LET’S GET PHYSICAL: HIT AND RUN (2012) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

Hit and Run is a surprisingly fresh updating of the old reliable car chase genre.  The secret sauce that holds everything together is the chemistry between real-life couple Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell, who spend much of the movie confined in the close quarters of cars, hotels, and convenience stores.  Their performances are so natural that there are times when you feel like you’re eavesdropping on their private conversations.  Even the dialogue seems like it could’ve been plucked from their marriage.  Moments where Bell takes Shepard to task for casually using a slur, having a frank discussion about their careers, and talking about things that happened in their past ring true mostly because they talk like real people and not characters in a car chase movie. 

The car chase itself is a little different than usual.  Most of these movies entail outlaws outrunning the police.  Here, our hero Dax is a former criminal in the witness protection program who decides against his handler’s wishes to drive his girlfriend to LA for her new job.  Along the way, his former criminal associate (Bradley Cooper) gets wind of his identity and tries to get revenge. 

The supporting players seem to be having a lot of fun.  Cooper looks like an Olympic snowboarder with his white boy dreadlocks, but he still has an air of menace about him.  I liked the scene where he casually suggests to a guy in a grocery store that he’s better off feeding his dog natural dog food.  When he shrugs off the suggestion, Cooper makes him eat it at gun point.  Michael Rosenbaum also looks to be having a blast playing Bell’s tweaked out jealous ex-boyfriend.  Tom Arnold gets some laughs too as a clumsy marshal. 

For a car chase movie, the actual chasing and stunts feel almost like an afterthought.  While they are competently handled and filmed, they don’t exactly knock your socks off.  That’s perfectly fine though, seeing how the quirky original characters and funny dialogue more than make up for it. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DIVINE TRASH (1998) ***

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 17th, 2007)

(NOTE:  Divine Trash was featured as a bonus supplement on the Criterion Collection’s Blu-Ray of Pink Flamingos.) 

Documentarian Steve Yeager’s fun, fact-filled chronicle of cult maverick John Waters is a must-see for fans of Baltimore’s greatest living director. It covers his childhood (he used to perform puppet plays based on William Castle’s The Tingler) and his early films with his leading lady Divine (such as Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, Roman Candles and Eat Your Make-Up) and concludes with the making of his cult classic Pink Flamingos. His early influences (H.G. Lewis, the Kuchar Brothers, and Paul Morrissey), fans (Jim Jarmusch, David O. Russell and Steve Buscemi), and his famed acting troupe (Mink Stole and Mary Vivian Pierce) are interviewed as well as Waters himself. The interviews are insightful and entertaining, but the best part is seeing rare behind the scenes footage from the set of Pink Flamingos (including the infamous dog shit eating scene). Yeager also directed In Bad Taste, which covered Waters’ later years and features many of the same interviewees.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: PINK FLAMINGOS (1972) ** ½

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

John Waters’ Pink Flamingos is a movie that is almost impossible to review.  It’s kind of unclassifiable unless you’re talking to someone who’s already seen it.  You either dig it or you don’t.  Even more than fifty years after its release, it still manages to be perverse, funny, and shocking.  I can’t quite exactly call it a “good” movie.  It’s more of a force of nature; something that must be experienced rather than “seen”.  

The plot has the Marbles, Raymond and Connie (David Lochary and Mink Stole) competing with Divine (himself) for the title of “Filthiest Person Alive”.  Naturally, all the back and forth between the two competitors leads to murder.  Finally, to cement her title, Divine resorts to eating dog shit.

I got a perverse thrill knowing this Midnight Movie cult flick has not only been released on Blu-Ray by the Criterion Collection, but also has been preserved as part of the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.  Do you think Waters and his cohorts ever envisioned that happening back in the ‘70s when they were running around the backwoods of Baltimore filming this?  I think not.

Pink Flamingos isn’t exactly a “film”, per se.  Instead, it functions more as a transgressive piece of rebel art.  Yes, it has a narrative, but it seems sort of juvenile, which helps to set up the craziness in the last half-hour. (Yes, I’m referring to the dog shit eating.)  Although by this point, it probably seems tame to today’s generation raised on the internet, or anyone who’s Googled Two Girls One Cup.  

Sure, there are things I love about the movie.  First and foremost, Divine.  He’s definitely a star.  He probably didn’t need to eat dog shit to be a legend, but I’m sure it didn’t hurt.  I also love Edith the Egg Lady, who gives a terrific performance.  

