THE DIRTBOMBS-"We Have You Surrounded"

There’s only one thing that could possibly get me to quit writing about movies and start writing about music.

A new Dirtbombs album.

It’s about time for a new LP of down and dirty rockers from the now legendary (well, to me at least) Michigan based Dirtbombs. Mick Collins of Gories and Blacktop fame and his rock steady crew continuously release hook- laden, punked out R&B with what seems to be minimal effort.

Dirtbombs albums, for the most part, don’t stray from the well produced trash rock formula Collins has perfected over the years and the 12 songs on “Surrounded” fit right in with all the others.

Standouts include the head-bobber “Ever Lovin’ Man”, the radio friendly, should-be-a-hit “Wreck My Flow” and “I Hear The Sirens” with it’s ability to make you involuntary hit the gas pedal and weave through traffic.

But the most important track is the lead off one, “It’s Not Fun Until They See You Cry.” An eerie and threatening sonic soundtrack to the world’s coolest action/exploitation film that hasn’t been made yet.

Get thee to a Dirtbombs show right after you buy the disc. It’s even better.

JOHN CARPENTER'S PRO-LIFE

Some of these MASTERS OF HORROR shows ain’t bad and matter of fact, CIGARETTE BURNS, the John Carpenter entry from the first season was pretty good. Carpenter’s second season entry , PRO-LIFE, is even better, give or take some lousy writing.

Anqelique runs through the woods and out into the road where she’s almost hit by doctor Alex (Mark Feuerstein, RULES OF ENGAGEMENT) and nurse Kim (Emmanuelle Vaugier, SAW II). They work in a abortion clinic somewhere in the middle of the Oregon woods and take Angelique there to make sure she’s alright. At the abortion clinic, they find out she’s pregnant and wants an abortion. Turns out, her father is Dwayne Burcell (Ron Perlman, CITY OF LOST CHILDREN), an abortion protestor with a restraing order. Dwayne and his three sons track down his daughter there and begin an assault on the medicos to get her back. However, all hell breaks loose literally, as we find out that the abortion foe’s daughter was impregnated by something evil from the bowels of inner earth.

The bad part about MASTERS OF HORROR are that the shows are cheap, which is fine, but some of these directors, like Carpenter, have a style that doesn’t seem to transcend to this under-funded television format. The two I’ve seen so far that break this mold are Joe Dante’s HOMECOMING and John Landis’s DEER WOMAN. However, that doesn’t make things all bad, as Carpenter ups the ante on implied torture and gushing gore which oddly enough, was never part of how he did business before.

The writing here is sloppy at points, especially when the story slows down to extend its running time. For example, Dwayne and his sons unload their weapons on a closed gate while trying to get in to the abortion clinic, but when faced with the wooden doors at the entrance, he sends the sons around the building to find another way in, allowing Carpenter to cut back to the drama inside. Similar padding happens a few more times , which means you could probably do this tale in about 30 minutes and some change, if not less.

The monster is pretty impressive for a low budget but the gore is a bit too digital for my taste. Acting is sub-par all around except for Perlman, who does a great job as the God-fearing father who learns too late the error of his ways.

While modestly entertaining if you catch it on TV, I can’t see anyone paying money to own this, especially when true Carpenter style is completely absent. Ol’ John needs to quit cashing his remake checks and turn out a new feature worthy of his talents.

TOMMOROW MOURNING (2007)

Look, I don’t want to discourage anyone from their dreams.

If making movies is something you want to do, then get out there and do it. But for god’s sake, don’t make something like TOMORROW MOURNING. And bad filmmaking should be treated like drunk driving: friends don't let friends make shit like this. When you lie to people and tell them what they're doing is good, you'll get TOMORROW MOURNING.

