THE MILKY WAY (1936) **

Harold Lloyd stars as Burleigh Sullivan, an unassuming milkman who comes to the aid of his sister (Helen Mack) when she’s being harassed by two drunks outside of a nightclub.  During the scuffle, Burleigh inadvertently knocks out one of the men, who just so happens to be Speedy McFarland (William Gargan), the middleweight champ of the world.  Speedy’s crafty manager (Adolphe Menjou) wants to turn Burleigh into a fighter, but he flat-out refuses.  That is until his beloved milk truck horse becomes ill.  With no other way to pay her vet bills, the decidedly puny Burleigh steps into the ring, with predictable results. 

I’m a fan of Lloyd’s silent work, but this talkie is a big comedown from his best stuff.  The set-up is sound (no pun intended), and yet very little is done with the premise.  Lloyd’s legendary physical comedy gifts go curiously untapped here, which seems odd when you figure a boxing movie would be ripe with physical comedy possibilities.  Unfortunately, the boxing scenes are brief, and Lloyd is only limited to a couple of corny dance moves that keep his head just out of the way of his opponent’s boxing gloves.

There’s also a lot of stuff with the bullying fighters (one of which is Lionel Stander from Hart to Hart) that take up too much screen time.  The subplot involving Lloyd’s sister actually falling in love with the champ is kind of clunky and merely exists as a mechanism to complicate the final act.  Menjou’s villainous manager character isn’t very funny either, and the scenes of his wheeling and dealing get in the way of Lloyd doing his thing.  

Even then, Lloyd’s boxing schtick isn’t all that funny to begin with.  The climax is particularly disappointing, especially when compared to his best work.  Although the laughs land more infrequently than the champ’s punches, Lloyd’s plucky enthusiasm keeps you watching.  

RAMBO: LAST BLOOD (2019) ****

There are few things more American than seeing Rambo in the theater with your dad.  I’ve seen every one of Rambo’s adventures since Part 2 in the theater with my old man, and each installment has strengthened the bond between father and son over the years.  When I heard Sylvester Stallone was coming out with his latest (I hesitate to say “last” because something tells me he’s still got another one of these things up his sleeve) installment, I figured, why mess with tradition?  So, I called up my dad, and despite our conflicting schedules, we made a point to see it together on opening night.  Boy, am I glad I did!  Stallone didn’t disappoint either of us.  

Right off the bat, we know this isn’t quite the same Rambo we’ve seen before.  For one, he’s got SHORT HAIR!  I honestly didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about this.  From the very beginning, Rambo always had long hair.  I mean the long hair is important to the character because…how else are you supposed to tell him apart from Rocky, for God’s sake!  Seeing him with short hair… took some getting used to?  Eventually, I got on board with it, mostly because I was too preoccupied counting up the dead bodies.  

It was interesting to see how else Rambo had changed over the years.  For starters, we’ve never seen him in “the world” before.  In the first film, he was drifting from town to town still with his Army jacket on his back.  Now he’s rocking a new cowboy look straight out of a Marlboro Man ad!  Some might cry foul on this, but come on, who knows?  Maybe John J. loved to wear cowboy boots and lasso mustangs when he wasn’t off fighting for Uncle Sam.  Maybe all this time when he was in the jungles wearing his red headbands and jade necklaces, he was actually yearning for a ten-gallon hat.  Who am I to say?  

When we first met Rambo, he hadn’t yet set down roots after the war.  He hadn’t even begun to find his place in a country that ostracized him for merely being a veteran.  Now, after all these years, and various pitstops to Vietnam, Tibet, Afghanistan, and Burma, Rambo has finally returned home to America and found structure, family, and peace.

Well… maybe not peace.  You see, even though he’s got a big farmhouse, lots of land, and plenty of room to break in horses, he opts to live in a vast underground tunnel system he’s carved out for himself in and around the property.  I’ll get more into this aspect later, because it’s a crucial element to the film that I think a lot of my fellow critics have slept on.

