This Coleslaw Archives: Coach (1978)

The following review is from Tucker's old blog This Coleslaw Makes Me Sick. In an attempt to simplify their web presence, Tucker, Jeff and other contributor's writings will be periodically transferred to the If We Made It Podcast blog. Of course the old blog still exists, but Tucker never looks at it and neither does anyone else.

Movie Review: Coach (1978)

Lovingly enjoyed by Tucker

There are certain conventions we expect to see when we enter a comedy with a simple plot that seems to promise little more than a few laughs and some naked flesh. I expected these conventions from Coach based only on the trailer and poster. And even though said conventions were there, I can't say they paid off, and I also can't say I was disappointed. This feature actually became the highlight of the film.
This movie has the plot of Wildcats without any of the structure, drama or comedy. Coach has so little to recommend it that I feel I must. The film follows an Olympic gold medalist named Randy Rawlings who is hired sight unseen because of her credentials and masculine name to coach a high school basketball coach. When she arrives the laughably sexist principal played by Keenan Wynn (Willard "Digger" Barnes to me and any other Dallas fans) attempts to put his foot down, but Randy makes a deal that he can fire her after the first game she loses. He accepts the challenge and tries to sabotage her. This is all well and good and in line with my expectations. This should play out in some cliched, yet pleasing way and the audience will go home satisfied. It doesn't.
Randy also falls for one of her players played by a young, baby faced Michael Biehn. They begin a love affair that includes a tryst in the boys shower room where they're almost busted by a custodian. This seems very in appropriate (and awesome) and we, the audience, just know they'll be found out and it will jeopardize her coaching duties, but eventually it will all work out somehow. That doesn't happen either. Instead this is a movie where no lessons are learned, there is no right from wrong and no rule that can't be broken, and just when you think the game is up, the movie ends. Pretty awesome.
There are a few boobs, the campfire song director Bud Townsend obviously has a hard-on for appears here and again in his own The Beach Girls, and a hypnotized white kid who apparently thinks black people are monsters. That's all I'll say for fear of ruining it for any interested parties. That, and there is a song about how kick-ass their high school is that plays over the climactic game that must be heard. I admit I laughed more at this movie as a whole than in individual spots, but it was definitely worth every minute.

Grade: F
Entertainment Value: B-

See Tucker's Coach review in its natural habitat: Coach!

This Coleslaw Archives: The Beach Girls (1982)

The following review is from Tucker's old blog This Coleslaw Makes Me Sick. In an attempt to simplify their web presence, Tucker, Jeff and other contributor's writings will be periodically transferred to the If We Made It Podcast blog. Of course the old blog still exists, but Tucker never looks at it and neither does anyone else.

Movie Review: The Beach Girls (1982)

By Tucker Battrell

Perhaps it was my early exposure to the late Bob Clark's classic Porky'sthanks to a rebellious teenage babysitter, or maybe it's just nostalgia for the era in which I grew up, but whatever the reason the fact remains that I am hopelessly infatuated with trash from the eighties. Now, I love trash of any and all decades, but there is something special about Reagan-era garbage, especially when it comes to that staple of late-night HBO programming: The Sex Comedy. The Beach Girls is an overlooked (perhaps rightly so) film that doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is.
The film gets off to a great start with a slow-motion credit sequence featuring girls running, jumping, playing Frisbee, and just generally flopping about on the beach. After this glorious opening we meet Sarah who is on her way to her Uncle Carl's beach house for the summer. And we're soon making the acquaintance of Sarah's friends Ginger and Duckiewho are meeting her there for what's sure to be the greatest summer ever. What ensues upon their arrival is simply a party; a party populated by horny guys and topless girls. Now, that's story enough for several movies, but The Beach Girls is not skimping on the extras. We've got the girls finding six trash bags of pot on the beach dumped by drug dealers with eye patches they don't need evading a boat filled with nearly retarded Coast guardsmen. If that wasn't drama enough, Uncle Carl comes home and wants Ginger and Duckie to leave, so they must "convince" him to let them stay. All this and a racist fight scene between the Mexican gardener and an Asian chauffeur make for ninety-some minutes of good, wholesome family fun.
This movie is light, superfluous and is trying to say absolutely nothing. Well, maybe it's pro-breast, pro-pot and anti-Coast Guard, but that's as deep as it gets, and I for one say bully! It's good to see something sounselfconscious and not politically correct in any way, shape or form, yet not malicious in the least. This is the remedy to Paul Haggis. It seems when I was growing up the adults were always talking about "simpler times", but from an entertainment standpoint it didn't get any simpler than this. There's boobs, bad jokes, boobs, a silly campfire song used in this film and in director Bud Townsend's other film Coach, and lots of boobs. This movie delivers on the boobs. There's even some brief full frontal. In short, this is a movie with nudity in it.

