Apocalypse Then

BOOBY TRAP aka Wired to Kill

D: Franky Schaeffer 1986

It’s 1998 and LA has been struck down with a killer virus called T.A.P.E.X. that has wiped out one hundred and twenty million people and left the place looking pretty damn bleak. Gangs roam the streets, property values suck and our heroine Rebecca (Emily Longstreth) has just been kicked out of home cos dad’s got himself a new gal and she don’t like the daughter cramping her style.

So Rebecca goes and stays with old friend Steve (Devin Huelscher) who has a nice clean singlet, a house in the hood and a ma and granny which contrasts nicely with the sleazy, greasy gang living in an industrial zone having bedtime stories read to them by their brainiac leader Reegus (Merrit Butrick) who should be played by Wings Hauser but isn’t. Steve is a bit of a brainiac too, in fact he’s that most dreaded of brainiacs - a bedroom musician!!! Only he’s in the shed with his keyboards, junk and dinky electronic music - oh and a robot named Winston. I guess in 1986 the idea of making yr own music from the bedroom was cutting edge but christ on a crutch the music he plays for us sure ain’t. Not unless wanting to cut yr wrists after hearing it counts. In fact the music is very, very 80’s as is the girl as is the boy. Actually if Franky had set the story in 2010 he would have been just about right!

Anyway back to the story, we are after all professionals. The evil greasy gang break into Steve’s place, crack his ma across the skull and grab Rebecca to do rude things to her. Steve saves her but gets his legs broken for his bravery (by Tiny Lister Jr who was Zeus in the WWF!) Couldn’t they have broken his hands, christ, didn’t they hear the music? When ma and granny go to the cops all hell breaks loose. The cop shop itself is damn effective. Barricaded with sandbags and barbed wire, anonymous voices over the PA repeating messages about yr rights and the 1800 number to call about them – very claustrophobic and bleak as is the hospital that Steve goes to. The same public announcements in the same bland voices really adding to the idea of a faceless bureaucracy that doesn’t care what happens in the barrios or slums as long as the rich are protected. Granny gets whacked and killed in a scene that unfortunately sucks and ruins the previous buildup of atmosphere and grime. Budget constraints me thinks. Mum then gets carnapped by the gang, forced into the back of a truck, car and all and crushed. She’s tough though and broken back and all, crawls out of the wreckage. Steve, now confined to a wheelchair, and realizing that the cops can’t do shit, decides to fight back.

He sends Winston the robot out on recon with a camera attached to follow the gang back to their slum lair. Strangely enough none of the denizens of this hell hole notice the ‘little robot who could’ whizzing about. Some white suited ghetto pimp gangstas show up to sell drugs to brainiac and his gang but Winston grabs the money and sneaks off with it. Now armed with some bucks Steve and Rebecca load up their arsenal with guns, ammo, more computer junk and a bike seat that Steve rigs with a knife that’ll gut you from the nuts up! OWWW! Before this though, Rebecca disguised as a hooker sells some wicked blow to a gang member that makes Ice look like Milo. The foaming fake head however was very wisely only shown briefly. Obviously the money was spent on the robot not the special fx. (or the soundtrack)

Rebecca in fact has to do most of the actual leg work since Steve is confined to his chair and his ‘puter screen where he steers Winston (now armed with a pistol) thru his paces. Of course, she gets caught but luckily brainiac has his own plans for her so the gang don’t get to taste the merchandise. In fact brainiac wants to bring some culture to the shithole he calls home so he puts on Romeo & Juliet for the slum suckers and hobos that share his world. I think he’s just happy to have found someone else who can read! Rebecca, chained up and hanging from her arms is forced to read her part in a very painful scene. I admit I squirmed, I must be getting old. Winston comes to her rescue though sending the gang into a frenzy. While they’re all shooting at him, a Klaus Kinski look-a-like frees Rebecca. Why? Is it because he feels sorry for her? Is it because Winston can’t untie knots? No, it’s so he can hunt her….of course. Meanwhile Zeus blows poor old Winston to pieces… awwwww and Klaus takes Rebecca for a drive in the desert. I think he doesn’t want to share. Unfortunately before he can get anywhere with his date he gets his head fried with a pair of booby trapped headphones and a shitty walkman. I’m guessing it was Steve’s music that did it. It was about now that I started to realise that Rebecca was becoming stronger and stronger as the movie went along. The whiney 80s girl was gone and this new girl wanted revenge. They booby trap the gang truck/people mover and in a weird dream sequence/reality segue the gang gets blown to muthafucking pieces that makes me think Frankie was either getting arty or running out of money and time.

