This week we welcome local jocks Pickel and Kool Hersh for this week's installment of GGD. It's the first beautiful day of the year so we're expecting big things!
The rest of the month goes as follows:
03/17 - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Featuring special guest Diz
03/24 - 'Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Featuring special guest Bald E.
03/31 - Diamonds of The Glamour
In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago (which takes place on the first Monday of every month). The idea behind the night is to screen cult classics, exploit movies, unintentional comedies and every other kind of film we collectively decide is so bad that it's actually good. In the ongoing search for the perfect 'Bad Meaning Good' film I've decided to take on a weekly (or AT LEAST once-per-week) blog entry in which I'll review, summarize and rate bad movies of every variety imaginable. The goal is to reach somewhere in the range of 75-100 posts within a year, at which point I'll look for a place to publish a first volume of 'Bad Meaning Good' reviews in book form. Stay tuned...
Summary:
'Brain Damage' is the second film from famed cult director Frank Henenlotter and the 1988 follow-up to his much-beloved 'Basket Case'. While 'Basket Case' has endured a larger and more renown cult status over the years (I, for one, have made my case - no pun intended - for the film before on this very website), I was shocked to find that 'Brain Damage' might somehow be the better of the two and that Henenlotter's bag of tricks is indeed full to the brim with inspired grotesqueries of surreal proportions.
In brief summary, both films deal with innocent and seemingly uncorrupted young men who become subservient to the fiendish and murderous needs of biologically perverse monsters... And the similarities don't stop there. Additionally, in each of the films, the protagonists find themselves retreating into the depths of 1980's NYC's sleazy underbelly and shacking up in fleabag motels in order to mask their newly-acquired homicidal tendencies on society's fringes.
This film though is a kind of sci-fi/exploit crossbreed that shares thematic connections with stuff like Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft adaptation 'From Beyond' and borrows a good deal of inspiration from some of David Cronenberg's very grossest biological horror moments. Make no mistakes about it though, 'Brain Damage' deals with terrors of an entirely different breed and the specific terror at play in this film is a heinously repulsive creature named 'Aylmer'; a tadpole-like, phallus-monster from antiquity with the power to transform ostensibly normal folk into drug-addled degenerates acquiescent to his needs. And what exactly are his needs, you ask? Human brains. The character latches onto people in parasitic fashion and injects a blue fluid through the back of their necks and onto their brain, causing them to hallucinate and experience something akin to an opiate-induced euphoria. In return, he expects them to provide him, or at least lead him to the human fodder from whom he sucks the brains out, allowing him to carry on his vicious cycle.
In short our hero, a young man named Brian, is unwittingly enslaved by Aylmer's "juice" and plunges into a downward spiral of death and depravity. Will he escape the creature's grasp or become just another among the many whom Aylmer has ruthlessly subjugated throughout the ages? This is the dilemma at hand.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' was it?:
Henenlotter's got a real gift for hilarious sleaze and in that regard, this one is a real hoot. Additionally, the Aylmer character is such a nauseatingly charming little fucker that despite his unquenchable bloodthirst, you'll begin to root for him and anxiously await his next killing. His first screen appearance is such a laugh-out-loud, rewind-inducing, WTF! sort of moment that alone, it justifies the viewing of the entire film. Aylmer also serenades Brian in a motel room and generally provides more delirious laughs and whimsical magnetism than I had previously thought possible from an obviously fake, rubber monster of his ilk.
In one particularly memorable sequence, Aylmer prompts Brian into an underground punk club called 'Hell' (the kind that probably only existed in 1980's Manhattan) where Brian, high on the juice, catches the eye of a trampy, young lady on the dancefloor. Little does she know, as she drags him out to the alleyway for an unsolicited beej on the low, that Aylmer is eagerly awaiting her arrival from the inside of Brian's pants. What follows is perhaps cinema history's very most obnoxiously tasteless and repulsive blowjob death sequence... The kind that once viewed, will sear itself onto your brain for the remainder of your lifetime. Whether or not this is a good thing is perhaps a matter of opinion but um, yeah... I laughed. A lot.
There's also a truly disgusting spaghetti and meatballs (er, rather "brainballs") dinner scene, a super gnarly ear-removal hallucination, a number of brain sucking deaths on the behalf of Aylmer, a hilarious impromptu diatribe on the history of the creature, and enough brain-eating to satisfy the needs of a half dozen zombie flicks combined.