Grade: F
Entertainment Value: B

See this review in its natural habitat: Beach Girls

Episode 35 - Maniac (1980)

Episode 35 - Maniac (1980)

Jeff and Tucker watch Maniac and countdown their favorite Savini deaths. This episode is no longer available on iTunes, but it is available to download through Mediafire. Here's the link:

Download: Episode 35 - Maniac

Also, check out Final Girl Film Club! You can find all sorts of Maniac talk over there. It's really very cool. Here's the link: Final Girl Film Club : Maniac

This Coleslaw Archives: Columbo - "Prescription: Murder" (1968)

If We Made It Podcast contributor Mrak! gave this great review of the first Columbo to This Coleslaw Makes Me Sick. We are pleased to present it here for your reading pleasure. Thanks Mrak!

Columbo review: “Prescription: Murder” (1968)
by Mrak!

This first installment of “Columbo” is interesting for a number of reasons. 7 reasons actually:

1. It’s the first appearance of Lt. Columbo, which is awesome. Columbo’s character changes in interesting ways from Mystery Movie to
Mystery Movie, but it never gets better than in this one. In future Mystery Movies he may be more brilliant, funnier, and sometimes even delightfully strange, but in this first appearance he is funny and strong and mysterious, all without theatricality. Peter Falk just meanders about quietly, establishing the mythic character with almost no effort. As the movie progresses, you slowly get the sense that Columbo is much more than what he seems, and I can imagine audiences like myself seeing him for the first time and getting excited as it goes on, realizing this unassuming guy is concealing his identity as the fucking Nobel laureate of detection.
I’m also going to venture to say, even though I don’t have any evidence, that this is the first ever movie mystery where there is no mystery. For those of you who haven’t seen a Columbo, this is how all of the movies are (with one exception I think), and one of the things that makes it unique. Rather than a whodunit, it’s a how-catch’em, as they say. First you watch the murder take place, you see everything that happens and who did what, then you watch Columbo figure it out.
So the typical mystery formula is skewed and made fresh, and it’s interesting to note that “Prescription: Murder” is based on a stageplay of the same name, written by the same guys that did the play.

2. The murderer explicitly describes the character of Lt. Columbo, almost like he’s talking to the writers of future movies about how to proceed. It happens late in the movie, as Columbo gets closer and closer to nailing his ass. He’s a psychiatrist who fancies himself an intellectual behemoth, and he laughingly describes Columbo as a genius of detective work, in so many words, and goes on to reveal just about every element of Columbo that makes him Columbo. I’d repeat the
monologue here, but it’s more fun to watch it. Columbo just says something like, “I gotta say, doc, I think you got me figured pretty good.”

3. Columbo is emotional, a quality which is sometimes lost in later movies. There is a scene in which he interrogates the murderer’s young female accomplice and basically starts screaming at her. I think he even makes her cry. But this movie gives Columbo some leeway in a lot of areas, which I like. There was no formula just yet.

4. Columbo’s bumbling is minimal and endearing rather than hilarious, and you get the sense that he can turn it on or off and use it as a tool. You get the feeling that his mannerisms are a genuine element of his personality, so it's not an act, but they don't overshadow his brilliance, which happens occasionally in later movies.

5. Peter Falk’s hair is short and neat. This is related to number 4 and may seem like a small point, but Columbo’s future persona becomes almost entirely anchored by his disheveled appearance, sometimes reaching almost clownish proportions in his wild uncombed head, overly wrinkled raincoat and basically broken Peugeot (“That’s a French car!”). But here it is just a small function of his blue collar nature, which I actually prefer, despite the comic potential of villains mistaking him for a homeless man, which thankfully happens more than once.

