Netflix'd :: Clearing Out the Instant Queue :: A Spoiler Free Quick Beer-Gut Reaction to Marvel's The Defenders (2017)

Something kept going through my head as I bogarted my way through The Defenders (2017) on Netflix over the past 20 some odd hours. Actually, a name. And that name was Sandy Frank. See, back in ye olden days Sandy Frank bought up a bunch of goofy Japanese TV shows, chopped them up, and then spliced some of the pieces together into a semi-coherent narrative and got them released on the matinee circuit or sold off to TV syndication domestically as a feature.

And perhaps heeding some advice from the masses, The Defenders was reduced to only eight episodes instead of the usual 13, and yet, it still felt like there was a lot of fat. I have no doubt that someone could take those eight episodes and make a pretty stellar 2 hour movie out of its parts like good old Sandy Frank and not really lose a thing. And perhaps in future team-up installments, Marvel and Netflix might be wise to just skip that and make the inevitable Defenders II an original stand alone movie.

Having said all of that, I did enjoy the series quite a bit despite the repetitiveness of it (-- this is not something to marathon, this is something that was designed more for episodic weekly consumption), and a climax that could be best described as kinda clumsy. Everyone acquits themselves -- even Danny Rand's perpetual petulant twerp act is growing on me; and nice to see all the second bananas pitch in; but once again Krysten Ritter is the standout and I really look forward to another season dedicated to Jessica Jones, followed closely by Charlie Cox's devil of Hell's Kitchen, which has me itching to revisit both their solo series. And, HOLY CRAP, Scott Glenn. Also, SLIGHT SPOILERS, was kinda hoping for at least a cameo by Frank Castle but, alas! 

Beyond that, overall, pretty good. Could've been better. Could've been A LOT worse.

Netflix'd :: Clearing Out the Instant Que :: A Boy, a Tiger, and Comical Symmetry :: Joel Allen Schroeder's Dear Mr. Watterson (2013)

Well, turns out Dear Mr. Watterson (2013), a documentary on the creator of the much beloved Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, was not the worthless fan-lip-service-circle-jerk that I both feared and was led to believe.

No, the notoriously elusive and reclusive cartoonist does not participate, but documentarian Joel Allen Schroeder does the next best thing by compiling a ton of interviews with the artist's contemporaries, his syndicators, cultural historians, comic art curators, and yes, fans, who discuss the cultural impact of the strip, the history of the medium, the dire straits of newspaper comics today, and speculate on Watterson's cantankerous merchandising decisions, meaning the complete lack of any, and why he pulled the plug nearly twenty -- yes, TWENTY -- years ago after a ten year run of brilliance and basically disappeared.

Even the framing device of the filmmaker's navel-gazing reminiscing works as he digs into Watterson's history, skirting the line between stalking and fact-finding, as he relates his own relationship to the strip (I chuckled how his mother admits she wouldn't let him read it at first due to Calvin's destructive tendencies) and visits the creator's hometown of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and digs up some of his early high school and college work, and later unearths several of his editorial cartoons from when he briefly worked at the Cincinnati Post, which all show the evolution of his craft. But Schroeder takes it no further than that, respecting his subject's decision to be left alone.

Calvin & Hobbes ended before I started working at a small micropolitan newspaper back 1996. And as my job evolved over the years since then, one of the responsibilities I've inherited is building the daily and Sunday comic sections, which isn't nearly as romantic or cool as you'd think in this digital age of drag and drop. Folks still care care about them (-- judging by the phone calls received if I mess something up), but they ain't what they used to be as papers shrink and strips shrivel like Shrinky-Dinks to save money. I seldom read the dailies, but the Sunday section is still as vibrant as ever. (If you're not following Zits, you should.)

And if you will allow me one more relevant personal note, of all the vintage toys, boxes of comics, books and vids cluttering up my house, my most prized possessions is an autographed copy of Watterson's last Sunday strip, given to me by the managing editor for some editorial cartoons I did for him.

Admittedly, Dear Mr. Watterson works best when it's not dealing with the fan-gush, with people basically regurgitating up their favorite strip but seldom slowing down enough to say why. (My favorite is pictured above.) But I think that gets to the heart of why Watterson refused any offer to merchandise his creation. Without this dilution of product, the strip remained small and personal and left to each individual interpretation. Not some ad executives'. Not some voice-over actors' from a non-existent cartoon. And definitely not from dropping trou' and relieving yourself on some corporate logo.

