When I began watching Deadly Friend, I wasn’t expecting to see Matthew Labyorteaux (Little House on the Prairie), Kristy Swanson, or Anne Ramsey. I wasn’t expecting to discover a film directed by Wes Craven. I wasn’t expecting a robot named BB, a cross between Johnny 5 from Short Circuit and the robots from Chopping Mall, to be voiced by Charles “Roger Rabbit” Fleischer. Most of all, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this film as much as I did.

As Deadly Friend opens we see Paul (a teenage genius) and his mother relocating to a college town. Paul is the creator of BB, a robot with a nearly human capability to learn. Shortly after moving in, Paul meets another boy his age (Tom) and his next door neighbor, Samantha, who lives with her abusive father.

BB is cute, but there are hints he’s not as innocent as his cute face would seem. Early on we witness BB nearly kill a potential purse snatcher, and dispose of a neighborhood bully with a metallic pincher to the crotch. Unfortunately while trying to retrieve an errant basketball, BB turns out to be no match for cranky Anne Ramsey’s shotgun. Bye bye, BB.

BB isn’t the only one being disassembled. After a night of drinking, Sam’s father hits her with a right cross that sends her tumbling down a flight of stairs and headfirst into a wall below, leaving her braindead. Before the hospital has a chance to pull the plug, Paul comes up with an idea — if he can transplant BB’s brain into Sam’s body, he could save her life.

Or, you know, turn her into a killer human robot. One or the other.

Fortunately for Paul, reanimating Sam’s corpse and replacing her dead brain with a computer is as simple as cutting a square into her skull, mashing a CPU down into her gray matter, and sewing up the patch. Paul spends a little time teaching Sam/BB to walk all over again, but fortunately he doesn’t have to teach her how to kill! Not only does Sam quickly even the score with her father, but BB’s murder is also quickly avenged.

(Never play basketball with a killer robot.)

Sure, you can spend the movie wondering how that CPU works, or why Sam walks around like a cross between a zombie, a robot, and a Vulcan, but you’ll be wasting your brain cycles. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, and reanimating your dead girlfriend’s corpse isn’t always a great idea. Okay, it’s almost never a great idea, but in some cases, it’s a really bad idea, especially when your creation gets all emo and sad. Best-laid plans, and all.

What begins as a killer robot movie ends as Frankenstein, with people chasing BB/Sam through the streets. The way BB/Sam is defeated honestly makes no sense, and the film concludes with a Wes Craven twist scene that makes literally less than zero sense. Despite the last five minutes, the film remains entertaining. It’s a little creepy, a little kooky, and a whole lot of fun. If the film has any fault at all, it’s that the more you think about it, the more difficult it becomes to root against the antagonist.

Creepozoids, released in 1987, is a post-apocalyptic film that takes place in 1998 — “six years after the superpowers have engaged in a devastating nuclear exchange. Earth is now a blackened husk of a planet.” Through additional opening text we learn small groups of humans “eke out a miserable existence in the ruins of cities” while avoiding bands of deserters, mutant nomads, and avoiding acid rain.

It’s the impending threat of acid rain that sends five deserting soldiers in search of cover. After breaking into a seemingly abandoned warehouse, the group spreads out to search the new location and fortunately, there’s a little something for everyone — the nerd finds a computer, the two leaders find a place to rest, and Linnea Quigley finds a shower and an excuse to take her clothes off because… well, she’s Linnea Quigley. Through a floppy disk full of electronic diary entries, the nerd learns that whoever previously occupied the location was working on a way for humans to generate their own amino acids so that they would never have to eat and some other scientific-sounding gobbledygook. We can assume the experiments didn’t go well when one of the soldiers erupts into a volcano of black goop, another member is attacked by a rodents of unusual size, and a third encounters a six-foot tall monster that seems less than friendly.

Once the Creepozoid arrives in all his man-in-a-suit glory, the team of less-than-elite soldiers are quickly converted into exploding oil wells, zombies, and sometimes both. Because the acid rain prevents the group from escaping, they are forced to stay and fight the Creepozoid (with mostly disastrous results). The group’s laser blasters prove ineffective against pretty much everything, forcing the team to find alternate ways to defeat the monster. And just when you think the good guys have won, it turns out the Creepozoid was hiding a secret (she’a a mommy!) at which point I was treated to the most uncomfortable man vs. baby fight since the park scene in Dead Alive.

Despite aping Alien beat-for-beat, Creepozoid isn’t all bad. I would have liked to have seen more scenes of the wasteland and a slightly more developed monster, neither of which I expect the budget allowed for. That being said, 1987’s Creepozoids is a 1950’s monster movie — it’s not a matter of if the monster will show up, but when, and who will have the wits to survive the attack.

Blue Monkey isn’t a great movie, which is impressive as it’s almost a direct rip-off of Aliens. Instead of a Xenomorph, in this film it’s a killer insect that plants its larva inside its unsuspecting victims (poor Fred). After a group of children decide to randomly pour chemicals on the larva, it morphs into a giant killer insect before retreating to the bowels of the hospital which look so much like the Nostromo I expected the hospital to zoom off into outer space.

Sometimes as a group and sometimes on their own, members of the hospital staff (two female doctors, the janitor, an entomologist and the hospital’s director) team up with a visiting detective to locate the insect. The insect is pretty easy to find; it’s usually in whatever area has the most fog machines, blue spotlights, and strobe lights.

The fact that the insect is a big puppet is mostly hidden by poor lighting and POV camera shots, but occasionally we do get a glimpse of the creature and… yeah.

As with Alien, the monster is only half the problem — the basement is filling up with oopy-goopy egg sacks, and eventually the whole hospital will be bug city. Fortunately, two lushes discover that the creature has an aversion to alcohol. If only COVID worked the same way!

As the insect returns and the chase is on, the monster is portrayed by a guy in a giant insect suit who stumbles around, flails his insect legs, and is probably only the fifth worst actor in the movie. From the children to the doctors and particularly the star detective, no one seems all that interested to be in this film.

The tone in Blue Monkey is all over the place. For the most part the film is presented as an honest-to-goodness horror film, but in between scenes we get two elderly woman wandering around drunk, a woman giving birth (and her goofy husband), and a dead doctor that gets stepped on by fleeing patients like an old Three Stooges gag. It’s often hard to tell how serious we are to take the film, and unfortunately the actors don’t help in this department.

After a nearly 30-year wait, Blue Monkey was finally released on disc (Blu-ray!). Sadly, I suspect high-definition works against the shots of the monster rather than for it.

I really wanted to like Blue Monkey, and I did… when it was called Aliens.

We meet every main characters in Ants! within the first five minutes of the film. There’s the shiesty real estate mogul and his secretary who have arrived in town, scouting locations for their next casino. There’s the elderly owner of Lakewood Manor and her daughter, who disagree on whether or not they should sell the lakeside hotel. There’s the hunka-hunka handyman who by chance meets a drifting blonde bombshell. And finally, there’s the construction crew working next to the hotel who just so happen to uncover a hoard of killer ants.

If you’re imagining giant ants like the ones from Them!, think again. These killer ants look like plain ‘ol, regular-sized ants. In fact, it’s eventually explained that ants aren’t aggressive at all, and will only attack people who invade their space. Fortunately for us, a few people do — a contruction worker, a curious child, and a kitchen chef all find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Representatives from the State Department of Health (but not the police) arrive to investigate the mysterious deaths, but no one can figure out what’s causing them (apparently, killer ants don’t leave bite marks). Even when one of the construction workers is bitten (but survives), the state department employees refuse to believe him and instead insist they’re dealing with a virus.