Anyway, the plot is simple.  The teenaged Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal) is Rambo’s family friend.  He dotes on her like he would his own daughter.  When she learns her biological father is alive and living in Mexico, she takes an ill-advised trip south of the border to meet him.  There, she gets kidnapped by sex traffickers, and it’s up to Rambo, John J. to save her.

Melding elements of Death Wish, Punisher:  War Zone, You Were Never Really Here, and Taken into the typical Rambo DNA was a… ahem… sly choice.  The last one was such a perfect send-off for the character that it made me kinda hope Stallone was going to let the series end there.  Sly proved me wrong as this is a great addition to the franchise.  It may not be up to the upper echelon of Rambo, First Blood, and First Blood Part 2, but it’s a mean, nasty, bleak, and brutal action movie.  That is to say, I fucking loved it. 

What’s remarkable is that Sly found some nuance and poignancy to go along with the gratuitous bloodshed.  As I stated before, we see Rambo working on a horse farm. but he doesn’t live in the house.  Instead. he lives in an elaborate underground tunnel system of his own design.  This is just so fucking perfect that I got a lump in my throat the moment I saw him living down there.  Many have missed the symbolism of this, so please allow me to elaborate why this little touch is so heartbreaking.

Okay, remember the long scene in First Blood when Rambo eludes the police and goes into hiding in the underground mine?  This sequence takes up a lot of screen time, but it is crucial to the formation of the character as we would later know him.  While looking for his way out, he goes on a hero’s quest, entering one side as a frightened fugitive and emerging from the other as a killing machine. 

Rambo’s homemade tunnels are symbolic of his past deeds.  He’s been in similar terrain and came out the other side a killing machine.  The tunnels symbolize the bridge between two worlds:  The man he once was and the killing machine he is prone to become.  As Rambo himself says, “You can’t change.  All you can do is put a lid on it.”   Staying isolated in those tunnels is his way of putting a lid on his tendencies.  Once Gabrielle is kidnapped, his world is torn apart and that lid comes off.  Big time.

There are gonna be spoilers here, and I apologize, but I’m only doing so to drive the whole tunnel metaphor home.  In the end, Rambo lures the bad guys onto his home turf, and into the tunnels, which he has fitted with various homemade booby traps, effectively turning most of the men into the consistency of peanut butter soup along the way.  Finally, he expels the ringleader of the abuse (whom he appropriately saves for last) by setting off a series of explosions that flush him out of the tunnels and above ground.  In doing so, Rambo causes the entire mineshaft system to collapse upon itself.  Not only has he blown up the tunnels and his home, he’s also severed the sole lifeline tethering him from out and out savagery.  It’s a powerful moment, stating that there’s no going back.  There’s no more John the cowboy.  There’s only Rambo, the killing machine.

Or maybe I’m just reading WWWAAAAAAYYYYY too much into things.  Look, it’s been eleven years since we saw Rambo, John J. turn the bad guys into little bitty pieces.  So, maybe I’m just overcompensating a little due to the long wait.  

I honestly can’t tell you how good it was to see Rambo draw a bow again.  Action fans will be eating up the finale (which features one of the best needle-drops of a classic rock song you’ll hear this year), in which Rambo shows no mercy as he stabs, chops, slices, eviscerates, guns down, blows up and generally makes pasta salad out of the bad guys.  There’s even a moment where he goes full-on Sub-Zero on a villain that will have you cheering.  Imagine a straight-faced Machete movie and that might give you an idea of what to expect.

If Rambo:  Last Blood is in fact, the last Blood, it’ll be a nice conclusion.  The title may sound like a joke from an episode of The Simpsons or something, but it’s fitting.  It perfectly sums up Stallone’s willingness to entertain as he’s practically given us his very last drop of blood to keep the fans happy.  

In the words of Rambo, John J.:  “Mission accomplished!”

LONELY HEARTS (2007) ** ½

Lonely Hearts is based on the same case as the cult classic The Honeymoon Killers.  That film at least felt like a true-crime docudrama.  This one feels like an ION TV mini-series with an occasional naughty bit thrown in here and there.  

