B movies from the 80s
There are three B movies from the 1980s that as far as I'm concerned stand out more than any other. H.O.T.S. (1979, not 80s but close enough), Screwballs (1983) and Porky's (1982). All three of these epitomize what raunchy sex humor is supposed to be in a B movie.
I consider the best of the three Screwballs, because that movie is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny in several places. The best part as far as laughs go is the bowling scene, no question. Also it should be said that concerning the storyline, as ridiculous as it is, you actually really get into it. It's a high school movie, but the jock, rich kid, prep, fat kid and nerd all band together to go after this one girl. This does not happen in high school flicks because there are usually lines drawn between the cliques. Not in Screwballs. The pretty girl is actually the 'bad guy' here. What happens at the end is satisfying - and not for the obvious reason. You'll have to see it to know what I'm talking about.
Another thing about Screwballs is that the comedy in the movie is genuinely well done. Director Rafal Zielinski did know a thing or two about timing (in comedy, timing is everything), the writing was done in a way that was easy to follow where you really want to know how everything turns out, and the over-the-top characters (like the librarian) are just plain goofy-awesome.
As far as H.O.T.S. and Porky's go, eh.. yeah, they have their moments but they're not easy to sit through.
Something to note is that internet adult video ruined the B movie industry completely. The entire reason to watch these flicks was to have a good laugh and see boobs. Mostly boobs. That was it. When internet adult video happened, B movies died a very quick death, never came back and never will. Guys could now see boobs in seconds just with a few clicks of a mouse, so why bother with the movie?
A kid today would probably question why guys watched these movies back in the day at all. The answer is really simple. It was a way to rent a soft adult flick without being overly obvious about it. Guys could actually discuss these movies in public and wax on about the comedy scenes without being labeled perverts. Try talking about a real adult movie like that. You can't. Parents also let us watch movies like this because there was no outright sex in them. Boobs everywhere? Yes, but acceptable.
And by the way, any one of the three movies, as bad as they are, are far more entertaining than any real adult movie you could watch because they're actual movies. That much is true.
That same kid would probably watch these movies and say, "Oh, that's just like American Pie!" No, no no.. American Pie and other movies of the ilk got (as in outright stole in some instances) their ideas from 80s B movies originally.
the firm
The Firm is a flick I'm surprised I haven't written about before. I've watched it at least 4 or 5 times.
I honestly don't remember where I saw this movie first, but I can tell you it wasn't in the theater. It was either on TV or something I saw in the movie rental store that looked interesting. I did know this movie was a lawyer flick and there are times I like those kind of films because they have a very traditional movie-making style to them. Usually they have zero special effects, a very earthy soundtrack (as this one does, no question), and wholly rely on the story itself to push the movie along. In other words, no magical superpower whiz-bang thing saves the day at the end of the third act. Plot points must be established for the movie to hold together else it will completely fall apart and quickly. Fortunately the story here is decent enough to keep you interested.
The Firm is a lawyer movie released June 1993, and like all lawyer movies, the mob is involved albeit only very briefly. Think of it as a 2.5-hour long episode of Law & Order.
Cruise in his typical style overacts like crazy in this movie and has basically zero chemistry with Jeanne Tripplehorn who played his wife. Jeanne, by the way, is unbelievably hot, or at least she was in this movie - but her and Cruise just aren't believable as an on-screen married couple. Just doesn't work. However every other actor, which included Ed Harris, David Strathairn, Gary Busey, Wilford Brimley and Gene Hackman to name a few - did awesome. They pick up the slack where Cruise and Tripplehorn couldn't cut the mustard.
A note about Brimley: He's a bad guy in this movie, and wow did he pull it off. You totally believe the character he plays is an evil dude.
What totally destroys this movie is the fact the story hinges upon technology limitations of the day in several places, but the one that will make you laugh out loud is this:
There's a point when a fax is sent to Bad-Guy-Brimley's headquarters containing really important information. This fax prints out on thermal paper (the "curly" kind, remember that?). It just so happens that it's the last piece of paper in the machine. It falls out (where's the paper tray?), curls up and rolls under the stand the machine is on.
Later on, while Bad-Guy-Brimley is in Bad-Guy-Headquarters, he notices the fax machine is beeping loudly and literally says:
What the hell's the matter with you guys? This thing's out of paper!
