"Alice, Sweet Alice" (1976) d/ Alfred Sole

Amid chants of "Oh, B.W., you apropos motherfucker!", I give you Alfred Sole's best movie, a religion-based period slasher full of atmosphere that's set in his hometown of Paterson-friggin'-New Jersey, of all places, here at the Wop on the holiest day of the week. Nevermind that this, like Romero's original Night of the Living Dead (1968),  turned up as one of those vhs titles that suddenly flooded the Halloween market of every cheap department store in all sorts of dollar releases back in the nineties, what we have on our hands is no less than a competent giallo-esque study in brutal violence and shocking death of Hitchcockian proportions that stands as one helluva white knuckle ride, at any damned price.


"Two communion wafers?? God candle-strangles those who help themselves to His body in gluttony!"
Catherine (Linda Miller) really has her hands full with her two daughters, Karen (Brooke Shields), a whiny little princess about to receive First Holy Communion, and her older sister Alice (Paula Sheppard), a schizophrenic bully who keeps cockroaches as pets in a jar in the basement and terrorizes her sister in a yellow raincoat and translucent Ben Cooper-style mask. Naturally, when Karen is violently rubbed out with a votive candle then set ablaze inside one of the pews (...talk about overkill)  by someone in that very same ensemble, accusatory eyes all fall upon Alice, who just so happens to have her sister's veil stuffed in her pocket as her sister's smoldering body is screamingly discovered. The case for her innocence is not helped much when her zealous Aunt Annie (Jane Lowry) gets shanked up in the building hallway, by someone wearing the aforementioned weird disguise. Catherine's ex-husband, Dom (Niles McMaster), returns in time for his daughter's funeral, decides to stay until her killer is found, and is later lumped up with a pair of bricks, hogtied, and chucked face first into some empty liquor bottles from a high window for his troubles.


"I thought she was self-assured,  and I really like that in a person...'til I saw her smoking in a bench compartment. Blew my whole image of her."
Meanwhile, the adolescent Alice is being pawed by the landlord, Mr. Alphonso (Alphonso DeNoble), a morbidly obese cat food-devouring egghead freak, the local pervo detectives are ogling her pubescent tits, and she's locked away to be psychoanalyzed, to boot. It's only when her father turns up smooshed in a back alley, with Karen's missing crucifix necklace lodged in his throat, that she's begrudgingly crossed off the list of murder suspects, to the horror of Aunt Annie, Alphonso, and most of Patterson, New Jersey, it would seem.When Alice is released, she abruptly dons the suspicious costume and gives her pet roaches a shore leave pass on a sleeping Alphonso's massive midsection, just as the real killer, in identical garb to Alice's, is sneaking into the building, to add Catherine to the growing list of victims. Aghast at his new pudge pouch-passengers, Alphonso lumbers screaming into the hallway, in time to bump into the killer, who perforates him full of air holes with a sizeable butcher knife before escaping into the street. The nearby detectives spot the suspect, sans mask, and set up a dramatic sting during Sunday mass in a wild finale that'll leave you well satisfied, after all is said and done.


"Butterfingers! That's not the Cuneiform bone, that's a metatarsal...it's my turn to operate!"
Paula Sheppard would also turn up in Liquid Sky (1982). This Linda Miller happens to be Jackie Gleason's daughter, not the blonde dip with the annoying voice that Toho Kong had the hots for in the sixties. Besides this movie, Sole also helmed a porno, a softcore outing with Vanity and makeup fx by Rob Bottin, and that fucking Smothers Brothers movie that shall not be named aloud here within the hallowed walls of the Wop. It's a shame, too, because he really displays an excellent grasp of the medium here, his effort worthy of mention in the same breath as some of my favorite countrymen in the genre, and not that far a cry from, dare I say, perhaps Hitchcock himself, if he were having the rarest of off-days?  Only having you on, this guy directed Pandemonium (1982),  ferchrissakes. Still, tonight's entry is very good, so see it. Three wops.


"I belieeeeve in miracles! Where ya from, you sexy thaaaaaang?"

"Rituals" (1976) d/ Peter Carter

Just when you thought it was safe to tuck the entire mutant redneck sub-genre off to sleep for twenty years or more (I'd be cool with "or more" by now), along comes this grimy little early survival horror entry from our pals in the Great White North, reminiscent at times of Boorman's Deliverance (1972), and Lieberman's Just Before Dawn (1982), which came over a half decade later, but I happened to see prior to tonight's review, also released ten minutes shorter, as The Creeper in 1977. Hal Holbrook of  The Fog (1980) et al, takes center stage here, along with the film's producer, Lawrence Dane, though the real star of the picture is the dense-then-desolate Ontario landscape, intensifying the harrowing feeling of isolation that steadily grows amid the main protagonists throughout, in this obscure Canadian shocker.


"Who's Jeffrey Dahmer and why is he throwing us a 'Stag Party' ?"
We're introduced to five doctors as they embark on their yearly vacation, backpacking fifteen miles into the wilds of Canada this time around, with a destination called the "Cauldron of the Moon" by local Indians, as the optimum fishing spot for six days free from humanity, before they're picked up by the plane that dropped them off. Almost instantly, things go wrong, as all five men's hiking boots are lifted right under their noses from their campsite on the first night. D.J. (Gary Reineke) volunteers to hike off in the direction of a hydroelectric dam up river, to find help, while the others are left to bicker among themselves, smoke pot, fondle blow up dolls, and drink excessively. Except someone or something has left a stag's headpiece, freshly skewered on a bloody stake, as a grim memento. The remaining campers, shaken up by the experience, decide to follow D.J. towards the dam, but  someone hurls an enormous beehive bursting with angry bees at the men like a shrapnel grenade, killing Abel (Ken James) in the process, before the treacherous foam of the rushing rapids hides crippling bear traps, which leave Martin (Robin Gammell), D.J.'s gay brother, unable to even stand on his own.


"I'm only on the edge of my seat because I've been crucified to it..."
Forced to stretcher a burdensome and steadily worsening Martin through impassable forest and a rocky waterfall, Harry (Hal Holbrook), a Korean war vet who cut off his alcoholic father, and Mitzi (Lawrence Dane), are driven past the point of breaking, snapping at each other, as they stumble upon Abel's head on a stake in the same manner as the stag, with x-rays dated from the World War II era attached to it. The doctors surmise that whoever is responsible for their predicament is exacting vengeance upon them for what terrible maltreatment they've suffered at the hands of other doctors in the past. Soon the overgrown forest becomes a burned out, post-apocalyptic landscape, with sheer rock faces set against a dreary sky. The men come upon the dam, which has long since been abandoned, looking as though it had been bombed out during the war. D.J.'s battered body, barely clinging to life, and impaled to a chair, is also discovered, and Harry is forced to put the dying man out of his lingering misery with hands that are accustomed to saving, not taking lives. On a far off plateau, the silhouette of a man is seen, watching intently...


Tune in next week on "Fucked Dynasty" when Cousin Zeke will show us how a burst roadkill 'possum can feed twenty-five of your nearest and dearest kinfolk...
Peter Carter you may remember as the director behind The Intruder Within (1981), an Alien-inspired made-for-tv ripoff. He's truly inspired here, with some exemplary use of atmosphere, cinematography, soundtrack, and solid acting performances from the cast to whip together a slightly disturbing, though mostly bloodless and altogether boobless ride (you're only kidding yourself if you're expecting a gore-drenched bloodbath from a Canadian film made in 1976), rendered obscure by poor distribution (maddest props to the folks over at Code Red for the definitive dvd restoration and release, to date) , that's sure to satisfy genre fans looking for something that's different, yet the same... much like Cheech and Chong's band uniform concepts, I guess. To me, the whole experience was excellent, indeed, genre movies the way they used to make 'em. Three wops, and a strong recommendation. See it!


...followed by Wicker Man, M.D., check your listings for details.

"The Firm" (1989) d/ Alan Clarke

You thought the British football hoolie movie reviews were over, are they fuck? Tonight's, in particular,  is Alan Clarke's take on the subject, a 1988 made-for-television affair starring a mustacchioed, maniacal Gary Oldman at his fanatic and frenetic best, and Philip Davis, who you can't have yet forgotten directed I.D., our previous football hoolie movie review, as his ponytailed, motor-vandalizing rival with a toothy grin. Interestingly, Oldman's on screen wife, Lesley Manville, was also his first wife in real life, leaving her thee months after his son Alfie was born, the same year Firm was debuted. Oldman leaned on his friend in Pennsylvania four years later, when he checked himself into Marworth, in Waverly Township (!),  for alcohol abuse. Twenty minutes away from my old place, you could have gone on the piss-up of your life, Gar, you daft cunt. In any case, on to the footie...


"You let a ponce with a pony tail do your motor." grumbles Dad.
Bex (Oldman) has got it fucking all, boys; a cushy gig selling real estate, a loving young wife and toddler son who can already say "Piss off!", a nice car, and nice flat...but he's still regularly beckoned to return to his parent's place, where his old bedroom is wallpapered with footie and newspaper clippings, and a hidden suitcase full of tools for clobbering blokes violently about the head and body, is tucked away in the wardrobe. He's the head of a firm called the I.C.C., or Inter City Crew (based on West Ham's infamous I.C.F.) that regularly butts heads (Bexy gives 'Manchester Kisses' to just about everybody, for any reason, the darling.) with a rival firm, the Buccaneers, as led by uber-blonde Yeti (Philip Davis) who's not only got the bottle to trash expensive cars and petrol bomb them on I.C.C. turf, he also sports Wayfarer sunglasses and a dork knob, on purpose. Bex is so obsessed with payback, that he fails to notice his infant son brushing his own gums with a Stanley knife while he's organizing future aggro on the phone. While his wife doesn't half understand her husband's need for "the buzz", his Harp-slurping father is on board, one hundred fifty percent, even taking Polaroids of the tooled up crew for them and encouraging his son to "go 'round and kick the bastard's head in", like he used to do, in his heyday.


"I'm nicknamed after a fictitious Himalayan snow beast.", quips Yeti (Philip Davis).
Bex dreams of the rival crews all united under a national banner, taking legendary bovver to all of Europe for the 1988 Championships, but a full-on war is escalating between them for leadership, with property vandalism, tile-cutter slashed faces, back alley scraps, and pry bars, sledgehammers, and baseball bats all being utilized to their full destructive capacity. While Sue (Lesley Manville) pleads with Bex to end the insanity, as he's not a common bootboy or thug, but a thirty year old man with a family, he refuses to listen, desperate to maintain order in his crew, even if it takes violence, and desperate to maintain the "buzz" that he can find nowhere else in his life. Ultimately, Bex and company descend on the Buccaneers' home pub with baseball bats, and bash the fuck out of everyone, whether they be a hooligan or an innocent woman having a pint a'. Having had the embarrassing fuck kicked out of him, Yeti surprisingly pulls a shooter and puts a fatal one into Bex. Later, we see representatives from all three crews drinking together, and remembering their late chum Bexy, whose untimely death has united them into the national firm that he'd always dreamed of...


"We need a commemorative bovver-ready Polaroid, don't we, lads?", shouts Bexy (Gary Oldman).
Initially, critics held mixed feelings about the violence in Clarke's film, as per usual, though it's widely acclaimed as a cult classic, and perhaps the most honest cinematic representation of football hoolies in Thatcher-era Britain, and after digging my region 2 copy out of the ol' library for the first time in a decade or longer (Cheers to Nigel of IFR), I'm not a disbeliever in that notion, by any means, and don't believe I ever have been, for the record. It's a brief but powerful work, thick with tense energy, conducted by a volatile performance from Oldman, at the top of his craft, three Wops and a strong recommendation may have never been an easier call than this. Still enjoy I.D. a bit more though, personally. It's gotta be the mustache.


"Where you blag that fucking shooter? The fucking Imperial War Museum North, in Manchester?"

"Bluebeard" (1972) d/ Edward Dmytryk, Luciano Sacripanti

 Sometimes, when an actor has truly "made it", as legendary British star Richard Burton certainly had by 1972, having snagged five Oscar nominations for 'Best Actor', and one for 'Best Supporting Actor' by 1970, he gets the opportunity to perform in as grandiose a chunk of seventies Eurosleaze as tonight's review, while surrounded by no less than eight of the most beautiful women in the world at the time. You've got Marilu Tolo, who'd appeared in Mio caro assassino(1972), Virna Lisi, who'd go on to appear in Lucio Fulci's Zanna bianca (1973), Karin Schubert, who'd turned up in Enzo Castellari's Gli occhi freddi della paura (1971),  Agostina Belli, who also show up in Giorgio Ferroni's La notte dei diavoli (1972),  and topping it all  off (for me, anyway) there's Nathalie Delon, Raquel Welch, Sybill Danning, and Joey Heatherton. For proper perspective,also try to remember that Dicky was going home to Elizabeth Taylor when shooting wrapped. Poor devil...


"This chaise makes my ass sore. Do you mind if I lay on my Belli?", asks Agostina.
Kurt Von Sepper (Richard Burton) is an Austrian WWI pilot, big game hunter, and member of the aristocracy, his bluish beard, well admired by all his nationalist chums, while his overactive appetite for a wide variety of strikingly beautiful women leads to each lovely's respective demise at his judgmentally murderous hands, in Bava-esque, giallo-licious ways.At least until the American pixie, Anna (Joey Heatherton), with true love in her eyes, comes along. She gives her new husband a pass after stumbling upon an old cleaning woman brushing the hair of the corpse of his dead, mummified mother. Stumbling into a secret freezer full of dead wives, on the other hand, she finds much harder to forgive. Von Sepper regretfully informs his enthusiastic spouse that she's joining the gruesome display and going on permanent bye-bye's before the sun rises, but she cunningly buys herself time by hearing extensive confessions to all of her husband's previous crimes first.


I'd say five Hail Marys, two Our Fathers, and an Act of Contrition for a swig o' the wine outta Magdalena's (Raquel Welch) tabernacle.
Through flashbacks, Greta (Karin Schubert) gets "accidentally" shot on a hunt after threatening to reveal the true extent of a war wound he'd received, then Elga (Virna Lisi) gets rubbed out by guillotine over her incessant warbling,  while Erika (Nathalie Delon) is a virginal model whose bedroom inexperience forces Kurt to hire a prostitute (Sybill Danning) to school her in the art of lovemaking. When the girls get too sleepover-y for his proper taste, it's the rhino horn chandelier for both of them. Magdalena (Raquel Welch) is a nymphomaniac-turned-nun whose constant flow of graphic carnal confessions earn her an asphyxiation in a nearby casket. Brigitte (Marilu Tolo) is a gun-shootin', hangbag puntin', bundle of feminism whose mile wide masochistic streak leaves Kurt no choice but to extinguish her. Then there's the brattish Caroline (Agostina Belli) who also doesn't make it to the final reel. A guy who couldn't hit it off with any of this crumpet'd have to be impotent...like Kurt is, surprise, surprise. What ensues, I'll leave you to experience for yourselves.


"I understand the 'milk,milk' paht, dahling, it's when you go 'round the corner that confuses meh."
For the perverted section of Woprophiles out there (hopefully every last one of you!), all of Burton's co-stars put their fleshy wares on full display here, save for Raquel Welch, who looks just as fine in a nun's habit as she does in a bathing suit, any old damned way. The soundtrack, by maestro Ennio Morricone, is top shelf, as always, full of allusion and character. While we're on the subject of moods and maestros, the film's atmosphere is notably thick with the brightly colored influence of  Mario Bava, the artificial bodies lending an air of dark humor about the production, as well. Bluebeard isn't perfect, but there's more than enough beauty in front of the lens, and behind it, as well, to make this a highly enjoyable screening, and a three Wop score sounds reasonably fitting. Equally artsy and exploitative, see it.


"What, no Francoise Pascal or Christina Lindberg?!!?", begs the Baron (Burton). 

"The Death Wheelers" (1973) d/ Don Sharp

I remember the Media VHS of tonight's review under it's original title, Psychomania (1972), one of the earliest releases on the format if my memory serves me correctly, before a sudden flood of unlicensed bootlegs of much grit and grain turned up in supermarket bins everywhere for a buck (much like Romero's Night of the Living Dead, which I bought  Media's release of, way back when, for fifty bucks.), one Halloween season. Of course, I'd dug this idiosyncratic tale of biker gangs and the occult for ages beforehand, having seen it numerous times during its run as a late night television staple back in the seventies, the ideal venue for the production, really, since it doesn't offer the boobs or blood as a PG feature that rivals Hammer would have slathered an X certificate film with.


"Try licking his back...It's very groovy, indeed.", notes Shadwell (George Sanders).
Tom Latham (Nicky Henson) is an interesting chap, to be sure. When he's not terrorizing people and causing traffic accidents with his motorcycle gang, the aptly-named "Living Dead",  a surprisingly posh bunch who all have names like "Chopped Meat", "Gash", and "Hinky" (of course, there's also a Bertram thrown in for good measure), and skulls and crossbones painted on their helmets to go with the usual diabolical leather clobber and chains you always see that lot wearing, he's grilling his frog-digging, psychic mother (Beryl Reid, as a "large medium", you might say) for the secrets to immortality that are seemingly locked away in his late father's study. After nearly blowing his cool in said study, he learns that eternal life can be achieved by simply committing suicide and believing that you'll return afterwards. He does just that, and is buried on his motorcycle(!), which he uses to dramatically burst free from his earthy grave, finally a patch holder with the real living dead.


Meanwhile, somewhere in Italy, Michele Soavi nodded approvingly.
Once the rest of the gang gets a load of Tom's new kicks: mass murder, as evidenced by the lifeless bodies he's been leaving in his wake, even busting them out of the nick by killing the attending guards and bending the cell bars, Hulk-style(!),  they all decide to join in his shenanigans by snuffing it in different, creative ways: one by skydiving, one by chain-weighted drowning, one swan dives off of a busy traffic overpass, etc., except for Tom's reluctant bird, Abby (Mary Larkin) whose stubborn refusal to die really gets up her late boyfriend's nose. He drives his bike through a brick wall, later giving her the lover's ultimatum: Die, or I'll kill you. Sounds reasonable. Tom's mother, shamed by her son's lust for power and appetite for destruction, uses her superior black magic skills to transform the rotten lot of them into stone pillars before Abby's disbelieving eyes.


"May a nearsighted nonce mistake yer hemorrhoids fer cherry tah-matoes, ya deuce-in-a-pail!"
Sadly, this would be apex British cad George Sanders' last movie, as he committed suicide in 1972. Beryl Reid, you may remember from 1970's Beast in the Cellar. Ann Michelle was no stranger to genre films, herself, appearing in things like 1972's Virgin Witch, House of Whipcord (1974), and even Cruel Passion (1977) with Koo Stark. Nicky Henson, who also appeared in 1968's Vincent Price vehicle, Witchfinder General, would turn up opposite David Niven in the comedic Old Drac/ Vampira (1974). I think the film's strength lies in the odd, witchy vibe it surrounds itself in throughout; its well-deserved cult classic status stemming from the film's black sense of humor as much as the bikers' far out skull-helmets, which must've struck an immediate nerve with audiences at the time, especially during the impressive foggy slo-mo in the title sequence. On the scale, Wheelers scores an impressive three Wops and comes highly recommended. Add it to your collection, sharpish.


Suddenly, Tom (Nicky Henson) was petrified at the thought of immortality.

"Revenge of the Cheerleaders" (1976) d/Richard Lerner

Anybody that can't get a few cheap kicks out of a good vintage teenage sex comedy from the seventies is either dead inside or harbors some deep-seated resentment towards young people having a blast a la Dennis the Menace's drape neighbor, Mr. Wilson, that old fuddy-duddy. High school serves as a good diving board towards embarking on a lifetime tour as a partying wildman from Borneo if you play it the right way; my only regrets are that I didn't pull more shit back then than I did. Had dimepiece genre chicks like Rainbeaux Smith, Penthouse Pet Helen Lang, Jerii Woods, Patricia Rohmer, and Susie Elene gone to my school, I probably would have thought about dosing the coffee pot in the teacher's lounge to score some pom-pom poonany, but at my school, it wouldn't have affected most of the drug addict bastards one bit! Or so I heard...


You German readers see anything in this screen cap you like?
 At Aloha High (Cali, Hawaii, what's the difference), you can pretty much do whatever you want, maaaan. The school maintains a constant anarchy and healthy buzz thanks to it's cheerleading squad (Lang, Woods, Pohmer, Elene, and Smith in the latest stages of pregnancy possible), who spend their days getting high, fucking, and lazily executing corny choreographed disco dance numbers with the rhythmically-challenged "Boner" (Hasselhoff) and the basketball team, when they aren't infiltrating rival school Lincoln Tech, holding the students hostage with a fire extinguisher while robbing them of their narcotics and booze, leading to the inevitable altered states cafeteria food fight (I was never a big 'food fight' guy, always found that kinda gross)/ mid-day bubble bath gym shower orgy with state inspectors in attendance, no less.


So that's where the peanuts in a CMP sundae come from...
Now that you've stopped pissing yourself laughing at the care-free hijinks that would get you expelled/prosecuted/jailed (in that order) in today's era of fake tolerance, let's get to the meat of the story. Except, it's more like a pink meat paste substitute, in this case. A greedy land baron by the name of Hartlander (William Bramley) has his beady eye set on Aloha, with plans to bulldoze it and turn it into one of those awful shopping malls, and worse, his ambitions will force a school merger with the rival gearheads from Lincoln. To speed up the process, he even contracts out Aloha's evil nurse (Eddra Gale) as a spy/ kidnapper, who abducts their beloved principal, leading to the inescapable chase sequence in and out of the massive dinosaur sculpture in the Cali desert that you last saw in Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985) and some ambitious spatial reasoning leads to the consequential Bronson Caves, which just so happen to lead to Hartlander's mall HQ. Of course, they save the day in the end, and a parting shot reveals Heather is no longer pregnant, proudly holding her newborn son for the cameras (Smith's real-life son, Justin). Awwww...


"Heaven smells kinda salmon-y..."
It's become pretty trendy for everyone to get their cheap jollies by shitting on Hasselhoff for his early "work" (I say work, because his scenes are pretty much an endurance test for anyone who happens to be watching) here, as though "Knight Rider" and "Baywatch" were the equivalent of Master-fuckin'-piece Theater, ferchrissakes..."Drunk Floor-burger" is the best thing the guy's done, IMHO. Let's not forget a memorable appearance from Carl "McHale's Navy" Ballantine as the most easy going school principal ever committed to celluloid. Still, all the softcore-level promiscuity (there's a sequence between a pair of cheerleaders and a boy scout in the woods that pushes the envelope on that assessment, if you're wondering) and wanton full-frontal nudity in the world can hardly mask the technical ineptitude of tonight's cheapie, a one Wop flick if there ever was one, but then again, nobody's sitting down to this one and expecting Casablanca.


My favorite Rainbeaux in the spectrum, obviously.

"Heavy Traffic" (1973) d/ Ralph Bakshi

April jumps off the drawing table here at the Wop with another Bakshi review, in Heavy Traffic, his X-rated follow up to the popular and successful Fritz the Cat a year earlier. Gone are the trippy, anthropomorphic animals that audiences had grown accustomed to, and in their stead, real human characters facing the tribulations of life on the streets of the big city. Of course, tackling such a risky, personal project meant legendary clashes with the producer; leading to Bakshi actually being locked out of the studio along the way, as a disgruntled Steve Krantz searched for replacement directors, until Samuel Z. Arkoff threatened to pull all funding for the film unless Bakshi was re-hired. In the end, I'm sure the inner turbulence got laughed off by all over the bubbliest of champers, as Traffic's ambition and gritty realism were rewarded by both, the box office and critics, alike. While Tarantino gives PDA's to Hey Goodlookin' (1982), and Ralph often cites Coonskin (1974) as his own favorite, ol' Wop is here to tell you that tonight's review tops his list of Bakshi's cinema work to date, though nobody's ever asked me that question either. What are you afraid of? I only bite occasionally...


"Michael! Twiggy's on the phone, she says you ought to be a good boy and return her hairstyle to her, ASAP."
Life as an underground comic artist in the big city is like being a pinball, as Michael (Joseph Kauffman) can attest to, as the twenty-four year old unemployed virgin son of a doting, nipple-slipping, Jewish mother (Terri Haven) and a shamed Italian father (Frank DeKova) with mob ties. Michael is constant mediator to their violent and abusive domestic quarrels when he isn't trading cartoons of a legless bouncer named Shorty for drinks from his favorite bartender, a together young black chick named Carole (Beverly Hope Atkinson). After a transvestite prostitute named Snowflake takes some gay knocks for hoodwinking a burly drunk on Carole's shift, she finds herself jobless and on the receiving end of unwanted charity from the enamored cripple, forcing her to cozy up to Michael in a hurry. This sudden pairing draws the scorn of a rejected Shorty and more racial venom from dad, Angie, who's generously enlisted the skills of a girthy Sicilian prostitute named Rosa to deflower his son, in between pistol-whipping his wife's face in, leading the impromptu young couple to vacate the premises for greener pastures...


I faced similar obstacles finding my way back to Cowboy X's van in a Phish show parking lot back in the nineties.
In an attempt to raise funds for a California move, Michael pitches his unusual comic strip to a gravely ill executive, providing only disappointment when the mogul turns his toes up before he finishes, while Carole's stint as a taxi dancer ends abruptly when a fortuitous panty flash kills an elderly customer. Back at home, Angie turns to the Godfather to put a hit on his disgraceful son, but the Don refuses, claiming his gripe is personal, not business. The jilted Shorty makes the scene, gladly accepting the contract in the end. Meanwhile, the lovers have resorted to crime, with Carole turning to prostitution and Michael choosing cold-blooded murder, as he bashes in the brains of one of her tricks in a fleabag motel room, but as they walk out together, they're surprised to see Shorty, who pulls his burner and pulverizes Michael's skull with a single, slow motion bullet. Top that, Walt Disney. A bizarre, psychedelic montage of disturbing imagery leads the viewer back into the live-action world, where we see Michael angrily tipping a tilted pinball machine over and storming out of an arcade, only to bump into Carole, who, after some brief unresponsiveness, takes his hand and dances us into the end credits.


"Alright, you win! Helen Reddy is better than Anne Murray!!!"
Jamie "Klinger" Farr of M.A.S.H. fame has a blink-and-you'll-miss-him non-speaking cameo in the live action sequence during the final reel. The fantasy sequence set to Chuck Berry's "Maybelline" experienced some censorship, with the tamest of three versions making it into the final X-rated cut of the film. I'd like to see the other two someday. The folks at Shout Factory, always at the top of their game, released the definitive 40th Anniversary Blu-ray last year, so there's no legit excuses as to why this one has no place upon your shelves. On the scale, Traffic naturally receives a perfect score of four Wops; a thought-provoking, visually dazzling masterpiece that comes with my highest recommendation. See it!


J.F.K.? Cobain? Dwyer? I give up already, I'm just no good at charades.