Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines

I'll be back.

Can a story that has already been told from start to finish continue? in the world of movies, anything can happen, and believe it or not, James Cameron announced Terminator 3 many times in the late 90's, but without coming out with any finished script. Tedi Sarafian wrote an early draft, and eventually earned a shared "story by" credit with screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris, who wrote the screenplay.

The studios had long wanted to make a sequel to the Terminator films. However, they were unsure whether Arnold Schwarzenegger would appear in it. Schwarzenegger initially refused to star in Terminator 3 because Cameron, who created the character and helmed the first two films, would not be directing the third installment. Schwarzenegger tried to persuade Cameron to produce the third film. Cameron declined, however, as he felt that he had already finished telling the story upon the conclusion of T2. But feeling that the Terminator character was as much Schwarzenegger's as it was his own, he advised Schwarzenegger to just do the third film and ask for "nothing less than $30 million." anyways, let's move on to part III of a franchise that should have stayed a trilogy (We'll deal with Terminator Salvation soon) for good times sake.

 

a newer sexier Terminator that is to die for!

Terminator pride!

In 2003 John Connor(played by Nick Stahl) is living a life without record, with no fixed address, no bank account and no permanent job. He does this to avoid the terminators of the future being able to find him and kill him. In absence of him, Skynet sends back a T-X(played by sexy bombshell Kristanna Loken who gets in the nude in her arrival scenes, just pause your DVD/Blu Ray player at the right moment and you'll see the new menacing weaponry of the female Terminator) to kill secondary targets – Connor's future lieutenants, among them Kate Brewster(with a very convincing portrayal by romantic comedy actress Claire Danes), daughter of military scientist Robert Brewster(David Andrews). Luckily, in the future, Kate has sent back a captured Terminator to protect them. As the group escape Connor learns more of judgement day and sets out to try and stop it again.

T3 is different from T2 in that it isn't really in the same league as T2 was when it came out. In my view T2 was the must see movie of it's time whereas now it has faded a little and is secondary to The Matrix (soon the trilogy will be reviewed here) and other cutting edge blockbusters. In fact so second was it that I wasn't that bothered about seeing it or not. However I'm glad it did as T3 is nicely paced, doesn't expect too much of itself and does just what a blockbuster is meant to be – be entertaining.

Katherine Brewster soon gets in the action.

John Connor, hobo jobo.

The plot is mostly secondary to the action but, basically, the T-X has been sent back to take out a group of people before it then (accidentally) finds it's primary target of John Connor. Some of the plot is a little tenuous but it doesn't matter as it moves along at such a pace that you don't have time to really think too long about any one scene. However the climax is a hark back to the original Terminator with a down deep and depressing ending where fate manages to happen regardless of Connor's best intentions.

The action is great although it does look basic beside the effects of Matrix etc. I did feel that they worked better by not trying to be overly flashy or fancy. The morphing effects are actually more enjoyable because here they make up part of the action whereas in T2 they were key moments of cutting edge technology. The film's action takes the form of a simple chase and is very effective, the multiple car chase is my favorite scene – partly because it shows how very out classed the Terminator is by the new model!

I'm fucking back again!

I'm the undertaker!

The direction is good and Cameron isn't missed at all. Mostow does a great job with the action scenes and keeps everything just perfect. Because the film realizes that the franchise is build on catch phrases and images that have entered into popular culture so much that they are overused, it wisely chooses to mock itself and has a real nice sense of humor to it. For example the original Terminator had the terminator entering a motor cycle bar and exiting dressed in biker leathers, here he enters a bar and finds a ladies night in full swing and has to get his clothes from a gay stripper. The deadpan way in which he rejects the sunglasses is really good. In a way this could have undermined the effect of the film but it is managed well and doesn't.

The cast is roundly good. The exit of Sarah Connor is handled well and her replacement (Danes) is good despite a few duff lines which don't convince. Stahl's performance could be seen as mocking Furlong's drug problems (I can't see any other reason for his junkie-like tics etc.) but he is still good and carries the film well. Schwarzenegger wisely agrees to mock his own character – the film takes the idea that time has passed the Terminator franchise by, by having the terminator itself being totally superseded. Loken is good as the T-X and is sexy enough but isn't given as much to do as anyone else. Whereas Patrick was pretty much the main focus of T2 (because of the effects) Loken has less of an impact.

