'DR. GIGGLES'..... WHAT TRUMP'S 'CONCEPTS' OF A MEDICAL PLAN WOULD LOOK LIKE.....

Dr. Giggles (1992)   Hard to believe of BQ, but we never got around to this one upon its first release, so there's nothing like finally catching up with a film 32 years later. 

        (To be fair to ourselves, we spent that malignant year toiling for a major video chain which came direct from the depths of hell. The irony - their punishing workload, their terrorizing of employees and their China sweatshop hours left us little time to actually watch movies.....)

        The good doctor Giggles surprised us in a few ways. For 1992, director Manny Coto took to the gore quotient right up to the allowable limit he could get away with for an R rating. (Oh my, how times have changed...) But you can still clearly notice the obvious trimming of excessive splatter.

       A standard mad-slasher-of-teenagers trope is in place....this time it's Evan Rendell (Larry Drake), who blossomed from a psychotic, giggling little boy maniac to a full fledged giggling grown-up loon, newly escaped from the Funny Farm. 

       Drake, a superb, gifted character actor, has a mad-eyed ball here. The giggle seems to come from somewhere deep in his chest, like a ventriloquism feat, and the script supplies him endless doctor jokes as he hacks and stabs his way to a well stacked high body count. ("You think that hurt, wait'll you get my bill...")

       A few other things perked us up.....the inventive main titles, filled with floating red corpuscles,a clever homage to the legendary hall-of-mirrors sequence in Orson Welles' "The Lady From Shanghai".....and who doesn't love a camera angle from inside a victim's mouth just before Doc G performs terminal oral surgery?

       A fun Halloween watch, if you haven't seen it.  3 stars (***.)

        

        

        

'THE JUDGEMENT OF YOYO GOLD'...AN ORTHODOX JEWISH TEEN FINDS LOVE AND REBELLION

  The Judgement of Yoyo Gold (2024) by Isaac Blum   

     Yoyo is most definitely not your typical teen overachiever who longs to break through the constraints put upon her by her family, friends and community. She's the dutiful oldest child of an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and tirelessly does everything expected of her......excels in classes, helps to co-parent her younger siblings, follows the teachings and procedures of her faith and functions as a perfect role model for everyone around her.

     Her only outlet for communicating her true feelings was her lifelong friendship with Esti, whose extroverted, daring behavior proved too much to their tight-knit community........when Esti s sent off to a far away school, an angry, frustrated Yoyo believes her dearest friend was indeed banished, with her father having a hand in it.

      Yoyo's more than ready to unleash rebellion against the structure of her Orthodox life, and her increasingly uncomfortable role in it. in. She finds a kindred spirit (and sweet first love) in gentle, studious Shua, yet another outcast who helps removes her father's filters from her phone.. This allows Yoyo to secretly outrage and confound her peers. with anonymous gossip-y Tik Tok videos.......revealing moments of un-Orthodox, rule breaking behavior from her friends and herself. as well.

     All of Yoyo's inner turbulence is presented with a knowing sense of wisdom and at times, the sharpest, ironic wit you'll ever enjoy in a YA drama. And author Isaac Blum deftly immerses you in a world of religious faith that may seem strange and foreign until you see all the universal things unfold.....the changing dynamics between parents and children and the eternal adolescent challenge to figure out who you are and what's your place in the world.
   
     A great, thoughtful read, with a character who captures you from the first page and will hold you till she reaches a reckoning with faith, love, friendship and the world outside her own. My highest recommendation....go get Yoyo.

       5 stars (*****)

'BLACK SUNDAY'.....BAVA GOES "BOO!"....WITH NERVES OF STEELE

Black Sunday (a.k.a. The Mask Of Satan) 1960    Once we started our re-watch Mario Bava's horror classic, we realized we forget to mention Tim Burton's goofy, yet loving tribute to it in our review of  "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice".......

          We imagined casual moviegoing audiences scratched their heads when Burton's film suddenly veers into black-and-white.....and Italian with English subtitles. (...with Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice flashing back to his centuries old unfortunate wedding to soul sucking demon witch Delores (Monica Belucci)

         But those of us who revel in cult horror knew exactly what director and film to which Burton paid homage.......the one that scared the living crap out of the Baby Boomers...(for many of them, this was their first real introduction to the weird world of Euro-Horror).

         Master cinematographer Bava established his reputation as Master Visualist director Bava with "Black Sunday", based on a Nicolai Gogol story set in Medieval Modavia.

          No one could equal Bava in rendering nightmare dreamscapes on film. The dark, gloomy, fogbound bogs, filled mostly with twisted barren trees, crypts and tombstones was a suitable for framing Hell On Earth.  Nobody had seen anything like it since James Whale's settings in this 1930's "Frankenstein" movies. 

          We're off to a great start in the Dark Ages, with the mob delivering gruesome terminal punishment to Vampire-witch Asa Vajda (Barbara Steele) and her equally bloodsucking consort Javutich (Ivo Garrani).....especially Asa, who gets a spike-filled mask hammered into her face.....ouch.

           Centuries later, that deadly, dynamic duo is out and about, ready to rumble, suck neck, and bring serious pain to the ancestors of their tormentors. And the primary unlucky ancestor is Princess Katia, the exact double of the evil Asa (played by.....surprise, surprise, Barbara Steele.

            The film literally drips, oozes and suffocates a viewer with darkness, gloom and impending death. Bava makes you think you're living inside a Halloween shop cardboard display....for real.

            There's even some nifty effects that still hold up, but the film's finest and creepiest effect by far is the legendary Barbara Steele. A one time British fashion model and struggling Hollywood starlet, she's strikingly gorgeous, with jet-black hair and dark eyes that could bulge wider than globes......in short, tailor made for horror. 

            With "Black Sunday" an iconic Scream Queen was born and Steele ruled as the Elizabeth Taylor of Italian horror movies throughout the 1960's.......(which in truth, a position she didn't much enjoy)

          So here's the perfect entry to kick off your Halloween season viewing. No fan of cult scary cinema should go without seeing it at least once.....5 stars (*****).

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP........SPECIAL 'THEY'RE CONTROLLING THE WEATHER!' EDITION.......

 

Trump sinks to a new low (even for him) by spreading misinformation about FEMA and Florida Hurricanes, causing even more pain to the state's disaster stricken residents.....later explaining, "sorry about those suckers, but it did get me in the news every day, so that's a good thing for me.....and what's good for me is good for....well,....me."

Bob Woodward's new book reveals Trump sent COVID tests to Putin during the height of the Pandemic and still makes phone calls to Putin....."Those are all lies.....but I did send Vladdy 5 gallons of bleach and an ultraviolet light to shine up his rear end.....and maybe an beaker filled with Coronavirus to put into the Ukranians water  supply....."

Latest photos of Trump rally show thousands of empty seats, with people leaving early as Trump rambles on for 2 or more hours....Trump angrily denied that medical teams were forced to routinely offer assistance to rally attendees who slipped in comas while listening to him......

Marjorie Taylor Greene claims the government is controlling and weaponizing the weather......and also said she feels lucky to be alive, having dodged surgical strike beams from Jewish Space Lasers targeting her house and car. 

Trump's bibles are revealed to be made in China....("It's a beautiful thing to see those little Chinese boys and girls pasting in the pages and stamping them with my autograph stamp. Such cute kids, they work so hard all day, for 1 bowl of rice every 10 hours. And over in China, there's no such thing as overtime pay, so it's such a beautiful thing.  I sent 'em a little note - 'if God didn't want you to make my bibles he wouldn't have made you Chinese....")

'JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX'.....THE LAST WRECKAGE ASSESSMENT YOU'LL NEED TO READ....

 Joker: Folie A Deux (2024)    Relax, beloved BQ visitors.....we promise you'll read not one more laborious plot description of this film, followed by a flood of adjectives like 'boring', 'repetitive', 'tiresome', 'what the hell were they thinking?'....yada, yada. 

            Yawn.

             Let's just break it down to a damage evaluation.....

            The musical stuff.....We don't know of any successful musical whose advance marketing tried to hide the fact it's a musical. That's strike one. Strike two: the musical numbers themselves are staged with a mish-mash of jarring styles. Sometimes the singing occurs within actual scenes, sometimes it's staged as deliberate fantasy dreams, sometimes a clumsy mixture of both. Strike three: why the heavy reliance on singing anyway?  The Joker thinks he's Rodney Dangerfield, not Frank Sinatra.

