Death Wish 4: The Crackdown!

"They made FOUR of these fucking things?!"
-My girlfriend after she woke up to find me watching this this morning

Part four of a franchise that lasted five films in total, "Death Wish 4: The Crackdown" was directed by long-time Charles Bronson director J. Lee Thompson and came out in 1987. Thompson and Bronson did 9 movies together, including one of my favorite Bronson movies, "10 To Midnight," which I saw, for some reason, a LOT as a kid. I think it was one of the few tapes we had.

Anyway, the movie follows Bronson (whose character is clearly hated by God because everybody he loves gets murdered or beaten at the start of these movies) after the death of his girlfriend's daughter. Then he gets recruited to murder some drug dealers, which he does with FULL FORCE (he was 65 when he filmed this, by the way), before he's double-crossed and then some other stuff happens and then it ends. But not before Bronson VAPORIZES an old dude bad guy by using a rocket launcher on his gold-chain-wearing ass from about 20 feet away. Check it:



"Death Wish 4" has some cool '80s sets like an arcade, a roller rink, and a VHS rental store! It also has cameos by that bald guy who was Mulder's boss on "The X-Files," the girl who played Audrey in the very first "Vacation" movie, the guy who played a black Vulcan on Star Trek: Voyager, that tall bro who was in charge of the odd street gang in Return of the Living Dead 3, and Danny Trejo. Trejo gets blown up by a bomb hidden in a wine bottle. It's nuts.

Here's the trailer:



And here's a clip of JUST the murders that Bronson has a hand in:



My copy of the VHS tape has a lot of wear, but the cassette played just fine. I picked it up at a used section in our local Barnes & Noble, which is an odd thing for a Barnes & Noble to have, I think. It was originally $3, then became $1.50, and then I bought it at $.60! Here's the box:


I'm really itching to watch the other 4 now. I remember catching a bit of part one waaaaay back and it scared the living pee out of me.

C.H.U.D. Poster?

I ran across this poster for C.H.U.D.




Panik indeed. I've never seen this version, only the classic sewer grate cover. It was probably for the German release, hence the German. Can anyone identity the logo in the lower left hand corner? It's possibly the video distributor, a topic I'd like to post about in the future. Either way it's super rad! LEGS!

Ernest Goes to Splash Mountain - TV Special

If you're like me, you've got a special place in your heart for Ernest P. Worrell, the goodhearted goofball played by genius comic actor Jim Varney in films like "Ernest Goes to Camp" and "Ernest Scared Stupid."


Ernest was a character developed by a marketing firm in Tennessee called Carden & Cherry Advertising, and he was used to make hundreds of down-to-Earth commercials for specific markets across the country where he sold everything from local sodas to milk to auto dealerships.




In 1987, John Cherry, one of the men who helped create the Ernest character, directed "Ernest Goes to Camp" for Disney's Touchstone Pictures, and, holy shit, I could go on and on about that movie. It's one of my favorites and it brought Ernest to the attention of households everywhere.

Anywho, this put the Ernest character in business with Disney, where he appeared in a lot of Disney promotional video stuff, and in 1989, when "Ernest Goes to Camp" aired on TV for "The Wonderful World of Disney," it was preceded by a special about the opening of the Splash Mountain ride at Disneyland called...



I can't handle how excited I would've been to have a pizza night back in 1989 and watch both "Ernest Goes To Camp" AND a brand-new TV special!

In the TV special, Ernest has been tapped as the first HUMAN to test the ride, so a news station follows him around to see how he trains for the duty. We also get some history about the development of Splash Mountain (I had no idea the ride was based on the controversial "Song of the South" film) and other stuffs. It was never released on DVD or VHS as far as I can tell, which is a bummer, cause it'd be a dope special extra if they ever put out a boss anniversary edition of "Ernest Goes to Camp." That means you'll have to settle for these 3 clips I found of the special online, which cover the entire program.

Lost Ernest footage! Ugh, I'm so happy the internet exists.

Enjoy!

Part One:

(My favorite bit comes at 5:45)




Part Two:




Part Three:

(The nightmare sequence at :52 MUST be burned into some fans' memories)




Look for more Ernest content down the line. It's a shame Varney passed away when he did. He had a lot of great roles and ideas ahead of him, and it's too bad to think he missed out on all the cool stuff he had heading his way. Of all my childhood icons, he's one of the few who never got tangled up in crazy controversies or compromised himself - he just tried to entertain and stayed humble.

The Majorettes!

You just can't take your eyes off them - and that's enough to get them KILLED.

Not familiar with "The Majorettes"? Neither was I.

John Russo, co-creator of the "Night of the Living Dead" franchise, wrote the book this 1986 film about a murderer targeting a high school dance team was based on - and also did the screenplay! The dance team at my high school was called "The Kangarettes" cause our mascot was the kangaroo.

>fart noise<

Not really any known actors or actresses here, but it WAS directed by S. William Hinzman, the man who played the "Cemetery Zombie" in "Night of the Living Dead." He smashed the window out of the car. He's this bro:


Anywho, the box art on the VHS is rad. Here's the front of one version:


And the front of another version I also like:


That one mirrors the paperback cover, which you can see here. Here's the VHS box back:


Here's the trailer:



There's a DVD available, but the box art is really goober-y. Go check it out here.

Lastly, the movie features this homeboy:


Visit this wonderful site to find out how...

Evilspeak!

"You screwed up for the last time, pooper-dick!"

There is an absolutely outrageous amount of dope shit going on in this 1981 movie, which was banned for a while in England. Clint Howard plays a military school cadet (named STANLEY COOPERSMITH!) who get bullied so much that he types some Satanic stuff into a computer, which makes the computer want blood, and then some demon thing with a pig face comes to Earth, and then these fires start all over the place, and Clint Howard has a flaming sword, and I'm PRETTY sure a Jesus statue shoots a spike out of its wrist and into the forehead of a preacher like a murdering Spider-Man religion monster.

Here's the awesome movie poster! You owe it to yourself to click for a larger version.


And here's the trailer:



You can get an uncut DVD of the film here, but I don't know if I recommend it.

Vampirella direct-to-VHS movie

"Now, she's traveling across time - to a new world - and a MURDERER over 300,00 years old."

I feel like I saw ads or casting news for this in Wizard Magazine, but, well, gross. It stars Princess Katana from the "Mortal Kombat" movie and the lead singer of The Who. It also features John Landis as an astronaut who stumbles upon Vampirella in space!


This 1996 film was directed by Jim Wynorski, who has directed some seriously great shit. Aside from some porn stuff, Wynorski directed "Chopping Mall," "Sorority House Massacre II" and its unofficial sequel "Hard to Die." Plus, "Ghoulies IV," "Return of Swamp Thing," "Deathstalker II," and "Not of This Earth," which starred Traci Lords and was recently re-released by Shout as part of its Roger Corman Collection!

Wynorski's an institution. I'll be posting trailers for all of his stuff down the line and tagging his name in each.

Meanwhile, enjoy this Vampirella trailer:

Vigilante Force

"What war?"

"MY WAR."

Kris Kristofferson teamed up with that dude from the Airwolf TV series for this NUTS movie about civil unrest in a small town, which results in the two men fighting each other with machine guns. Kristofferson totally gets in a street fight, and Airwolf-guy totally shoots at a shack filled with what looks like a group of prostitutes. Kristofferson shoulda been in Road House.

Check out that braggable Tiger shirt at the 1:40 mark:



And don't forget: "Broadway's Bernadette Peters dazzales as 'Little Dee."


(special thanks to Zach Oat!)