"Roller Boogie"(1979)d/Mark L. Lester

An hour and forty-three minutes later, to say that the prodigious section of my blood pump reserved unrequitedly for former child star Linda Blair had just been rigorously tested, would be more of an understatement than the following: Joseph Merrick, or 'The Elephant Man', was a curiously-shaped individual.After having scored nominations for an Academy Award and two Golden Globes(fittingly) for her portrayal of Regan MacNeill in The Exorcist(1973), Blair spent much of the rest of the seventies and early eighties assailing her once promising film career with lunkheaded decisions, bizarre romantic pairings, nude pictorials, and even narcotics possession and distribution charges at the tender age of eighteen,  but some things are just unabridgedly unpardonable, baby.Take this movie, for example.Whenever you see footage of the  boardwalk on Venice Beach, California in a movie or on television, there's a good chance you'll spot one or two jackasses rollerskating by, and much of the reason there aren't more of these goons-on-wheels lies sandwiched between the disco-fueled credits here.Together with Skatetown, U.S.A.(1979), and Xanadu(1980), which featured many of the same rollerskaters as tonight's production, Hollywood moved forward with it's next new craze as the once-popular disco scene had pretty much worn out it's national welcome by decade's end.Packed to the brim with nuthugger shorts, Mork suspenders, satin baseball jackets, and more feathered haircuts than Kristy McNicholl's fourteenth birthday party, Boogie plays like a longer, less likeable Annette Funicello beach movie from the sixties, with less Annette and more gay guys on wheels with their nuts hanging out.

Another ten or fifteen minutes just like this might have made it all worthwhile.
We open with what looks to be the entire population of Venice Beach boogieing about the boardwalk on rollerskates, as we're introduced to Bobby James(Jim Bray), the resident phenom on wheels, as he skates to work with his cartoonish pals, Phones, Hoppy, and Gordo(I'd name the actors here, but you really don't care who they are, trust me).Meanwhile on the other side of the tracks in Beverly Hills, we see Terry Barkley(Linda Blair) , the foxy, young concert flautist, decked out in her foxiest Danskin-wear for a ride to the beach in her convertible 1978 Excalibur Phaeton Series III with her  snobbish top-heavy pal, Lana(Kimberly Beck).Bobby spots Terry and is instantly smitten with the affluent rollerskater, who coldly spurns his romantic advances while hiring him to teach her how to skate well enough for the upcoming "roller boogie" contest.You know, I just bet these two are gonna end up terrific friends who thwart some local mobsters trying to close down the popular disco roller rink that everyone boogies at, just in time for the big contest, which they'll win in the end, despite their grossly different tax brackets.I dunno, call it a hunch.Back at the palatial estate, Mother(Beverly Garland) expresses her wishes that Terry skips the roller boogie contest, accepts the slapstick-heavy courtship of cooch-grabbin' upper-crust twit, Franklin(Christopher S. Nelson), and enrolls in Juilliard."But mother," she pouts, like the lost member of Alvin and the Chipmunks."I'm a musical genius...what a drag!What a bummer!"Mother simply doesn't comprehend how cool it is to rollerskate backwards on the boardwalk in a pair of short shorts that shows off your camel toe with a poor man's teenaged, metrosexual Eric Roberts by your side.Damn you, generation gap!

"But mother, I'm a musical genius...what a drag! What a bummer!"
Terry apologizes for having been a spoiled, manipulative cunt to Bobby over breakfast, cuing a lengthy outdoor montage of the duo refining(perfecting is a strong word when your dance partner keeps busting her ass on the pavement) their routine for the big contest.The club owner, Jammer Delany(Sean McClory), is leaned on to sell his place by unscrupulous businessman, Thatcher(Mark Goddard), who happens to be legally represented by Terry's father(Roger Perry).After Bobby's friends destroy a classical musical recital at the Barkley residence(All you rich fucks into the pool!) and Thatcher's henchmen chase Bobby and Terry all over the city in a thrilling, stunt-filled car v. rollerskate chase(wait, wasn't Terry a novice skater like, a minute ago?Oh, nevermind.) while Bobby's black buddy, Phones, momentarily joins the Hare Krishnas for whatever reason, Bobby finds a drunken Jammer passed out in the dj booth at the club, and decides the best medicine for the stressed-out owner, is an elaborate solo skate routine.Makes perfect sense.Phones records Thatcher threatening Jammer on his tape recorder, negating the roller rink sale, then it's roller-groovy, roller boogie contest time.Terry and Bobby win the trophy afterall, then share a bittersweet goodbye, as she gives him the trophy before setting off  for New York City, while he prepares for the coming Olympics, determined to win a Gold for the U.S. in, ummm, rollerskating, I guess?

