#24: In Hot Pursuit

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 7: Side A
1977

Wacky, circus-style music plays over the opening credits of In Hot Pursuit, struggling mightily to establish a tone of pure and unadulterated zaniness that is immediately undercut by the very first scene, in which two pilots mutter disinterestedly to each other as they slowly bring their pot-filled plane in for a landing in a field somewhere in rural Georgia. Waiting for the plane are drug-runners Oosh (Don Watson), his Bad Company t-shirt-sporting brother Boosh (Don’s real-life bro Bobby Watson) and a couple other long-haired, too-tight-jeans-wearing, Doobie Brothers-roadie-looking-types. When the plane lands Oosh and Boosh hand off a sack full of money to the pilots and load the grass into their musty Winnebago. That’s when the fuzz shows up.  

“Jesus Christ!” cries Boosh in his thick Southern drawl. “Here come the damn po-lice!” Cue a protracted backroads chase--In Hot Pursuit’s raison d’etre--involving the Winnebago, half a dozen cop cars, a Cadillac-driving old-timer, and an oblivious, burrito-eating trucker who continues chowing down even after accidentally swerving his eighteen-wheeler across the road and slicing the roof off Oosh and Boosh’s RV. Eventually the boys are apprehended and brought to the local jail, whereupon Mr. King (Paul Weiner), the sweaty, thick-necked head of the drug-smuggling operation, calls in his sweaty, thick-necked associates to devise a prison break. Their brilliantly idiotic plan entails landing a helicopter on the roof of the jail, where the boys just happen to be repairing an air-conditioning unit (who knew maintenance work was such a big part of serving time?) under the watchful eye of the sheriff. As the copter descends, the boys knock the sheriff out, grab onto the copter’s landing struts and are whisked away.      

This, inevitably, leads to more chases; double crosses; an armored car heist; multiple cops bellowing slight variations on the line, “That’s the car we got a lookout on! Let’s get ‘em!”; incongruous musical cues; some extended bed-lounging; a miraculous plane-landing in the middle of the forest; and a belabored comic set-piece consisting of a massive double-wide being transported down the highway atop a flatbed, an out-of-control, dope-filled tractor-trailer, and repeated cuts to a drunken, barefoot yokel inside the double-wide napping on a dirty cot.

Between this sort of desperate humor, the largely incomprehensible dialogue, Mr. King’s wood-paneled office that looks more like one-time director Jim West’s step-mom’s rumpus room than it does the headquarters of a major crime syndicate, and the delightfully low-rent credits (one of the actors is billed simply as Big Jim, another as Mrs. Oxly), In Hot Pursuit has a scuzzy, homemade charm to it not unlike that of fellow southern-fried Fifty Pack classics Twister’s Revenge and Country Blue. Add to it the fact that the movie, also known awesomely as Polk County Pot Plane, is loosely based on one of those strange-but-true news briefs--in August 1975 drug smugglers cleared out a 1000 foot landing strip on Treat Mountain in Georgia and against all odds landed a Douglas DC-4, a plane designed for runways of 3000 feet or longer--and the whole thing seems imbued with a goofy, over-the-top sense of local pride. Then there’s that badass claim at the end of the movie--No stuntmen were used in this film--which makes Oosh and Boosh’s car-crashing and helicopter-dangling antics all the more impressive. In some ways, the movie seems like something your inebriated, hirsute, redneck uncles--you know, the ones that let you play with fireworks when you were a kid and sip from their cans of Bud Light at family BBQs--might’ve cobbled together back when they were still young, a little crazy and their ambitions extended beyond long, hazy afternoons on the couch watching NASCAR.

#23: Don't Open Till Christmas

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 4: Side B
1984

As far as yuletide horror flicks go, there’s only one bona fide classic: 1974’s Black Christmas. The rest are like an inedible brick of a fruitcake, a lump of coal in the bottom of a stocking, an unwanted pair of socks under the tree, and other assorted overused Christmas-themed metaphors I’ve decided to use up in one go. This undistinguished subgenre ranges from the passable--Christmas Evil--to the sleazy--Silent Night, Deadly Night--to the Hulk Hogan-starring--the-not-technically-horror-but-still-pretty-horrific Santa With Muscles. Add to this sorry ilk the plodding British slasher Don’t Open Till Christmas, which features a plastic Santa Claus catching on fire and melting over the opening credits--just in case you didn’t, you know, get the point.