Dressed to kill.

Die humans!

Overall I had my doubts about this film but it did manage to do just what I needed it to do. The action is overblown and enjoyable without being the cutting edge in special effects at any time. The plot-driving scenes are good and the main story (behind the action) is involving and interesting, right up till the downbeat ending. I must say that, although it is hardly the most imaginative or inspiring film made in 2003, it certainly does what you need a blockbuster to do – no deep, pretentious plots, no joy-less acting, but rather a big noisy movie that doesn't take itself too serious (despite the serious plot) and is actually very enjoyable to watch.Considering what happened to many franchises when they released their part III  movies, Terminator 3 easily outdoes most of them. Perhaps, if we didn't know there was going to be a Terminator 4 we could have easily thought this was the weakest in the Terminator brand but, you know, shit happens and Terminator Salvation was ironically, Terminator 3's salvation.

Here's the movie trailer:

...and the deleted scene that explains why T-800 are modelled after Arnie:

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Hasta La Vista Baby!

Can someone outdo his own work? Well, James Cameron certainly did! In 1984 he rocked our socks off with the magnificent cyberpunk horror masterpiece The Terminator an uncertain future where AI has humanity enslaved. However, a time machine allows Kyle Reese to aid Sarah Connor onto securing her offspring's life. Nevertheless, a new tremor in our future call for immediate action...

Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines. The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two Terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human resistance, John Connor, my son. The first Terminator was programmed to strike at me in the year 1984, before John was born. It failed. The second was set to strike at John himself when he was still a child. As before, the resistance was able to send a lone warrior, a protector for John. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first.

In 1991, Terminator 2 Judgment Day, tells whatever happened to Sarah Connor(Linda Hamilton) and her child John Connor(Edward Furlong) when they're faced with another threat from the future. This film is a perfect 10, because it takes the vision of one of the most imaginative directors on Earth, and realizes them almost perfectly with all the tools that fit the task -- actors, stunts, puppetry, models, and CG. Without the vision, this film would be nothing. Without the tools, this film would be nothing.

Judgment Day is here to stay...

...Not in our watch fuckers!

But, a little bit of background is due. This is the sequel to the Terminator (1984), whose premise was that a near-indestructible cyborg is sent by evil self-aware machines from the near future to destroy the mother-to-be of the military commander who would lead the humans to a victory over the machines. Oh, and this terminator machine would come from a time of war between men and machines which followed a nuclear exchange that left billions of people dead, first. In Terminator 2, John Connor (the commander-to-be) is about 12 years old, and his mother (Sarah) is feverishly trying to prepare him for his fate, even as she tries to stop the factors that will lead to the nuclear war and the entire terrible future that made all this necessary. The machines now send a superior, more intelligent, shape-shifting cyborg (T-1000) into the past, to kill John himself. Meanwhile, future-John reprograms a T-101 Terminator (just like the one from the original film) and sends him into the past to PROTECT John against the T-1000.

That's your basic plot. It does involve travel into the past, so it immediately presents a time-travel paradox which can't really be resolved. In order to even try watching this movie, you MUST LOOK PAST THE PARADOX. If you don't, this movie has zero credibility, and is not worth your time.

Man & Machine against the future.

Skynet, you're about to meet your maker.

What happens after the two terminators appear in the past is a wild ride rife with macho action, dark reflection on the nature of man, and a few rays of hope, here and there. Schwarzenegger (the good terminator) and Patrick (the bad one) make for such effective foes that the times they meet on-screen are completely breathtaking (and odd, given that you repeatedly see the relatively slim T1000 through Arnie through a wall or two). Hamilton, as Sarah Connor, is a wonderful character -- tough beyond all belief and completely focused on preventing the nuclear war and ensuring John's safety, yet clearly a little out of her mind with paranoia and anger; amazingly, you see actual character development (specifically, when John and T101 arrive at Dyson's house to prevent her from doing what she wants to) in her otherwise 2-dimensional character. And Furlong, as John, is not bad himself as the extroverted kid who's confused by the fact that everyone except his mom tell him his entire upbringing was based on a lie. The bit players all do their jobs well, particularly Earl Boen who plays the semi-sadistic mental hospital warden that stands between Sarah Connor and her son (until the T1000 makes a chilling entrance).
With these players set in motion, it's up to the script to deliver the real substance of the movie. (One often sees great performances in mediocre films... here the story transcends the performances -- an impressive feat.) The script delivers. The film is absolutely filled with great, classic moments, and they're evenly spaced through the movie. I mean, who doesn't cheer (at least inside) when Arnold steps out of the biker bar, fully clad in leather when "Bad to the Bone" music starts to blast? The guy absolutely bleeds coolness. And the T1000 absolutely bleeds evil. But, with so many great moments, you'd think the pacing would be a little uneven... not really! The film shifts from place to place with an ease that makes perfect sense, never giving you the time to start being a little nitpicking jerk, always driving forward, but always doing so thoughtfully and with attention to detail.

