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.