Flicks that really messed me up as a kid. (Part 3)

• Part 1.
• Part 1.5
• Part 2.

"Yeah, right, Mike, you said you were done with your quests".

Well, yes and no.
No, these aren't quests, because what I consider quests, are agonizing, and full of hardship, and took a long fucking time.
Solving one of those muthas is a victory.

These, while lost, and needing to be found, came easier, and weren't desperation based.
More like "eh, oughtta see if I can get these too, and finish it all off".

BUT, yes, they took a little digging, and they were faded childhood memories that shaped me, and nagged a little.
But, not so's I couldn't get by sanity wise without tearing the universe apart for them.
I do like having found them though.
Don't get me wrong.

So, here we go...


The Ruling Class (1972)

Starring Peter O'Toole as a loony who thinks he's Jesus.
The servants and flunkies of his dead father try to cure him, but instead make him think he's Jack The Ripper.
Mayhem ensues.

It's a satire of the British upper-crust, and what scumbags they are.
I dug it.
This, and the next two, are about the only ones of this particular batch I truly enjoyed.

The only part I could remember anymore, was the bit where O'Toole is confronted with another guy who thinks he's Jesus, and is getting fried by the guy's imaginary lightning, while evil-Jesus screams "1 million volts!! 2 million volts!!...", and when he gets up to like, 25 million volts, O'Toole stops thinking he's Jesus.

I didn't even remember it was O'Toole, which can be forgiven, cuz he was buried in long hair, a beard, and makeup that made him look like Aryan-Jesus you see in all the medieval paintings.

Good flick, but the second half gets pretty fuckin' dark.
Again, I dug it.
Probably best of these.


Twice Upon A Time (1983)

This is a hard one to get a handle on.
It's fascinating to watch.
I recommend fellow animation junkies track it down, and give it at least one viewing.

It's executive produced by George Lucas, and has some relatively famous voice actors in it.
The most recognizable name is the late Lorenzo Music, who you all probably know as Garfield.

Here, he kind of plays a precursor to Jake The Dog from "Adventure Time".
A yellow shape-shifter, called "Ralph, the all-purpose animal".
Zoom in on the poster, and you can see he's a worm with a dog head there.

Okay, plot is, the main characters all live in the dimension where dreams are made, and the lord of nightmares succeeds in stealing the mainspring from the cosmic clock that controls time in our dimension, then, all humans being time-frozen, are at his mercy with his invasion of vultures dropping nightmare bombs.

The good guys have to stop this, but are bumbling, and inept.

Why it's hard to get a handle on, and probably why its vanished into obscurity, is...it's all over the place in age appropriateness.

Plot wise, there's no real adult themes, nothing explicit happens, this could just as easily have been G rated.
But, the villain in particular swears his head off.
Shit, ass, asshole, everything short of fuck.

It's PG, but a heavy PG before PG-13 was invented, and nowadays, it would have to make cuts to avoid R just for language.

Now, if it were me, I'd let kids see it, but my stance on censorship and development is pretty extreme compared to most people.
And, I'm not naive or oblivious to how the film business works.

Everything Lucas is owned by Disney now, so they could throw money at the lawyers needed to get this out of legal limbo, a Blu-ray release, and the ad campaign to awaken you to its existence.
But...again, how the hell would they market it???

Very interesting as a historical curiosity though.
I dunno if I'd put it up there with "Heavy Metal", or "Last Unicorn", but it's decent.
Worth checking out, but you'll have to dig for it.

The only part I could remember while searching for it, was the Video Gorilla (see poster), and its TV face playing a clip of Indiana Jones saying "trust me", at one point.


Get Crazy (1983)

Geez, you notice these almost all seemed to happen in the 1983-84 window?

Cast includes Malcolm McDowell, Daniel Stern, Ed Begley Junior, Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov, and Lou Reed.

It's everything you'd ever expect of a wacky drugs and rock n' roll 80's party movie.
80's-ness oozes off the screen.
Fun to see for nostalgia.
But, other 80's party movies that have stood the test of time blow it away.
This is pretty stupid.
It's got a few good parts though.

