"Thank God it's Friday"(1978)d/Robert Klane

Long before "Thank God it's Friday" became an end of the week mantra for the work-weary or the name of an overpriced restaurant chain with servers decked out in more pins and badges than an eighties voc tech student's jean vest, it was the title of this particular movie, a disjointed tribute to dance culture of the 1970s that probably unwittingly drove the last nail into disco's coffin instead.Growing up smack dab in the middle of said phenomenon, I have to admit, I haaaaated disco as a grade schooler, having already sold my soul for rock n' roll around the time Donna Summer first felt love.Of course, being faced with the improbable mess that is today's pop culture has me nostalgic for most things seventies these days, including some pumping disco tunes of the era, as evidenced by all the boogie fever one might encounter should my 70's mp3 mix fall into their hands.I'd first forced myself all the way through tonight's movie in the cable box days, hoping to glimpse some sexual situations or a stray boob while my parents were changing guardwatch on protecting my innocence, and of course, I ended up hating the fucking thing, and even hating myself a little for sitting through it.
So, last week, while zooted at the bar and challenged to scribble down some movies for the Netflix queue, I decided to give this one another look, thinking my judgment might be less harsh the second time around, thirty-plus years later.It just so happens that Friday is a cinematic atrocity, less a movie than a series of unfunny vignettes involving headache-inducingly annoying characters whose grating personalities are only matched by their atrocious, dated seventies fashions, with appearances by funk/soul outfit Commodores and disco diva Donna Summer not helping matters at all.Also sinking with the spinning mirrored ball and tacky polyester slacks here are Berlin's frontwoman, Terri Nunn, Mews Small, who you'll remember as Jack Nicholson's lady friend, Candy, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest(1975), John "The Wanderers" Friedrich, Debra "Officer and a Gentleman" Winger, and lanky schnoz Jeff Goldblum as a Porsche-driving, disco owner/lothario.Think about that for a second.

Columbia's Torch Lady loves the nightlife and has got to boogie on the disco rooooooound, oh yeah.Wait, what?
After watching an animated version of Columbia's logo disco dancing(!), we're introduced to lots of characters, all tied together by an LA discotheque called "The Zoo", none of them particularly interesting.Tony(Jeff Goldblum), the owner, looks like a Jewish Tony Manero after being stretched on a rack and/or starved half to death, trying to put the moves on a young married woman with a Dorothy Hamill hairdo named Sue(Andrea Howard), who's looking for some fun with a half-buttoned top, and win a money bet with the DJ, to the dismay of her uptight accountant-husband, Dave(Mark Lonow), who, in turn, is being fed various drugs and re-dubbed "Babakazoo" by a dental hygienist-in-a-bright-red-Chaka-Khan-lookin' wig named Jackie(Mews Small), in attempt to loosen him up and get his boogie on.Then there's aspiring singer, Nicole(Donna Summer), who just wants to get up there on the miniscule stage and sing her little heart out, dammit.Frannie and Jeannie(Valerie Landsburg, Terri Nunn) are two high school girls trying to sneak their way into the club so they can win the dance contest and use the prize money to buy tickets to a KISS concert.Want more?Bobby Speed(Ray Vitte) is the first-time DJ copping radio airtime by booking Commodores to play the dance contest, only their equipment is in a van driven by "Wrong Way" Floyd(DeWayne Jessie), and that cat is m.i.a.!Jennifer(Debra Winger) is a new girl in town being shown the nightlife by her friend Maddy(Robin Menken) who warns her to stay away from creeps in polyester, before, you guessed it, breaking camp with a couple of polyester creeps herself.Carl and Ken(Paul Jabara, John Friedrich) arrive in a beat up VW convertible after toking a jib and smashing into Tony's Porsche.Everybody's smashing into the Porsche, get it?