No matter how many times I’ve seen it, I do start to tap out by the time the “Singing Asshole” scene comes around.  To me, the dog shit scene seems kind of quaint in comparison.  It’s in the last half-hour where the film kind of goes off the rails and becomes part cinematic carnival geek show, part gore movie, and part fetish video. 

This is one case where a star rating system doesn’t really apply.  You’re either the kind of person who would watch it or you aren’t.  My review isn’t going to sway you one way or another.  I don’t even know if anyone can call it “good” in a conventional sense, but it is an important milestone, not only in terms of Midnight Movies, but in cinema in general.  I mean, if it’s good enough for the Library of Congress, it’s good enough for me. 

Oh, and the Blu-Ray comes with a replica of the Pink “Phlegm-ingos” barf bag, which is fucking cool. 

TAROT (2024) ***

Tarot has a good hook to hang a horror flick on.  It’s so good that it is somehow able to overcome the PG-13 rating and still deliver the goods.  If your film is carrying a PG-13 rating, it’s pretty much a given you’re not going to be tossing the gore around and letting the T & A jiggle and wiggle.  So, what you have to do is give your flick some style, atmosphere, and a sense of humor.  Tarot more or less checks all those boxes and is a surprisingly good time, mostly because it… ahem… plays its cards right. 

The film is basically Ouija meets Thirteen Ghosts with a little bit of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Final Destination thrown in.  A group of friends rent a mansion for the weekend.  While looking for booze, they stumble into a basement that would give the Warrens the creeps.  There, they find a mysterious deck of old tarot cards and the witchy one of the group performs readings for her friends.  Before you can say “Miss Cleo”, her friends begin dying off in ways described by the cards. 

As an added bonus, the victims’ final card takes on a life of its own to deliver the killing blow.  Such villains include The High Priestess, The Hermit, The Fool, and even Death himself.  Each has their own little gimmick.  For example, The Hangman uses a rope to hang one girl and The Magician locks a gal in a box and saws her in half.  Even though the flick is PG-13 this scene is still effective as the shots of the saw blade coming perilously close to the gal’s kicking legs works rather well.  The scene involving a ladder is also fairly brutal given the rating. 

The fact that the potential victims can outsmart Death if they heed the warnings in their reading is a smart little wrinkle.  Naturally, since this is a horror movie, many of them still manage to make dumb choices.  Sure, some of the backstory wasn’t really necessary (they should’ve saved it for a sequel), but for the most part, this is a solid flick. 

Our local theater does bargain shows on Tuesdays for $7.50.  That’s how I saw Tarot, and I would say I got my money’s worth.  So far, 2024 is shaping up to be a banner year for horror.

FOXY FOOD FIGHT (1987) ***

Women’s mud wrestling is one of the finest American institutions known to man. I mean how do you top that?  Well, you replace mud with food. 

The pre-entertainment show features contestants coming out dressed up as various foods like bananas, grapes, and hamburgers.  At first, I was afraid things were gonna get too literal with the gals wrestling in food costumes.  Luckily, they quickly eschewed their food-themed wardrobe, donned some bikinis, and went into action.  Oh, and the ring announcer was dressed as a chef, which I thought was a nice touch. 

The first fight has two bikini-clad combatants rolling around in a bed of lettuce.  During the match, one gal shoves a fistful of lettuce down the back of her opponent’s thong which gives new meaning to the term “tossing the salad”.  The main course finds two contestants battling in a pool of spaghetti.  Cooked pasta, as it turns out, also makes for an effective whip.  This match also includes a great moment where one of the fighters shoves the noodles inside her thong and shakes it around like a horse’s tail.  The “Dessert Round” finds the wrassling women going toe to toe in a vat of whipped cream. 

The video cinematography is acceptable for what it is.  It was filmed at the Whisky a Go-Go rather than some random strip club, so you know it’s a classy affair.  The editing is a little weird at times as every fighter’s entrance is shown as part of the same segment.  I mean, it would’ve made more sense to only show their entrance for each contestants’ fight.  (The random use of slow motion during the fights doesn’t really work either.)  Then again, it’s hard to complain when they all enter the ring in sexy themed outfits like Miss America, an Air Force officer, and a pirate. 

