I think it was in early 1984 when I first heard “Eat It” on the radio. It was the moment I became aware of Weird Al, and I’ve been a fan ever since. I gathered up what money I could find around my house, rode my bike up to Wal-Mart, and came home with Weird Al’s In 3D album. During the summer of ’99, I heard “The Saga Begins”, Al’s Star Wars tribute sung to the tune of “American Pie”, and soon I was making a trip back up to Wal-Mart (in a car, this time) and picking up Al’s latest offering, Running With Scissors. Between those two dates, I bought every other album that had his name attached to it.

In 1988, Weird Al got this idea that he should make a movie. So, he and manager Jay Levey banged out a script which was basically a collection of skits, gags, and jokes which was loosely tied together with a plot about Al inhereting a television station. Al wrote the skits, Levey wrote the plot. Soon, Orion Pictures was on board, and a month after finishing the script, Al was starring in his first (and last) major motion picture, and Levey found himself behind the director’s chair.

UHF was the film which was supposed to save Orion pictures from bankruptcy, believe it or not. Test audiences found it hilarious. And then … disaster stuck. UHF was lost in a sea of blockbusters (Robocop II, Lethal Weapon, Ghostbusters II), and went on to, according to Al, become the 2,253rd top grossing film of all time.

UHF remained in theaters for exactly two weeks. Two years later, in 1990, UHF was released on video. The video went out of print in 1995, and since then, the only way to watch the movie was either from an old rental tape, or catching it on cable television.

Until, last month. UHF was officially released on DVD last month — yay!

For those who don’t remember, Weird Al stars in this “string-of-parodies-linked-together-to-make-a-movie” as George Newman, a loser who can’t keep a job or a relationship. Newman’s Uncle Harvey wins a radio station in a poker game, and Newman seems like a perfect fit for the position of manager. With his roomate Bob (David Bowe), girlfriend Teri (Victoria Jackson), janitor/television star Stanly Spadowski (Michael Richards), reporter Pamela Finklestein (Fran Drescher), creepy engineer Philo (Anthony Geary), and cameramen Noodles (Billy Barty), the gang set out to make money and have fun, and end up in a battle with the city’s other head television studio, network affiliate Channel 8.

UHF is presented on DVD in both fullscreen and widescreen formats. Besides getting to view the movie in its original, uncut version (more on that later), you also get a nice collection of extras. Included in that pile are Behind The Scenes, Deleted Scenes, a Commentary Track, Production Stills, and Promotional Materials.

Behind The Scenes is a ten minute featurette which lots of behind the scenes video footage. It contains brief interviews with the cast and crew, and is nice if you want to know a little but more about the film but don’t feel like watching the entire film with the commentary track.

The Deleted Scenes contain fifteen or so short clips of things that were cut from the film. As Al says in one of his introductions, “if you’ve seen this film, you know how bad the footage is that made it into the film, so you can only imagine how bad this stuff is.” He’s right, there’s nothing too exciting in here, and the fact that the cut scenes were salvaged from a 14 year old, unmastered VHS tape don’t help much.

The Production Stills contain over 200 pictures taken both from the film and from behind the scenes. It’s kind of cool to flip through, but this is DVD so it’s not very exciting, and after about 20 I got bored and went back to the other features. The production area contains pictures of posters, video covers, album covers, photos of the crew, photos from the film … there’s a lot of pictures here, if you’re into that sort of thing.

The Promotional Materials include a trailer, a teaser, and more stills.

That leaves us with the commentary track, starring Weird Al and Jay Levey. Since both fellows wrote the script and made the movie, they know basically every little detail you could ever want to know about UHF — and then more. A lot more. The majority of the movie was filmed on location in Tulsa, Oklahoma (about 100 miles from me!) and Al spares no moment in rattling off the address of every location in the film. With enough time and Post It notes, I’m sure you could travel the entire city of Tulsa and visit every location in the film. Al does 95% of the commentary, with Levey only occasionally adding notes of interest or answering questions. Both Michael Richards and Emo Phillips stop by during the taping of the commentary track, and they add some comedy (but little insight) to the track. Near the end of the film, Al calls Victoria Jackson on the telephone, and she spouts off some kudos for Al and the film, but also fails to spill any facts about the production of the film, which is what commentary tracks are basically for.

