River's Edge (1986)

Hailed as a disturbing exercise in teenage apathy, River's Edge was both controversial and original when it came out in 1986. With an absolutely all-star cast of Dennis Hopper, Keanu Reeves, and Crispin Glover, this film is one of those that seems unimportant when you first watch it, and then continues to dig its way into your skull like a little worm easing its way into the center of an apple. And now it sticks to my soul. The entire film focuses on deep indifference, long before eyes were glued to screens and college kids could walk their way across campus to their next class without ever looking up from snapchat. In 99 minutes of increasing uneasiness, there are literally dozens of noteworthy quotes. But if I could sum up the movie in a single line, it would definitely be the beauty delivered during that unforgettable classroom scene:

"Wasting pigs is radical man!"

It probably doesn't help my conscience that this movie is based on a real-life murder in Milpitas, California, and partially inspired by youth in Sacramento. Too close to home. Too many gutter punks. I will say, the combination of Keanu and Crispin all punked out, and Dennis Hopper playing drugged out saxophone while wooing a blow-up doll, was a somewhat enlightening experience. I will now proceed to list a series of the best quotes, with a separate section just for ones about getting stoned.

"Maybe I am a killer. Why should you care? You just stay around here to fuck my mother and eat her food....Mother fucker food eater."

"Go get your nunchucks and your dad's car. I know where we can get a gun."

"I ate so much pussy those days, my beard looked like a glazed donut. 

- Is that when you lost your leg?"

"You didn't have to call me a stupid bitch."

"I'm nobody's mother...you were all mistakes anyway. I'm going to leave you all like your father."

--Stoner Section

"Sometimes I think it'd be a lot easier being dead. 

- Ah that's bullshit. you couldn't get stoned anymore."

"So now we get married right? 

- No, let's get stoned instead."

"You respect an adult? I really do need to get stoned."

"Someone could murder you you know. Or the Russians could send over a whole batch of nuclear bombs. 

-We should just get the Russians stoned."

Final judgement: This is a parent's worst fucking nightmare/"I feel like someone dipped me in used cooking oil."

Trancers (1984)

Let's set the scene - in a place where political correctness has yet to be born, and hobo baseball is a hilarious joke set starkly against a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a time where a New Age soundtrack and glowing lights mean everything is okay, and punk Jingle Bells makes everyone feel better, in a place of moshing and hideous hair cuts, where you actually light your cigarette before you go inside...this is 1984. This is Trancers. Cue Jack Deth, Angel City PD. He's just time traveled back from 2247 to catch a villain that uses his psychic brain energy to convert the weak-minded into zombies that do his bidding. He's lighting matches with his teeth, blowing up corpses and fending off crazy old ladies that turn into zombies and attack him with a cleaver. As dr_foreman says, this is truly "the eternal struggle between detectives and zombies."
 
This movie is filled with so many one-liners, you'll feel like you've been slapped in the face,

"If I see you in LA again, I don't care if you're a kid, an old lady or a kitty cat, I'm gonna kick your ass."




Not to mention all the other verbal ice cream sundaes:

"Did you mean what you said to me last night?
- Yeah sure. What did I say last night?
You said that making love to me is like the ethereal union of two lost souls."

Mmm, lick it up.

Have I waited this long to mention that Helen Hunt stars in this sci-fi flick? What a travesty. Hey, sweet confederate flag jacket Helen Hunt. It suits you.

The trailer for this film almost says it best:
"Jack Deth is back. And he's never even been here before."

So do yourself a favor, and spend some time with the good kind of Trancers.

Final Judgement: "Dry hair's for squids."/"You're swaying in the strike zone!"/Time travel never seemed so right.

Ticker (2001)

While pawing through mounds of action movies in my living room, this movie was an easy choice for me, mostly because it has so many of my favorite actors all in one movie. The stars, oh the stars. We're talking Dennis Hopper, Steven Seagal, Ice-T (it counts!), Jamie Pressley, Tom Sizemore, Nas, and, can you believe it(?), the bad guy from The Mask! What a crew. Like, how could I not watch this movie? And then I see that it's set in San Francisco, my old hood, and that completely seals the deal. So much glee, so much anticipation. Alas, it became clear to me early on that getting all of those amazing actors all into one movie was the last bit of effort anyone bothered to put into this movie. Don't worry, it's still an epic film (or else I wouldn't review it) - just one with little to no effort put into it.

