Sorry for the repeat absences. If you’ve been reading my Twitter feed on the side of the page, you probably know that my mother—Law & Order fan extraordinaire, brewer and drinker of two pitchers of sweet tea a day, and the woman who watched Poltergeist because she thought it was funny— was ill and unfortunately passed away a few weeks ago. I’m finally on the verge of settling some of the little details an only child has to settle when this happens, so the Omelet is open for business again.
One of the weird side effects of going through Mom’s things is that I now have a fridge full of food I wouldn’t ordinarily eat, because I can’t stand to waste it. (This is different, to my mind, from hoarding; nothing makes me happier than tossing the container from something I’ve finally used up. It’s the “finally used up” part that’s important here.) I did my best getting rid of the leftovers, tossing anything I knew I absolutely wouldn’t eat, but there’s still a lot left.
So not only will you actually be getting that Conjuring write-up I promised you back around Halloween, for a while I’ll be writing up “The MomFood Diary” as I go through all this stuff. Our first entry? Ensure Butter-Pecan shakes. Stay tuned…
Synopsis: The Quests are diverted from marine biology, first by the appearance of a spy sub, then by villagers with a voodoo problem. The voodoo is a smokescreen…er, zombie-drug-screen…to hide the construction of an undersea base, and the situation escalates faster than you can say “Wade Davis.” Highlights of this episode include turbanless Hadji and Bannon beefcake, because the dreadful doll is a doggone distraction.
Tip 59: It’s hard to look at a familiar problem with fresh eyes.
When you’ve recently waltzed around a secret nerve-gas factory, etc., it can be easy to forget that sometimes infiltrations don’t go so well.
Being reminded doesn’t seem great, either.
Instead, look for ways to liven up ordinary tasks and keep them exciting.
For example, Korbay the would-be voodoo priest lifehacked (sorry) this skull into a two-way radio.
Next time: I’m going to take a run at finishing my long-neglected post on The Conjuring.
Why Finally? “You’ve never seen this movie?!” someone with a wide-ranging Apple movie collection said—and off we went.
People, I had barely heard of Streets of Fire. Movie-wise, I spent 1984 watching The Secret of NIMH repeatedly on cable (while begging to be allowed to watch Flashdance), getting the bejeezus scared out of me at Gremlins, laughing at Ghostbusters and, sadly, not watching The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. (In that last case, as the man in a later movie said, I chose… poorly.)
Here is what I knew about Streets of Fire before last weekend:
This video. That’s it.
The Premise: When hometown girl turned rock star Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) is kidnapped from the stage by weird bikers (led by Willem Dafoe as “Raven”), old flame/current mercenary Tom Cody (Michael Paré) is called upon to rescue her. Which he does in spectacular fashion—for the ’80s, that is, back when less stuff exploded—thanks to the help of a fellow ex-soldier (Amy Madigan in what may be my favorite role in the film). Also along for the ride is Ellen’s current squeeze, music manager Billy Fish (Rick Moranis).
Streets of Fire calls itself a “rock ‘n’ roll fable,” which is a nice clue that things aren’t always going to make sense. The setting, for example, seems to be simultaneously the 1950s and the 1980s, with spandex pants and punky makeup for performers, but greasers all over the place like it’s set in a Stephen King town. I recall a lot of people in the ’80s complaining that TV and movies were becoming like music videos, and I bet this was held up (down?) as an early example. The story itself is about an inch deep, but evokes so many of the Classic Plots that it has the appeal of a fairy tale.
The Verdict: On one hand, I used the word “delightful” about five times during viewing, and I really enjoyed Streets of Fire. That may be less about the movie itself, though, and more about its resemblance to other works of its time. It has an underdog-mercenary plot like Extreme Prejudice or The A-Team,the random serendipity of the Buckaroo Banzai movie, a neo-retro underbelly like Blue Velvet (and two years before Blue Velvet came out, too), and, heaven help me, the good-will-prevail attitude that is the only thing I like about classic clunker Megaforce.
It also has, at most, 1.5 actual streets of fire.
