On June 4, 2004, Colorado resident Marvin Heemeyer was mad as hell and was not going to take this anymore. After years of sparring with the “good ol’ boys” town hall and Granby city court over a sewer line dispute at his muffler shop, the middle-aged welder fought back in the only way he felt he had left: with a bulldozer he had secretly modified with enough concrete, steel and fully loaded rifles to become a homemade tank.
It’s quite a story. Although it sounds like Guns & Ammo fanfic, Tread is not pretend. It’s a documentary detailing the whole sordid story as a man-vs.-government squabble in a town of less than 2,000 people boils into worldwide headlines.
Tread spends about an hour interviewing the principals to get both sides of the story. Then we get a third: the truth, with footage of Heemeyer’s two-hour rampage of unbridled property destruction and threats to lives. As it unfolds, director Paul Solet draws upon his background in horror films (including Grace and a segment of Tales of Halloween) to ratchet up a considerable amount of tension and sustain it, even if Heemeyer’s real-life Killdozer moves at a mere 2 mph. —Rod Lott
If Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the grandaddy of UFO films — and it is — John Coats’ Foes is the step-grandson who belongs to the daughter who got disowned after she got pregnant — the second time, at church camp. But, hey, doesn’t the kid deserve a birthday card at the very least, with or without an enclosed George Washington?
So let us acknowledge Foes. The sci-fi obscurity was written and directed by Coats, in his only work in those roles to date, more or less as an effects showcase. Today, he’s an Emmy-winning effects artist, so as a calling card, it’s obviously successful. For all its ingenuity of depicting flying saucers for next to nothing, however, the film narratively proves to be one tough sit.
At an island lighthouse, a couple (Coats and Jane Wiley) watches in awe as a shiny, silver disc hovers and moves overhead. Meanwhile, at a NORAD command center, Macdonald Carey (Summer of Fear) does a lot of consulting (and, in close up, a little trembling) with a U.S. Air Force general (Jerry Hardin, aka Deep Throat of TV’s The X-Files).
Matte-shot manna, the dead-sober Foes is easy to admire, in an Equinox-y way of not letting one’s imagination be limited by funds, as much as possible. Even if that means your trippy 2001-esque sequence can only be achieved by having your cast members bounce around on a trampoline. —Rod Lott
Frankie Fane loves the limelight. As played by Fantastic Voyage’s Stephen Boyd in a big, barking dog of a performance, Fane — a mere one letter from “fame,” folks! — is the (self-)center of his own universe at the Academy Awards, where he’s up for his first Oscar as Best Actor, against such stiff competition as Burt Lancaster and Richard Burton. How he got to that big night plays out in feature-length flashback in — what else? — The Oscar.
We watch as Frankie goes from two-bit traveling stripper spieler to accidental actor to hot new thing to box-office poison to (gasp!) pining for a TV pilot before a from-nowhere nomination saves his bacon. Along the way, he uses and abuses everyone in his immediate orbit: the talent scout who discovers him (Eleanor Parker, Eye of the Cat), his agent (comedian Milton Berle, playing it straight), his bump-and-grinder of a girlfriend (a super-sexy Jill St. John, Diamonds Are Forever), his eventual wife (Elke Sommer, The Wrecking Crew) and his best friend and manager, Hymie (crooner Tony Bennett, in his one and only film role not playing himself). Forget The Oscar; the marquee should have read The Asshole.
Thanks to the books The Golden Turkey Awards, The Official Razzie Movie Guide, Bad Movies We Love and their ilk, The Oscar has carried the burden as one of Hollywood’s legendary stinkers since its release, which isn’t playing fair. Oh, the melodrama is overwrought, all right, but I suspect its tarnished rep is more a case of Tinseltown not appreciating the suggestion that all is not golden in the moviemaking biz — especially one with such a nut-kick of an ending!
Immensely entertaining, The Oscar effectively killed the upwardly mobile careers of Boyd and director Russell Rouse, who co-wrote the screenplay with his regular collaborator Clarence Greene (Academy Award winners themselves for Pillow Talk) and some new kid named Harlan Ellison. What’s a revolutionary sci-fi author like him doing in a star-studded pic like this? While not entirely sure, I wonder if he is to blame for Frankie’s lingo-laden hepcat dialogue — to wit:
• “You fat honey-dripper!”
• “I’m up to here with all this bring-down!”
• “You’ve gotta be shuckin’ me!”