If nothing else, this documentary prodded me to dig out my old and worn out C&H compendiums, their spines long cracked and broken, but untouched for -- wow, since I last moved nearly 15 years ago. Polished off Calvin & Hobbes and got about half-way through Something Under the Bed is Drooling before I realized that all of Watterson's shrewd marketing decisions were not the actions of a control freak but an attempt to keep things pure and simple. As pure and simple as ink on paper and where your own imagination takes you from there.

And so, if you were a fan of the strip, and I've yet to meet anyone familiar who wasn't, give this doc a whirl. And with that, I let the The Beatlesøns play us out. Feel free use the lyrics provided below to sing along.

Video courtesy of Sello Million.

Dear Mr. Watterson (2013) Gravitas Ventures / P: Joel Allen Schroeder, Christopher Browne, Matt McUsic, Joel Allen Schroeder, Jennifer Clymer / D: Joel Allen Schroeder / C: Andrew Waruszewski / E: Joel Allen Schroeder / M: Mike Boggs / S: Joel Allen Schroeder, Berkeley Breathed, Jef Mallett, Stephan Pastis, Jean Schulz

Netflix'd :: Clearing Out the Instant Que :: This Saw Misfired :: John Luessenhop's Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)

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 "Do your thing, cuz!"

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One of the first things you'll prolly notice about Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), Lionsgate and Nu Image's latest reboot of Tobe Hooper's seminal fright flick, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), is how the word 'massacre' has been dropped in an effort, perhaps, to make it more family friendly. (And I say 'family friendly' because, turns out, that will be a very important ingredient for this latest incarnation.) Kinda like how Kentucky Fried Chicken morphed into KFC, because some marketing wonk thought 'fried' denoted something fairly unhealthy and changed everything except what made their product so artery-clogging to bring the customers back. In fact, I'm surprised they didn't just call this latest offering TCM 3D but I suppose that would have only led to some legal hassles with Turner Classic Movies. And believe me, this film already has enough problems as it is.

Truth be told, when I stumbled onto this film while browsing through Netflix Instant, at first, due to the abbreviated title, I assumed this was probably the Asylum knock-off to cash-in on the latest Chainsaw reboot. And seized with an uncontrollable urge to see what THAT would look like, I immediately pushed play. And, well, look at that, I was wrong. This was, indeed, the reboot, which I watched with ever escalating agog -- agog'd for all the wrong reasons, mind you. Because, oh, you dumb, stupid movie. Where do I even begin?

First up, as a PSA to all potential screenwriters, I'll throw out to the class this question: What is the worst misstep you could possibly make when writing a film about a group of cannibals living in rural Texas who are responsible for the deaths and consumption of god knows how many people? Unless your answer is 'Make them the injured party', I'm sorry, but put down your pencils. You've failed. However: If that was your answer -- Congratulations! You've just spawned the turd nugget from which this film sprung. Hooray! And the film does come out a'springin', using a fairly effective montage of the original film to get everyone up to speed; another tactical mistake, in hindsight, because that's a lot to live up to, am I right? Sure, the film will play lip-service to all those infamously brutal kills, but we're talking nth generation Xeroxes people.

Anyways, the film begins right where the original ends, with Sally making her escape and reaching the local authorities (via original crash-cut footage, some cock-knocking guitar riffs, and a voice-over). When the sheriff arrives at the Sawyer house, the abandoned semi is still there (-- though no sign of the Hitchhiker's flattened corpse is evident, but then I'm sure the Sawyers never overlooked any kind of roadkill to throw into the stew pot). He also spies several others, several others we've never met, armed and barricading themselves inside the house. Where did all these other people come from? Apparently, they're kin, called in to help defend the family homestead. That might not make much sense, but their presence is necessary, otherwise we wouldn't have the baby. Baby?! you ask. Yeah, we'll get to that plot contrivance in a sec. For now, it's important to note Sheriff Hooper (Barry) is in a negotiating mood and only wants the boy (a/k/a Leatherface, or Jed, as he's referred to in this film) to surrender quietly. (Apparently, Sally was too traumatized to finger the others for the kidnapping and assault but only pointed an accusing finger at the guy with the chainsaw for murdering her friends. That, or our trio of scriptwriters either forgot or hoped we wouldn't remember these piddling details.)

