Japanese Business Cat

Says Hai!

Saturday Night!

This is me right now. Actually, it's Moochie, dreaming of chasing squirrels and eating chow, but that's how I feel. Like I just want to lay on my back with my paws in the air like a cartoon character, with x's over my eyes, and be done with it. There should be a law that states you shouldn't have to close the bar and then open that fucker the next morning, but apparently the managers I work for don't get that. So here I am, on my fourth glass of wine (we get two 'shift' drinks) and not the least bit tired, or buzzed really. I should have just slept there, because I have to be back in less than eight hours. Woe is me.

And I wanted to regale you with my movie watching adventure tales of the last couple o' days, which included, but was not limited to, THE SILENT SCREAM (an almost Cavalcade-worthy 70's peeper foray. Seriously, if you are going to rent rooms to cute college co-eds, it is almost essential that you install cast iron grates to peep through in every room. Practice your heavy breathing too. Do it now.), THE NIGHT DIGGER (written by Roald Dahl! Since when did the auteur behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach pen sexually repressed mother-daughter relationship tales? Who'd thunk?) and a Ruggero Deodato number with a Simonetti score (so good!) I hadn't heard of but turned out to be a downer, BODYCOUNT (all one word). And that ain't all. But I should be taking shots of Nyquil (is Nyquil considered a beverage?) and getting my ass into the bed, which by the way, I washed the sheets and blankets and have absolutely no desire to reapply said sheets and blankets to the bed, so I guess I should be getting my ass to the couch then. You perverts have a good night and pray for my soul for the next six days -it's non-stop bringing people drinks and dealing with their bullshit. That being said, behave yourselves when you go out to the bars. Or I will bite you. Which you would probably like, knowing you.

Shrooms

Today as I prayed to the gods to take my hangover away (it's a particularly violent one, the result of an impromptu dance party, a gay birthday bash, and the consumption of a shot called a Statutory Rape), I watched SHROOMS. Because sometimes you just want to watch something stupid that you don't have to think too hard about because thinking hurts. Thinking really hurts right now. Everything really hurts right now.

It's your standard attractive college kids going into the woods for a weekend of partying but some shit hits the fan and people start dying movie. This one features deadly, eat 'em and you'll see into the future and possibly become evil hallucinogenic mushrooms.

It is no secret that I party. Before you fall out of your chair from the shock of hearing that news, let me tell you, I have never taken mushrooms. I've never dropped acid, either. And I've never wanted to. Something about my brain would probably make me freak out, so I never understood the whole mentality about tripping. It just seems dumb to me. That being said....

This complete dumbasses in this movie have traveled all the way from happy American college life to the middle of fucking nowhere Ireland to pick these crazy mushrooms to brew into a tea so they'll start to see shit. They have a friend that's native to the region and he helps them pick the mushrooms and warns them off of the one's with a black nipple because if you eat those, you'll go fucking crazy as a loon and start fucking everyone's shit up. And you might also become psychic. He also regales them with tales about a nearby abandoned home for screwed up youth where some bad shit went down years before and some people got their asses killed.

Their guide has failed to mention this to Tara, our final girl in the tale, and she eats one of the bad ones - just plucks it right off the floor as if she's compulsed to eat it. She has a seizure and then starts to have prophetic dreams about her friends dying. She also says the best line in the movie, 'I just overdosed on the heroin of mushrooms!' Who says stuff like that? I love it - but that's about all I love here.

There's also two weirdos that live in the forest and some thing about sticking your dick in car windows while there are two people fucking inside to get a blow job. And there's a guy with a sack on his head and another ghostly presence that may or may not be killing everyone. And a twist ending.

Why did I watch this? The characters are horrible people - the jock is just such an asshole - you can't wait for him to die. But the actor that plays him doesn't have the panache to pull off even this stock of a character. His girlfriend's alright, but not particularly memorable, either. The other hippy-ish couple hate the jock and his GF, which is weird, because why you make an international trip with people that you hate? I know I like to go on vacation with people I can't stand. Tara's the good girl, but particularly annoying for no reason at all just because. The ending was abrupt and it's attempt at a twist felt forced.

I hate when there is just absolutely nothing to love in a movie (save for that one piece of aforementioned dialogue). Sometimes it helps if I picture something sucky as a seventies Italian version it makes it better, but even that wouldn't help this shit fest. My brain hurts now. I'm going to watch cartoons.