The worst is yet to come though when Steve and Rebecca start kissing!!! Noooooo!!!!!!! Luckily brainiac saves us from the disgusting stuff by bursting in on them. Come on you didn’t really think he was dead did you?

I have to say this movie is much better than I expected. The start is slow, the 80s so obvious but once it kicks in there’s something about this movie that I really enjoyed. It’s not yr usual future sci fi apocalyptic fare, the girl is really the hero, she does the hard work, the cripple has to sit in his shed and make things. It’s slower than yr big action flicks but it does occasionally build tension too. Winston is a gas and the faceless bureaucracy idea works especially in hindsight and the shitty grimy cheap feel of it all adds to the movie. This was Schaeffer’s first film which he wrote as well, he went on to make Headhunter and then dropped out to write books. For the materials he had on hand, and the actors (and I use that word loosely) he did a pretty good job. I was pleasantly surprised, you might be too.

So What Did We Learn?

For one thing, you can’t rely on bureaucracy in the future or the police, they’re just out to protect themselves. Bad bedroom music will live on forever and Shakespeare is still the culture of choice for all budding greasy thespians.

Five frosty beers out of six for this one but don’t you dare dance to the music!

redneck lounge open for business

That's right muthas! the lounge is back - thursday nite 13th May at The Squatters Arms Hotel, George Street Thebarton. Kicking off from 8pm with some spoken word from Adelaide's finest : Jenny T, Amelia Walker, Peter Puglsey, Tracey K. and live acoustic sets from: GG Alan Bindig and the TRIF Spinks Special! plus redneck lounging all night long!

six pack review - Trailer Park Of Terror

Trailer Park Of Terror
DVD Approx 97 Mins 2008 USA MA 15+ Madman

In a trailer park full of the absolute bottom of the barrel, redneck, white trash, stereotype scum the gorgeous young Norma (Nichole Hiltz looking so much like Jaime Pressly I had to check the credits) is preparing herself for a date with Aaron, a boy from the good side of the tracks. You can tell he’s from the good side ‘cos he has a clean pick up truck and a shirt with sleeves. But the park boys don’t take kindly to losing their precious Norma to Aaron and indulge in a little ‘push me shove you’ teasing which unfortunately ends with Aaron impaled on a fence!
Her date ruined Norma storms off only to bump into the devil in the shape of Country/Honky Tonk singer Trace Adkins!! Yes, Trace Fucking Adkins!! How cool is that? Well I guess I just outed myself didn’t I? Adkins offers the distraught young hottie a deal she can’t refuse and soon the whole trailer park is wallowing in blood.

That was 1981 and as we see the headlines and years roll by, it seems a lot of folk have gone missing since then in the area – cue 2008 and a busload of troubled teens. Yep, it’s victim time! Six kids and their pastor, caught out by bad weather and an errant abandoned truck in the middle of the road, find themselves at the trailer park where a surprisingly hot looking Norma greets them. Surprising because the last time we saw Norma she was blowing herself and the trailer park to hell. The kids, a nympho, a gothchick, a druggie, a gay lad, a thief and a hardcase tough boy are then regaled with Norma’s story. Seems that her stepdaddy Stank (Ed Corbin) had a sideline making dirty movies with Mama (Priscilla “Three’s Company” Barnes) as the main attraction. But one day it all went wrong and the sheriff put a bullet through Mama’s head – all in front of Norma. Who then had to finish the movie! No wonder she was so desperate to get out. After telling the kids her sad story she packs them off to kip down in some of the other trailers while she strips down in front of the window for the poor young preacher. Seems he’s having trouble resisting temptation but when his spirit finally breaks he gets a lot more than he bargained for.