If you’re a fan of this movie and of Al, you may have already heard a couple of these stories before, but most of them are new. For example, Al tells a story of how the term “UHF” basically means nothing overseas, and so they asked him to rename the film for the overseas market. The title The Vidiot was decided upon, which he didn’t care for, but in the end they used the title The Vidiot from UHF which was even more confusing for foreign audiences, so in every foreign interview when he was asked about how they came up with the title he would just start telling about how it was a stupid name and he didn’t know where they got it from. Good stuff, and breaks up the constant list of addresses being offered up by Al.

As mentioned before, the DVD presents the film in it’s original, uncut format. Three scenes are routinely deleted from the cable version of the film. The scene where Emo Phillips cuts off his thumb while giving a demonstration on how to use (or not use) a table saw is often cut out. The end of a car commercial is also often cut off, where the owner of a car lot shouts, “buy a car, or I’ll club this baby seal!” while a seal barks close by on the hood of a car. A third scene, where Conan the Librarian cuts a student in half for returning late books is also often removed from cable broadcasts. If nothing else, it was nice to see the movie in it’s entirety — as bad as that may be.

UHF has developed quite the cult following over the past 14 years (trust me, it’s true — Al says it at least three times during his commentary track and twice on his website), and fellow fans of the weird one such as myself are glad to finally be able to own this messterpiece on DVD. As with several other “classics” (if you can lump anything Weird Al has worked on into the “classics” category) recently released on DVD, this is a pretty complete collection. You get the movie, you get deleted scenes, you get promotional material, you get a commentary track.

“You want it all on UHF?” You got it.

Check out my UHF Page HERE.

As a kid, I couldn’t get enough of the “unknown”. My bookshelf was overrun with books about aliens, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, and the Loch Ness Monster. As most people, my interest and belief in most of these topics has waned with age. I still enjoy the books and television specials, but for different reasons. Back then, it was because I wanted to believe. Now, it’s hard to sit through them without a smirk or a grin on my face.

To give you a rough idea, The UFO Chronicles is one of those specials that is probably even too cheezy for Fox to air. I probably never would have seen it or even heard of it if it hadn’t been for budget DVDs. All of a sudden, this DVD has popped up in Best Buy’s $6.99 or less section, and I’ve since seen it at both Wal-Mart and Hastings in their bargin bins as well.

Hosted by Lee Majors, this disc presents viewers with an increasingly odd collection of stories and testimonies relating “true” stories about other worldly encounters. The video is broken up into six chapters.

Chapter one is an interview with Whitley Strieber, author of Contact and Communion. Even if you thought he was a nut before, you will soon find him to be the most sane person on this film. Strieber recounts his multiple abductions in detail and provides descriptions and drawings of them.

Chapter two is titled “The Story of Jessica”. This nutcase was driving on a “lonely stretch of highway” in Montana (aren’t they all?) when she saw a bright light. Jessica’s entire story reads like every kid’s comic book on aliens you ever saw; it sticks to close to the formula, you could probably finish it yourself. Let’s see, her car wouldn’t stop, eventually it went dead, she got out but didn’t want to, she walked onto a ramp and blacked out, when she woke up she was on an operating table, she blacked out again and when she woke up she was back in her car, driving, and missing three hours. Zzzzz.

Chapter three starts dishing up the good stuff. We are treated to an extensive interview with Eddie Page, a wacko who is an alien-hybrid (his dad was an alien, but his mother was in the military and in some testing program. According to him, he was born fourth months after his mother had a hysterectomy. Unlikely. Anyhoo, it turns out now seven women have come forward claiming to be his “sisters”, coming from the same experiments. One of the ladies “has a light that runs through her”, giving off healing powers. She used this light, according to both of them, when Eddie “was killed in Vietnam”. Apparently after being killed, Eddie was beamed up to a UFO, where he received eight alien organs in a transplant operation (same blood type, of course), and his sister was able to heal him with her magic light. I told you Strieber was going to start sounding normal. Fortunately all ends well for the Page brothers and sisters, who are contacted by their father from outer space on a regular basis.

Chapter four covers a UFO convention in Las Vegas, where a bunch of wackos get together and discuss the reality of UFOs. We get a chance here to meet AriaA (yes, that’s spelled correctly), who is a “wandering spirit”. That’s an alien spirit that somehow gets put into a human body upon birth. Go figure.

Chapter five talks about the “Three Sisters Mystery”, regarding three mountains in the Northwest. A “flurry” of UFO activity has taken place here apparently, and so our trusty filmmakers headed northwest to prove that all UFO wackos aren’t found solely in the desert or Alabama. Then, several other flurries are discussed here, including the Gulf Breeze flap and the Mexico sightings, and some very, very bad photos are shown (hubcaps, anyone?).