I have no idea what the fuck's going on here, nor do I want to.
As the story goes, Canadian actor David Kennedy was replaced as the male lead when his real life romance with Blair fizzled during the production, leading the filmmakers to use a stunt double, amateur rollerskating champ, Jim Bray, instead.Besides the two or three months his Eric Roberts-esque grill was plastered all over candy fap for teenaged girls, like Tiger Beat, upon the film's release, you'll no doubt remember him...in...yeah, nothing.Blair allegedly developed bursitis in her hip from all the Danskin-clad ass-busting she did on skates for the production, to which I say, we're still not even, Linda-baby.A sore hip simply doesn't compare to the grotesque imagery depicted on the screen and forever seared into my memory.I just hope you guys appreciate the lengths I go to keep you entertained here at the Wop, and the irreparable damage sitting through crap like this has, no doubt, caused me.Screening this one silently, with some Electric Wizard blaring through your speakers as you ogle the adorable Blair as she rolls groovily through inane dialogue and uninspired love scenes might get you all the way through this one, but I doubt it.One Wop.

Incendiary romance was never like this!Seriously, it never was.

"Friday the 13th:The Final Chapter"(1984)d/Joseph Zito

Let's see,where the fuck were we...which brings us to the fourth installment of the wildly popular Friday the 13th series,which was billed as the final movie(yeah,if you bought that for even a New York minute you're greener than Carl Spackler's Kentucky bluegrass/Maui Wowie hybrid)and with a stellar b-cast and FX goremeister Tom Savini called in to finish off the monstrous mongoloid murderer he helped to create,stands as many genre fans favorite of the lot.I know,as someone who had made the trek to the theater for every film thus far,I was willing to let the shoddy bygone of Part 3 in 3D be just that,giddy at the possibilities as I awaited the theatrical release.And if this were still 1984,and you asked me which Friday was my favourite,I'd have told you,"The original,AND the Final Chapter" with the same bold snobbishness you've come to know and love.The problem is,it ain't exactly 1984 anymore,and I'm not that same teenager who walked around with visions of Savini-crafted head explosions dancing in my head.Sure,I still enjoy watching tonight's entry on occasion,especially since the recent special edition was weighed down with tasty extras that included all the rushes of Terrible Tommy's uncut kills,something I would have snuffed out a few unfortunate bastards for a glimpse of back in the golden era.Maybe I'm just being a dick(what else is new)about it,but besides the glorious effects and some of the cast(one nutbag in particular),the whole production is pretty wafer-thin.Not that I'm expecting Exorcist-level chills from the third sequel to a series that was shallow to begin with,but other than the aforementioned highlights,this is pretty standard(translation:average)stuff indeed.Even as such,it stands as one of the better entries in the series,for sure.And compared to parts V,VII,and Jason Takes Manhattan(THE worst of the lot by a country mile),this movie might as well be the friggin' Godfather Part II.

"Sit and spin,Jenny Craig!" rhetorts the tubby ride-thumber(Bonnie Hellman).
One day removed from the chaos of the events that would come to be known as "Friday the 13th Pt.3 in 3D",paramedics and law enforcement officers are trying to tidy up the crime scene of unsightly corpses at Higgins Haven,one of which happens to be the hydrocephallic harbinger of hockey masked hate,Jason Voorhees himself,dead from a barn lynching and a right good whack upside the headpiece with an axe.At the Wessex Morgue,Axel and Morgan,the resident doctor and nurse,find out the hard way that he,in fact,isn't.One surgical saw throat slash/head twist and eight point buck-level gutting later,our resident rambunctious retard is making his way back to Crystal Lake.It's a good thing nobody's planning a decadent weekend of drugs,sex,and partying there.Oh wait.Six teenagers have rented a house for the weekend on Crystal Lake.Probably not the best idea in the world by now,but who can argue with the folly of youth.They pass a chubby banana-munching hitchhiker who gets throat-skewered with a knife after flipping them the bird for not picking her up.Upon arrival they meet Trish(Beck)and Tommy Jarvis(Feldman),who live next to the rental house.Tommy is a bespectacled young horror fanatic who enjoys showing off monster masks and animatronic heads that he's made for lack of a normal social life or father figure.Methinks it's a different Tommy altogether doing the showing off,but I digress.The group also befriends a pair of oversexed twins,Tina and Terri(what's with all the T's,man),and before long a skinnydipapalooza ensues at Crystal Point.The Jarvis's car beaks down,but the siblings are helped by a mysterious hiker named Rob,who's kind of tentative about his being in the area.Let's see,that's Paul,Sam,Sarah,Doug,Ted,Jimmy,Trish,Tommy,Rob,Tina and Terri.How many of these names would you bet on still breathing oxygen by the final reel?Yeah,me neither.

