TRAGEDY

No update this week. My computer decided to drink a beer, and well, it was not the smooth, cold taste of the Rockies, so it got fried.

My computer has shitty taste in beer.

DAVE MUSTAINE'S MID-WEEK CONTENT

Yes, your mid-week content is early, mostly because I am gonna be hella busy the next couple of days.

Okay, that's just a straight up lie.

I just wanted to post about this video. Now, I know music videos aren't really what they used to be, but this is the laziest video I done ever seen, and that is what makes it hilarious.

I will preface this with the knowledge that I love Megadeth, even terrible Megadeth. I am not posting this video to laugh at them. I think they are pretty radical.

But goddamn, Dave Mustaine. What the hell were you thinking?

You know what? I don't care what you were thinking. This video is hilarious. Thank you for barely moving.

MISTER FREEDOM

After seeing Captain America: The First Avenger this weekend, I just knew it was finally time to let loose upon you, my readers, the glory of Mister Freedom.  It seemed like the good, patriotic thing to do. While it may not be Steve Rogers' favorite movie, I know for damned sure that John Walker the U.S. Agent has to straight up jerk it to this movie.

Yeah, that reference might be even too nerdy for me, but I'll be damned if I unwrite it. 

This movie was made by a crazy person. You would have to be straight from the looney bin to have seen a blank piece of paper and put the words down on it in the order that they happened in this movie. You'd have to be straight up certifiable to take those words on that piece of paper and use it as a basis for something to film. In fact, you'd have to have a significant disconnect with the fundamental principles of reality to work on this project.

Oh wait, it was made in the sixties. So, drugs. That explains it.

I am going to do something different with this review. I am going to post the entire plot, summarized in a way only Camp Counseling can do. I will not critique anything after said summary of the plot. When I post the last thing that happens in the movie, this entry will end. I feel that this is the only way that you can truly invoke the spirit of Mister Freedom.


That doesn't, however, mean I am not going to throw out some opinions beforehand.

I would love to sit here and pick out a memorable quote or something to lure you in from the beginning, but I can't. The entire script is hilarious. From the very first line spoken in this movie, you are hooked. There is no way that the things being said could possibly be being said. But, they are. They are ridiculously racist, cartoony, jingoistic, and just plain bizarre. Also, the accents are hilarious and I am not one to subject anyone to reading phonetic scribblings of ridiculously french people.

Be forewarned, however, as this movie is supposed to be a satire, and at times, you will see them almost doing this effectively. Don't let that sucker you in. This movie is beyond ridiculous, and any attempts at serious satire are completely undone by the drug fueled insanity splayed up on the screen.

But enough gabbing, let's get to the movie. Remember, all the things I am going to say actually happened. Someone filmed them and put them in this order.

The movie opens with a riot of some sort. There is no real reason given for the riot other than, "hey, America is a pretty violent place." (Satire, natch).

After some rioting, we are taken into a prison. A super American sheriff kinda swaggers around, past a poster claiming that John F. Kennedy is a traitor and a wanted man. He then approaches a gigantic American flag and we see that he is actually MISTER FREEDOM. We know because we see this costume

just hanging out there, surrounded by a multitude of weapons. Because, you can't be a superhero unless you have a half-dozen machine guns and a truckload of sweet knives.

This immediately cuts to ridiculously stereotypical black people hanging out in a loft apartment talking about all the things they have looted. I am 99% sure all of them are pimps and/or pushers and have probably pissed off both Shaft and Dolemite at least a dozen times. They are jive talkin' and laughing up a storm because they robbed so many places.

Mister Freedom, not wanting to wait for the inevitable shuckin' and jivin,' totally bursts through the window and yells racial epithets at them. Then, he starts singing his own theme song, very loudly, and very angrily as he waves pistols in the air, shooting all their ill-gotten gains. He is in the midst of his terrifying shanty when, suddenly, Dr. Loomis himself, Donald Pleasance, gives him a call on his wrist television video chat doohickey.

In this movie, Donald P is playing Professor Freedom. I like to think this is the one role closest to his real personality. Pleasance loved America, I am sure of it.

Anywho, Professor Freedom needs Mister Freedom to report back to Freedom Headquarters. You will hear the word "freedom" a lot in this movie. It is super sly satire. I mean, the superest and slyest. So, Mister Freedom kills the black people and rolls out like a stud.

