The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981)

There are some cinematic disasters that live on despite their failure, achieving a dubious kind of legend that actually serves them better than if they had succeeded. The Legend of the Lone Ranger is not one of them. In fact, it’s a film few people remember and even fewer ever talk about. When it flopped, it skipped right past infamy and went directly to oblivion instead.

The only reason I’ve remembered it over the years is because of a sweet childhood memory involving my parents waking me up to watch the Betamax copy they’d rented while coming home from a night on the town. I’ve come to assume that they were probably slightly tipsy when they did this, since they never did anything like that ever again, but I still find the recollection of it moving nonetheless.

Returning to the movie three decades later, I feared the worst, especially knowing its star discovery — the improbably named Klinton Spilsbury — was a male model who never acted again after having all of his dialogue replaced by James Keach (who occasionally sounds recorded in an echo chamber), so I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining the experience of watching it turned out to be.

That’s not to say it’s a good movie, but rather that I found much amusement in its inelegant attempt to marry the charming innocence of the classic Lone Ranger iconography with the graphic brutality of the post-Peckenpah/Leone Western landscape. Imagine The Apple Dumpling Gang with gaping bloody bullet wounds and you can almost picture it. Does The Legend of the Lone Ranger deserve its obscurity? Probably, but that won’t stop me from returning to it again. —Allan Mott

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Superchick (1973)

I knew I was going to dig Superchick once the opening credits read, “Norman Bartold as old policeman.” But, yeah, the sight of Joyce Jillson strutting down an airplane terminal in black hot pants and fuck-me boots, all to a swingin’ soundtrack, sure didn’t hurt. (In fact, it felt good.) Neither did the sight of Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy, accompanied by a toilet flush, suggesting that high art, this ain’t, so take it or leave it. I’ll take it!

Peyton Place refugee and eventual kook astrologer Jillson essays the role of Tara B. True, a stewardess — yes, back when they were called “stewardesses,” not “flight attendants,” because they said things like, “Coffee, tea or me?” — who’s quite a liberated gal, juggling three lovers in three cities. She’s faithful to all, not counting the lucky dudes she spontaneously inducts into the mile-high club.

One of those is a Marine she nails in the lavatory just to serve her country; the soldier stands at attention. Tara’s the kind of woman who coos threats like, “Last one in bed … gets no head.” She’s a fun girl. And she should be, because Superchick is essentially plotless, no matter how hard it tries to venture into mob territory.

In the loose framework of the film, Tara visits a porn set (where luscious Uschi Digard is fully on display); tokes up at a pot party; kung-fus a biker gang intent on a gang bang; screws a composer inside a piano, twice; chains John Carradine to a wall; loses her bikini bottom in the ocean, leading to some saltwater lovin’; and, finally, foils some hijackers, whereupon her blouse pops open for the TV cameras. You’re cleared for takeoff! —Rod Lott

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6 Movies I Saw in a Theater in 2001 and Only Barely Remember

1. Angel Eyes — The trailer made it seem like it was a spooky supernatural romance, but it just turned out to be about some asshole who was really, really sad.

2. Rock Star — Mark Wahlberg plays a normal guy who becomes the lead singer of his favorite band, but is too starstruck to notice that no one’s given a fuck about heavy metal since The Funky Bunch ruined music for everyone. He would go on to reprise the character five years later in Invincible.

3. Kate & Leopold — Meg Ryan is so desperate to get laid (and fuck Wolverine), she decides to abandon her life and go back in time to when she couldn’t vote or own property.

4. Sweet November — Keanu Reeves pretends that a month of hot sex with a dying Charlize Theron is bittersweet instead of just fucking awesome.

5. The Musketeer — What if The Three Musketeers were just like The Matrix, only really terrible? And starred Mena Suvari?

6. Get Over It — I have no idea what this was about, but it is weird to think how just 10 years ago, Kirsten Dunst was a reason why I would go to a movie. —Allan Mott

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Asylum (2008)

Call me easy, but I like director David R. Ellis’ movies. Yes, even Snakes on a Plane, and especially Final Destination 2. Sophisticated cineastes-about-town like me can’t live by Eric Rohmer alone, you know. We need a little Sarah Roemer to liven things up.

And with that back-scratching out of the way, I can say that the Ellis/Roemer collaboration Asylum is awful — dreck so powerful, it would take a barrel of soft soap to wash it away. Roemer plays a college freshman assigned to a new dorm. Well, not so much new as the renovated wing of an asylum for troubled teens that hasn’t been used since the youth revolted in the mid 1930s and killed the doctor who had been torturing them by shoving lobotomy needles into his eyes.

Now, the doctor’s ghost is roaming the halls and continuing to prey on young people with troubled pasts. The un-renovated wing in ruins — which, after 75 years, still has file cabinets containing patients’ histories — is attached to the dorm, so all it takes is about two minutes worth of computer hacking for the six kids who seem to be the dorm’s only inhabitants to gain access to the old section of the building.

Ellis is known for his wicked sense of humor, but it is entirely lacking in this hodgepodge of supernatural slasher clichés and clueless jump moments. You won’t believe a word of it, although “The” and “End” will be mighty welcome. —Doug Bentin

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