Even though I found it delightful, I can imagine the film having a lot of haters: the loner-with-a-heart-of-gold hero, for one thing, is a trope that should be using a rollator to get around by now. Had Streets of Fire been one whit more realistic, I think it would have sunk like a stone.
Might go well with: I mentioned so many movies above that I’ve got nothing but popcorn for this one.
Next time: In the Quest For Monday, Race tours the facilities.
Synopsis: The Quests are diverted from fun undersea business: first by the appearance of a spy sub, then by villagers with a voodoo problem. The voodoo is a smokescreen…er, zombie-drug-screen…to hide the construction of an undersea base, and the situation escalates faster than you can say “Wade Davis.” Highlights of this episode include turbanless Hadji and Bannon beefcake, because the dreadful doll is a doggone distraction.
Tip 58: There are lessons to be learned even from falsehood and fraud.
The would-be witch doctor’s scheme survives about five seconds of contact with the mind of Benton Quest:
“As I wrote in my book, The Snake And The Multicolored Arc.“
But at least we get to find out what the esteemed scientist’s Mini-Me would look like.
Pointy!
As well as what Race Bannon’s swimsuit calendar would look like.
Hey, at least he’s not purple and impersonating a god this time.
Next time: After I spend more time wondering how every online project I try slowly turns into a horror blog, I’ll pick something.
Next time on TQfM!: More than just a pretty face, Race is a top-notch finder of secret lairs.
Why… well, just why? I never found it until this week, and it’s sure not “finally!” watched, but this one made it into my Netflix queue for three reasons:
I like gargoyles.
Eric Balfour, who plays this movie’s hero, was one of my favorite things about Haven.
I have a very high tolerance for bad effects. (I own The Shining miniseries: enough said.)
Unbelievably, that blazer survives unscathed through the entire movie.
The Premise: Scholar Jack Randall (Balfour, with a very good adventure-hero moniker) once wrote a book about cryptids at the instigation of his girlfriend Carol, and it almost destroyed him professionally. After another rejection for Jack’s latest manuscript, Carol talks him into exploring an old church scheduled for demolition. While in the catacombs, she pockets a strange rock—which is so obviously a gargoyle egg that you’ll be yelling at your TV—and loses her life as a result. Slowly Jack begins to put the pieces together (no pun intended), and with the help of a pair of tabloid TV reporters and an insane priest (Nick Mancuso!), Jack sets out to exterminate the murderous creature.
I sometimes feel as though movies I’m ambivalent about are trying to win me over, like when the Carpenters’ “Superstar” kept turning up in 2007’s Ghost Rider. That’s the case here, too.Rise of the Gargoyles is uniquely suited to my interests, with Balfour in a tweed jacket as an amalgam of Indiana Jones, Rupert Giles and Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon. There’s mention of that other, more NSFW stone creature, the sheela-na-gig—pretty impressive folklore knowledge for a monster movie. And just like in Belphegor, we have a creature terrorizing Paris, albeit with a lot more blood. This movie should be awesome, for that value of awesome that is “puts a manic grin on my face at the prospect of maybe seeing a baby gargoyle.” (Spoiler alert: there’s a reason the phrase isn’t “Chekhov’s Baby Gargoyle.” Maybe the budget wasn’t there.)
The Verdict: For the second week in a row, what should have been a really enjoyable monster flick fails to fully deliver. Rise of the Gargoyles never quite clicks: the characters don’t seem to relate to each other, the idea that Jack is suspected of Carol’s murder—with one swipe of his pointed academic bona fides, presumably—is ridiculous, and even a few horror moments reminiscent of Preston and Child’s excellent The Relic couldn’t get the movie where it needed to go. It’s not bad (and Mancuso declaiming about the devil is not to be missed), but it is kind of a long 94 minutes.
Even So: There’s something endearing about a movie where people in trouble call the police, bring extra flashlight batteries on their trip to the old crypt, and so on. Rise of the Gargoyles has a practical-minded streak that I appreciated.
Fun Trivia Fact: If a gargoyle stops acting as a waterspout—say, by coming to life and decapitating a bunch of people—it is technically a grotesque in every possible sense.
Might go well with: Croissants, as long as they aren’t actually monster eggs; The Relic; Haven.
Synopsis: The Quests are diverted from fun fish-identifying business: first by the appearance of a spy sub, then by villagers with a voodoo problem. The voodoo is a smokescreen…er, zombie-drug-screen…to hide the construction of an undersea base, and the situation escalates faster than you can say “Wade Davis.” Highlights of this episode include turbanless Hadji and Bannon beefcake, because the dreadful doll is a doggone distraction.
Tip 57: Sometimes old movie quotes say it all.
You know how to make it seem like you can turn people into zombies via magic, don’t you?
Why Found-Again? At the end of my last post, I mentioned the Five Film Fang Fest, a Hammer Dracula mini-marathon that aired on TBS in October in the late ’80s. That’s where I first saw my favorite (Taste the Blood of Dracula) and least favorite (The Satanic Rites of Dracula, or as I like to call it, Dracula vs. the Shrubbery, With Surprising Results) of Christopher Lee’s outings as the titular count. It’s also where I watched Dracula A.D. 1972, but other than the kind of “hip” counterculture stuff the Austin Powers movies mined for laughs, I don’t remember much about it.
The Premise: After his demise in the 19th century (impaled on a wagon wheel! must’ve been made of hawthorn), Dracula’s signet ring and ashes are stolen away by some young spark.
….in other words.
Later, in swingin’ 1972 London, we see a very familiar young-sparky face at a party/orgy. Johnny Alucard (I don’t write it, I just report it) convinces a bunch of hippies to do a black mass, resurrecting You-Know-Who. Sadly for Dracula, one of the hippies (Stephanie “Sister Kate” Beacham) is a van Helsing, with a grandfather played by Peter Cushing. This has predictable results.
Alucard.The other one.
In some ways, this is a rehash of Taste the Blood of Dracula, in which Dracula is raised by a young nihilist who forms an ad hoc Hellfire Club. Cults were back in the news in the ’70s, and it shows in the police investigation that leads the cops to the vampire hunter who can help them. The attempt to drag Dracula into modernity—hiding vampires at a Chelsea nightclub, pairing him with a guy who strongly recalls Alex from A Clockwork Orange—is imperfectly executed but interesting, and the movie seems to sense this, since it regularly returns to the traditional creaky old church setting. There also seem to be a few scattered visual jokes: a shot of empty milk bottles on a sidewalk after Dracula attacks a victim, Peter Cushing racing to save his granddaughter through a service entrance marked “Goods.”
The Verdict: I wish I could say that Dracula A.D. 1972 won me over, but it’s just not quite…right. It has a lot going for it in its relatively balanced portrayal of the hippie kids, and Christopher Lee does a great job as always, but the old and new portions of the narrative never truly gel. (Honestly, the fact that there was a character named “Johnny Alucard”—and that van Helsing had to draw a diagram to work that one out—may have stuck a stake in this film as far as I’m concerned.) Given the goofy ways they kill off vampires in these Hammer movies, though, I am happy to report that Dracula ends up doused in holy water and speared on punji sticks. Van Helsing circa 1972 is not messing around.
Other random observations:
If you like ’70s music, this is kind of fun. The party that kicks off the 1972 timeline resembles some of the Incredible String Band’s album covers, and some of the incidental music sounds like long-lost James Bond.
Whoever gave Stephanie Beacham that haircut should be prosecuted.
Imagine those old houses where there always seems to be a print of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, only instead of the blue boy, it’s a scary woodcut of Christopher Lee.
Might go well with: Tomato juice, the music of Donovan.
Next time: Doing that voodoo that…that bald guy on Jonny Quest…does so well.
Synopsis: The Quests are diverted from fun fish-identifying business: first by the appearance of a spy sub, then by villagers with a voodoo problem. The voodoo is a smokescreen…er, zombie-drug-screen…to hide the construction of an undersea base, and the situation escalates faster than you can say “Wade Davis.” Highlights of this episode include turbanless Hadji and Bannon beefcake, because the dreadful doll is a doggone distraction.
Only a spot of voodoo could interrupt Team Quest’s oceanic idyll… apparently.
Tip 56: It’s good to love your work, but maybe not too much.
Especially if your work shows signs of loving you back.And the family’s not even that surprised.
Next time: Christopher Lee in a movie I haven’t seen since the days of TBS’s Five Film Fang Fest, which is to say a hell of a long time.
Next time on TQfM!: Becoming a voodoo master the easy way.
It’s been a while since I rewatched a Jeff Goldblum movie for this site—well, he’s in The Sentinel for about a minute, like everyone else—and this was one of the first I ever saw. It was 1986, and I was attempting to gear up for The Fly by watching everything the guy had ever done, including Death Wish and that disco movie.
Can you blame me?
Why Found-Again? That said, I’ve been putting this one off. I’ve seen a lot of Found-Again films at this point, and only a few have really disappointed me. I thought Transylvania 6-5000 was goofy fun when I was 12… but will a comedy broader than the ocean, and sporting an aesthetic best described as Monty Hall meets The Munsters meets Benny Hill meets Love Boat, really stand up to grown-up scrutiny?
The Premise: Instead of making things up like a normal tabloid, the paper Jack and Gil* (Goldblum and Ed Begley, Jr.) work for sends them to Transylvania after a tourist video seems to show the Frankenstein monster. They arrive to find a town bent on increasing tourism and showcasing its normalcy despite being populated by (among others) a goofy bellhop, a sort of Igor family, a shy but horny vampire, a werewolf, a mad scientist, and, yes, the F-Monster himself. Jack, who has an amazingly low tolerance for bullshit for a hero in a comedy, just wants to give up and romance a beautiful blonde; Gil, who makes up in go-getter spirit what he lacks in brains, stays on the case. And that’s how they stumble onto the real secret of the Transylvanian monsters.
It’s also how this happens. Ordinarily I wouldn’t include a groin-grab screenshot, but when I talk to other people who’ve seen the movie, this is invariably the thing they remember.
Like a lot of these goofy movies from the ’70s and ’80s, this has a pretty good cast; if you ever watch it, remember that only a few years later, Geena Davis took home the Oscar. John Byner and Carol Kane steal every scene they’re in, and Jeffrey Jones does well as, essentially, the Principal Rooney of a small town in the Carpathians. It also has a pre-Seinfeld Michael Richards, if you’re into that. As for the plot, you know me–any mystery in a storm.
The Verdict: I don’t think I’d go so far as to recommend it for a movie night, but being trapped in a room with T-6-5000 could certainly be worse. And I won’t lie: the “heartwarming” denouement, especially Lupi and Radu, at the end of this movie gets me every time, as stupid as that is. Transylvania 6-5000 is still best enjoyed by 12-year-olds, but what I’ve lost in tolerance for its obvious gags is made up for by… well, by a lot of the other movies I’ve watched for this site. It’s an Abbott and Costello flick for a new(er) age, made with obvious affection for the old monster movies that inspired it.
That said, it was a pretty long 94 minutes, and you can see why.
*Oh, hell. Is that a pun?
Next time: The Quest For Monday becomes The Quest For Voodoo! And for next Friday, by default, we have Dracula AD 1972.
Synopsis: The Quests are back on their home turf—the surf. What should be enviable underwater fun and education is ruined when Jonny finds a treasure and Team Quest is set upon by some very lazy pirates. Also, Bandit learns to dive.
(OOC Author Note: Even before my time got compromised late last year, I struggled with this one because it’s everything I ever wanted out of a Jonny Quest episode as a kid: sea creatures, showy-but-plausible science, and a swashbuckling plot. That makes it a little bland for Benton Quest Field Guide purposes, so I think I’m just going to wrap it up today.)
When your life is on the line, even from the laziest of sources, and you need to summon help…
…such as when confronted by pirates who are averse to standing up for long periods of time, but who could still shoot you.
Tip 55: Sometimes the weird thing to do is the right thing to do.
Bandit’s reporting trouble above the water. He’s kind of an inverse Lassie.
Next time: I’m letting someone else decide Friday’s movie, so it’ll either be really silly or the Hammer (film) will drop…which doesn’t actually preclude the silly.
Next time on TQfM!: “The Dreadful Doll” looks like the TV equivalent of movie voodoo, only in the Questverse. This has the potential to be excruciating. I can’t wait.
