Summer of 90's: 1990-Graveyard Shift

So I'm wrapping up the 90's thing with this. What the hell, I started in 1990, might as well end in 1990. Let's do the time warp again!

"Graveyard Shift" is based on a short story by Stephen King and boy does it show. I'm sure they added in a few scenes just to make it a movie length cause for a good chunk of the movie, nothing happens.

The story takes place in a textile mill and we focus on one guy, who's oddly enough wearing a red shirt so I guess this movie has an awesome sense of humor. Red Shirt is running the cotton picker in the...basement? No that can't be, the basement is mentioned later. I don't know where this thing is cause people walk down stairs to get to it.

Anyway, Red Shirt is visited by mice and rats and he talks to them like students. He picks one up and puts it through the cotton picker, which kills it. The mice and rats don't like this so they send in their ringer: some giant shadowy thing off camera that kills Red Shirt.



After the credits, we find John walking through town. He's a drifter who worked and lived everywhere along the East Coast. The setting of this story is Maine, where all of King's stories take place (well, except for the Langoliers but whatever) ((Oh right, The Shining, ok whatever)) (((Oh yeah and Children of the Corn-ok I take back what I said, jesus)))

What was I saying?

John finds a place to live and goes to the mill to get a job. We meet Warwick, who has the same haircut as my Uncle, so now when we go to family get togethers, I'm gonna have to be leary of him. Warwick is the manager/owner of the mill and he has a problem (besides mice and rats and red shirts dying). The basement is a safety hazard and needs to be organized and cleaned in a week or else the mill is going to be shut down. So Warwick needs a cleaning crew to go down there and clean it up.

This is the plot which is stretched out over an hour. Warwick hires John to do the cotton picking. People in the mill and the town give John a hard time for whatever reason. There's a shitload of rats. And Brad Dourif is the Exterminator.



Dourif gets a Robert Shaw-like scene where he talks about rats being used as torture in Veitnam but it literally came out nowhere and I couldn't understand what he was saying cause he was all dirty and sweaty. In fact, every single person in this movie was so incredibly sweaty. Where was this filmed, the Mojave Desert?



There's some more sub plot stuff of chicks Warwick is banging and trying to bang. One chick he was banging finds out she's on the basement clean up crew and is pissed about this so she smashes his car to hell. I should institute a new movie rule/law:
If a nice car is shown, by the end of the movie, it will be trashed. I demand credit for coming up with that.

I also wanna mention this quickly. In a scene in a diner, a guy is in the background reading "Ben". This movie is cute.



John eventually hooks up with Jane (wow, what boring names. Sorry, Mr. King) and eventually Warwick has his cleanup crew put together. So the night of the cleanup, the crew (including John, Jane, a black dude, and three people that pick on John for whatever reason) are in the basement cleaning up with one dude with the hose loves his job a bit too much and wipes out the rats with the hose. I guess they didn't put the lotion on it's skin.

Warwick's a funny guy cause it looks like he's not around then whenever something happens that interests him he just shows up. There's a part where John is moving some stuff and he finds a underground enterance. Suddenly, Warwick is there and opens it up. Soon, the entire crew goes down into the tunnel. But Dumbass Hose Guy freaks out, breaks the stairs, and falls into a pool of water where he's eaten.

The last 20 minutes goes by pretty quickly. Brad Dourif is suddenly killed when a tombstone falls on his head. The other people that made fun of John die quickly. Warwick decided to go batshit insane and smear himself with dirty and go on a rat rampage. John and Jane manage to get away by finding a tunnel that leads to whatever this giant creature is home.

Warwick decides he's not crazy enough, stabs Jane, and wants to kill John. The creature shows up and munches on Warwick. John finds that this hideout leads to the cotton picking room (now wait a cotton pickin' minute! Sorry, I had to say that at least once) and the giant creature, which we don't ever really see clearly, follows.




