"Pull the string! Pull the string!" - Bela Lugosi in GLEN OR GLENDA

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY and I PAID TO SEE LEPRECHAUN!

I don't know what I find more frightening, the fact that I paid to see that movie in a theater or the fact that LEPRECHAUN actually got a theatrical run before the franchise was condemned to direct-to-video Hell!  Anyway, Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Oops, too late.

So, I found myself this week participating in the great American tradition that is jury duty and positively bored out of my mind during a recess in the trial.  Sadly, this isn't the jury duty as seen in the Pauley Shore movie entitled JURY DUTY, where hilarity ensues and you get to make-out with Tia Carrere.  No, this is the real thing and it can be very tedious.

I was reflecting on the conversation I had with a friend of mine this past weekend about schlocky cinema.  More to the point, the fact that good schlocky movies (Is that an oxymoron?) rarely make it to the big screen anymore, as opposed to just simply mediocre movies, mass produced by the Hollywood studio system to appeal to certain demographics with the hopes that it will have a successful opening weekend, after which it will probably fade into obscurity.  This leads me to my article for this edition of THE FOYWONDER entitled:

A MULTIPLEX CAN PUT BATTLEFIELD EARTH ON 3 SCREENS BUT KOMODO HAS TO GO STRAIGHT TO VIDEO?!?!

Have you ever seen KOMODO?  Released on video late last year, it's about killer, man-eating, Komodo Dragons on this island off the coast of South Carolina.  Oh, did I mention it's from the same individual who wrote ANACONDA?  KOMODO makes ANACONDA look like JAWS!  It's that bad!  The only thing that makes it better than a movie like PIGS, the infamous man-eating pigs movie, is that has great FX.  The CGI Komodo dragons looked completely realistic.   Unfortunately, nothing else in the movie has any value and, basically, makes Full Moon Productions look like Cecille D. DeMille!  So, what's the point already?  The point is that we weren't given the opportunity to experience the sheer awfulness that this movie is in a darkened theater.  Why?  Because like most schlock nowadays, it gets released straight to home video or debuts on cable, thus denying us the full experience of sitting in a theater with perfect strangers and enduring it together.  There is joy in hearing others groan at the acting, the dialogue, the bad FX or the ridiculous story and being able to share that pain with them.  Or seeing just who has the guts to stick it out and who simply walks out.  Don't get me wrong.  Hollywood, these days, produces more crap than a pig farm, but there's something that sets this apart. It's hard to explain, but lord knows I'll try.

I remember back in the spring of 1991.  It must have been slim pickings at the box office because, for about a month, one of our local cineplexes got one new movie per week that I had never heard of and ran each for exactly one week.  Never saw a single TV ad for any of them and the paper had no synopsis of the film.  All you had to go on was the black & white reproduction of the poster in the paper.  I actually went to see two of these movies and I will never forget them.

The first one was SHAKMA.   All I knew from the poster was that it was about a killer ape and starred the Bogey & Bacall-like combination of "Mr. Blue Lagoon," Christopher Atkins, and a man who is no stranger to apes, Roddy McDowell.  Actually, the billing of McDowell as one of the stars was something of false advertising because he only had a 10-minute cameo.

Here's the basic synopsis of SHAKMA.  A group of med students plans to play some sort of live action fantasy role-playing game in one of the buildings of their med school after hours.  It just so happens that this med school has been performing experiments on baboons for reasons I forget.  For whatever reason, one of the apes, the movie's namesake, has become super aggressive and they have to put him down.  Atkins, who had bonded with the ape, or so he thought, is sympathetic towards Shakma and can't bear to incinerate the corpse of the baboon after being instructed to do so by his supervisor, McDowell.  Of course, since Atkins didn't cremate the chemically altered chimp, it springs back to life, Jason style, and wreaks havoc.  Something to do with adrenaline kicking in that resuscitated it.  Needless to say, McDowell, being the bright eyes that experimented on the monkey, dies first.  From there, it's basically a slasher movie, only with a killer baboon instead of some masked homicidal maniac.  It all culminates in a battle of wits (cough) between Atkins and Shakma in which Atkins tricks the psycho monkey to leap through a mirror and into the incinerator.  This after Atkins is mortally wounded by the way.  This is one of those rare movies where everybody dies.

