Brilliant.

"I have to go. My planet needs me."

Not too long ago, Alec Baldwin mentioned in an interview that he was retiring from acting. His exact words were:

“I consider my entire movie career a complete failure. The goal of movie-making is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that.”

Could this really be true? Not about the retirement, I predict he’ll pull a Dan Aykroyd in no time. I mean could Baldwin be right about his career? The guy’s been a name forever; certainly he must have turned in at least one outstanding performance.

Well, we’re going to find out in a new Critical End! feature that Logan and I are calling Home School. A Home School will be a series of posts that takes a chronological look at a group of related films. This could be a bunch of sequels like the Friday the 13th films, or the catalog of a particular actor or director. By the end, we’ll have taken an interesting little journey, obtained some perspective on the subject matter, and likely filled in some gaps in our cinematic education. All from the comfort of our couches (hence “Home School”). This inaugural installment will explore the entirety of Alec Baldwin’s catalog in an attempt to test the actor’s own hypothesis that he’s never done anything worthwhile. Join us, won’t you?

Alec Baldwin Home School: Forever, Lulu (1987)
Not to be confused with the Melanie Griffith/Patrick Swayze movie of the same name, Forever, Lulu (AKA Crazy Streets) is the 1987 comedy that marks the feature film debut of one Alec Baldwin. According to IMDb, he’d been floating around TV since 1980, most notably on Knots Landing. But since that season isn’t on DVD yet, we’re going to keep things simple and start here. Joining Alec is Debbie Harry of Blondie fame, and Hanna Schygulla, who I’d never heard of, but is apparently an incredibly well known German actress. See? We’re learning things already.

The Film
Schygulla stars as Elaine, a wannabe author living in New York. Her sleazy manager won’t publish her novel because it’s not sexy enough, but she refuses to compromise her artistic vision, even though she’s down to her last nickel. She’s so destitute that she ends up taking a job writing the script for a porn movie just to make ends meet. Not a bad premise for a late 80s comedy. Except that’s apparently not the premise.

I guess she finishes the porn script off-camera, because it’s barely mentioned again. Instead, we get scene after scene of Elaine’s miserable existence. She sulks in her shitty apartment, gets grifted by a con artist, and complains about her love life to her annoying gal-pal sidekick who is NOT Debbie Harry. Occasionally, Debbie shows up in the periphery to stare knowingly and say absolutely nothing. It’s as if she’s in the talky introduction of a music video and she’s waiting for her cue to break into song.

Finally, more than 20 minutes in (and not a Baldwin in sight), Elaine grabs a gun and prepares to blow her brains out. Unfortunately, she’s interrupted by a phone call to go on a blind date. She agrees, but the date goes so poorly that she ends up running into the street, waving her gun in the air, and yelling about her crappy life. An approaching couple mistakenly thinks she’s mugging them, so they give her their coats and run. In the pockets, she finds a picture of Debbie Harry signed “Forever, Lulu” and a mysterious address.  Now, the story begins!

There is no visual record of "Buck", so enjoy this picture of a young Baldwin posing for Young and Hairy Quarterly.

Well, kind of. First we get several more boring scenes of Elaine whining indecisively and parading around in her stolen mink coat. Some goon recognizes the coat (I think?) and tries to mug her, but she’s rescued handily by Buck, a strapping NYC cop portrayed by, you guessed it, Alec Baldwin. We’re 28 minutes in, but our hero has finally arrived to awkwardly hit on Elaine, get rejected, and then disappear again for most of the film.

Then a bunch of other crap happens. She goes to the address, witnesses a murder, and ends up stealing a briefcase full of money from the mob. So the mob’s looking for her and she’s got to decide what to do with the cash. It’s been like 45 minutes at this point, and I THINK this is now supposed to be the real premise of the film. Except all she does is sit around and brood some more before deciding to turn the case over to the cops.

Yep, no wacky Blank Check style spending spree, she just comes clean about the whole thing. But, she’s able to turn her story into a best-selling book! Now a famous author, she hobnobs with the rich and famous in another series of long, uneventful scenes. Meanwhile, gangsters halfheartedly try to kill her, and Debbie Harry continues to drop in to stand around silently. There’s also some oddly casual nudity from Schygulla, and an appearance by Wayne Knight as a shoe-licker in a fetish club. None of this actually advances the plot.

At about an hour and 15 minutes, the mobsters finally manage to capture Elaine and…I guess demand an apology? It’s pretty damn unclear what they actually want since she already told the police everything and doesn’t have the money anymore. Anyway, they’re about to kill her when Officer Baldwin makes his triumphant return and saves the day. In the process, the picture of Debbie Harry is splashed by some clearly-labeled Paul Newman salad dressing, which reveals a secret message!