"Yeah, Das Black Milk.Don't even try to tell me you've never heard of us..."
Add to the equation a couple of star-crossed computer dating misfits(she's a stiltish grade school teacher, he's a punchy fat garbage collector) and Marv Gomez(Chick Vennera), a guy who's only concern is "danseeng!Everytheeng else is boolsheet!", and who goes by the nickname:Leatherman.Sue recognizes Tony for the slimy shitbag liar he is, but her husband's preoccupied with Jackie, and banged out of his mind on drugs, judging by his mid-dance floor swandive onto a high trapeze holding a guy in a Tarzan costume, during which he accidentally removes the dude's loincloth with his head and takes a faceful of bare male ass before plummetting to the ground in front of his wife.Maybe the most unintentionally funny thing I've ever seen, rewound several times.Nicole finally gets her shot, sings "Last Dance"(Evidentally thirty years of not hearing that song hasn't warmed me up to it very much), and hooks up with the DJ.Frannie gets Leatherman to be her dance partner, and they win the prize money.Jennifer, a clumsy oaf as evidenced by several unfunny pratfalls throughout the production, stumbles into Ken(who's been taught to dance by Leatherman outside the club, through a clumsy and awkward solo disco dance sequence on the top of parked cars) and they hit it off.Carl, the nearsighted dork with the Jew-fro, ends up locked on a stairwell with one of Tony's scantily dressed throwaways.They boogie.Wrong Way finally makes it to the club with the instruments after having to pretend to play them over piped-in music to various police officers who keep pulling him over for speeding.Stop, you're killing me.The Commodores play a couple of songs while decked out in freaky astronaut costumes.Lionel Richie's 'fro is woofin'.So yeah, all's well that ends well, I guess.Except I'll never get that hour and twenty-plus minutes back that I just wasted.Get down, muthafuckas!

Possibly the least impressive dance choreography sequence ever filmed.Nice moves, jagoff.
You may have seen director Klane's other work, apart for his rejected Grease sequel("Greasier".I shit you not.), like Weekend at Bernies II(1993) and, uh, yeah that's it.After testing for the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars(1977), the ever-gorgeous Terri Nunn appeared on television a whole lot before singing "The Metro" with her aforementioned band.Chick "Leatherman" Vennera did voice work on Pinky and the Brain and Animaniacs.Andrea Howard also appeared in The Nude Bomb(1980).Jeff Goldblum, who got his start in Hollywood as "Freak No. 1" in Death Wish(1974), also scored genre work in movies like The Fly(1986) and The Fly II(1989), The Sentinel(1976), and the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.I'm actually surprised anyone involved here went on to have any semblance of a career in movies afterwards.On the scale, it earns a single Wop for that pisser of a stunt mistake above, and some of the soundtrack, perhaps.You'll do better reminiscing upon the booty-shaking decade elsewhere, I'm sure.Avoid like a post-show couch with G.G. Allin.

The only thing worse than accidentally smashing your face into some dude's bare ass during a stunt in a disco movie, is ending up here as a screenshot as a result.

"King Kong Escapes"(1967)d/Ishirō Honda

Burned into my childhood memories forever, thanks to WWOR channel nine's annual monkey day in the seventies and early eighties, and my mom's insistance in parroting every one of Linda Miller's lines as obnoxiously overdubbed by what sounds like Glinda the Good Witch on a sherm-blowing PCP bender(and my old man yelling at the screen from his couch,"Look at that!Goddamned fake shit!"), tonight's Japanese/American co-production is faketastic rubbery kaiju goodness from Eiji Tsuburaya, the gent behind the mint miniatures mauled medium-style by Gojira and countless other suitmated beasts, and the folks who gave us stop-motion classics like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Coming to Town.Sure, the shoddy Kong suit makes Willis O'Brien's 1933 stop-motion simian look like state of the art cgi, but as a little boy, this was must-see tv whenever it aired, no apologies to NBC'S Thursday night lineup in the nineties.Besides American model Miller's butterscotch locks and miniskirted gams on display, there's also Japanese dish Mie Hama, who appeared in King Kong vs. Godzilla five years earlier, as well as a turn as "Kissy" in the Bond film, You Only Live Twice(1967).Add to the mix long time television staple, Rhodes Reason, and Hideyo Amamoto(who goes by Eisei here) as Dr. Hu, the bad guy with even worse teeth, and you've got yourself a pretty good time in front of you.Coincidentally, Amamoto was dubbed by American voice actor, Paul Frees, who voiced Boo-Berry in the monster cereal commercials(second to Frankenberry, says I), among thousands of other credits.Onwards!