Inside Freedom HQ, we learn that this movie was not directed by William Klein, but rather Harold Zoid, because every extra or ancillary character has to be doing something absurd at all times. This will prevail throughout the movie, but it starts with the receptionist chewing the shit out of some gum and kinda hopping along with Mister Freedom to the elevator.

Inside the elevator, we see that all of America's biggest companies like General Motors and Unilever are tied in with Freedom, Incorporated. However, we never get to see what Freedom, Inc.'s office looks like, because a spooky video monitor that has multiple Dr. Loomis heads schools Mister Freedom on how totally radical freedom and America are, and how straight up horrible everyone else is, especially the French. He shits all over France because, as luck would have it, Mr. Freedom has to go to France because his freedom buddy Captain Formidable was murdered by the dreaded Red Chinaman. Mister Freedom has a very bizarre love for Captain Formidable. They must have had a forbidden romance at some point in time.

So, Mister Freedom's plane lands in what we are told is France, and the first thing he does is beat up a Chinese tourist and totally swipe their camera. The camera is never seen again, and Japanese people are the ones who are always taking pictures, but fuck consistent stereotypes. We ain't care about that anymore, because as soon as Mister Freedom struts into the French hotel, he is swarmed by more foxy ladies. Inside the elevator, he is attacked by a sassy lady in a blue overcoat. After beating her up and haranguing her about how it is totally okay for him to beat up a woman (well, she did start the fight), she strips and has shows her totally revealing pro-freedom bathing suit. This woman is Marie, and she is his contact in France. They never pork, however, as filthy foreign vaginal secretions are the number one cause of ED in this land.

Instead of giving in to her carnal desires as soon as they get into the hotel room, she informs Mister Freedom of how Captain Formidable was mind controlled by the evil Music Man. As she is giving us boring exposition, Mister Freedom is outside throwing a window washer off the building. Mister Freedom is never not violent. Freedom is all about peace. Somehow that correlates with being the biggest jerk ever.

Oh, yeah, satire.

And drugs.

So, Marie takes Mister Freedom to a soiree in his honor, filled with people with hilarious names like Johnny Detergent. Whoever named the characters in this movie outshines even the immortal Sly Stallone in the stupid name department. All of them are wearing shirts with Freedom or "F" on it, including ladies with "F"s on they boobies. They are also holding pro-freedom signs and banners and throwing confetti all over the place. It's actually quite the happening little shindig. They even have a band made of four buff forty-year-olds in unitards made for turn of the century wrestlers! They are tiny, squat, mounds of muscle that play the shit out of the simple song they were tasked with.

Mister Freedom takes this opportunity to show a ridiculously long slide show of what makes America so great, complete with pictures of war atrocities, and a bizarre soliloquy about how Harlem (and black people) are shit. This gets the cowardly French really pumped up, so Mister Freedom goes back to his hotel room, forces a lady to strip for him and eat poisoned eggs, and then makes his way to the American embassy.

The American embassy is proto-Wal-Mart. It is clean, white, and you can buy anything there. Also, you will be surrounded by ladies dressed in star shirts hopping around and gettin' real excited to see you. But, in case you are unsure of what Freedom and America are, there is a loudspeaker repeating all the key points about what makes America grand over and over again.

Mister Freedom doesn't do much here but once again talk about how nobody has a bigger cock than America, and then sets off to meet Super Frenchman. And this, my friends, is exactly where insanity straight up replaces any and all logical actions.

First of all, Super Frenchman is a gigantic balloon man in a knit cap. He is that inflatable tube man you see at used car dealerships, only in a striped shirt.  He is the balloon version of a stereotypical French sailor. Secondly, His henchman are "W"s colored in the French flag. You read that right. There are dudes in a costume shaped like the letter "W" backing him up.

Super Frenchman stone cold denies to help Mister Freedom. This does not sit well, but Super Frenchman flies away. So, Mister Freedom just stares at the "W"s and they surrender! They lost the will to fight! We find out that this is because Mister Freedom has hypno-sunglasses. Then, he squirts a flower at the last "W" and strolls out.  Yeah, so, Mister Freedom is the Joker.