The photo actually concealed the names of the city’s biggest drug dealers. Alec instantly recognizes the names, leading me to wonder why a list of already-known drug dealers would be at all valuable. At any rate, with the three thugs dead, clearly nobody will every bother Elaine again, so she and Alec celebrate by getting it on in the back of a dirty mob-owned fish market. In the last scene, Elaine finally runs into Debbie Harry, recognizes her as Lulu, kinda shrugs at the coincidence, and walks away.

Reaction
Obviously, Alec Baldwin wasn’t yet a star, so I wasn’t that shocked that he plays a glorified bit part. But I gotta tell you, for a film with the tagline “Two outrageous women are turning New York City upside-down!” I expected a story with at least two women. Take a look at the DVD cover again. It’s a production shot from that final scene, the only notable time Debbie Harry actually interacts with Hanna Schygulla. If all those wistful glances were supposed to be significant enough to elevate Harry to co-star status, I guess that significance was lost on me. And I don’t buy that the best friend is the other woman either, as she’s mostly an afterthought.

Anyway, no one was expecting the first film in Baldwin’s catalog to validate his career, and it certainly doesn’t, but he escapes mostly unscathed. In a movie that manages to feel interminable at 85 minutes, Baldwin’s scenes are a welcome relief. This is partly because he has the good fortune of being in the few scenes that actually shove the plot forward. But it’s also due to Baldwin’s undeniable likability, a theme I’m pretty sure we’ll see repeated as we continue our voyage up his IMDb page. His performance is hammy and one-dimensional here, but you just can’t help enjoying it at least a little.

So that’s our first Home School. I promise they won’t all be so long. Next time, we’ll take a look at She’s Having a Baby, which provides a bigger role for Baldwin and a bit more opportunity for critique.

Final Stats
Movie Rating:   4 out of 10
Baldwin Rating:   5 out of 10
Biggest Takeaway: Hanna Schygulla is difficult to watch when clothed. Further study needed.
Quote for Your Facebook Status: “Have you ever made love to an older woman in a fish store?”

I’m pretty sure Logan and I have mentioned the movie Hard Ticket to Hawaii on the podcast at some point.  Suffice it to say that it’s one of the best, awful, borderline pornographic, low budget spy/action drama/comedies of its day.  Oh, and it’s got a scene where a dude is killed by a Frisbee with razor blades taped to it.

Well, a group of brave YouTubers have recreated this classic scene on digital video and fed it to the internet.  Now, normally I’d encourage you to watch the original before the remake, but I’m going to make an exception.  First, take a look at the fan version:

Pretty great, right?  But surely, they cheesed up the acting for comedic effect.  And obviously the real movie’s special effects were more convincing, right?  Let’s see for ourselves…

Yes, it turns out that the fans got it pitch perfect.  If anything, their version is somehow less absurd than the one that hit theaters.  Well done.  For added fun, try starting both clips at the same time.

Catching up on 2009 movies for our big year end wrap-up, I finally saw G.I. Joe.  During my viewing, Dennis Quaid gave me a message that he wanted me to pass along to you.  He says to…

“DEPLOY THE SHARKS!”

Just so you know.

We all know Tom Wilson as Biff from Back to the Future,  and if my DVR is any judge, he’s still doing okay for himself making the rounds on procedural crime dramas.  But who knew he did stand up?  You do now (thanks to /Film).  And–shock of shocks–he does a musical bit about BTTF in his act.

So…what if he’d kissed a regular frog?  REVIEWED: The Princess and the Frog.  PLUS: A bunch of Christmas Retro Picks including Jack Frost (not the Michael Keaton one) and a whole messa Muppets.

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It’s once again that time of year when families gather around the warm glow of the television and watch such holiday classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to name a few.  Sure, your pals here at Critical End! watch those too, but when the hour grows late, the fire has died down, and the kids from Ryan’s third marriage have all gone to bed, that’s when the real Christmas fun begins.  Logan mixes his “special” eggnog (Ingredients: Eggnog, mostly booze), while Ryan warms up the DVD player for those holiday slasher films known as Silent Night, Deadly Night.  This year, in honor of the birth of Christ our savior (Okay, and the release of Parts 3 to 5 on DVD), we thought we’d let Logan share his opinion on each film in a special 5 part series each week until Christmas. 

This week Logan looks at Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.

Body Count: 24 (But to be fair, 12 of those are from clips of the first movie)

Best Death Scene: One poor soul is killed simply because it’s garbage day and he’s disposing some trash.  Fellas, let this be a lesson next time the wife/girlfriend wants you to take the garbage out.