The tip-off that this ain’t your father’s Honeymoon Killers is that the female killer is played by Salma Hayek and not Shirley Stoler.  I mean, as one of the world’s leading Salma fanatics, I can easily say she is one of the hottest women on the planet… which makes her totally wrong for the part.  At least her partner, Jared Leto TRIES to look like his real-life counterpart, although his performance comes up short next to Hayek’s (admittedly amusing) flamboyant theatrics.

While Hayek and Leto are picking up rich women and killing them for their money, cops John Travolta and James Gandolfini are on their trail.  I like both performers, and neither one of them phone their roles in.  It’s just that their dialogue is kind of rote.  You almost wish you could call for a do-over and see them act their scenes with a better script.  Likewise, Leto and Hayek are fun to watch, and Salma in particular has a few moments of campy, vampy melodramatics, but you kind of wish the whole thing came together as a solid whole and not a collection of hit-and-miss vignettes. 

Lonely Hearts struggles to find a consistent tone, only occasionally hitting a bullseye.  However, it’s not nearly as lurid as it thinks it is, and it’s nowhere near respectable enough to work as a straight true-crime thriller.  Even though it suffers from comparison to The Honeymoon Killers, with this cast (which also includes a brief, but memorable bit from Alice Krige), it’s nothing less than watchable.   

AKA:  Lonely Hearts Killers.

HELLBILLY (2003) ** ½

Hellbilly is only 47 minutes long, and the first 3 ½ are devoted to a title sequence of a Jeep going down a desert road.  Lucky for us, Skinamax legend Beverly Lynne is in the Jeep and gets it on in the very first scene.  When her lover leaves to take a piss, he is killed by titular lunatic (who wears something that looks like a modified Leatherface Halloween mask).  Lynne then runs through the desert as the masked madman gives chase.  Hellbilly finally catches up to her and ties Bev to a chair.  When she escapes AGAIN, Hellbilly goes after her again and murders anyone who stands in his way (including a pair of guys inexplicably playing chess in the woods).

I’m not entirely sure what Bev is doing in this shot-on-video horror film, but her very presence helps to elevate it from the usual dreck.  She gives a strong performance too and is far better than the regional actors that populate the rest of the film.  Too bad her character disappears abruptly from the proceedings.  

Some of the kills are amusing.  I liked the part when Hellbilly beat a blind woman to death with her own cane.  My favorite moment though was when he shoved pages of a Bible into a nun’s mouth (and panties).  The gore isn’t bad, although the machete-to-the-skull effects are overused.  

It’s not all good news.  The repetitive banjo score will get on your nerves and the ending is pretty terrible.  Despite these limitations, Hellbilly goes down rather smoothly thanks to the abbreviated running time and Lynne’s feisty performance.

WINTER HEAT (1976) ***

Jamie Gillis and his three criminal friends seek refuge in an abandoned barn.  There, he gets his dick wet while his buddies watch.  They then break into snowbound cabin where three girlfriends have come to get away from it all.  The hooligans terrorize the ladies, verbally berate them, and then have their way with them.  After a while, the women kind of… like it?  

Most of the sex scenes heavily revolve around oral and/or go on too long.  That’s not really a criticism, especially if that’s what you’re into.  There’s just not a whole lot here in the way of variety.  That’s really the only complaint though as Winter Heat is a solid roughie through and through.  It’s not as demented as some, but it’s certainly kinkier (and better made) than a few. 

The awesome performance by Gillis is the real reason to watch the movie.  If you read my book, Revenge of the Video Vacuum, you know he’s one of my favorite actors.  In Winter Heat, he gets to play another despicable scumbag and one that’s always funny, quirky, and memorable.  The standout scene occurs when Gillis forces one of the women to strip, verbally abuses her, and then forcibly makes her eat oatmeal from a wooden spoon.  You probably won’t look at the Quaker Oats guy the same way again.

AKA:  Snowbound.

THE AFTERMATH (1982) * ½

Steve Barkett did it all in The Aftermath.  He wrote it.  Produced it.  Edited it.  Directed it.  Said, “Hey, you know who would look GREAT shirtless on the video box?  Me!”  Yep, he did that too, although I kind of wish he didn’t.  

