Rednecks, crackers and peckerwoods all loved slasher films (as did capheads and other fratboy types), EXCEPT for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (we're talking about the original, of course, as this was the 80s). They hated, hated, hated that film, always bringing back with some complaint "man, that shit was just WEIRD,…

One time when working at Video Review back in the 80s, I was approached by a pompadoured man in a powder blue three piece suit. "That there movie One Thousand Maniacs, is that a good movie to show to my ten year old boy?"

When I worked at Video Review in Greensboro, NC, in the 80s, we had a lot of redneck customers. Now, Greensboro isn't a particularly rednecky town, as North Carolina goes, but this particular store was in the trailer park zone (for those who don't know, rednecks are NOT the same thing as Country Folk, but instead…

Brocktoon!
"To wear the flesh, to tear the flesh!"

CHOCOLATE and THE ENFORCER
CHOCOLATE has what may be the greatest tagline ever. "A special needs girl with a very special need . . . to kick some ass!," demonstrating just how much awesome RAINMAN would have been if Dustin Hoffman had been a gawky/cute teenaged girl with deadly Muay Thai skills.

In general, I find dislike of musicals to be icing on the douchecake. Now, I'm not saying that people should LOVE musicals, but whenever some smug little buttplug starts talking about how he hates the form (not really a genre), I start seeing him as a waste of protein that would serve society better as cat food or…

Early American version and Dolly Parton's breast tattoos
I don't know if a pilot was ever shot, but at one point Roseanne was producing an American version that was to star Carrie Fisher and Barbara Carrera, iirc.

WATCHMEN certainly has its flaws, some of which are inherent in the medium (the superhero story, not comics per se) and Moore's prose is indeed sometimes overwrought. But on a sentence-by-sentence level, I'll take it over KAVALIER AND KLAY any day. I mean, come on, it's not like Chabon is a master of lean, clean…

THE 13TH WARRIOR has its problems, both because of the compromised shoot (I believe that McTiernan and Crichton were at odds and there was additional studio interference) and because Banderas's character was rewritten as a swashbuckling stud rather than the nerdy little clerk of the novel. Back in the 80s, I heard…

I like SINGING IN THE RAIN okay, and it achieves transcendance when Cyd Charisse briefly shows up dressed as Louise Brooks, but THE BAND WAGON is so much better.

Take the "/" and the ">" off the end of the link above. There seems to be a glitch in the reply function that's inserting those characters, at least into YouTube links.

He doesn't fuck bats, as far as I know, but he does, or has, fucked a woman, at least four or five times. And that's either a cause or symptom of his insanity, the fact that his religion compels him (like the meant-t0-be-sympathetic gay character in one of his recent novels) to "join the chain of life" by seeding a…

I wonder if Orson Scott Card will rave about this . . .
. . . the way does about Tyler Perry's films and plays. The insane author of ENDER'S GAME has repeatedly called Perry "America's greatest playwright" in his blog and his Rhinoceros Times column, while castigating Them Evil Elitist White Liberals for not…

Moore, "tainted money" and dissatisfaction with Hollywood
People tend to caricature Moore's views on cinematic adaptations of his work. It's not just that he thinks they shouldn't be adapted; it's that he feels he was lied to and used, and that people simply won't leave him alone. And, no, actually, he's NOT taking…

Noel, I think you should give more props to Yasuaki Kurata
I find his performance as the heroine's sympathetic uncle, a character modeled on the founder of Shotokan karate, to be one of the film's major virtues. And I do mean his actual performance, not just his martial ability. This is the first time the film's…

Nate Fick at the DNC
He's speaking before Obama tonight (Thursday).

Memos from Purgatory
Another excellent article, Tasha, but I couldn't let your reference to Harlan Ellison's "non-fiction" account of his time with the street gang pass without comment. You are aware that it's almost totally BS, right? Truly, it's much more heavily fictionalized that you suspect parts of Fast Times…

The "it's not a ________, it's a _______!" argument is specious
CAT BALLOU being a comedy in now way prevents it from being a Western. There are comic westerns and allegorical ones and ones that pretty much function as horror films (THE STALKING MOON comes to mind). DESTRY RIDES AGAIN is also a comedy, but it's…

The "it's not a ________, it's a _______!

Of course GROUNDHOG DAY is a fantasy
It's pretty much the same premise and Theodore Sturgeon's classic short story "Yesterday Was Monday," which appeared in John W. Campbell's beloved UNKNOWN WORLDS, the 1940s pulp magazine that helped to define the "modern" form of the genre. Is the kind of fantasy that Tolkein or…