This shot on video mess is like CRASH, I’m guessing. I haven’t seen CRASH but the general jist of it seems the same. Matter of fact, here’s the premise straight from the horse’s mouth:

"premise.
it would seem as if we have control of our own lives and our own destinies. the life we lead is determined by the choices we make. the choices we must make are at times, if not always, somehow connected by the choices of others. do we really control our own fate? or is the randomness of it all so chaotic at first sight, that we cannot see how well organized life is, just below the surface.

this story is a glimpse into the lives of six strangers as they drift through life hoping the next door that opens will be the door to their salvation. they will all, in their own way, come to find that no matter what choices are made, life is not theirs to control. when a person hits the rocky bottom of their life they come to realize that at the bottom is where life truly begins.

each of these six people represent the foundation of the society we live in. more than a story about destiny, more than a story about prejudice and hatred, more than a look into the troubled lives of today's youth, tomorrow mourning is a harsh look into the darkest corners of society. it explores the idea that no part of society is exempt from loss and pain. there are two constants that remain true in all walks of life...time and pain. while time waits for no man, woman or child...pain does not discriminate."

The Kowalski version of the premise? A bunch of terrible actors with gay problems, drug problems, family problems and crime problems and goth problems and religious problems that come together in the same hotel room at the end.

And when I say come, I don’t even mean porno come, because if they did, it would have been a highlight of what could be the worst attempt at filmmaking.

Ever.

Actually, what’s more interesting is how I got the DVD. Walking around a Moviestop, I plucked it out of the comedy section. Apparently the makers of the film were engaging in guerrilla marketing and dropping off free copies in random places (you couldn’t ask anybody to pay for this). They even left a nice little note in Sharpie on the cellophane saying it’s free.

So I took it up to the cashier and said, Hey, it’s free. The Movie Stop employees were like what the fuck? Anyway, I took it home and waited a bit to watch it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t want to work on certain DVD players. After trying the third DVD player in the house, it loaded.

I consider myself an atheist, but I think that God people talk about may have been trying to tell me something. At least the Movie God.

Horrible overacting, cliched and miserable shakycam, a lot of meandering, a terrible script and the bad part is IT’S A FUCKING DRAMA. If you’re going to make a movie and not know how to make one, make aforementioned pornography, cheap gore, even a lame unfunny comedy.

But here’s the real kicker. THE GODDAMN THING IS ALMOST 3 HOURS LONG!

The director and co-writer, David Petlansky, is either the most egotistical man on the planet with a bunch of those friends I mentioned earlier who lie to him or he’s fucking clinically insane. Not only is it almost three hours long, but two discs chock full of crap nobody, not even the parents of everyone involved, would care about. Director and cast commentary, Deleted scenes (!), Behind the Scenes, Outtakes, Interviews.

Jesus Fucking Christ, Petlansky and Company are insane! It’s the only answer for this mess.

If they aren’t insane, it’s astounding how insulated from the real world the filmmakers are. It’s almost worth it to track down a copy to say that you have the worst movie ever made in your collection, with extras to boot. Not to kick a dog when its down, but I was so taken aback by the sheer awfulness of it all that I had to go to the film’s website.

Well, there’s no more website apparently. But there is a Myspace page. And, as no god as my witness, it’s in Myspace Music. Not Myspace Film.

Does the insanity ever stop with these people?

No, because you can go over to Café Press and SHIRTS WITH PICTURES OF PEOPLE FROM THE MOVIE AND THEIR CHARACTER’S NAMES ON THEM! Or the logo of the movie as well. For $19.

I clicked on the TM News button on the site and was taken over to a live journal page which hasn’t been updated for a year.

They sent the frigging thing to Cannes.

But this seals the deal. The people behind this monstrosity are certifiable. On Feb 1, 2007, the director (I’m assuming) wrote:

“i am so confident that tm is going to sneak up and blow some people away.”

You have. My god, you have.

When you make Andy Milligan look like Martin Scorsese, you have blown people away.

Am I being rude? If not blowing smoke up somebody's ass is considered rude nowadays. Unnecessarily mean? Not at all. Somebody has to tell these people that they've made an unwatchable vanity piece that almost begs to be seen just to prove it exists.

They've shown they've got the wherewithall to make a feature. Now they need to get some talent. Or at least work on other people's movies that have it.