Next we’re treated to a lame-ass office Xmas party with costumed revelers shimmying halfheartedly to a limp disco beat. Backstage the boss sits in front of a mirror, fretting over his Santa costume. His daughter Kate (Belinda Mane) comes in and slathers some makeup on his face. “I shall look like a gay old queen,” he bemoans before trudging out front to deliver gifts to his weakly-boogying drones. Almost immediately a mysterious masked figure appears and thrusts a sword through the poor homophobic bastard’s skull.

Cut to Chief Inspector Harris (Edmund Purdom) and Detective Sergeant Powell (Mark Jones) of Scotland Yard, the bickering, unpleasant, somewhat dimwitted duo assigned to the case. “It was the costume he was wearing,” Powell explains to Kate. “He was the victim of another Santa murder.” Cue a ragged-looking Saint Nick in a darkened alley roasting a batch of chestnuts over a grill. Suddenly the killer appears behind him and shoves his face down on the hot coals, after which the ill-fated Claus improbably bursts into flame. This is how the rest of the movie goes: Harris and Powell putz around--“Do you think we might have a psychopath on our hands?” Harris dimly wonders at one point--then another Santa is abruptly dispatched, then Harris and Powell putz some more, then yet another doomed, anonymous Kris Kringle is slain without even the slightest attempt at suspense-building.

Who could be behind these murders? Is it Giles (Alan Lake), the snooping, shifty-eyed loner who falsely claims to be a reporter? Is it Inspector Harris, whom witnesses pointedly remark is the same height as the killer? Or is it Cliff Boyd (Gerry Sundquist), Kate’s slimy, flute-playing, subway-station-busking boyfriend who tries to convince Kate--remember, her father was just skewered before her very eyes--to pose for a couple topless photos at his equally slimy buddy’s studio? Or perhaps the better question is: What idiotic, nonsensical, pseudo-Freudian motive will Don’t Open Till Christmas give its Santa slayer?

Really, there’s only one worthwhile scene in the entire thing. Late in the film, a drunken Santa stumbles out of a pub and hops on a rickety bike, only to be harassed by the least threatening gang of local punks ever. “Pedal power!” one of them calls out. “You’re drunk!” observes another. Santa flips the punks off and the punks give chase. “Stop pedaling, mate,” one of them politely requests. Eventually this Santa, too, will be abruptly and unimaginatively murdered. But as the giggling group of mohawked goofs scramble after him--all that’s missing is a jingle-bell-tinged rendition of “Yakety Sax”--Don’t Open Till Christmas seems like some forgotten, so-bad-it’s-good gem. Considering how dull and dispiriting the rest of the movie is this brief bit of absurdity is like a freakin‘ Christmas miracle.    

#16: Snowbeast

Drive In Movie Classics 
Disc 5: Side A
1977

Snowbeast opens on snow-covered hills. A close-up shows tree branches, encased in ice. Suddenly, a large, white paw thrusts into frame, pushing aside the branches. The seasoned monster-moviegoer suspects this will be all they'll ever see of the so-called snowbeast. Two woman--Jennifer and Heidi--appear on skis, unaware they’re being stalked. They stop, spotting a large, inhuman footprint in the snow. Heidi is frightened. Jennifer is skeptical, sure someone is playing a practical joke on them. The tracks? “Snowshoes from some mail order novelty house,” Jennifer explains, semi-logically. The snowbeast, nothing more than a shaky POV shot now, bursts from the trees and attacks.