6. The title sequence is great and unusual. It’s a nifty little animation involving blooming Rorschach tests, and has a quality musical theme to go with it. Most future movies get lazy and just have a large yellow font that says Columbo, and then the title of the movie, which comforts me, but I can't say it's very fun.

7. Nearly every piece of the Columbo formula is established here. The how-catch’em structure, the intellectual cat-and-mouse, the tense
rapport between Columbo and murderer, the series of small incongruent details that leads eventually to a nifty “gotcha” moment, and most importantly, the various elements that make up the lovable savant detective, Lt. Columbo: The raincoat, the cigar, the villain’s underestimation of him, his thoughtful shuffle, the trademark line “Just one more thing” (though he rarely says it just like that), the sense of a blue-collar victory over the amoral ruling class (which I may write about here in the future) and a host of other details that recur in just about every Columbo movie to come.

Columbo: "Prescription: Murder": 4 1/2 out of 5 More Things

See Mrak!'s review over at This Coleslaw Makes Me Sick: Columbo: Prescription Murder

This Coleslaw Archives: Conquest (1983)

The following review is from Tucker's old blog This Coleslaw Makes Me Sick. In an attempt to simplify their web presence, Tucker, Jeff and other contributor's writings will be periodically transferred to the If We Made It Podcast blog. Of course the old blog still exists, but Tucker never looks at it and neither does anyone else.

 Conquest (1983) aka La Conquista

Lovingly observed by Tucker

I am about to tell you everything about this movie. Italian gore-hound Lucio Fulci tries his hand at the homo-erotic sword and talking to animals genre after spending his career slaving away with zombies and flesh-eating spiders. At first glance this doesn't look like it would deliver on the signature gore that has driven Fulci's work and his legend with horror fans, but that assumption is proven wrong almost immediately. The villain is a woman who never wears a top, gets it on with snakes and commands an army of wolf-people who raid villages, and rip women in half like wishbones. This being Fulci, you know I'm not exaggerating. Then the villain eats brains out of the wishbone's decapitated head. Then the pretty-boy hero who lives with a peaceful people sets out on a quest armed with a bow that shoots arrows made of sunlight. He meets up with an Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer-lookin' fella who is "friend to no one" but seems to get along with birds. Lots of soft-focus shots of misty landscapes later, they are darts of some sort shot at them from the bushes. The arrows appear to have been scratched on the negative. So one hits pretty boy and he oozes pus and blood for a while until Unfrozen gets back from battling zombies (yay!) in order to get magic flowers to heal him. Then Unfrozen gets kidnapped by low-rent Jawa-types and tied to a piece of wood that gets thrown into the ocean where he clearly drowns. Then dolphins chew through the rope and bring him to the surface. I say, well if the dolphins went to all that trouble, you got to let him live. Apparently Fulci felt the same way, because he's alive! Then the pretty-boy gets abducted by wolf-men and decapitated. Unfrozen burns what's left of his body, rubs his ashes on his arms, summons his friend's bow and shoots everyone with sunlight including the boobie-villain who then turns into a wolf and walks away. Unfrozen walks into the mist and the first credit to role says "Any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental". And that's what made this the funniest thing I have ever seen.

Grade: F
Entertainment Value: A

See this review at its original home: Conquest

This Coleslaw Archives: Hostel Part II (2007) by Jeff and Tucker

The following review is from Tucker's old blog This Coleslaw Makes Me Sick. In an attempt to simplify their web presence, Tucker, Jeff and other contributor's writings will be periodically transferred to the If We Made It Podcast blog. Of course the old blog still exists, but Tucker never looks at it and neither does anyone else.

Hostel Part II (2007)

Opening argument by Jeff

I like Eli Roth. Cabin Fever was promising and showed the fun, fast side of horror films that I enjoy so much. The "Thanksgiving" trailer on Grindhouse is a perfect example of what I like about Roth. He knows how to make horror fun again. The first Hostel had those qualities. Although the the movie's torture premise is as dark as it gets, the film was handled with a sense of excitement. It had what I like about good horror movies. Goofy youngsters embark on a sex party vacation and then get slaughtered in crazy ways. It worked for me. Now, on to part 2.