Our gorgeous Norma who regularly patches herself up and pumps up her boobs with an air compressor is, along with the rest of the park’s denizens, doomed to an eternity of claiming souls for the devil. And the kids are their latest victims. One by one the brats are picked off, brutalized and destroyed with some serious b-grade brutality, bloodshed and imagination.
I mean the rockabilly zombie geetar slingin’ Roach(Myk Watford) cuts off a gal’s arm and she’s too drugged up to even know it’s happening. Roach then gets hisself blown up chasing gothgirl Bridget (Jeanette Brox) through his booby trapped dope crop. Later on we watch him getting’ gaffer taped and stapled back together. Another boy has his spine crushed by an Asian zombie hooker before getting his tackle ripped off. It also seems that Stank is still making movies except the kids don’t want to co-operate resulting in some nasty work. See, Stank’s other source of income is Jerky. And he’ll use whatever meat is available to make it. I’ve seen some gruesome and gory movie killings over the years but this was my first full body deep fry! And that was after the bully boy had been forced to eat little pieces of himself! FAAAAAARKKKK!!!!!! If that don’t make you sit up and take notice nothin’ will.

This isn’t your usual zombie flick though, this is more 80s stalker movie, just with dead folk doing the killing. If you’re looking for rampaging dead things sucking out brains you’ll be disappointed. But if the idea of comedy sitcom My Name Is Earl being invaded by redneck zombie crackers appeals to you then this is the film for you. With nods to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance (only with electric geetar instead o’ banjo), as well as the zombie genre and more than a touch of twisted humour this is one hell of a funny, bloodthirsty, violent and hilarious mash up of genres that comes up trumps.

For a direct to video release this is a surprisingly good quality product. Clear, clean and punching well above its weight. With good sound, so clear you can hear the blood drip and a soundtrack that’ll rip shreds off your lame ass top forty ipod shite. plus a 30 minute behind the scenes featurette and Interviews with the trailer park zombies (And I mean with the zombies! Not the actors) Great visuals, great acting (especially for a cast of unknowns and tv actors), the film sets a great pace, it looks good, sounds great – it’s a hell of a ride! Sure there is nothing new in the idea but hell it’s called Trailer Park Of Terror!! You didn’t pick it up because you were wanted Barry Luhmann did you? This isn’t b-grade this is B PLUS!!! And that soundtrack!! Hell, I want me a copy of that for my next barbecue and beer fest! Now get me a cold beer and chuck another possum on the coals will ya?

Director: Steven Goldmann
Writer: Timothy Dolan
Cast: Nichole Hiltz
Trace Adkins
Priscilla Barnes
Stefanie Black
Jeanette Brox
Ryan Carnes
Ed Corbin
Brock Cuchna
Matthew Del Negro
Dale Dickey
Brandon Ellison
Michelle Lee
Ricky Mabe
J.P. Manoux
Cody McMains
J. Brian Miles
Hayley Marie Norman
Lew Temple
Tracey Walter
Myk Watford
Duane Whitaker

CASSETTE CULTURE PART III

Time to shake out the dust in my bones, dig through the drawers and on top of the cupboards and reload the K-Tel cassette selector with some more weaponry!

AEROSMITH – BEST OF one of them cheap series from the late 80s that all the majors seemed to be pumpin’ out at the time – only ten tracks but hell, it’s all the good early stuff – Dream On, Back In The Saddle, Walk This Way, Draw The Line… it does the job

DEEP PURPLE – BURN Fuck Machine Head!! This is the fucken album you should all have! With Coverdale singin;. Blackmore smokin’ the fret board, songs that nail you to the wall – this had the lot! Burn, Mistreated, Might Just Take Your Life… the fuggin’ real deal!

JIM CROCE – GREATEST HITS Complete with inserted lyric sheet, I picked this up for 20c somewhere and it doesn’t even have the song I wanted on it! But hell, it’s got plenty of other good shit. Croce’s trouble is that (A) he’s dead and (B) in Australia all he’s known for is Bad Bad Leroy Brown. Well lemme tell ya the son of a bitch nailed a lot more than just that pain in the ass song… Operator, Rapid Roy, Roller Derby Queen… just to name a few. And the damn song that wasn’t on here - Box No. 10… a great songwriter, a great voice… specially with a touch of bourbon in yr gut and the blues in yr throat.