Then he notices the rolled-up fax under the machine. Now the story can continue.
Yes, this really happens, and bear in mind this is supposed to be a really tense scene in the movie - but today it's just laughable at best.
This really got my curiosity going because I was certain plain-paper faxing existed at the time. Turns out it did. Canon introduced the first plain-paper facsimile machine in 1987 - but this movie is telling me that a multi-million-dollar law firm in the early 1990s couldn't afford one? I don't think so.
In other words, a fax machine's thermal paper idiosyncrasies is an actual plot device in The Firm. Very cheesy.
There are also several instances in this movie where paper and faxing play really important moments in moving the story along.
Given that in the early 1990s the fastest way to send a photo across a great distance was by fax and that there was no other way to do it faster, the machines do get a fair amount of screen time.
What's even crazier is that in the movie, a fax sent from Memphis Tennessee to the Cayman Islands. In the early 1990s that probably would have cost close to 10 dollars in long-distance fees just to send that one fax. It was probably sent at 9600bps or lower. Today the same thing could be done via email or by just snapping a full-color high-resolution photo on a phone, and have it be there in seconds.
With today's modern tech - even the cheap stuff - there's no way the story being told in The Firm would hold up at all. That thermal paper goof? Never would have happened in today's world as it would have been nothing more than a text message. The photo? Would have been sent by email or phone as I said above.
Was there text messaging in the early 1990s? Yes, but no matter how much cash you had, you couldn't get it. The first-ever SMS message was sent in the UK in 1992 and the first commercial SMS in Sweden in 1993. It wasn't until late 90s where people here in the US were using it regularly, so it was not an option at the time The Firm was made. Yes, you do see cell phones being used in the movie, but only for voice because that's all that was available at the time.
I still like The Firm as it is a good movie. From box office sales worldwide, it made a ton of money. But when watching it now, I can't help but chuckle whenever I see the walrus complaining about his fax machine being out of paper.
banana squier, day 142
On February 1, 2011 I bought a new Arctic White Squier Bullet Strat - the second Squier I've ever owned.
After a month of owning it, the lower 12th fret dot inlay sunk into the neck. That was fixed under warranty repair. Since then the only real issue has been the pickup selector is a bit scratchy going from selection to selection, and that's because it's a cheap guitar. I can either have this fixed under warranty, or I can attempt a new switch install myself. I may opt to do it myself because I really want to learn how to do this stuff, and in reality it's not hard to do. The wiring diagram for my Bullet Strat is very simple in design and almost impossible to screw up. The hard part is using a soldering iron, as I have almost no experience with one, but it's not like it takes days to learn how to solder. More like minutes. I'd just buy a spool of cheap wire and do a few test solders to make sure I get it right, then go for it from there with the real thing. The switch itself incidentally is 12 bucks. Cheap upgrade and a good one at that.
If I have good luck with the switch replacement, I might actually buy another and replace the one on my red Squier, because that one is in really bad shape - but there's a problem as there is no wiring diagram available for my '89. However my red Squier does have the same pickup settings as Banana does.
Unless a Deluxe model, all Squier Strats are set up in such a way where first position is volume-only, with tone control only available to positions 2, 3, 4 and 5. My '89 is like this as is Banana. Given that '89 and Banana are identical in this respect, the 5-way switch should be wired the exact same way on both; there's no reason it shouldn't be as the configurations are the same. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. If when I get into the '89 and the selector connections are all different, I'll have to make do and just do my best to repair it instead of replace.
Anyway, Banana at this point is what I consider to be broken in. I'm at the point where I prefer playing her over any other guitar I own. She sings the way I want her to now and I'm used to her quirky dynamics. She will be the primary guitar I used on my upcoming release - no doubt about that. Yes I will be using the '89 and my '93 USA-made blue Strat as well (just because), but the bulk of the guitar work will be done on Banana.
I don't know if I'll be doing my hardware crapola with Banana before or after recording. Technically I don't need to at this point, so I'll probably just record first, upgrade hardware later.