Boy it's hot in 1991.

Nope!

Of course, this wouldn't be an action movie without some action. There's plenty of it, and it's perfectly done. The CG effects for the shape-shifting T1000 were cutting-edge for the time, and still look great (whoever said differently is simply incorrect) -- even if they're completely commonplace today. The stunts are completely insane in scale (at one point, a helicopter flies under a highway overpass; at another, a motorcycle jumps from the 2nd floor of a building into a flying chopper). (Probably, only the Matrix and the Lord of the Rings movies compare in terms of the level of stunt insanity.) And the gunplay is delivered in perfect Cameron-Schwarzenegger style (as opposed to the slo-mo John Woo-style) -- you'll see lots of heavy automatic and explosive weapons, and you'll see them used well. The film is violent, and somewhat bloody, but ALL of the mean-spirited violence is dealt by the evil characters, not the ones you root for (Quentin Tarantino fans: sorry). And then the truly amazing scenes that bypass acting are shocking and memorable -- just wait until the nuclear detonation sequence.

Unlike many Sci-Fi films, T2 not only offers the viewer a stunning collection of action sequences packed with magnificent special effects. What makes the sequel better than its predecessor is the fact that we get to see a lot of character development as the film develops to the climax.  For instance, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton takes her acting skills to the limit here) is being held captive in a mental institution because, you know, nobody would buy her machines-killing humans-through time travel-story. through her performance you not only see her struggle, you can feel her pain. Then there's John Connor (Furlong) a kid in his teens, playing arcade, listening to Public Enemy, and trying to be cool while doing stunts only teens are amazed at. He thinks his mother is crazy, and hates his foster parents but everything changes when he finds himself in the middle of a bike chase of proportions. But wait, that's not all! even the T-101, a cyborg, a heartless machine offers character development as he's reset by Sarah Connor to allow him to learn human language & behavior on the go.

Die human scum!

What? can't we have a little fun?

The secondary characters, although with very little on screen time, do deliver convincing performances. Robert Patrick as the antagonist T-1000 depicts a heartless machine with brutal AI.

Music also plays a relevant role here, what can be more 90's than featuring songs from "Use Your Illusion I & II" from Guns ´n´Roses?  Well, maybe the Arcade Center adds up for more 90's nostalgia love. Had this movie being premiered after September 1991 I'm sure the soundtrack would have definitely featured Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains & Soundgarden.

 

I'm not sure what else you would want in a movie. Probably moral content, and the movie has a very clear pro-human, anti-war message. The message is a bit stale, and the delivery IS, at times, a little heavy-handed (and some moments with the T101 seem just a bit unrealistic, towards the end), but the movie has heart, and that you cannot deny. Plus, it simply rocks. 10/10

Here's the movie trailer:

And Guns 'n' Roses popular tune:

Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere

Trading pictures.

Sometimes, being a fan of cult cinema can be a pain in the ass. Even in the days of the "all you can download" syndrome there are some films that are way too obscure to be found. Hence, the motto of the S.P.A.M. Alternative team: "To uphold the legacy of the films whose qualities have taken them to obscurity"

Such is the case  of today's magnificent entry but, before we get into details let me say that from this week on we'll be checking some of the most interesting films ever made by the number one Italian bombshell of all times: Ornella Muti. Like Christina Lindberg, Ornella Muti spend her film career displaying her sexiness  and acting talent like no other Italian actress has done to date. However, comparing Muti with Lindberg may be a little unfair towards the latter since Ornella could act really well.

Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere, is a 1971 film directed by Umberto Lenzi and starred by Irene Papas, Ray Lovelock & Ornella Muti. Outside Italy the film is known as Oasis of Fear, AKA  Dirty Pictures. However, the correct translation is "An Ideal Place To Kill". The film had long been available only in the VHS format, until Shameless Pictures released it on DVD in 2011 if I'm not mistaken. Anyways, the following review was made in its entirety after watching the original Italian VHS (no dubbing, no english subs)

Hi, dirty old man, enjoying the view?

Orgasmic beauty.

It's ironic sometimes how a film doesn't turn out quite like its director intended, but the end result still outshines much of his other work; Lenzi reportedly wanted to make something akin to EASY RIDER(1969) but producer Carlo Ponti requested "the usual giallo" – besides, the drug-trafficking angle was changed to an even more lurid (and commercial) one involving pornographic material (hence, the alternate title DIRTY PICTURES)! Anyway, this is an atypical {sic} – thus interesting – effort from the genre's heyday: for once, too, the tone isn't overly glum (Bruno Lauzi's score, in fact, is infectiously upbeat most of the time) while being, as ever, a very stylish film.

The plot concerns two English kids (Ray Lovelock and under-aged Ornella Muti) traveling through Catholic Italy selling uncommon 'brochures' (Muti is perhaps too Mediterranean-looking to convince as an English girl, but she's sexy and generally delightful all the same). Being reckless, they never save what little money they make – when it's not stolen by those who 'befriend' them along the way (including a real-life motor-cycle dare-devil, dubbed "Crazy Tony", popular at the time!) – so the couple are forced to keep up the act…until they're betrayed to the Police by a potential customer who run them out of town. However, on the way, their car (stolen, of course) runs out of gas and the only nearby 'oasis' is a secluded villa they at first believe to be uninhabited; it transpires that rich American(!) Irene Papas (a curious presence in this type of film which, to my mind, definitely works in its favor) is inside and she catches them in the garage just as they're transferring petrol from one of the cars within into their own vehicle.

Ray Lovelock, the lucky one.

I'm in love!

The woman's first reaction is to send the kids away, but she soon changes her mind and they're invited to feed and even stay the night. The couple's freewheeling antics seem to liberate the stiff lady of the house, too, and before the night is out, the trio are having themselves a party (cue some crazy zooms on the dancing participants) for which Muti also contrives to dress up in exotic fashion. Papas and Lovelock spend the night together but not before she's sent him to the garage to fetch her some cigarettes: looking in the glove compartment of her car, he finds a gun and instinctively picks it up. This, as it turns out, was a deliberate move on her part as the young man now has his fingerprints on the weapon – when the kids first arrived, Papas had been acting strangely and we soon discover why: her husband's body (whom she herself shot, being in cahoots with a lawyer who's intermittently seen trying to make contact with her) is stashed in the boot of the car! To add more conviction to her fabricated story – that the kids assaulted the household – Papas feigns an attempted rape…

Typically, the picture is filled with solid suspense touches and clever narrative twists: when the Police finally arrive, as Papas had predicted, it's her they believe; the kids, thinking otherwise (having drugged the woman and 'planted' the gun in her hands) take it easy as they're reaching the border, even deciding to go for an impromptu swim. However, as they're departing once again, the Police bars their way and, it all ends with the kids running the car off the road and tumbling to their death – still, the director gives the whole a cynical conclusion this time around (accentuated by the reprise of the jaunty theme tune) as there's no redeeming last-minute stroke of irony here! 

You gotta make a livin' y'know.

Tit Selfie! Take that Instagram!

This film is labelled as a giallo by many, although I'm not sure I necessarily agree that it is. It's more of a crime-thriller than anything else. It basically boils down to a cat and mouse game between three people. It feels relatively restrained for an Umberto Lenzi picture. It isn't very violent at all, although it does have some quite frank sexual scenes. Although it is a thriller, it does feel very much more a product of the end of the counter-culture. It's pessimistic ending recalls Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider, while it's hippies gone bad is in line with the post Charles Manson massacre that in many ways put an end to the flower power movement.

It's all-in-all a good enough genre picture, although not a great one. Lenzi himself has made much more entertaining flicks. It's probably fair to say that Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere is a minor film but not one without interest, I mean, Ornella Muti looks magnificent in it and that is reason enough to give it a look.