Hostel 2 took whatever was fun, over the top, and thrilling about the idea behind Hostel and did the opposite. I am glad Roth did not just re-do Hostel, but this sequel is unnecessary. The film's main objective is to show the perspective of the torturers that were relatively mysterious in the first film. The idea is that there is an underground society that kidnaps youngsters and sells them to the highest bidder to be tortured and killed. OK premise for one slasher, not two. Roth gets much more serious in this film and tries to convince his audience that this premise is really intriguing and powerful. It's not. It's a hook. It's nothing more than a simple idea to show some gore and that's fine with me. What is not fine is pretending that this idea is more than it is. There were moments in Hostel 2 where Roth did have fun. The soccer scene at the end was hilarious and I enjoyed a few of his stylistic choices. But, unlike the first, the film's victims--girls this time--were typical and boring. His focus on the murderer characters did not interest me. This film will only work if you totally buy into the premise. I don't want to take my horror movies seriously unless they deserve it. This story does not.

Roth has the ability to bring a lot to the horror movie genre and I am sure he will make more movies I will love. He has a good idea of how to make horror films exciting, but he took a step back with Hostel 2. The several moments of fun (mostly the last ten minutes of the film), made the film not a total waste, but a disappointment for me. Horror movie killers are usually much more interesting when they are left to be mysterious. Bad idea for a film. So, Tucker, bring on the debate.

Rebuttal by Tucker

Hostel and its sequel Hostel part 2 are very much of their time. Just as horror films of the past have held a mirror up to society to show us all the ugliness that terrifies us about the world in which we live, so do theHostel films. The first film dealt with the fear we as Americans feel with regards to world travel post-Iraq. We are told that the rest of the world hates us and these mysterious lands are filled with people who want to kill us and writer/director Eli Roth exploits this very effectively. The victims of the first film are also not very sympathetic which I think worked for the film. These young men partake in all the sex and drugs they can buy. In this place where every vice is for sale they are quickly turned into the ultimate product when they are kidnapped and sold for murder and torture. Whether we are ugly Americans or not, that may be how the rest of the world sees us and that's what makes them sympathetic. This and the torture scenes reminiscent of Abu Ghraib make the first film an important one for the horror genre that should stand the test of time.
Hostel part 2 picks up where the first left off and is truly a second half to that film. This time a trio of girls are duped into coming to the Hostel and offered up to the highest bidder to be tortured and murdered. This is the typical horror movie half of the film but where the film really comes to life is when Roth examines the inner workings of the company providing this grisly service. We follow two American businessman through the process of purchasing and preparing to kill these girls. They are two models of American emasculation. Richard Burgi plays Todd as an over-macho, overzealous deal-maker while his partner Stuart is sympathetically portrayed by Roger Bart as a timid, apprehensive follower. What makes Stuart so scary is that he is likable and our first instinct is to ask why he's there in the first place. The obvious answer is that he is going along with his buddy, but that's too easy and not realistic. There is something at work in Stuart that is much more menacing than his friend's brio; something that has driven him to this extreme moment of violence.
And the violence is horrific. Roth knows what his audience wants and he delivers plenty of blood and guts as well as a nod to gore-hounds with a clever cameo from Ruggero Deodato directer of Cannibal Holocaust. Roth gives us all the horror movie staples. There's boobs, bush, peen, decapitations, nose-biting, cannibalism, castration, circular saw to the face, nub-chewing cat, penis-eating dog, head soccer, child killing, bloodbath, grotesque sound effects during scythe killing, and a scythe killing. All this and some social commentary for the nerds.
While the first Hostel may have worked better as a straight horror film the sequel puts us in the position of caring about a villain. Hostel played upon our fear of the other while Hostel part 2 exposes those fears as ourselves.

Grade: A-

Check out the original posts:

 Jeff

   Tucker

This Coleslaw Archives: The Tripper (2007) by Tucker

The following review is from Tucker's old blog This Coleslaw Makes Me Sick. In an attempt to simplify their web presence, Tucker, Jeff and other contributor's writings will be periodically transferred to the If We Made It Podcast blog. Of course the old blog still exists, but Tucker never looks at it and neither does anyone else. 

The Tripper (2007)

Lovingly observed by Tucker

I have never been a fan of David Arquette. He never particularly bothered me either, but I was never a fan. He's been in a few movies I enjoyed, but mostly he was just not making an impression. Then he married Courtney Cox and that seemed to put him in a proper context. Other than Cox's appearances in classics like Family Ties,Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark video and perhaps Masters of the Universe, the only thing she'd done of any consequence was raise my blood pressure for however many hundreds of years Friends was on the air. I can't hold him responsible for his bad taste in women, but since that event he has gotten increasingly more grating. Of course I could just be looking at him in a different light. I also seem to place the blame forFriends squarely on Cox's shoulders simply because she's the only cast member who has done nothing of any quality since that shows long overdue demise (Matt LeBlanc doesn't even count). In short, I don't like Courtney Cox and by virtue of this hatred I dislike David Arquette. My point is, I'm not a good candidate to be a fan of Arquette's directorial debut The Tripper.Of course besides this, and the inclusion of Jason Mewes in the cast, everything else sounds like something I would love. The movie follows a group of drugged-out hippies into the woods for a music festival run by Frank Baker(Paul Reubens) a concert promoter who makes wonderful use of the word "fuck" and will let nothing stand between him and every last dollar he can squeeze out of the hippies he's catering to. Once in the woods, the hippies start getting killed off by a wacko in a Ronald Reagan mask who roams the woods with his dog Nancy, leaving Jelly Beans at the crime scenes.
The first section of the movie plays with the tensions between the Reagan/Bushies and the hippies in generally amusing ways. The fun kicks off with a flashback of the killer watching his logger father arrested after trying to remove some hippie tree-huggers from his work area where all he wanted was to make a few dollars to pay for his dying wife's medication. The kid goes a little loopy and chainsaws the hippie. Of course this is followed with a short history lesson on Reagan and his policies as governor of California regarding environmentalist (you've seen one Red Wood you've seen 'em all) and the mentally ill. He cut funding for psychiatric hospitals resulting in hundreds of mentally disturbed people being turned loose. Our killer is one of those hundreds. Why Reagan's policies weren't horrific enough for a movie without a killer in a mask I can't tell you, but the movie kept rolling.
The kids we follow to the concert have their own run-ins on the way to the show. When they stop the van Lukas Haas gets out to pee and is hit in the head with a bottle by a bunch of rednecks in a pick-up--one of them David Arquette. They deal with more loyal Bushies at a backwoods gas station/diner, who then multiply when Arquette and his fellow bottle-throwers show up. And finally, one of the girls in the van is just getting out of an abusive relationship with right-winger Balthazar Getty. That's fun to say.
The best thing about this film is that neither Republicans nor hippies are spared. Neither are shown in a flattering light and if Arquette's intention was to make one of the groups likable, he is a miserable failure. Two of the most disgusting groups of people in the country, if not the planet. I think the mafia is more tolerable than hippies and I like them more than Republicans.
The movie is populated by crazy townsfolk and stoned hippies which makes for a pretty entertaining horror film. Since you want almost everyone dead you can sit back and enjoy without getting too involved. That's not necessarily a good thing. There is no one really to pull for here and the only truly likable people in the movie are Officer Buzz Hall and Frank Baker played hilariously by Thomas Jayne and Paul Reubens. But even these characters aren't likable, they're just funny. So we're left not being very invested, but I also can't remember the last time that criteria actually applied to a slasher film. So, I liked the movie.
The film has dog attacks, decapitation, evisceration, stabbings, axe murders, boobs, bush (not the president), peen, bum, someone gets cut in half with a chainsaw, fat kid's leg gets cut off, a drum circle gets slaughtered with an axe, Jason Mewes' hand gets cut off! I think there are at least two reasons to see this movie listed there. It's not quite as bloody or gory as it should be, but I have pretty high standards when it comes to that. In short, if you like slasher movies you should see this because it is one. Don't watch the credits however, or you will be woe to find out that no hippies or Republicans were harmed during the making of this film, which is just sad. If they had been hurt I could officially call myself a David Arquette fan. Although I must say, he is growing on me.

Grade: B-

Check this review out at its original home: The Tripper