Chapter six introduces us to some really odd nutcases. We get the, ahem, privledge, of meeting two members of the Intergalactic Council. Just like the UN, these two loons represent Earth in this universe wide committee. Funny, I don’t remember voting for them! To save themselves from all that “abduction” hastle, they communicate telepathically to the rest of the Galactic Federation. No frequent flyer miles for you!

Similar to religion, most of the people in this video all have differing accounts of what the aliens are like, and of course, they all think they’re right. I tend to think that all the pussy, “peace and love to the galaxy” alien people are full of shit. I like to think that when people from outer space come, they’re coming to take our resources and turn us into baby food.

If you’re a fan of good ol’ UFO schlock and enjoy good sci-fi cheese, The UFO Chronicles are definitely worth the $7 I spent. Who knows, when the aliens land they may spare you as food just for owning it.

In the 1980s, nothing was scarier to parents than Heavy Metal music. Murders, suicides, teenage pregnancies and illegal drug use were all being blamed on this new genre of music (none of those things had ever occurred before kids started listening to Heavy Metal in the 80s, apparently). Richard Ramirez, the serial killer known as The Night Stalker, claimed to have been influenced by AC/DC’s song “Night Prowler”. Two young teens blamed their suicide attempts in court on backward messages in Judas Priest’s album Stained Class; another one’s family sued Ozzy Osbourne over supposed subliminal messages contained in his song “Suicide Solution”. The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) lobbied to have warning labels put on the covers of offensive albums. Scary Heavy Metal music was everywhere, destroying civilization as we know it. (By the way, most of those scary songs from that era now get daily play on retro-80s radio stations.)

One of the “scariest” things about Heavy Metal was the inclusion of backwards messages hidden within the songs. These messages were recorded backwards and heard in reverse by listeners; the theory at the time was that these messages would somehow be reversed mentally by listeners and cause otherwise normal people to do terrible things. While there’s no real science behind the theory, that didn’t stop bands from flocking to the studio and recording all kinds of goofy messages in reverse. Truth be told, the forward-playing lyrics were typically much more graphic.

The 1986 film Trick or Treat stars Marc Price (Skippy from Family Ties) as Eddie “Ragman” Weinbauer, a high-school reject outcast for his love of Heavy Metal music (he’s the only metal head in school, which would be pretty incredible in 1986). Eddie’s hero is Sammi Curr, a cartoony conglomeration of Alice Cooper, Nikki Sixx, and Marilyn Manson all rolled into one. Eddie is devastated when he learns Curr has died in a mysterious fire, but after talking to local radio disc jockey “Nuke” (Gene Simmons) he receives a gift the sole copy of Curr’s last album.

Curr’s album contains more than rockin’ 80s Hair Metal. When played backwards, Curr begins speaking directly to Eddie think of it as a hi-phonic Ouija board or sorts. Through generic, fortune-cookie style messages Curr begins predicting events in Eddie’s life and giving him advice. Eddie’s main desire (other than, you know, rockin’) is to get even with all the stupid high school jocks that do mean things to him like poke holes in his milk carton or attempt to drown him at an after school pool party. Eddie goes along with the plan at first, but when one of the jocks almost gets killed Eddie tries to call of Curr’s attack. Curr, deciding Eddie is a pussy, goes on with his attack.

Curr’s power comes from playing his album backwards, something you wouldn’t think would be much of a problem since (A) there’s only one copy of the album and (B) if Eddie would quit playing it backwards, Curr would go away. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this is not the case as Eddie ends up making copies of the album (recorded in reverse) which he slips to the jocks and really, what jock wouldn’t love to sit around and listen to a cassette tape of music he doesn’t like in the first place, recorded in reverse? Pretty soon you’ve got demons manifesting in cars raping girls, the shop class drill press attacking jocks, and Curr playing his own album in reverse. Eddie instructs his nerdy friend Roger to retrieve and destroy the tape. Roger manages to retrieve the tape, but instead of destroying it he takes it to the school’s Halloween dance and plays it. Just when it seems things couldn’t get any worse, DJ Nuke announces on the air that he’s going to play Sammi Curr’s unreleased album (he kept a reel-to-reel copy) in reverse at midnight on Halloween, a plan that must’ve pleased the station’s manager to no end.