Happy Birthday John Carpenter!

John Carpenter is 62 years young today, which is about as old as I feel even though I'm like half that. But then JC doesn't have to work brunch all weekend and put up with people's hangovers and their coffee and their water and their mimosa and their diet coke. Anyway, pop in HALLOWEEN or the THE THING or THEY LIVE or something appropriately Carpenter and raise a glass to one of the greats!

The Black Room

So, I'm sure it's happened to the best of us. We get sick of being married after so many years, being with the same person, over and over, day in and day out. Maybe we've had a couple kids and the sex life suffers. We pine for the days when we were young and carefree and fucked whoever we wanted to whenever we wanted to. So what do you do when your marriage starts to go stale? Take a cue from Larry and Robin from director Norman Thaddeus Vane's THE BLACK ROOM and rent a kinky fetish dungeon complete with glowing white cube coffee table in the Hollywood Hills, get your prostitutes and hitchhikers to accompany you back to the room, and have landlord Jason and his freaky sister, Bridget, photograph you from behind a two way mirror while you have weird, but not artsy sex, then ex-sanguinate the working girls of their blood to treat Jason's rare vampiric blood disease. Go home and tell your wife all about it when you're done, but lead her to believe you've made it all up, otherwise she'll be pissed. Really freak out when she finds out it's all for reals. Then kiss and makeup and drive off into the sunset with your partially exsanguinated babysitter played by Linnea Quigley in the backseat of you station wagon.

Yeah, sounds like a good time, right? Sounds like just the thing to kickstart the old marriage now, doesn't it? You would think so. But sexy this ain't. While made in the early eighties, this one still has it's foot firmly in the seventies, so much so, it borders on the camp. If you associate fucking your hired lady of the night with fine wine, classical music, and velvet paintings of your landlady with a dragon on the wall behind you, then here you are.

It's a decadent tale about a marriage gone sour and the horrors of infidelity, and maybe even addiction. It's also a great spin on how men think it's cool to be unfaithful to their wives, while they could never entertain the fact that their wives could be unfaithful to them. Like I said, it has it's feet firmly still in the seventies, and I've since adopted a much more flexible ideal than the one presented by this film. But this isn't about me and my cheatin' heart, this is about a sex room, two weirdo non-traditional vampires (they walk around in daylight, cast reflections, can be photographed), and the dumbasses that get involved with them because they've become disenchanted with vanilla sex.

It's imaginative at it's core and could have been so much more than it actually was. While I spoiled the ending, with Larry, Robin, and the kids driving off virtually unscathed, it would have been far more satisfying to see them take over Jason and Bridget's enterprise, after brutally murdering the two voyeurs, but alas, it wasn't to be. Instead, we have it revert right back to vanilla, leaving me wondering, what could happen if Larry and Robin had put the dungeon back on the market since their tastes were far less exotic than those of Jason and Bridget?

So we've got voyeurism, sex addiction, marital infidelity, incest (Jason and Bridget like to get it on and take fetish photos of each other), the onset of medical vampirism, what else? Do we need anything else? Maybe a better transfer and more kink. While this one wants to be kinky as hell, the result is far more kitsch. Leaving me bored. I'd like to say more about a movie with so much going for it, but I can't. Oh well.

Spa Day!

Aw man, to be the bat in this picture. What a nice spa day for him. This reminds me, really for no reason except that a bat is involved, about this time that Bruce and I went to Chiller Theatre and there was this dude there that had live bats on display. And one of the bats totally had his dick out and the bat wrangler dude, who was wearing a pirate shirt - the dude, not the bat, kept admonishing the bat for having his dick exposed. He was pointing his finger and literally saying to the bat to put that thing away. And of course the bat wouldn't. Because really, if you want to have your weiner out in front of an audience, you're going to have you weiner out in front of said audience. Who's really to blame here? I love bats. I'm also drunk right now.

Contest!

This logo rules! Rules, I say! Too bad after I was treated to this, I was subjected to two horses gettin' it on, with extreme close ups. Of their genitals. Tell me what movie this awesome logo is from and where you get to see two horses doin' it immediately after the title sequence and you will get a prize of your choosing - either a dvd of Cinderella's greatest hits or a copy of Vampire Hookers that no longer works in my VCR - but who's to say it won't work in your VCR? Great prize giveaway for a ridiculous random question, huh? I will accept the answer in English and/or French, preferably both. Want more hints? Too bad.