Ski-patroller Tony Rill (Robert Logan) finds Jennifer’s bright orange ski suit in the snow, soaked in blood. A roar echoes across the hills. More shaky POV shots ensue. Tony hurries back to the nearby ski lodge, which happens to be owned by his grandmother Carrie (Sylvia Sidney). He pulls a Chief Brody, trying to convince Carrie to shut down the resort so no one else is injured. “This wasn’t an animal,” he insists. “And it wasn’t a human, either. There’s something very strange and very dangerous out there.” 

Unfortunately, the annual winter carnival is set for that very weekend. Hundreds of tourists--and more importantly, their money--are expected. The resort can’t afford to lose the business. Carrie, in full-on disbelieving-mayor-mode, refuses to shut the lodge down. “I’m not being insensitive,” she tells Tony, “I’m just being realistic.”

More skiers fall victim to shaky POV shots. While lounging in the hot tub, Tony tries to convince his old friend Gar Seberg (Bo Svenson), a former Olympic skier, that the snowbeast is responsible. “It wasn’t an animal,” says Tony. “And it wasn’t human, either.” This seems to be the main thrust of his argument. Gar isn’t convinced--not until his wife Ellen (Yvette Mimieux) disappears. Gar dons his bright blue and yellow jumpsuit. He straps on his skis, which, we learn in a tedious subplot, he hasn’t worn since he won the gold medal in ’68. He searches the surrounding hills and finally finds Ellen in a remote cabin, safe but slightly shaken. A POV shot lurks nearby.

Gar and Ellen decide to join Tony and the sheriff on the hunt for the snowbeast. They arm themselves with rifles. For their base they choose a crummy-looking Winnebago. The sheriff is killed. The others split up for no apparent reason. Gar kills the snowbeast. That’s pretty much it. Snowbeast is a made-for-TV Jaws rip-off. As a result there’s little violence and even less suspense. As for the snowbeast, you see even less of it than you do the killer grizzly bear in Grizzly, another silly Jaws clone from the 70s. In fact, most of the film’s running time is taken up by interminable ski footage, with a little snowmobile action thrown in for good measure. Imagine if Jaws was mostly swimmers swimming around aimlessly. That should give you a good sense of Snowbeast's priorities.


Do you have any favorite Jaws knock offs?

#8: Mad Dog

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 2: Side B
1977

As Mad Dog opens we see Nanni Vitali (Helmut Berger) and three accomplices barreling out the front door of a jail. Not exactly the most elaborate of prison breaks, but it gets the film, also known as The Mad Dog Killer, Ferocious and Beast With A Gun, off to a propulsive start. The prisoners grab a guard as a hostage, steal a nearby car and speed off with the police in pursuit. When Nanni finds out the guard’s gun isn’t actually loaded he slaps the guard around and throws him from the moving car, apparently out of utter contempt. Later, Nanni and his shifty-eyed crew flag down another car being driven by a young couple, slap the guy around, rip open the woman’s shirt, hop in the couple’s car and speed off once again.

 “I was afraid they were going to kill us,” the woman tells her boyfriend before looking into the back of the car Nanni left behind and seeing the bloody, battered body of that car’s driver. She screams and the film cuts to Nanni and the crew at a gas station, where they slap the attendant around, slap the attendant’s son around, steal some money from the register and speed off yet again.

At this point I started wondering if the film was going to keep introducing one-dimensional, peripheral characters solely so Nanni could brutalize them. It’s like an endless, repetitive fever dream: A man slaps another man around, gets in a car and speeds off. A man slaps another man around, gets in a car and speeds off. A man slaps another man around, gets in a car and speeds off. 

Sure enough, Nanni and the crew find someone else to brutalize. They kidnap the police informer who got Nanni sentenced to twenty-three years in the joint and drive he and his girlfriend out to that staple of low-budget action flicks of the 1970s and 80s: The gravel pit. I’ve never actually been to a gravel pit in person, but through the magic of cinema I feel like I have. The mounds of gravel, the muddy ground, the overcast skies--it’s all so real to me.