All the staples of a Hollywood budget thriller are here: the acting’s not bad, the music’s terrific (if you like 80s hair metal), and the special effects are on par with the genre, the era and the budget. Eddie’s character comes off as semi-believable, partially due to his never-ending wardrobe and posters of real bands from the 80s. Rocker Sammi Curr comes off as slightly less believable no, not just because he’s a homicidal ghost, but because we really never find out the motivation behind his killing spree. I know people like to believe that Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson are creepy people, but they’re not. Off stage, Alice Cooper is Vincent Furnier, a guy who does a lot of golfing for charity, and Marilyn Manson is Brian Warner, a somewhat normal and very intelligent guy. Ozzy Osbourne’s not the antichrist he’s a feeble old man who can’t work a television remote or fix his own meals, God love him. But Sammi Curr (and more importantly Sammi Curr’s ghost) goes from rock star to homicidal maniac in zero to sixty. At first his motivation is to help Eddie exact revenge but at the end it’s simply to kill everybody. Apparently, death sucks.

While it probably wasn’t intended to become one, Trick or Treat serves as a pretty neat time capsule to those who remember the comeuppance of Alice Cooper, KISS, Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, W.A.S.P., Judas Priest, and all the other hair metal bands of the 80s that consisted of big hair, skulls, and faux Satanic imagery. To kids it was exciting, to adults scary, and to both groups looking back, like Trick or Treat, a little silly.

Drifting, the style of racing which The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift focuses on, requires drivers to continually slide their cars around corners at breakneck speeds. This technique allows the brave drivers to take corners much faster than usual speeds, delivering audiences fast paced races in tight quarters (such as parking garages and winding mountain roads) along with plenty of crashes.

And that brings us to Tokyo Drift, a film about high school student Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) who learns the meaning of three strikes and youre out after getting busted for street racing a third time. To curb Sean of his racing ways, the boy is sent to live with his father, Lieutenant Boswell (Brian Goodman), who is stationed in Tokyo. Seans parents hope that the change of location will break him of his street-racing habits, but that would make for a pretty boring movie; instead, within twenty-four hours, Sean becomes involved in Tokyos underworld of drift racing while picking a fight with DK (a member of the Japanese mafia) and flirting with his girlfriend at the same time. Fast and furious, indeed.

Sean finds a few allies in Han (DKs partner in crime), Twinkie (another displaced American, played by rapper Bow Wow) and Neela, DKs girlfriend. After wrecking one of Hans cars while learning to drift, Sean goes to work for him as a debt collector. Before long both of them end up on DKs bad side, and before the end of the film honor has been disgraced, friends have been betrayed and people have been killed all of which can only be solved by (of course) only one thing: a race.

Tokyo Drift is full of plot holes so large you could drift a dozen cars through. Seans ability to pick up the Japanese language as well as navigate his way through Tokyo upon his arrival is quite amazing (I get lost every time I visit Chicago and at least there the signs are written in English!) Seans attraction to Neela doesnt make much sense when, as Hans sidekick, we see the two of them hanging out in a string of exclusive Tokyo clubs filled with international fashion models who ARENT involved with psychotic, violent Mafia members. And then there are the cars themselves, which continue to smash against one another at high rates of speed, often not even leaving a scratch. On the other end of the spectrum, my Chevy Avalanche has a small dent in my car from a rogue shopping cart. I wont even get into the American muscle car with the Nissan engine, sure to make the skin crawl of fans from either camp.

All of this, however, is simply fluff gobbledygook draped over the films half a dozen or so race scenes. Drifting fans will appreciate the level of detail in which the races are covered, down to every gear shift, clutch stomp and hand brake grab. If import racing is more important to you than plot (and really, by the third movie in a series you should know what to expect by now!) then The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift could be the film for you. Theres enough of a plot to keep the story moving from race to race, the cars look nice, and its really not much dumber than either of the first two films.

Timeline is one of the few books I actually read this year that wasn’t a computer manual. For those of you who have not read the book, I’ll give Timeline a three out of ten rating. For those who have, I’ll give it a one. It turns out that all those friends and family members who have been telling me, “the book was better than the movie,” all these years were right.

In Timeline, a group of archeologists are excavating the ruins of an old castle in Castleguard, France. The group consists of various students and is led by Professor Johnston. Their work is being funded by a technology company named ITC. One day, the professor’s son Chris (Paul Walker, The Fast and the Furious) shows up on site to visit. During his visit, the professor makes a trip back to visit ITC, a trip which he doesn’t return from. While searching for clues, the students discover a note from the professor which reads “Help me.” Through carbon dating, the students discover the note came from the 1300’s.