More narcissistic viewers might read this cautionary tale as more of an instruction manual, like Valley of the Dolls. While the two don’t reside on the same level of camp, make no mistake: They fucked. —Rod Lott
When Terminator: Dark Fate was released last year, it was met with unbridled hatred from conservatives, which I mostly chocked up to it being a movie featuring three women in the lead roles. Having just seen it though, their hatred of this franchise is more apparent than even that: It casts Latino actors Natalia Reyes as the savior of humanity and Gabriel Luna as its destroyer.
That being said, with a decidedly death-dealing tone toward immigration and their paid foot soldiers, Dark Fate was one of the better science-fiction films of 2019.
With each Terminator film veering off into a new timeline of sorts — it really makes sense if you let it — this one takes place in an alternate present where, a short time after T2, John Connor (Edward Furlong) is blown away by the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) while on a tropical beach vacation. This gives a returning Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) a new purpose, as you could guess.
Meanwhile, Skynet never happened, but a different form of AI, known as the Legion, took its place instead, offering up a new Judgment Day of killer cyborgs warring against surviving humans, many of whom become augmented soldiers. One of them, Grace (Mackenzie Davis), travels back in time to protect Mexican factory worker Dani (Reyes) against a newer Terminator menace (Luna) known as a REV-9.
There’s plenty of what we’ve come to expect from Terminator flicks, including explosive set pieces, constant authority slashings and naked time travelers — as well as a returning Schwarzenegger — that runs this engine well, with the innovation of Deadpool’s Tim Miller behind the camera and a story by returning creator Harlan Ellison James Cameron.
But, you know, the scene where the Terminator does in about 40 or 50 immigration officials … it’s hard to not cheer for that. No MAGA here, ese.
—Louis Fowler
Roger Corman never met a Hollywood blockbuster he couldn’t rip off (and I mean that lovingly). With Munchies, the legendary producer didn’t just ride the coattails of former employee Joe Dante’s Gremlins; he doubled down, hiring the editor of Gremlins, Tina Hirsch, to helm this quickie, and casting Dante regulars Wendy Schaal, Robert Picardo and Paul Bartel in bit parts, perhaps hoping for quality by association.
None of that made any difference. Carnosaur, this ain’t. (To composer Ernest Troost’s credit, his score doesn’t steal from Gremlins. Because it’s too busy pilfering Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.)
Anyway, in Munchies (not based on the Frito-Lay snack), archeologist Simon Watterman (Harvey Korman, Mel Brooks’ good-luck charm) returns from Peru with a gremlin ghoulie critter troll spookie hobgoblin squatty little creature that he smuggles into America via gym bag. Before a screwballian round of sex with novelty props, Simon’s loser adult son (Charlie Stratton, Summer Camp Nightmare) and his girlfriend (Nadine Van der Velde, Moving Violations) justify the title by calling the, er, thing a “munchie,” on account of its voracious, fridge-be-damned appetite, and naming it “Arnold,” because it’s 1987.
When Simon has to leave town, his slimy brother, mini-golf magnate Cecil (also Korman, but with a Bob Goulet mustache), tries to steal Arnold. Cecil’s scared stoner stepson, Dude (Jon Stafford, Full Metal Jacket), stops playing hacky sack long enough to slice Arnold into pieces, which only makes more Arnolds (à la The Gate). Ergo, Corman gets his PG-rated plural Munchies; havoc, ye shall be wreaked!
Provided it sounds fun at all, it is not as much fun as it sounds — the primary reason being this immutable fact: The munchies were designed without points of articulation, which qualifies as more stuffed animal than puppet; a sock slipped over your hand displays more action. Someone just out of frame moves the mini-monsters left and/or right and/or up in the air — whatever slapstick gag the script (by Barbarian Queen II’s Lance Smith) calls for, whether trying to shotgun an old lady or peering up young ladies’ skirts. Unrelated to their shenanigans, the comedy is desperate at best, and from Starsky & Hutch to S&H Green Stamps, the typical joke feels stale by half an acid-washed generation. —Rod Lott
On June 4, 2004, Colorado resident Marvin Heemeyer was mad as hell and was not going to take this anymore. After years of sparring with the “good ol’ boys” town hall and Granby city court over a sewer line dispute at his muffler shop, the middle-aged welder fought back in the only way he felt he had left: with a bulldozer he had secretly modified with enough concrete, steel and fully loaded rifles to become a homemade tank. 
Tread spends about an hour interviewing the principals to get both sides of the story. Then we get a third: the truth, with footage of Heemeyer’s two-hour rampage of unbridled property destruction and threats to lives. As it unfolds, director Paul Solet draws upon his background in horror films (including Grace and a segment of Tales of Halloween) to ratchet up a considerable amount of tension and sustain it, even if Heemeyer’s real-life Killdozer moves at a mere 2 mph. —Rod Lott