Anyway, Nanni slaps the informer around, then drags his girlfriend off to rape her. How does the viewer know this is what he’s doing? Helpfully, the camera lingers on the rape for a long, uncomfortable moment. It’s here that I asked myself, really, what’s the point of Mad Dog? Are we supposed to be so disgusted with Nanni we can’t wait until he gets his comeuppance? Are we supposed to find him somehow compelling? The complete lack of psychological depth to Nanni is almost fearless on the filmmakers' part. And yet the experience of watching the character is wearying, pointless. The Poliziotteschi, the genre of Italian crime films to which Mad Dog belongs, isn’t necessarily known for subtlety or rich characterization, but Mad Dog is particularly crude. Are Nanni’s terrible deeds exploitative or is the film itself exploitative? I fear it’s a fine line. But what I fear most of all is that this film might single handedly end the moviegoer’s love affair with the gravel pit.  



Anybody else seen Mad Dog? Have a different opinion of it? Have a better recommendation for Italian crime films? Any gravel pit favorites?

#7: Going Steady

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 2: Side B
1979

Going Steady opens on our protagonists--Benji, Huey and Bobby--cruising in their convertible through what looks like the classic-car-infested set of America Graffiti. It is, we presume, the 1950s.

“Hey now, look over there!” cries Huey. “There’s a good-looking girl!”

Soon after, the boys park the car and amble into a diner, where other youngsters are shaking their hips to the rock and roll blasting out of a jukebox. Huey snaps a girl’s bra strap. Uh oh, the viewer thinks. How integral will bra-snapping be to this plot? The viewer’s fears deepen as the boys pick up some girls at the diner, drive them out to the beach, strip naked and jump in the ocean, all the while trying to entice the girls to join them. Suddenly the girls’ boyfriends show up on motorcycles, snatch the boys’ clothes and speed off. Benji (Yftach Katzur), Huey (Zachi Noy) and Bobby (Jonathan Sagall) are forced to go home naked and face their disapproving parents, seeming to confirm the viewer's suspicion that Going Steady is yet another in the long tradition of films about the humiliation of young adulthood and the age old quest to get laid.

And yet it manages to rise above Porky’s and its countless rip-offs and sequels--Porky’s II: The Next Day, Porky’s III: The Day After Tomorrow, Porky’s IV: The Final Chapter, Porky’s V: A New Beginning, Porky’s VI: Jason Takes Angel Beach High School. The film leaves behind the silly gags to focus on Benji’s pursuit of his dream girl Tammy (Yvonne Michaels). He fakes a letter from the principal in order to get Tammy out of class. He holds up a sign asking Tammy if she’ll go out with him. He sits down across from her in a quiet library, pulls out a carrot, celery, bell pepper and other crunchy vegetables, and takes loud bites--much to the irritation of the other patrons. Tammy, however, is impressed, and agrees to go out with him. Yes, it’s still pretty silly, but there’s something charming about Benji and Tammy’s courtship. And as the movie progresses, their relationship deepens, they go through emotional highs and lows of young love, and, like the characters themselves, Going Steady seems to mature a little right before the viewer’s eyes.

But perhaps what distinguishes the film most of all is that, despite its American Graffiti-style milieu, Going Steady is actually set in Tel Aviv. It’s the second in the popular, long-running Lemon Popsicle series from Israel that predates Porky‘s and its ilk by quite a few years. In the Hebrew language version of the film, Benji, Huey and Bobby are Benzi, Yudale and Momo, respectively. Going Steady is simply a poorly-dubbed version of the original, Yotzim Kavua. Somehow, this adds another layer to what, at first glance, seems like your average teen sex-comedy.



Anybody else pleasantly surprised by Going Steady? Anybody seen the other films in the Lemon Popsicle series? Are they any good? How much bra-snapping is involved? Too little or not enough?

#4: Day of the Panther

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 1: Side B
1988

Day of the Panther opens in China, where we witness our hero Jason Blade (Edward John Stazak) and his partner Linda Anderson (Linda Megeir), undergoing their initiation into the secret Order of the Panther. What is the Order of the Panther? you ask. Linda’s father William (John Stanton), a current Panther member, is on hand to provide some helpful voiceover:

“The ancient and secret order of the Panthers,” he explains, “combine the most vigorous training in the martial arts with a high sense of correct behavior and Zen mastery of the self.”

