T.J. Hooker The Movie. For Real.

Word on the street is that the classic 1980s cop show TJ Hooker, starring The Shat during his curly headed toupe era, is being turned into a big time "action comedy" motion picture.

The producers of this future classic plan to do a retro comedy like the Starsky and Hutch movie. The good news is the filmmakers are interested in having The Shat appear in this film.

Bad news? No word on the status of Adrian Zmed's participation in this new project.

Read more at Trekmovie.com

Michael Cimino Please Make Another Movie

Film lovers need another Michael Cimino epic, that is a movie of epic proportions that feature real, three dimensional characters and awe inspiring visuals.

The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate are visually exciting, intelligent movies, not dumbed down time-wasters like so much crap that's spewed out by the studios.

Back then it was Jaws and Star Wars rip-offs. But there were also truly good movies produced like the Godfather, Clockwork Orange, and Nashville.

But today's movie screens are mostly filled with multi-million dollar retreads of old TV shows and video games. Studios spend a lot of money churning out uninspired pablum. Hell, even 3D is making a come back.

Studios are so cynical. Distract the audience with 3D! The audience won't know that they've paid $10 to watch crap.

Come back to the movies, Mr. Cimino. Save us from such nightmarish drek as the upcoming movie versions of Dallas, CHiPS, and yes, even I Dream of Jeannie.

We need big budget, adult films. Adult as in intelligent, real, personal.

The Deer Hunter is a beautiful, painful, gut wrenching experience. It is filled with some of the best film performances. John Cazale, Christopher Walken, and non-actor Chuck Aspergren, bring truth and honesty to their characters.

I've discussed Heaven's Gate in a previous post. Many people love this movie for what it is, an attempt to transcend the Western genre to become of the greatest movies ever made. It's visionary scale goes back to Griffith with Intolerance and Von Stroheim with Greed.

I know you haven't been totally out of the loop. You have directed a short film in France and have appeared at the Cannes Film Festival. But we need you to make a complete return to movie making.

The French government would be willing to finance another Cimino movie. It's only a matter of time.

We'll even forgive that new hair style.

Movie Review of the Day™ - The Devil's Rain

Heaven help us all when The Devil's Rain! That sentence makes no grammatical sense but it is the tag line of The Movie Review of the Day™: The Devil's Rain, one of the great bad movies of the 1970s. Follow an all-star cast as they do battle with Satan over human souls trapped within a glass orb in which there is constant rain.

That’s right, The Devil’s Rain!

All-star cast features William Shatner, wearing a bland, pre-TJ Hooker toupee, Ida Lupino, Tom Skerrit, Eddie “Green Acres” Albert, and Ernest Borgnine as the demonic Goat-Man man named Corbis.

This is a low budget movie so there's a lot of driving around. Lots of dirt roads. A small, old western town serves as the main location. A satanic church sits just on the edge of the abandoned town.

So this movie is very 70s, very dry, and very sweaty. Imagine being stuck out West with 1970s quality air-conditioning.

Get this, The Shat plays a man named Martin Fife - that’s right, Martin Fife - and for centuries his family has been hiding a book that contains the names of people whose souls have been promised to Satan (kind of like Beelzebug's accounting ledger, if you will.)

Corbis, the demonic Goat-Man, wants the book, needs the book. Why? Something to do with The Devil’s Rain, but what is The Devil’s Rain? No one knows. The Shat doesn't know. Corbis doesn't know. The filmmakers didn't know.

I have a copy of the screenplay (purchased from Script City because a free copy was nowhere to be found on the world wide Internet!) and it's as confusing as the finished movie. Funny thing, the screenplay has a few typos.

The Devil's Rain touches on ESP - what 70s movie didn't touch on ESP? Tom Skerrit and Eddie Albert are doctors that study the paranormal. Skerrit plays the Shat’s brother. Skerrit’s wife has ESP abilities and senses something is wrong back home.

John Travolta has a “blink and you’ll miss him” role as Danny. Anton LeVay and his Church of Satan were consultants on the film. Ernest Borgnine looks cool with horns.

The highlight of the film occurs when the cult members melt in The Devil's Rain during the climactic confrontation between good and evil. Green and yellow goo - looking for all the world like melted candle wax - oozes out of the cult members’ eye sockets. The melting scene goes on for what feels like hours but, man, it’s worth every sweaty 1970s minute.

Spread the word. People must see The Devil’s Rain.

Over-Rated Movie Directors in No Particular Order

1) Charlie Chaplin. That’s right, I said it. I never got The Tramp and never will. And, by the way, The Three Stooges did a hell of a better job making fun of Hitler in You Nazty Spy and I'll Never Heil Again than Chaplin did in that Great Dictator movie.

2) Noam Baumbach. Pretentious filmmaker about pretentious, self-involved people. With Mr. Baumbach movies, movie critics are under the impression that they are watching an intellectual movie about intellectual people made by an intellectual. Wrong on all counts.

3) Whit Stillman. Pretentious filmmaker about pretentious WASPs. His movies are just a painful, excruciating look at characters created by some lame Noel Coward wanna-be. So witty, so smart, so stomach-turning.

4) Michel Gondry. Just pretentious. And like my complaint with Tim Burton, Mr. Gondry seems to do the same wacky, arty-farty stuff over and over. Intellectual? Intelligent? Witty? No, just tedious and boring.

5) QT. I liked Reservoir Dogs but Pulp Fiction was all hype and style over substance. Kill Bill was watchable thanks to the great cameraman Robert Richardson, but overall, that movie was way too long, too indulgent.

6) Michael Moore. Preaching to the choir. Yawn. We get it, Mr. Moore, America (the land that's been paying your royalties from your books, movies, and TV shows for years) sucks. Big Deal.

7) Marty Scorsese. Yes, his record is pretty darn good but come on movie critics, admit it when he makes a stinker like Gangs of New York or Age of Innocence.

8) Tim Burton. He may tackle different stories but his films all end up looking the same: Male and female characters with Bride of Frankenstein hair, heavy Goth make up. Wacky production design. Same old, same old. Tedious and exhausting.

Halloween Poster Illustration of the Day - Satan's Deadly Brides

Here's another poster done up for last year's Halloween party. It's an homage to all of those great 1970s "Satanic cult - Witches coven" type horror movies that were all the rage back then.

You know classics like The Devil's Rain (reviewed in a previous blog), Dracula AD 1972, The Wicker Man (original version please), Manos:The Hands of Fate and Simon King of the Witches (reviewed in a previous blog)

I did the entire artwork in pencil. I used Prismacolor pencils to colour in the picture. I like the Prismacolor brand of pencils for their flexibility and colorful richness.

Click image for full resolution and to read the witty screen credits.

Halloween Poster Illustration of the Day

Ah yes, this drawing was used for last year's Halloween party. I was asked to create a series of old style horror movie posters to help decorate the party. I created five or six posters each being a nod toward different genres of the B-horror film, such as the haunted house, sea monsters, Draculas, etc.

This poster is a tribute to the lovable Shatner-mask wearing murder machine known as Michael Myers. This Michael Myers is one wack character. The dude just won't stay dead!

He was shot up by a bunch of bullets and fell off a second story balcony but managed to escape at the end of the original Halloween.

Then he was blow'd up real good at the end of Halloween II.

But thanks to the Satanic evil known as Hollywood accountants Mr. Myers managed to come back for many more pictures.

Michael Myers was finally beheaded by Jamie Lee Curtis in fantastic H20, but somehow was brought back for the campy Resurrection. You know the movie about a reality show set in the Myers house and...um...who the really hell cares...

Any-hoo, you can't keep a good killer down. Rob Zombie successfully brought him back in the 2007 remake and bringing back again in the upcoming H2.

Click on the image to read the - dare I say - witty screen credits and to view picture at full resolution.

Pierrot le Fou – A Review

The Jean Luc Godard masterpiece Pierrot le Fou tells the story of Ferdinand, portrayed by Jean-Paul Belmondo. He’s bored with his middle class life and hooks up with Marianne, played by the beautiful Anna Karina.

The plot is that of a simple detective novel: a guy, a girl, guns, and money. There are a couple of double crosses. Marianne is searching for her brother who is involved with smuggling or gun running in Africa.

Just like Ferdinand, we can never be sure if Marianne is ever telling the truth. But the truth doesn’t matter. Marianne is beautiful and full of life.

Early in the film, Ferdinand is at a party where everyone speaks in advertising slogans. A brilliant Godard technique showing how programmed, predictable, and boring “successful” middle class people are.

The heart of the film follows Ferdinand and Marianne as they hide-out in the French Riviera, along the Mediterranean Sea.

The camera work by Raoul Coutard is amazing. Pierrot le Fou is in full color Cinemascope and is one of the most beautiful movies ever made in color. And the Criterion Collection DVD is stunning.

There are wonderful bits of musical whimsy during the French Riviera sequence. There is also political commentary thrown in as well. To raise some money, Ferdinand and Marianne put on an impromptu play about the Vietnam War for the amusement of some American tourists.

But not is all fun and games. At one point Marianne is captured by a dwarf then escapes. Ferdinand is water-boarded by two men looking for Marianne and the money she stole from them.

To think that this movie came out in 1965 and features water-boarding is interesting. People have tortured in the past and will continue to torture in the future. The reasons for torture may change but the torture remains the same.

Seconds - A Review

This is a review of the Rock Hudson movie Seconds, a surreal yet penetrating movie directed by John Frankenheimer.

Seconds deals with an older man, Arthur Hamilton, who is a successful upper-middle class bank executive with a wife, large home, green lawn, air conditioning. He is miserable. A friend of Hamilton's hooks him up with The Company that will give Hamilton a new life.

This entails faking Hamilton's death and heavy reconstruction surgery. The old man Hamilton becomes a young man named Wilson. And Wilson just happens to look like Rock Hudson.

Seconds is very artsy. It came out in 1966 when American filmmakers were using European styles of film making. The scenes involving the old Hamilton and his wife play like Ingmar Bergman. The later scenes with young Wilson and The Company are surreal, like Godard.

I won't give any of the surprises away. The first twenty minutes is a little difficult to get into but once the plot kicks in the movie works really well.

Seconds deals with second chances and freedom. Old man Hamilton represents the status quo. He has the American Dream but is miserable. By becoming a younger man, Wilson, he is allowed to live as a successful artist but he is still miserable. Even jumping into a large vat of grapes with a bunch of naked hippies doesn't make him in happier.

This guy is miserable no matter what life he choses to go with.

Seconds is a very good, very unique American made thriller. It's like a Twilight Zone episode that was written by Bergman and directed by Godard.