Just like in real life, when Paul Walker calls ITC threatens to call the cops, the massively secret technology company spills the beans about everything. The company informs the archeologists that while attempting to build a 3D fax machine that would “teleport” objects, they accidentally discovered a wormhole through space and time that somehow links back to 1357 AD, Castleguard, France. The professor talked ICT into sending him back in time, and never came back. Since one civillian did so well (and he IS the professor), the company has decided the best case scenario would be to send back five or six MORE civillians, with a couple of ex-Marines by their side to make sure “nothing goes wrong.” Within 60 seconds of going back, one of the Marines has three arrows sticking out of him, and manages to destroy the time machine when a hand grenade goes off. Oops. So much for that plan. The students must now find the professor, avoid being killed, and somehow survive a huge English/French battle which they’ve carefully been dropped in the middle of.

Each of the students who go back have a special skill. There’s Marek, the guy who’s studied the medieval period his entire life and knows the customs of the time. There’s Kate, the archeologist/rock climber/love interest. Along for the ride is a guy who speaks French and two or three proverbial “Star Trek Red Shirts” who show up only to die. Leading the pack is Chris, who had no idea about anything going on, but loooooves the ladies. The group kind of reminded me of the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, except I liked most of those characters.

In the book, certain things had to happen to allow the travellers to return to modern times, which left them stranded there for 35 days or so. In the movie, it’s six hours. This is just one of the things that totally changed the idea of the book. In the book, these kids had to figure out how to survive, how to eat, how to do everything. In the movie, they just had to get by for six hours. Likewise, in the book each person was fitted with a translator that allowed the students to hear and speak other languages (hey, it WAS a technology company). In the movie there’s no such thing, which turns out to be okay because most of the people in the movie are bi or even tri-lingual — and you KNOW how well the colleges were back in those days!

The movie ends up being two hours of running from one battle to the next, escaping from one cell and into the next, and so on and so forth. A few of the book’s major characters come up missing, and the first five or so chapters that explained all the science behind the ideas (something Crichton is famous for) ends up being crammed into about five minutes of screen time. The biggest difference between the book and the movie is that the book conveys the idea that no matter how smart you think you are, you wouldn’t have lasted an hour in the middle ages. These were people who did back breaking labor day in and day out. The average farmer’s wife from back then could kick your ass. In the movie though, Paul Walker says to the group, “we’ve got 650 years of intelligence on these people. Let’s put our heads together and outsmart these fools!” Let me just go on record and say that Paul Walker couldn’t outsmart the average lab rat in a game of Connect Four. Just because people lived in the middle ages doesn’t mean they were stupid. The fact that you know about the Internet and Playstation isn’t going to mean jack shit when you look at some guard the wrong way and he shoves a sword down your throat because he’s bored. Plus, what knowledge do you ACTUALLY have that would be of interest to these people? All I could do is show them my “hey look, I pulled my thumb off” magic trick. Probably right before some guard shoved his sword down my throat because he was bored.

The film left me with more questions than the average round of Jeopardy. The biggest of which is, what proof did anyone have that the professor ever really got to ITC? All they would have said was, “nope, he never made it.” Big deal! That sure would have saved a lot of people from getting whisked around to different times and more than one person meeting the business end of a sword! Timeline makes it seem like you could just call Roswell and say, “ok, what’s going on in there? I’ll call the COPS man!” and they would say, “oh gosh no, not the cops, here, come on in and test drive a crashed UFO while you’re here!” It’s ridiculous!

The say that Paul Walker is one of the better actors in the film should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect. I believed in Jar Jar Binks more than half of these nitwits. No one in the film convinced me why they would even go back in time to save a coworker and someone’s father. The next time you’re at work, look at your boss and try and decide if you would risk going back in time and possibly never coming back or even getting killed to save him or her. I wouldn’t loan my boss my stapler last week.

Timeline is, unfortunately, pretty bad. The bad acting, huge plot holes, convoluted plot, poor logic and 45 minute grand finale battle all left me wishing I could go back in time two hours and see something else instead. Avoid it like the plague. The bubonic plague.

Time After Time is one of those classic movies I grew up on. Released in 1979, it barely made a dent in the year’s box office earnings. The late 70’s offered up blockbusters such as Star Wars, Close Encounters, and Jaws, and Time after Time became one of those movies that simply got lost in the shuffle and fell through the cracks. It wasn’t until heavy cable airplay a few years later that the movie began earning the cult status the film holds today.