V/A - FANTASTIC K-Tel compilation from very early 70s with the likes of Slade, Gazza, Free, Dingoes and a mess more. A strange mix as they always were but hell it brings back some memories – not always good ones but that’s my childhood right there…

COLD CHISEL – RADIO SONGS Everyone hates these guys cos of Barnesy! Well fuck you. When I was 12 or 13 this stuff was raw and loud and made perfect sense to an alienated kid in the mid 70s. The fact they made money and had hit singles seems to mean they can’t be ‘cool’… I don’t really care, I’d still rather get drunk as fuck and sing Goodbye Astrid Goodbye more often than not. This is bogan rock, nothing more, nothing less… and I’m embracing my roots cos I for one am damn proud of them.

WHITESNAKE – SLIP OF THE TONGUE/ SELF TITLED (1987) Maxell SLN90 tape I bought at a garage sale with two albums from the king of the long haired, botoxed rock and roll crowd of the 80s – David Coverdale. I mean really how can you not like a man that names his band after his dick, who has guitar slingers like Steve Vai on board and who got to bang Tawney back when she was still young and good lookin’. A role model for all of us. And more damn hooks that a Japanese Whaling Fleet.

ZODIAC MINDWARP – TATTOOED BEAT MESSIAH “Well I love TV and I love T.Rex, I can see thru your skirt, I got x-ray spex” what more do you need to know? Dirty, sleazy, glam rock bastards who understood what it was all about. And with a twisted sense of humour to boot. Couldn’t have existed any other time except the 80s but hell he made it fun for awhile.

CHARLEY PRIDE – GREATEST HITS One of many best of albums for the black country crooner – and sure there’s plenty of them sappy love songs but there’s also Miller’s Cave, The Snakes Crawl At Night, Kaw Liga and Crystal Chandelier so for 25 damn cents I ain’t complainin’. And on Sunday mornings, there’s not much better than Charley’s croon to slowly drag you back to yr senses.

JOHNNY CASH – GREATEST HITS VOL 1 ‘Cept of course for JC. This early comp has the good shit – Ring Of Fire, I Walk The Line, Ballad Of Ira Hayes… doesn’t get much better does it?

ANGELS – FACE TO FACE Another iconic Aussie pub band that cops flack for bein’ popular but hell, ain’t too many that done it better. And this early album o’ theirs is close to the best they did… Take A Long Line, Marseilles, After The Rain, Comin’ Down… fuck it’s all gold, it’s angry but it’s controlled and it hits the right spots. Beer drinking, front bar, fist pumping juke box rock and roll!

V/A – TRUCKSTAR MUSIC One of a bunch of cheap tapes I picked up from the scout hall, half of which didn’t even play but that’s the way it goes. Dave Dudley, Skeeter Davis, Red Simpson - lots of familiar country drivin’ tunes like Six Days On The Road and Give Me 40 Acres… sure as shit ain’t the best thing I ever picked up but far from the worst… if only it had Teddy Bear on it…

V/A – COUNTRY BALLADEERS Same batch but with the real deal goin’ off. Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell (Wichita Lineman – does it get any better?), Lefty Frizell – with this comp you get the feeling someone with some knowledge was around to put it all together… can’t go wrong and another Sunday morning ‘what the fuck is that mess on my shoes?” type o’ cassette.

MOTORHEAD/METAL CHURCH – BEST OF/ THE DARK One I put together myself way back in the day… and one I still crank up. The Dark was The Metal Church at their early peak – loud and aggressive and seminal… the Lemmy collection is one of many but this has a fair selection including the classics – Ace Of Spades, Jail Bait, I Got Mine, Over The Top, even Louie Louie… makes for a great way to wake the neighbour’s dogs!!

GLEN MILLER – CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO Not as good as listenin’ to Glenn on 78 but a dozen of his better known swing toons on tape and hell, I like the sweet simple style he had – the fucker could swing, what more do you want?

KEVIN BLOODY WILSON Another garage sale find Teac 60 minute tape of the bogan comedian who’s makin’ a fortune outta bein’ as blatantly rude, dumb and as funny as yr best mate on a Saturday night after the footy when all the wives have left and yr standing around the fire drinkin’ someone else’s bundy and cola cans cos they’re flaked on the front lawn. Love this bastard!