The old man (not James Siedow but a reasonable facsimile) seems ready to capitulate to this but things quickly get out of hand when a rowdy lynch mob of rednecks and hayseeds arrive, led by a local hard-ass named Hartman (Rae). Seems the locals were wary of the Sawyers seedy culinary enterprises and will turn a blind-eye no longer. Tempers quickly flare, shots are fired, Molotov cocktails are thrown, and the Sawyer house becomes a raging inferno trapping and killing everyone inside, save for two; a mother and her infant daughter. They're found by a surly bumpkin amongst the graveyard of stolen cars of all those people plucked and BBQ'd over the years, who quickly kills the woman and turns the baby over to his own barren wife to raise as their own. And before we abandon this prologue, we should note that even though his charred chainsaw was found, it was impossible to identify any of the burnt remains as actually being Jed Sawyer -- he typed ominously.

Now jump ahead some 20 years, where we catch up with Heather Miller (Daddario), who is now all grown up and working as -- wait for it -- a meat cutter at a grocery store. And if that kind of blunt foreshadowing doesn't clue you in as to where this is all going, congratulations again for not being a jaded old fart-knocker who has seen one too many of these damned things. And so, left with a film I hope will either surprise me (doubtful) or be worth the trip (forgive me for not holding my breath), the plot proper gets moving when Heather comes into a sizable inheritance from a grandmother she never knew she had, which soon finds her, her boyfriend, Ryan (Songz), her best friend, Nikki (Raymonde), and her beau, Kenny (Malicki-Sanchez), packed into a familiar looking VW micro-bus and roaming around the backroads of Texas. They even manage to pick themselves up a dubious hitchhiker (Sipos) before arriving at the ancestral mansion of Verna Carson (-- whose maiden name, we find out, thanks to a handy headstone, was Sawyer).

The first sign of trouble is when the executor refuses to set foot on the property, turning over a ridiculously massive set of keys, papers, and a letter Heather is direly instructed to read immediately. Of course, this letter is summarily ignored to explore the posh pad. And when the others head into town for some vittles, the hitchhiker hangs back and ransacks the place, using those keys to poke into every nook, cranny, and, eventually, the basement via a secret passage, where he finds a familiar looking metal door (which sticks out rather ridiculously, when you get right down to it), which refuses to open. Never fear, what's on the other side soon reveals himself, sledgehammer in hand, and makes with the *whack* *thud* *splat*.

Meanwhile, in town, Heather gets the standard 'we don't like outsiders' vibe off the locals, except for a too friendly deputy (Eastwood), and Hartman, now the mayor of Wherever the Hell We Are, who is flatly rebuffed when he offers to buy the old Carson place. Returning to the house, they discover what the hitchhiker had been up to, which is pretty much ignored because it's time to par-tay. And while Ryan and Nikki head off to the barn to continue their covert affair, Kenny manages to find the basement and get himself killed rather gruesomely. Blissfully unaware of all this, Heather explores the upper floors of the mansion, stumbles upon a few more plot contrivances (most notably the S-shaped pendant worn by all the Sawyer women), until eventually finding the exhumed corpse of her benefactor waiting in the master bedroom. Yoinks!

The chainsaw kinda hits the fan from there, with Heather the only one escaping Leatherface in one piece after successfully eluding him by heading toward the apparent safety in numbers of a local carnival (-- +5 intelligence points on the script, which brings the score to -546), where she is rescued by Deputy Do-RIght. Taken into protective custody, Heather is left alone with a big, convenient box of evidence about the Sawyer family massacre, including a very prominent newspaper clipping and photo which shows all the participants of said massacre (Mayor McCranky, the dead deputy, her step-parents etc.), which she sifts through while Sheriff Hooper and Mayor McCranky kill some screen time watching another deputy follow a blood trail into the Carson house via a transmitting smartphone with a 10,000-Watt spotlight app.

Stumbling into the basement, Deputy Dipstick recreates the deep-freeze discovery and commits some friendly-fire atrocities before getting himself killed and skinned, which gives us the most pleasant opportunity of watching Jed (Dan Yeager) stitch a new mask onto his face and dress up like Mae West in Sextette. Thank you, movie.