Since he has no crimes to clown prince, Mister Freedom tracks down Music Man. Music Man is a guy in an inflatable Mountie costume. The best way to describe it is to think of those sumo suits you have seen at any depiction of a sweet party, only instead of padding, that is all just air. He even has the stupid flappy cap.

I'd like to say something ridiculous happens at first, but it doesn't. They just have a very long, very stupid political debate.

Naturally, the craziness has to go into overdrive to make up for this, so Mister Freedom and Music Man's tête-à-tête is broken up by none other than Red Chinaman, who, as luck would have it, is a gigantic inflatable dragon complete with stereotypical Chinese accent. But don't think too long about that, because now that the argument has become a three-way, none other than Jesus Christ and his mother, Mary, show up. All of these guys gang up on Mister Freedom, calling him stupid and a jerk, and really mean things. The cunning warrior he is, Mister Freedom, backs away, smacks his head on a sign, and knocks himself unconscious. 


All of this happens in five minutes. In five minutes, a mountie in an inflated uniform, and inflatable dragon, Jesus Christ, Mary, and Mister Freedom are all arguing back and forth about how much of a jerk America is. And, instead of fighting back, Mister Freedom knocks himself out.


Just pause a little longer and think about that.


Now check your watch.


The movie ain't even half over yet.This crazy train done derailed, and nothing is stopping it from a fiery explosion. Not even an early cameo by the King of Kings. 


So, Mister Freedom is captured and let escape by the broad you see in that picture of Mister Freedom in full armor. To repay the favor, Mister Freedom murders her. He uses his new found freedom (pun intended? who knows?) to crash straight through the window of Marie's house. Marie is super jazzed to see him, and we see that she plasters her wall with posters of Disney characters and Hitler. 


Mister Freedom is kind of down, so he goes to brush his teeth. He runs into Marie's son, who is pretty much Little Orphan Annie, complete with a pink wig instead of red to make it extra effeminate. Mister Freedom mocks this kid, but the kid gets the upper hand when he tells Mister Freedom that no one likes him and that he is a fascist.

Mister Freedom just cannot deal with this news so he has an existential crisis. Yes. That is right. The dude who beats up tourists and window washers has a crisis of identity.

First he rages ridiculously at foreigners and black people and how everyone should just leave America alone. Then, he gets stigmata and turns into a fat, blubbering baby. Then, it is all revealed to be an evil trick by Red Chinaman. 


I refuse to elaborate on that.


So, seeing as how his tooth antenna has been switched for one that makes Mister Freedom feel bad about America, Marie takes him to the Freedom dentist who fixes that problem. After the procedure is finished, Mister Freedom kills the dentist. No witnesses, after all.


This immediately cuts to the funeral of that broad that helped Mister Freedom escaped. Music Man is there, being a big baby and not waiting to fight, so his army decides to take matters into their own hands. Music Man is the stupid chief of this movie. He doesn't know how to get results.

Meanwhile, somewhere, a bunch of French people are fighting each other, seemingly to the death in a cave somewhere. One guy is in a straight up diaper, and there are two dudes drowning a naked lady in a bathtub full of blood. All the rest are wearing clothes that make the rags the slave children wore in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom look like Hilfiger. Why, exactly, they are fighting to the death is never made clear. Then again, rules one and two of Fight Club.


We find out that this is the hidden bunker for Freedom HQ. Mister Freedom storms in and tells them all to be terrorists. He calls it a cold war, but I am not sure a cold war involved out and out terrorizing a country. But that is beside the point, because he then straight up home shopping networks grab bags of weapons of mass destruction that he is giving to each and every freedom fighter. The freedom fighters celebrate this news by returning to beating the shit out of each other.


We then get a montage of the freedom fighters terrorizing France. Nothing too crazy here besides an egg beater that can turn off all the power in the city. I know that is normal crazy, but it is not Mister Freedom crazy.


Now, my friends, we get to journey into the Freedom command center. If you thought Super Frenchman had a surreal group of henchman, you were wrong. The place is swarming with insanity. I cannot accurately describe everything you will see here, as no two henchman looks alike. It's all just various red, white, and blue sports equipment and jerseys. They look like crazy goalies and catchers and overweight, over the hill pitchers. I guess every army needs a Kenny Powers or two. Oh, and there are dudes who are full, head to toe, covered in giant, red and white striped body suits. The arms are ridiculously long and they just kinda flail around like scared E.T.'s 

Damn, I almost forgot the Mouseketeers, who are just Playboy bunny waitresses copyright infringing on Disney.