T.REX / ADAM ANT – VERY BEST OF A split tape compilation with ten Bolan tracks from Metal Guru thru to Laser Love plus 8 of Adam’s finer moments on the other side. Not sure why it was released or who decided to slap these two together but hell it saves having to look for the singles I guess. (I mean Ants – already got damn near all the T.Rex stuff but I couldn’t just leave the tape there lonely on the table could I?)

V/A – MUSIC FOR DEMENTED JELLYBEANS Back when I was 17/18 me and some mates, inspired by The Warriors and after seeing a pack of 12 year olds who called themselves The Cobras, formed a street gang, well – a car gang or something… we called ourselves Demented Jellybeans – named for our dress sense and our love of Monty Python… this tape was the soundtrack that I put together for our nights cruising the streets looking for girls, action, The Cobras or anything else to wash away the sawdust and blandness of our lives. Kiss, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, Skyhooks, The Goons, Bowie, Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Slade and more besides… I still play this tape all the time though it loses something in translation now… we all got older, none of us wiser but the music still reminds me what it was like back then… a soundtrack for a nostalgic old drunk… hell of a way to be remembered.

The VeeBees – Live At Summernauts (Ocker Records)

The bastard sons of the Cosmic Psychos and the girl who inspired AC/DC’s Whole Lotta Rosie cookin’ snags and playin’ loud at the biggest, drunkest, revhead-carfreak, tyre burning, high octane, beer guzzling frenzy that is Summernaut would seem like the perfect fuckin’ party!! And you know what? It fuckin’ is! After listening to this raw, straight off the board, fuck the mixing down, tidying up, let’s adjust the vocals type o’ shit LIVE album that just stinks of stale beer, sausage fat, bundy vomit and petrol fumes I’m fuckin’ jealous that I wasn’t there. Full of classic ocker rock toons, like Beer O’Clock, Pissed On Sunday, Shootin’ And Rootin’, Roots’n’Blues, Up The Shit and my personal fave – Drinkin’ Problem plus a cover of Verbal Abuse – Rock Your Liver and chockers with witty stage banter and offers of fairy bread and poofter sausages, this is an album you can’t listen to without cracking a beer or four or six. So don’t put this on if yre supposed to be having tea with the in-laws or going to church or meeting yr kid’s teacher cos you’ll be so smashed after listenin’ to this that you won’t be wantin’ to do anything but hop in the ute, drive down the bottle-o, load up with another carton, come home, light the barbie and cranking this damn thing up again. If you can listen to this and stay sober, you’re not really listening!

TOTAL NON STOP ACTION?? DVD REVIEW

TNA Wrestling - Jeff Jarrett King Of The Mountain

Madman
Region 4 – PAL
4 dvd set – 714 minutes

With TNA Wrestling about to enter a new era with Hulk Hogan and his cronies taking over the steering and aiming straight for the rocks this four dvd set is a handy reminder of TNA’s beginnings and early vision. But that said I must also point out the obvious…
A four disc set of Jeff Jarrett??!!!! What sort of egotistical maniac thinks we need four discs of one wrassler? I mean, nobody gets four discs! Not Eddie Guerrero, not Macho Man Randy Savage, not even Edge so why did Jarrett warrant four? Oh yeah, because he started TNA, that’s why. And he doesn’t let us forget it either. Actually this near 12 hour collection (that’s right 12 hours of Jarrett!) should have been called the history of TNA because along with Jarrett’s own history we also get the history of TNA from its first PPV right through to the modern Kurt Angle era. And say what you want about Jeff, he does know talent when he sees it – I mean AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, Abyss, James Storm… these are the guys that are setting the wrasslin’ world alight right now. (or being copied by big brother WWE). And Jarrett himself bleeds for the company.