Time After Time tells the story of H.G. Wells, author of among other things, The Time Machine. Wells, portrayed here by Malcolm McDowell (best known for his role of Alex in A Clockwork Orange), has hosted a dinner party for his upper class London friends. The purpose of this party is to unveil his latest invention — a time machine.

Unbeknownst to Wells, one of his guests, John Lesley Stevenson (played by classic bad guy David Warner) turns about to be better known by another name: Jack the Ripper. Without warning, investigators from Scotland Yard crash Wells’ dinner party and inform the guests that “the Ripper” is in the vicinity. They know, because he left his calling card (a split open hooker) not far from Wells’ home. The detectives discover a surgeon’s bag filled with bloody knives. The house is searched, and two things are found to be missing. One, is John Lesley Stevenson. The second, is Wells’ time machine.

By this point in time Wells has already expressed his dreams of visiting the “utopia-like” future, a place where war, violence, and sexism have been eliminated. Horrified with the fact that he may have just unleashed Jack the Ripper on this peaceful future world, Wells gathers up what money he has in the house, and sets out on a trip through time to aprehend one of the world’s most infamous serial killers.

Time After Time is many things. One, it’s a sci-fi flick. Two, it’s a time travel story. Three, it’s an action/adventure/comedy/mystery. Lastly, it’s a love story. Wells meets Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen) at the bank she works at while transferring ancient British pounds into current American currency. It’s love at first site for these two (literally; McDowell and Steenburgen got married the following year but divorced after a decade together). Eventually, Robbins gets pulled into the entire mess, and a love/hate triangle develops.

The crux of the story revolves around a key used in the time machine. Without the key, the time machine returns to whatever time it left from. For example, when Stevenson used the machine, it returned to the 1880s because he did not have the key. When Wells followed him, he was able to keep the machine in 1979 because he used the key. It becomes obvious to Stevenson that without the key, Wells will follow him forever through time.

Time After Time requires a bit of “suspension of belief” to thoroughly enjoy. For example, surely H.G. Wells would pick up a history book and catch up on the happenings of the past 100 years once he arrived in the future. Instead, one of the most brilliant men in history wanders around looking like an idiot, not knowing about either World War, the Golden Gate bridge, or even automobiles. Instead, Walls stumbles through conversations and gives a lot of blank stares, not fitting in at all.

Stevenson, on the other hand, fits in perfectly. “In our time I was a freak,” Stevenson tells Wells as they flip television channels, changing from one morbid news story to another. “Here, I am an amateur.” It doesn’t take long before Stevenson is up to his old tricks … on tricks, no less.

My wife watched this movie for the first time last night and enjoyed it. It’s one of those movies that has a little bit of everything, so regardless if you’re looking for a love story, an action story, a little bit of comedy, or just a good old fashioned thriller, you’ll find something enjoyable in Time after Time.

The DVD release of the movie contains a bunch of crap (trailers and things to read), but does contain a commentary track featuring Malcolm McDowell and director and co-writer Nicholas Meyer. The commentary isn’t that entertaining, but it is informative. If the two didn’t occasionally ask each other questions, I would swear that they were recorded at different times and patched together later. McDowell provides the only chuckles to the track, while Meyer has a lot of dry details which, unless you’re a fan of the film, you probably just won’t care about.

Go buy Time After Time. You’ll watch it time after … nah, too cheezy for even me.

We’re not normal people.

Of course, if you’ve been to this site more than once chances are you’ve already noticed this fact. We like our music extreme, we like our artwork extreme, we like our girls extreme, and we like our cars extreme. Sure, we may not all drive classic muscle cars, but we all have an appreciation for vehicles that are closer to “art” than simply “transportation”. My love of the extreme, and especially extreme cars, is what lured me into the theater to see The Fast and the Furious.

I’m almost 28 years old, which means I turned 16 in 1989. My first three cars, in order, were a 1968 convertible Firebird, a 1979 5.0 Mustang, and a 1979 Formula Firebird with a small block 400. I was no street racer, but I did my share of burn outs, drag racing and, eventually, destroying all three of these cars (prompting my parents to foot the bill for my next car, a 1989 Yugo).

Unfortunately, this movie wasn’t written for me. It was written for people who are turning 16 now, not 12 years ago. Gone are the Camaros, the Mustangs, the Novas, the Chargers – they’ve been replaced by Hondas, Nissans, and Toyotas. Gone are the days of tuning an engine with wrenches and screwdrivers – they’ve been replaced with laptops, computer chips, and apparently lots and lots of NOS.