"A broken jaw-piece and a yap fulla soap suds?!!I'd like to see you try, motherfucker."
Carl Nelson(Rhodes Reason), commander of the UN submarine Explorer, is forced to stop off at Mondo Island when an underwater rock slide kiboshes the sub's engines while it searches for oil.Accompanying Commander Nelson are his XO, Jiro(Akira Takarada), and ship's nurse/gams, Susan Watson(Linda Miller).Nelson, a long standing "Kong" legend buff, doesn't have to wait too long to glimpse the massive simian, as he witnesses Kong square off against Gorosaurus with Lt. Watson daintily placed in a high tree as the grand prize.The apex ape makes short work of the dinosaur, snapping its jawbone and leaving it to lifelessly billow soap suds on the jungle floor.Kong instantly digs the blonde and understands her perfectly, so long as she speaks verrrry sloooooooowwwwly as she shouts condescendingly at him.Enter Dr. Hu(Eisei Amamoto), who's set up an arctic base around a huge deposit of lucratively destructive 'Element X', in between brushing his rotten teeth with candy, apparently.He's aided by Madame Piranha(Mie Hama), his liason with an unnamed nation that finds the concept of owning all the Element X a very sexy one, indeed.Hu has built a giant mechanical ape off of Nelson's stolen diagram to dig through the ice and snow and retrieve the mystery element, that somewhat resembles flashing lucite, but exposure to X short circuits the metal monster, and leaves Hu's designs dead in the water.Piranha is perturbed that the doctor has wasted resources from her anonymous country on metal monkeys(a crane might have done the trick instead), that is, until the dastardly duo hears news of Nelson's brush with the real deal on Mondo via press conference.

"Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal!" exclaims Dr. Hu(Eisei Amamoto).
As part of Hu's despicable plan b, he goes ashore on Mondo, puts hot lead in the labonza of an elderly native(read:Japanese painted orange), slips Kong a roofie, and kidnaps the ape to mine the ore out of the ice for him, through the power of hypno-lights.As insurance, he also kidnaps Nelson, Jiro, and Susan and throws them in a sub-zero dungeon until the blonde agrees to force the ape to dig with annoyingly slow shouting.Kong escapes the doctor's evil clutches and swims to Japan, while Piranha uses her groovy wardrobe to put the moves on Nelson, later helping he and his friends to escape, and catching a hot lead beatdown from Dr. Hu as a result.Hu sends his repaired Mechani-Kong to Japan to square off against the real deal in Tokyo, with Lt. Watson in tow as the two behemoths climb the side of the massive Tokyo Tower, where Kong sends his metal twin groundward with a well-placed kick in the chops, smashing the robot to pieces on the street below.Hu, realizing he's failed again, tries making a break for it, but Watson shoutingly convinces Kong to chase after Hu's ship, and, with percious little effort from the oversized gorilla, sink it in the harbor where it floats.Having had enough of what we humans foolhardily call "civilization", Kong swims back to Mondo Island as the protagonists watch from the distance, giving Watson the opportunity to annoyingly shout the ape's name several more times before the end credits roll.

"Just put your hand on it before you go below, is all I'm asking here."
The late yuck-mouthed Amamoto appeared in several kaiju films, from Matango and Atragon in 1963, Dagora the Space Monster(1964), Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster(1964), Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster(1966), and Godzilla's Revenge(1969), to his final appearance in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack(2001), before passing away in 2003.Director Honda sat in the chair for most of the genre's entries during the fifties and sixties, most notably Godzilla(1954), Rodan(1956), Mothra(1961), King Kong vs. Godzilla(1962), War of the Gargantuas(1968), Destroy All Monsters(1968), and Terror of Mechagodzilla(1975), though he arguably helmed 'em all, or at least, any worth seeing.Linda Miller would turn up the following year in The Green Slime(1968), and work with exploitation king Ron Ormond in the curiously named If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?(1971), an anti-communist, pro-fundamentalist rarity that I'm gonna have to snag a copy of, one of these days, dammit.Hama, the first Asian Bond girl, known as "the Japanese Brigitte Bardot", also bared it all in a Bond pictorial for Playboy in 1967.Toho studios would revisit their terrible Kong suit in 1974 tv show, Go!Greenman, as they did with many movie costumes that had become dilapidated with age, but fearing lawsuits due to expired licensing rights, called him "Gorilla" in the three episodes he appeared in.On the scale, Escapes earns a modest two Wop score, but is a lot more fun to watch than that, really, especially if you're in an altered state.Worth a look.