Steve stars as Newman, an astronaut who returns to Earth from a deep space mission to find the apocalypse has occurred.  (This is also known as “Pulling a Heston”.)  He goes to a museum ran by “The Curator” (Forrest J. Ackerman, in what was probably his biggest role) and gets the lowdown on what happened while he was away.  Meanwhile, the vile Cutter (Sid Haig) and his buddies have been going around killing men and raping women.  Newman befriends a young boy (Christopher Barkett, one of countless Barketts to be found among the credits as nepotism ran rampant behind the scenes of this one) and a refugee from Cutter’s prison named Sarah (Lynne Margulies) and the three form a half-assed post-nuclear family.  Things take a turn for the Death Wish in the third act when Cutter and his men kill Sarah, prompting Newman to wage a one-man war on Cutter’s compound.

The Aftermath was a vanity project for the decidedly not-movie-star-handsome Barkett.  Not only did he give his family members plum roles behind and in front of the camera, he also gave himself a completely gratuitous love scene with the topless female lead.  Maybe I got to look into this movie business thing for myself.   

Clumsy and awkward in nearly every regard; cheap and crappy on just about all fronts, The Aftermath is a jaw-dropper if nothing else.  Too crude to have charm and mostly too unpleasant to be considered “fun”, it nevertheless has an unmistakable… something about it.  Let me put it to you this way.  When I was watching it, I just wanted it to end.  Now that I have some distance from it, I want to show it to others just to see their reactions. 

The opening sequence has some of the worst spaceship effects I’ve ever seen.  Seriously, Ed Wood would’ve rejected a few of these shots for looking phony.  The shots depicting the nuclear fallout in the city work much better though, although some of them are overused. 

Sid curiously underplays his villain role.  While he perks up the movie somewhat, he never quite goes for broke.  The best scene is when Ackerman walks around the dinosaur sculptures while giving a tour of his museum.  I mean, you know you’re in trouble when Forrest J. Ackerman gives the best performance of the movie.  

As for the action, it’s amateurish, slapdash, and mostly weighted toward the end.  Until then, it’s kind of like watching paint dry.  At least with paint there’s a possibility you could get high off the fumes. 

AKA:  Nuclear Aftermath.  AKA:  Zombie Aftermath.

THE FOUNDER (2017) *** ½

Like it or not, the story of McDonald’s is the story of America.  Both began with great ideas, wholesome ideals, and spectacular innovation, all of which got perverted along the way by greed, ego, and a business-as-usual mentality.  You either eat the clown or the clown eats you.  

Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) finds McDonald’s hamburger stand like an oasis in the desert.  He loves their “fast food” system and wants to take the idea and expand it nationally.  His impassioned speech moves the unmovable McDonald brothers (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch) and they grudgingly allow him to franchise the restaurant.  As Kroc’s ever-reaching lust for expansion grows, his vision begins to run against the grain of the brothers’ core beliefs, causing friction between the three men.

The film is anchored by a powerhouse performance by Keaton, one of his best.  Even as he’s stealing the brothers’ company out from under them, you can’t help but get swept up in his fervor.  The scene where he equates the Golden Arches with church crosses and courthouse flags as a symbol where Americans gather works not only as a potential Oscar soundbite, but as hamburger propaganda as well. 

I think it’s also a little ironic how Kroc gets into the burger business.  In the early scenes we see him becoming grouchy when it takes forever for a carhop to get him his food.  Later, he’s upset when they get his order wrong.  It’s funny how the movie makes you think that somehow McDonald’s is above all this.  I can’t tell you how many times I had to wait for my food at McDonald’s and then after all that time, they got it wrong.  But I digress.

If there is a gripe, is that the only real takeaway here is that business (like war) is hell.  Or maybe the filmmakers want you to remember Kroc’s backstabbing ways the next time you bite into one of their hamburgers.  Either way, it doesn’t lessen the enjoyment of the film.