As it turns out, William, Linda and Blade are also all vaguely-defined secret agents, who are trying to get evidence of an equally vaguely-defined deal between the Triad and an Australian crime syndicate.

“Undercover surveillance is the most dangerous game we play,” the voiceover interjects. “Jason and Linda played the most perfect professional team. Then came the night that would change all our lives.”

We see Linda in a big, puffy, bright orange blouse and Blade in an ugly sweater and whitewashed jeans sneaking into the Triad headquarters. They’re not dressed as discreetly as you might expect from such seasoned agents, but maybe such garish clothing counted as discreet in the late 80s. Whatever the case, they’re the professionals. They must know what they’re doing, right? Well, the way they go about scooting and shuffling through the headquarters, ducking around corners and craning their necks around doorways, you might wonder. Linda crouches behind a couch to take pictures of the deal going down, while Blade peers at the villains through the glass of a terrarium. They’re soon spotted by the Triad, and a martial arts battle ensues.

Blade and Linda escape unscathed, and Linda travels to Perth to present the evidence to the Australian authorities. Unfortunately, she finds herself in that staple of 80s action movies, the abandoned warehouse. She's attacked and killed by a group of the mob boss’s henchmen, who are all, for some reason, wearing animal masks--an odd, little detail that would be creepy were not for the jeans and sweaty tank-tops they’re also all wearing. Not only that, but the suspense in this scene is undermined by repeated and unnecessary cuts back to Blade arriving in Perth by plane. We all know James Bond darts from one exotic locale to another, but we don’t need to see him sitting and looking at his watch impatiently as his plane slowly taxis down the runway and pulls up to the gate. On top of it all, Blade is clearly flying coach, detracting from the aura of glamor most secret agent movies strive for. Lucky for us, though, Blade didn’t check any luggage, so we’re spared a long scene at the baggage claim.

Day of the Panther picks up after this excruciating scene, as Blade infiltrates the crime syndicate and begins to take his revenge for the death of his partner. The majority of the fight scenes are well-choreographed, no surprise since the film was directed by Australian genre vet Brian Trenchard-Smith, who helmed Stunt Rock, Escape 2000, Dead End Drive-In and BMX Bandits, among many, many others. It’s obvious he knows his way around a cheesy action flick. As an added bonus, the DVD of Day of the Panther boasts the crispest presentation of any 50-Pack movie yet. Most movies in these sorts of collection are transferred so poorly  and are so badly cropped you can barely make out the actors on screen. This one looked like a real, genuine movie, rather than some strange, murky, forgotten home video only you and the editor have ever seen. And if the countless kung-fu battles bore you, don’t worry, there are a handful of awesomely bad moments.

Take the random and pointless scene where Blade is pumping iron in the gym and a be-spandexed, feather-haired woman walks in, pops a cassette tape into a boom-box and commences to Flashdance.

“That looked great,” Blade compliments her afterwards. “You move very well.”



Anybody else seen Day of the Panther? Any favorite silly moments? Any favorite Brian Trenchard-Smith movies? Mine's gotta be Dead End Drive-In.

#2: Devil With Seven Faces

Drive In Movie Classics

Disc 1: Side A

1971

Next up is The Devil With Seven Faces, which is less a thrill-free Italian thriller from 1971--though it is that--than a cavalacade of bad, early 70s fashions and tastes. We first glimpse our heroine Julie Harrison (Carroll Baker) leaving a party, where the guests are wearing some of the most hideous outfits imaginable, including a patchwork dress that looks to have been hastily stitched together from the remnants of other, equally hideous dresses. The combined power of all this pea-green, mustard-yellow and puke-orange fabric is staggering. Things get even more dated from there, when we realize Julie is being clumsily stalked through the shadows by a man in a loud, ill-fitting tweed-suit. All of which is to say nothing of the oversized, day-glo table lamps and rotary phones on display throughout the film, which you can't help but gaze at in a stupor the way the attention of small infants are automatically drawn to any nearby bright, shiny object.

