Roadhouse 66

The first thing I thought of when I saw this movie's title was "Sweet!  They made sixty-five sequels to Road House!  And this one has Willem Dafoe!  Who says that sequels suck?"  Sadly, this movie has no connection to Patrick Swayze's touching tribute to the dive bar business.  In fact, this was made five years before Swayze's film, so unless they pull some sort of Terminator time-travel crap, this movie is destined to be less than awesome.  What the hell, that hasn't stopped me from watching bad movies before.

While driving cross-country across Route 66 to scout out some future locations for his father's (and eventually his) fast food pork franchise, Beckman Hallsgood, Jr. (Judge Reinhold) encounters a problem.  He can't fit his luggage and his name in his car.  Actually, some inbred-looking hicks pull up alongside him and start to heckle him.  And then one of them pulls out a gun and shoot a hole in his radiator.  So, let that be a lesson to you; if someone pulls up to give you any crap, you might as well shoot first because you know for a fact that they're about to go after your radiator.  Side note: Don't shoot other drivers, at least until your vehicles have come to a complete stop.  Beckman Hallsood, Jr. manages to make it to the next town, but his car needs repairs, and his name is Beckman Hallsgood Jr. --- he is obviously not a grease monkey.  Luckily, Johnny Harte (Willem Dafoe) happens to be there, and looking for a ride.  And man, that Johnny Harte is cool; imagine Willem Dafoe as a peripheral character in Grease, but with the line delivery he had in Spider-Man, and you get the picture.  The dude is creepy.  He patches the car up enough to get to the next town, which has a mechanic and, unfortunately, the hicks that shot the car in the first place.  And in case you were wondering, the bad guys are named Dink (Kevyn Major Howard), Moss, and the leader is Hoot.  So, essentially, this movie boils down to Beckman Hallsgood, Jr. against Hoot?  Sounds thrilling.  Anyway, Johnny and Beckman manage to fix up the car, but instead of leaving opt to enter into a race as a way to stick it to Hoot and the boys (Hoot always wins) and to prove their love for the two townie chicks that they suddenly are deeply in love with.  It's that kind of movie.

Well...what can I say?  The acting's not too terribly bad.  I mean, if you want Judge Reinhold to play an uptight nerd, then naming him Beckman Hallsgood, Jr. is a good start.  Willem Dafoe is creepy as ever, but I don't know how well he pulled off the I'm-secretly-a-rockabilly-legend aspect of his role.  He did sing a song on stage, and it was clearly Willem singing, so that's...something.  I always enjoy Dafoe, so even when he's slumming, he's better than most actors.  The supporting cast is universally terrible, with Kate Vernon doing an acceptable job as the townie love interest and Kevyn Major Howard managing to be just as awesomely bad as he was in Death Wish 2.  This was the directorial debut for John Mark Robinson, and it's no surprise that his next movie was made six years later.  I haven't seen his other movies, but I'm guessing six years may have been a little too soon for a follow up. 

Let's talk about what the movie does right.  Well, the characters have names that give you a decent idea of how the characters should act.  That's got to be worth something, right?  Actually, this movie's bad but it's not painfully bad.  It's just stupid.  Hmm...are these two heroes going to start a fight in a road house?  Is pride and stupidity going to be the only reason this movie is longer than twenty minutes long?  Are there only two moderately attractive girls in town, and the main characters have scooped them both up?  To all of those questions, I can only answer "mmmmmaybe."

Being a stupid movie, there are a lot of really dumb things in it.  Probably the first mistake this film makes is having Willem Dafoe as a supplementary character.  He basically is playing a mysterious Fonzie role here, where everyone keeps pointing out how cool he is.  Nobody ever mentions what a creepy knowing grin he has; it's a knowing smile, like he's letting you know that he knows what your sweat tastes like because he licked your face as you slept last night.  That might be reading into things a bit much, but I think it's justified.  But with Willem as a supporting role, we are supposed to root for J.D. Nerdington VI?  I didn't sign up for that!  If I wanted to see Judge Reinhold carry a movie, I would have watched...um...hmm...slim pickings, these...Vice Versa, I guess.  That's just a problem I have with the script, though.  I don't want to waste my time listing all the dumb stuff that happens in the movie, but I will leave you with this gem.  So, Uptight Fancypants III is about to start the big race when Hoot comes over to wish him luck.  They talk a little bit and Hoot very subtly drops a scorpion on the car seat next to Fancypants.  I would like to point out a few things with that scene.  First, when I say "subtly," I mean "totally obviously."  Hoot couldn't have looked more like he was up to no good if he had been singing "I'm just being a nice guy, fa-la, and not sabotaging you for the race at all, sha-na-na-na."  Second, I'm pretty sure that I would notice the sound of something dropping onto the car seat next to me.  Not that putting the scorpion there would be a fool-proof plan; it's an arachnid, not a killer shark with a taste for human blood.  It probably would have scurried under the seat.

I didn't like this movie very much, but I didn't hate it.  It's definitely a decent B-movie and it's awfulness is not offensive enough to generate any real hatred from me.  I just wish Willem Dafoe hadn't wasted the time to film this.

Death Wish II

While there are notable exceptions (Terminator 2 and The Color of Money come to mind), it is usually a bad sign when a sequel to a successful movie is made many years after the original.  In case you missed the surprisingly good Death Wish, here's a recap: Paul Kersey's wife and daughter were raped and his wife murdered by some home invading street thugs, led by Jeff Goldblum.  With no leads, the police case looks thin and Kersey needs an outlet for his rage, which he finds by murdering random street thugs.  Now, the tag line for this movie seems to stray a bit from this idea: "When murder and rape invade your home, and the cops can't stop it...This man will.  His way."  That almost makes Kersey seem like a killer-for-hire, out to offer his services to the many crime victims that the police are unable to help (or help but are unable to help satisfactorily).  That seems like a pretty big thematic leap from the original film, but I'll give this the benefit of the doubt, since the original was pretty good and both Charles Bronson and director Michael Winner return to the series.