There's a bunch more sissy debating going on here, but that is cut short by the French resistance attacking, all wearing various Halloween masks in one of the longest, stupidest, most ridiculous battles I have ever seen. Bullets seem to only effect some people. Linebackers tackle radicals. And, in a stunning act of betrayal, we find out Marie is one of them! She hates freedom!

Mister Freedom does not take this lightly. He strangles her to death, cries a little, then goes straight up gonzo nuts. He puts on war paint and starts bombing random areas in France. After he has blown up half the country, he demands to be put on television.

He then gives the single most ridiculous speech I think I have ever heard in my life. I can't repeat it. Without his delivery, it isn't the same. But, basically, he demands that France surrenders to freedom, or he will nuke the whole country.

We then see stock footage of parades with a song about how Freedom is awful and that the world has to unite against it and that France will rise again and blah blah blah who cares? It ends with Mister Freedom going back to home base, finding all his men dead, and then nuking France.

Only, it wasn't really a nuke. He took out like a block, and we can see cars and people wandering around. Then Donald Pleasance gets on Mister Freedom's wrist television and sings an even creepier version of Mister Freedom's theme song.

Oh, and we find out that Mister Freedom was a robot.

The end.

DRAINIAC

Drainiac is a movie that has absolutely no tension whatsoever. It absolutely refuses to let you care about anything that is going on or fear for the lives for anyone who is a main character. It throws subplot after subplot at you, as if you might actually actually believe they are going somewhere, only to have just another thing happen to make you forget that something interesting was dropped again. The movie just steadfastly defies any and all inclinations to be adequate at anything. In short, Drainiac is the epitome of everything you should not do when telling a story, and it is all the more hilarious for it. 

The movie starts with politically conscious hobos waxing philosophical. They are incredibly eloquent. They were probably philosophy majors. One hobo besmirches America, and that just doesn't abide with the other hobo, so he tries to beat him up. Well for that and for the fact he tried to steal his hooch. You do not fuck with a hobo's hooch. In the midst of their Bumfights segment, the two hobos see a spooky house. They go in and the America hater gets melted by weird green goop.

Of course, none of that matters because it was a pointless prologue meant to pad out a pitifully short film. This is not a knock on the movie. I just wanted more, but good old Brett Piper of Kinky Kong fame just did not want to give me any.

So now that the homeless have been mocked thoroughly, we get to meet our main character, Julie. She lives with her jerk dad and her mother is dead. I can relate to Julie as I have been in that situation. However, unlike Julie, I did not dream of monsters raping and murdering me. Clearly, Julie is jacked in the head, and this will come to be a plot point no one really cares to use unless they need a reason for her to be angry.

After being dream raped, Julie goes for a run and hangs out in the cemetery to gab with her dead mom. I am not ashamed to admit I have done this too, but mostly to ask her where she hid things. It's been a year now, and there's still some junk I have never recovered. That woman was crafty. Always movin' things when I wasn't looking.

Moving away from the recent trauma of losing a parent, Julie's jerk dad bought a shit house because he thinks he can make a mint selling it. Said shit house also happens  to be the place where our Communazi terrorist hobo friend found himself deceased, we just don't know that yet. It is just super, duper implied.  Jerk dad is gonna make Julie clean this house, because he hates women.

Speaking of Julie's dad, every time he talks to her, I am outright amazed he does not backhand her. That is just the type of dude he is. He is every Lifetime movie abusive husband rolled into one horrible person, only very poorly acted. It adds to his roguish charms.

As they are pulling out of the driveway, Julie's friends pull up in a jalopy, and angry dad is super nice to them. Julie is friends with stereotypes. There is pretty girl, other pretty girl, and huge nerd. Huge nerd is the one with the penis, but he isn't a threat to them since he is so gangly and awkward he knows, deep down, they will never wanna knock no boots with him. Julie tells them how sweet her plans for the day are, so they immediately ditch her for the mall. 

...

You know what?

Fuck it.

