Dead End Drive-In (1986)

Long time no update. Been spending too much time in ‘real life’ learning how to teach English to Year 7 cretins and not enough time in my room watching dumb flicks. Breaking the review drought with Dead End Drive-In. Ever since I managed to cop the documentary ‘Not Quite Hollywood’ I’ve been working my way through all the 70’s and 80s Aussie genre films I can get my hands on, a whole litany of movies I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t know existed. If you haven’t seen the documentary its really worth your time. Ok, now Dead End Drive-In, a nugget of b-grade gold from the king of Aussie genre filmmaking Brian Trenchard-Smith. In true Trenchard-Smith form you get lashings of violence, boobs and souped up cars, dumb acting and multiple stunt scenes. While probably not my favourite Trenchard-Smith joint (Turkey Shoot, which I’m keen to rewatch and write about) this is a pretty funny cheesy ride with real over-the-top 80’s Australian vibe (“Shit! We’re on fire!”) that makes me want to place a hand on my chest and sing the National Anthem.
It’s the early 1990s and Australia, like the rest of the world, has fallen into a post-apocalyptic garbageland of abandon highways and burnt out cities. Gangs of dudes in makeup and leather called ‘Car Boys’ drive around causing havoc and trouble. Crabs is a pint sized dude who wants to be just like his brother Frank, a burly tow-truck driver who shows up at the scene of car crashes to fight the Car Boys and claim the twisted metal. Crab’s manages to borrow Frank’s Chevy for a date with his bogan queen girlfriend Carmen to the Star Drive-In. Unbeknownst to Crabs, the whole drive-in is a ruse for the government to round up teenagers in a kind of caravan park meets concentration camp. As the slippery peds looking owner of the drive-in tells Crabs ‘You’re here until the government knows what to do with you.” The social satire of the movie is laid on pretty thick. Teeming masses of Aussie bogans flit around the drive-in, their cars customised into little campsites, kept intoxicated on constant piles of fast food, rocking 80’s pop music and nightly movie screenings are barely aware of their own imprisonment in the drive-in. When the government starts dumping truckloads of Asians and Indians in the concentration camp, the teens form a ‘White Australians Council’ and discuss ways to chuck them out. Of course Crabs doesn’t succumb to this sort of racism and is solely preoccupied with escape.
A few things come to mind that makes this movie sick: the fact problems in the drive-in are solved with a cricket bat duel, the new wave punk extras with spiky hair looking mean for the camera, all the messed up cars, the fact that Trenchard-Smith nods to his own movies by playing them on the big screen in the background in a weird form of self-reference. Dead End Drive-In is a truly bizarre movie, a bit like an MTV Mad Max stripped of its ruggedness and venom but left with the weird haircuts and wandering references to Aussie fascism. Advance Australia fair.

The Exterminator (1980)

What a slimy turd snaking itself out of the b-grade asshole that fell into my lap this evening. Plot holes you could drive your car through, horrible acting, massive amounts of ridiculousness and sleaze and anold Italian stereotype lowered into a meat grinder. Basically this stonefaced feather haired dude serves in Vietnam with his pal who saves his life (“That nigger was my best friend”) after the Charlie takes a machete to a GI’s neck, admittedly resulting in a very impressive beheading. Fast forward to America and they work packing trucks together. His mate gets roughed up by some street gang who have the unbelievably non-threatening handle of the Ghetto Ghouls and our hero gets revenge. Featherhead develops a taste for killing criminals and suddenly a new dawn rises over New York City as pimps, mobsters and gangsters are getting rubbed out left right and centre. Obviously a grizzled detective who has seen too much gets put on the case but he’s pretty sympathetic to what’s going down. Okay, what did I like about this stinker? First things first I have a soft spot for 70s/80s genre fare set in New York. Everything always looks so gritty and dirty and a hundred times more atmospheric then a movie set. This gets exploited in this with mucho scene of Feathers walking past 25 cent porno stores and strip clubs. Like always I couldn’t help thinking about the hardcore bands floating around New York at this point and musing over the universe they existed in and how this dirty and rough city shaped the music and image of this scene. Speaking of New York, I think David Berkowitz edited this movie because scenes jump all over the place, are barely strung together and alot of the time shit just doesn’t make sense. I’m not even sure why or how a lot of what happens. Also the lead is pretty infuriating because its not that the man can’t act, it’s that he wont act. I guess if you can’t do something, don’t try, its always worked for me. The dude has the same face and the same voice for every situation in this movie from torturing gang members, turning off his friends life support, telling his friends wife her husband died, being threatened with beheading by the Viet Cong. Now I think about it, he might not of been human but an elaborate puppet. The sleaze hits a few notches of spiciness at times as well. An example is a scene where a prostitute is tortured by heaving her breasts burnt with a soldering iron because she wouldn’t whack on a strap on and fuck a dude in the ass while he fucks a boy in the ass. Yeah. I’m going to cut this review short because it’s hard to write logically about a movie that existed in an illogical universe so I’m going to say that I like 80s action movies because it’s so obvious they want to make right wing gun dudes jizz in their slacks and I can feel that.

The Prowler (1981)

In 1945 a servicemen overseas gets a ‘Dear John’ letter from his best girl, Rosemary. The GI’s return home and Rosemary is attending her high school graduation dance with some other dude, they go out to enjoy some alone time when they get introduced to the business end of a pitchfork by a ‘prowler’ in complete soldier uniform. Thirty-five years pass of no dances and when one gets organised, as you could probably assume, chiselled 80’s teens start to get rubbed out. While The Prowler is no gem, it’s got a lot in it for the slasher enthusiast; however I find that the movie seems to get bogged down, really only saved by appearances of the killer and Tom Savini’s gore effects.
First things first the crazy veteran killer is one of the better bad guys I’ve seen in the movie. Whenever you see him lurking around he just drips presence and dread. One of the coolest moments of the film is when scenes of girls getting ready for the dance are intercut with scenes of this dude ‘arming up’; sliding bayonets and knives into holsters, strapping on jackboots etc. The murder scenes are probably the best shot in the movie, I really felt that ‘The Prowler’ himself was an angry, vindictive bastard. It’s no small feat to communicate fury through a mask and it’s pulled off. I’m not an expert in the military history of the United States but I don’t think Marines were equipped with pitchforks as they took to the field of battle but that implement is more or less this guys ‘signature’ weapon and it’s weaved like an artist. Savini showed up for this one hard and I was lucky enough to obtain an uncut version of the film, you get some throat slashings, knives through the back of the skull, plentiful pitchfork implementation including a couple being stuck together (An effect that was completely cut out of Friday the 13th II) and an exploding head that rivals the one in Savini’s Maniac. I feel like my virginity will become magically reinserted by making nerdy statements like this but Savini’s life is the number one argument against garish, fake looking CGI, a big reason why I largely avoid genre movies from the last decade and a half. The Prowler is not all love and kisses though. It’s a largely plodding affair, I wasn’t too into the characters and was cheering for the GI to remove them from the movie. Maybe I’m just a retard but I got a little confused with the plot holes and red herrings. It’s annoying when slashers try to be something that they are not and pull off these capers, I just got bored. The main character cop also seemed to have one of those octagon, sharp angled heads that only people in the 1980s seem to have, it was a distraction. When it was revealed who the killer was it was such a ‘no care ever’ event that it was funny.
That said, I don't watch these movies to be mystified, I watch them for the red stuff and The Prowler delivered.

The Burning (1981)

A ballsy, entertaining Friday the 13^th knockoff (A mutant looking freak rubs out horny teens at a summer camp) that really kicked my ass. Old Cropsy is an angry old alcoholic groundskeeper at a summer camp who’s always fucking around with the kids. Some dudes plan to pull a trick on him that goes quite wrong when he ends up catching on fire in his bed and burning like a torch before their eyes. Five years later, he’s a melted psychopath lurking the forest with his shears, out for blood. I found a lot to love in this movie with only a few complaints.

First of all, I love a slasher movie that actually makes me care about the cast, and The Burning achieves this for me in spades. I got to mention it features a young Jason Alexander rocking the shit, he’s the cool guy around camp who can hook you up with a pack of condoms or a Hustler and the ladies flock to his cool head of luxurious hair. Frank and Estelle must of been very disappointed with the unemployable shlub he would turn into by the early 90s. The gore delivers to, courtesy of the man himself, Tom Savini. If there is an example of a slasher movie bringing the hammer down supremely, it’s during what could only be described as the raft river massacre scene. Its a pretty ingenious scene, your situation can’t get much more pathetic if you’re on a raft in the middle of a big-ass river with this dude slaughtering everyone in front of you, you literally have no escape. Very itchy, very gory and Savini delivered the red stuff and guts massively. Build up, tension, kills with superb gore payoff, they hit a feature on the slasher pokie machine. I got a big laugh when I saw in the opening credits that the score was by Rick Wakeman. I never heard his music before but my fucking asshole neighbour loves him and whenever he’s bashing my ears with dumb stories he usually chucks in some anecdote about how much he loves the music of Rick Wakeman. Well I think that makes two Wakeman fans in ole Islington because the score on this is fucking great, and I would describe it as being above par for a U.S slasher film, all murky tense synth and dark, ominous tones. I really got into the villain of Cropsy as well, but one of the failings of The Burning is they waste his early, dark presences with too much fish-eyed POV. I was cheering after he kills a prostitute, coming across as an actual demented human rather than a franchise slasher machine. By the time he hits the forest though, it’s gone. Also, with such a large cast of kids I was looking forward to a respectable kill count, and I was disappointed. Those complaints aside, The Burning has become an instant favourite of mine. I watched it twice in the same day and I can think of no better way to start The Ripper List.

A New Blood

This is not a personal website or a journal or any of that nonsense, rather something for me to write about the dumb trash I waste time and money on scrutinizing over. Posts will concern deep thoughts on either a movie I've watched or a record I've been spinning lately. How quickly will this die in the ass? Only time will tell.