R.I.P. Dick Wagner

                                12/14/42 - 06/30/14

"Roadie"(1980)d/Alan Rudolph

Tonight we'll examine director Alan Rudolph's 1980 silly-but-sweet kitchen sink rock n' roll/romantic comedy starring the plus-sized crooner Meat Loaf as an unlikely leading man playing a handy beer truck-driving Texan named Travis, who's never left his county and is suddenly thrust into the sex, drugs, and concussion-inducing headbutts that come with being a roadie for rock bands, when he falls in love with a sixteen year old would-be groupie with dreams of losing her virginity to Alice Cooper.I'll let you re-read that premise, as written by a guy named "Big Boy"(Medlin)(sounds more like a Ted Nugent script to me...ba dum bum) and let it sink in properly.I never cared too much for Meat Loaf's theatrical brand of eight track pop music(apart from the tracks that he did vocals for on Nugent's 1976 "Free for All" album , and even then, ehhh...) and I wasn't a big fan of Rocky Horror, either, but I still must've seen this one twenty-five times or more on pay cable in the early eighties.Fleshing out the dated cinematic corny-copia are Kaki "Porky's" Hunter as Travis' underage love interest, Lola, Art "Honeymooners" Carney as Travis' slovenly southern paw, Don "Soul Train" Cornelius as a memorable record company bigwig, and performances by the likes of Blondie, Roy Orbison, Hank Williams, Jr.(my least favorite of the III, by far), and ol' Hard-Hearted Alice before the end credits roll.Throw in some quease-worthy BBQ rib-smackin', a redneck wedding, car chase/wrecks, and midgets in satin baseball jackets and you've almost got the complete picture.The story goes like this...

There's more than 17 g of fat on a serving of this Meat Loaf.
We meet electrical whiz-cum-beer truck driver, Travis W. Redfish(Meat Loaf), as he's picked up for work by his best friend, B.B.(Gailard Sartain), amidst some heavy duty comedic gooberage from his father, Corpus(Art Carney) and sister, Alice Poo(Rhonda Bates). During the ride, the good ol' boys encounter music mogul Mohammed Johnson's(Don Cornelius) broken down tour bus on the side of the highway, where Travis spots Lola Bouilliabase(Kaki Hunter), a teenaged beanpole groupie along for the ride, for the first time, and readily agrees to help them get roadworthy with some MacGuyver-esque tweaks.Lola turns on her Olive Oyl charm and convinces Travis to drive them to a Hank Williams, Jr. gig in Houston that night, while B.B. covers for him with the beer delivery route.At the gig, Travis sets up the equipment in record time, gives an angry hayseed a charging headbutt, develops 'brainlock', a condition where he mindlessly spouts gibberish until he gets beer in him, and causes a highway pileup after taking the wheel of Mohammed's limo and spurring on a police chase and roadblock.The mogul touts the hefty young long-haired redneck as the "world's greatest roadie", using his growing affection for the underaged groupie to con him into working for Johnson on tour.Back home, Corpus, Alice, and B.B. receive a postcard from Travis, in the middle of sloppily chowing down on some BBQ ribs.One of the grossest things I've ever had to watch, sauce-faced Art Carney smacking his lips like a backwoods glutton next to a trout-mouthed broad like Rhonda Bates, whose yap is equally saucy.

C'mon, where else are you gonna see Don Cornelius doing the 'Funky Chicken' in a cowboy hat?

Lola confesses to Travis that she plans to lose her virginity to Alice Cooper when the tour lands in New York, while he harnesses electricity from manure to power a Blondie gig where Debbie Harry belts out a Johnny Cash cover.He goes to dinner with the band, but when Lola cockblocks with a band of midgets in satin baseball jackets, it's a food fight, alright.Debbie leaves with a black midget, and Travis vows to get Lola to New York to make her groupie dreams come true.In the Big Apple, Travis barges in on an Alice Cooper soundcheck, fixes the band's sound, and earns a tour bus to drive back to Texas for B.B. and Alice Poo's wedding in, while Lola gets the royal treatment she's been dreaming of, eating a posh dinner with Alice and his constrictor, and watching him perform "Pain" front row and center.Of course, after the obligatory hootenanny at the Redfish wedding, Travis and Lola reconcile and take to the road together in the tour bus, their romantic interlude abruptly interrupted by a damaged spaceship in need of Redfish's technical ingenuity.Hurr-hurr.Cue:Cheap Trick "Everything Works(If You Let It)".Roll credits.

Debbie Harry plays the beer bottles as Travis(Meat Loaf) gets his stationary 'Swim' on.

Of course, I've got roadie tales of my own, having taken to the road with The Business and Dropkick Murphys on their '96-'97 tour, rich with wild nights of drink, drugs, football thugs, acoustic hospital bedside serenades, and ample groupie-hopping to boot.Snorkels were brung, full sacs were emptied, but that's another story for another time, kiddies.Scale-wise, Roadie earns two Wops, and hey, two outta four(ain't bad).Okay, I think I've exhausted all my Meat Loaf-related jokes for the time being, at least until I start covering the Masters of Horror series here.Some day, I'm sure.A light, enjoyable late seventies time capsule that's worth a look now and then.Check it out.

She asked me why the singer's name was Alice, I said, "Baby, you just wouldn't understand..."

"Prince of Darkness"(1987)d/John Carpenter

Where the strings of classics ended for director John Carpenter is arguable,for sure.Some say its before tonight's entry,some say afterwards.Whatever camp you might have your tent pitched in,you gotta admit,Darkness is a pretty ambitious effort.I think there's only one glaring fault with the film that keeps it out of classic territory,and that's the special makeups in the finale.They're just not all that special.If Carpenter had hired one of the sick and talented fucks like Rob Bottin out there that could have realized a more frightening vision than a jam-faced broad in pajamas.In fact,I hate that effect so fucking much,I'm gonna avoid screenshots of it altogether,despite the fact they'd provide me the opportunity to shit all over it the way it deserves.I'm gonna go so far as to say that the jam-faced broad in pajamas is the precise point Carpenter's work started steadily turning to soft bowel movements,finally hardening into a full toilet bowl yule log/German fetish gold by Ghosts of Mars(2001).
The rest of the movie is pretty choice.The screenplay,written by Carpenter under the pseudonym 'Martin Quartermass',a tribute to the late Nigel Kneale's fictional character, Professor Bernard Quartermass, is frightening on a cerebral level.Every shot is framed beautifully in the tradition and style we've come to expect from Carpenter dating back to Dark Star(1974).The cast is thoroughly solid from Victor Wong as Professor Birack down to Donald Pleasance as Father...Loomis,ahem.Jameson Parker is even pretty good as the lead moustache.There's no noticeably smoking brawdz on board,because,well,they're collegiate physics students,ferchrissakes.The percentage of those that find their way onto Girls Gone Wild:Cabo Wabo is lilliputian,you can bet on it.A very choice movie indeed,I just wish they'd...well you know where I was going again there.

Spare some change for the guy behind "Look at You Over There(Ripping the Sawdust From My Teddy Bear)"?.
Professor Birack(Wong)is invited to a rundown Los Angeles church by Father Loomis(that's right,Loomis),the newly appointed keeper of the key,a position in a forgotten secret religious sect known as the "Brotherhood of Sleep" that stands guard over said dilapidated parish,for in the basement,captured in a large vessel,and held prisoner for thousands of years...is the Devil himself,who has spent an eternity,circularly swirling and glowing inside,sort of like the lava lamp that didn't catch on,what,with ultimate evil in puddle form inside.Birack gathers both his colleagues in science and technology and the best of his quantum physics students to scientifically prove once and for all that Satan exists in the real world, growing in strength with every passing day,and unscrewing the lid of the vessel from the inside,all the while negatively influencing all lesser forms of life around him,like ants,worms,and Alice Cooper.On board for the extra credit weekend from Hell,are students Brian Moustac...uhh,Marsh(Jameson Parker,who you won't remember from Simon & Simon,since nobody watched that fucking show):kind of the human equivalent of Wonder bread,Cathy(Lisa Blount):a flame-headed fuck machine whose morals break down nightly on a sub-atomic level,Walter:a wisecracking Asian version of Mr. Chicken,Kelly:blonde non-factor plain Jane who unwittingly impregnates herself with Satan after bumping the corner of some computer equipment(it could happen),Dr. Leahy(Peter Jason),who brings bouncing fruit on two fingers while smoking and imitating a trumpet with his lips to this gathering of analytical minds,and various other electro-geeks and math-nerds,not excluding Thom "Murray RIPTIDE Bozinski" Bray,to really fill out that who's who of people with nothing better to do this weekend.Science?Satan.Satan?Science.