Describing the plot of this movie is an exercise in tedium. I have said it a million times, but, I am dead serious when I say this movie is: things happen, then the credits roll. I can't even backtrack and pretend like anything that happens in this movie matters. Not that anything that happens in any of the movies in Camp Counseling matters, but this is taking it to whole new extremes. Things that happen from sequence to sequence in Drainiac do little, if not nothing, to actually push the pencil-thin story any further.

It is really quite difficult to articulate why this makes the movie so enjoyable. I have seen some low budget movies, ones with budgets even lower than the reported ~$8,000 that it cost to make this masterpiece employ some amazing tactics and storytelling twists in order to put something worthwhile out. In this movie? Not a chance. It just plum does not care about anything. 

Characters literally stroll in and out of the movie like it is no big thing, and we are supposed to pretend that any of them is a big deal. It is actually hilarious.There is one character, Plummer, who is the savior of our quartet of stupid teens. He is introduced as a guy who was just kinda walking around, looking for ghosts to bust. He stumbles upon things being amiss and immediately deduces it looks like the house that has a case of rickets.

Top that with the fact that, in a movie where a demonic house is murdering people, only four dudes die. Even more egregious is the only breasts we see are an evil ghost's and the main character's. That is not how horror movies are supposed to work! We need to see everyone naked but the main character!

But, considering the threat in this movie, it is almost passable. The main villain of the movie is haunted water.

I mean, until the third act, which I will actually describe.

We are racing towards our ending, and though he has only been in the movie for like 5 minutes, Plummer convinces Julie that she should let him exorcise the house. The group agrees with him because it said to in the script, and the movie was almost over, so something interesting had to happen. That and he had business cards, and when an elderly faux-Irish man hands you a business card saying he is a ghostbuster, you take his word for it.

In order to exorcise the house, the people there all lay in a pentagram and stare at the ceiling while neat looking claymation effects circle around them. That is all that happens. The third act of Drainiac  is pretty much laser Floyd; just ten minutes of creepy shit on the wall while an old Irishman curses at demons (which, I guess, is better than listening to Dark Side of the Moon). And just when you think that you will get bored with this, the demons drown the old Irishman. Then Julie sees her dead mom, and the group walk out of the house. The end.

I shit you not. The final confrontation is the group of teenagers walking gingerly out of an evil house that, really, only killed jerks and the Irish. And, in all fairness, aren't they one and the same? I bet Plummer was drunk, anyway.

Before closing this thing out, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the sweet special effects.When watching this movie, you have to keep in mind that it was made in the late 90's and released in the year 2000.  Drainiac likes to boast the fact that all the effects were practical, which seems unreal for a horror movie around that time, but that is a straight up bonkers claim. See, the version you will be able to see is actually a revised version from 2007. Now, usually revised means a director's cut or some such nonsense. Not in the case of Drainiac. See, Brett Piper claims the movie wasn't finished when it was released, so he went back and touched up the special effects by adding incredibly cheesy CGI to it. So, you have the effect of what might be impressive in 1987 being coated with a slick veneer of 1995-level CG. It is quite the treat to see double dated special effects. And, the irony is the effects he didn't touch up look so much better than the ones he did. When a claymation demon spider looks more believable than CG water, you have struck gold, my friend.

I am actually kinda miffed this entry is pathetically short, but there isn't much to say when talking about Drainiac. Again, that is not a bad thing, but it just comes with the territory. I said earlier this movie is short, so the entry about it should be too.

MID-WEEK REVIVAL

So, I kinda screwed the pooch last week, huh? I would like to say that The Crime Killer broke me, but the fact of the matter is I get lazy sometimes. Lazy and drunk. In fact, when not sleeping, I am either lazy or drunk, and, more often than not, both. It is just a quirky character trait that makes me beloved by like 3 dudes in Samoa and this homeless guy that waffles between a thumbs up and the stink eye whenever I am returning my Netflix. He lives by the mailbox, and I am pretty sure he always knows what I rented, thus the different greetings. He just hated The Eyes of Laura Mars and he is not afraid to intimidate strangers to prove it; a misunderstood master of criticism that gets his rocks off humping blue federal property.

But, I digress.

Today's little mid-week spiel will be a bit longer than usual, but only because I want to talk about myself -- my favorite topic.