My head hurts so much right now thinking about all this,I may sue.

BLADES OF GLORY (2007)

I guess at one time I was a Will Ferrell fan. I still am. I think.

However, BLADES OF GLORY wasn’t a movie I was going to run out and see. Since I no longer subscribe to the pop culture machine as much as I used to, when the trailers first showed up on TV and the theaters, I shook my head and wondered why. Another one about a marginal sport? It also seemed slapdash, like it sat on the shelf for a while and was coming on the heels of the hit, TALLADEGA NIGHTS, which really blew.

Kind of like TEEN WOLF to BACK TO THE FUTURE.

It’s showing on HBO now and I caught it tonight. Well, not the whole thing. I kept getting pestered by my drunk family members into stoking fires, hooking up a record player and eating Bojangles chicken. The dog needed some attention as well. Not once did I ever get pissed about having to get up and quit watching the movie.

It was that bad.

But it had a few amusing parts. The first male/male skate competition to get to Montreal had a chuckle or to. Jenna Fischer is easy on the eyes. Jon Heder is quite annoying though.

Ferrell’s drunk macho man shtick is funny, always has been, but it is getting a bit tiresome.

But who cares? People like it. People can do what they want. But people are stupid too.

I probably saw a total of 35 minutes of the movie, walking in and out between the beginning and the ending. I feel like I watched the whole film.

And now, there’s SEMI-PRO. I think Ferrell is going to kill his career or re-make Leif Garrett’s foosball classic LONGSHOT (1981). One or the other, or possibly both.

NEVER BACK DOWN from a clichéd KARATE KID script.

Some people just don’t get it. Look at those doofs called “critics” at Rotten Tomatoes who are slagging one of the better popcorn pictures of our still young year.

I fortunately do get it. And it’s good for you that I know what I’m talking about. That I know what I know. That I appreciate a good re-hash as long as it ups the ante on the exploitation it’s exploiting. And NEVER BACK DOWN? Well, it does just that.

Without me, you’d probably just dismiss this well-handled B-movie until it showed up on Spike TV at three in the morning.

Now to be quite honest, it’s not even a re-hash of THE KARATE KID (1984). It shares the same lineage, but really it’s a re-hash of the vastly underrated SHOWDOWN (1993), the Billy Blanks vehicle that starred him as a school janitor teaching a nebbish new student martial arts so he can beat up the kid who’s the school’s martial arts master and get his now ex-girlfriend (an early role for Ben Stiller’s wife, Christine Taylor). Of course, SHOWDOWN was a direct re-hash of KARATE KID, but the camp humor that abounded throughout made it stand out from the KARATE KID re-hash pack and ultimately surpass the vastly overrated KARATE KID itself. It also helps if you have the late Brion James as an irreverent school principal in your cast. If you haven’t seen SHOWDOWN, get thee to Ebay.

In NEVER BACK DOWN, Jake Taylor (Sean Faris, “One Tree Hill”) is a football player from Iowa with natural American Streetfighting ability who moves to Orlando, FL after the drunk driving death of his father and so his tennis-prodigy little brother can attend some tennis academy. Before you think we may get some tennis circuit hi-jinks ala THE BREAK (1995), the Vincent Van Patten cult classic that was THE KARATE KID of tennis, let it be known that the kid thinks his brother’s fighting is way cooler than tennis, which worries Jake’s bitchy mom (Leslie Hope, “RoboCop: Prime Directives”) because she blames Jake for the father’s death and doesn’t really like him or his fighting. Jake was with his dad the night he died and instead of taking the keys from him, he let Pops drive. Of course, if he didn’t let his dad kill himself, then he’d have no fuel to fight and NEVER BACK DOWN would be without its driving catalyst.