Here's the movie trailer from the remastered DVD edition:

Trip with the Teacher

Get ready to be blown away.

A couple of years ago I decided it was about time to turn my "complaing about everything blog" into something bigger, an exploitation paradise that would help the unaware become instant connoisseurs of a genre and an era worth remembering forever. Back then  I didn't know much about the genre so my opinions were mostly based upon other apparently renowned reviewers. Time went by and my earliest reviews didn't live up to the legendary name of the movies I reviewed, so there comes a time in a man's life where he has to redeem himself by paying homage to the greatest movies the way they were always meant to be paid homage. So, today I'll review once more "Trip with the Teacher" AKA "Deadly Field Trip", a 1975 Crown International Pictures production  written and directed by Earl Barton and starred by Brenda Fogarty (Miss Tenny, the teacher) and Zalman King (badass cold blooded murderer and rapist Al) The rest of the actors are more or less the supporting cast playing Miss Tenny's students and two extra bikers (one being Al's brother Peter, played magnificently by Robert Porter and the other being the good guy Jay)  The music score is also very groovy, definitely displaying what music was about in 1975 and if someone knows where can I find the complete score, please let me know 'cause Mr. Igo Kantor did an excellent job.

a Schoolbus full of teen meat.

Bikers, mean bikers.

So now let's get down to business and let me tell you about what the movie is about so that in case you haven't watched it yet, I'll give you a glimpse of it. Totally bonkers psycho Alan and his more mellow, but still quite lethal brother Peter are a pair of odious, malefic, resolutely vile and unwholesome degenerate biker louts who gleefully torment, terrorize, manhandle, degrade and generally flat-out grossly mistreat a prissy school teacher and her bus load of four nubile strumpet teenage girl students (Susie Russell, Cathy Worthington, Jill Voight and Dina Ousley, all sublimely delectable fair maidens who are just ripe with adolescent purity and ingenuousness) in a remote area of the California desert.

Hi, I'm Al and  I want to rape & murder your teenie slutty ass.

That's it for the admittedly skimpy plot and frankly who cares about some fancy-schmancy story, for what this really base and repulsive vintage 70's drive-in sleaze lacks in style and substance (plenty, man), it more than compensates for with a winning abundance of ferociously foul-minded hardcore grindhouse cinema sliminess. We've got blunt direction by Earl Barton, grainy cinematography by Erwin Jay Barer, and a get-down funky syncopated score by Igo Kantor. Moreover, we also got rape, gratuitous nudity, a thrilling motorcycle chase that's followed by an equally exciting foot chase, a truly mean misogynistic bent, a few fiercely protracted murder set pieces, a marvelously vicious last reel onslaught of mass killing and destruction, and absolutely no redeeming artistic quality to ground the assorted trashy activities in any slight semblance of unwanted pretense or needless gravity.

Al likes to hum a creepy song before & after his killing job is done.

Miss Tenny has no choice.

Best of all, it's considerably enlivened and made essential viewing by the incomparable Zalman King's frenzied, overwrought, explosively insane and unrestrained scenery-gulping histrionics. With his unsightly mass of curly, unwashed greasy hair, soiled dirt-stained blue jeans, irritating wheezing, deranged cackle, nasal, slurred mumble-grumble voice, enormous wrap-around black shades, fixed, unblinking baleful stare, crazed facial expressions (King contorts his sweaty puss into a hilariously pained grimace whenever he bags somebody), scraggly five day beard, getting wackier by the minute slow burn intensity, and hysterically out of it live-wire mugging, King could pass for either David Hess' severely dysfunctional sociopathic near twin brother or a twitchy heroin addict who's in dire need of an immediate fix. An exquisitely gnarly'n'nasty nugget. Besides, his relationship with his brother, Pete, is interesting as it seems that Pete goes along with the bad stuff simply to keep Al happy. He has moments when he seems to possibly change his ways, but always sticks with Al. This, despite that Al gives indications that he'd waste Pete too if Pete lets him down. The film doesn't go too far into their relationship which is too bad, it would have given the movie a little extra bit of interest.

One of the girls decide she can fuck one of the mean guys to set an escape plan.

The good guy has no chances left now.