I am not ashamed to say, flat out, that I was pretty much raised by television. In fact before Camp Counseling became Camp Counseling, it was going to be something very different. It was going to be called Raised by Television and be an autobiographical account of how movies and television played pivotal roles in decisions and events both large and small in my life. This is not to say I had horribly negligent parents who left the T.V. on while they got up to some completely inappropriate and irresponsible hoodwinkery. My parents were pretty decent, all things considered. In fact, they probably could've taught me a hell of a lot, but I chose to learn from Elvira and Joe Bob Brigs and Crow T. Robot to name a few. 

My best friends were the UHF dial and old-school black box cable. Prime time for me started at midnight and ended when the sun tried to muscle its way past my heavy eyelids. I spent way too much time staying up 'til 4 AM just to watch the Knife Collector's Show on the Shop at Home network. Pubescent me thought seeing grown men getting way too excited about pocket knives was the funniest thing. Adult me still kinda agrees.

In a way, this lifestyle choice planted the seeds that sprouted my love of camp. It made things awkward because I was never fully awake when hanging out with my friends, and I would flat out lie to them if, instead of hanging out in the dreaded sunlight, I really wanted to watch, say, Porky's. Then again, a true friend would never interrupt Porky's. They must've all been jerks.

Yeah, I probably could've had straight up Stand by Me adventures and bonded closely with the dudes who were around pre- and post- testicular droppage. I probably would have a litany of coming-of-age stories to tell you. However, none of this matters because I had access to the Holy Grail of early 90's cable:  Cinemax. 

Sure, you could watch Joe Bob Briggs on Showtime and later USA, and he'd always have something wonderful for you. You could tune into Comedy Central and get a fix of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and laugh your ass off. Reruns of Elvira's show, too, were easy to come by and there's nothing quite like the feeling of having an errection during Plan 9 from Outer Space. However, they all paled in comparsion to Cinemax: the channel that would play anything.  

Memory is a tricky thing. I forget pretty much everyone's birthday, when I took medication, if I ate in the past 24 hours, and even my name at times, but I remember every movie I saw on Cinemax way back then. And for you, people with nothing better to do but read my rambling, I will use my sweet brain and awesome languification skills to present to you a list of the first five movies I saw on Cinemax in the early 90's. I feel as though they are a good indicator of what shaped me to be the way I am.

As an aside, I tend to think in lists a lot. I like to break things down into lists as well. Just gotta organize and rate most of the things in my life. Like John Cusack in High Fidelity only I am not a blubbering man-baby vagina. Plus, I am relatively sure I ain't plowed Lily Tomlin.

Now, I am going to list the five movies, but I am not going to tell you what they were about. I will give a brief paragraph about how they affected me, but that is it. I feel as though experiencing these movies knowing nothing is the best way to do it.

Well, except for Death Wish 2. Which you should know all about and have seen multiple times by now. Oh yeah. That was the first one. Whoops.

Yes, Death Wish 2 is the first movie I saw on Cinemax. To try to articulate my love for the Death Wish franchise is futile. Though part 3 will always be my favorite, there was something magical about seeing Charles Bronson, dressed like a hobo, shooting Cowboy Curtis. It was as if Chuck knew I was on a better path, and he was murdering all the childish riff raff to make me the manly man I am now.

I also saw The Evil Dead for the first time on Cinemax. That was number two. I am secretly terrible at listing even though I do it all the time. But I guess it's not so secret now, what with you being able to see this, publicly, on the internet.

The Evil Dead was not a comedy. I think many people forget this. It was completely serious and even more completely hilarious. It was my first taste of true, utter camp. I immediately was hooked and, no lie, started envisioning all movie special effects being reimagined with claymation like the end. I really feel that is a tool that isn't used nearly enough any more. It is almost always hilarious. Except when Wes Anderson uses it.

Now, number three is a curveball. It is not campy, nor is it really a movie you'd expect me to talk about. So I won't.

PS: It was Flowers in the Attic.

Goddamn that movie was creepy, but I did find it hilarious it was immediately followed up by a soft-core porn movie. Something with "bikini" in the title. At a young age, I appreciated poor decisions. Then again, my life was a constant stream of them. Still is, too.