The plot of The Fast and the Furious has been done a million times – only this time, it’s with street racing. It’s the classic love triangle: Good guy falls in love with good girl who has a bad brother. The main conflict quickly becomes, “can good guy keep good girl and defeat bad guy?” I saw it in Point Blank, I saw it in Thrashin’ … hell, I’ve seen it a dozen times at least.

So, what do you want me to say about the movie? It was exactly what I had expected: A fairly shallow plot strung in between a bunch of street racing. There were a few surprises along the way; nothing that would stump Sherlock Holmes, mind you, but enough to keep me awake from scene to scene. The plot was good, but the filming was great. The race scenes really seemed to give you an inner look at some sort of “sub-culture” – if beefing up rice rockets and racing them around downtown Los Angeles is indeed a sub-culture.

The acting in this movie also wasn’t horrible. Somehow, that’s a compliment. Movies of this “ilk” usually capitalize on a market or a gimmick, and then pick up a bunch of second rate actors. While most of the actors in TF&TF are no names or up-and-comers at best, they all do a fairly good job of keeping at least one foot in reality. Paul Walker (Brian Spilner/O’Conner) would have made a decent teenage Anakin Skywalker. His role isn’t much harder hitting than his last few (Varsity Blues, Pleasantville, She’s All That) but he does a decent job. Vin Diesel (as Dominic Toretto) plays a perfect baddie. Diesel got his feet wet in Saving Private Ryan and Pitch Black, and with a starring role in Pitch Black 2 and XXX I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of him. Michelle Rodriguez plays Letty, the villian’s love interest. I hadn’t seen her before, but after this and her role in Resident Evil I’m sure we’ll be hearing her name thrown around quite a bit very soon. Jordana Brewster rounds out the top billing as Dominic’s sister. She was OK in The Faculty and she was OK in this. She’s … OK.

I’ve been working on this review for a couple of days now, and although the movie has kind of flushed through my system I’ve found myself looking up lots of performance parts prices for my Neon on the web the last couple of days and paying a lot more attention to the brightly-colored little cars zipping around town with their bolted on spoilers and hood scoupes. My personal theory about race cars is a lot like my personal theory about speakers – bigger is better. Still, the thought of a Honda Civic doing 150+ with two bottles of NOS wide open makes me grin.

Dominic Toretto, the main bad guy (or is he?) says during the movie, “I live life one quarter mile at a time.” Maybe not in the drag racing sense, but I can relate to that. Hell, we probably all can. But then again, we’re not normal people, are we?

The Stoned Age, like Dazed and Confused and American Gigolo before that, tells the story of a couple of dudes as it unfolds throughout a single night. This genre typically follows its protagonists through a right of passage of some sort (like graduating high school). In The Stoned Age, our heroes Joe and Hubbs are on a single mission to score with some hot chicks.

Crump, the town bully, has a couple of fine chicks from out of town ready and waiting to party. Word about the chicks-in-waiting spreads throughout the town, eventually reaching Joe and Hubbs. The two of them then plot to beat the rest of the towns teenage horny suitors to the chicks lair. Along the way the dudes crank some tunes, score some hooch, and out weasel the competition on their way toward the ultimate goal.

On the surface The Stoned Age appears to be a pretty light-hearted film. Its funny, the guys are goofy, and the adventure is inherently silly. But after further reflection, The Stoned Age shows those who may have forgotten the grittier side of being a teenager. Theres an awful lot of backstabbing and screwing of friends that, regrettably, many of us can relate to. Watching the on-screen friends betraying one another in the quest to get laid was painful to watch, now having hindsight to realize that the your friends will still be there long after the names and faces of those hot chicks have been wiped from your memory. There are a lot of universal teen-truths presented during the flick, such as he with the car gets the girls. Or, as Hubbs (driver of the Blue Torpedo) eloquently explains to zit-faced Tack, information without transportation equals dick.

The cast consists of largely unknowns, which works in the films advantage as viewers arent distracted by known faces (Taylor Negron as the perpetually-discoing liquor store clerk may be the lone exception). As the story unfolded I found myself liking and disliking different characters throughout the adventure. Just like in real life, it was sometimes hard to decide just who the good guys and bad guys were.

The DVDs extras are pretty sparse save for a nice commentary track provided by the writing and directing team, during which the two share some of the sources of the stories and characters that appear in the film.

I suspect that no matter where your social class fell in high school, youll find something in The Stoned Age that you can relate to. The problem is, will it be something you like?