Jimmy(Crispin Glover):From a dead fuck to fuckin' dead with one chop.
Sam(Aronson),apparently unfulfilled by the afternoon's nudity,goes midnight skinnydipping and gets impaled through a raft.Her boyfriend Paul goes out to join her,getting his Moby Dick harpooned in the process.Terri leaves the party prematurely,earning her a spear in the back.Jimmy(Glover),the "dead fuck",dances like a spaz,bottoms out in Tina,and gets a corkscrew rammed into his mitt,and his grill bissected horizontally by a meatcleaver.Tina gets chucked two stories out an upstairs window.Ted(Monoson),a cocky fuck whose annoying personality("Wanna give Teddy a kiss?"repeatedly,while holding a Teddy bear)even rivals Shelly from Part Three,gets stoned and watches antique stag movies before getting knifed through a projection screen in the back of the dome.Doug and Sarah share a shower-based aquafuck before Doug gets his face smooshed against the wet tiles by a vengefully retard strong hand.Sarah gets an axe-thrown-through-the-front-door-and-buried-into-her-sternum.Jason should have tried out for the Hayward lumberjack competition in Wisconsin.Meanwhile at the Jarvis residence,Trish and Tommy find their muddah missing,so they enlist the help of Rob,who,in a revenge-laden twist that'd make the Shaw Brothers blush,reveals that he's the brother of Sandra from Part Two on a manhunt for Jason,once again.While Jason is introducing Rob to the Grim Reaper,Tommy does a slapdash makeup job on himself based on Rob's newspaper clippings to resemble twelve year old Jason who drowned in the lake because...okay,I have no fucking idea myself.The hellspawn in a hockey mask terrorizes the boy and his sister,and in a boffo finale gets his head half-hemisected by his own machete,then hacked into haggis when the boy notices movement in the downed waterhead.Trish hugs Tommy,while he visits her later at the hospital,and the boy gives a disturbed look directly to the camera which ends in a telling freeze.You know,I'll bet this wasn't the last Friday the 13th movie afterall!

Sam(Judie Aronson)displayed her hams,gams,and clam as she swam.Now she's damned.
For those keeping score,my favorite piece of screen decoration this time around is Judie Aronson,who also worked in Weird Science,American Ninja,and more recently,Hannibal.She still looks pretty good,too.Director Zito,whose prior work included genre fave,The Prowler,went on to direct longstanding viral internet joke Chuck Norris in Invasion USA and Missing in Action,his most successful movie.Corey Feldman has enjoyed a long career in b-movies when he's not haunting horror conventions across the country(and throwing dead hotel room parties,so the story goes).The always uber-bizarre Glover has been touring his self-produced headscratcher of a trilogy,where his co-stars are usually retarded,in blackface,or a Shirley Temple doll in nazi getup.Crispin Hellion Glover,what are we to do with you.Peter Barton went on to a recurring role in housewife tele-crack,Young and the Restless.Last American Virgin Lawrence Monoson is still highly active in television to this day.In closing,the effects are peerless for their time(especially uncut),there are some memorable performances by some of the cast,and that's enough to make this one of the better unlucky Fridays you could sit down to watch.The Final Chapter dances spastically around the living room to a scale rating of two wops.

Jason's(Ted White) facin' a brutal erasin' as Tommy(Feldman) hacks his ana-tomy as revenge for his mommy.