Troma entered my life early with Sgt. Kabukiman, N.Y.P.D. I would love to say that it entered with The Toxic Avenger, but all I knew of good ol' Toxie was from Toxic Crusaders and well, there weren't nearly that many boobs and head crushings in that show. There was a dude with a big nose, though. I like to think it was Lloyd Kaufman playing around with Jewish stereotypes. Only I think he was from Oklahoma. Are there Jews in Oklahoma? This line of questioning is irrelvant, though. The point is Sgt. Kabukiman exemplified and magnified all the things I loved in The Evil Dead and then took it much further over the top than was appropriate or wise. The bombastic Troma spirit of entertainment being king became a siren's song to me.

So, of course, the next movie I saw was Eating Raoul. It was about people who murder and eat swingers. There was an orgy in it, and Ed Begley Jr.gets killed.

Hey remember when I said I wasn't going to tell you what the movies were about?

I lied.

Also, remember when I stole a quote from Commando?

That was pretty cool of me. I'm a stud.

And, well, yeah. Those are the first five movies I saw on Cinemax.  I guess you might have learned a little about me too, reading this list.

...

Oh dang, I got way too personal with this entry, didn't I?

Gotta fix this.

Uh.

Uhhhhh.

Here's a Scandinavian giantess singing a sultry song:

Phew.

Entry saved.

THE CRIME KILLER (AKA ZEUS: THE CRIME KILLER)

I am going to level with you. 90% of why I tracked this movie down was because the guy who played Hitler in Hard Rock Zombies plays the President of the United States in this movie. That fact, combined with the fact that those are the only two film roles he ever had made me need this movie even more than is remotely healthy. I searched and scoured for this movie for years and always seemed to just miss it. I finally snagged a copy on Monday and I don't know how I was able to live without it. Believe me, it was worth the wait, as this movie is straight up bonkers to the umpteenth degree, and is worthy of being your Independence Day weekend entry.

So, The Crime Killer. Man, it sure is a movie. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It was filmed, presumably, with a camera or camera-like device. People pretended to be people they were not. And, that, my friends, is all that is deciperhable about this movie. It is a glorious hodge-podge of stupefyingly pathetic performances, characters that come and go willy-nilly with little to no justification, plot points that exist only because something has to happen when the camera is on, and a main character who is the most effeminate loose cannon cop to ever grace the silver screen. I will try to piece what I saw back together for you, but I implore you to track down a copy for yourself. I am not sure I believe I saw what I did, and would like a second opinion.

The Crime Killer starts off with our hero and Greek cop extraordinaire, Zeus and his black partner (no idea how many days from retirement he is) in a shootout in an incredibly dark alleyway. After killing a few punks, it looks like all is clear and maybe we will get a credits sequence. But things are not ever this easy. It turns out that a bunch of punks were hiding in metal trash cans that just kinda litter this absurdist's vision of an alleyway. They jump out in slow motion and mow down Zeus' partner in a hail of really slow bullets. They also shoot Zeus. We find out that these guys are evil mobster/drug dealers and that they are working with dirty cops when two dirty cops show up and Zeus kills them.

That above paragraph is less confusing than the actual sequence, mind you.

We get a brief glimpse of Zeus' home life next. His wife has got to be like 25 years younger than him. We learn that Zeus pretty much lets anyone ever live at his house, because he has three roommates and is now inviting black cop's wife to life with him. Her function is to bring the proper levels of sass to any given scene that has a sass deficiency. I want to write more about what happens at home, but all we find out is that Zeus really, really likes kids. It is one of the many creepy personality traits our writer, director, and star George Pan-Andreas felt this movie needed. Bless his ineptitude.

Zeus is called in to see the chief of police. We know he is the chief of police because anyone, other than Zeus, who has any position of power has a gigantic 1800's oil-baron mustache. They are all the Monopoly guy. Apparently, shooting cops is frowned upon. But the logistics of the meeting are not important. What is important is that we finally get to realize that The Crime Killer is the most homoerotic movie ever made. It is gayer than Rob Halford and Freddy Mercury making out with a Will and Grace script. You can just feel the pangs of a forbidden love in between every line of dialogue between Zeus and the chief this early on and it is hilarious because the chief has less acting chops than Dean Lerner.