Grab a beer and drop your pants, send your wife and kids to France.
It’s the Man Show!
Quit your job and light a fart, yank your favorite private part.
It’s the Man Show!
Its a place where men can come together.
Look at the cans on this chick named Heather.
Juggy girls on trampolines, time to loosen those blue jeans.
It’s the … Man Show!

Ah yes, the Man Show. In 1999, the show that brought “Chicks on Trampolines” to primetime cable appeared on Comedy Central. Now in its fifth season, the show is still on the air despite the loss of both original hosts (Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla) and the original Ziggy-Socky man (the late Bill Foster). For those of you (like myself) who think that the first season was the best, this box set is for you.

The Man Show: Season One Part Two picks up where “The Man Show: Season One Part One” left off. Yes, they managed to squeeze SIX DVDs worth of material out of the first season. Part II contains the last twelve episodes of the season, plus several extras (moved to the third disc). I believe the second half of the first season is when the show really fell into stride, and this box set proves it.

If somewhere in the universe there is a huge scale of literary value, I’m sure Shakespeare is on one end and The Man Show is on the other. Those not looking for fart jokes, beer drinking, and lots and lots of hot ladies should steer as far as possible from this box set. Between all the crude humor are lots of scantily clad women, who are always either offering household tips, mingling with the audience, or jumping on trampolines. Probably not what Women’s Lib was fighting for all those years, but it’s all in good fun.

When you’re done watching the episodes you’ll want to pop in the extras disc, which has comments from Charlton Hestons Penis, an Oprah Jimfrey special, a Karl Malone section, and even more girls jumping on trampolines. If you like the show, you’ll like this stuff too.

Overall, The Man Show: Season One Part Two is a great value. I can’t say I’m thrilled that they broke the season up into two different box sets, but after watching them it’s almost like two different seasons. The first twelve episodes have the guys still wading in, seeing what works and what doesn’t, but Season One Part Two is the guys at their best. Fans of good beer, bad jokes, and chicks on trampolines should be sure to ask Santa for this one.

Episode Guide:
Jobs
Mysteries of Women
Underwear
Thanks Man Show
The Woman Show
Veal
Practical Jokes
Holiday Show
Millennium
New Year’s Resolution Show
Compilation 2
Super Bowl Show

The Corpse Grinders was directed by Ted V. Mikels, also responsible for movies such as Astro-Zombies and Blood Orgy of the She Devils. This fact alone should help most readers decide whether or not this is a movie they should see or if they even need to continue reading this review. If youve already decided that this film probably isnt for you, at least read the following sentence before leaving: The Corpse Grinders is about domesticated cats attacking their owners after eating cat food made from ground up cadavers. If that doesnt spark your interest, you may now move along.

The film opens with a scene of an ordinary house cat inexplicably attacking its owner. Fake cat, fake blood, great opening scene. A few days later, Dr. Howard Glass is attacked in his office by his nurse Angie Robinsons kitty why she brings her cat along with her to the operating room is anyones guess. The scene is interrupted by the arrival of a dead woman, mauled to death by her own housecat. As Dr. Glass begins to investigate these attacks further, he finds they all have one thing in common: Lotus brand cat food.

Landau and Maltby, owners of the Lotus Cat Food Company, have a secret. The newest cat food ingredient is people dead people, rather. After striking a deal with the caretaker of the local cemetery (Farewell Acres, snicker), Landau and Maltby begin shoveling cadavers into the Corpse Grinder (a barely-disguised refrigerator box). The Corpse Grinder, true to its name, squeezes out toothpaste-like mush which domestic felines go crazy for and I do mean crazy! Once they get a taste of the stuff they acquire an unquenchable thirst for more human flesh, turning on their owners for their next meal!

The Corpse Grinders (1972) is classic drive-in schlock. Like Ed Wood, Mikels presents the material here completely on the level, never once winking at the audience or itself. Theres no nod to the audience when obviously fake sign language is used between characters, no glance at the camera when a stuffed cat is strapped to someones face and flung around the room.

Its hard to imagine a DVD looking worse than this one. The transfer from video to DVD has preserved every scratch and piece of dust on the film for generations to come. The discs mono audio track just adds to the campiness and overall package. The disc contains several trailers for other films Mikels and a commentary track from him as well. The commentary track starts good but runs out of steam less than halfway through the movie.

In case you think the plot of this film couldnt get any worse, Ive just discovered that 30 years after the original was released, Mikels made a direct-to-video sequel, which includes (among other things) man-sized alien cats. Fire up the grinder, people Mr. Whiskers is comin to dinner.