Now the second driving catalyst is high school rich boy/master of mixed martial arts is Ryan McCarthy (Cam Gigandet, WHO”S YOUR CADDY?) who beats Jake’s ass in a fight at a party. McCarthy’s girl, Baja (Amber Heard, ALPHA DOG), sets Jake up by inviting him to his own ass-kicking, but really, she just wants to Greco-Roman wrestle with the new guy. Jake’s new buddy, Max (Evan Peters, “Invasion”), convinces Jake that his natural American Streetfighting ability would gel well with mixed martial arts and therefore he takes up the ass-kicking business by training with Senegal-by-way-of-Brazil Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou, DEEP RISING), a mixed martial arts trainer whose got some of his own demons to fight and therefore ended up near Disney World.

At the end of NEVER BACK DOWN, there’s a big tournament and a happy ending. Which I knew was going to happen. You know it’s going to happen. It’s supposed to happen. In this post-post-irony period, if he didn’t win, it would look cliché.

What works best about NEVER BACK DOWN is that it succeeds greatly in giving the intended action audience what it wants. Many films nowadays (let’s say for example, the GONE IN 60 SECONDS remake) promise a decent enough trailer and the end result when all put together is stupendously boring and contemptuous of its demographic. Not the case here.

Every cliché is lovingly rendered for the 21st Century, every punch and crunch professionally sound designed for maximum cringe-inducing effect and every ass-kicking expertly staged by fight choreographers Damon Caro (DAWN OF THE DEAD remake) and Jonathan Eusebio (MAX HAVOC:CURSE OF THE DRAGON). Mucho kudos to director Jeff Wadlow (CRY WOLF) who took this son-of-a-bitch seriously; his attention to detail shows in the final product. Hell, he even rips off the x-ray bit from Chiba’s original STREETFIGHTER (1975) so you know he’s done his genre homework.

Let’s also give it up to writer Chris Hauty, whose only other IMDB credit was writing Disney’s HOMEWARD BOUND II. Was it desperation that led him to pitch KARATE KID meets UFC in Walt’s backyard? Whatever it was, bully for him, putting the pieces together where they need be (although, Chris, you know this shit is SHOWDOWN. You can’t fool me.)

One of the most important technical parts of NEVER BACK DOWN is that logic is never even hinted at. Genre movies lately try to inject logic in what is essentially an illogical universe, i.e. the movies.

At this new school in Orlando, EVERYBODY is all about mixed martial arts, kind of like Vince Lombardi High, where EVERYBODY was all about the Ramones, a world that only exists in the movies, which is what I want when I go to the movies.

There’s no cops, no punishment for those involved in illegal fighting or uploading teen fighting videos on the Internet and no monitoring of any of the kid’s activities in any way shape or form. These people don’t really exist so their world doesn’t exist thus making it an extremely fragile netherworld whose only enemy is any semblance of logic, which at that point would disrupt its universe like bad kryptonite and render NEVER BACK DOWN unforgivably pointless.

Needless to say, a cinematic experience like this is extremely rare and deserves your attention.

But NEVER BACK DOWN really deserves you attention because it’s never boring, consistently brutal and heart-warmingly familiar throughout its whole 110 minute running time. Like RAMBO, it promises what’s in the trailer. Unlike RAMBO, it doesn’t give you more. But for a SHOWDOWN rip-off, you don’t expect it to.

NEVER BACK DOWN is a great matinee or a fun night at the drive-in. And if you frequent the megaplex nowadays, these movies are few and far between. That said, this is the second action film in 2008 I can say that about.

Maybe something is happening in Hollywood.

AMERICAN NINJA (1985)

Yeah, I know what you’re saying. AMERICAN NINJA? That old shit?

It’s old. I give you that. But I can honestly say that they don’t make them like this anymore. And that’s a shame.

AMERICAN NINJA (1985) is a classic 80’s actioner brought to us by the late and sometimes not-so-great Cannon Films. Cannon, as you know, was bought and ran into the ground by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. They specialized in low-budget action with the occasional foray into art-house cinema. Say what you want about Golan-Globus, but they did give us BARFLY (1987) and INVASION USA (1985).





You can’t even begin to talk about Cannon without mentioning the Chuck Norris films they bankrolled. Hell, they MADE Chuck Norris the icon he was. They also kept the DEATH WISH movies going as well keeping Charles Bronson on the screen up until the early 90’s. Can anyone forget the OVER THE TOP (1987) debacle with Sly? I can’t. I wouldn’t want to.