By the time the truth is revealed, it’s too late. Every character we met in the first five minutes of the film finds his or herself trapped in the motel, surrounded by ants. Again, these appear to be normal ants, just with poisonous bites. Any human being could out-walk one, or step over them. The only possible way to get trapped by the ants would be to retreat to a hotel with only one entrance and then allow them to surround and infiltrate the building, which is exactly what happens.

Unlike the crews from Jaws (who had to deal with a mostly non-functioning shark) or Jurassic Park (which sprayed down their life-size T-Rex only to discover it didn’t function well when wet), as far as I can tell, Ants! used honest-to-goodness real ants. Sure, there’s plenty of stock footage and some fake ants in the background, but there are plenty of scenes in which it appears right before the director yelled “action,” someone dumped live ants all over the actors.

Before the end of the film, a helicopter, a moat of fire, and rolls of wallpaper are used to defeat the ants. Along the way, in a single and somber piece of exposition, a scientist tells the audience that we’ve been using poison against insects for many years, and it appears they’re figured out a way to turn it against us.

Snort.

I thought this film felt like a made for television movie, and later learned that it was. Originally titled It Happened at Lakewood Manor, the movie was renamed Ants for its 2014 release on DVD. The movie contained a star-studded cast, including Robert Foxworth, Lynda Day George, Gerald Gordon, Myrna Loy, Suzanne Somers, Bernie Casey,
Barry Van Dyke, and Brian Dennehy as the Fire Chief. While Ants! is a better name for the film, it’s not a great movie no matter what you call it. Slow pacing and a pretty avoidable insect make the stakes on this one pretty low.

Imagine opening a video on YouTube and discovering someone who looked and sounded exactly like you. That’s what happened to Anais Bordier, a Korean-born French student attending school in the UK. The YouTube video she saw featured another Korean woman, American actress Samantha Futerman. After connecting through Facebook, the two girls learned that not only had they both been adopted, but shared the same birth date as well. Ultimately, a DNA test confirmed what everyone who had met the girls in person already knew: Anais and Samantha are identical twins.

Unfortunately, the concept of Twinsters is more interesting than the documentary itself. First, Samantha and members of her family fly to the UK to meet Anais and her family. Later the reverse happens, with Anais and members of her family visiting Samantha’s family in California. In a wacky Disney film this would lead to zany “fish out of water” antics, but in reality both Anais and Samantha are intelligent, well-spoken women who have no trouble navigating London or Venice Beach. Later, the two travel to Korea together to visit each of their original foster moms before attending a conference for adopted Koreans.

Few questions are presented throughout the film, and even fewer are answered. Other than the obvious stuff (“we both have the same fingernails!”) the film doesn’t get much into the nature vs. nurture questions we have about identical twins separated at birth. The twins wonder why they were separated and why their birth mother refuses to see them and denies she gave birth to twins, but all of these questions and more are met with merely a shrug. Instead, Anais and Samantha giggle a lot, hang on each other, and take selfies. By the end of the film, each of the girls are back home in their respective countries and we have no hint as to what their future relationship will be.

Great documentaries not only document an event, but present a narrative as well. Twinsters is primarily video footage of an extremely odd event that happened to two people. It fails to ask, or answer, any real questions. Perhaps fittingly, most of the film feels like a really well-shot YouTube video that simply sits back and says “Well, that happened.” While two separated twins discovering one-another through social media is an interesting occurrence, it is not enough to carry a 90 minute film. A more seasoned director could have done much more with the material.

An old man from Salt Lake City. A teenage girl in Missouri. A homeless drifter in Germany. A Connecticut handyman who immigrated from Ecuador. These four people couldn’t be more different, and yet they all share something in common that has changed their lives.

They all share the name “Hitler.”

At first, it seems almost comical. Sixteen-year-old Emily Hittler shows off signs in her room her friends made that say, “Go Hittler!” Gene Hitler, an 89-year-old man, had four daughters and joked with them about their husbands taking their last names. One of Gene’s daughters shows the swastikas students drew in her high school yearbook. Gene Hitler grew up in a small town. He lived on Hitler Road, next to the Hitler Cemetery. It’s tough not to snicker.

Unfortunately, every single person featured in the film has had hardships solely because of the name they share with one of the most infamous human beings ever to have lived. Hitler Gutierrez, the handyman from Ecuador, shares how he has lost contracting jobs because of his name, and is frequently asked for two (and sometimes three) forms of identification to verify his name. One of Gene’s daughters shares a memory of being booed off the stage at school by hecklers who accused her of killing Jews.

The subjects featured in Meet the Hitlers fall into one of three categories. First are the people like Gene Hitler, Emily Hittler, and Hitler Gutierrez — people with no connection to Adolf Hitler in any way, but have had their lives affected by sharing Adolf’s last name.

Then you have Romano Hitler, a 62-year-old adopted man who claims to be the nephew of Adolph Hitler, and the four anonymous sons of William Patrick Stuart-Houston (ne’ Hitler) who was Adolf Hitler’s nephew. It is obvious that both the brothers (who are spoken about, but not involved directly with the film) and Romano feel deeply guilty by association. Although none of them have done anything wrong, they have fought hard to disassociate themselves from their family’s history.

The last man to be featured in the film is Isadore Heath Campbell, a white supremacist who made national headlines in 2008 by trying to force ShopRite to make a birthday cake for his son, whom he had named Adolf Hitler. The incident brought attention to Campbell’s family, and resulted in the state taking possession of all of their children. Campbell appears in the film sporting a traditional “Hitler” mustache, a Nazi uniform, and a large swastika tattooed on his neck.

The documentary makes the case that a name (literally, six letters) can change a person’s life, whether it’s people who through no fault of their name inherited the name, or, as in the case of Campbell, glom onto it for the notoriety and attention it brings. Throughout the film, each subject is eventually asked why they never changed their name. Answers vary, but each one is insightful.

Meet the Hitlers leads an interesting discussion on what’s in a name, and how our names are tied to our identities.

I’m going to say this up front — The Banana Splits Movie is not terrible. To be more specific, it’s no more terrible than any of the hundreds of other straight-to-video/SyFy-distributed horror films I’ve watched. It’s only problem — and it turns out, a big one — is that it’s a terrible “Banana Splits” movie.

“The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” was an hour-long Hanna-Barbera television show that aired in the late 60s and early 70s. It was a kid-friendly variety show (think “Laugh-In”) starring four animals — Fleegle (the beagle), Bingo (the ape), Drooper (the lion), and Snorky (the elephant) — played on-screen by adults in mascot-like costumes. The show consisted of live action skits along with animated cartoons, musical performances by the Splits, and other nonsense. The takeaway here is that the Banana Splits were revered by a generation of children who grew up watching them.

In real life the Banana Splits went off the air in the early 70s, but in the alternate universe in which The Banana Splits Movie takes place, the Splits were (and are) a real-life television show that allows kids and their parents to attend live tapings. In this same universe, the anthropomorphic Banana Splits are, underneath their fun costumes, robots. It boggles the mind why millions upon millions of dollars worth of advanced robotics would be used when paying human beings minimum wage to perform in funny suits would suffice, but no one in the film seems to question it, so neither should viewers.

The movie opens on Harley’s eighth birthday, and although a big deal is made of the fact that he is “too old” to still enjoy the Banana Splits, his parents gift him five tickets to a live taping of the show. Another big deal is made of the fact that Harley’s friend Duncan is sick and can’t come along, and so his mother has made arrangements for another friend (Zoe) to attend the taping with Harley’s family. By the way, there’s no payoff for any of these little details. We never meet Duncan, the fact that Zoe came instead of Duncan doesn’t change anything, and the two eight-year-olds (despite being “too old” for the show) are literally the two youngest people in the audience. These are all red flags that you should probably check your brain at the door before continuing.

From the onset it’s obvious not all is well with the Splits. When one of them receives a corrupted code update (the code literally changes from green to red on screen), whatever bug has been introduced is serious enough to turn this gentle robotic performer into a violent animatronic killer. And when his robotic cohorts learn (along with the staff) that the show has been cancelled, they too turn homicidal. Not all the animatronics receive the corrupted code, but they all seem on board with hacking up staff members and children, and that’s what’s important.

After the taping ends, a handful of (un)lucky groups are invited to an after-show meet and greet. Along with Harley and his family, the other invitees include a father desperate to get his daughter into showbiz, and a social media-obsessed couple. This, along with the show’s staff, gives the now homicidal Banana Splits more than enough victims to work with. Anyone who’s seen more than three horror movies will have no problem figuring out which members of the cast will last long enough to see the closing credits.

If murderous animatronic animals roaming around in the dark sounds familiar, you may have heard of Five Nights at Freddy’s, a popular video game franchise. According to the IMDB trivia section, The Banana Splits Movie script was originally pitched as a Five Nights at Freddy’s film; when licensing fell through, the script was recycled, Freddy was out, and the Splits were in.

The Banana Splits Movie isn’t a mystery and wasn’t particular scary. Instead, the entire pitch seemed to be, “wouldn’t it be funny to watch adult-sized animals killing people,” and at least on that level, the film delivers. Someone gets cut in half. Someone gets decapitated. At least two of the kills are on par with the Saw franchise. If you have been patiently waiting for a film in which a giant beagle burns a man’s face off using a cigar and an aerosol can, boy did you hit the jackpot.

For the average horror fan, The Banana Splits Movie is a fun romp. The push back will not come from horror fans, but fans of the original Banana Splits. Take any beloved franchise from your childhood and imagine that character doing the absolute worst thing possible. Few people want to see a movie in which Mr. Rogers becomes a serial killer, or the denizens of Sesame Street become kidnappers. The film gains little (other than shock value) from attaching itself to the Banana Splits franchise, and instead has to potential to distance viewers because of it.

In 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds, the members of Lambda Lambda Lambda were forced to stand up for themselves after being repeatedly attacked by the jocks from Alpha Beta, led by Stan Gable and his ogreish sidekick, Ogre. The Tri-Lambs, guided by mega-nerds Lewis Skolnick and Gilbert Lowe, bested the Alpha Betas in a series of head-to-head challenges which ultimately led to Gilbert becoming the new Council president. The conflict followed the two fraternities to a national convention in the 1987 sequel, Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise. There, in Florida, the nerds again prevailed, and the Alpha Beta’s chapter was permanently disbanded.

Or so you thought.

Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation is such a bizarre and inconsistent film that it may take place in a different universe from the first two films. The story begins with Harold and Ira (the titular “next generation of nerds”) headed off to Adams College. There, they discover the Tri-Lambs now rule the university. Nerds are “cool,” while the Alpha Betas (“permanently revoked” doesn’t mean what I thought it means) are now looked down upon. Shortly after arriving, Harold visits his Uncle Lewis and Aunt Betty for dinner, but learns that Lewis is no longer the nerd he once was. Lewis has grown a ponytail, ditched his pocket protector, denounced his formerly nerdy ways, hides his iconic laugh, and now insists on being called “Lew.” It’s a change in character that completely contradicts the theme of the first two movies, which was “it’s okay to be yourself.” Not only has Lew forgotten where he came from; he also forgets “when” he came from, when he tells his nephew he’s Adams class of ’80. (In the first movie, he was a freshman in 1984.)