 The second one was YOUNG COMMANDOS, whose title
 alone was trying to cash in on the success of YOUNG GUNS.  It
 was released on video as DELTA FORCE 3: THE KILLING
 GAME.  The poster featured a bunch of young men in military
 fatigues holding automatic weapons.  The names at the top, in
 big bold letters, read CASSAVETES, DOUGLAS, and
 NORRIS preceded by, in much smaller fonts, their first names -
 Nick, Eric, and Mike.  This is one of those Golan-Globus Middle
 East actioner type productions.  Basically, lots of sand, lots of
 guns, lots of Arab bad guys, lots of explosions, lots of people
 dying, very little budget, and that's about all there was to it.

 Sure Hollywood makes tons of plotless, pointless, no brainer
 slasher/action movies, but these two had a certain charm to
 them.  Why?   Damned if I know, but the lack of slick production
values gave it a feel that separated it from the same kind of overblown productions that come out of the major studios.  Most Hollywood movies are shaped and molded by the studios to be mass marketed with the hopes of having one successful weekend before fading into obscurity, yet watching some of these movies, you have to wonder if the filmmakers had any clue what they were trying to accomplish to begin with.  The overwhelming majority of today's movies I have already forgotten but I still remember SHAKMA and YOUNG COMMANDOS.

Despite the fact that these two movies were pretty bad, my memories of the overall experience for whatever reason are positive.

I also still remember AMERICAN CYBORG: STEEL WARRIOR. This movie played in a local theater for exactly 3 days!  It opened on Friday with a notice next to it stating that it would close on Monday to make room for HOUSE PARTY 3!  Now AMERICAN CYBORG was a Golan-Globus production and even had a trailer in front of it for another fine Golan-Globus production, Chuck Norris' HELLBOUND.  HELLBOUND was, basically, the Chuck Norris vs. Satan movie!  I will speak no more of it at this time because to say anymore would require me to recall the actual film and I have attempted to block it from my memory.

I've already said too much... Dear God, no... Memories of bad movie returning... Wimpy devil guy getting kicked by Walker, Texas Ranger... Gratuitous wisecracking, stereotypical, black sidekick... Pointless 15-minute chase through the back alleys of Tel Aviv to capture the street kid who picked his pocket... No more! The pain!!  Back to the nether regions of my subconscious, foul beast!!

Wheew!  I'm better now.

Anyway, if you miss the first 5 minutes of AMERICAN CYBORG, then you miss one of the movies only two plot points.  The plot had something to do with terminator rip-offs enslaving mankind and not allowing the birth of "human" children.  Some wasteland warrior has to protect some chick with a baby.  The production values in this one make Jean Claude Van Damme's CYBORG look like TITANIC!  In fact, the fight choreography in AMERICAN CYBORG is so horrendous it makes the fights in the old Santo movies look like CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON!  There were six people in the theater before the movie began and only three when the movie ended.  Sadly, I was one of them!  And yet, I can recall this movie going experience with more clarity than I can any number of other major Hollywood releases.

What is the point to all my ramblings again?  I guess I just wish that more schlocky, non-studio, movies got theatrical releases.  Even if they had to slowly make the rounds from region to region like in the old days of cinema.  Sure, some of you who live in major metropolitan areas have theaters that get some of these from time to time, or maybe have the occasional midnight movie, but most of us never get any of those "art house" movies let alone "outhouse" movies!  Today, SHAKMA would go direct to video.  You would probably fast forward through all the failed attempts at character development in YOUNG COMMANDOS.  And, most importantly, you'd probably just hit "eject" and never finish watching AMERICAN CYBORG: STEEL WARRIOR, thus denying yourself the full experience of its wretchedness.  When you've paid to see something in the theater, you do so to see it as an experience.  That's what's so great about NOWFF.  You're there in a theater with a group of people who want the collected experience of viewing these kinds of movies as a group.  Whether it's the so-bad-its-good type of movie like THE GREEN SLIME or the so-bad-its-bad type of movie like THE CONQUEROR, we're in it together!  Sure, every now and then Hollywood releases a KULL THE CONQUEROR or a GODZILLA 2000, but mostly they'll just give us bad movies that are over-hyped, overproduced, and underwritten.  And, most of them will soon be forgotten by the general public, but I, however, will always remember SHAKMA!

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY and I PAID TO SEE
YOR, HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE!