"Meatballs Part II" (1984) d/ Ken Wiederhorn

Remember everything that made Ivan Reitman's 1979 summer camp classic, Meatballs, such a good time? Forget about finding any of it here, in the first of many awful, name-only sequels, as piloted by the guy who brought you aquatic nazi zombies in 1977's Shock Waves. Soap (1977-81) co-stars Richard Mulligan and Hamilton Camp are reunited as rival head counselors, with names like John Larroquette, Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens, Misty "Hee Haw" Rowe, and Kim Richards (insert lustful eyes/wolf whistle/cat call right here) as the choicest piece of teen eye candy that this miserably unfunny mess has to offer, all vainly jockeying for laughs. The original had Bill Murray's frenetic party-based humor while he was arguably at his very best, while Part II boasts of ...well, John Mengatti levitating in a dress and the sorriest-looking alien since Badi : Turkish E.T (1983).


Notfahnuttin', but....eyyyy-yo, fahgeddabouddit, awready.
As Albert the bus driver (Paul Reubens) races a kid in a rocket wheelchair to Camp Sasquatch, his bus is stopped by police cruisers, who dump off "Flash" Carducci (John Mengatti), an Italian punk troublemaker who's forced to C.I.T. as terms of his community service. Coach Giddy (Richard Mulligan) runs the show at Sasquatch, amid forty-something counselors who can't seem to find a place secluded enough to fuck, teenage girls giggling about penis jokes, and a young alien dropped off for the summer by his Jewish-sounding parents via flying saucer. Across the lake is the aptly-named Camp Patton, a militaristic unit headed by the cartoonish Col. Hershey (Hamilton Camp) and his effeminate Lieutenant, Foxglove (John Larroquette), where the kids wear camo fatigues and stab dummies with bayonets.


My favorite moment in "Meatballs Part II", far and away.
When Hershey sells the lake property to a group of American Indians, Giddy is forced to bluff, claiming some Hare Krishnas are looking to buy his Camp, leaving both men to settle their differences through the "Champ of the Lake" boxing match between the camps. Giddy wants the street smart loner Flash to don the gloves for Sasquatch, and he's stereotypically reluctant until he notices the virginal Cheryl (Kim Richards), who's never even seen a boy's "pinkie" yet. There are midnight flashers, cockblocking grizzlies, jibber-reefing aliens, and a semi-retarded guy named Boomer gets dusted up by little kids packing brass knuckles. It all comes to a head during the fucking ridiculous boxing match between  a cross-dressing Flash (it's Larroquette's dress) and Patton's representative, the cross-eyed, raw steak-eating Mad Dog (Donald Gibb), who gets K.T.F.O.ed with the otherworldly help of little Meathead the Alien (Felix Silla) who saves the day for Camp Sasquatch, before getting picked up, you know, in the saucer. I assure you I didn't write that with a straight face.


"Elmore Tibbs! It's me, Burt Campbell! Why is Dan Fielding looking at me like that?" 
Tammy Taylor, who plays Kim Richards' girlfriend here, can also be seen in 1979's Don't Go Near the Park. Comedienne Elayne Boosler scores a brief cameo, while Flash's paisan, Ralph Seymour, you'll remember was memorably run through at the crotch by mutant hillbillies in Jeff Lieberman's Just Before Dawn (1981). Jason Hervey of Wonder Years fame turns up as one of the little rugrats, too. The delectable Kim Richards would follow this role up with Tuff Turf the following year, and we'll be looking at that one somewhere down the road, as well. The schizophrenically stupid Murray-less sequel to a Bill Murray hit movie, a teenage sex comedy without so much as a bare boob (or an honest laugh), Part II barely manages to rustle up a single Wop on the ratings scale. Less fun than getting poison sumac on your undercarriage.


"Can you use telekinesis to open the outhouse door? Paul Reubens has been locked in there all morning."

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"(1974)d/Tobe Hooper

If you ask horror aficionados which movie tops their list of the greatest of all-time,chances are,the vast majority will cite tonight's entry(OR one we'll be looking at sometime next month)as the granddaddy of 'em all.Few films can boast of capturing real,honest to goodness terror within their frames,but if any have ever done so,this one has.So effectively,it would seem,that former college professor and director of tonight's feature,Tobe Hooper,has never been able to live up to it,or escape from the shadow of it.Even Gunnar "Leatherface" Hansen learned early on,that taking a girl to see his exploits on the big screen probably isn't the world's greatest idea for a first date(Lamberto Bava's Demoni(1985) was always my movie of choice,as many of you women lucky enough to have dated me out there can attest).Loosely based on the handiwork of the "Butcher of Plainfield",Wisconsin's infamous serial killer,Ed Gein,and inspired by the growing brutality of the changing culture of the seventies and governmental falsehoods heaped upon the unsuspecting populace.It stood as the single most successful independent film ever made,until Halloween dethroned it four years later.
My first exposure to tonight's review dates back to the pre-rental days of video,when twenty bucks of my allowance was spent buying a grainy unlabeled bootleg out of the back of a black van in Edwardsville(no lie!),and upon being popped into my eight hundred dollar wood grain top loader,instantly became a regularly watched favorite of me and the boys,with deadpan imitations of Edwin Neal and Jim Siedow not an unusual sound around my house.I can't remember ever seeing broad daylight so effectively used to evoke harrowing feelings of terror the way Hooper does here.And when the sun goes down,well that's another story.The finale has got to be one of the most memorably maddening experiences ever committed to celluloid,drawing reserved reviews of praise from critics and moviegoers alike.With a brilliant pre-credit sequence delivered by John "Night Court" Larroquette(!) scrolling upwards,nothing could have prepared us for the most bizzare crimes in the annals of American history that were to follow...