Zeus is kicked off the force because of damn politicians, a line that is repeated about seventy-five times in three minutes, and we immediately cut to President Hitler addressing the nation. He got a letter from an old woman about how crime is out of control, and he starts choking back tears. He decides that enough is enough and he is going to be extra super special tough on crime. He declares war on drugs.

Two drug dealers watch on as the President gives his speech. They get angry, and decide that if the President is going to have a war on drugs, then they will kill the President. I mean, being more cautious and maybe moving into a different racket might have been the wiser choices, but fuck, this is The Crime Killer, and thinking rationally is, well, the biggest crime of all.

After Zeus stops blubbering and sobbing over not being a cop anymore, a whole lot of nothing happens until the chief shows up like nothing happened at all and asks Zeus to help him with a case. Their forbidden romance has hit a fever pitch, so of course, the pretense is dropped when he straight up tells the chief he loves him and that the chief broke his heart in a scene that completely feels to be Zeus asking the chief out on a date instead of the chief needing help to fight crime.

The chief leads Zeus to two ladies with their throats slashed. One of the ladies is the ex-wife of the President, and Zeus, using astounding logic, figures that if the president's ex was murdered, than only the president himself could be next!

This springboards into Zeus' creepy obsession with children rearing its ugly head again, as a little girl was a witness to the crime! He makes her look at pictures of killers while playing a game who's rules we are never actually given. She identifies one of our couch-potato drug dealers. So, Zeus goes undercover as a gardener to get facts. 

At this point, seriously, why did he lose his badge? He has done more police work than actual police officers, the dirty cops never show up again, and, you know what? I gotta stop thinking and focus more on Zeus' gardener adventures.

Zeus pretends to be a gardner to try and get intel on what our evil president killing drug dealers are up to. Apparently, they throw bitchin' parties for oil sheiks complete with topless tennis, and a mysterious woman on a balcony who doesn't show up again in the end. Also, they hang out with the Yakuza. Zeus gets discovered, and a Greek accent pretending to have a Mexican accent is pretty much the funniest thing in the world. Oh, and they kick the snot out of him for what seems like a billion years.

While Zeus is busy licking his wounds and having his wife nag the bejeesus out of him, the little girl witness gets kidnapped! I wonder how they saw through his amazing disguise. Zeus, fed up with all this bullshit, immediately starts flashing back to the Vietnam War. He then demands the Chief to let him get his old unit from said war back together to find Emily.

Yes, you read this all right. And no, none of this back story was every mentioned before, nor were any of his war buddies ever seen before this moment. Oh, and, in case you were wondering, this is the exact moment this movie just completely drops the charade it cares about making sense. Because, immediately after this, shit gets crazy. 

Zeus and his two war buddies drive out into an abandoned field. From within the brush, a drill sergeant emerges. He yells at them and demeans them, and makes them sign a piece of paper saying that the government now owns them. He then puts them through the lamest boot camp sequence I have ever seen, and interspersed between it are flashbacks to Vietnam, with the least convincing soldiers ever yelling at our trio. It is the most surreal experience I have ever had, and it is never explained what the whole point of it is, because once it is over, the drill sergeant then retreats back into the brush never to be seen again. I just know I could not stop laughing.

From this point we get to bear witness to:

- Every villain in the entire film knowing Kung Fu. All of them, from the junkie in an abandoned alley to the border-line morbidly obese drug dealer

- A car chase where not even once are the two vehicles ever in the same shot

-  Zeus getting sassed at for being a cop by his ex-partner's wife

- The secret head main villain being a person we only saw for three seconds in one shot

- Zeus stealing the President's watch

- The President making said watch explode

 And those are just some of the all-out crazy things that happen in this movie after the training sequence. It just turns into all-out anarchy for no good reason. They start jump cutting between idiotic ideas, scenes, and even right over lines of dialogue all to go for the gusto straight to a finish that makes even less sense than what has come before it.

It has taken me over 18 hours to write this entry. Normally, I can bang one out in about 3, but man, this movie just burrows its way into your head and you just cannot seem to repeat what it is you just saw. You loved every minute of it, but you just can't quite fathom what the hell it was. Immediately after the movie ends, you are going to have to repeatedly ask yourself what was just watched. You will have no idea how this movie could exist. You will have no idea if it was all just some fever dream of cops who really want to kiss each other. You will be tempted to re-watch it. Give in to that temptation.