Malcolm McDowell plays a rock star, and sings his own songs, and he's actually not too bad.

The one part I remembered about this, was near/at the end, McDowell's penis starts talking to him.
Hey, c'mon, you don't forget a thing like that.
I'd forgotten is was McDowell though.
My memory had it as just some generic guy.

This wasn't great, I'd probably never watch it again, but, I got some enjoyment out of it.
Especially in hindsight of the really awful  ones.
Speaking of, now, for the ones that sucked donkeys....


Endangered Species (1982)

All I remembered of this one, was a mutilated cow with half its fucking skull showing.
Yeah, that'll burn into you if you're a kid.

And dipshit HBO played the ad for it with that scene over, and over, and over.

It's got Robert Urich (Ice Pirates), JoBeth Williams (Poltergeist), Hoyt Axton (Gremlins), and...it suuuuucks.
It suu-uu-uu-uu--uuu-UU-UCKS.

Booooooriiiing.

Okay, here's the whole plot.
There's cattle mutilations.
Urich and Williams investigate.
You're faked out at first it's aliens.
Spoilers, it's a black ops outfit of the government doing germ warfare shit out of Cold War paranoia, and they'll kill anyone to keep it from getting out.
Inside your head, it seems like this would have lots of tension, doesn't it?
Nope.
It's like watching an industrial film about calcium, and drinking milk.
Inept at every level.
Pure fuckin' schlock.

Man, looking back, HBO had a handful of gems, and then a big heaping bunch of shit.


Sudden Death (1985)

Okay, these next two were foisted on us by my grandfather (the one who passed in 2012), and, man, I loved ya, Gramp, but your taste,...yeesh.

So, to set this up, he went through this phase of being a flat out junkie for revenge pictures.
"Death Wish", "Dirty Harry", all that stuff.

He taped this one, and loaned it to us, and my folks didn't know what we were in for, popped this in, and about half hour in, the heroine gets dragged into a stolen Taxi, and gets the everliving shit raped out of her.
Not as bad as "I Spit On Your Grave", but it's pretty fucking unpleasant.

My dad ripped it out of the machine, and that was that.

I think we gave up on HBO in favor of rentals about 1987 or so.
So, even though it's an '85 flick, that's probably when Gramp loaned it.

I'm tough enough now for "I Spit On Your Grave", so, I figured "fuck it, let's finally see this thing all the way through".

All I could remember was the Taxi rape, but that was enough for Google and the IMDB message boards to lock onto it.

Godawful.
Cardboard characters you don't care about, terrible acting, awful unrealistic dialog out of an NRA pamphlet, just crap.
Hey, I keep an open mind, I want to like these damned things.
I don't set out to hate, I really don't.

I mean, look, on a technical level, "I Spit On Your Grave", is cheesy, but I liked that one.
"Sudden Death", earns its half star, believe me.


Extreme Prejudice (1987)

Another Gramp loaner, and an '87 flick that played in '87.

Nick Nolte, Michael Ironside, Rip Torn, Powers Boothe, Tiny Lister, directed by Walter Hill, written by John Milius, score by Jerry Goldsmith.
Wow, what a pedigree.
How could it possibly suck?

It found a way.

Flat characters, wooden acting, unrealistic dialog that real people would never say, delivered every step of the way like bad movie trailer narration, unfunny catchphrases, and good guys and bad guys who are exactly the same level of asshole, so you just don't care.

Also, it's about the drug war, and I really can't get morally invested in that bullshit.

I remember hating it as a kid, but this thing gets good reviews fucking everywhere, so I was open to being wrong, and maybe I had to grow into it.
Nope.
Sucked just as bad.

Unlike all the others, I SAW this one all the way through, but my memory deliberately erased it, and only left behind the hate.
Now, I remember the damned thing.
I think I would have been better off.

Anyway, luckily, I saw "The Ruling Class", after this, and that was my antidote movie.

And, that's those.

Up next, another batch of these, but not under the "flicks that really messed me up as a kid", heading.
I'll explain in the post.