Now onto the serious stuff – the collection starts off with possibly the most egotistical and funniest intro I’ve heard in a long time before getting into Jeff’s early life and sporting history, offering us a glimpse at a teenager who could have gone to basketball or wrestling but whose family ties were so strong he chose the grapple. Matches from the early days of TNA are interspersed with Jarrett’s interview so we get the very first TNA PPV – a royal rumble with Buff Bagwell and Scott Hall amongst other has-beens and up and comers plus country singer Toby Keith getting involved before having to tolerate Vince Russo’s gimmicks as well as a young AJ Styles and a truly bloody and vicious match with Raven when he still could move freely. By this stage despite the gimmicks, the interference in every match, the ref bumps I was beginning to respect JJ who let’s face it was never really superstar material – not b-grade mind you but not a-plus either. Here though his mini-me Ric Flair strut and constant juicing fit in and come across well. The singles matches do start to drag though – I mean how many times can we see the same gimmicks over and over – ref gets knocked out, outside interference… blah blah blah, thankfully there are matches with the likes of Raven, Rhino and Jeff Hardy to break the “seen it, heard it, know what’s coming” feeling but really it was the interviews that were keeping my interest by disc 2. When we start getting into the tag team matches on disc 3 it picks up again – 6 man suplex!, Team 3D, Scott Steiner, Sting, watching AJ Styles come off a ladder on top of a cage and put James Storm (or was it Chris Harris?) through a table!!! This is what TNA is all about – they do things you don’t expect, they have wrestlers who really put themselves on the line and Jarrett for awhile was doing it too. The second half of the collection is more about TNA itself than just Jarrett’s story and for wrasslin’ fans it’s worth the look. Styles, Angel., Sting and all the background guys get a word or two in as well. Of course it is biased and one sided but it is an interesting peek at how things got going, even if a little whitewashed. When we get to 2007’s Slammiversary and Jarrett addresses the crowd about his wife Jill’s battle and death from breast cancer I dare you to have a dry eye. I’ll admit I cried watching it live that day and I cried again watching it on dvd. One of the most honest few minutes you will ever see from a sportsman, hell any man. It’s this willingness to let you in to his personal life that makes you forget just how much of wrestling is pre-ordained and planned. You get a glimpse of the man himself as well as the image he’s trying to create.

I still think 12 hours of any wrestler is too much, this would have been a great two disc set – one disc for the interviews, one disc with all the good matches and you would have had a damn near perfect distillation of what makes TNA so good. But then that’s what the chapter select is for. And for real fans, there’s a couple of bonus matches at the end – early footage of Jarrett taking on Jerry The King Lawler (back when he was a wrestler not a schlepp for WWE), Cactus Jack (ditto) and Hector Guerrero! Say what you like about Jeff Jarrett but he loves his wrestling. That above all shines through.

There's a little bit of a petrolhead in all of us

Love The Beast
D: Eric Bana 2009

A documentary by an Aussie actor who’s a Hollywood star about his love for his first car doesn’t sound all that exciting does it? Unless you are a big Eric Bana fan or a revhead.
I’m essentially neither, having never seen Bana in anything except Chopper and having not owned a car for some years now (and being mechanically inept when I did own one.) That said though this is a great movie. Perhaps because I don’t see Bana as a Hollywood star I can quite happily accept him as a guy with a passion for cars, a guy who just happens to have access to Jay Leno, Jeremy Clarkson and Dr. Phil but also a guy who still gets together with his mates from childhood to play with their cars.
And really that is what this movie is about – passion. Whether its music, splatter movies, Jess Franco’s leading ladies, sports or yes, cars – everyone has a passion, something they love, truly love and will defend, collect, rave on about, watch, play, study… For Eric and his mates, it has always been cars and in Bana’s case his first car an XB Ford Falcon Coupe, bought for him by his father when he was just fifteen years old. As his mate Tony so eloquently puts it, “I’ve never met anyone who’s had a car for so long that’s been a heap of shit and been so in love with it.”
This film is all about that car “The Beast” and Bana’s plans to race it in the 2007 Targa Rally in Tasmania. Eleven years before, a younger and less famous Bana had raced there for the first time but now with the car completely stripped down and rebuilt he wants to do it all again. Along the way we are treated to the story of how he got the car, how his friends helped him to prepare it, we are given a look at the boy, the Melbourne suburbs he grew up in, the 65 T-Bird his father still keeps in the garage, refusing to get rid of it though it hasn’t been driven for ten years. There’s the mateship and bond that exists between Eric and his mates who despite their different lifestyles still get together when the beast calls.
And yes there are those special guest interviews. Leno shows off his aircraft hangar sized garage chock full of cars, Clarkson talks about how cars are more than just objects and Dr. Phil? Well, he is as irritating as ever. Doesn’t matter what the guy talks about, he’s a pain in the ass.
And then there is the race itself. Four days in, Bana crashed the beast into a tree, totalling the car but luckily not harming himself or his navigator Tony. Two days later Bana had to attend a red carpet premiere for a movie back in New York. In a great little scene he mocks the whole Hollywood scene before getting out there and doing what he has to do to promote a movie he only vaguely remembers making. Meanwhile his one true love sits in a garage, broken and bent and waiting for him to come home.

