Monsters and Men **

If someone knew nothing about life on earth, and gleaned all they knew about the New York Police Department from watching Reinaldo Marcus Green’s bitch-burn-downer Monsters and Men – or, as I am dubbing it, Dindus and Dems – that viewer could hardly be blamed for believing that the NYPD exists primarily for the purpose of persecuting innocent people of color. The film is a bit reminiscent of Paul Haggis’s Crash (2004), but updated for the angrier decade of hands-up-don’t-shoot hoaxery. In a story inspired by the death of Eric Garner, a racist white police officer shoots a po innocent brotha jus tryna sell some loosies on the corner – and witness Manny (Anthony Ramos) must now decide whether to keep his head down to protect his family or release his camera phone footage to the internet and risk the repercussions. In another of its threads, Dindus and Dems traces the turmoil experienced by aspiring baseball star Zyrick (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) who, after experiencing police harassment, finds himself attracted to a troublemaking BLM-style organization despite the expectations of his more conservative father. Thirdly, Dindus and Dems follows black police officer Dennis (John David Washington, who has inherited father Denzel’s voice), who finds himself torn between his loyalty toward the force, his firsthand knowledge of discriminatory policing, and his fellow blacks’ perception of him as a race traitor. It’s worthwhile to watch trash like this once in a while, if only to see just how far removed from reality liberals’ understandings of race relations are to the extent that they take their cues from corporate media messaging – and, as Dindus and Dems makes abundantly clear, we appear to be inhabiting entirely different planets.

2 out of 5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Dindus and Dems is:

5. Anti-drug. After being stopped and searched by police officers, Zyrick goes home and flushes a packet of weed down the toilet, presumably because he realizes the trouble he would have been in had the police found the pretext to arrest him. Drug use is also mentioned as a potential barrier to professional athletic success.

4. Pro-AIDS. The community organizing horde that Zyrick joins focuses on black grievances but also advocates for “trans women”.

3. Pro-family. Dindus and Dems presents more than one example of caring fathers. As Zyrick’s trajectory illustrates, however, fathers do not possess ultimate moral authority and are subject to rebellion.

2. Anti-capitalistic – but only disingenuously so. “Look around. Just turn on the TV,” insists a black street corner poetess. “KKK walkin’ ‘round here free. No white sheets. White shirts and ties, all lies. Wall Street lookin’ far too familiar like the cotton fields of Virginia,” she conjures, equating the world of finance with southern plantation culture – rather than, say, kibbutzim. Wall Street would look “far too familiar” to writer-director Reinaldo Marcus Green, who, according to Filmmaker Magazine, slaved “for five years as a director of talent acquisitions in diversity on Wall Street.”

1.Woke. Dindus and Dems is set in the “tight-knit” Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, which also served as the setting for Spike Lee’s similarly provocative but rather more honest Do the Right Thing (1989). Ironically, this is also the neighborhood where police officers Wenjian Liu and Raphael Ramos were murdered “execution-style” in their patrol car by angry black psycho Ismaayil Brinsley in 2014. As Dindus and Dems would have it, though, it is innocent black men just trying to get home from baseball practice or cruise around listening to Al Green who are hunted by Nazi cops with impunity. “You got a hoodie on, for chrissake,” Zyrick’s father objects before his son heads downtown to participate in a protest – the implication being that this increases the chances that some white person will shoot him a la Trayvon Martin. Inspiringly, the end of the film presents sportsball as a safe and productive means through which blacks can voice their gripes.

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

Rainer is the author of the books Drugs, Jungles, and Jingoism and Protocols of the Elders of Zanuck: Psychological Warfare and Filth at the Movies.

The Homesman *****

Pioneer life is a neglected subject on twenty-first century movie screens – not being sufficiently hyper-violent or anus-oriented to guarantee rentals, one imagines. It may, however, also be because a movie like The Homesman blows to smithereens any goofy notions of “white privilege” or of American whites’ allegedly unearned prosperity having been built on the backs of slaves. Existence for the earliest Midwestern settlers was brutal, as is brought to vivid life in this impressive film from writer-director-star Tommy Lee Jones, who plays a scoundrel drafted by upstanding citizen Hilary Swank to transport three crazed women back east by wagon. This being ultra-Zionist Haim Saban’s production, however, it goes without saying that other, less savory currents are also at work in the film.

[WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS]

5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that The Homesman is:

6. Anti-Christian. One of the women, clearly deranged by the one-two punch of frontier life and old-time religion, imagines herself to be the Almighty and threatens, “God will strike you down!”

5. Anti-racist (i.e., pro-yawn). Viewers who blink may miss a shot of black slaves in a wagon, reminding the audience that black people had it even harder. When Jones tells an anecdote about killing Indian horse thieves, Swank’s facial reaction gives the viewer to understand that his insensitivity has disturbed her. Jones, encountering another group of Indians, gives them a horse to make them leave him alone. The idea would seem to be that whites, if they want to live in peace with minority neighbors, ought to accustom themselves to such life-or-death generosity.

4. Pro-gun. Guns are a handy frontier equalizer, especially for a woman.

3. Bolshevik. When wealthy businessman James Spader refuses to give room or board to Jones and company because they are not “socially acceptable”, the protagonist, in one of The Homesman’s more colorful lines, tells Spader’s party, “Your mothers and your sisters and your wives and your daughters will cuss your broke-dick souls!” He later returns to the inn where Spader’s group is staying and sets it ablaze, burning them alive.

2. Anti-family. From the sickening moment the Saban Films logo comes up onscreen, the informed viewer knows that something evil is afoot; and the institutions of marriage and family really come in for a drubbing in this otherwise exceptional film, unfortunately. “You hate me! I hate you!” These words set the tone for married life on the prairie in The Homesman. “You will give me a son,” insists a husband as he fucks his wife as impersonally as some robotic movie Nazi. Further obsessing over his “seed”, he borderline-rapes her as her mother, lying beside her in the bed, pretends not even to notice. Conventional domesticity is equated with horror as a woman’s darning drudgery unexpectedly turns into an act of self-mutilation with a sewing needle. In The Homesman’s most shocking scene, one of the women throws her baby down the hole in an outhouse. She is at no point treated as a murderer, but regarded as a victim of circumstances.

1. Feminist. Swank is “as good a man as any man hereabouts”, her character furnishing a model of culture and propriety in contrast with loutish, dirty men. After twice (or more, one suspects) having her marriage proposals refused by men undeserving of her (who say she is “too bossy” and “plain”), she quietly hangs herself as a proto-feminist martyr of sorts, a woman ahead of her time for whom the Nebraska territory simply offered no opportunities equal to her personal merit and talents. Jones, by contrast, is prepared to meet his death only with copious begging and whimpering.

Rainer Chlodwig von Kook

Outpost: Black Sun ***1/2

In the opening scene of Outpost: B.S., an elderly gentleman (Michael Byrne) in a nursing home receives a visit from a young woman, Lena (Catherine Steadman), claiming to be his long-lost niece. Rather than embracing him, however, she turns insolent, grasps his hand, breaks his fingers, and even pilfers the old man’s ring. This, one assumes, is intended to endear her to the audience when the man is revealed to have been a Nazi, and social justice demands that, lest the Fourth Reich rise up and six zillion more Jews suffer another Holohoax, wheelchair-bound geezers must be physically abused.

Whereas this film’s predecessor, Outpost (2008), was an impressive exercise in modestly budgeted horror-action that benefited in macho economy from focusing on a gruff, totally male ensemble of seasoned mercenaries, this 2012 sequel shoots itself in the boot from the beginning by featuring a Jewish Nazi huntress as the heroine, thus injecting a dose of sanctimonious and emotional motivation into the franchise where none was needed. Something of the sense of suspense that drove the first film remains in evidence, however, as the bothersome Nazi zombies are on the loose again and conquering a constantly broadening swath of already war-torn Eastern Europe. It also becomes more entertaining once a British commando unit enters the story, contributing a brusque, confrontational snottiness.

The cast is fine and does what it can with the preposterous material. Catherine Steadman is pretty and hardly to be faulted for her annoying character’s uselessness to the franchise; however, the teaser ending, which suggests that she will also play the lead in the expected third installment, is somewhat disappointing for that reason.

[WARNING: SPOILERS]

Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Outpost: B.S. is:

9. Pro-family. Lena carries on a family tradition of Nazi-hunting and hopes to avenge relatives who died in the Holohoax.

8. Anti-military/anti-nuke. The term “military intelligence” is used sarcastically. Hovering over the whole mission, meanwhile, is the threat of a nuclear option that would probably not be efficacious in any event.