Oh, where to start?  I guess I need to get the most important thing about this movie out of the way first: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is my favorite bad movie of all time.  Yes, some people may tell you that you could never get worse than, say, Troll 2, or to a more recent extent, The Room, but for my money, this film has them all beat.  And do you want to know the weirdest part about the whole thing?  More than one third of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is made up of, yeah, you guessed it, clips of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1 MINUS most of the gore and nudity.

Following the video success of the first film, producers begin to search for a way to extend its shelf life a bit.  Due mostly to the fact that nobody in Hollywood likes to use their brain (See any Adam Sandler film for further analysis), they collectively decided that the best thing to do would be to hire an editor to re-cut the film, adding two more scenes that would, get this, feature a mental patient telling the story which would have  made the original film appear to be nothing more than the ravings of a lunatic.  Hollywood, this is why you have no friends.

Lucky for us, Director/Editor Lee Harry (and yes, that is his actual screen credit in the movie), and a team of six writers decided that the movie needed a bit more.  Now, when I say a bit more what I really mean is about 30 minutes of new material.  The rest, as I mentioned above, is nothing but clips from the first movie edited for content.  Wow, it took six writers to come up with that?  Maybe this film was some sort of tax write off…whatever the case, the movie comes across like the equivalent of listening to your drunk Uncle Steve attempt to explain the first film.  It’s now several years later and Billy’s little brother, Ricky, is all grown up and in the nut house.  How he got there is the only real mystery in the movie (Spoiler: He killed lots of people), and is revealed mostly through what I have dubbed “eyebrow acting” and in flashbacks that bring the grand total of Ricky actors to a staggering EIGHT people.  My God, that’s a lot of eyebrow acting.  At one point the film really jumps the rails (and Ricky’s eyebrows threaten to jump off his face), when he decides that he needs to flashback to his first date.  The movie then becomes a love story about a killer Santa for a few minutes.  The best part?  They go to see Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1 on their first date.  Just when we thought the film had finally stopped showing clips from the first movie, the filmmakers decided that what we really wanted to see was people watching the first film.  God, I love this movie.

Oh, there’s more, but just take my word for it: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is NOT to be missed.  If you’re a lover of bad films, then this will be like the holy grail for you.  I can’t end this review without mentioning the fact that this film features one of my all time favorite lines and scenes from any movie ever.  The clip from this scene is all over YouTube, but it’s worthless unless you actually made it through the rest of the film.  I guess what I’m saying is that you have to work for it…and believe me: It’s worth every second.  Happy Garbage Day, folks!

Rating:
3 out of 10

In three days: Ricky returns for some more yuletide slayings, but due to the head injury he received in the last film, he now wears his brain in a glass dome.  GENIUS.

It’s once again that time of year when families gather around the warm glow of the television and watch such holiday classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to name a few.  Sure, your pals here at Critical End! watch those too, but when the hour grows late, the fire has died down, and the kids from Ryan’s third marriage have all gone to bed, that’s when the real Christmas fun begins.  Logan mixes his “special” eggnog (Ingredients: Eggnog, mostly booze), while Ryan warms up the DVD player for those holiday slasher films known as Silent Night, Deadly Night.  This year, in honor of the birth of Christ our savior (Okay, and the release of Parts 3 to 5 on DVD), we thought we’d let Logan share his opinion on each film in a special 5 part series each week until Christmas. 

This week Logan looks at Silent Night, Deadly Night.

Body Count: 13
Best Death Scene: Death by impaling on a stuffed antelope’s horns?  Count me in!

Silent Night, Deadly Night is the cult slasher that was so highly offensive that, get this, C.A.M.M. (that’s Citizens Against Movie Madness in case you were wondering) decided that they needed to boycott its 1984 theatrical release.  Several “concerned” parents felt that the image of Santa with a bloody ax was going too far.  Hell, they even got Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney to join their letter writing campaign to TriStar Pictures (Never mind the fact that Rooney himself would later star in Part 5).  Want to know the kicker?  All of this worked.  That’s right, after two weeks in only a handful of theaters, Silent Night, Deadly Night died a quiet death.  Luckily, it was the early ’80’s and people were enjoying the spoils of a rather new gadget called VCRs.  It was here that the film really took off, quickly selling close to a million copies on VHS and becoming a cult hit.

So was all the uproar really worth it?  Yes, actually.  This movie is pretty damn gory, full of needless nudity, and, truth be told, rather fun.  It opens on Christmas Eve 1971 with 5 year old Billy and his newborn brother Ricky accompanying their parents to visit their crazy old Grandfather.  Crazy old Grandfather warns them that they better run when they see Santa tonight, but do they listen?  No, because he’s crazy and old.  On the way back home the family happens to run into a maniac dressed like Santa who shoots the father and rapes the mom in front of the two kids.  Outraged yet, Mickey Rooney?

