Joe Dante directed a wide array of movies, funny, scary, or both. Including "Gremlins", "Gremlins 2", "The Howling", "Explorers", "Innerspace", and even a segment in "Twlight Zone: The Movie", which makes me referencing it earlier weird.
This short film he did deals with zombies. And not any type of zombies. Zombies killed during the war. And all the characters in this film represent someone in real life who's involved with politics. There's Jane Cleaver, who's suppose to be Ann Coulter. There's some dude who's suppose to be Richard Corville, and there's someone who suppose to be Larry King, but a bit younger (which makes the dude in the movie about 85). And of course there's "The President", who speaks in a Texan accent and has a name similar to a small green thing found on your lawn. (No, not grass.) All these characters go on and on saying they did in fact make stuff up about the war and all the soliders are dying for no reason.
Then one guy named David (I can't figure out who he's suppose to represent, I don't follow politics that close) goes on "Larry's" show and wishes that the dead soliders could come back to tell us what they think about the war. Well, his wish comes true. All the soliders who died do come back. And they don't walk around, mumbling "brains" either, they are pretty intelligent zombies who only want one thing: BRING DOWN "W"!
So zombie soliders line up at voting booths and vote "for the other guy", then they immedately die...again. All the characters spend some time figuring out if this is legal and they should be allowed. In the meantime, a Zombie Guantamino is set up. I wonder how you torture a zombie.
Anyway, they figure "hey! They went to war! They should SUPPORT it!", not knowing the zombies want "W" out, so they let the zombies vote. Once they do, they drop dead. And it's then that everyone realizes the zombies true intentions. So, because they're good at it, they "fudge" some numbers and viola! Second term!
Well, this done pissed off the dead. They come back from the dead, and this time it's EVERY PERSON WHO EVER DIED DURING ANY WAR IN AMERICAN HISTORY!! And they're pissed that David and Ann/June fudged some numbers and want to kill!!! Well, no. David kills June cause she was gonna take his job somehow and the zombies kill David so he can work on their side.
I'm not too sure cause the ending was a bit confusing. I think the zombies just took over the country and are now an unstopable force. I guess. But I liked this episode anyway cause of the tongue-in-cheek humor and the fact that Joe Dante is saying that Ann Coulter is into S&M (well duh I suppose). And he even threw in a little sight gag. Check out the name on the grave.
Even though I liked this short film, it really wasn't scary. So I have to knock some points off for that. Course, Gremlins is somehow considered a horror movie and that's fuckin' hilarious. Oh well.
My friend Adam is gonna strangle me for saying this, but Larry Cohen is hit or miss for me. He also directed and wrote a slew of horror movies, usually of the B grade. These include "Uncle Sam", "The Stuff", "Q: The Winged Serpent", and "It's Alive!" among other things. He also directed "Original Gangstas", which if you read my post about films made in my neck of the woods, means he was like totally a few blocks from me back in the late 90's. That's weird enough right there.
So "Pick Me Up", is about hitchhiking and dueling serial killers. And this one stars Fairuza Balk AND Michael Moriarty, who is a genius in his own right. Fariuza is a chick who was on a Greyhound type bus going somewhere in Washington State when the bus breaks down. Fairuza (I call her by her real name cause she's never given a name. Hell, all of the characters in this aren't given names) decides to walk to a hotel 20 miles down.
Soon enough here comes Michael Moriarty, who's a Trucker. He offers to take some people to a trading post down the other way and some old chick with WAY too much plastic sugery and some bland dude agree. A bitchy chick and her cuckholded husband stay behind with the driver.
Soon enough The Trucker kills both Joan Rivers & Bland dude. Then we focus on Cowboy Hitchiker, who stumbles upon the driver and Bitchy Couple. He kills the driver and the husband (who is pretty lucky if you think about it), then he stalks Bitchy Chick (who had a big ass btw) for awhile, until he catches her and ties her up with barbed wire. Eventually, The Trucker finds her and leaves her to kinda bleed to death? I guess.
We focus back on Fairuza as she gets a hotel room. I think we're gonna see some Fairuza boobies, who hadn't shown her boobies on film in awhile (I believe American History X was the last time), but no. She's disturbed by the couple next door having copious amounts of sex. Well, at least she thinks it's sex. It's really Cowboy Dude cutting up a punch chick he met while hitchiking.
Fairuza eventually meets both Cowboy & Trucker and is creeped out by both of them. Then Cowboy breaks into her room, but she sneaks out. Trucker picks her up and soon has her tied up. They come across Cowboy and now it's a showdown between two crazy dudes who wanna just kill a bitch.
Fairuza gets bored and slams on the break, causing Trucker and Cowboy to fly out the window. They continue to duke it out until an ambulance arrives. I was wondering who the hell called for the ambulance and how it knew to show up, but then we kinda get an answer.
In the ambulance, the driver and...the other guy immedately kill Trucker and Cowboy and say they're saving Fairuza for desert. See, this means that they're ANOTHER type of killer out on the road: they kill crash victims I guess. Gotta say, that's pretty clever. And creepy. Well played Cohen. Well played.
I think I liked this one better cause it was a bit scarier, and even gorier, then "Homecoming" and I will admit, Larry boy can direct. I was pretty impressed with the whole thing. So this one gets my favorite vote and higher rating.
Tomorrow I tackle two more episodes/films, from John Landis & Lucky McKee. Look forward to those.
-Jason
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