The Hitchhiker(Edwin Neal) sure knows how to break the ice on awkward van rides,or head cheese,Polaroids,gun powder,straight razors,and you.
Sally(Burns)and her yappy invalid brother,Franklin(Partain),drive across the state of Texas on a sweltering summer day with Jerry(Allen Danziger),Kirk(William Vail),and Pam(McMinn) in a van to investigate recent news reports of grave robbery and corpse defilement in state cemeteries,and see if their grandfather's plot is among those that have been tampered with.On the way to a family property with a much needed swimming hole afterwards,the group stops to pick up a weird hitchhiker(Neal)along the road,who leeringly rambles about his family's history as slaughterhouse workers,the pros and cons of bolt gun steer execution,and his brother's head cheese,before taking Franklin's pocket knife and slicing his own palm open with it.He then takes a Polaroid of the fat chatterbox on wheels and demands five dollars for it.When Franklin declines to pay,the hitchhiker blows the picture up with a small pile of gun powder,and cuts Franklin's forearm with a straight razor before being forced out of the van,and giving half hearted chase,kicking the vehicle and giving the terrified youths raspberries.They stop at a gas station,where the proprietor(Siedow) tells them he's out of gas,then feeds them his own barbeque.They decide to drive ahead to the Hardesty property,returning to the gas station after the fuel truck makes its delivery.After arriving at the abandoned house and discovering the watering hole has dried up,Kirk and Pam decide to walk to a nearby house and ask the residents for gas.After disgusting his girlfriend with a human tooth he finds on the front porch,he goes inside,only to have the bejeezus clobbered out of his domepiece with a sledgehammer by a hulking retard in an apron,wearing a human skin mask.When Kirk doesn't return,Pam enters and stumbles into a room mobbed with piles of animal and human bones,some of which have been fashioned into garish,macabre furniture.As she tries to escape,she is chased down and dragged back inside by the lumbering murderer(Hansen),and slammed onto a meathook,where she is forced to watch as Leatherface perforates her dead boyfriend with a smoking chainsaw on a table in front of her disbelieving eyes.

Betcha didn't read this in your horoscope,Pam(Terri McMinn)!
As the sun begins to set upon the Hardesty house,Jerry sets out to find Kirk and Pam,who've never returned from their attempted swimming excursion.After finding their blanket outside,Jerry enters the neighboring house,only to discover a half dead,bluish Pam inside a freezer,before getting brained by Leatherface's mallet.As night descends on Sally and her brother,they take a lone flashlight into the thick brush in attempt to find their friends.As Franklin calls out their names,he's interrupted by Leatherface,who springs out of the blackness,bissecting him in his wheelchair with his revving chainsaw to the horror of his screaming sister.Sally runs from the squealing monster,unwittingly into the killer's house,and is greeted upstairs by the inert remains of an elderly couple propped up in easy chairs,before jumping out a second story window,and running the entire distance to the gas station they'd visited earlier,with Leatherface close behind.The cook reassures the hysterical girl at first,but then clobbers her with a broom handle and hogties her in a sack,throwing his acquisition into his truck and driving off into the night.Outside the house,he picks up the hitchhiker,and then chastises he and his younger brother,Leatherface,for what he's done to the door with his chainsaw(!).Inside,Sally comes to,to find herself in the middle of an ongoing nightmare,bound to a chair made of human bones,at a dinner table surrounded by bickering,hooting and hollering cannibals.Leatherface has donned a mask made of a girl's face,and appropriately applied makeup to it,before he and his brother fetch their elderly,vampiric grandfather(John Dugan) to kill the girl,as he was,afterall,the best killer there ever was.They hold the screaming captive's head over a metal apple barrel,but the ancient psychopath is too weak to wield the mallet,and drops it repeatedly.While they bicker back and forth,Sally manages to free herself and jump through a window.As she runs,the hitchhiker sweepingly slashes her with his straight razor,but unknowingly strolls into the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler,which runs him over and kills him.Leatherface attacks the truck cab,but the driver throws a monkey wrench,hitting him in the head,buying Sally enough time to jump into the flatbed of a passing pick up truck.She giggles hysterically,in shock,as the sight of a furious Leatherface,angrily spinning swinging his chainsaw in circles in the middle of the highway,gets further and further away.

Leatherface(Gunnar Hansen) gives a Poulan-derived STFU to mouthy cripple,Franklin(Paul Partain).
Tonight's entry spawned several sequels,a terrible Michael Bay remake,and a subsequent prequel,none of which ever recaptured the greatness of the original(big surprise).Hooper followed it up with Eaten Alive(1977),Salem's Lot(1979),The Funhouse(1981),Poltergeist(1982),Lifeforce(1985),Invaders from Mars(1986),and the first sequel in 1986(all of which range from decent to excellent),before falling off big time.Burns,the lovely Pennyslvanian,played Linda Kasabian in the tele-picture Helter Skelter(1976),and genre fare like Hooper's Eaten Alive and Future Kill(1985).Neal has worked steadily ever since in films and television in everything from Power Rangers to Nick Palumbo's excellent Murder Set Pieces(2004),and is a real pisser to talk to.Hansen has also kept busy in mosty genre fare,with roles in Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers(1985) and the aforementioned Murder Set Pieces on his impressive resume.You can find most of these rascals at horror conventions on a lucky weekend.We depart the classics for now and set our sights back on the familiar shores of mediocrity in July,with an occasional masterpieces thrown in for good measure,as usual.TCM stands as either number one or two of all-time,depending on my mood at the time of query,and for that impressive status,a perfect scale rating is bequeathed upon it,and a full recommendation from your(not so)humble N...

Sally(Marilyn Burns),up to her glutes in piles of animal and human bones,wonders where her hosts buy their curtains.