Okay, now, already teetering on the brink, here's where the film really shits the bed as far as I'm concerned: Heather, incensed over the death of her real family, escapes police custody and tracks down the estate lawyer, who reveals that Verna was the last of the Sawyers (well, third to last but whatever), who hired him to find Heather so she could come home and take over her role as caretaker of Jed, who was hidden away in the basement these many years. With that plot dump out of the way, she's then ambushed and captured by Deputy Do-RIght, who turns out to be the son of Mayor McCranky, who is bound and determined to end the Sawyer line once and for all. 

Taken to the old slaughter house for proper disposal, luckily for her, Jed, who was listening in on the dead deputy's radio, arms up, ties up, and heads over to join in on the fun. Finding a trussed up and strangely abandoned Heather, our gibbering maniac prepares to dismember her until noticing the birthmark on his victim's chest. Only it's not a birthmark, see, but a scar acquired when her real mother's S-pendant seared into her while escaping the fire.

Realizing she's family, Jed frees her, but their reunion is short-lived when Hartman shows up. Thus and so, quite stupidly, the tables are turned so Jed becomes the degenerate in distress for Heather to save. Once that's done, with a quip that left me mentally groaning for hours and hours, Leatherface pulps Hartman in a meat-grinder while Heather AND sheriff Hooper watch approvingly. Then, to add insult to injury, with a nod and a simple demand that Heather clean up the mess, Hooper leaves them alone and un-arrested. No, no, see, Hartman was really the bad guy, see. He was the real monster, see. And Jed was just taking revenge on those who killed his family, see. The Sawyers were the real victims, see. It doesn't matter that Jed and his kin have killed and eaten hundreds of innocent people, see, because family is family, and the family that slays together, stays together... 

... And so, Heather finally reads that letter, explaining everything, dons her pendant, symbolically taking on the burden of her heritage without a second thought for her bestest friends, whose remains probably aren't even cold yet somewhere below; and then we wrap things up with Jed re-burying his old caretaker before returning to his spider-hole, while his new custodian moves to make him a midday snack after a hard days slaughter. (I'll bet Kenny tastes like chicken.)

Pardon me, but, *pffffffffffffttttt* ... Gahd my head hurts just thinking about the overall plot of this thing, which asks us to gloss over a lot and accept some extremely ignorant and asinine motivations to make it work. Stupid I can handle, but Texas Chainsaw 3D was just plain dumb. And it's all on the script, credited to Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan, and Kirsten Elms. I'm a little baffled that it took three people to cop everything that was terrible about Rob Zombie's House of a Thousand Corpses (2003) and The Devils Rejects (2005) and then threw in every misguided dramatic 'it's all about the family' liberties taken in Jan de Bont's version of The Haunting (1999). Fledgling director John Luessenhop and his cast do the best they can with it, and the grue F/X stands and delivers but it's just not enough to overcompensate for the five-car plot contrivance pile-up. Not even close.

Shot with a savage eye to cash in on the 3D boom, meaning there's ton of crap being thrown at you from the very beginning, be it blade or dismembered appendage, apparently, this thing had the blessing of Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel, who served as producers; and Gunnar Hansen and Marylin Burns show up in a couple of glorified cameos. (The IMDB credits Bill Moseley in there somewhere but I failed to spot him.) It's a running dogfight between this franchise and Halloween's as to which collection of sequels and reboots have done the most damage and disservice to their original movies. And though Texas Chainsaw 3D did little to widen that gap, there is some consolation in that its plot problems of egregious misplaced sympathy aren't quite as detestable as the Illuminati-induced horseshit of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Next Generation (1994). So there's that, at least -- but not much else.

Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) Leatherface Productions :: Lionsgate :: Mainline Pictures :: Millennium Films :: Nu Image Films :: Twisted Chainsaw Pictures / EP: Mark Burg, Christa Campbell, Danny Dimbort, Lati Grobman, Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper, Robert Kuhn, Avi Lerner / P: Carl Mazzocone / AP: T. Justin Ross / D: John Luessenhop / W: Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan, Kirsten Elms / C: Anastas N. Michos / E: Randy Bricker / M: John Frizzell / S: Alexandra Daddario, Trey Songz, Tania Raymonde, Keram Malicki-Sánchez, Scott Eastwood, Thom Barry, Paul Rae, Dan Yeager

Netflix'd :: Clearing Out the Instant Que :: Taking a Ride Down Showtime's Rebel Highway (1994)

Back in 1994, American International Pictures kinda had a mini-revival on premium cable via Showtime's anthology series, Rebel Highway. Under the guiding hand of producers Lou Arkoff (son of AIP's co-founder, Samuel Z. Arkoff,) and Debra Hill (Halloween, Escape from New York), all ten episodes were based on a sordid and motley bunch of vintage AIP juvenile delinquent and high-octane exploitation releases from the 1950s; period pieces still, but with more *ahem* lax standards and practices. Or, as the younger Arkoff put it: "If you made Rebel Without a Cause today, it would be more lurid, sexier, and much more dangerous -- and you definitely would've had Natalie Wood's top off." (From the Rebel Highway Wikipedia page.) 

With the only caveat being they had to be set in the '50s and fit into a programming slot, lengthwise, to make this happen, Arkoff and Hill sent out feelers to several top-notch directors, offering them a decent 12 day shooting budget, with full creative control over the script, cast and crew choices on whatever title they personally chose to pluck from AIP's back catalog to remake. Well, not outright remakes, mind you, but films 'inspired by' the original title. Or, more than likely, these new adaptation were based on the old posters for these films just like American International had done so successfully for years and years, where the promotional art rendered by Al Kallis or Reynold Brown came first, and, if they drew booking interest, only then did a movie get made. Several big name directors answered the call, along with a few young turks, with casts littered by the established brat-packers of the day -- but it was some fairly new faces, who now look very familiar, that really left their mark on the series. Throw in some Brylcreem, tailfins, nicotine, rocket-bras, leather, chrome, switchblades, and a lot of scorched asphalt, with a killer soundtrack as a cherry on top of it all (Fats Domino, Link Wray, and a metric ton of obscure rockabilly from the likes of Jody Reynolds and The Scarlets), some episodes prove better than others, yes, but thus far I've found nary an outright dud in the whole bunch.

Serving as the opening salvo, Robert Rodriguez's RoadRacers is one hellacious opening act with Dude Delaney (David Arquette) as our hot-rodding rebel rouser, who has just about had it with the Squaresville he calls home. Hounded by a psychotic police sergeant (William Sadler) and his even more psychopathic son (Jason Wiles), both looking to settle old scores, this sets up several staggering vignettes of ratcheting tension, territorial pissings, and fateful decisions until it all finally explodes with a final, fatal rumble. Along for the inevitable ride on this road to ruin are Selma Hayek as Dude's girlfriend, Donna, but the movie is absolutely stolen out from under everybody by a barely recognizable John Hawkes as our hero's toadie and street corner prophet, Nixer, who is currently obsessed with the new movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, whose themes of coerced conformity and homogenization Rodriguez uses brilliantly as a framing device to help finally prod our hero down the wrong, self-destructive path. 

All of the director's hyper-active quirks are present and accounted for, and if the episode has one flaw, and it's nearly fatal, is all the 'time-outs' Rodriguez takes to focus solely on the fetishistic ritual of Dude striking a pose, greasing up the ducktail, popping a Winchester, and lighting an over-modulated match that stopped being "kewl" and started being downright buffoonish about the fourth or fifth time thru (and I stopped counting at 12), which kinda derails the mood and it just wasn't necessary. A major minor quibble, because the rest delivers a sizable entertaining payload.

Next, director John Milius liberally mixed in a massive dose of Hot Rods to Hell (1967) into his version of Motorcycle Gang, where once more a family in transit is menaced by pack of degenerate two-wheeling hooligans when the club leader (Jake Busey) takes a shine to their daughter (Carla Gugino). But even before the rubber hits the road we're already made privy to several family skeletons. Seems the Morris' marriage is already on the brink due to the overly-stoic father (Gerald MCraney), who hasn't been the same since coming home from the war, always distancing himself from everyone due to some lingering PTSD; this detachment causes the emotionally unstable mother (Elan Oberon) to find comfort in the arms of another man, which only makes the wedge driven between her and her daughter, who knows about the affair, even worse; and frankly, it was bad enough already due to mom's vanity and the lingering jealousy over the misconception of being constantly upstaged by her rapidly blossoming offspring. Hoping a fresh move to California will help solve all their problems, somewhere in the desert, they run afoul of this predatory pack of heroin smugglers, who have a history of kidnapping, raping, and murdering unwary waitresses from many a roadside diner. And soon enough, these thugs engineer another smash and grab before heading off to Mexico. And when the authorities on both sides of the border prove worthless, it's up to dear old dad to tap into some old training and unleash hell to save his daughter, his family, and, ultimately, his marriage. 