7. Anti-slavery (i.e., pro-yawn). A black soldier (Gary McDonald) winces at the sight of a chain and shackle.

6. Anti-state. The American spokesman for a “UN-backed task force” claims to be looking for chemical weapons, but actually wants to secure the Nazi superweaponry for his government. “Any government will pay any price” for the technology.

5. Anti-Slav. Scientist Wallace (Richard Coyle) claims to have been betrayed by Russian partners. “Don’t do time in one of their prisons. They’re cold,” he says, presumably with reference not just to their penal system, but to the Russian people themselves. Eastern Europeans are depicted as shady, sleazy, and suspicious.

4. Feminist. Self-reliant Steadman succeeds in throwing a monkey wrench into the Nazis’ plans.

3. Anti-Christian. One Nazi is named Christian Gotz, and a house with a crucifix conspicuously displayed on one of its walls turns out to have a Nazi zombie hiding in it. A map shows the concentric spread of the undead’s conquered territory in crosshairs, i.e., with a cross at its center.

2. Paranoiacally Zionist and Holohoax-alarmist. The movie industry, prescient of the day when the passage of time would render too ridiculous the idea of a geriatric Fourth Reich rising from the ashes to conquer the globe, has over the decades foisted on filmgoers such interesting (or not) innovations as the conventional Nazi zombie army in films like The Frozen Dead (1966) and Shock Waves (1977); cloned Hitlers in The Boys from Brazil (1978); vengeful and pitilessly boring Nazi ghost sailors in Death Ship (1980); the National Socialist moon colony in Iron Sky (2012); and now, most outlandish of all, the immortal runic unified field Nazi zombie army of the Outpost franchise. “Two days ago I still thought this was all about what these people [i.e., Germans and gentiles generally] had done,” Lena reflects. “But it’s not. It’s only ever been about what they were going to do.” “There’ll always be somebody else,” Wallace warns. Ironically, treacherous gentile Wallace turns out to have been working against Lena the whole time, hoping to acquire the Holy Grail of Nazi zombie-generating unified field technology not to destroy it, but to sell it back to the Nazis. Hilariously, once the deception comes out, Wallace’s black hair changes to blonde, revealing his truly evil nature.

1. Anti-German. Outpost: B.S. reduces the Teuton to what, in the paranoid and condescending anti-white progressive’s view, is his essence: a dead-eyed, lumbering, growling, killing machine bent on stabbing or cudgeling to death anybody unlike himself.

Rainer Chlodwig von Kook

Machete Kills ***

Rodriguez’s most recent contribution to the Mexploitation subgenre, Machete Kills is exactly the movie one would expect it to be: a shallow, self-congratulatorily hip, and hyperviolent celebration of Mexican ethnic pride and muscle-flexing Reconquista. Danny Trejo reprises the role of the righteous butcher who in this sequel accepts a presidential offer of American citizenship in exchange for stopping a cataclysmic missile strike on Washington. Machete Kills is sufficiently fast-paced to ward off snores, but the cartoonish tone and the flippant approach to the violence keep it from generating any emotional interest or genuine suspense. One hopes for the sake of the future of film that this big-budget B-movie brand of Tarantinoid, winking, self-aware exploitation fetishism has almost run its course.

3 out of 5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Machete Kills is:

13. State-skeptical. “Justice and law aren’t always the same thing.”

12. Anti-military. Corrupt soldiers sell government-issue arms to a drug cartel.

11. Anti-family. A whore recounts how her father raped her. (see also no. 2)

10. Drug-ambivalent. Machete “don’t smoke”, but lights a bazooka like a bong. The drug cartels are his enemies.

9. Pro-miscegenation. Can anyone blame Miss San Antonio (Amber Heard) for being unable to resist Machete’s haggard, wrinkly, and humorless Aztec charms?

8. Anti-gun. Machete prefers blades. A campaign commercial associates Second Amendment advocacy with pork spending on military hardware. The principal villain, Voz (Mel Gibson), is a firearms manufacturer.

7. Globalist and war-ambivalent. “This isn’t about Mexico no more. It’s about the world.” Voz reveals he has installed puppet troublemakers in North Korea and Russia so as to pump government interest in his military wares. While there is truth in the notion that international bogeys are frequently manufactured as pretexts for war, Machete Kills endorses the neocon worldview to the extent that it accepts that Russia and North Korea are legitimately threatening to American national security. “Fuck world peace,” says Miss San Antonio.