2 bakshi animated films
A long time ago back when I was attending Lyndon State College in Vermont before I transferred out and finished my degree at New England Tech, I was living in a dorm. Because college dorm life was somewhat boring, I bought a VCP, which is a VHS videocassette player, meaning a VCR with no recording ability. Bear in mind this was the early 1990s.
The way VHS tapes worked is that you can record SP (standard play, 2 hours), LP (long play, 4 hours) or EP (extended play, 6 hours).
(Side note: If you want to get six hours of video out of a DVD, don't bother. You'll have to compress it so much that the picture will be worse than VHS and would take longer to encode and burn compared to the real-time deck-to-deck method with VHS. Yes, really. If you want gobs and gobs of video on disc, get a console player than can read AVI files and then you can easily push 6+ hours of good quality video on a DVD as a data disc. One of these days I'm purposely going to purchase a DVD console player that can read AVI files just for that reason.)
Anyway, it was routine that pretty much everybody used EP so you could fit 3 to 4 movies on a single tape. The guy in the dorm room next to me had some tapes, one of which had what appeared to be cool movies on it. The third movie written on the label was Fritz The Cat. I had no idea what it was.
I watched it. Turned out it was an X-rated animated film - but not just any animation. Fritz The Cat in 1972 was in fact the first animated film in history ever to receive an X rating because there's sex, violence (with blood) and a ton of curse words.
Would you believe Fritz The Cat is the best-selling independent animated movie of all time? Yes, it is.
Is the movie any good? That's a really tough call. I personally like it because I think there are several good comedy scenes in it - good enough to make you laugh out loud. And the animation is cool in that late 60s/early 70s sort of way. However I'm pretty sure most people who would watch this flick would hate it.
Another movie I watched very recently was American Pop, released 1981. I'd never seen it before, and loved it mainly for the animation. The film uses a technique called rotoscoping. What happens is that live actors perform a scene that is shot on film, and then the animator draws over the live actors frame-by-frame to make the animation. Disney used this technique in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, so if you can imagine a film that looks like Snow White but is dirty and just outright nasty in some spots, American Pop is it.
There's no other way to say it - the animation in American Pop is INCREDIBLE. You will see mannerisms, little expressions and a whole host of other stuff that just show so much character. It makes me wish all animated films used rotoscoping.
Fritz The Cat was directed by Ralph Bakshi, and American Pop was directed and produced by the same man.
Both films are absolutely not your standard fare when it comes to movies. Each is very gritty in nature, and that counts for look and story; you simply don't see flicks like this made anymore.
I'd only recommend the above two films to those who want something really different. If you're into the standard schlock that counts for major motion pictures today, you'll hate these films. But if you're sick of the plastic and want something a lot more raw, you'll definitely get that with Fritz The Cat and American Pop.
red sonja
Two films in two days? Sure, why not.
Red Sonja is yet another one of those movies that used to be run by television networks during the summer to fill time before the new shows aired in the fall. For some reason I only caught parts of this movie as a kid and was never able to see the whole thing; it was one of those things you stumbled upon as you were flipping through channels. Nobody ever said, "Oh, cool! Red Sonja is on!" They tuned in, said, "I don't know what this is but Arnold's in it, so I guess it can't be too bad?" Wrong.
This movie sucks. You know this right up front from the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger, who does not play the lead character, is shown on the poster and on the DVD cover much larger than the true lead played by Brigitte Nielsen. This means the company who made the movie was relying on Arnold's star power to actually sell the film. Not a good sign.
Before getting into the flick, let's talk about Brigitte for a moment. This is her first major movie, and she in all her packed-and-stacked, 22-year-old six-foot-one glory is absolutely smoking hot. However even Brigitte's hotness cannot take away from the fact that this movie is bad.
The best way to describe Red Sonja is that it looks and feels like an Americanized version of a cheesy Kung Fu movie. The dialog is clunky and slow. As for the pace.. well.. there is none. It's dialog, action, then dialog, then action, then dialog, then action, blah blah. You will be able to predict everything that will happen in this movie as you're watching it. Does this mean you have superpowers? No, it just means the story is that bad.
An oddity about Red Sonja is that while it's a 1985 film, it looks like it was made in the 1970s, again in reference to cheesy Kung Fu movies of that era.
I only recommend this flick to those that like bad movies. If you want cheese, Red Sonja is it.