           The Bait 'n Switch Trailer  Not that we blame Warner Brothers for crafting a trailer promising a bigger, better, even more outrageous version of the first film. They're all about putting asses in seats, even if it means turning into snake-oil salesmen......even if it bites them in the ass once audiences get a look at the actual movie.  But this time they unwisely pulled a double-whammy con job, covering up the musical numbers as well as the film's 360 degree detour into depressing, tragic, psychological introspection.

      So not only did WB and director-co-screenwriter Todd Phillips serve up a completely different movie than what audiences expected, they served up a crappy version of the different movie they were attempting to make. 

          The "F*** you!" to the incel fanboys who turned the first film into a giant hit.   We think we get what 'Folie A Deux tried to do.....teach us a moral lesson and shame us for the sin of cheering on the Joker as he unleashed hell on those who abused and insulted him.The film reveals him as a lonely introvert starved for affection.....a lost soul who deluded himself into thinking he'd gone mad simply because he used grotesque cosplay to release his inner Id. Most cruelly of all, the girl he mistook for a soulmate turns out as nothing but a groupie attracted to nihilism and chaos.

     There's nothing wrong with this premise at all. But Todd Phillips wanted it both ways.....to shake his finger at us for finding Joker entertaining and still attract crowds by squandering 200 million dollars to hide his message inside what resembles a tentpole spectacle. 

            Ticket buyers gave him what he richly deserved.....they spent their money elsewhere. 

            And David Zaslav, the reptile in charge of Warners, would have probably made more money if he'd released "Batgirl" and "Coyote Vs. Acme", the fully completed movies he flushed into oblivion for tax writeoffs. 

            The Lizard Of Oz flushed the wrong movie.....for 'Joker: Folie A Deux', Zero stars (0).

           

            

        

'THE FUTURE WAS NOW: MADMEN, MAVERICKS AND THE EPIC SCI-FI SUMMER OF 1982......THIS BOOK ALREADY WROTE OUR TEASER SUB-TITLE FOR US.....

 The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks And the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982 by Chris Nashawaty (2024)

         If you're a movie buff who couldn't wait to plant themselves in theater seats during during this one incredible summer, you'll want to read this book.....like yesterday.

         For the rest of you young 'uns, who maybe wondered how the multiplexes ended up engorged each summer with mega-budgeted sci-fi-fantasy tentpoles......gather round and author Chris Nashawaty will tell you how the floodgates opened.....

          ......with lots of juicy, behind-the-scenes details too. Artistic clashes, huge creative gambles, big boxoffice bonanzas and humiliating, disastrous flops. 

              Quick flashback to 1977:  Steven Spielberg and George Lucas upend the cinema universe with "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind". Unheard of money rolls into Hollywood. A vast, previously untapped audience is discovered. 

               And Hollywood, which has always relegated sci-fi and fantasy films to low-budget, low class, double feature landfill, has seen the light. Suddenly, in the eyes of greedy studio execs, spaceships, aliens, ghosts, robots and monsters are bringing in the big bucks. So it's time to spend some big bucks to make them......

            By the time the summer of 1982 rolled around, no less than five high profile movies were ready to unleash themselves on the world....."Blade Runner", "Tron", "Conan The Barbarian", "Poltergeist", "E.T." and "The Thing".  

            Never before had moviegoers faced such an overwhelming bounty of sci-fi, fantasy and horror, all in one unforgettable summer.

           But they picked and chose what they liked and disliked about the films.....which ones moved them, which ones scared them silly, which ones bored them out of their minds, which ones they cheered, which ones they ignored. 

            When the dust finally settled, two of the films (both Spielberg's),"E.T." and "Poltergeist" were massive hits, Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" left people perplexed and confused. Disney's groundbreaking, computerized "Tron" struggled to justify its enormous cost.....and sadly, John Carpenter's remake (and radical re-invention) of "The Thing" repulsed both audiences and critics with its state-of-the-art graphic, live-on-set effects.

           As if anyone needed a reminder of how the passage of time changes how we contemplate movies of their era........ We now celebrate "The Thing" and "Blade Runner" as immortal classics of sci-fi cinema.

           "The Future Was Now" delves fully into the impossibly convoluted, crazy backstories of how each of these films somehow came together. Author Nashawaty doesn't miss a thing..... the clashes between producers, directors, actors and screenwriters, the sometimes angst-filled perilous journeys each film took on its long road to completion. 

          (This includes the full, awkward tale of how 'Poltergeist's officially credited director Tobe Hooper, ended up as an embarrassed figurehead while Spielberg obviously put his own unique stamp on the film.  And horror-sci-fi fans who cherish and adore "The Thing" will cringe at John Carpenter's becoming an instant Hollywood pariah after the film's crushing initial failure....)

           Need we go on? For everyone who's watched all the covered films multiple times and would've loved to be a fly on the wall during their creation, here's the book for you.

            5 stars (*****)  A fast. fun read.

            

             

'THE BEEKEEPER'......STATHAM, TAKING CARE OF BUZZ-NESS......

 The Beekeeper (2024)    We'll not deny it. We had the best guilty pleasure time of our lives watching this. 

         And there may be no guiltier pleasure this year than this one. 

         Stupid in the extreme?  Yes. 

         Ridiculous? Unbelievable?  Borderline unintentionally hilarious?  Yes.

          We don't care. We're tellin' you right now, cook up a vast amount of popcorn, stock your favorite alcoholic beverage, plop down on the couch and give in to the lunacy. 

          It's 105 minutes of pure unadulterated Jason Statham ass-kicking, uninterrupted by logic, reality, or even a smidgen of common sense. 

         Just go with it. But we'd first recommend watching it as if you recently had a prefrontal lobotomy. Leave your brains on pause for the duration of the film's running time.......(much like Trumpanzees for duration of the election...)

         A movie like this was inevitable. Sooner or later a filmmaker would wake up in the middle of the night and scream, "Let's make 'The Equalizer' on steroids!  Let's make Denzel's character look like Mr. Rogers!"

         And so we come across Statham's  'Adam Clay', a quiet, monosyllabic beekeeper, tending to his little insect charges and enjoying the friendship and care given him by his elderly retired neighbor Eloise (Phylicia Rashad).

         Then Eloise, gentle and kind-hearted, responds to one of those fake 'virus' warnings on her laptop. And a corporate funded array of cyberthieves clean out her life savings and her charity fund, prompting her immediate suicide. 

         This turn of events rather upsets the beekeeper. And you don't want to make this guy upset. Because he used to be a member of a super-secret, deep state cadre of assassin-avengers, pledged to maintain a semblance of order in the world. This gang makes Seal Team 6 look like pre-schoolers. 

          Guess what? They're actually called 'The Beekeepers', dedicated to a metaphorical view of the world as a hive. They see their task as protectors of the hive, even if that means killing the Queen and her consorts.....

           Okay, stop snickering. We're not making this up. Really. 

           And that's all besides the point anyway.

          The main attraction here is watching Jason Statham as an unstoppable vengeance machine on the hunt for all the entitled corporate scum who drove his friend into taking her own life. 

          Capable of punching, kicking, stabbing and shooting mass quantities of assailants who foolishly get in his way, the Beekeeper tears through the corridors of power like a one man tornado.

           Most amusingly, Statham's rampages hardly phase the young, loathsome primary villain Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson). He's a rich, spoiled rotten corporate creep, currently under the protection of ex-CIA director and family friend Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons). And the weary, disgusted Westwyld's only babysitting the odious little prick at the request of Derek's mother (Jemma Redgrave) the current U.S. President.......(feel free to mutter, "She's the WHAT?")

        .....which would make the POTUS unofficially the Queen if we're going by the rules of regulations of the The Beekeepers mythology. Uh oh.....

          But none of that stuff matters. You watch a movie like this for the pure, down 'n dirty fun of seeing sights like Statham face punching cyber-scammers senseless, penetrating every heavily armed fortress designed to stop him and burning down and/or blowing up entire office buildings.

          And those buildings get blowed up real good. Oh yes. 

          We wouldn't even begin to apply a standard critical evaluation to "The Beekeeper".  The movie's completely unapologetic about itself and and that's what we loved about it. We cheered, we laughed and delighted in Jason Statham decimating dozens of people as if it's just another day at the office for him. 

           But as a guilty pleasure? 

            4 ****in' stars. (****).