Wedged in all this Hollywood excess was AMERICAN NINJA, a 1985 low budget action pic filmed in the Philippines and starring Michael Dudikoff (BACHELOR PARTY, 1984) and Steve James (THE EXTERMINATOR, 1980).

Cannon even created a cottage industry for Dudikoff. How many people can say that?

So tell me about this AMERICAN NINJA, you say.

Joe Armstrong is a quiet loner who commits a crime and is given a choice: go to jail or join the army. This makes me wonder if the script they dusted off was from the 60’s. So of course Joe chooses the army. Now Joe isn’t your ordinary quiet loner. Joe is a ninja. He doesn’t even know he’s a ninja; the shit just comes naturally. You see, that’s because Joe has amnesia that he contracted from a blast that knocked him out when he was an orphan on an island being trained by a Japanese WWII soldier who lived on the island and didn’t even know the war was over.



It’s like the 60’s script was jacked up, a little bit of BLACK STALLION was attached and the story outfitted with a set of brand new ninja mania that was still in vogue at the time (Sho Kosugi’s PRAY FOR DEATH was the same year, mind you).



So now Joe is having his ninja awakening and running afoul of the military. He’s befriended by Steve James, who takes an asswhooping by Joe in front of the whole Army, and tries to convince him to stage martial arts exhibitions for money, as if they could get out of the Army whenever they want and travel around staging martial arts demonstrations like carnies.

Now it just so happens that there have been a lot of Army trucks being hijacked that have a lot of weapons on them. Instead of finding out what’s going on or Washington coming in and investigating, the brass sits around with their thumbs up their asses. This do-nothingness lets Joe poke his nose around to find out the truth about the hijackings. Any reasonable investigation or governmental action and there’d be no AMERICAN NINJA.

It’s easy to make fun of a movie like this. The writing is awful and none of it makes any sense. It’s overcast in the shot but the next cut it’s sunny. But it’s a true action movie, and goddamn if it doesn’t give you true action. It’s what’s missing from action movies nowadays. Real stunts by real people. And ninjas. Ever since John Woo, no more Americanized ninjas (who apparently like to dive out of the way a lot).





blow up, guns shoot shit up, model helicopters get bazooka-ed, and there’s hand-to-hand/sword-to-torso ninja combat all over. All of this is executed with exploitation craftmanship by Cannon action specialist Sam Firstenberg. Firstenberg not only helmed AMERICAN NINJA, he got to come back and make AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION (1987). He also made the Dudikoff/James vehicle AVENGING FORCE (1986). Firstenberg is a man’s man action director. There’s no pretense at all: set up the situation and film the destruction. An action film like I remember.





A lot of people can find a lot to laugh at within AMERICAN NINJA, but they can’t say it isn’t competent filmmaking. It’s aged well, and most people would be surprised at how well done the action scenes are and more so, how well it is all put together. The terrible plot and occasional overacting add to the fun and the exotic Filipino location and extras are wonderful to look at (sadly, no Vic Diaz). Plus smack dab in the middle is Judie Aronson, who played Wyatt’s lust object in WEIRD SCIENCE the same year. What a quinela, Judie! Way to go.



AMERICAN NINJA, while not obscure, more than likely will fade even more from view within the coming years. People remember it mostly from cable and remember it fondly but no one actively seeks it out. Dudikoff did some more Cannon actioners like PLATOON LEADER (1988) and RIVER OF DEATH (1989) and Steve James sadly passed away in 1993 after headlining in some of his own overlooked straight to video gems like STREET HUNTER (1990) and RIVERBEND (1990). Firstenberg was well versed in ninjas by this time, having already made REVENGE OF THE NINJA (1983) and NINJA III: THE DOMINATION (1984). In terms of smooth moves, he made the ninja-esque BREAKIN’ 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (1984). He’s still workin’, thank the movie gods.