6. Feminist. “Don’t call me sweetheart,” bristles Sartana (Jessica Alba) before gunning down a male chauvinist pig. Machete Kills milks the tired non-novelty of women acting tough and shooting their mouths and machine-guns, which here include weapons mounted on the bosom and crotch. Interestingly, the long tradition of sexual violence directed exclusively at the male genitalia finally seems to be coming home to haunt the feminists in the form of the sickening “pussy punch”. Only girls are allowed to play this dirty hand, however. (see also no. 2)

5. Anti-Christian. Voz looks forward to a day when “kingdom comes”. White supremacist Sheriff Doakes uses expressions like “Amen” and “Hallelujah”. Assassin the Chameleon (a shapeshifter portrayed at different points in the film by Walter Goggins, Cuba Gooding, Lady Gaga, and Antonio Banderas) drives a truck called the “Holy Roller”, with kitschy religious knickknacks on the dashboard. “Preach it, Sister,” says villainess Miss San Antonio.

4. Anti-white. Whites – surprise, surprise! – are the bad guys. Those who, like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, concern themselves with America’s sovereignty and security, are represented in Machete Kills by the likes of the dopey Minutemen-like “Freedom Force” and Sheriff Doakes (William Sadler), who calls Mexicans things like “taco” and “beaner”. Voz plans to abscond into outer space with a load of Mexicans to serve him as slave labor. Blonde beauty and secret agent Miss San Antonio lives up to her hair color and turns out to be a traitoress. The decision to cast Mel Gibson, with his off-screen baggage of accusations of anti-Semitism and bigotry, as supervillain Voz reinforces the anti-white/anti-racist theme.

3. Pro-amnesty. Machete is Mexico, observes President Rathcock (Charlie Sheen), who by offering citizenship to Machete is in effect endorsing the wholesale naturalization of everybody south of the border. “Even Jesus couldn’t get through that damn wall.” Sadly, many of the ignorant dupes who see this movie will probably be led to believe that there actually is a wall protecting the U.S. from turd world invasion.

2. Anti-human. The title says it all, with enough red splattering to paint a barn. In addition, Miss San Antonio in her pageant speech endorses “a woman’s right to choose.”

1. Razist. “You fucked with the wrong Mexican.”

Blood Revels of the Puppet Mistress

Lamb Chop’s Special Chanukah (1995) ***1/2

This kooky kiddie relic of the pandemic cultural crappiness constituting the 1990s opens with sock-puppeteer Sonia Hurwitz (alias Shari Lewis) doing some last-minute Chanukah shopping in an open air produce market. Brimming with the supremacist ebullience of the season, Hurwitz launches into a song to tell her fellow shoppers how happy she is, dancing and twirling her red coattail like a vampire’s cape now that Chanukah, like some biblical plague, has finally arrived! She bumps into TV has-beens Pat Morita (Happy Days) and Alan Thicke (Growing Pains) and invites them to come to her house for dinner. That means it is up to Hurwitz and Lamb Chop to cook enough latkes (potato pancakes) to accommodate their guests – all while singing up a funky shitstorm about it, of course.

Meanwhile, Hurwitz’s mutant child, buck-toothed miniature pony Charlie Horse, is trying to win a prize by creating the greatest-ever superhero using a computer game. Thicke and Morita have dual roles as two of Charlie’s botched superhero creations, Weapons Man and Super Ninja, who proceed to tear up Hurwitz’s house like a couple of ungrateful goyische kops. Lloyd Bochner also appears as a disembodied flying head in an existential crisis. Camp factor, needless to say, is high.

Nothing captures the spirit of a Jewish holiday like a Jew with her fist stuffed up the ass of a symbol of Christ named after its own dismemberment. Christians, accustomed to celebrating the birth or resurrection of Jesus and seeing Jews constantly depicted as innocent victims in the massive ass media, are generally unaware that the Chosen, in choosing their holy days, prefer to commemorate the slaughter of gentile enemies and their children.

Chanukah, or Hanukkah, or however one attempts to express by means of the English alphabet the phlegm production signifying the name of this eight-day indulgence in ritual self-worship, celebrates the victory of Judah Maccabee, or “Judas Sledgehammer”, who defeated the gentile forces of the Greeks and the Syrians, two peoples against whom – if recent history offers any indication – the Jews still bear a bloodthirsty grudge.

3.5 out of 5 Stars of David. Lock yourself in this laughing-gas chamber and get exterminated with cuteness.

Shari’s Passover Surprise (1996) ***1/2

Charlie Horse is running for Fifth Grade President at his elementary school, which apparently is so progressive that disheveled Jewish ponies are permitted to enroll alongside human children. Hoping to sway his classmates’ loyalties by means of old country hospitality – and to subject them to weepy tales of Jewish woe to gain sympathy votes – Charlie invites the whole multicultural crew to the Hurwitz home for a Passover Seder. That means lots o’ matzo to make!

Gullible tub Dom DeLuise, tricked into believing himself the recipient of some enviable privilege, is persuaded to play the shabbos goy and cook supper for the bunch, and professes his eagerness to become a Seder “sadist”, while Benson‘s Robert Guillaume is also invited and sings some soulful jive about the plagues visited upon the Egyptians. Rounding out the likable cast of has-beens is Alan Thicke, putting in another brief appearance in the demanding role of himself.

The Seder is a kind of nightmarish house party, with characters crawling around looking for a hidden matzo and Lamb Chop hanging from a chandelier and screaming in vain for help from Shari. This being the 90s, when the children are told the story of the Egyptian captivity, they are told to boo when Pharaoh is mentioned and go “Woo Woo Woo!” like an Arsenio Hall audience whenever Moses gets name-dropped.

Passover occasions the Jews’ deluded gloating over their psychotic god Yahweh’s mass murder of gentile children in Egypt during the period of the Israelites’ supposed enslavement in that land. Notwithstanding the utter lack of archaeological evidence for this, however, Shari’s Passover Surprise goes whole hog and more than once trots out the ludicrous claim that Hebrew wretches were even forced to build the pyramids.

Continuing in the tradition of killing gentile children, Shari’s Passover Surprise cuts loose with a veritable enfilade of politically correct small ordnance, hitting the audience with a cheerful anti-slavery pep talk, multicultural mumbo jumbo, and even an endorsement of bestiality when Charlie Horse determines to ask a black girl out on a date – all designed to murder the mind and squash incipient self-esteem in any white children who may happen to be watching.

There is also a faint echo of Kristallnacht when Charlie Horse and a blond boy are playing catch outside Robert Guillaume’s house and break out one of his windows. The blond boy, naturally being a fink, runs away and leaves the horse to take the whole of the blame. Damn blond kids! It was a perfectly good and wholesomely diverse neighborhood until they moved in!

3.5 out of 5 Stars of David. Press play and get plagued, you hateful goyim!

“Come on, Bubby, light my fire!”

Transformers: Age of Extinction ****

Nothing epitomizes the summer movie season like a big, blustering, CGI-saturated blockbuster about giant, battling, alien robots. This installment stars Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager, a down-on-his-luck robotics engineer and single father living in “Texas, U.S.A.” (as a caption conveniently informs those viewers uncertain which country Texas occupies). Cade and his daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz), get swept up in military-industrial machinations and even intergalactic warfare when he discovers the wreck of a truck that turns out to be Optimus Prime.

Inconveniently, CIA eminence grise Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) is secretly rounding up all the Transformers he can find and delivering these to military contractor KSI, headed by arrogant weenie Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci), the idea being to corner the technology and create a totally automated U.S. military. Meanwhile, Attinger’s robot co-conspirator Lockdown, along with new creation Galvatron, may not be the controllable assets Joyce and Attinger confidently believe these to be.

Transformers: Age of Extinction is exactly the explosion-packed, lightning-paced action extravaganza fans are expecting, with quite a few close shaves, noisy weapons exotica, nasty, slime-spewing creatures, and one particularly suspenseful moment with characters inching their way along cables suspended high in the air while harried by Lockdown’s robotic hell-hounds. Younger audiences are sure to be in awe. The film’s themes are, however, more adult than juvenile, and parents may be concerned to know that Age of Extinction contains several frightening incidents and one especially noteworthy death scene, that of comic relief slacker Lucas (T.J. Miller), that is too graphically disturbing to be appropriate for children. The film runs a little overlong, and the ending, reminiscent of Prometheus (2012), has Optimus Prime setting out on a new adventure and so setting up the inevitable next installment of the popular toy adaptation franchise.

4 out of 5 stars.

Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Transformers: Age of Extinction is:

8. Anti-torture. “This is worse than waterboarding,” robot Brains complains at being shocked by an electric jolt.

7. Pro-serfdom. Tessa aspires to do her part to inflate the American college bubble by applying for financial aid to go to university. The film attempts to milk sympathy from a rejection letter.

6. New age, lending credence to the idea that Earth was once visited by ancient aliens.

5. Corporate, featuring prominent product placement for Victoria’s Secret, Oreo, Giorgio Armani, and Red Bull.

4. Anti-slavery (i.e., pro-yawn). Negroid-voiced Transformer Brains exults at being “free at last!” Lucas, objecting to partner Cade’s cutthroat business practices, also alludes to slavery.

3. Capitalist, offering a sympathetic portrait of the struggling small business owner in Cade. Early scenes of the hero’s domestic existence convey a definite impression of an America in economic decline.

2. Pro-miscegenation. Joyce falls for the head executive of his company’s China branch (Bingbing Li).

1. Antiwar, anti-state, and anti-cronyism. Attinger, head of CIA black ops and military contractor KSI’s best customer, expects to take a seven-figure salary with the company after leaving government “service”. Since the Battle of Chicago, a cataclysmic 9/11-like event in which America was attacked by Decepticons and defended by the Autobots, a paranoid police state has taken hold, with Decepticons and Autobots alike being hunted down and neutralized by the fearmongering CIA. Transformers: Age of Extinction also gives a timely illustration of federal authoritarian overreach when CIA agents, with no warrant and no regard for human dignity or life, raid Cade’s property and threaten to murder his daughter. The movie expresses Americans’ discomfort over the advent of drones, as well.

 

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80s Oddities Month: Post-Apocalyptic Porn

Future Sodom (1987) ****

An initial viewing of Future Sodom may be a disappointment if viewers allow the stylish cover photo of Laurel Canyon to lead them to expect a dark, creative vision of a futuristic world. When friends Mickey (Frank James) and Morgan (Jesse Eastern) find themselves transported into an unknown place and time – “to grow, to advance” in their sexuality – their sylvan surroundings resemble the idyllic woods around a summer cabin more than a dingy, urban vice capital. What follows is mostly a plotless succession of sexual encounters between the visitors and the carefree inhabitants of this sunny natural paradise.

First, Mickey and Morgan double-team a blonde beauty (Canyon), Mickey receiving a boisterous blowjob as Morgan bumps her from behind, all while ethereal synthesizer and mechanized tribal beats convey that this is the future – either that or the 80s. After trading orifices and having their fill, Mickey and Morgan relax indoors and exchange philosophies about sex. Morgan, a hopeless romantic, is disillusioned with what seems to him to be the mechanical nature of sex; but Mickey is perfectly content to screw anything that moves. “It was so impersonal, man, it was hot as hell,” he says, describing why phone sex gets him excited.

Group play follows: first an enthusiastic threesome set to languid electric guitar with Laurel Canyon, Britt Morgan, and Peter North, who find that an open door policy spices up the boredom of marriage; and later a more elaborate session conducted by a toga-bedecked Instructor (gross Jew William Margold) who sets a proper orgy in motion – complete with oral and anal sex and disgusting asshole-licking – before joining the fray himself, ultimately slurping his own semen off of a woman’s back. All of this unfolds to some drab 80s disco.

In one of Future Sodom’s few acknowledgments of the notion that this is all supposed to be taking place in some kind of futuristic setting, one of the sordid celebrants is a tattooed, freakish “robot”, Lucy (played by Viper), who has been “specially programmed as an anal participant.” This bargain basement production’s idea of an android, alas, is a tramp in a Mardi Gras mask, with chains strapped across her chest, nipple and clitoris piercings, and obscenities like “motherfucker” and “eat shit” scrawled all over her body. Lucy explains that mischievous Boy Scouts are responsible for the physical graffiti. “They raped me anally and I castrated ten of them,” she says in Future Sodom’s most outrageous scene. “Yes, I programmed myself to castrate Boy Scouts.”

In the second of Future Sodom’s two standout performances – the first being newcomer Laurel Canyon – Frankie Leigh plays the mysterious “Woman”, a sexual chameleon who suits her behavior to the fantasies of her partner of the moment. This cute but thoroughly debauched brunette has the best scene in Future Sodom, sneering her needs at horny Mickey: “Nah, I don’t think you fucking understand. I want dick, dick, and more dick,  you hear that? And I want buckets of fucking cum. I wanna fuckin’ swallow it, I wanna choke on it. I wanna fuckin’ wallow in it. I wanna fuckin’ bathe in the fuckin’ shit, you know? I want you to turn my mouth into a fuckin’ sewer, into a goddamn toilet.” Leigh then proceeds to blow three guys in creepy transparent plastic masks like the ones in Last House on Dead End Street.

Underlying the flimsy excuse for a story, specifically in the old-fashioned Morgan character, is an awareness of a discomfort left in men’s hearts in the wake of the sexual revolution. Now that moral constraints are no longer an issue, do men really want their women to be voracious sexual beasts? What do women want? Paula Damiano’s script, unfortunately, leaves this speculative thread underdeveloped, the only semblance of resolution to Morgan’s uncertainty being his sullen resignation and determination of, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

Future Sodom, though nothing particularly special, does have a few things to recommend it. The hair is big, the action is hot, and the actors are clearly enjoying themselves; and, with the exception of Viper, whose damaged goods and devilish scowl are a little intimidating, the principal actresses are exquisite. 80s aficionados will appreciate Jesse Eastern’s mullet, and may also be interested to learn the ultimate fate of Ronald Reagan. Viewers, however, should expect nothing profound from a film which, after all, was produced and directed by Deep Throat auteur Gerard Damiano.

4 out of 5 stars.

The Load Warrior aka The Load Warriors (1987) ****1/2

From the first bleak, synthesized notes queuing up The Load Warrior’s ugly orange pixelated opening credits, all the makings of a 1980s pornographic classic are present: movie parody premise, pun title, hokey electronic music, garish eye makeup, and big, beautiful, puffy manes of whore hair. Peter North portrays the titular titillationist in this post-apocalyptic tale of a world devastated by a “great fire” (i.e., nuclear holocaust) followed by the “invisible fire” of radiation that causes fertility to plummet. The result is a wasteland in which “seed became money and men became cattle”, with female barbarians unceremoniously milking their slaves like farm animals, the old ways of love, foreplay, and even vaginal penetration having been forgotten by most – all but the Load Warrior.

The Load Warrior satirizes the seeming reversal of sex roles effected by the sexual revolution, the entry of women into the workforce, and the cold commoditization of reproduction through sperm banks. “‘Married’?” Willow (Krysta Lane) asks, puzzled at hearing the word for the first time. “What’s ‘married’?” Men, reduced to utilitarian sex slaves, are left wanting foreplay, affection, and some sense of sexual autonomy, while women have become violent, impersonal brutes, as typified by ruthless businesswoman Queen Humongous (Lois Ayres), who reigns like a callous CEO over a “bustling rat hole” called Motherload. Here the remains of the wasteland’s men come to sell their sperm at the trading post of Dr. D (Jesse Eastern), who hands out “antique” broccoli and rotten chicken (“Of course it’s got maggots in there. That’s the nutritious part.”) in exchange for their more or less ineffectual sperm. Fortuitously, the Load Warrior comes and pounds into the women an important truth: “A load in the bush is worth far more than any in the hand.”

Sharon Mitchell, who participates in an ambitious fivesome (!) with Eastern and others in the “Blow the Man Dome”, is typically tough and charismatic as the aptly named Wilde, who threatens to cut off a woman’s tits and make lampshades out of them. Too much time is spent on an interracial scene between Eastern and Angel Kelly; but the sex, if not consistently scorching, is solid, and for the most part tastefully photographed, greatly enhanced by the scuzzy art direction of “C.L. Jaz”. Much of the action in The Load Warrior plays like a music video, with the imitation Tina Turner theme song smoothing North’s scene with delectable Gail Force being a definite highlight of the show. Also, the manner in which the hero dispatches the bitchy Queen Humongous is not to be missed! Hot, heavy, and humorous, The Load Warrior is mandatory sleaze for 80s strokers.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

 

Blood Red Presidents ****

Filmed in 2010 as The Two Plates and re-released at Redboxes this week under the stronger and more attention-grabbing title Blood Red Presidents, this ghetto epic from writer-director Jonathan Straiton is well worth checking out. Nasty, raw, and uncompromising, Blood Red Presidents dispenses with the Hollywood kid gloves in the depiction of blacks and emphasizes instead the grittily real. So firm is this film’s commitment to presenting the truth, no matter how unflattering to the society it depicts, that much of it feels almost as if actual camera phone footage straight out of the ‘hood had been edited together and uploaded onto YouTube as a movie, with most of the actors mumbling and slurring their lines instead of hamming it up and projecting; but there is much audiovisual style displayed here along with the handheld and seemingly primitive, with several memorably composed frames and such tactics as split screen employed more than once and used especially effectively in a doom-laden money-counting montage and musical interlude. Hip-hop is very much a part of this film’s personality and does much to enhance its power.