When I first started watching this millennial classic, I thought to myself, "Wow, they managed to get all known movie cliches in one movie! Impressive!" A little further into the film, I found myself saying, "Dang, not a single line in this movie is original. In fact, I am pretty sure that every single line has been said in between 1 and 100 other action movies." Not much later, I was pretty much convinced that the makers of this movie didn't actually know how to write a script so they just used a computer to randomly sort the occurrences of certain themes and output an algorithm of what should happen in their movie. The result is the most cliche action movie I've ever had the pleasure to witness. But it was a pleasure. Sort of a morbid pleasure, but a pleasure none the less.

And hey! I wasn't that far off! It turns out that this movie looks hastily done because they threw it together in 12 days. 12. Days. In fact, Dennis Hopper was only on set for 1 day, and he didn't even meet any of the other actors. Impressive! Definitely coulda fooled me. I suddenly feel a whole lot better about that horrid Irish accent that he brought to set with him for that one lonely day. Let's just say that the only believable characters in this movie are the members of the blues band at the club.

And perchance did any of movie seem oddly familiar? Don't worry, you're not magical - it's just because a 12-day budget doesn't allow for those old-fashioned hoo-diggy things like cast and crew. Instead, they took the smart way out and "borrowed" footage from 8 other movies to, you know, just, like, fill out this one, make it a normal movie length. Sweet deal. If you're at all tempted, you can see a list of all the movies they used on the imdb trivia site.

But there are a few - nay - several things that make this movie both redeemable and postable, beyond the "lunchbreak cameo by Ice-T" (thank you Kastore). Let me go ahead and list them for you here:
1) Massive explosions with sad Irish music over them, 2) the most sophisticated interrogation techniques I've ever seen, 3) Dennis Hopper saying things like, "That, Pooch, is the very essence of our existence. Synchronicity. Synchronicity," in his Irish accent, and last, but definitely not least, 4) Steven Seagal practicing Zen preacher skills. Yes, he's a Zen bomb-defusing ninja. That alone could save any movie. And so it does. So it does.

Final judgement: I do not regret watching this movie.

Hardware (1990)

We open on the desert under red filter.

A robot hand slowly emerges from under the sand, revealed by a strong wind. A burning man escapee walks across the sand, uncovers the robot.

"This is Angry Bob, the man with the industrial dick!"

Iggy Pop is Angry Bob. The boat-cab driver is Lemmy from Motörhead. And this is how you know you are about to sit through 94 minutes of mind-altering escapism.

A post-apocalyptic Earth, bug tea, zone trippers and Nintendo glove arms (I just can NOT think of the Nintendo glove without reminiscing about the greatness that is Congo). Oh yeah, and there sure is a lot of meditation for such a pervy movie. Yes, super pervy. Some of the lines are too pervy for respectable internet. Luckily, this is not such a respectable site.

"You ready to take it up the ass? What if I fuck you with a string of popcorn up your ass and pull it out real slow?"

"Do you think you're ready to try the Hershey Highway?"

"Take that big dick. Take it all the way in. Take it. Suck him dry. That's it baby...squeeze that tube."

That last one is courtesy of a gross, fat, sweaty pervo masturbating and sticking his tongue out like a dying pig. Ah Hardware. Apparently they had to cut a lot of footage to get the R rating in the US of A. I wonder where that footage is...maybe on France's "Genetic Warrior" release? I guess I know what I'm doing this Friday night...

And despite the fact that this movie was a financial success ($5.7 million to it's $1.5 mill. production budget!), somehow the director Richard Stanley never really went on to do much else. A travesty and tragedy, I am sure.


Just a few more things:
weird psychic circles and flashing lights and Kali Indian god of destruction
radiation free reindeer steaks
slow motion decapitation by baseball bat     &
major good vibes cigarettes


Final judgement: this is some epileptic robot nightmare shit; this is a horror sci-fi post-apocalyptic creature feature; this is a sad broken love story; this is population control - the final solution