Conflict arrives in the form of university president Orrin Price (Morton Downey, Jr.) and his son, Adam. Orrin thinks the Tri-Lambs being treated as human beings is a crime, and devises a scheme to return the Alpha Betas to power. To set his plan in motion, Orrin hires Stan Gable (Ted McGinley), former charter president of the Alpha Betas, as the college’s new dean. Stan has zero experience in being a dean, but accepts the role so he can exact revenge against the Tri-Lambs (none of whom have any idea who he is) and potentially win back Betty (his girlfriend from ten years ago) from Lewis.

Er, “Lew”.

The biggest problem with the Next Generation of nerds is that the next generation of nerds are bland and forgettable. Along with the completely interchangeable Harold and Ira, other Tri-Lambs include an Elvis impersonator from South Korea named Steve Toyota and an overweight kilt-wearing Englishman named Trevor (played by the late John Pinette), whose only real jokes are their accents. The rest of the Tri-Lambs fade into the background as quickly as they appear, and none of them have any skills or personality quirks that add value to the plot or make them memorable in any way.

It’s not until the Tri-Lambs require legal council that they contact local attorney and former Tri-Lamb Dudley “Booger” Dawson and breathe some life into this snooze-fest. Played again by Curtis Armstrong, Booger is the only character that seems to remember anything from the previous two films. He still picks his nose, loves to party with the ladies from Omega Mu, and is genuinely confused by the next generation of Tri-Lambs. “You don’t eat meat, you don’t do drugs… what’s wrong with kids today?” he opines.

And that, of course, is the core of the issue. To say the first two films in the franchise aged poorly is putting it mildly. In the first film, the Tri-Lambs set up security cameras in a neighboring dorm to spy on (and take pictures of) nude girls. Later in the film, Lewis has sex with Betty while pretending to be her boyfriend Stan (see Rape by Deception. In the second film, the Tri-Lambs attract a large crowd to their rally by changing the sign outside their hotel to read “hot oral sex.” The question is, how do you gracefully steer a franchise away from the raunchy, sophomoric 80s humor that originally made it popular, and the answer is, you can’t.

Parading some of the original nerds at the 11th hour is too little, too late to save this tragedy. Mr. Skolnick, U.N. Jefferson, Lamar, Takashi, Wormser and Gilbert (the latter two having been recast) arrive in the closing minutes of a court session to lend support to their friends (and the movie). Their arrival does nothing but scream “we’re could only afford these people for a single day” on this made-for-television film’s $2 million budget.

In the closing scene, Alpha Beta / alpha male Stan Gable admits that he too is a nerd, claiming that he only played sports as a kid because his parents made him. Before all the mean, violent, and downright cruel things the Alpha Betas had done to the Tri-Lambs over the past three films had time to flash before my eyes, Stan had already been forgiven, and made an honorary Tri-Lamb. Forgiving the guy that helped set you up on felony charges and let you rot in jail doesn’t make them nerds. It makes them, like the rest of this movie, dumb.

In the opening of Tattoos & Tequila, Vince Neil claims his dream job would be renting jet skis to tourists on a private beach. Sadly for him, Neil drew a short straw and somehow ended up as the lead singer for Motley Crue (one of the most popular and successful rock bands of all time) instead.

Tattoos & Tequila was the last memoir to be published by a member of Motley Crue. First was The Dirt, the ultimate sleazy tell-all book which was published in 2001 and has since been turned into a Netflix original film. Following that book, drummer Tommy Lee published his own book, Tommyland, in 2005; that was followed by bassist Nikki Sixx’s The Heroin Diaries in 2007. One might assume there’s not much blood left to squeeze from these four turnips, and for the most part you would be right — 2010’s Tattoos & Tequila adds little to the band’s overall lexicon. Instead, Neil mostly uses his platform to brag about his sexual conquests while making sure readers know just how much he hates the fellow members of Motley Crue.

Neil wastes no time in separating himself from his band mates. In the very first chapter, he clarifies that he’s no longer a member of Motley Crue. “These days I’m basically like a free agent,” he says. “I have a separate deal. I got out because I just didn’t want to deal with their bullshit anymore.” For decades, the Crue’s public image has been one of four inseparable members (Nikki Sixx often referred to the band publicly as a “gang”). If Neil is to be believed, much of that, especially over the past thirty years, has been little more than an act.