I know Milius grew up immersed in the surfing culture of southern California, which kinda shows, here, through his palpable disdain for the bikers and beatniks our nuclear family unit encounters during this trial by fire. In fact, he kind of thumbs his nose at the whole genre, epitomized in the scene where the daughter, innocent, bored, and just maybe looking for a ride on the wild side, almost falls for the roguish greaser's line of bullshit only to be rewarded with a sexual assault followed by the threat of a gang bang. (The fact that she is saved by her Fabian pin, a stand up guy, sure, but definitely the establishment's answer to Elvis Presley, only adds insult to injury.) Oh yeah, here, Milius is squarely on the side of law and order, especially when you have to take it into your own hands to defend what is yours. Whether you agree or disagree, Motorcycle Gang does provide an interesting counterpoint to all the other glorification tales of rebels, delinquents, and rock 'n' rollers. Personally, I think the set-up of simmering hostility and smoldering lust plays out better than the vengeful payoff. And the whole thing is saved thanks to the efforts of McRaney, Gugino, Busey and Oberon in front of the camera, making up for Milius' too heavy a hand behind it.

Meanwhile, Mary Lambert's Dragstrip Girl is a wildly disjointed love letter to the forbidden teen romance that fueled a lot of these exploitation pieces. Here, on the wrong side of the tracks we find Johnny Ramirez (Mark Dacascos), a Chicano car hop, who also ramrods a low yield but extremely effective car theft ring with several of his cohorts (including a young Raymond Cruz). Johnny lives with his wheel-chair bound brother (Augusto Sandino) under the supervision of their 'aunt' Blanche (Traci Lords, doing a passable impersonation of Mamie Van Doren doing a passable impersonation of Marilyn Monroe), who runs a brothel out of her bedroom that her 'boys' constantly spy on through several holes in the plaster. (And how she or her clientele cannot hear their constant derisive giggling is beyond me.) Anyhoo, longing for something above his station, Johnny soon becomes infatuated with Laura Bickford (Natasha Gregson Wagner, daughter of Natalie Wood), a girl from the suburbs, much to the chagrin of her letter-jacket wearing beau. Seeing her as the key to getting everything he wants, meaning wealth and standing, turns out this girl who has everything is tired of the same old thing and looking for something 'money can't buy.' And after a fairly creepy stalking sequence, Johnny mistakes this confession for wanting something more dangerous (and he would've known different if he'd only read the diary he stole earlier), and so, he uses one of the stolen cars to impress his new girl at the drag races, which brings on a ton of heat from the cops -- not only on him but his soon to be former friends. 

Alas, this tale was destined to end tragically, as Johnny chucks everything, not for the girl, or t'woo wuv, but for what the girl can give him, which, when you consider how he treats his old girlfriend, betrays his friends, gets his brother killed, and whether Laura loves him or not is completely irrelevant, because, I don't care how diehard a romantic you are, you cannot change the fact that Johnny is a self-serving asshole of astronomical proportions. Known mostly for directing Madonna's breakout music videos, Lambert's effort here was trying for the same stylized aesthetic but wound up with something a little off-kilter that's hampered by a strange candy-coating that leaves the weird parts not weird enough, the romantic bits too awkward, and the sleazy parts not sleazy enough, leaving you with a sense that Dragstrip Girl had a lot of promise left unfulfilled. No. Check that. Not unfulfilled. Misfired. An entertaining enough misfire, but a misfire just the same.

Speaking of misfires, Jonathan Kaplan's Reform School Girl probably comes off a little too sweet for its own good. Strange, considering this is the same guy who gave us the ultimate movie about disaffected youth with the highly nihilistic Over the Edge (1979). It starts with an introduction to Donna Patterson (Aimee Graham), a good girl, who works as a waitress, desperately trying to save enough money to get her and her little sister out of their lecherous uncle's house. (Their real parents died in a car crash.) Unfortunately for her, she's set up on a disastrous blind date with a young turk named Vince (Matt LeBlanc); and I say disastrous because it ends with a fatal hit and run, with Vince ditching the stolen car and Donna at the scene of the crime. Unable to provide the last name of the driver, Donna is convicted on manslaughter charges, but, thanks to a clean record otherwise, she is sentenced to a girl's reformatory for rehabilitation instead of the state pen. 

What follows never really strays from the usual women in prison tropes, this time with a juvenile twist. You've got the usual learning curve, treacherous snitches, food fights, time spent in the hole, and a predatory warden (Carolyn Seymour) looking for athletes to populate the institution's track team. Wait. Track team? Yes, a track team, which explains why the behind the bars antics are dumped for a bizarre slobs versus snobs third act that is stolen wholesale from two other prison flicks: Michael Mann's The Jericho Mile (1979) and Sidney Poitier's Stir Crazy (1980). There is some intrigue in-between as Donna makes friends and loses friends on the inside, gets into trouble with the grab-fanny staff psychiatrist, and refuses to join up until coerced. (Luckily, she is still able to clandestinely gets her sister out of Dodge and away from both Vince and Mr. Bad Touch.) Along the way, Kaplan also manages the seemingly impossible by having an exploratory lesbian make-out scene in a prison flick without one single iota of salaciousness generated and, dare I say, comes off as kinda sweet. Which is nice, yes, but probably isn't quite what you're looking for in something called Reform School Girl. But! I still dug it and the 'up yours' ending nonetheless.

I don't think anybody can strip the veneer off the 1950s better than Joe Dante. And he does it again here, taking the decade behind the woodshed and beating it senseless with a big, biting farcical club of comedy called Runaway Daughters, which begins with a delightful montage credit sequence culled (I assume) from Dante's The Movie Orgy to give everyone a snapshot of life in the Eisenhower era, which, in spite of what your parents and grandparents tell you, proves just as dysfunctional as any other era. And after another nifty sequence at the local drive-in to introduce our players, our story proper kicks in when a horny teenager (Chris Young) uses the imminent threat of the recently launched Sputnik to finally get into the pants of his girl, Mary (Holly Fields). And when Mary misses her next period, she confronts Bob with the news of his imminent fatherhood, who promptly skips town to join the Navy. When Mary's two best friends, Angie and Laura (Julie Bown, Jenny Lewis), get wind of this treachery, they concoct a bizarre faux kidnapping plot so the three of them can steal a car and skip town to San Diego to head the deadbeat father off at the recruiting station, drag him back home, and make him do the right thing before the whole town knows what happened. But things get a little crazy on the road where out trio encounter a couple of lecherous patrol cops, crazed anti-commie survivalists, and two mad-dog killers. Meanwhile, back home, the parents realize the local cops are idiots and hire a private detective (Dick Miller), who doesn't buy the kidnap plot, to find their errant children. And with the help of one of their boyfriends (Paul Rudd), he's soon hot on their trail; but will he catch them before they catch Bob? Or will they even make it to San Diego at all? 

The answer to all of the above is yes. Yes they do. And it ends disastrously for one of them but I will leave it to you to find out who. Runaway Daughters would make a great double feature with Matinee (1993), Dante's cinematic ode to the next decade gone awry. Mostly harmless and quite silly, the whole film comes off as a goof; and taken as goof, it truly is wonderful. Hysterical even. All of Dante's trademark destructive humor is there, along with a ton of welcomed cameos (Roger and Julie Corman, Fabian, and even Sam Arkoff shows up), the usual stock players (Miller, Christopher and Dee Wallace Stone, Belinda Belasky, and Robert Picardo), and the usual film references and inside jokes. (The family names are (Jim) Nicholson, (Lou) Rusoff, (Eddie L.) Cahn, and (Alex) Gordon, all familar to American International junkies like myself, and keep your eyes out for the AIP food market and gas station.) The third act is kinda leaking water, and there's a twist that resolves itself a little too cheaply, but, eh, I'll just roll with it. And besides, I was too busy laughing to really even notice.

Before I wrap this up, I would also like to commend Arkoff and Hill for the dedication that finished every film, paying tribute to the late, great James H. Nicholson, who was the creative force behind American International, and Lou Rusoff, who penned the majority of those scripts that first put AIP on the map.

Adapting their feature films to TV was nothing new for American International Pictures. Larry Buchanan did a bunch of remakes back in the 1960s that netted us Zontar the Thing from Venus and Attack of the the Eye Creatures. And Cinemax would follow in Showtime's footsteps in 2001 by re-imagining some of AIP's sci-fi output (Teenage Caveman, Earth vs. the Spider), though I found those results pretty odious. But I'm really digging this revisit to the Rebel Highway, so much so that this retrospective will definitely be continued somewhere further up the road as I polish off the rest of the series. Until then, stay cool, Boils and Ghouls.  

Rebel Highway (1994) Drive-In Classics :: Showtime Networks / P: Lou Arkoff, Debra Hill, Willie Kutner, Llewellyn Wells / AP: Llewellyn Wells / D: Allan Arkush, Ralph Bakshi, Joe Dante, Uli Edel, William Friedkin, Jonathan Kaplan, Mary Lambert, John McNaughton, John Milius, Robert Rodriguez

Rue 5/1 :: The Great Netflix Purge of 2013 and the Demise of an Instant Queue.

If you've been away from your internetical interface contraptions today, you might have missed the foul odor emanating from the barren wasteland that used to be your Netflix Instant queue. That, and the grumblings of those, myself included, who lost a good chunk of films from their personal digital To Watch Piles as April 30th gave way to May 1st. Yeah, for those of you unaware, Netflix Instant has dumped some 2000 titles from its streaming pool. And despite some earlier reports that this was due to losing the rights on a ton of films to the new Warner Archive Instant site the real truth has come out that, basically, Netflix has decided to dump a bunch titles they feel 'don't get watched enough.' And when they say "don't get watched enough' they mean genre films, B-Movies, and other offbeat cinema. And this is why I spent the last three days since word broke about the impending purge watching as many of these expiring rarities as humanly possible.

Gone.

Look, I know Netflix has rotated out their stock before but this is almost comical in its ridiculousness. My own queue has gone from about 330 titles to less than 100. And a cursory glance shows a good chunk of those were from American International's back catalog. According to some sources, this package was part of a deal Netflix struck with EPIX that they've allowed to expire -- and a quick glance at the schedule on the EPIX Drive-In Channel easily confirms these suspicions. And to make matters worse, Netflix has also gone and launched a clandestine redesign for their user interfaces -- to, I think, make a standardize browser for all the user platforms (Computer, Roku, video game consoles, etc.):

"Hello everyone! We are currently looking at new ways to encourage watching more on Netflix. For those of you who are seeing a 'Your List' feature, and no longer seeing the Instant Queue, this is one iteration of our newest feature. Your saved titles may currently be arranged by what we think that you'll watch, based on what you've already watched and rated on Netflix. Others may see titles arranged based on taste preferences indicated on our website, as well as popularity, new episodes, recently added and more. Here at Netflix, we are always looking at new and innovative ways to make finding great content easier, and we appreciate all of your feedback and suggestions."

-- The Company Line. xxxx

Basically, they get to control what they think you want to watch and funnel content to you the same way a plumber uses the plumber's helper on a stubborn drain. Wow. There's no content like forced-fed main-streaming streamlined content. Feh.

Gone. 

Now, user reaction to these new browsers has been universally negative, from 'What the @#$* are they thinking' to 'Get this shit off my screen.' As a paying customer, I concur. But, frankly, I for one am less concerned about this software development and more in a frothing state of mind over what Netflix intends to do to fill that huge gap in their library. (As of the posting this post, the sound of crickets you hear is Netflix's official answer to that question.) I mean, I never got any notice that the price was going down. And I don't know about the rest of you, but if I'm getting less service for the same price, I tend to take my business elsewhere. And I sure as hell don't give two shits about their much ballyhooed new original programming when that money could have been spent keeping their catalog in better shape. 

Gone.

Sadly, this kind of shitty customer service has become the official modus operandi of Netflix of late. And this make me sad. I like Netflix. Really. I do. It's a business. I totally get that. But! Remember when Blockbuster and Hollywood Video and its ilk killed off all the mom and pop video stores? Remember when they squeezed out their older movie sections to make way for 90 copies of the latest new release? Remember when we all went to Netflix for salvation because they provided a better service and an insane selection of titles? And then all those chain stores died because they couldn't compete? Is history about to repeat itself. Is this the beginning of the end for Netflix? Unless they get some more content, it's definitely going to be the end for me...

 "Adios, Maria."

*sigh*