The violent story has two small-time hustlers, Deshaun (Assault) and Buck (Ambush), making a play for the big-time money as counterfeiters after they steal two plates that once belonged to a Peruvian drug lord. Unfortunately for them, their scheme attracts the attention of Secret Service agent Caddell (John Patton), who, along with Richmond cops Beck (Chris Morrison) and Burnett (Wes Reid), is determined to bring Deshaun and Buck’s successful run to an end. Before the tragic but blackly humorous story has run its seedy course, many will die, families will suffer, and friends will turn against each other. Blood Red Presidents, then, lives up to its title as yet another cautionary tale about how money, the titular “presidents”, is supposedly “the root to all evil.” Buck and Deshaun are no pitiable victims of any white Man’s “system”, however; these are crude, coldblooded brutes, self-described “niggers killin’ niggers” who deserve everything they get and more.

4 out of 5 stars. Recommended.

[WARNING: SPOILERS]

Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Blood Red Presidents is:

6. Christian. “Yeah, I’m sure, man. Is Jesus black?” Director Jonathan Straiton thanks God in the credits for His “guidance”.

5. Pro-family. Straiton dedicates the film to his father. Executive producer John M. Clark, meanwhile, thanks “Gene my adopted son who I appreciate very much for helping my retarded son.”

4. Sexist and slut-ambivalent. A rap that plays over the opening credits warns of crooked lawyers and “bitches with game”. “Get the fuck off the bed,” Deshaun tells his “shorty” in one early scene. “You need to take that shit to the clinic,” one young wastrel says to her. Leaning in the pro-slut direction, however, the executive producer gives a “special thanks” to “the designer of crotchless panties and peach flavored douche.”

3. Drug-ambivalent. In the opening scene, an old-fashioned white father, no doubt intended to be laughable, is shocked that his son would use marijuana. Thugs smoke joints and blunts and drink alcohol throughout the film, but “seein’ ya mama on that glass pipe is a painful sight.” In the end credits, executive producer John M. Clark thanks “the French wheat growers for doing their part to distill Grey Goose Vodka without which I couldn’t get through a day,” while producer Mean Gene thanks Bud Light “for always being there for me in time of need.” The director, Jonathan Straiton, says, “To anyone I forgot I apologize but it’s late and I’m drunk.”

2. Police-ambivalent/anti-state. Blood Red Presidents presents a sympathetic portrait of rookie cop Burnett and his chief. “You know how the media is,” Burnett complains to his chief after being accused of police brutality. “I mean, where were they last week when I was changing that old lady’s tire?” Surprisingly, Burnett is the only character in the film who shows any remorse after committing a murder, and he even risks blowing a major investigation to try to save a criminal informant’s life. His colleague Beck is another matter. In a situation similar to that in The Place Beyond the Pines, this officer attempts to cover up for Burnett after his mistaken killing of an unarmed suspect. Meaningfully, the victim, an aspiring rapper, is found to have been holding a microphone rather than a gun. (Symbolically, this might be read as suggesting that the police state feels less threatened by black crime than by socially conscious black men’s freedom of expression.) One of the extras in the police station has clearly been cast to capture the worthless, doughnut-scarfing blob archetype.

1. Diversity-skeptical/anti-wigger. A close-up of Virginia’s state flag, with its motto, “Sic semper tyrannis”, calls to mind Lincoln’s assassination and never-completed Reconstruction. “Freedom ain’t free,” one rap number suggests, and racial resentments going back to the days of slavery inform the typical thug mindset, with the ghosts of slaves, heard from the trees, encouraging young black men to “Squeeze that tech, nigga.” White police, consequently, are vulnerable both to violence and defamation in the media. In one scene, a black man punches a white stranger on sight. Buck and Deshaun’s wigger associates, “silly-ass white boy” Chuck (Ashby Brooks) and his brother, “ol’ crazy-ass white boy” Mike (Rob Rozier), turn out to be untrustworthy. Authorities, meanwhile, are frustrated by criminals’ use of unintelligible Ebonics.