Lisa Blount stars as carrot-coiffed Celt-cooze(thanks,Phe!),Sleeps O'Round.
Lisa fucks out Brian for the price of a cup of coffee,(god,I miss the sluts of the Reaganomics era)then we settle in for the investigation and subsequent unholy rebuttal by Lucifer.Some stumblebums under evil influence shank the kee-rist outta one of the team,after which the dark lord and master puts him back together into a hand puppet using live beetles,The Coop runs Murray Bozinski through on a bike frame(at his suggestion and right outta his live show),and inside the church,Ol' Scratch drips upward to the ceiling,occasionally firing unholy water in a psionic blast into the team members' unsuspecting mouths,turning them into zombies.The closer everyone is to the vile vessel,the more frequently their dreams are invaded by a tachyon broadcast from the future where a hulking dark figure emerges from the same church.Meanwhile,the priest and Birac formulate a scientific/holy theory that if there's a God,there must also be an Anti-God,who's just as powerful,and much less likely to help blind people to see.Kelly undergoes a weird metamorphosis after her bump where her whole body undergoes remarkable physiological changes(translation:her skin becomes patchy with a jam-like substance),ultimately transforming her into the titular Prince himself(who's apparently cool with walking around as a jam-faced broad in pajamas).After more members succumb to the Satanic Super Soaker yap-squirt,only Marsh,Birack,Loomis,Cathy,and Walter stand in the way of Satan pulling Anti-God into the human dimension through a full-length mirror(an earlier attempt with a compact mirror fails.Silly Satan.).Just before Satan can lend his father a hand,Cathy selflessly sacrifices any future nights of getting bottomed out by random mullet-headed guidos,and gives Satan a shoulder tackle into the mirror that would give Barnaby Jones a full mast erection.The mirror smashes,trapping Satan,Anti-God,and Cathy on the other side.That night at home,Brian's sleep is interrupted by a tachyon broadcast from the year one-nine-nine-nine,but instead of the ominous dark figure emerging from the church,this time it is Cathy.He wakes up in a puddle of sweat,then turns to his own bedroom mirror,reaching out,his fingers mere millimeters away from the reflective surface...

Give that thing a phattie bowl and glass pull-up carb,blast some Sabbath over the loudspeakers and we're talking epic partyage.
Carpenter followed this up with They Live(1988),which we'll dissect here very soon,also a pretty solid movie in its own right,that sadly didn't slow the overall quality descent that followed.Parker was spotted most recently on Jag(did anyone watch that show either?WTF),while the late Wong will be remembered for such titles as The Last Emperor,Bloodsport,and Carpenter's own Big Trouble in Little China.Sadly,Lisa Blount,a rad actress who played a similarly ruthless and memorable bitch in An Officer and a Gentleman,passed away a little over a month ago at the age of 53.Her character,Cathy Danforth,is a paen to Jim Danforth,who did matte work on this production,and is legendary for his stop-motion work of the sixties and seventies.Donald Pleasance would continue to portray the OTHER Loomis in inferior Halloween sequels up until his death in 1995.All jokes aside,this movie delivers the goods on a number of levels,it's smart,creepy,funny at times,and is a good time when you throw it in every once in a while.On the scale,Darkness reaches into the mirror and pulls out three wops.Choice.

Wilt Chamberlain transmits from the future a horrifying message,indeed:The mullet and porn stache are doomed,and NOTHING will save them!