In some ways I felt bad focusing so much on the garish clothes and hairstyles while watching this movie. After all, it's not really the movie's fault that it was made at a time when restraint and good taste were rare commodities; if anything The Devil With Seven Faces acts a a time capsule, a somewhat accurate depiction of its era. Or is it? These were the sorts of questions I found myself asking as yet another sweaty, unshaven man accosted Julie and accused her of stealing a diamond from his boss, mistakenly believing her to be her twin sister.

"Mary and I are twins," Julie explains to a friend at one point. "I mean identical twins. But just physically. That's as far as the resemblance goes."

Yes, such riveting dialogue is typical of The Devil With Seven Faces, usually delivered as the characters lounge in shag-carpeted living rooms, sip coffee and enjoy long puffs on their smooth, satisfying cigarettes. But the excitement doesn't stop there. We also get quite a bit of footage of people parking cars, getting out, closing the door behind them, walking to the front door of houses and then--spoiler alert--knocking on the door. Stay tuned until the very end, though, for an obligatory, unsurprising plot twist of the sort expected in a movie involving twins and mistaken identity, followed by an endless final shot of a plane taking off into a hazy sky.

And yet, watching The Devil With Seven Faces wasn't quite the miserable, begrudging chore I've made it out to be. Such dull, uninspired movies are a necessary part of the 50-pack experience. Through their sheer incompetence and insipidity they make the few semi-decent movies in the collection seem all the better, even elevating heretofore dire fare like the comedy-less comedy Twister's Revenge! to so-bad-it's-good status. Though I nodded off a few times during the middle of The Devil With Seven Faces, I somehow felt rejuvenated after watching it, optimistic that the next movie will be marginally better. It’s almost cathartic enduring such pain. It’s like the gloomy hopefulness of a bad day at work--there’s no way tomorrow can be any worse.

Anybody else seen this snooze-fest? Did it put you to sleep, too? Thoughts on the 70s decor?

#1: Twister's Revenge!

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 1: Side A
1987

Most people don’t have particularly high-standards for movies about talking, computerized monster trucks. Yet no matter how low you set your expectations for the 1987 laugh-free comedy Twister’s Revenge!, it somehow finds a way to startle you with its sheer ineptitude. You sense this as soon as the title flashes on the screen and you see that big, bold, yellow exclamation point. Such punctuation in movie titles is meant to suggest excitement, a boundless comic energy, wacky shenanigans to come. Airplane! remains the high-water mark of the exclamation point school of comedy. Hot Shots! is pretty good, too, while the exclamation point in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! is sardonic and purposely incongruous. The exclamation point in Twister’s Revenge!, however, only punctuates the film’s desperation. An ellipses trailing off into nothingness would do a better job of establishing the tone.

The title fades, the soundtrack fills with cheesy, fumbling power-chords that sound like they were learned the day of the recording, and we are treated to an extended montage of a dirty, low-rent county fair. If you ever wanted to see sweaty, unshaven men in trucker hats riding the Tilt-a-Whirl and clambering around in the sort of grimy ball-pits typically reserved for children under four feet, then Twister’s Revenge! is the movie for you. For the rest of us, it’s a bit unsettling, especially when we realize the three dimwitted men--Kelly (David Alan Smith), Dutch (Jay Gjernes) and Bear (R. Richardson Luka)--are our protagonists (or maybe antagonists, it’s never quite clear). During a long scene in which we get to watch the trio watch a monster truck show, they suddenly, for no apparent reason become suspicious of the headlining truck, Mr. Twister.   

"Go down and check that out," Kelly, the ringleader, orders Dutch.

"Me?" Dutch whines. "I can't."
  
"Why not?" Kelly wants to know.
  