"Mechani-keezy up in da heezy fo' reezy.Whut uuuuup, bitches!"

"Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan"(1989)d/Rob Hedden

One time, back in 1982, my old man, overcome by anxiety and frustration, attempted a U-turn on the lower level of the George Washington bridge while driving us to a Tigers-Yankees game and somehow managed to get the car trapped on the shuddering concrete divider as bumper-to-bumper traffic pinned us there for almost two hours.My buddies giggled from the back seat as a steady deluge of racial epithets and vulgarities flowed out of my dad's mouth as the flash of non-courteous headlights shot past the '79 Impala windows, cracked open just wide enough to fill the Chevy with the stench of the Harlem River outside.Me, I just sat up front, pushing all of his buttons and whipping him into a snarling frenzy like some cornered Mediterranean wolverine facing the electric flash of an impending cattle prod until he finally managed to scrape down on the right side of the bridge.Adding insult to injury, we missed Detroit ace Jack Morris' start by one day in the rotation, leaving me to scream insults and abuse down at Howard Johnson from behind third base as the Tigers got whooped.It wouldn't be until eight years or so later that something New York-related left an even worse taste in my mouth, with the inevitable vhs rental(I'd stopped wasting money seeing them in the movies three sequels back) of tonight's legendarily lousy mess.
Let's give director Rob Hedden an iota of credit here, it's no easy task to craft a logic-oblivious, discontinuous, unintentionally hilarious cakehole as lame as this, the least successful(and least popular) of the series, is.Horror websites have been teeing off on this joke for years about its misleading title, which, for all intents and purposes should probably be called "Friday the 13th Pt. VIII:Jason Takes Manhattan, if by 'Manhattan' you mean 'Vancouver, Canada', and the word 'Takes' signifies 'spending twenty or so uninspired minutes in'", and then Hedden could at least boast of a film title that rivals the length of earlier cult pioneer Ray Dennis Steckler's "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies"(1968), which, for the record, is a whole lot more fucking fun to watch than this movie, if you're keeping score at home.From Manhattan's apparent nightly release of toxic waste in it's sewer systems(that doesn't explain the giant, mutated albino alligators worth a lick) to getting the side of Jason's face that's deformed wrong, Manhattan's an altogether stale piece of fruit that even the Manson girls couldn't rescue from the grocery dumpster.Forwards!

Townsend did it first, Big J(Kane Hodder).Just sayin'.
When last we left Jason Voorhees(Kane Hodder), he lay dormant at the bottom of Crystal Lake, chained to a massive boulder by a psychokinetic broad's dead father(!).When two sex-minded teens on a boat drop anchor in the lake, it snags an underwater powerline, shocking the big lug back into his usual routine.He scores himself a new hockey mask and dispatches the hormonal couple with a spear gun.The senior class of Lakeview High twenty-somethings just so happens to have their luxury cruise to the Big Apple aboard the SS Lazarus scheduled(are they departing out of Crystal Lake?If that's the case, said lake isn't one by definition, no?), unaware of their homicidal stowaway that's hitched a ride on the anchor below.On deck is a smörgåsbord of unlikable cardboard standees masquerading as human beings; the tight-assed biology teacher, Charles(Peter Mark Richman) and his niece Rennie(Jensen Daggett), who's prone to flashbacks of a sloppily made-up boy drowning from her childhood(Timeline?We don't recognize no stinking timelines!).J.J.(Saffron Henderson) is an embarrassing Joan Jett/Lita Ford reject that gets her domepiece caved in with a flying V axe.Next to eat it, a young boxer relaxing in the ship's sauna room gets a hot sauna rock punched into his chest(liked that).On a roll, Jason de-towels a floozy in the showers then shanks her ass with a piece of broken glass.The captain and his chief engineer soon join the victim ranks, as well as an oriental chick that gets C.T.F.O. on a disco floor and a boy that gets chucked onto a deck post.When he tosses another lad into a control panel, causing a fire that ignites the fuel tanks and blows a sinkhole in the hull of the boat, it's soon to be women and children first, Andrea Doria lifeboat-style.Hey, what about Manhattan, fellas?