"Trip with the Teacher" is a fantastic piece of early 70's sleaze that has a few lulls but for the most part, moves along nicely and is quite tense and suspenseful. The girls are all very pretty and sexy, having that classic "70's sexy high-schooler" look. The teacher is very sexy herself and looks like a 70's porno star. The guys do a good job, even the old man at the gas station who doesn't take Al's nonsense (he regrets it though!). However, the film, being a part of the 70's open mindedness does feature some disturbing scenes towards women treatment. One being the sexual assault against Miss Tenny, where we don't see any explicit sex/porn, but we actually some very violent acting that can disturb you easily, also, there's one killing scene where the visual violence toward women (again) reminds you the reasons why the exploitation genre was so disliked by women of all ages and why some filming rules have been applied since then to avoid any disturbing and/or schocking results. However, Trip with the Teacher looks like a Discover Kids toon compared to I Spit on Your Grave. You've been warned.

Trip with the Teacher's collage.

This is definitely a good viewing, but again, why is this film having such a low rating on big sites like IMDB? There are countless films much, much worse than this. Sleaze fans will not want to miss this one, made during an era when little film gems like this came and went, and were able to be made and put out in the first place. 

Here are some cool movie excerpts four your pleasure:

The Opening scene:

The Gas Station scene:

The catfight scene:

See you next time with more exploitation classics!

Easy Rider

Easy pal, easy.

To be honest with my fellow readers, I got to admit it wasn't long ago since I got my hands on the blu ray edition of Easy Rider. All I'd heard before about the mystique the film had, came mostly from my elder relatives experiences, but as soon as I had the chance of watching it by myself my expectations were very high. I wanted to get into the hippie free wheeling world the movie is well known for. I was utterly surprised by this film. I was expecting nothing more than some short scenes of our now-infamous actors smoking marijuana followed by trippy scenes that instantly remind me of drug driven Beatles songs like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds & Strawberry Fields Forever. Some say Easy Rider should be shown in every American History class in the United States. It not only showed the beauty of the country of which we reside, but it also spoke about the people that reside in it. You know the old saying, 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people', well after watching this film, it is a very true statement. We are afraid of what is different. We are a culture that is afraid of change, yet seek it so badly. We are a society of hypocrites, androids, and ignorants. We thrive on the fact that we are the best country in the world, yet somebody shows any disassociation of routine, we are the first to question and get angry. I would dare say that we have moved so far from the 60s that I cannot see why our parents do not cry everyday. Their generations was a free-spirited, mind challenging culture that explored all possibilities no matter the cost. The experience was all they needed as a reward. Now, we are more concerned about money and the family-plan that we sometimes place ourselves on the backburner to life. Wake, eat, and pay the bills. What a sad daily structure that we have. When was the last time you considered the possibility of just jumping on your bike and riding until you hit water? Probably not for a long time … why? It is called 'bills' and 'responsibilities'. These are the choices that we chose to make, and for anyone to say that they cannot do it, I would have to challenge. You CAN do anything, it is whether you chose to do it is another question. I wonder what it will be like in another 30 years. Where will we be, and will the idea of individualism be lost? I can't wait to see …

Weed, man, weed.

With the American way on his back.

Outside of the deeply rooted themes of this film, I felt that Hopper (who also directed) knew exactly what he was doing behind the camera. He kept the talking short, the music loud and symbolic, and allowed the background to do the explaining. I loved the fact that we really knew nothing about Fonda or Hopper's characters. It allowed us to relate to them. You could easily add your story into their characters and have the life that you lead and wish to escape. Hopper was able to transform this film from a drug movie to a film about humanity. Fonda, who also helped write the film with Hopper, did a superb job of adding Nicholson's character into the mix.

Let's ride!

 Yao Ming!

Nicholson represented us, the American public and our love of liquor, football, and lies. I viewed Nicholson as the average American. He drank too much, was the product of a wealthy upbringing, but did not know much about the world. He was sheltered. He never smoked weed (in fact didn't even know what it was when presented to him), never left the state line, and never lived life. He constantly used the expression, 'I have always wanted to …'. How many times do you hear this a day from either a family member or a co-worker? If you always wanted to do it, why haven't you? So, here we have Hanson, dreaming a dream but never following through, who is traveling with two guys that live the ultimate life and live by their own rules. They are complete opposites, but Hanson's words seemed to remain in my mind for a long time. He reminded me of one of my wife's students today that spoke about freedom. He knew exactly what it was, but never practiced it. Hopper and Fonda were walking (driving most of the time) representations of the word 'freedom'. It is tragic what happens to Harmon, because he (unfortunately) experienced the negative side of freedom … hatred and fear of the unknown.