There’s also a neat gimmick of new food being added in between rounds like carrots and tomatoes in the salad fight, tomato sauce in spaghetti fight, and cherries are added in during dessert.  While there are many near-nips slips, everything is pretty PG-13 for the most part.  Sure, it won’t replace women’s mud wrestling any time soon, but Foxy Food Fight offers up a fun variation on the theme, nevertheless. 

Foxy Oil Wrestling followed. 

GINGER LYNN ALLEN’S SUPERBODY (1993) ***

You all know me.  You know how I earn my living.  You know I love me some celebrity workout videos.  You also know I love me some porn stars, especially ones from the ‘80s.  So, when I find something like Ginger Lynn Allen’s Superbody on YouTube, I just have to watch it.  I’m not sure if this was Ginger’s answer video to Jazz Warm-up to Traci Lords or if she already had an idea to make her own exercise video.  Perhaps having two competing porn star workout videos was a happy accident.  Either way, I’m glad they both exist. 

In the intro, Ginger says her routine is a combination of “Yoga, body sculpting, and low impact aerobics”.  She begins with some floor stretches before moving on to what looks like a mix of yoga and dancercise.  Then, it’s back to the floor for some “Butt Lifters” (which sounds like the name of a movie Ginger would’ve starred in), leg lifts, and crunches.  Finally, we end with some breathing exercises. 

As workout videos go, Ginger Lynn’s Superbody offers nothing too strenuous for the viewer.  If you’re looking to perform an actual workout routine along with the video, you may find it useful, especially if you’re a beginner.  But let’s face it.  This thing solely exists for guys like me to watch Ginger Lynn In tight white workout clothes undulating around on the floor. 

The set is very industrial looking, which is a sharp contrast to the relaxing narration and soft, soothing music.  There’s also a giant fan behind Ginger and her two models that create a silhouette reminiscent of lighting in a film noir movie.  (The use of black and white in some scenes enhances this feeling.)  Overall, it kinda looks like a set from a cheap Sci-Fi movie and is far removed from the homey settings featured in most celebrity workout videos.  That’s part of what makes it interesting though.

All of Ginger’s instructions come in the form of voiceover.  Because of her monotone delivery, along with the New Age soundtrack, it almost plays better as ASMR than as a workout video.  Then again, if you’re watching this, you’re probably just watching it for Ginger, and not so much the exercise. 

Despite her profession, there’s nothing outwardly pornographic here, although Ginger shows off some cleavage here and there and sports major camel toe in many shots.  Also, the slow-motion cheesecake shots of Ginger enjoying her exercise are more sexy than instructional.  Not that I am complaining.  The scenes of her on all fours and rhythmically undulating are pretty hot too.  I guess this is about as naughty as Ginger is allowed to be on a workout tape.  That said, it’s still rather steamy.

AKA:  Superbody Workout.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: KIDS IN THE HALL: BRAIN CANDY (1996) ***

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

Kids in the Hall:  Brain Candy was a flop at the time of release (I have fond memories of braving a blizzard to see it at the movies and being the only one in the theater) although fans and even the creators seem to hate it.  (The sketch about the movie finally making its money back on the first episode of the new reboot was pretty funny though.)  I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for it.  Sure, translating a sketch comedy show to a feature length movie is a tricky thing.  I’ll admit the plot doesn’t exactly lend itself to their brand of humor either (although it does give them an excuse to dust off some of their characters who are mostly relegated to cameos).  I remember thinking when I first saw it that a comedy about the pharmaceutical industry was a weird angle to hang a sketch comedy movie around.  Nowadays, it seems like every time you turn on TV you see commercials for various drugs, so I have to wonder if it was actually just ahead of its time.  Either way, there is some wickedly funny stuff here, which is all that really matters. 

Chris (Kevin McDonald) is a scientist who creates a wonder drug to cure depression.  Naturally, it needs a bunch more tests but when the CEO of the pharmaceutical company (Mark McKinney) threatens his job, he pushes it through to market.  At first, it seems to be a miracle cure, but side effects eventually kick in and it’s up to Chris to make things right. 

Although I miss some of the more famous sketch characters, the cast is great as usual.  Some of the highlights are Dave Foley’s “Just a Guy”, Bruce McCullough as Cancer Boy, and Scott Thompson gets a great gay musical number.  I know a lot of fans look down their nose at it, but for this fan, it gave me plenty of big laughs.  If you can just turn off your brain, there’s plenty of candy to be had.