Boardinghouse

Last night I wasn't using my normal mental prowess (hehe) and decided after getting off work and not eating any dinner that staying out until last call drinking copious amounts of alcohol would be a good idea because the BFF got dumped by his woman. I was clearly exhibiting such behavior in the interest of being a good friend. Well, that's the last fucking time I'm being supportive and consoling because today I am paying for it with hunger, thirst, and a raging headache. Since I'm not fit to be seen in public, I shall regale you with the tale of BOARDINGHOUSE.

A simple premise really - a flamboyant psychic Lothario, Jim, inherits a haunted house from his uncle and places an ad in the paper for lovely ladies to come rent rooms. A harem of beauties show up and begin to romp topless around the pool, sex up Jim, and die all by the hand of a malevolent force that resides within in the house for some reason. I say for some reason because BOARDINGHOUSE is one of those movies that accounts for NOTHING within its plot. You would never guess by the above synopsis that this is one of the maddest, craziest, fucked up, HORRIBLE movies in the history of my movie watching career. It actually defies genre, spits in narrative's face, and yet still leaves me entertained. I'm holding my head and rocking back and forth, but I'm still entertained. I think if you spliced this thing together backwards it would still make the same amount of sense that it does in the order it was meant to be presented.

Let me try to recreate the experience, although it likely won't work. This is one where I should just stop now, tell you to go netflix this charming piece of garbage, and then you can get back to me. And likely your only comment will be Wow, and wow. Really, just wow. Here we go - don't stop me if you get confused. It will only lead to more confusion.

After some weirdness at an asylum - a doctor is forced to hang herself by an evil presence, phones ring for no reason off camera, and some other stuff - we are treated to our first image of Jim, aforementioned telepathic gigolo, in a speedo, sitting in lotus position on the desk in (his?) office. He makes the plants shake with his mind and then dips his socks in a crystal bowl of water before putting them back on and meets a roaring drunk that barges into the office for no real reason whatsoever. So you're thrown off by the weird beginning, then as you start to get the hang of it, sorta, here comes this drunk to mess it all up.

Back at Jim's haunted abode, the girls are arriving by the car-full. They all seem like your typical horror victim females and for the most part they are, but they arrive in such numbers and so quickly and appear so haphazardly, it's hard to keep track of who's who and what their relationships are to each other. Some appear to know one another, others are meeting for the first time. Are we supposed to care about these females? Likely not - it seems as if they're more friends of the director (the guy that plays Jim - John Wintergate) than actual actresses.

The first real dose of horror comes when one of the girls, when trying to light a cigarette on an electric stove gets an icepick through her hand. Everyone stands around and stares and Jim says, 'all her fingers work; I checked them.' Okay, Jim, whatever you say. They slap a couple bandaids on that serious flesh wound and call it a day.

Other weirdness occurs, such as the loping around of a weird gardener - think early 80's punk rocker/bum/war veteran - who likes to just stare at the girls, natch. One of the chicas tries to befriend him. 'Aren't you the gardener? I thought you only worked at night?' Wha? I don't know what the function of the gardener is really - to throw us off? I thought this was a movie about supernatural psychic stuff? Oh well. There's a black-gloved killer thrown into the mix as well.

Let's regroup. So far we have telekinesis, supernatural forces, a dash of giallo - all of which occur in such doses we forget about each as it vies for our attention. Convoluted? Sure. Boring? No way. There's dream sequences, skeleton hands, a demon that comes out when the girls vacuum, metaphysics, pizza, a pig gargoyle, chainsaws, a rock band at a pool party, and demonic possession. And would you believe there's more? I can't even recall everything in this - you just have to witness it for yourself. Whole scenes seem to ignore each other and someone says this gem of a line, 'I cut myself with the apple, I mean the knife.' Where else are you going to get that kind of wonderful dialogue?

It's shot on video and there are some major technical difficulties as well. You should see the demon! The gore gags are actually surprisingly well done and, as I mentioned, the dialogue completely off the wall. The whole thing is memorably quotable. It's all part of the fun though, and I think this was intended to be a spoof. It's really hard to tell though. It's a good thing that there aren't other movies like this otherwise we might start getting used to them. Just see it for yourself - trust me - you will feel madness enter your brain and you will LOVE it.