Needless to say, Billy grows up hating Santa and working at, of all places, a freakin’ toy store.  It’s also the only toy store that I’ve ever seen with easy access to a huge fire ax (It’s located next to the board games and stuffed animals).  Well, we all know what happens from here.  Through a series of events (mostly told by way of a cheesy ’80’s montage), Billy ends up dressing up as the store Santa.  A sleazy, tight pants, co-worker hitting on Billy’s best gal is all it takes to send Billy into a Christmas Eve/morning killing spree with the above mentioned ax…but not before using a bow and arrow to dispatch one unlucky victim.  Why this toy store sells real bow and arrow sets is beyond me, but who am I to question the practices of Ira’s Toys?

From here until the “shocking” ending things are pretty much your typical ’80’s slasher film with something of a budget.  That is to say that Silent Night, Deadly Night is really no different than any fun, trashy horror film along the lines of the original Friday the 13th.  Yes, it’s garbage, no doubt, but it’s a great time if this is your sort of thing.  I could honestly recommend this for your yearly alcohol fueled Christmas party, if not for the existence of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2…but we’ll get to that next week.  Until then, why not find a copy of Part 1 and check it out this holiday season?  Tell them Mickey Rooney sent you.

Rating:
5 out of 10

Next week: Little baby brother Ricky picks up where Billy left off and delivers one of Logan’s five favorite film lines of all time in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. 

Your pals at Critical End! would like to wish a super happy birthday to Sir Chevy Chase (we’ve knighted him in our own minds).  Can you believe the man is 66 today?!  Most people don’t know that Chevy didn’t become the household name that he is today until around his 32 birthday when he first started getting noticed on some show called NBC’s Saturday Night.  I wonder what ever happened to that forgotten gem?
Speaking of great moments in Chevy history, Ryan and I have listed our five all-time favorite Chevy films below.  In celebration of this special day, why not take a few hours to get reacquainted with one of the greatest comedians of all time?

Ryan’s Top Five Chevy Picks
1.  Caddyshack
2.  Three Amigos!
3.  Fletch
4.  National Lampoon’s Vacation
5.  National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Logan’s Top Five Chevy Picks
1.  Caddyshack
2.  National Lampoon’s Vacation
3.  Fletch
4.  Three Amigos!
5.  Spies Like Us

And finally…news hit the web yesterday about a rumored fifth Vacation film from New Line Cinema.  However, I couldn’t find a single website that had a source on this, so I’ve decided to hold off reporting the “details” for now.  Just be aware that this could possibly exist outside of my dreams within the next few years.  More info to come.

Happy Chevy Chase Day, kids. 

Claws Up

• Jackie Earle Haley seems to be playing it pretty well.
• The bed levitation and claw-in-the-tub indicate they’re paying proper homage to the original.
• They’re bringing the nursery rhyme back, complete with creepy jump-roping girls.

Claws Down

• “From Producer Michael Bay”
• “It’s so hot in this fire!  I’d better take off my windbreaker and–BOOM!  Stripey shirt!”
• The implication that Freddy Krueger may be innocent.  Come on, he’s the bastard son of a thousand maniacs.
• The possibility that Freddy Krueger is going to talk like Slingblade the whole movie.

So what do you guys think?  Also, side note, this kid is making a career out of dying.

Bitchiness and bile abounds in CE!’s 30th show.  REVIEWED: Jennifer’s Body.  RETRO PICK: Hook.  PLUS: Zombie Patrick Swayze.

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You could say that Li’l Logan was a freak for all things Pee-wee Herman.  Unfortunately, this unnatural love has followed me throughout the years…I currently own two t-shirts, a poster, the complete show on DVD and VHS, and the majority of my original Pee-wee’s Playhouse toys.  What can I say?  Girls dig me.

It also seems that I was a bit ahead of my time: Thanks to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim and current shows like Blue’s Clues and SpongeBob Square Pants (both have acknowledged the influence of Pee-wee’s Playhouse), Paul Reubens has finally decided to bring his classic character back, starting with a revival of the original stage show.  Tickets and information can be found here.  Please remember that my birthday is coming up.

What’s that you say?  You can’t afford $50 tickets AND a trip to Los Angeles?  Well, it looks like you’ll just have to catch Pee-wee’s big primetime return on the September 22nd episode of The Jay Leno Show.  It’s free so you have no excuse, you cheap bastard.

Everything I know about dancing I learned from repeat viewings of this movie.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter Rating:
Crispin Glover’s “Dead Fuck” Dance Rating:

This episode wants to awkwardly make out with you on the Wild Mouse. REVIEWED: Adventureland. PLUS: The boys relive fears and hairstyles of the 1980s.

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