Monster Dog(1985)d/Claudio Fragasso

Let the record show that I'm a huge Alice Cooper fan from waaaaay back.Some of you out there may have already gathered that from the review I did of The Nightmare last October.His legendary career spanning some forty years is overbrimming with dizzying highs and nauseating lows.Unfortunately,tonight's entry definitely falls into the latter category.After two stints in rehab nearly pulverized his musical legacy,by 1984,hard hearted Alice found himself at the bottom of the bargain bin looking up.With his albums being panned,the shock rocker turned to genre writer/director Claudio Fragasso for a film vehicle that would draw the brakes on his plummeting skid towards mediocrity.Not a good move,Coop.Luckily his collaboration with the man responsible for such non-classics as Rats:Night of Terror,Zombie 3,Hell of the Living Dead,and Troll 2,wasn't the final nail in Alice's artistic coffin,as he bounced back the following year with a successful heavy metal reinvention of his musical persona,and even scoring soundtrack work and a few cameos in some genre films,while this Spanish production thankfully sank into a quagmire of forgotten z-grade celluloid trash.Drawing positives from this mess,the two songs "Identity Crises" and "See Me in the Mirror" he provided for the soundtrack,though unavailable on any albums(save for the superior boxset "The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper"),are excellent.Sadly,the rest isn't appetizing to even a mangy,starving mutt.

Sometimes I'm...a dead ringer for Bob Cratchett?
Vince Raven is a top tier rockstar(played by rockstar-on-the-downswing,Alice Cooper,and badly dubbed by someone who is obviously NOT Alice Cooper)returning to his hometown to shoot a music video with a small crew in a conversion van,like so many of the biggest celebrity musicians were doing in the mid-eighties(cue eyeroll).Only,Raven's hometown holds few good memories for him since his father was afflicted with a rare heart disease that caused him to not only fly into a primal rage,but display characteristics of lycanthropy(!),ultimately getting him brutally eighty-sixed by the superstitious townfolk.After maneuvering the seventies vehicle through what seems like an eternity of atmospheric dry ice...err,umm...fog,Raven is stopped by the local sheriff and deputy who warn of a ravenous pack of wild dogs that have killed several times already,then break his balls about both his crazy rock n' roll,and his crazy daddy that they had to murder years ago.Further on down the soundstage...uhh,err...ominous night road,the van hits a dog,and when Raven's crew gets out to investigate,they stumble across a bloodied senile lunatic who's patterned himself a little too closely to Crazy Ralph from the Friday the 13th series.Dogs,wind,moon,death...whatever you say,claret chin.When they finally arrive at the mansion,it is barren,with no sign of Joss the caretaker to be found,save for some sandwiches he has made,and a "Welcome Home Vince" banner.Pull out all the stops for the rockstar.

"¡Le todo condenan!" says Crazy Ralph's Spanish cousin,twice removed.
After some momentary visions of Vince in werewolf makeup that makes The Werewolf(1956)look like The Howling(1980),the crew's attempt at shooting a gothic video in the mansion is interrupted by Joss's lifeless body crashing through an upstairs window and onto the terrified leading lady.Raven,still decked out in his slightly embarrassing video duds and makeup sets off to look for whatever did in his shaky handed malt-maker.While he's gone,a carload of scruffy local rabble pull up outside the mansion,looking like extras in a Leone western rip-off,and vowing to plug the rock n' roller fulla holes,and free the town we never get to see from the grip of moon-based mayhem.At this point,the pack of wild dogs lay siege to the huge house,led by what looks to be nothing more than an oversized Mardi Gras-style papier mache' head,and brutalizing both vigilantes and video crew alike.When it looks like curtains for Sandra(Victoria Vera),Raven's girlfriend/video director,who's barricaded herself in a room,Vince shows up out of nowhere,and mysteriously the dogs cease their attack,and lie at the two survivors feet as they tip toe out to safety,where Vince is clawed by the titular giant head before blasting it,and revealing through off-screen metamorphosis that the werewolf was....drumroll...the bloody geryatric whackjob.Raven,now caught up in the throes of the curse,pleads for Sandra to shoot him before he transforms into something unintentionally silly,and luckily,she does just that,as he languishes in mid-sub-par,south of the border change-o-head transformation.Bloodied and exhausted,the female survivor stumbles off,almost looking like she's been raped(she's not the only one who feels violated,believe me),before a reprise of Raven's earlier video takes us to credits.Thankfully,it's all over.

Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately,Alice?
If you can get past the fact that very little happens for long periods of time...arond ninety minutes worth,to be precise,and a hokey script full of corny speeches like:"Oh, bullshit,Vince!The year 2000 is just around the corner. I am a recognized expert in electronic videos and you are the hottest rock n' roll star... in the world! You're making records, videos, movies ... on high-tech electronic equipment of fantastic sophistication. You can get on a plane tonight and be in Australia tomorrow. And you're scared of werewolves.",you might just get a few kicks out of this.Alice Cooper treads dangerously close to wooden cigar store indian territory with this performance,and face it,if you're a rockstar in real life that can't convince people you're a rockstar on the big screen...you're pretty much effed,buddy.The effects are piss-weak,the supporting cast is relatively uninteresting,and the pacing is bound to have you yawning and looking at the clock on the wall repeatedly.I can't recommend this to anyone,save the hardest core Cooper completists.


...More like papier mache' dog.

Alice Cooper:The Nightmare(1975)d/Jørn Winther

This television special cemented the Coop in my personal "Hall of People Who Will Remain Cool Forever"(visit it the next time you're on the Blackhorse Pike between Philly and Atlantic City) back in 1975,and it's easy to see why.Giant cyclops,black widow spiders,dancing skeletons,witches submerging the Coop into a simmering cauldron,the legendary Vincent Price tying the whole theatrical production together with his inimitable hammy interludes;it was like Christmas for a creepy little six year old kid like me.The original Alice Cooper band had called it quits the year before,and the "Welcome to my Nightmare" album was Alice's premier solo effort,backed by Bob Ezrin's Hollywood Vampires,and an ambitious concept album it was,overbrimming with bombastic orchestral pieces and incendiary guitar riffs in the same four bars.So naturally when it came together as an ABC special that fateful April 25th,1975,yours cruelly was glued to the big woodgrain floor model television in our living room.

A nocturnal vacation,unnecessary sedation...
The Coop is Steven,in the midst of a terrifying(maybe if you thought "Cats" was terrifying)nightmare.He is led through by the "spirit of the nightmare" as aptly portrayed by maestro Vincent Price,who pulls our rock hero around on a short leash(!).Alice performs "Welcome to my Nightmare" in a signature top hat,then is poked and lowered into a bubbling cauldron by a witch and her cronies as he sings "Devil's Food".He then tapdances with skeletons through "Some Folks" before slowing it down with the ballad "Only Women(Bleed)".In between songs,Price reminds him that everything he sees and experiences are creations of his own mind,and that he will be fine...so long as he reminds himself he cannot escape.

She's cool in bed...yeah,she oughta be,cos Ethel's dead.
Out of a refrigerator comes Alice's dead lover, (Cold) Ethel,who dances around a frozen stage as he sings to her.Price then shows the Coop his spider collection,becoming sidetracked when he comes to Lycosa Raptoria,the Black Widow,which Alice sings as he's harrassed by dancers in goofy black widow costumes on a giant spider web.The nightmare becomes nostalgic,as Alice rides a merry go round to the tune of "Years Ago".He's then superimposed over his own newspaper clippings and magazine articles as he sings "Department of Youth".He reprises "Years Ago",then sings "Steven" and "The Awakening",before harkening back to the Love it to Death album for the memorable track "Ballad of Dwight Frye" which he croons sinisterly in trademark strait jacket.The show ends with "Escape" and Alice being chased by a giant cyclopean monster with a spotlight eye,and Price's minions dragging Steven out of bed back into the nightmare to strains of "The Awakening".

The bedroom is only a temporary safe place from nightmares...
This Emmy winning special never gets old to me,but has yet to be released on DVD,lucky fans having had to pick up the VHS or Beta(!)tape way back in 1983.The Coop has always been a master showman,and here he shines amidst his own creepy theatrics for the tv audience.The producers had Alice change the "Man's got his woman to take his seed" line for youngsters watching at home,but Cooper has always been notorious for flubbing his own lyrics live so it doesn't really matter anyway.If you can get your hands on this classic,do so,as I bestow upon it,my highest rating:

Man has ruled this world as a stumbling,demented child-king LONG ENOUGH!