on-purpose lines comes when Haim explains why two Superman comics shouldn't be right next to each other (Lori Lemaris hasn't even been introduced yet). How about because they're no less than 100 issues apart from each other. Oh, also their parents look dead. Just saying. Anyway, the Frog Bros. are vampire hunters.
Anyway, you can imagine where things go from there. Sean Collins made the point that, in the 80s kids progressed from Goonies to Monster Squad to Lost Boys. Now, I had never actually heard of Monster Squad as a kid and I didn't see Lost Boys until Rickey and I lived together, but these three films definitely share a spirit that you can't find in movies aimed at kids anymore. Heck half the stars of this R-rated movie probably couldn't legally see it when it premiered. Awesome!
But, really, you should check it out. There's some pretty good effects and the last battle in the mom's house is pretty great. Plus it's good for a lot of laughs, both intentional and unintentional.
So, after Lost Boys we popped the VHS copy of Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) that I bought off of Amazon for just this occasion for about $6. It's one of, if not THE most ridiculous movies (horror or otherwise) I've seen ever. As I explained to the group before we started, the first SPM movie had a random mental patient killing high school kids at a slumber party with a drill. This movie stars Crystal Bernard (the cute, blonde girl from Wings) as the sister of the survivor from the first flick. She's in a band with three of her friends. One of the girls' parents' decided it would be a good idea to allow the girls to head up to their new condo (which are treated with the same sense of "newness" that malls were treated with in Dawn of the Dead) for the weekend.
Crystal keeps having crazy visions about a rockabilly dude with an Elvis haircut dressed in leather and rocking what looks like a BC Rich designed drill-tar. Well, as you can imagine, she keeps getting freaked out by various visions (the zit one is my favorite, worth the $6 I paid for this junk) but her friends just think she's crazy until the dude comes to real life and starts killing her friends and their visiting boyfriends. What?!
From there it's your average kids running away from a slasher movie, but with a lot more dancing as the Driller Killer busts some moves at random intervals and sings crazy songs. Seriously, if you love bad slasher movies, check this one out. Though I'm not sure if any of my MMM colleagues would agree with that sentiment. General consensus was that it was in the least liked films in MMM history down there with Steel Dawn and King Kong Lives (which I also found hilarious).
Unfortunately, I started coming down with a pretty bad cold that I'm still dealing with today, so I bounced out before the end of Dead Alive, though I'm not sure how much longer anyone else watched it. I would recommend skipping to the last 30 minutes, but make sure to view the zombie sex scene. It's hilarious. Anyway, for my full Dead Alive/Braindead review, click here. As always, I had a great time at the MMM (even with getting sick) and I highly recommend starting up your own.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment