My Problems With Game of Thrones

The other day, I got a comment to a post I made complaining about the three episodes of Game Of Thrones I’d “watched” a while back. The comment was everything you wish it wasn’t. I’ve deleted the comment, the post and all, because I deleted the post on LJ a long time ago (I wasn’t making my points clearly and I didn’t want to argue about something that was just making me angry) and just forgot to delete the one on WordPress.

You can read the rest, but you've only yourself to blame.

Product review: Magic Marbles

I bought these Magic Marbles a little while ago, and you simply must buy these things! You can get them cheaper from this place, but you don’t really need that many. The kit came with 5 grams, and the other place sells them in groups of 50 grams. You may want that many, but need and want are different things.

All these things are, is a kind bead that absorbs water and becomes a gel like marble. Simple enough, but they have some fun properties.

The kit comes with a small tank, which helps because it gives you something to put them in. However, you can’t put all the marbles in the tank and expect them to grow to full size. For once, there’s actually too much stuff for the thing that they include to put them in. This means… MORE SUFF TO PLAY WITH! Unapproved uses! WOOO!

Now, what makes these things really fun, is that they have the same refraction index as water, so unless you look very close, you can’t tell they’re in there. If you have colored ones, you just see splotches of color. While they’re being sold as a toy here, the real use for them is growing water loving plants. They hold water and release it slowly, so you don’t need to water quite so often. I’m going to buy some bamboo, which should look neat held up by these marbles. They also feel neat when you slip your fingers in and wiggle them around.

Let’s look at some pictures…

The Problem with Lembas

Lembas, or elf bread or way bread, or any other number of names you might have for it, is a real problem in Lord of the Rings. The elves are not mechanical, they live in the forest, and as such don’t seem to have any actual agricultural class in their society. So how do they get the bread for grain? Who grinds the corn? Who bakes the bread? They’re strict isolationists, so they can’t be trading with the hobbits, who at least have farmers. And how can a person live off it for days with a single mouthful? What’s the caloric intake? How many carbs? How can it last nearly indefinitely? Is it a twinkie? It’s a twinkie, isn’t it? How do they get the cream in when they eschew machines then? This is one of those places where “It’s magic bitch” isn’t a good enough answer. They need to get the raw ingredients from somewhere. They need to process those ingredients, they need to combine them and put in a lot of extra ingredients in to make it last as long as it does. There is a lot that goes into that wafer of bread. There are a lot of steps to do anything truly from scratch.

This is a major problem I end up having with fantasy, over and over again. The writers stress that it’s a pre-mechanical medieval style society, forgetting that even medieval people have machines. Water wheels are parts of machines, they’re the power source, and they weren’t just used by millers to run grindstones for corn. They could be hooks to other machines to power blast furnaces, or sawmills, or even stamping machines. If you disallow all kinds of machines (as in Tolkien) there start to be things you can’t really have.

Brass buttons for one, you need a lot of technology to get brass buttons. Yes, they can be stamped by hand, but since Bilbo uses brass instead of gold, because wasn’t rich enough, there has to be some kind of middle class here. If there is a brass level, there has to be some kind of manufacturing system in place to make those people brass buttons. Even if we accept a simple hand powered stamp like a coin stamp, how do they get brass for the buttons? Okay, maybe there are miners because hobbits are hole dwellers and digging should get raw metals sometimes, but processing ore into brass requires smelting, and blast furnaces are “teh debil” in Tolkien’s world. He said several times that he mistrusted anything more complicated than a wheelbarrow, and a water wheel is more complicated. The point is, there is a lot of work that goes into a simple brass button. Anyone who has tried to make things for an authentic SCA costume can tell you the trouble that goes into making an outfit with no modern shortcuts. There is a large and complex society, once which Tolkien says doesn’t really exist, that is needed to produce brass buttons. Never mind the woven and brocaded waistcoats and the mechanical looms needed for those complicated designs for anyone but the royalty level rich.

This always becomes my problems, we’re told that these fantasy realms don’t have machines, but they’ll often have styles of armor that have leather bits connected to their metal bits with small screws. Metal screw are pretty much only machine made, you have to own a lathe to do them properly. Yes, you can make them by hand, but even then the expert making them is going to charge you up the ass. Lathes have been around for about three and a half thousand years, but they never seem to turn up in fantasy. Many a technological device is denied the fantasy world. In fact it’s often explicitly stated that they don’t have these things. It’s this blind spot that always annoys be, because they want to have the things that said technology will bring, but not the society or technology that demands it’s invention.

Clothes are much the same. I’m wearing a t-shirt that, as far as I know, can only exists form the 20th century on. It has no seams along it, except where the sleeves meet the body, because the main of the shirt was woven as a tube of fabric. Even if the sock with sleeves method has come before, there is also silk screening, the cut and the fact that it’s a t-shirt to peg me at the late 20th, early 21st century. There are social and environmental reasons that the clothes I’m wearing can only fit the time I’m in. Like wise, it’s just as bad when someone wears an Elizabethan style doublet during what is clearly supposed to be a society gripped in the tenth century. And no, I’m not talking about someone wearing a gambeson, or an armored jack, but what is clearly a warm weather doublet in what is clearly a cold weather climate and about 300 years too early when compared to other clothing in the story. Not tunics or jerkins either, but highly complex doublets with removable sleeves and short fringe like skirts. This, quite often, from a society that hasn’t yet moved past the “big lumps of fur” coat design for winter and summer wear. You basically end up with everything thrown together, from roman shirts to colonial era jackets, without any understanding of how each outfit had come about and what need it filled.

This extends to weapons, which are not interchangeable with each other and have their own niches and societal influences. You can’t just carry a 45 inch bladed sword on your hip with you wherever you go, that’s a war sword, not a local fracas sword. And if I may digress for a moment, a hollow pommel is just stupid. Even the Irish, who are dumb enough to make a hollow pommeled sword, still stuck the end of the tang through it to secure it, because they understood having your sword break because of a weakened tang was an embarrassment that could kill you. It’s just too darn big and unwieldy for a foot level entanglement. Even granting that someone might carry such a large blade, those are heavy things to always have on you, and they make moving awkward as hell. Swords have specific purposes in both fighting and in societies that make them important, and they need to fit in those societies. You should be able to simply look at a sword or knife and tell exactly who uses it and what purpose it serves, and in fact I can. Once in a while I get one wrong, but I’m not an expert, I just play one on the internet. Rapiers cannot exist with two-handed broadswords because one is a civilian weapon devised after the middle class started putting on airs and the other is a weapon for the battle field devised after noticing that things die when you hit them with five pounds of sharpened metal.

And guns, don’t get me started on guns. Cannons started turning up in the mid 1300s or so, hand guns soon followed, but never in a fantasy story, not even one that uses weapons, clothing and armor developed after the firearm and some that were developed as a reaction to firearms. Oh no, we don’t never have no guns, even if we are basically retelling the Wars of the Roses in all but name. We don’t need no stinking guns, we got dragons and shit. Besides, guns aren’t romantic and we’re being all romantic with our fantasy story and why do you have to be so damn pedantic all the time?

I just have problems with lazy writing, and I’ve learned enough about the history of technology to know that you can’t have this unless you have that. And if you have that, then there’s this other thing over here that you can also have.

So, yeah, where do the elves get the grain to make lembas?

My thoughts on Game of Thrones

So, if you read here, but don’t read facebook or twitter, you might be wondering what I thought of the first three episodes of Game of Thrones.

Okay, here is a run down.

#1. The makers of this show really, REALLY hate women. They’re not to fond of men either, but they despise the female in all forms. Weak, stupid, vapid, shallow, whore… these are the words used to describe their female characters. The closest thing to a likable female is like 8, and as such is not a person. All the women are either trouble making whores, or holes for men to stick their dicks in. I found the treatment of women wholly distasteful and I’m going to have to watch Hell’s Bloody Devils to get the taste out of my mouth. You fucking think about that for a minute.

#2. It’s like a fantasy based Film Noir, only without likeable characters or an interesting hook. It’s like a Ren Fest, gone dark and gritty. The Bastard (the love child of Orlando Bloom and Keanu Reeves) is like Phil Marlowe. He doesn’t belong, he works along side legit people, but he himself can’t be legit, he’s got some sense of pride and honor… I can keep going. You got femme fatales all over the place, or in contrast to that, the stalwart and stupid girls. A corrupt system, a guy who’s outdated sense of honor doesn’t fit the new system, a smart guy who works around the edges, a spoiled rich kid who wants to cause trouble, a crime lord, the dwarf… everyone is there in one form or another. It’s just not interesting and I don’t care about any of the characters. They forgot that I need at least one person to compel me to keep watching.

#3. On that, I don’t know a single character’s name. They are “The Dwarf” and “Ace Rimmer” or “Eowyn Jr” and “Orlando Reeves” instead of whatever names they’re supposed to have. This is how little they’ve impacted me. The actors are between bad and teeth grittingly terrible. Princess Bad Wig is probably going to be an important part, with an interesting story arc, but I don’t care because instead of hiring an actress, they hired a stupid little girl, so desperate for fame she’d go full naked and get faux-raped on HBO for the first episode.

#4. HBO is so interested in making it shocking and gritty, they forgot to give us anyone to actually root for. HBO is trying to hard to be outrageous, they just come off like a fourteen year old shouting “FUCK” because no one is going to yell at them this one time. Everything they’re doing is for shock value, and that’s dull. They also forgot to tell a story, they’re just laying on more and more horribleness to show how horrible the middle ages where, despite the fact that they weren’t. Do some fucking research, don’t just tell me those were awful terrible times. Don’t present me this grubby Ren Fest view with no accuracy or intelligence. They just assume horribleness and go with it from there. A lot of thought hasn’t gone into this script, it’s just laying on awfulness from people I don’t care about and have refused to know them by name to hate them properly. I can’t tell you how many times I was yelling “That’s not how that works!” at the screen.

#5. On that point, no one has ever just walked around any castle just wearing both their swords. Even in feudal Japan, where that shit was taken as read, people didn’t just carry al their weapons, while wearing their armor, with them from room to room like that. Also, the swords shown seem to have been handed out with the idea that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings was a good place to start on sword length. People are carrying two handed broadswords on their hips, and incongruously wearing fencing poniards on their other hip. The costumes are all over the place, some people wearing Elizabethan doublets while others are wearing what look like Roman tunics and still others are in actual medieval outfits and some seem to have taken their cues from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It’s just all over the fucking place. Why they have Celtic knots on the shoulder pieces of their armor is anyone’s guess. It’s such a sloppy mish mash, I would have found it distracting if I wasn’t so distracted by how bad the whole thing was.

We won’t even go into how the wedding ceremony in EP 1 is right out of a racists handbook for how savages comport themselves written by some white (probably English) fucker circa 1845.

Sooo, yeah. I found the whole thing to be pretty hateful and shitty overall. I was simultaneously bored and angry. I doubt I’ll watch the rest from here. I gave it three episodes, and I didn’t like it much. I know, I know, I’m supposed to watch the whole thing and only then am I allowed to have an opinion and that opinion had better be that I love it. I know, I know. We’ve been through this with Dr. Who, which also sucks by the way. And yes, I am saying you’re stupid for liking it*. However, I’ve got lots of things I’d like to watch, lots of things vying for my attention, and continuing to watch something I don’t enjoy only makes me hate geeks more than I already do.

Anytime I’m actually shouting at the screen and stomping off isn’t a good sign.

*If you can’t tell this sentence for the satire it is, please smack yourself in the face as hard as you can with a garden weasel.

EDIT: I should point out that I do like Peter Dinklage’s Character and he’s a good actor.

Cartoon Review: Mickey’s Christmas Carol

Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983 Dir. Burny Mattinson)

Advertizements of the Damned!

I will take you away from all this.

This advertisement for Cheer Detergent chronicles one woman’s decent into madness. Our protagonist, let’s call her Suzy Jenkins, is seeing her kids out the door. She examines her children as they leave, not to see that the children themselves are alright, but to examine their clothes. She grabs each child by their shoulders and turns them to look at their shirts. A Dune like internal monologue informs us that the little girl’s white clothes were cleaned with a hot water wash. This is regarded as being just “okay” while the boy, dressed in a red shirt is different. His red shirt was given a cold-water wash, which we’re told is “pretty clean” as she barely even recognizes the fact that he tries to kiss her. His kiss instead lands unrewarded and unrecognized on her cheek, despite the fact that he just wanted to get a moment of love from this cold beast. As the door closes, she stands and declares “Aww, they didn’t look that good!” and then walks to the middle of the room and asks “When can I stop kidding myself?” While one presumes she’s about to go on and say “I don’t love them, I hate their father, my life is a lie!” she’s instead interrupted by a Mr. Spock knock off who beams in and introduces her to All Temperature Cheer. At least, that’s what she sees, we know this to be madness though, since Spok is hardly going to show up just to give her a box of laundry soap available at any Piggly Wiggly. No, she’s imagined this to break her day up, if only a little. He then explains how Cheer cleans in all temperatures. Instead of begging him to take her with him, which is what a younger her would have wanted, her madness demands she stay here and marvel over the clean clothes. One presumes that, having spent so much energy on the clothes she’ll slaughter the family the next time they so much as get their clothes dusty. If you look here, you can see the murderous look of madness. The world isn’t perfect, and she’ll make them pay. Watch the ad and see if I’m wrong.

Don’t leave her alone with the children!

Movie Review: Morozko (Jack Frost)

While I’m away, have a simple cut and paste job.

Morozko (1964 Gorky Film Studio Dir. Aleksandr Rou) MST3K Episode 13 of Season 8. Airdate: 1997-07-12

You might want to settle in folks, this is gonna take a while.

So here we are, another Russian movie that was on Mystery Science Theater 3000. There were actually three movies that fit this mold. This, Sadko, and a movie called Ilya Muromets, which I own but haven’t reviewed yet. Interestingly, not one of them exists on the show under their original name. Sadko became The Magic Voyage of Sinbad, Ilya Muromets became The Sword and the Dragon and this became Jack Frost. Out of the three, this one remains the least changed by the transfer to the West. The dub is actual actors doing the voices rather than two people talking in heavily accented English over the Russian track, and it seems to be the one that was on MST3K, so all should be well. The name isn’t even too far off as the character of Ded Moroz translates to Grandfather Frost (although usually made into just Father Frost) and he fills the same sort of niche as Jack Frost does in American folk lore with a little bit of Santa Claus mixed in. There’s more to it than that, but that will do for this review.

Look, kid. I’m a rooster, I really don’t care if that knit ends up on Ravelry.

So we begin our story with a woman telling the tale from her window. She only shows up here at the very beginning and at the very end, so we won’t talk too much about her. She tells the tale of a poor girl named Nastenka, who lives with her father and step mother, who looks like a comic version of Judi Dench if she was kept from her make-up people and beauty regime for a year. I’m not sure if we’re seeing multiple fairytales mixed into one movie, or if they just cross over, but Nastenka is going to take up aspects of half the Disney Princesses before we’re done. When we meet her, she’s being forced to work for her ugly step-sister, and told to finish making some stockings before dawn. In fact, she’s told if she doesn’t finish the stocking by the time the rooster crows, then Dame Judi will yank her lovely long braid off. This begins the first signs of Nastenka’s very annoying habit. You see, cute little Nastenka is auditioning for the role of Jesus, which she understands was left vacant after the whole crucifixion thing. A rooster shows up, and she stops to go talk to him. I mention this because they actually show the dog sitting down in reverse. There are four or five times in this movie that an animal is shown moving in reverse when they could have just as easily gotten and animal that could, you know, sit or something. It just helps this movie be a little more wacky I guess. Can’t imagine why they’d think it needs the help.

“ Where the hell is Bond?”

She runs to a rooster and begs him not to crow, explaining that she only has one row left. The rooster is sympathetic to her plight, what with her being the Snow White of Russia and all, but claims he’s got to crow when the dawn comes. You know how it is, we all are a slave to The Man in our own little way. Until the glorious revolution that is. Even the rooster knows that if he doesn’t get his stuff done his ass will be on the line. So does she knit faster? No. She runs to the horizon and begs the sun not to rise until she finishes this one last row. I don’t know much about knitting, but I’m guessing it would take less time to just finish the stupid sock than it does to run to the sun and ask it to screw up the fabric of space and time just for her. Still, the sun is sympathetic as well, since she has eyes the size of dinner plates and skin like alabaster. It sinks below the horizon and damn the poor Transylvanians who are waiting for the sun to come up and fry Count Dracula. They aren’t as cute as she is, and those stockings aren’t going to knit themselves. So the sun goes down, she finishes, Dr. Van Helsing dies checking his watch and an almanac while Dracula eats his face, and she shows the sun her pretty stockings. The problem is that finishing the stockings just gets her yelled at because in typical Cinderella fashion, nothings good enough for Dame Judi.

Do I have anything in my teeth? Why yes, I’ve got some awesome stuck in there.

So now we meet the male lead Ivan, and the first thing about him that we learn is that even his mother thinks he’s a douche. That’s not actually a joke. When he emerges, with the worst wig I have EVER seen, his mother begs him not to be a cockbite. She doesn’t use those exact words, but you can tell that there is a measure of cockbitiness about him and his wig isn’t doing him any favors either. If the first thing said about him is that even his mother begs him to stop being such a jerk, what does that say for the rest of the movie? Well may you ask, since he then proceeds to sing a musical version of “I’m Sorry, I Can’t Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I Am.” Actually, it starts with all the girls macking on his hot bod and bad wig (I guess his wig just brings all the girls to the yard) and then he proceeds to sing about how awesome he is. Not joking. He actually calls himself “a handsome, jolly lad” and demands people step aside for him in his song before declaring “Ain’t I great? I’m just a delight” and “Nothing’s wrong with me, I’m just right” despite the fact that he has… THAT WIG! So he doesn’t have a self-esteem problem then, though he should. I mean he looks in the mirror about a hundred times in the first five minutes we see him, he should be able to see how bad his wig is. I’m beginning to think, and stop me if I’m wrong, that maybe Ivan is an arrogant prick who is going to learn not to be a massive prick by the end of the movie. Ya think? Maybe? We’ll see.

He took a look at her and kept walking? Is there something wrong with Russian men?

Let’s get to one of this film’s major problems. Actually, it’s a problem many films of this type share. Whenever there is a movie based on fairy tales, there tends to be a sensation of fragmentation within the narrative structure. There are vignettes, and eventually the whole tale does come together, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that the movie could have had a stronger narrative thrust in the first act. I found a version of the folk tale online and the movie must be padded or have another tale in here or something. It’s done better here than in some movies, but it does mean that we meander around for a while without getting anywhere. Speaking of which, the next scene has just started.

It this about my wig?

Ivan is strolling around, talking about how just spiffy he is and how it’s a shame there aren’t two of him so he could kiss himself, when he’s set upon by bandits. These are the greatest bandits in the history of banditry by the way. While waiting for victims to show up, they pull the petals off daisies saying “We will rob them, we won’t rob them.” How can you not love guys like this? Anyway, Ivan stumbles into them and they decide to take his stuff, while not making fun of his wig. You’d think they would, but since most of them are wearing prosthetic noses, they probably feel they can’t complain too much about his artificial head covering. Ivan takes the whole thing pretty calmly, handing over his bag and letting the bandits fight over his rye bread. While the bandits are fighting, the throws their clubs into the air, announcing that they won’t come down until winter. And then… he just walks off. The bandits don’t stop him, or try to beat him up, or inform him that while he has a freaky wig, he does have a real perty mouth. They just let him wander off. Ivan wanders for a while before a mushroom starts talking to him.

After falling on hard times, Gerard Depardieu put on a false beard and joined a band of robbers.

A little guy with a beard and a mushroom hat who wants to play a game with young Ivan. The little man being a magic guy, he challenges Ivan to either a game of Hide & Seek or just a game of who is faster. The dub and subs disagree on this point, what they agree on is that if Ivan wins he’ll gain a nice bow and arrow set that the Mushroom guy just happened to have hanging around. Ivan looses the game, but for being a good sport, the little Mushroom guy gives him the bow and arrows anyway. Ivan starts to run off but the Mushroom dude tells him that he forgot to bow and say thank you for the lovely present. Ivan arrogantly tells him that his appreciation is in another castle and that bears can bow to him. Ivan walks off and the Mushroom make a comment about how the bear will bow but it will be his back that bends. Once again, it’s going to take forever for the pay off of that gag to come.

Wow, Craigslist has gotten specific over the years.

Ivan wanders around a while, kills a goose to take one feather that evidently will lead him to destiny, and comes across Nastenka. She, it seems, is busying herself trying to find Bond so Judi Dench can yell at him. Until Bond remerges, Nastenka waters a stump until flowers grow up in it. Ivan, knowing a hottie when he sees one (unlike some Russian guys I could mention) decides to go over to her and turn on the mack daddiness. The problem is, while he’s telling her about how hot he is and asking if she’ll marry him, she’s sort of unimpressed. I’m guessing it’s because she took one look at his wig and decided against him, but decided not to press that particular issue. She says he’s sort of arrogant, which he objects to on the grounds that he’s so awesome and clearly the best thing in the universe. In order to prove how awesome he is, he tells her he’ll kill a bear with one arrow. Am I missing something about Russians here? Is whacking a bear the same as showing up with flowers and nice poem among the Eastern Slavic people? I’m sort of Celtic and Gallic with a dash of Teuton, so I don’t really know about how other folk’s courting rituals go. Being a viewer of Anime, I’m a little confused by how the Japanese run their mating rituals too.

And thus, the idea for the Bucket Head Knights from Alexander Nevski was born!

Well, it seems Nastenka isn’t impressed either because she bungs a bucket on his head. The Mushroom dude realizes that his moment has come and decides to get Nastenka blamed for his little trick. He bangs those two little twigs, or bells, or whatever it is he’s holding and BOOM(!) Ivan is turned into a bear. At least that wig is gone, right? Well, if anything the bear head looks worse. This freaks Nastenka right the hell out and she faints. Ivan grabs his mirror and checks for her breath. Since he can’t resist his reflection, he also gets a quick look at himself and finding that he’s a bear reacts badly. In fact, he calls Nastenka a witch and claims she did it. This causes Nastenka to sit down and cry. She suffers so much, she’ll probably die for our sins and come back from the dead before the movie is over.

But am I still pretty?

Now, why Nastenka crying into the river should cause flowers to grow in that stump she was working on before, I have no idea. Those tears do some though, and spill from her near alien like eyes. Seriously, do they have to be that big? Anyway, the tears spill from her massive blue orbs and into the stream and this causes the flowers to grow. They grow suddenly, and she sits down and has a proper cry next to them. Ivan runs around, until the Mushroom Man shows up again and then he begs forgiveness. The Mushroom Dude however, instead of turning him back into a person, proceeds to tell Ivan some pretty unpleasant truths about himself. He goes into his selfishness, his arrogance, his narcissism and the fact that he’s never done a good thing for anyone else in his life. Ivan interprets this commentary as a need to go do good deeds, and runs off instead of listening to the Mushroom Dude, who claims that the answer is in another castle. Mushroom dude mentions that he has to collect a hundred stars and defeat Bowser, but Ivan has run off already.

Seriously, look at her! She’s all eyes with a bit of nose and mouth!

We’re then treated to Ivan trying to find people he can do good deeds for, but all the girls think he’s a werewolf and run away from him. Then, for reasons only known to the Russians, we get almost a full half minute of bear cubs running around and grabbing fake toadstools. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean to the movie, but it happens. For 28 seconds, which is a long time on screen, it’s just these two bear cubs running back and forth. They grab a fake toadstool, pick it up in their little arms, and walk back off screen. It can’t be meant to be Ivan, he’s always shown as wearing his clothes and is just bear-headed. Is it symbolic? If I had Slavs instead of Gales, Celts and Teutons in my lineage would I understand this? Is this just some circus act that someone talked the producers into or perhaps the director’s brother in law? And no, this never goes anywhere. It’s just bear cubs grab fake mushrooms and toddle off. It makes no sense! It’s just randomly weird.

What are we even looking at here?

Anyway, Nastenka comes back to the flowers she helped grown on the old stump and they have a little conversation about Ivan. She tells the flowers that she’s hopes she’s not bothering them, all the time talking in the same breathy half whisper of a voice. I checked all three audio channels, and all three actresses portray her in the same way. A soft, half whisper of a voice that tells you that when you eat of the bread and drink of the cup you should do it in remembrance of her. She asks the flowers questions about Ivan, who answer by nodding up and down or shaking from side to side. So either, these are magic flowers, grown from her magic, or she’s batshit crazy and thinks when the wind blows the flowers it’s the flower talking to her. Personally, I’m going to vote for crazy. Being slave to the wicked Judi Dench has cracked her poor mind and now she thinks she can control the dawn and talk to plants. We then go see Ivan trying to do good deeds. He gives a beggar a copeck, but that’s not enough. Can’t buy your way out of trouble kids, at least not for such a low price.

Come on! You can be the Robin to my Batman!

Now we return to the trails of Nastenka, and the cruelties foisted upon her. Her sister and Judi Dench are preparing to meet a suitor and they abuse poor Nastenka the whole time. Wiping her face with soot and wrapping her head in a scarf to cover her long lovely braid. The sister wanted to cut it off, but Dame Judi objects that if she cuts off the braid she’ll have nothing to drag her around the house with. They then comically doll the sister up for the suitor and the matchmaker. We then cross cut back to Ivan, who finds and old woman and helps her with her wood. The old woman is a little too enthusiastic about hopping on his back and getting a piggyback ride though if you ask me. Like, waaaay too enthusiastic. It’s a little creepy to be honest, like she’s been waiting for someone to give her a lift all month and is really going to enjoy this chance.

Sometimes, you don’t need a joke. Sometimes you can just sit back and let the screen cap do all the work.

So we go back to Nastenka’s sister being shown off to the suitor, his mother, the matchmaker while Nastenka is hidden away. While playing up the sister’s attributes, they claim she can cook like a dream, which is a lie because she never does a lick of work ever. The mother and suitor want proof, so they send the sister out to kill and cook a goose. Knowing that humiliation is coming, the townsfolk all show up to watch her fail. When she chases the geese, she falls into the lake. Nastenka has to run to the lake ans save her step system walking across the water instead of doing anything so pedestrian (ironically) as swimming in it. When Nastenka pulls her sister out of the water though, some of the water must have splashed on her because her face is clean and her hair is perfect. She’s not even wet, perfectly on display.

And she stepped on the ball!

While this was happening, Ivan dropped the old woman off at her home, and found that it wasn’t enough of a good deed. The problem was that The Mushroom Guy didn’t want to make him do a good deed, he wanted him to be a better person. Ivan sees the old woman’s stick, and decides to take it back to her. This actually thinking about someone is enough for the Mushroom Dude and he changes him back, at which point Ivan throws the stick down and announces to the world that he’s going to go get Nastenka. The stick disappears, but I would think for the trick to hold he should have taken it back.

Am I still wearing the wig?

Meanwhile, time passes and it becomes winter. Judi Dench tells her husband that she’s tired of Nastenka turning water to wine, raising the dead, curing the possessed, doing that loaves and fishes thing… yeah I’ll stop now. Anyway, she tells Father of The Year here to take his only daughter out to the woods and leave her there to die. And he does! WOW! What a dad! Actually, half way into the woods he decides he’s not going to do it. And seeing that her father is having a moment of courage that can’t possibly be maintained for more than two minutes, she hops off the sled so that we can tell everyone she was killed by men she loved. And seriously, when the father gets back to the house and discovers his daughter isn’t with him? He slinks right back into being the coward he was before. I hate this old man. Even the dog has nothing but contempt for him.

I haven’t had a bowel movement in fifteen years.

Ivan wanders through the wood, with no coat, hat, scarf, thermal underpants, or anything sold by either Carhartt or North Face. All he has to keep him warm is his very stupid looking wig. Still, he must be doing okay, since he’s clearly been carrying on all this time. Wandering through snow and ice, shouting Nastenka’s name over and over again. That is until he comes to the most awesome cabin in the WORLD! See, this is a cabin that walks around on chicken feet, and when it tilts the snow doesn’t shift, which means that BABA YAGA has entered the tale! WOOO HOOO!!! It seems that Baba Yaga knows Ivan, but he calls her Hunch back fairy in the dub and just old witch in the subtitles. Then comes an awesome bit of comedy. Baba Yaga wants the house to face the woods and Ivan wants the house to face him, so they go back and forth, stomping on the ground to make the house listen to them. It goes about five or six times and Baba Yaga keeps doing a little dance every time she comes out of the door. I know how dumb it is, but it cracks me up every single time.

See if you can get a gumball in my mouth from there.

Eventually, Baba Yaga announces that she’s had it with these melon farming snaked on this melon pale and gets the trees around her cabin to beat Ivan up. Seriously, there is nothing about this part of the movie that isn’t awesome. Once the trees throw him into her cabin, the trees hop in and push Ivan onto a large baking peel and get ready to shove him in to an oven. But the awesome doesn’t stop there! Ivan turned around and he doesn’t know how one should go about it. Seriously? Has that worked for anyone in the history of ever? Well, she falls for it, so that’s one. So, complaining about what they’re teaching kids in school these days, Baba Yaga shows him how to sit. This yields what, in hindsight, should have been predictable results. He shoves her in the oven and tosses the trees out into the snow. I’m not sure he notices, but his wig slips back quite a way during this event. He lets her out and tells her to tell him where he can find Nastenka, since that was the whole reason for his visit here.

What it’s gonna take to get you into one of these babies today?

We then cut to the other story, where a song has started and some singing has begun. It turns out to be Grandfather Frost, who at 48 minutes and 45 seconds finally shows up in a movie that bears his name! The whole movie is only like 84 minutes long by the way, so it’s taken this long to get to the title character. It also occurs to me that this is getting quite long and we’re only half way though. However, most the insanity is actually over and from here on out we basically just have plot and stuff. Frost wanders around, putting snow on the trees in some pretty good reverse filming. Normally, with someone with flowing robes, it’s very easy to tell that the film is running in reverse because of how the fabric flows. The actor and crew who did this though are great and the only sign is the obvious one that the trees shudder a bit and suddenly have snow leap up onto their branches.

I’m here! I’m here! Don’t start the movie without me!

Frost comes across Nastenka, who is freezeing to death in the snow and asks if she’s cold. Nastenka lies and tells him that she’s fine, and he rewards her lies. He takes pity on her and wraps his big coat around her. She confirms her attempt at stealing the throne of Jesus by telling Frosty that if she takes his coat, he’ll be cold so he better not. A bird lands on his staff and she proves how much you should hate her by warble-whispering ‘a bird’ like she’s never seen one before. It’s the whisper voice that bugs me with her, she never raises her voice or speaks in anything but that breathy “I’m so adowabwe that you must wuv me so evew much” sort of voice. The bird lands on the staff, becomes a lump of ice and falls off. While she morns the loss of the bird and her frustrating inability to bring it back to life despite touching it, he explains that whoever touches the thing will freeze and never wake up again. I mention this because he all but looks into the camera and shouts “Did everybody get that? Don’t want you to miss it when it becomes a plot point later!” They get on his rocket powered ice sleigh and go back to his big palace. Can I point out how awesome his outfit is and how annoying it is that our Santa just wears a big red fur coat? Father Frost’s outfit is so awesome that Santa looks sort of dull and boring by comparison.

With my new frosted highlights, I’m even cuter!

We go back to Baba Yaga telling Ivan all about how to find Nastenka, which turns out to be simply sending a little sled with a pig’s head on it to find her, which sending a cat to get there before them and pull a trick on Ivan. She keeps dancing as she goes into the house after letting Ivan go, she’s so awesome. I want to ask Baba Yaga over to have dinner with me. She’d be a hoot! Point of order, all the animals are just run backwards in this. The cat runs up the steps, and instead of shooting it running down again, they just reverse the film so the cat obviously walks backwards. Don’t know why they keep doing that.

Huh. Normally that works on the first try.

The trick is that the cat runs by Nastenka and, for our sins, causes her to touch the tip of Frost’s staff (scepter you perv!) and she turns into a cutecicle. The cat and sleigh both get back to Baba Yaga and she rewards them happily, proving that she might be evil but she likes cats and thus can’t be all bad. The movie even mentions the whole anyone who touches the staff turns to ice thing again. Her dog senses a disturbance in the Force and runs to lead Ivan the rest of the way to the house. They get to Frost’s house only to find she’s turned transparent, which is supposed to indicate frozenness. Ivan apologizes to Nastenka, which causes her to come back to life. He followers find only that the boulder has been pushed out of the way. Anyhow, she wakes up, Frost and the dog walk backwards again when just walking out would have done fine. Ivan brags at how he’s not a braggart anymore, and this time Nastenka thinks it’s cute and agrees to marry him. Baba Yaga isn’t through with them though, she knows this movie has twenty more minutes and we’ve got to have a big finish.

Did I leave the oven on?

We go back to the house of the old man, where Judi Dench is shouting at him for getting rid of Nastenka. It seems that without her to abuse and work like a slave, life isn’t fun anymore. While complaining though (or speaking of the devil one might say) Nastenka and Ivan come home to show they’ve made good. It seems that by virture of being cute and having big eyes polite, Frost has given them coats and a big sleigh and a big box of jewels for a dowry. Sidenote: I have got to get a Russian seamstress, those people knew how to dress! SRSLY! While he had an awesome coat, Ivan still has that ugly stupid wig. Nastenka tells her father all that happened and how being cute won her all the bling she could ever want.

She is just not impressed with ABC’s new Thursday night line-up.

Now, the story isn’t quite over yet. If this were a German tale, it undoubtedly would be. The good people were rewarded, that’s about it as far as Grimm’s goes. But this is a Russian tale, so there must be some misery before we’re through. The step sister demands to be take out to the woods so she can get a chest of jewels and a husband like Nastenka got. The problem is that the sister is not cute and doesn’t have big eyes spoiled so she insults Frost and demands these things from him. Now, in some versions of the folktale, Frost leaves her to freeze to death, but this is a children’s movie made in the 60s and even the filthy stinkin’ commies aren’t going to do that. You have to wait a little while though, because we have to have the pay off to the club thing from about a million years ago.

Nice coat, shame about the wig.

You remember the bandits from the beginning of the movie? Well, they don’t like the cold and Baba Yaga offers them more money than they’ve ever seen to whack Nastenka and Ivan. I love the person playing Baba Yaga. Georgi Millyar gives so much life and fun to this character. I want this Baba Yaga to come to my birthday party. I have GOT to see Baba Yaga drunk sometime, cause that’d be awesome. So, the bandits take on the commission and jump Ivan and Nastenka, almost causing Ivan to loose his wig in the process. However, just when our… do we call them heroes? Anyway, when it looks darkest for our heroes, those clubs Ivan threw at the beginning fall from the sky and knock out each bandit in turn. Then they kick Baba Yaga in the butt and send her on her way.

I have doubts! Not about anything specific, just doubts.

For our final bit of movie, we’ve got the return of the sister, who is on a small sled pulled by pigs. The dowry turns out to be a box of crows and the whole town turns out to laugh at her again. I feel sort of sorry for the sister at this point, because the movie is sort doing that “You see, ugly people are horrible and deserve to have bad things happen to them” thing and I don’t like that. Also, while she’s spoiled, they over do it and she’s just a product of bad parenting. The sister was sort of crapped on by this movie and I feel bad for her. The father then throws off his coat and tells Judi Dench that he’s going to make the rules now, because seeing his wife publicly humiliated gave him some backbone or something. Anyway, at that point the movie is over and all that’s left is to have Ivan and Nastenka’s wedding feast where she is as lacking of personality and pointless as she’s been this whole movie and Ivan wears and even uglier wig.

You want to see how bad this wig is? Look!

This movie is pretty good, and in places it’s really excellent, but I hate that wig. When you reach the end you sort of notice that Nastenka has made no progress as a character at all, she’s just been a sort of Christ figure and a pretty thing for the boy to eventually win. However, it’s an inventive and fun little movie, and it doesn’t even cost very much on Amazon, you do have to get it via the marketplace, but it still won’t run you much more than $20. The DVD has about 9 subtitle options, but the Russian, French and English dub tracks are all good and I think they were all dubbed so you don’t even need to worry about loosing part of the performance if you choose to listen in English. But you will need the subtitles for the songs, which aren’t dubbed.

CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!

Also, sorry this got so long. It’s a Holiday special though, right? They play this movie on Czech TV every year between Christmas and New Years, so it counts. It’s fun and it’s cute and it takes place in the same alternate dimension where The Adventures of Robin Hood takes place. It’s that super colorful light hearted romp you can watch with the kids. See? I like some things, they’re just all fricking weird.

I’ll catch ya on the flip side! Peace out G!
(I’m at a loss weather I love this lady or Baba Yaga more)

You wanna watch the MST3K Episode? Okay. I’ll embed it for you. Just for you though.

Cartoon Review: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973 Dir. Bill Melendez)

From his dopey, drugged out look I have to suggest he was watching “I love the 80s” on VH1

When this review was first written, this was the only other Thanksgiving special I could find in my collection. Someone told me that there are some more, but I’d have to watch TV shows I hate to find them so never mind. Using the two I’ve seen, I will now make sweeping generalizations about any and all Thanksgiving specials. They are heavily padded to make up for short scripts, they involve lots of costume changes, grandmothers not being up to the normal ideal of granmotherlyness, they all have jazz soundtracks, alternate menus for thanksgiving feature heavily as do the difficulties in food preparation and Drew Barrymore was hot in the 90s. That’s not actually part of the show, but this picture just popped up as my wallpaper and it sort of stopped me for a moment. Nothing serious but it did give me a second of “Whoa, she was hot there” and I thought I would share that moment with you as it might be the last enjoyable moment we ever share. After looking her up out of curiosity, she still looks really good actually. Enough of this tangent though! Let’s start the cartoon, shall we?

Cartoon Review: Garfield’s Thanksgiving

Garfield’s Thanksgiving (1989 Dir. Phil Roman)

Even Garfield can’t believe he’s in this stupid special.

You know what I’ve discovered recently, I hate Garfield. It’s really sad when the best part of your cartoon is that Lou Rawls sings the song over your credit sequence. It’s doubly sad because I always sort of saw that as an attempt to copy the Peanuts Specials with their use of Vince Guaraldi’s jazz music. Of course since Garfield was a cynical and calculated attempt to cash in on what had gone before, it pretty much measures up. I hate to be really nasty, but it is true that Garfield hasn’t been funny in 20 years and these specials pinpoint that fact. There is a joke in here that shows up in all three of the specials on this DVD, pretty much at the same time in each one too. It’s pretty sad to see how little effort went into each of these cartoons.

Movie Review: Maximum Overdrive

Maximum Overdrive (1986 De Laurentiis Entertainment Group Dir. Stephen King)

DAMN RIGHT!

Let us drop hyperbole for a moment and admit that this is the best feature film Stephen King has ever directed. Those of you who don’t have your hymnals open to page 19 won’t get that joke, and if you didn’t bring your hymnbook with you, I’m not going to explain things. This is, however, King’s single best directorial effort with no mistake or argument. I’ve heard that the impetus was a bet between King and George Romero after King commented that making a movie didn’t look all that hard. At the time, King was working with Dino De Laurentiis, who I will always love because the man never turned his nose up at a stupid idea. DEG Produced both Evil Dead II and Cat’s Eye as well. Without him, there might not be a Maximum Overdrive and the world would be a darker place. Based on the short story Trucks, King pulls double duty as both director and writer of this magnificent piece of Grade A 80s era cheddar.

The man, the myth, the stupid clip-on sunglasses.

Maximum Overdrive is a film that challenges you as a viewer. It’s a movie that asks “Am I really a bad movie?” to which you are expected to answer “Well, yeah, obviously.” Except, if you dismiss it like that you’re going to get hit right between the eyes with “Yes, but are you sure that wasn’t deliberate?” and then you’ll have to stop and think. Because there is this sense that maybe it was supposed to be like this, that maybe King got exactly what he was going for with this movie. Go watch Creepshow again and tell me this man doesn’t have a screwy sense of humor. Twenty years before Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were hailed as heroes for failing with Grindhouse, Stephen King failed with Maximum Overdrive. Not artistically, financially. I think it was too early, and too many people didn’t quite get the idea of winking comedy and horror put together yet. Odd, because Creepshow had come out almost five years before this.

Ah the 80s, when an entire movie could be explained with a single paragraph.

The movie begins with a text wall explaining that a comet made everything happen. This isn’t really important, because the rest of the story will more or less follow the story of Trucks in that the characters don’t actually know why the machines have decided to rebel. The first person to have any lines is King himself, getting the cameo out of the way to complain about and ATM calling him an asshole. And then the AC/DC music starts and you have to love King all the more. Who else gets one of the best rock bands in the world to score his movie? The first sign that the machines have more than profanity in mind when a drawbridge decides to raise itself. This movie isn’t 6 minutes old and we’ve had asshole, what the hell, shit, goddamn, Jesus Christ and fuck all spoken by characters. Shit doesn’t get a mention until later. If only there was a naked woman this would be everything I love about crappy 80s movies. Okay, technically, there are naked women, there are some photos from dirty books taped up to a wall in the truck stop. It’s not quite a later day Pearl, but you’ve got to make allowances. You don’t get everything in the first 6 minutes, the gratuitous machine guns don’t show up until later. We did get a blond in a white headband though, and that was awesome. It’s like we’re witnessing the Citizen Kane of 80s horror.

It’s not so much hard to come up with a joke for this shot as much as it’s hard to pick a joke.

After the opening madness at the bridge, we go to the Dixie Boy Truck Stop where the bulk of the movie will take place. Good idea, a single shooting location in North Carolina provided a lot of economy in those days and made it possible to show more of America than just New York and L.A. in the bargain. We’re introduced to our hero, a fella named Billy Robinson, who we are told is an ex-con. While we’re introduced, the games room of the truck stop is going nuts and braking, where upon a young man tells the machines how he feels explaining, “Your momma!” before stuffing his pockets with cigarettes that the vending machine begins to spit out. After that, a man is sprayed in the face by a malfunctioning pump hose and screams and screams. The reason Billy being an ex-con comes into the story is that there is a subplot that, in true drive-in fashion, fails to go anywhere about the boss of the Dixie Boy being a corrupt so and so. This reflects the deep seated corruption we remember from Chinatown, only it’s more personal and believable here.

It’s like Film Noir. Only, you know, not.

While Billy is talking to the boss, a waitress is taking care of the grill, until she’s attacked by an insane electric knife that is. The knife effect is really neat since it turns towards her before switching itself on and cutting into her arm. Blood sprays all over the place and Billy takes a hammer to the knife, killing it after several blows, proving him to be a kin to St. George who slew the Dragon of Silene all those years ago. Only Billy has no horse, or sword, or armor and goes off on an electric knife with a hammer. Still though, in this modern age without noble heroes, we take what we can get. Now while that’s going on, the fellow in the game room manages to get himself electrocuted and Sir Billy of Robinson is sent in to deal with him.

All he says is “Yo momma!” but when he says it, we believe him.

Suddenly, the focus of the movie shits to a little league game, where a young man has just hit what is sure to be the winning run of the game. This scene would later be mirrored in Kitano Takeshi’s 3-4 x Jugatsu only that movie was a fantasy of yakuza violence and retribution where a looser imagines himself to be slightly less of a looser where as here the kid makes the run and wins the game. The coach goes to buy some sodas (which I assume it a southern word for pop) and is attacked by the machine in a way that Jamie Hyneman would later use for a 7 Up commercial. As you are no doubt becoming aware, Maximum Overdrive is both the alpha and the omega of pop culture. The machine attacks kids left and right, before a steamroller comes for them. How awesome is it to still hear the under 16s using phrases like “Oh shit!” and “What the hell?” in a movie? We don’t get that anymore. Mom’s groups have fits and don’t let us have any fun these days. Once the kid who was good at baseball gets away, we shift story lines again. These interweaving story lines will come together in the end, focusing into a single thread, much like L.A. Confidential would do later. We’re introduced to a lecherous bible salesman and the girl he’s picked up names Brett. Point of order, why did girls stop wearing suit jackets with the sleeves pushed up and fedoras with their jeans and white shirts? She looks so good, and other girls looked great when that was the fashion.

Incredulous cuttie is incredulous.

When they get to the Dixie Boy, the big truck attacks. You shouldn’t be surprised that they get to the Dixie Boy. Everyone in this movie eventually gets to the Dixie Boy. Like Rome, all roads lead to the Dixie Boy. Once again the movie shifts and we meet Curt and Connie, a nice couple on their honeymoon. I don’t know about the guy, but Connie sounds a lot like Lisa Simpson, so I’m assuming that The Simpsons used an actress that imitates her voice with out the southern drawl in an obvious homage to this film. As the two of them stop at the wreckage of a filling station, they’re merciless attacked by an enraged tow truck. Curtis, at first, tries to reason with the truck, missing the patches of blood that adorn the front of the cab. For the first time, we get a confirmation that there is no one actually in the vehicles that are attacking people. One wonders why the cars aren’t acting up like the trucks and knives, but perhaps being more domesticated they don’t rebel as easily.

Please Matt Groening, get your show started and save me from all this.

Billy, being the heroic type, goes to investigate the big rig that tried to kill the bible salesman and Brett a scene or two ago. He’s still of the belief that someone must have gotten into the rig, but the facts don’t bear that out. As he investigates, Brett sneaks up on him and that have a Lead Male/Lead Female sort of conversation. She actually does just look at him and say “You’re cute” as an opener. It’s the sort of sparkeling dialogue I’d expect from My Man Godfrey, not some b-grade horror flick! She then asks “Did you ever see that much nothing at 10:15 in the morning hero?” which you must admit, is a hell of a philosophical question. Think about it for a moment. Have you ever seen that much nothing at 10:15 in the morning? I haven’t. These sort of weighty questions harkens back to The Seventh Seal and the questions that picture raises for the viewer. Only, instead of asking the question with impenetrable symbolism, it asks it outright through the medium of insane machinery on a rampage. In that way, it makes these questions more accessible to the mainstream audience and thus creates a more palatable sense of dread when facing a cruel an uncaring universe.

You’re the lead male
Yeah, and you’re the lead female
And this is the 80s. You know what that means don’t you?
We get to shoot guns later?
…Yes, that as well.

Our baseball player rides through the suburbs of his small North Carolina town, witnessing the violence that has be fallen his neighborhood and following in their wake like the narrator of War of the Worlds, dodging death at every turn when even the lawn mower comes after him. As it turns out, the baseball player is the son of the man who got the facefull of diesel in his face. He decides that he has to get to his son, announcing that “I gotta find my boy” to the world entire. This sort of fatherly dedication is right out of The Godfather. His dedication is short lived, since a rig runs him down almost upon the instant, killing him and driving the inmates of the Dixie Boy into the building. All but the bible salesman that is, who runs out to confront the evil like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, only in this case the windmill actually is the imagined giant. The reward for his gallantry is a blow that sends him right out of his shoes and into a ditch.

Just a little hay fever.

The group tries to raise help, but the radio is a machine and the machines have risen against them. This story line would later be mirrored in the Terminator series, and while the first movie came out before this, the original story of Trucks is clearly the inspiration for that movie’s back-story. The trucks now begin a campaign of terror by driving around and around the Dixie Boy in an attempt to break the spirit of the humans within. Meanwhile Curtis and Connie head inexorably toward the Dixie Boy, only to be menaced by another of the phantom trucks. Connie cries out “Why is this happening?” which is both a reasonable question and a great demand to the gods for an explanation for the entirety of the mortal world. Curt and Connie barely make it into the Dixie Boy parking lot. Connie then engages in a stream of profanity hardly seen outside of a Tarentino movie. As Billy and Brett attempt to get Connie and Curtis from the wreckage of their car, the first of the weapons come out. The boss of the Dixie Boy pulls out a bazooka, yes a bazooka and fires a round into one of the trucks which destroys it. Score one for the human race. They then fire a second rocket and boom goes another truck. It’s like Rambo, without the muscles, the mullet or the knife fetishism.

It took hours for them to realize that the first one in line was following the last one.

This leads to a tender male lead/female lead moment between Billy and Brett. This is because there must be a love story and they’re the lovers for today. Then they investigate the armory in the basement and discuss how Billy got to be an ex-con for a bit. It’s a confession that will be mirrored years later when George Lucas would borrow the scene in Episdoe Two, having Anakin explain his murder of the Sand people to Padmé. Meanwhile, the baseball player continues his Odyssey like journey toward the Dixie Boy, but finds his progress stymied by a series of obstacles put before him by the almighty. We then cut back to Billy and Brett, who have consummated their Male Lead/Female Lead status in the back of the truck stop, because romance happens anywhere. I was going to put a TV Tropes link here about how everyone always falls in love, but I can’t seem to find it and frankly, after 10 minutes I don’t care anymore. You’d think that’d be the easy one to find, but no. I guess it’s so obvious that there is ALWAYS a romance they don’t even bother to mention it. So fuck them, let’s get back to the movie. They then discuss the idea of going to a small island which is free of motor vehicles for the duration of the madness. One sentence? I continued for one sentence?

Nice to see Dee Synder kept working after the operation.

Sadly, the waitress has decided to go insane. She bangs a beer bottle on the table as she demands “They can’t do this” and then runs outside screaming “We made you!” to the machines demand that they can’t do this. The machines however, like the slave revolting in Spartacus, insist that they can. Once the machines decide they’ve had enough, they cut the power and leave their former masters in the dark. After a moment of that, the bible salesman proves that he isn’t quite dead by screaming in pain. The Dixie Boy inmates, or at least Billy and Curtis decide to go and rescue him. Connie complains that he should go and tells him not to make her a widow on her wedding day. He begs her “Do not forsake me, oh my darling, on this our wedding day”. It’s just like Gary Cooperonly without him selling a load of crap to McCarthy in hopes of ruining a lot of people he didn’t like. In greatest 80s fashion he and Billy strap on a bazooka and an M-16 before they run out to save the day. The guns aren’t immediately useful as they only want to get to a large shower drain in order to sneak along and find the salesman while AC/DC rocks along with them.

I will not make a lit fart joke, I will not make a lit fart joke, I will not make a lit fart joke…

It’s always great seeing in a movie when someone waves a small flashlight and it results in a grip off camera waving a large halogen light to create the illusion that the room is being lit by the single bulb. Billy and Curtis come out of the drains to discover that the bible salesman has passed on, but they do find the young baseball player and thus complete the trinity of useful male characters in this movie, bringing them all together at last. We are then left and the characters are all allowed to sleep for a while.

He actually believes this is a “Yee-Ha” situation we’ve got right here.

The morning of day two begins with a little military mobile platform and a bulldozer pulling up to the Dixie Boy. The dozer gets their attention by pushing away the wreckage of the destroyed vehicles and then attacking the front of the Dixie Boy. There is a small attempt to fight back, but the platform has a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho. The military scoot then pulls up and honks out at them inmates in Morse Code, delivering terms to them. The baseball player got a merit badge in Morse recently, so it’s up to him to translate. Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be a merit badge just for knowing Morse code. There is the Radio Merit badge, which requires knowing Morse, but none for the code itself. The machines explain that if they pump gas, the inmates of the Dixie Boy will be allowed to live. They agree because, well, what else can they do? A rock montage then ensues of them filling the trucks all day long. “They don’t understand how a man gets tired” Billy complains as the unending stream of trucks just keep on coming. This of course is the symbolic complaint of the proletariat against the uncaring factory owner who constantly uses men and grinds them into the dust. There will be no union to help them though, because the trucks won’t allow such a thing. This is more or less where the original story ended, with them filling up the trucks, slaves forever under the wheels of the trucks. However, here there is a little more going on and besides it’s the 80s and we have rocket launchers. Billy suggests that a race of aliens is controlling the machines to destroy the humans and wipe the place clean before infesting the planet. From there, he begins to form a plan.

See? Heat, camel, it’s all symbolic.

A hand grenade into the platform removes the issue of the machine gun. Once they remove that threat, they run from the Dixie Boy, slipping away through some of the other drainpipes. Once the trucks realize that they haven’t seen the humans for a while, they start to smash into the Dixie Boy, turning it into a big pile of kindling. The destruction of Dixie Boy reminds me of the destruction of… oh hell, I don’t know. Pick something. I mean I could mention a lot of things, but it’s all a bit silly at this point and I can’t think of anything good at the moment. I mean damn, I’ve compared this movie to enough things, you think of one for a change! Why is it always me that has to do all the heavy lifting around here?

Can I a get a Woo Hoo?

The Dixie Boy escapees then run away to a marina where they finally finish off one of the main trucks and escape on a sailboat to the island we talked about earlier. I haven’t really talked about it, but you know what truck I mean. What’s perhaps most surprising is the sheer number of survivors there are. In most movies the group is picked off one by one until one three or four remain. Now there is a certain amount of picking off, but there are a dozen or so survivors by the end of this movie. Far more live than died. The end claims that a large UFO was destroyed and that six days later the world passed through the tail of the comet and everything was alright after that. The survivors of the Dixie Boy, we are told, are still survivors. And what better way could you end a movie than that? It makes the Triumphant ending to Star Wars seem small potatoes by comparison.

There! I showed the Green Goblin Truck! Happy now?

I guess I can understand why someone might not like this movie. It’s not funny enough to be a pure comedy, but there are too many jokes for it to be a straight horror. It’s not an easy movie to categorize. It also addresses too many of the greater questions that face humanity, which could scare away the sort of person who never looked into the abyss and found the abyss looking back. There are also some people who have no taste in music at all. Those folk might not like the AC/DC songs, but those people are bastards and should be punched in the crotch. If the movie has a flaw, it’s that the story telling is very much the “Tab A into Slot B” style with action around the story points to pad the run time. That’s not really a problem for me though. King was a first time director after all and at least his movie makes sense. Had he made more, I’m sure he would have done even better. No, in the end, this is the finest movie of its kind to come out of the 80s and it’s everything I love about cheap cinema. It’s filled with screwy ideas, a lot of “yeah, whatever” explanations as to why some very convenient things happen, and it lets the scrappy good guy win in the end. What’s not to love? Yesterday’s review was painful, but this was joy.

And the whole epilogue is explained in one paragraph too. God, I miss those days.

This may just be the best movie ever made.

Did you come? I came.

Happy Halloween everybody!