Kitchen Sink

The Happy Holiday Hearth (2002)

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Is it too much for a man to ask to get him some Xmas lovin’? This here Happy Holiday Hearth is like having a fireplace on your TV, know what I’m sayin’? That’s the whole plot: There’s a fire and it burns.

And since fires are s’posed to be, like, all romantic and shit, I done put it in the player, hoping I’d get me a little sumthin’ sumthin’ with my girl. But she just laughed at it. And even though the Happy Holiday Hearth peoples done made it so one can manipulate the audio to be cracklin’ logs, Christmas music or cracklin’ logs and Christmas music, she didn’t want no bonin’! Bah, humbug. —Rod Lott

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Mystery

Midnight Cop (1988)

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midnightcopYou know that segment of the German population that refuses to acknowledge the existence of the Holocaust? Perhaps they should focus such futile energies on the Krauts’ kraptastic Midnight Cop instead.

It’s a dull, dreary, thrill-free thriller starring Armin Mueller-Stahl (The Game) as Alex Glass, a sloppy and depressed jazz-loving, turtle-owning, pickle-eating police commissioner out to bust a serial killer who slathers Vaseline on the faces of the young women he’s killed.

Weaving in and out of the supposed mystery are Frank Stallone, Sly’s brother, as Jack, a drug-pushing heavy who wears a towel far higher on his waist than any man should; Michael York (Logan’s Run) as Armin’s close pal Karstens, whom York has chosen to play in “sleep” mode; a late-night cafe owner with some kind of funky bloody nub on his shaved head; and Morgan Fairchild (whom I’m slept with) as Lisa, a high-class hooker who falls in love with Glass and sports one incredible behind.

midnightcop1Trust me: Armin’s hands are all over it in several scenes, and I do not blame him; she’s a gorgeous woman.

You’ll have the plot figured out before what little actually happens happens. Mueller-Stahl is typically a fine actor, but you wouldn’t know it with this half-assed German production. You haven’t seen a Terrible Acting Showdown until you witness Stallone and Fairchild go airhead-to-airhead. And the ending is jaw-droppingly terrible on so many levels that I’d almost recommend watching the movie just to see it. Easy there, horsey, I said “almost.” —Rod Lott

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Horror

X Game (2010)

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Rumor has it that a recent rash of suicides among young people in Japan is due to a bully taking revenge for past transgressions. Why else would the victims have a large “X” branded so crudely onto their faces?

After his sixth-grade teacher “leaps” to his death, Hideaki (Hirofumi Araki) strongly suspects it to be the work of Mariko, a pale, homely girl who was teased mercilessly that year of grade school before transferring. Her abusers engaged in a game called “X Game,” in which Mariko was made to pull slips of paper from a pink box; whatever demeaning act was scrawled on those scraps was what they would do to her, from forcing her to sit atop thumbtacks to lighting her hair on fire.

Karma’s a bitch, as Hideaki and three former classmates find out when they find themselves trapped in a caged room made to look like their elementary school room and guarded by two hooded men armed with cattle prods. Mariko has infused ye olde X Game with modern technology; as monitors explain to our captive quartet, they’re to enact 13 punishments, with the victim of each determined at random. Whether that’s being force-fed gallons of milk via a tube or eating a meal of fried rice and maggots, they have three minutes to comply or they’re whisked away for a branding, then returned to the game.

I need not tell you that X Game is a J-horror response to Saw; you might surmise that simply from reading the title. So was director Yôhei Fukuda’s earlier pair of Death Tube movies, but this effort is more polished in both script and sights. At a hair under two hours, it’s still too long by a quarter, yet devious enough to satisfy fans of the madman-run-contest subgenre. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977)

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In the late 1970s, sci-fi flicks popped up like mad, because producers wrongly assumed any space-themed film would be the next Star Wars. Italy made scads of them, including Cosmos: War of the Planets. If a plot exists to its first half, it skipped the translation process.

For 45 minutes, the members of a spaceship push buttons, take orders from a computer named Wiz, go on a spacewalk where acid seeps into the suit, and have virtual sex in the “Cosmic Love” room (which has two settings: “violent or gentle”). Because they all wear red cloth helmets that obscure a majority of the head, it’s extremely difficult to tell the characters apart. Okay, so one has a beard, one is black (and gets the whitest voice-dub of them all) and a couple of them have breasts, but other than that, baby, they’re the same.

Then they visit a mysterious planet, where a semblance of a story takes shape. Our heroes come across a Stonehenge-like structure that, when walked through, zaps them underground to a cavernous dwelling housing a race of mostly naked slaves who look like Blue Man Group with Mr. Spock ears. As these slaves explain via telepathy, they’re lorded over by a boxy slot-machine robot that suspiciously resembles that non-threatening educational toy Tomy put on the market around the time.

The last few minutes is one of those endings that makes you go, “What the—?” for several reasons, not the least of which is a crew member who inexplicably turns into a rabid, pustule-faced monster. With the flick’s low budget, expect a goofy electronic score, rudimentary optical effects and cardboard direction by Super Stooges vs. the Wonder Women‘s Al Bradley (aka Alfonso Brescia); ironically, don’t expect the one thing that costs nothing: lucidity. —Rod Lott

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Action

Death Journey (1976)

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The first of four low-budget vanity productions starring former pro football player Fred Williamson as alter ego Jesse Crowder, Death Journey was directed by Williamson as well. According to the credits, he also served as “producer and executive producer,” suggesting the Hammer’s ego was way out of control.

Crowder is an ex-cop hired to escort a mob-snitch accountant (Bernard Kirby) from Los Angeles to New York in 48 hours. Killers await at every turn; Crowder punches them out. In one instance, he throws a punch that clearly doesn’t even make contact, but the would-be recipient falls down anyway. The witness is a fat, perspiring slob who unwraps and eats four candy bars at once. Yes, this is a case of “laugh at the fat honky.” You just might.

Williamson spends the entire movie with his shirt unbuttoned (when he’s wearing one at all, that is), presumably for easy-on/easy-off access, as no fewer than four women throw themselves at Crowder for casual sex. One of them attempts a post-coital hit on Crowder’s tubby charge, and begs for her life when Crowder thwarts her plans.

“I’m not gonna kill you, lady. You’re too good in the sack for that. I’m just gonna bruise you up a little,” he says. So he throws her off a moving train with a toodeloo line of, “Happy landing, bitch!”

Williamson shows even less talent behind the camera as he does in front of it. Scenes go on and on (sometimes in excruciating slow-motion), as if he were determined to use every frame of film shot. And there are so many needless scenes of people driving cars, you’ll wonder, “Hey, where are Jim Nabors and Dom DeLuise?” —Rod Lott

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