Bana has done a beautiful job with this doco, it could have quite easily just been a “look at me, aren’t I cool? I race cars and I act and I know all the stars” type thing but instead it’s just another guy and his mates, his family right behind him, trying to live a dream, trying to finish a race. The fact he does know a few famous folk helps get the interviews but its not played out as a ‘cool buddy’ thing – in fact Clarkson rags him about his car! This is purely about a bloke’s passions, about family and friends, about what is important to people. To some of us, it is our car, to some it’s owning every Beatles record ever made, for others its following a football team or a movie director, or playing guitar or collecting books – forget about Bana the actor for awhile and think of Eric Bana, revhead kid from the ‘burbs of Melbourne, Eric Bana rally driver, father, son, mate – that’s the guy in this documentary. Do that and you’ll enjoy the ride.

PUPPETMASTER

D: David Schmoeller 1989

From the house of Charles Band, the Roger Corman lite of the new millennium comes a classic example of late 80s exploitation and madness. With well over 200 movies under his belt either directing, writing or producing, Band knows how to entertain. Sure it’s all low budget, small time television actors and washed out ex-stars, strange stories, cash-ins and exploitation but he does it so well. With Puppetmaster he’s come up with a story that can best be described as just plain nuts but entertaining never the less. Schmoeller, who directed Tourist Trap and Crawlspace amongst others, would seem to be a kindred soul and he’s put together a beautifully looking film using the main set of a 1930s hotel to its full advantage.
Our story starts in 1939 at the Bodega Bay Hotel where a strange old man is making puppets, evil looking little buggers that he then brings to life. Seems the old man is the last in a long line of alchemists who know the secrets of the after life as passed down from the Egyptians. Of course we don’t find that out until later in the film so for now we just know he’s a clever bugger. When two men in trenchcoats with German accents show up though we also know the old guy hasn’t got much longer to live. Unperturbed he hides the puppets, bites the bullet before the trenchcoats can even be opened and we then segue to ‘now’ where Paul Le Mat (American Graffiti) , looking remarkably like Peter Gabriel circa Sledgehammer only gone to seed, is having bad dreams about leeches and guns. It turns out that Paul’s character Alex is part of a small group of psychics who have been brought together by a man named Gallagher (Jimmie Skaggs) to do something though they aren’t quite sure what. When the group consisting of Alex who dreams of future events, a white witch Dana (Irene Miracle – Inferno’s Rose Elliot) who has a dead dog as a companion, a couple of scientists, Frank (Matt Roe) who doesn’t do much except look like a pimp and Carlissa (the very hot Kathryn O’Reilly) who can tell who’s been shagging in this bed, bathtub, elevator etc just by touch (nice work if you can get it) gather at the Bodega Bay they discover that Gallagher is dead, having bit the bullet himself. From there it’s a magical mystery tour as the story slowly unfolds, puppets pop up everywhere and people start dying. The puppets are awesome too. There’s a pinhead with human size hands, a puppet with a drill on his head, a Klaus Kinski lookalike with a hook on one hand and a knife on the other and a seductress who spews leeches! I kid you not!! While Alex dreams strange dreams about Gallagher and his wife Megan (Robin Frates) who owns the Bodega Bay, the puppets knock off the others one by one. Gruesome, bizarre and in the case of the leeches just plain disgusting, this is a film you wouldn’t want to watch while on psychedelic drugs. Unfortunately for all involved, it seems Gallagher has discovered the secret of eternal life but wants to eliminate his quartet of psychic companions before they can stop him. Unfortunately for Gallagher he upsets the puppets who then turn on their master and in a gory, twisted finale, give him a real seeing to. Luckily for us, Le Mat doesn’t have to do too much because, lets be honest, a bloated, gone to seed Peter Gabriel lookalike is not what you would call hero material.