The monster gets caught in the machine and John throws a pop can at the on switch, and this manages to chomp the monster into bits. John is now laying on the floor and a horde of rats desend upon him and....fade to black. Aww, it's "Inception" all over again!

The first half of the movie is good and the last 20 minutes or so is fucking awesome. The middle part, clearly the part added to King's story, is a bit slow. I'm all for setting up a story, but jesus this took forever. I was just "Ugh, get in the basement and get eaten by that giant rat thing whatever already!" And they probably didn't have to kill Jane, that was kind of a pointless kill.


Anyway, that's it. I know I missed a shitload of 90's movies but between work and the weather (the Misses insists I go outside, I don't know why) I haven't had the time. But there's good stuff coming up so stay tuned for that!
-Jason

Summer of '90's: 1990-Total Recall (As I Try To Recall It)

I was TOTALly gonna watch this movie then write about it but I have seen it a few times and I think it'd be great if I could just RECALL what the movie is about based on my memory. That should be fun! Here we go!

Arnold Swartzenegger is a guy in the future. He's bored with his life, so he hears about this company called Rekall, spelled wrong cause spelling things wrong is PHUN! So he goes to this company and they tell him the scenerio he'll be playing, which is he becomes a big hero and at the end he gets the girl.

But in the middle of it, something goes wrong and the machine starts malfucntioning. Arnold leaves and then he finds out his life is all sorts of fucked up. He learns that he's actually a secret government spy and everyone is out to kill him: his best friend, his wife played by Sharon Stone, and even himself!

Arnold is told by a suitcase playing a video of himself to wrap a wet towel on his head, then pick a huge red glowing booger out of his nose with some pliers, then he's gotta go to Mars cause Mars Needs Bodybuilders! And to be librated with air or something.

But he's gotta go in disguise, so he goes as a giant woman and this works for .00001 seconds until the disguise just randomly blows up. So now Arnold is on Mars, he meets up with the chick from "Falling Down", and then some dude shows up telling him none of this is real and that he's still stuck in the Rekall machine. Arnold doesn't believe him so he kills the dude.

Arnold runs around Mars, gets trapped outside Mars, nearly suffocates, then some guy with a small dude in his stomach appears and says stuff to Arnold. I remember then some old guy chasing Arnold around and he fell down a lot. Then Arnold and girl from "Falling Down" turning the air on for Mars, then enjoying a sunset together on Mars annnnd end film.

Directed by Paul Verhooven aka "Director of Showgirls".

I had to watch this movie a few times cause the first time I seen it I was I think 11 or 12 and I didn't fucking understand it. Then when I got older I watched it a few more times and I thought it was amazingly cheesy. And I think having not seen it in awhile, I did a pretty good job remembering it. Right?

....right?

-Jason

PS: OH and there's a chick with three tits. Awesome.

Summer of '90's: 1990-Sorority House Massacre 2: Nighty-Nightmare

With 1990 winding up here, I just have to-HAVE TO-talk about this movie. I've seen this movie more times then I care to admit. And yes, it is a sequel to a movie, which I haven't seen, but I'm sure I really don't need to see it cause this movie is just great on it's own. Much like "Silent Night, Deadly Night".

In this movie, five random skanks decide to randomly start a sorority in an abandoned house...in a residental neighborhood. I forget the skanks names, it's not important really, but one of them has the worst accent ever. I don't even know what she's suppose to be. British? Australian? Brazilian? Martian? No fuckin' idea.

Anyway, the skanks get settled into the house, soon the clothes start coming off, there's a gratutious shower scene, and the drinking starts. Then right when it gets dark outside, the neighbor across the screet decides to introduce himself and he is easily the best fuckin' character in the whole entire movie.

I swear to you his name is Orville Ketchup, despite the ending credits calling him Orville Ketchum. But EVERYBODY in the movie is clearly saying "Ketchup" so his name is Orville Ketchup, ok? Anyway, Orville Ketchup is this weird looking guy who's pretty anti-social and he decides to tell the skanks a story.