Check this out yo!

I see dead people man.

There was one scene that just jumped out at me. It occurs in the diner before the incident later that night where our travelers experience hatred in the country they admire so much. They go from peace and love to fear and hate. It is as if they witnessed night and day. It was frightening to hear the words coming from people in that restaurant. It was not only scary to wonder what was going to happen to our narrators, but mainly that people were speaking that way to fellow citizens. I know that it still occurs today, and it is surprising to me. We bomb a country because they do not follow the same principles that we do, but we need to start asking ourselves this question … do we need another United States?

Here's the movie trailer:



And for your guilty cinema pleasures here you have the full movie:



But, I most certainly recommend you to watch it on Blu Ray. You'll be blown away! Check this video review some dude made about the Blu Ray edition:

Wild Riders

Escape machines on the road to hell.

This typically trashy Crown International Pictures release may not be the foulest, single most scuzzy and revolting biker movie ever made (Al Adamson's cartoonishly repellent doozy "Satan's Sadists" gets my vote for that particular dastardly dishonor), but it still rates pretty highly as a real sleazy slice of wonderfully rancid drive-in cinema schlock just the same.

This film starts off promisingly, (for sick, sick thrills) when our two main characters torture and kill Pete's girlfriend because she dared to cheat on him, and with a man who had the gall to be born with a high melanin content, no less. This is too much to stand, even for the rest of the scuzzy biker gang they are riding with, so the gang leader tells them to beat it, hit the road and don't come back, the gang is splitting up and some of us are going to California.

So, the two scuzz buckets, Pete (reminiscent of Peter Fonda's Heavenly Blue, only meaner) and Stick (he's a bit slow but lovable, for a moronic sadist), go off by themselves like some crank-addicted George and Lennie in a white-trash version of "Of Mice and Men". Out of money and desperate, our two anti-heroes take over a somewhat posh suburban home where two sisters are holed up, bickering, since hubby is away on business.

Nice tits!

The face of an idiot.

Idiot riders.

The two creeps take over the house and hold the ladies hostage, and we settle in for over an hour of what appears to be a sort of bargain-basement "Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf" on meth. Various physical and psychic tortures are inflicted upon both the victims and tormentors, as mind games galore play themselves out, until the inevitable, bloody conclusion. And since this was made during the post-Altamont era, you just know that the ending is most certainly NOT going to consist of the main characters going off into the sunset or sharing milk and cookies. Let's just say you'll never look at the cello the same way again.

Some have stated this film is just a violent creep fest full of ugliness, recriminations and unnecessary cruelty. Perhaps, for that time (1971) the movie does share violent imagery of physical & mental abuse, but believe me, there are movies that would make Wild Riders look like a kindergarten lesson. However, the film was banned in the UK twice. The first time, when it was released in theaters and the second time when it was released in the VHS home format. 

I watched Wild Riders as part of the Millcreek Entertainment 12 DVD movie pack Savage Cinema. The similarities between Arell Blanton's character (Pete) and Peter Fonda's cannot be an accident – it has to be the hair, sideburns, glasses; and, the times. No doubt, Crown International Pictures shot Wild Riders to ride the coattails of Easy Rider, released two years earlier.

Innocent bikini bystanders.

Murder by Cello.

Cello can fight.

True musicians can fight like mad.

However, this movie has more in common with Crown International's Trip with the Teacher (also available from Millcreek Entertainment) than its better-known road trip movie.

Both Crown International films share the same crude production values, sadistic motorcycle goons, and shocking ending.

While Easy Rider is about the trip, we find none of that in Wild Riders, which takes us from a desolate Florida execution of Pete's girlfriend to the Hollywood Hills during the title sequence.

I can sum up the problem here in four words: not enough bike riding. A few more chase scenes, biker parties with naked chicks, or even a shootout with the police, and I might have gotten on board with this little sleaze fest. But, they blew it. I totally get that they had a very low budget to work with, but this wasn't the way to solve that problem. In spite of this, I highlight Alex Rocco's performance as a mildly retarded reprobate. 

Here's the movie trailer: