All posts by Louis Fowler

Comedy

Rock ’n’ Roll High School Forever (1991)

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A movie like Rock ’n’ Roll High School — one of my favorites and with an awesome Ramones soundtrack — should have a riff-blowing sequel. Should have.

See, when I noticed Rock ’n’ Roll School High Forever at my video store in the early ’90s, I was quite ecstatic and, of course, I rented it. And watched it.

And became visibly sick.

My preconceived notions rubbed out like a GPC cigarette on the wet pavement, I took the tape from the VCR — being nether kind nor rewinding, natch — and dumped it back into the shop’s return box, thoroughly disgusted at what I’d seen.

Thirty-plus years later, the sequel is one of the bonus features on the original film’s 45th anniversary edition in 4K Ultra HD (my 10th time to buy the movie). I popped in the disc and, like a fetid stream of A/V puke, once again dropped out of Rock ’n’ Roll School High Forever.

It starts out somewhat promising, with the re-named Ronald Reagan High School and various teenagers plotting a PG-13 rock ’n’ roll insurrection. But as once-popular star Corey Feldman turns directly to the camera and sneers, “Are you ready to rock and roll?,” I guess we’re not ready at all.

Instead, in his standard and strange Michael Jackson mimicry, Corey overflows the school toilets and tears off the skirt of a comely student, all as the title theme by The Pursuit of Happiness (whoever they are) warbles on the soundtrack. Ha-ha?

The plot, as it stands, is about Corey and his “band,” The Eradicators, trying to play their substandard covers of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” and Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’” at the school dance. Meanwhile, the school gets a new vice principal in Miss Togar Dr. Vadar, reprised (?) by Mary Woronov. To be sure, she rules with an iron fist — and a robotic hand on her left.

With needless help from the apparent heir of illustrious scrounger Eaglebauer (no relation to Clint Howard) and the Spirit of Rock ’n’ Roll (Mojo Nixon in a low-budget fantasy sequence), Corey and bad company crash the prom. Utilizing dated sequences from the first movie, they take Togar Vadar down and burn down the school.

By the time the credits roll, it’s apparent that rock, finally, is dead.

With the combined failed efforts of director Deborah Brock (Slumber Party Massacre II), whichever distribution outfit Roger Corman had at the time and the sheer ugliness straight-to-video movies at the time were going for, Forever remains was an unmitigated disasterpiece. With Feldman on the soundtrack, the deceased Ramones are defiantly spinning in their graves. Gabba gabba nay. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Kitchen Sink

Performance (1970)

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WTF

When I moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, years ago, somehow I fell into a commune-like situation, with plenty of wheatgrass juices, patchouli incense and Kundalini yoga — woven, parachute-like pants sadly not included.

With all the flatmates, bunk buddies and transitional couch surfers really into the crunchy granola lifestyle as they professed, I slowly noticed they didn’t bring their free love and other wanton charges around me. To be sure, it’s because I was so darn square and far too fat.

Such is life, right?

Viewing the movie Performance, my counterculture dreams became my transient nightmares, as well as a revelatory cream dream of the demeaning sod I would’ve become around the arousing ’60s temptations and erectile ’70s eruptions.

The musings and teachings of Mick Jagger and his Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request have been accurately depicted here, even if the album’s drug-swaggered, free-loving altera-utopia was never to be seen in real life (mostly due to the release of Running Out of Luck in 1985, but that’s a whole other story).

In the rogue hands of director Nicolas Roeg, Performance’s prince/pauper fable might have been overlooked, if not for its dispassionate narrative and drab surroundings making it one of Roeg’s definitive defective works.

East London gang member Chas (James Fox) goes about muscling the wrong people — beating, extorting, shaving a man’s head bald. It’s sitar raga in basic 4/4 time, man, as the scared Chas goes on the run and finds himself in the slovenly boudoir of strung-out rock star Turner (Jagger).

In addition to a drug habit, Turner has quite the sexual addiction. He leads Chas into drab games of master and servant, with bisexual Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and Lucy (Michèle Breton) feeding him LSD and handling loaded weapons in a slim bathtub while smoking cigarettes and, probably, scissoring.

As Turner performs the movie’s lone single, “Memo from Turner,” he and Chas physically and metaphysically transform into one another, resulting in not only the type of spiritually devolved finale Roeg was wont to do later (in Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth), but also one of his most troubling films, all in a syncopated tabla-beat way.

With all the pomp and circumstance a man can muster, Jagger’s performance is very invasively tight, but Fox is no slouch, giving an enthusiastic, bleak portrait like he did in films such as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Together, they’re a satanic pair of spilled wine decanters filled with all the vice in the world, and it’s impossible to take your eyes off them.

But, in the end, Roeg’s masterfully hypnotic direction, aided by artist Donald Cammell, is the burning, the consumption and the dying of the fading rock star and his homunculus’ wet ashes, mystically and masochistically buried along with their names.

I never found my hellish opening to that detached, debauched, hedonist rock-star lifestyle I so secretly craved, but Jagger — and, really, Roeg — were kind enough to show me their vacation photos. That’s good enough for me. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

Andy Warhol’s Bad (1977)

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Version 1.0.0

In 1977, John Waters released the filthy Desperate Living, one of his most underrated features and, to be sure, one of his best. On the other hand, famed pop artist Andy Warhol’s film editor Jed Johnson directed his own filthy ditty, Andy Warhol’s Bad, and, true to its name, it really wasn’t very good.

In fact, it’s Bad.

Sure, Bad had the Waters vibe of the Baltimore suburban dystopia, all played for full belly snorts and unrushed chortles, but Waters’ own artistry and persona made all his films so unique. At times, his amateurish bravado made his films better.

Bad has none of that. Sure, Johnson had the low-class substrata, the skid-marked panties and a brutally nasty tone, but unlike Waters’ work, Johnson’s film doesn’t have the well-oiled crotch or the well-timed heart. Just a bunch of people acting like assholes.

Starting with the boozy theme song courtesy of blues musician Mike Bloomfield, the movie starts with an overflowing public toilet and, sadly, doesn’t get better. Drifter L.T. (a pre-Riptide Perry King) gets in the murder-for-hire business for downbeat electrolysis pimp Hazel (Carroll Baker, 1978’s Cyclone). L.T.’s a sleazy dude who struts around waiting for the phone while stealing from his landlord as she puts broken glass on the floor for him to step on.

Waiting for the call, he encounters all the women in Hazel’s service, including an oversexed Italian ice queen; Hazel’s undersexed, long-suffering welfare daughter (Susan Tyrrell, Avenging Angel); and a pair of sisters who are psycho-sexual arsonists and stab a dog in the street.

It all culminates when not only does L.T. strikes an autistic child many times on his job, but when a woman throws a screaming child out the window that, of course, causes it to splat on the street, all for comedy … right?

I am all for the blackest comedy around — seriously! — but you need to have even slight tittering somewhere in there, even for the most uncomfortable jokes. Instead, Warhol and company thought they were woefully posturing around the New York art scene, yet they were the only audience for it. It’s sad this could have been something but when a bad joke isn’t a joke at all, it becomes a tarnished insult.

The direction is bad, the script is bad, the performances are bad and, worst, the comedy is bad. At least Paul Morrissey could set up a camera and a joke. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Demolition Man (1993)

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Most of Southern California being on fire reminds me Demolition Man, but, of course, with different results. The movie begins with the Hollywood Hills on fire, a dire prophecy that has come to pass, sadly — especially since Sylvester Stallone is now an “emissary” to Hollywood by Donald Trump. (Truthfully, I didn’t see that coming, palling around with other has-beens like Mel Gibson and Jon Voight. Yeccccch!)

With hits like Rocky, Rambo, and Rhinestone, Stallone was one of the biggest actors in the world. However, Demolition Man is Stallone’s absolute triumph: a somewhat smart, pretty inventive sci-fi-action film with enough explosives and unmatched machismo to create a spandex-clad gumbo — in other words, one of 1993’s most underrated and unappreciated films!

In an alternate 1996, L.A. is a total war zone. Beefy cop Sgt. John Spartan (the beefy Stallone) goes into the inner city to take down terrorist mastermind Simon Phoenix (the fully engaging Wesley Snipes) and is penalized for his trouble: He is cryogenically frozen. Wowza!

In a future 2032, L.A. is renamed San Angeles, a utopian megalopolis with no violence, hunger or, apparently, working toilets. That all changes when Phoenix and Spartan are revived and compete in the world’s biggest dick contest. Of course, the peaceful members of society get murdered, killed and executed, all at the same time.

In between exhibitions at the MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum, artist Marco Brambilla directed the film. His swerves on the well-paved road between precise critiques of pop culture and disparate art culture serve the purpose to entertain.

And, really, it’s not that dumb. I can’t stress this enough!

The movie also casts the charming Sandra Bullock and the grating Denis Leary, and they serve their comical purposes. But, once again, the penile swagger of Stallone and Snipes create a dream team of ethical counterpoints, trading stereotypical non-PC lines and acts of brutality in a two-hour time frame.

In other words, it was a smart movie from stupid people. Right?

Demolition Man, with its end credits song by Sting — always a banger — is a fully satisfying film and one of Stallone’s last major works. Two years later, all that goodwill was tossed in the trash can with Judge Dredd and, well, we all know how that turned out. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Shape of Water (2017)

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When Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water came out to rave reviews in 2017, I was so completely transfixed with the simple language of lush storytelling and dramatic fantasy about a mute, lovelorn woman who impossibly falls in love with a semi-magical gill-man.
 
Sadly, most of my then-colleagues called it — and, frankly, still call it — “the fish-fucking movie.” From that moment on, I realized my tastes probably will differ from others’. But The Criterion Collection ’s new disc willfully transcends all the insults and barbs the film was given; The Shape of Water goes beyond monster-movie milieu, invigorating and reenergizing the creature feature for the new-ish millennium.
 
And, of course, it’s just a damn good movie.
 
With the sheer eroticism of the Creature from the Black Lagoon grasping at Julie Adams’ legs, The Shape of Water distills the essence with the voiceless Elisa (the lithe Sally Hawkins) in Cold War-era 1962. Trudging through life as a janitor in a secret government laboratory, she comes upon the lab’s new capture: a South American amphibian man (the emotive Doug Jones).

Trapped in the lab, the gill-man is put through tests and brutal exercises to determine his usefulness as a weapon, mostly administered by the sadistic Strickland (a wholly affecting performance from Michael Shannon). During this horrific tribulation, Elisa falls in love with the Gill-man — it’s a fish out of water story, literally.
 
With help from her working-class friends, Elisa breaks him out and tries to hide him until the tide comes in. As their passion intensifies, the gill-man gets sicker without the ocean to revive him, only to learn their love is more than natural and, in the end, supernatural.
 
Without a doubt, this movie took del Toro from the horror-film loving character behind Hellboy and Pacific Rim, as well as the Mexican-lensed The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, into the realm of fantastic world cinema. The success of The Shape of Water led to four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture Oscars. For once, I was right!
 
The film captures not only the weighty, yet weightless feeling of dangerously falling in love, but how to deal with the mindless automatons who automatically try to dissuade you. From the homophobic clerk at lunch to the buttoned-down brownshirt who craves cruelty, the problem is them, not you.
 
As The Shape of Water literally and metaphorically challenges conventions, it creates a beautiful world where love always wins out — even in the deep dark sea. At least that’s what I believe. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.