The story is about the former resident of the house this sorority is now in named Hocksetter. One day Old Man Hocksetter decided to go nuts and kill some other random skanks and all of this is told through a helpful flashback. Eventually the cops showed up and killed Hocksetter in his place.

And with that, Orville Ketchup just leaves. Thanks. Say hi to Mean Mr. Mustard.

So then the fun begins when one of the skanks shows up dead and everything thinks its Orville Ketchup...even though they see him outside the house trying to get in. Orville Ketchup tries all kinds of ways to get into the house and no matter what, the girls find all sorts of ways to stop the guy: throw him off the roof, slam his head into a bunch of wood, even give him a swirlie in the toilet.

But the body's keep piling up until it's one girl and bad accent girl. Then the truth is revealed and this is fucking stupid but I swear this is what happened:

The bad accent girl...IS POSSESSED BY HOCKSETTER!! And the only person to stop him/her is...ORVILLE KETCHUP! Orville Ketchup pulls out a soul destroying gun and shoots bad accent girl, but not before she kills the other girl. Then a mover shows up with some cops and the cops shoot Orville Ketchup pretty point blank in the body...AND HE SURVIVED!!! He just has some scratches on him and he's ok! Movie's over!

It may sound like the most retarded movie in the world, and it is, but it's also fucking awesome. I'm telling you, Orville Ketchup needs to be in more movies. He's the greatest. He's this weird guy who can't die and he's suppose to be a good guy. I mean..WHAT??

As of this writing, its only available on VHS, which I am clutching to my A-Cup bosom as we speak. If anyone does have a DVD copy of this, please, pass the wealth.




-Jason

Summer of '90's: 1990-Soultaker

"Soultaker" was featured in a pretty famous episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000". It was not only the episode that kicked off their tenth (and final) season, but it featured the return of Joel Hodgeson and Frank Conniff. Sadly, Joel didn't partake in the riffing but it was awesome to see both Mike and Joel standing side by side, making off-the-cuff jokes about comparing each other and whatnot.

The movie on the other hand...oh boy. Starring Joe Estevez (Martin Sheen's brother) and written and co-starring a chick named Vivian Schilling. It tells the story of a group of friends who die in a car accident and are not being chased by a "soultaker", sort of a Grim Reaper of sorts, played by Joe Estevez.

The group of friends include Zach, his ex-girlfriend Natalie, and their friends Brad and Tommy. Brad doesn't like Natalie cause she's "slightly more rich then they are", which is like saying "I hate that person cause he has slightly more shoes than I do".

They're driving to the ever fun Summerfest when The Angel of Death (Robert Z'Dar) tells Joe to take the souls of our four heroes and he only has 12 hours to do so before...I don't know, their soul's expire or something. So Joe causes a car accident, which I think is cheating if you ask me, and succeeds in taking the souls of Brad and Tommy but it's Zach and Natalie that Joe has a hard time with.

Then there's the sub-plot of Joe remembering his wife in his previous life and she just happens to look like Natalie. Did I mention the chick playing Natalie wrote this movie? Just in case that wasn't clear. So the rest of the movie is Zach and Natalie NOT KNOWING THEY'RE DEAD and they go get help from Natalie's Mom, who's really just Joe in disguise, so there's some pretty creepy moments.

Eventually, they discover that Zach and Natalie's bodies are on life support at the hospital and they have to get back into their bodies before their parents pull the plug. So this leads to RUNNING IN THE HOSPITAL: THE MOVIE! It must be fun to run in a hospital.

I won't tell the ending cause frankly it's stupid and retarded. I recommend watching this movie in MST3K form cause it's MUCH more enjoyable. The movie itself is just weird, kinda slow, and just overall stupid. Plus having the screenwriter cast as the main chick is just so vain. I guess she thought this movie was about her.

-Jason

Summer of '90's-1990: Darkman

Fuckin' LOOOOVE "Darkman". I seen this when it came out on video and I was blown away. Watching it again 20 years later, I'm still blown away. And amazed that this movie stars Liam Neeson AND Frances McDormand.

This is a Sam Raimi movie and it shows. This was probably what he showed Marvel when he was interested in directing "Spider-man" because this entire movie feels like a comic book movie. The style, the background scenes, hell even the overall story is almost like a mash-up of every comic book hero ever.

The story focuses on Peyton Westlake (Neeson) who is a scientist working on making realistic skin for burn victims and whatnot. He's successful but the skin can only last for 99 minutes before it melts away. But he discovers that in the dark it lasts a long time. Peyton is dating Julie (McDormand), who is an attorney for some sleazy building developer named Strack. Julie discovers some sort of illegal thing going on with Strack and rather stupidly goes right to him about this.

Strack isn't happy about this so he sends his right hand man named Durant (Larry Drake, yes THAT Larry Drake) to Peyton's place to get this memo. Durant trashes Peyton's lab, kills his assistant, and pretty much fucks up Peyton's body, badly burning him. As a final "fuck you", Durant and his men blow the shit out of his lab. Peyton goes flying and lands in a nearby water source.

Sometime later, Peyton is found and put in a hospital where they cut off all his nerve endings so he doesn't feel the pain of being horrible burnt. The cause of this, however, leads to Peyton getting pissed off a lot and kinda sensitive. He wakes up and escapes the hospital and after salaving what's left of his equipment, moves to an abandoned warehouse and starts a-new.

Eventually, he moves on to revenge and starts making faces of Durant's men and fucking with their lives. He poses as one goon and takes Durant's money, so then Durant goes to the real goon's house and kills him, not believing his story of "it wasn't me" even though Durant saw him on the counter AND on the sofa.

Finally, Peyton is able to make a fake version of his face and he goes out to find Julie and...not tell her what happened. O....K. While he's getting his groove thang back on with Julie, he's planning revenge on Durant and his men by fucking up more shit.

After Peyton tries to pretend to be Durant and take some more money, in which the REAL Durant shows up, and Julie tells Strack Peyton is alive, life gets hard(er) for him. Durant followed Julie to the abandoned warehouse to plead with Peyton to let her see his real self (after she finds out he's been using his equipment to make fake faces) and kidnaps her and tries to rid of Peyton. Peyton alludes them and eventually stops Durant. Now to save Julie.

Peyton disguises himself as Durant but Strack figures it out and tries to pay off Peyton, but Peyton is like "Fuck you" and a fight ensues. It's a pretty awesome fight. Hell, the chase scene one scene back was awesome too. This entire movie is just awesome. I'm stopping here cause if you haven't seen "Darkman" you need you get on that.

Sadly, there were some sequels that don't have Liam Neeson nor were written or directed by Sam Raimi so I'm sure they're crap. I'll give them a watch eventually but for now, let's just enjoy this awesome original movie. Oh and look out for a cameo by Bruce Campbell. Can't miss it.

-Jason

Summer of '90's-1990: Troll 2

To begin the movie portion of my Summer-long blog-a-thon, let's start with, oh I don't know...Troll 2?

Troll 2 is such an epic movie that not only did I make it my second ever Mass Invasion, but it was also the 100th movie reviewed on the site. What's even greater is this movie is so bad there's a documentary on how bad it is. I present to you "Best Worst Movie"



But that's not what this is about. You wanna read some stuff about the movie itself. Thankfully, this movie has been covered all over the place. So take your pick:

Me and My Friends Review It
Nolahn, my podcastin' partner in crime, reviewed it at Bargin Bin Review
Andrew at BadMovies.org reviewed it
And Fatally Yours reviewed it

If you reviewed "Troll 2" and you want it linked up here, drop me a line in the comment section. Now if you excuse me, I got some hopsitality to piss on.
-Jason