"If you're just gonna lay around and get stoned the whole cruise, I'm gonna leave you to it."
Still on the fucking boat, Jason effs with Rennie's throat, involving his murderous mitts, and takes a pen in his eye for the thought.Then, she, the two adult chaperones, the captain's Luke Perry-lite-esque son(Scott Reeves), Julius(V. C. Dupree) the token brothah, two other students and a dog abandon ship(the way I oughta have done, during the opening credits) for a rowboat.Missing his new playthings, Voorhees walks across the ocean-bottom and emerges in the New York harbor just downstream from them, as they arrive themselves, shagged and fagged from half-heartedly selling the row to safety.Two skeevy street rats immediately mug the survivors, kidnapping Rennie and fixing her up with some tar in a back alley, as if her weekend wasn't bad enough already.Jason shows up on the scene and dispatches the gangbangers with a discarded works and a well-placed faceplant into a pipe.After chasing Julius onto a rooftop, our gruesome goalie allows the aspiring boxer to wear himself out, repeatedly jabbing and uppercutting the killer until he returns a single blow, knocking his head off his shoulders.The unlikely high schoolers are reunited, flagging down a cop who Jason gets rid of, off-camera, while the group discovers Julius' head in the police cruiser.Rennie, all banged out on junk, takes the wheel and drives over Voorhees and directly into a brick wall, killing Colleen, the other chaperone, when the wreck explodes.The opiates cause Rennie to recall why she's been having visions of Jason in the first place:Uncle Charlie threw her into Crystal Lake as a little girl in a lugheaded attempt to teach her to swim, where she first encountered the drowned tard, somehow.Jason flips the teacher ass-side up and dunks him in an open barrel of toxic waste.Goalie-puss pursues Rennie and Sean(the captain's son)onto the subway, where the young man manages to electrocute the brute on the third rail.They emerge in Times Square, where Jason smashes some punks n' skins' ghettoblaster, lifting his mask and scaring them off with his fucked up grill when they get the notion to ratpack him.The teens(ahem) eventually end up in the sewer system, where they're informed that toxic waste is flushed through nightly at midnight(!!) by a worker that Jason does away with, moments later.The corrosive fluid rapidly eats through the cheap latex comprising Jason's costume, leaving the drowned sped in his swimtrunks in its wake, inexplicably.The teens emerge from the sewers into a new day, and join back up with their dog.I'm not even kidding.

Obviously, these young scenesters never saw Joey without his Ramone wig before.
Leonard Maltin once called this one the "highlight" of the series, proving once again that mainstream Hollywood propagandists like Maltie should probably steer clear of genres they don't understand, like horror, and stick to snooze-worthy drama instead.The potential was definitely present to create an original and entertaining sequel here: a hulking, deformed, serial killing zombie in a goalie mask terrorizing a bustling, metropolitan hub that's almost too self-absorbed to notice him in the first place.Jason interacting with Wall St. investors, gangbangers, homeless bums, arabic cab drivers?Endless possibilities presented themselves, and instead we get a brief, unrealistic visit to a make-believe Big Apple where industrial barrels of toxic waste are stored(open, mind you) in alleyways.On top of that, you've got a bad script, embarrassing makeup effects(in the climax, Jason kinda looks like a Yuckmouth muppet), uninventive kills(for the most part, I dug the sauna rock and the guitar, for what that's worth), and a cast of characters I didn't give a Wednesday night three-pump suzie about.An insult to fans of the series and horror proponents everywhere, Manhattan manages to whiff at the plate, securing not one single blessed Wop to call it's own.Garbage like this should be avoided, at all costs.Almost worse than Waterworld.

Jason is surprised by a billboard that isn't defaced by illegible graffiti tags.