It has been eight years since the events of Death Wish, and Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) seems to have moved past the death of his wife in that film.  He now has a young girlfriend (his real-life wife Jill Ireland) and they decide to take Kersey's daughter, Carol (Robin Sherwood), out for a walk in the park; Carol has begun to speak again, after years of near-catatonia following the rape and the presumed divorce from her husband (at least, he's not mentioned in this movie at all).  The park is filled with elderly people, mothers with their children, and women hanging out with their female friends.  This makes Kersey the only logical target for a street gang to pickpocket.  Street gangs (and, really, all bad dudes) love a challenge, you know.  Kersey realizes what has happened and the gang scatters; Kersey picks one and chases his into an alley, beats him up, but doesn't find his wallet.  Kersey returns to his daughter and girlfriend and continues their day out.  The street gang's natural response to such a challenge is to use Kersey's ID to locate his home and break in.  They take turns raping Kersey's maid until he comes home with his daughter.  Then, Kersey is knocked unconscious, his maid is murdered, and Carol is kidnapped.  The gang later takes Carol to an abandoned warehouse, where she is raped until she escapes long enough to jump out a window and impale herself on a fence.  I know what you're thinking...enough comedy, where's the action?  Well, the police try to help Kersey, but he lies to them, claiming that he cannot identify his attackers.  That is when he begins to stalk the streets at night, armed, looking for the men who ruined his life...again.  He's pretty good at finding them, too, since the movie is only 88 minutes long.  The question remains, though...will Kessler's love of murdering low-rent criminals get in the way of his love of his girlfriend?  Yes, yes it will.

As you can probably guess from all the rape and death, Death Wish II is a great date movie, the type that makes you look meaningfully in your lover's eyes and say, "I would murder so many people for you, if you only let me."  If that line doesn't work for you on Valentine's Day, then you'll never seal the deal.

On that note, it's probably for the best that we shift gears and talk about the casting and direction.  This is a Charles Bronson vehicle, so you can be assured that there will be at least one virtuoso performance here, and by "virtuoso performance," I of course mean "Easter Island statue impression."  The rest of the sympathetic actors are just as bad as Charlie.  Jill Ireland and Robin Sherwood put forth the absolute minimum amount of effort required to qualify as acting and the literally dozens of supporting cast members deliver two, maybe three lines, and then are never seen again.  You know the acting is bad when a career television actor like Vincent Gardenia provides one of the few glimpses of a professional acting performance.  The street thugs in the movie don't necessarily act well, but they are certainly the most entertaining aspect of the film.  C'mon, who doesn't love the idea of Laurence Fishburne in some truly fantastic 80s sunglasses?  Kevyn Major Howard sports a fantastic skullet and adds some much-needed high-pitched laughter and belly shirts to the mix.  And when I'm praising an actor's haircut, you can tell I've run out of nice things to say about the movie.  Michael Winner apparently chose not to do much when directing this movie.  I would give up early, too, if I had to direct Charles Bronson after 1975.  On the bright side, the movie is pretty short and it is rare for more than ten minutes to pass without some sort of violence, so I guess Winner's legacy in this film breaks even.

This is not a movie that is difficult to predict.  Bronson is wronged, Bronson chooses to not involve the police, and Bronson kills those that wronged him.  What is unusual about the movie is just how stupid it is on so many levels.  Jimmy Page recorded the score to the movie, but the only time you can tell that a guitar god is involved is during the opening credit sequence. Call me crazy, but if I had Jimmy Page score my film, you would know it; at the very least, I would include the opening thrashes of "Good Times, Bad Times" whenever Kessler kills somebody.  That reminds me...Kessler is not gunning for just any criminal in this movie (which is what makes Death Wish so compelling), he is hunting for five specific punks in Los Angeles.  That might sound difficult, but Kessler (or the screenwriter) makes it look easy.  What also makes it easy is the fact that Kessler isn't limiting himself to killing those thugs; he kills five other street urchins because they interfered with his hunt.  What was up with that street gang, anyway?  I get the vintage 80s clothes and jive talkin', but after Kessler has killed two of the five gang members, the rest are still hanging out in dark, secluded areas and dancing with each other while listening to a boombox.  Oh, and Laurence Fishburne, here's a tip: boomboxes do not protect your face from bullets.  In the scene where that happens, Kessler decides to ambush the gang members in the middle of an arms deal.  Apparently, the best time to attack your enemy is when they have access to a few dozen fully automatic weapons.  Vincent Gardenia's character is then mowed down by the gang members and his final words on this earth were "Get the bastards for me."  Really?  Not "I can't believe you got me shot, Bronson," or "This is why vigilantism is illegal"?  How about "This is why the police call for back-up"?  He is a much more forgiving man than I.

That's really my main problem with this movie.  I fully support most dumb action movies where the hero takes the law into his own hands, but you need to see how "the system" isn't working in order to justify the character's actions.  Charles Bronson purposefully misleads the police, forcing them into ineffectiveness.  I'm okay with that choice, too, but when a police officer dies because Bronson stupidly attacks the gang during their arms deal, that cop shouldn't be endorsing Bronson's crusade.  I think that scene encapsulates this movie best because it shows how amateurish and dangerous Bronson is, but he is encouraged to keep killing more.  Had that scene ended with some sort of accusation of Bronson, or at least some emotional impact, then the movie could have been mediocre.  As it stands, though, it is depressing and insultingly idiotic in a way that gratuitous violence cannot fix.