Dr Hermes Reviews - VIDEO WILDERNESS
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ABERRATION (1997) (March 20, 2002)   Okay killer-critter type horror flick, but man does it take a long time to get rolling. In the snowy boondocks of New Zealand, a couple of humans are threatened by these mutant lizard varmints that are hard to kill and who have unfortunately found human flesh very tasty. There's gore and screaming and running around and cabins blowing up-- all that good old drive-in sort of entertainment-- and partway through a Russian gangster with a pair of guns seems to wander in, seemingly from a different movie altogether. Pamela Gidley is fun to watch, with her shock of white hair (and an impressive rack in that long-sleeved turtleneck), but the crooked character she plays just isn't likeable and neither is the young tree-hugger she harasses the entire movie. If these had been folks you were cheering to survive, the movie would have been much more fun to watch. And the video box wins the misleading art award for the month, implying ABERRATION is sort of like the movie SPECIES. It's not.

THE ALL-AMERICAN GIRL (1972)

(April 2, 2002)

 
This is a soft-core porn movie that actually played in theatres. Of course, that was long before VCRs or Cable TV-- today, this would fit right in on a late night showing on Showtime or HBO. And just a bit after this flick came out, DEEP THROAT opened (sorry) and actual hardcore porn became more accessible to the public.

In any case, this is actually not too bad. Very pretty Peggy Church (also in THE BIG SNATCH) is believable and likeable, and she seems to be actualy having some fun here. She plays a young girl named Debbie, who promises her mother she will not go all the way-- but she certainly experiments with everything short of the actual deed. In some ways, soft-core is more erotic and more like real life than hard-core, where everything is brightly overlit and you can see every tiny detail. All the action here takes place just an inch or two off-camera, which in itself stimulates the ol' imagination. This type of flick is not for everyone but for fans of the Golden Age of Soft-Core Movies, it's a gem.

AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON (1987) (Aug 22, 2005) It's difficult to enjoy this film, because it has five directors and (not surprisingly) is very uneven. About half of the skits are excellent, clever and inventive comedy. John Landis and Joe Dante throw in their usual bizarre touches. Unfortunately the rest of the movie has long tepid stretches which dull the effects of the good parts. The film has no pacing and doesn't seem to schedule its segments well. Even so, it's worth viewing if only for the once-in a lifetime cast of cult favorites doing comic skits and bits -- I mean, there's Rosanna Arquette , Michelle Pfeiffer, Carrie Fisher, B.B. King, Forrest J Ackerman, Russ Meyer, Steve Gutenberg, Rip Taylor, Andrew Dice Clay, William Marshall (as a literal Video Pirate), and the list goes on. Trivia buffs orf the 80s will have great glee as they spot obscure favorites. (In fact, the opening credits simply say, "Starring a lot of actors.") The basic premise is that we're watching a 1950s drive-in flick, AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON; during commercial breaks, we switch stations to see bizarre skits that are apparently parts of other programs. My favorite is the black & white take-off on Universal's classic horror films with Ed Begley as the son of the Invisible Man, who only thinks he's invisible. But there are also many gags which stand on their own (like Arsenio Hall's apartment trying to kill him) and these don't fit into the storyline. It doesn't matter, really. I would recommend KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE way more strongly than this, and if you enjoy that classic, give AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON a shot with lowered expectations.

AMERICAN PSYCHO 2: THE ALL AMERICAN GIRL (2002)

(Dec 23, 2003)

Pretty funny in a twisted way. This is not much like the original AMERICAN PSYCHO, and its satire is less perceptive, but it's still a worthwhile dark comedy. A college co-ed becomes obsessed with getting a position as teaching assistant to her favorite professor (in a class about serial killers), and since she already has an unhealthy fascination with those serial killers... well, anyone who gets in her way ends up with an icepick in the head and getting thrown into the trunk of her car.
It's funny because she rationalizes her killings as a necessary way to get in a position where she can stop hundreds of real serial killers. The real reason to watch this is so you have an excuse to stare at Mila Kunis for ninety minutes. She's both gorgeous and hilarious, chatting with the corpses of her victims as if they're her stuffed animals, rolling her eyes as her parents come to visit just when there's a body stuffed in the closet. I can't explain how a little foxlette who seems to be just five feet tall on tippy toes can haul husky dead jocks down stairs and into dumpsters so easily, but maybe it's the same principle that allows the hero to jump back up after being clubbed over the head with a two by four.

ANDY AND THE AIRWAVE RANGERS (1988) PG! 78 minutes! What was I thinking!? Honestly, I tried to sit through this, but it just made me throw things about the TV in rage over the sheer mendacity of these crooks. These guys took clips from old Roger Corman movies (which were not exactly works of art to begin with) and inserted a kid (on videotape) looking for his sister, who has become trapped inside a TV set somehow. Arrgghh! I can't stand it! This is worse than watching an ABC Afterschool Special about returning library books on time. I wanted to take a marker and write DON'T RENT THIS on the cassette box. Gag! Choke! Absolute dredge.

THE ASSASSIN (1977) Okay, let's lurk in the dusty, poorly-lit nooks of the video store and snatch up three likely-looking video oddities. Let's see....howzabout THE ASSASSIN. If through some arcane magic, you took a mid-1970s Charles Bronson flicks (say, THE MECHANIC) and somehow transmogrified all the actors in Japanese, you'd have this movie. It's a competent, crime-fighting rampage with the standard plot of an undercover cop getting two rival gangs to wipe each other out, but THE ASSASSIN is, well, unnecessary. No surprises. By 1977, Tokyo was so Westernized that a film had to seek out exotic detail or it could be set in Anytown, Movieland. Shinichi 'Sonny' Chiba, the star of maybe forty action picturs from ol' Nippon, is his usual sullen, rabid self here. He can handle a fight scene with the best of 'em, but he doesn't get to wreck the landscape in his usual way. This is not a thriller which delivers.