"Because I split my pants," Dutch confesses--a comedic high never again reached by Twister's Revenge!. Not only that, but like Ophelia's death in Hamlet this great pants-splitting tragedy happens off-stage--a truly odd choice for a lowbrow comedy. Imagine if a Three Stooges short consisted of Larry, Moe and Curly sitting down and calmly discussing how they had once poked each other in the eyes at a different, unseen location.
  
Before we can dwell on this any further, we are introduced to Sherry (Meredith Orr), scientist and inventor, who humbly explains to her fiancé Dave (Dean West) how her creation Mr. Twister works.

"All I did," she says, "was integrate the artificial intelligence system with the internal logic unit."

"Enough of that computer talk," Jack replies. "You know it gives this cowboy a headache."
  
Imagine if Sherry applied that great mind of hers to combating global warming, curing cancer or simply unlocking the mysteries of the universe, rather than to monster truck technology. But alas, as with Stephen Hawking and his robotic jet-ski Sir Tsunami, her talents are wasted. As it is, Kelly, Dutch and Bear decide to kidnap Sherry, apparently in hopes of getting Mr. Twister for ransom, though it's never quite clear what their intentions are. Soon they've surrounded the rusting camper-van where Sherry and Dave, now wedded, are spending their honeymoon, consummating their marriage beneath a pile of musty blankets--which is vaguely unsettling. In movies this low-budget you sometimes get the impression everyone involved in the production is related, so watching these two kiss is like walking in on two of your cousins secretly making-out at a family reunion.
  
This doesn’t deter Kelly, Dutch and Bear, however, who enact their master plan, which entails shaking the camper van really hard until the back door flies open and the couple inside tumble out. Sherry is captured in the ensuing confusion and hidden in an abandoned mineshaft. Dave and Mr. Twister must then team up to track her down, a quest that consists entirely of Mr. Twister racing across flat, barren, muddy landscapes and occasionally rolling over the rows of conveniently-placed, dilapidated Cadillacs that appear out of nowhere. At one point Bear, running for his life, ducks into an outhouse--helpfully marked Shit House--solely so Mr. Twister can run it over. Not only that, but much of this action is shot in fast-motion, which is to lazy comedy-filmmaking what the exclamation point is in Twister‘s Revenge!: An act of desperation. When in doubt, the old adage goes, get zany.
  
Unfortunately, bad comedy doesn’t offer the same campy pleasures that bad sci-fi and bad horror movies do. For aficionados of the so-bad-it’s-good style of cinema, the more inept the dialogue, acting and plot, the greater the laughs. For proof, look no further than the other titles in the oeuvre of Twister's Revenge! director Bill Rebane. He’s responsible for Monster-a-Go Go and The Giant Spider Invasion, two ultra low-budget turkeys that provided some of the best riffing-material for the crew of the Satellite of Love in Mystery Science Theater 3000. You can’t help but laugh at the lack of competence in such movies. But how can you laugh at the lack of anything to laugh at in a film like Twister’s Revenge!? What’s funny about the unfunny?
  
Yet the movie isn’t a complete waste. Midway through there is the sort of odd, disconcerting moment that I search for in films like Twister’s Revenge!, where the terms good and bad become almost meaningless. It’s a musical interlude by Lulu and the Lovebirds, set in a grungy biker bar where three be-spandexed women of varying degrees of doughy-ness gyrate halfheartedly to a weak rock-guitar noodling. It's so embarrassing for everybody involved--even the viewer--you can only stare in disbelief. Is this hilarious? you wonder. Depressing? Hilariously depressing? Or depressingly hilarious?   

At this point the filmmakers almost seem to be challenging you not to ridicule them: So what if we're a bunch of unappealing, unfunny people who made a tedious, mind-numbing comedy in the late 80s? Does that give you the right to mock us? Does that make you better than us?

We, the audience, can no longer criticize Twister’s Revenge! as if it were made in a vacuum. Real, live human beings created this ungainly thing. They took a risk and failed so miserably it’s almost noble. Not bad for a movie about a talking, computerized monster truck.



Any thoughts on Twister's Revenge!? Anybody else seen this dud? Did it meet your expectations for a movie about a talking, computerized monster truck? Did it exceed them?