Still in the first chapter, Neil makes sure readers know that the guys in Motley Crue “are not my friends. And they haven’t been for a long time.” This theme continues throughout the book. “I just don’t trust Nikki,” he says later. “I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any of the guys in the band. Because they’re not trustworthy.” And later, in case you didn’t catch it — “We don’t really like each other anymore, maybe, but we’ve stayed together for the benefit of the kids.” Throughout the lows of Neil’s life — the DUI that killed his friend Razzle and injured two others, the death of his daughter, his multiple failed marriages — Neil is quick to remind readers that his three band mates never once called to console him. Particularly, the lack of emotional support he received from his band after the death of his daughter Skyler (who passed away at the age of four from cancer) still bothers him. “I know that feeds into my whole resentment of the band as well.”

Technically, Tattoos & Tequila was not written by Neil; it was orally dictated to author Mike Sager, who appears to have simply transcribed Neil’s words. Most of the book reads exactly how one might imagine Neil (a self-described “surfer dude”) actually speaks. Lots of sentences end with “you know?” or “whatever, dude.” The first few chapters are difficult to follow as Neil leaps wildly between topics, jumping back and forth between decades. It’s not until later when the chronological story line begins that things become easier to follow — and even then, many of Neil’s stories lead nowhere, trailing off with “I don’t really remember…”

Once the book begins to resemble a narrative, Neil spends 3/4 of it weaving through tales of sex, drugs, sex, concerts, sex, booze, sex, cars, and more sex. The notches in Neil’s bedpost number somewhere in the hundreds (or possibly thousands), and Neil repeatedly reminds readers of his type (“girls with a smokin’ bod and a nice rack”). There are more than a few humble brags (“Sorry I’m late, but I had to swap out my Ferrari for my Lambo”) and some not so humble (“I’ve always been stronger and in better shape than Nikki”). Most of the sexual encounters Neil mentions happened while he was married, which is why in different sections of the book we get to hear from his first, second, third, and fourth wives. Each time Neil cheats on one of his wives, he offers excuses like, “well, a girl came over and took her clothes off, what was I supposed to do?”

There’s an old saying about how money can’t buy happiness. No matter how much money the guy makes or how many exotic sports cars he buys, every couple of chapters another one of his wives is leaving him. In one chapter, Neil talks about how he’s the most popular guy in LA, throwing parties that last for weeks. A few pages later, he can’t get a single person to pick him up after he is released from jail. And if money can’t buy happiness, based on this book, it surely can’t buy class. Throughout the book, multiple people from Neil’s life including family members, ex-wives, and ex-band mates contribute to the narrative. Few of them have great things to say about the man. The last two interviews are with two of Neil’s grown children, both of whom say they largely communicate with their dad through text messages.

The beginning and ending of the book aren’t tales of old, but stories from the then 48-year-old (now 58-year-old) Vince Neil. It is there that he discusses his latest business ventures. Some of them, like Vince Neil Aviation and Feelgood’s Rock Bar and Grill, didn’t last the test of time, while others, like Neil’s own line of vodka and his tattoo shop located on the Vegas strip, are still around. In addition to his side ventures, Neil expresses a hope that someday his solo band will be as big as Motley Crue is. “I want to get to that next level,” he says in the final chapter. “I want to get to the Ozzy level. I want to headline arenas with my own band.”

At the time this book was published, Neil did not know how his own story would end. Despite his publicly stated disdain for his fellow band members, Neil continued touring with Motley Crue. In 2014, the band announced their Final Tour, signing an official “cessation of touring” agreement to take place by the end of 2015. Fortunately, I was able to attend the show in Oklahoma City.

The end of Motley Crue has allowed Vince Neil to pursue his dream of touring as a solo artist, where he mostly performing Motley Crue hits with a light sprinkling of his own solo songs throughout his sets. According to Vince Neil’s Facebook page, his next appearance will be at the 2019 Hair in the Fair festival, taking place at the Welland state fair in Ontario, Canada.

A long time ago back in the 1980s, a weird kid with a bowl haircut used his family’s video camera to create and record his own videos. Sometimes his friends and family made appearances in his videos, and other times he was the only performer. Some of the videos were skits, while others were simply of him dancing around, lip-syncing to his favorite songs and pretending to play the guitar. When he got a little older, he actually learned how to play the guitar and began writing and recording his own silly songs.

I am, of course, talking about myself.

But I am also talking about “Weird” Paul Petroskey, subject of the 2019 documentary Will Work for Views: The Low-Fi Life of Weird Paul.

In the 1980s, both Paul and I (two kids who lived a thousand miles apart and have never met one another) were both busy recording videos and writing songs. I eventually grew out of creating funny songs and videos, and that’s where my path diverged from Paul’s. Weird Paul continues to write songs and create videos to this day. He has released more than 700 songs, dozens of albums, uploaded almost a thousand videos to YouTube… and unfortunately, has very little to show for it.

Will Work for Views peels the curtain away from “Weird Paul” and gives viewers a view into the daily life of Paul Petroskey. The documentary focuses less on Paul’s creative output and more on the daily struggles he goes through to create it. Because the money Paul makes from his songs and videos doesn’t pay the bills, his primary source of income is a part-time job at Spencer’s Gifts, where he folds t-shirts, works the register, and spends his daily breaks coming up with new song and video ideas. Time spent working at Spencer’s (or on home maintenance) is time spent away from his true passion.

Paul is less obsessed than most musicians about pesky things like sound quality, and uses whatever resources he has on hand to create his art. His vast catalog of old songs were recorded on regular cassette tapes, while his videos have been digitized from decades-old VHS tapes. To this day, Weird Paul films his monthly YouTube videos using a vintage VHS camcorder, laboriously transferring each clip to his computer by way of a VCR while doing things like laying on his back when narrating certain scenes to maintain consistent audio quality.

In his YouTube videos, Weird Paul comes off as positive, happy, and childlike. Whether he’s singing about a pot of macaroni, a guy with a bone disease, or simply talking about his latest thrift store finds, he always has a twinkle in his eye. But when he steps away from his happy place, reality quickly creeps in. Paul admits he’s getting older and increasingly tired, and wonders when his big break will come. In a particularly revealing scene, Paul’s live-in girlfriend (artist Niffer Desmond) interrupts a scene to point out that the couple’s home is quite literally falling apart, with pieces of plaster falling from the ceiling, broken plumbing, and a basement full of mold.

There are hints that Weird Paul’s window to success is closing, with talks of limited income, limited time, limited resources, and even limited amounts of energy. If money were no object, I have no doubt Weird Paul would be uploading new content on a daily basis. Everything he does outside of that is simply a means to an end.

In separate moments during the documentary, both Paul and Niffer state that the mark of a successful artist is the ability to make a living from his or her art. They’re wrong. The mark of a successful artist is the ability to spark emotion in others through the art they create, and by that definition, Weird Paul is most certainly a success. His music is not for everyone; then again, whose is? Weird Paul is as honest and genuine as he is weird. Regardless of whether or not viewers think Paul will ever find the widespread success and validation he so desperately seeks, it’s impossible to walk away from this film not rooting for the guy.

Will Work for Views: The Low-Fi Life of Weird Paul is available through Amazon, YouTube Red, and other streaming services.

NOTE: Weird Paul does not make any money from sales or views of this documentary. Instead, I recommend checking out Weird Paul’s YouTube Channel, Patreon Page, Bandcamp Page, and Weird Paul’s website where he sells physical copies of his albums and other merchandise.