AMERICAN NINJA eventually made its way up to 5 with David Bradley taking over the titular role (Dudikoff costarred in 1990’s AMERICAN NINJA 4: THE ANNIHILATION) but none of them ever made the grade like the original. Ninjas became old hat and Cannon made AMERICAN KICKBOXER I (1991) and Firstenberg’s AMERICAN SAMURAI (1992) but by that time, poof, no more Cannon.



I’d like to think AMERICAN NINJA would become a cult classic, but the truth is, it may be too well-made for its own good to attain such status. Doesn’t matter. I think its tops and hopefully, you’ll take another look at it and agree.

CLOVERFIELD (2008)

My cousin calls me and says, “Hey cousin, let’s go see that CLOVERFIELD movie.”

I was half-drunk so I said, sure, why not? Plus it’s only $4 bucks at the drive-in. However bad it is won’t matter, because I’ve got enough beer to get full on drunk. And I’m a positive guy. I look at things as at least half-full whilst full on drunk.

CLOVERFIELD starts out with a bumper saying that the following footage is government property or some shit. I only kind of remember that part because now, I was about ¾ drunk. Anyway, there’s these yuppies in New York and they’re all rich and white and are filming the going away party of one of their rich yuppie friends whose job is sending them to Japan.

So basically, in no way, can I relate with any of these people. Something needs to stomp these people now.

About 15 minutes in, the shaky cam is getting to me. And I’m waiting on some stomping. I ask my cousin if its me or is the movie really that shaky. He tells me the whole movie is going to be that shaky.

It’s about now that I realize being full on drunk at CLOVERFIELD is not a good thing.

So this BLAIR WITCH/CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST with a Harryhausen tinge sci-fi’er takes a bit of time to get going. I guess to set up the characters enough that you want them to get stomped by something. Although that Malena or Marena girl is hot. I don’t know her name in the movie; it was something to that effect…Marena, Malena. I don’t know.

Look, I was drunk…

Anyway, then the thing shows up. It’s some kind of monster. Matter of fact, my cousin says it looks like that thing from THE MIST. And what little you see of it is kind of cool because the movie really is about the rich white yuppies’ trying to find this girl the Japan-bound guy loves and kind of fucked up his chance at smoochies with. Actually he did more than smoochies. Then he didn’t call her. Then she shows up at his going to Japan party with another dude. I also think one of the rich white yuppies was actually black or not all white. But she acted pretty white. I don’t know.

Look, I was drunk…

What’s most important to know is that CLOVERFIELD isn’t a monster movie as much as it’s a road-trip love story, kind of like Charlie Sheen’s immortal THREE FOR THE ROAD from 1987 with Kerri Green from THE GOONIES but filmed by an epileptic who obviously has no respect for Charlie Sheen movies from the 80’s. Because if he did, he would put the fucking camera on a tripod.

Look, I may be a tad drunk right now…

Towards the end of CLOVERFIELD, the camera finally comes to a stop. No shaky. By about halfway in, the thought of puking my guts out occurred to me about 300 times. This shit is really, really shaky and made me physically ill. But when that camera stopped, and my eyes tried to focus after 70 + minutes of Chinese-Olympic-caliber eyeball ping-pong, I puked.

All over the side of my cousin’s car. All the way to the shit-stank restroom. Right onto a piss-splattered toilet with a roll of toilet paper shoved in it for good measure. After puking, I looked over to the right of the stall to see these words etched into a 50th coat of red paint: WILL WORK FOR HOME DEPOT.

Jesus, I wish I was going to Japan. Chicks apparently like the vomit over there anyways.

I’ve seen the videos. I know these things. And in no way are they shaky like CLOVERFIELD. But the funny thing is, those videos didn’t make me puke.

Moral of the story: Don’t go see CLOVERFIELD drunk. Maybe don’t go see it all at the theater. For you general well being, it may be safer to watch it at home.

And stay away from those Japanese shit-puke videos.

They’ll scar you for life.

For more information on Charlie Sheen’s immortal THREE FOR THE ROAD, please go to its IMDB entry at