For fans of exploit, sleaze, gross-out horror and gritty 1980's NYC trash, this one is a must. For fans of 'Basket Case', it's nothing short of an absolute imperative. For the rest of you, I'd urge you to approach with caution... This one does not go down easy.
Tonight we welcome Mister Joshua of the Chicago Workgroup for another go-round of the GGD party funtimes. Per usual, the party starts at 11pm and goes until 4 in the AM... And is FREE of charge all night long.
The rest of the month goes as follows:
03/10 - DJ's Pickel and Kool Hersh
03/17 - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Featuring special guest Diz
03/24 - 'Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Featuring special guest Bald E.
03/31 - Diamonds of The Glamour
In honor of one of my very favorite American actors currently working, I'm dutifully bringing to your attention the gloriously awesome Nic Cage as Everyone blog... It's really quite simple and self-explanatory: you click the link, have a browse, and laugh. A lot.
A few of my favorite examples below:
Nic Cage as Young Albert Einstein
Nic Cage as Turbo & Ozone
Nic Cage as Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi
... And there's a whole lot more where that came from. Additionally, since we're on the subject, check out this reel of highlights from Cage's awesomely unhinged and over-the-top performance in the remake of 'The Wicker Man'...
Tonight at Get Get Down we'll be welcoming DJ Weaponry of the Chicago Workgroup for the third installment of our disco-intensive 'Disco's Revenge' edition which runs on the fourth Wednesday of every month.
As for the coming month, we've got a gang of awesome guests in store for March:
03/03 - Mister Joshua (Dialogue Inc./Chicago Workgroup)
03/10 - DJ's Pickel and Kool Hersh
03/17 - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Featuring special guest Diz
03/24 - 'Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Featuring special guest Bald E.
03/31 - Diamonds of The Glamour
Tonight in Zebo's absence, we'll be doing something of a low-key Chicago Workgroup showcase for our 'Viva La Vinyl' edition of Get Get Down and will be featuring the selecting talents of Ross Kelly and Mister Joshua. The three of us will of course be playing nothing but wax all night long and the party will rage on from 11pm to 4am per usual.
The remainder of the month's programming is as follows:
Super rad news on the DJ front... My latest 'Kaleidoscope' mix has just been featured as the guest mix for esteemed local taste-maker Mister Joshua's Dialogue Incorporated monthly radio show.
Those who've been following Dialogue Inc. for the past year and a half or so know that the radio show is always, consistently full of all kinds of interesting selections from across the musical map. Additionally, Mister Joshua is always providing a sharp literary voice to complement the selections and frames the music in an always interesting context with each new month.
It's with great disappointment I report that our guest for tonight's edition of Get Get Down, Jesse Jamz from NYC, will not be making it tonight due to the weather issues we're all currently experiencing... However, Zebo and I will of course be holding it down as we ever so capably can and the party will rage on, as it always does, until 4 in the AM.
You know what to do about it.
The remainder of the month's programming is as follows:
On Monday March 1st we'll be hosting our 11th Bad Meaning Good event at The Burlington and will be showing the 2nd of Andy Sidaris's "Triple B" action features; the infamous 'Hard Ticket To Hawaii'. You can read my Bad Meaning Good case study on 'Hard Ticket To Hawaii' here.
Here's some additional info about the film as well:
'Hard Ticket To Hawaii' on IMDB.
'Hard Ticket To Hawaii' at All Movie.
... And here are some choice screenshots on the French site Nanarland - Which, though I don't speak or read French, appears to be a similarly-minded website with regard to trash cinema in general.
Also, and again, thanks to all of you who made it out last week for 'The Apple'. I think we'd all agree it was a DAMN good time and I, for one, am super excited for the next go round!
More news to come...
In the meantime, check out this choice skater death sequence from the film:
In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago (which takes place on the first Monday of every month). The idea behind the night is to screen cult classics, exploit movies, unintentional comedies and every other kind of film we collectively decide is so bad that it's actually good. In the ongoing search for the perfect 'Bad Meaning Good' film I've decided to take on a weekly (or AT LEAST once-per-week) blog entry in which I'll review, summarize and rate bad movies of every variety imaginable. The goal is to reach somewhere in the range of 75-100 posts within a year, at which point I'll look for a place to publish a first volume of 'Bad Meaning Good' reviews in book form. Stay tuned...
Summary:
From 1985-1998 Andy Sidaris directed 12 movies known as the "Triple B" collection (short for Bullets, Bombs, and Babes); a series of light hearted, budget level and pseudo-softcore/sleeze, action B-movies. 'Hard Ticket To Hawaii' (1987) was the second of the series and is, true to "Triple B" form, full to the brim with gratuitous nudity, campy dialog, breasts, explosions, off-road vehicles, breasts, recognizably late-80's neon attire, Playboy playmate "actresses", breasts, sleezy drug traffickers, breasts, laughably ridiculous props, breasts, and um... Breasts. This thing was shamelessly and squarely aimed at the video rental and late-night cable markets and it comes loaded with the kind of extremely high volume of per minute stupidity and low-budget filmmaking daftness that you'd expect from both similarly minded films of its era and from the series at large.
The story is about Donna and Taryn (played by Sidaris regulars Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton respectively), two oft-naked but always scantily clad cargo delivery babes who, while on duty, are incidentally made aware of a clandestine drug and diamond smuggling operation when they spot a diamond drop-off delivered by a remote controlled helicopter. With a portion of the diamonds in tow, they avert the baddies for whom the shipment was intended and opt to call in a pair of muscle-bound, DEA-working bros to help dispatch the drug ring and put a stop to the criminal syndicate plaguing the Hawaiian streets. It ain't all smooth sailing though, because during the fracas the two lose sight of the cargo they were meant to deliver, which turns out to be an incredibly deadly (and equally fake) mutant snake now on the loose. From there, it's island hijinks at full throttle and it won't stop until the fatcats controlling the Hawaiian drug underworld are either dead or behind bars.
The two mostly run around (on the job, mind you) sporting feathered bangs in butt cheek-exposing short shorts, knee-high boots and sleeveless vests, while wearing tool belts equipped with ninja stars and nunchucks and basically kicking the ass of all manner of faux-bad guys unfortunate enough to get in their way. The whole thing also goes down to the tune of some hilariously, brutally bad original songs and includes more than a serviceable amount of hammy dialog to prop up the less action-intensive moments. The whole affair is really, unapologetically about the boobs though and if you were to take a running tally that included the credit sequence that acts as a sort of bare breast highlight reel of the entire film, you'd easily be looking at an exposed breast quotient that tops the 20 mark.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' was it?:
For those of us who like our laughs served with unhealthy doses of sleeze and baseless humor (and if you're reading this I'd bet you sure do), this thing is a brazenly good time. I would not call Sidaris the wittiest of filmmakers nor an ace script-writer by even the lowest of trash cinema standards, but he is an unquestionably solid, workmanlike one given the high volume and prolific nature of the "Triple B" series in total (and given the decidedly lowbrow nature of his work). It's also obvious that the bulk of the folks involved in the production were having a deliriously good time making this film and the manifest sincerity of such creative chemistry is something any fan of B-movies should appreciate. (As an aside, the film would make a riotously funny double feature with 'Samurai Cop'.)
There are some undeniably awesome gems of dialog idiocy in this one and you'll recognize this early on when Donna demonstrates her recognition of the cathartic and soul-cleansing qualities of topless hot tub time: "Let's unload and hit the jacuzzi... I do my best thinking there." The movie scored additionally side-splitting laughs from me when one of the male characters, in noting his high-powered prowess with the fairer sex, offered a post-coital sweet nothing to his lady friend in the form of the truly charming and timeless observation that "one man's dream is another man's lunch."
The movie also sports an abundantly absurd inventory of ridiculous moments that, to name a few, includes a blow up doll being shot out the sky with a bazooka, a death-by-harpoon-gun, a man riding a motorbike directly through the wall of a house, an outrageously profane tv interview with a pro football player, a spy in drag, a razorblade frisbee death, an edit of a dummy subbed for a man who was dropped from a building, a blatantly artificial hand puppet snake, a sumo wrestling match, a machine gun-toting baddie named "Shades" who likes to play frisbee on the beach, and a WHOLE LOT more...
If you're the type to stomach the excess, 'Hard Ticket To Hawaii' is a feast of vulgar delights.
