And yet, in the midst of all this chaos there was a voice of reason; John Milius.  Milius has numerous writing and directing credits to his name (Conan the Barbarian for one), but nothing would ever rival his finest work… his Spruce Goose… a film we know as Red Dawn .

If you were born after 1980, then the list of actors in Red Dawn may surprise you a little bit, but keep in mind that this movie was made in a time shortly before the world stopped making sense.  This is when Patrick Swayze was a badass, Charlie Sheen wasn’t coked to the gills and Emilio Estevez wasn’t coaching junior hockey.  Lea Thompson was (as she is now) a fox, and Jennifer Grey was… well… she was… a supporting character.

The film opens with a mid-western American high school teacher giving a history lesson and noticing hundreds of paratroopers falling from the sky.  He goes outside to see what’s going on, and gets blown away.  It seems that the Soviet nations have invaded the United States of America and the only ones who can save Mom, all her apple pie, and the rest of America are its youth.  Just thinking about it makes me want to smoke a carton of Marlboros, eat 12 Big Macs and chug a 32 oz bottle of Jack Daniels. WOOO!  U…S…A!!!!

Sorry, I digressed there.  This slightly altered view of a possible future must have resonated with an early 80s audience (this is also before the days of Gorbachev and Perestroika, so the Russian bear was greatly feared… as should be ALL bears), so if it’s lost on any of young pups out there, just imagine they’re from somewhere in the Middle East… somewhere Jack Bauer wants to go and kick some ass.

Ignoring the poignant and cleverly woven tapestry of cultural commentary (and there’s A LOT… easily enough for a Grad paper or two), Red Dawn delivers on every other level.  It’s got action sequences that will make your teeth hurt (from gritting them, or whatever), romance (albeit between the lovely Lea Thompson and some geezer), and High School Football.  Like every 80s movie, the teen characters are broken up into their various social groups (a la ‘Sixteen Candles‘ and ‘The Breakfast Club‘) but with far more depth.

For me, Red Dawn is the film to which every other film must compete… it is a perfect 10.  Disagree with me.  I dare you.  GO WOLVERINES!

Note: I do not condone the watching of these films unless it’s done in a mocking fashion. Also, I will omit any films that I saw ripped apart by Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Manos: The Hands Of Fate and The Night Train To Mundo Fine are easily the worst films I’ve seen, but they have already been saluted as horrible by the aforementioned MST3K.

Seamless : Seems like the worst is a great place to start and this definitely qualifies. Of all the films on this list, it’s the only one that I didn’t make it all the way through. The only thing worse than the plot was the acting. Something about drugs, placebos, raves and a used clothing store, I think. Anyways, this was so bad, I couldn’t even laugh at it.

The Hustle : You can chalk this one up to false advertising. The cover of the film prominantly features to DJ’s known as Doctor Dre (not to be confused with Dr. Dre) and Ed Lover. I decided to rent this after their stellar performance in Who’s The Man? , which was actually pretty funny. Back to The Hustle, anyways, these two are barely in it. They make a brief cameo and, while funny, could not make up for the rest of the film, which could’ve been made by some high school students.

Black Friday : This really is the most interesting film of the bunch. The film was directed by a guy who had previously just done music videos and it was kind of shot like one. This led to a couple of interestingly shot scenes but that couldn’t make up for horrible diaglogue, acting, pacing, casting, editing and pretty much everything else. What sets this film apart is that you keep watching because you expect it to get better. Sadly, it never does.

Code Hunter : Signs that this film will be bad: 1) Coolio, 2) the guy from the Highlander TV show, 3) Vanessa Marcil in her pre-Las Vegas phase, 4) SNL alumnus Nora Dunn. This film was actually pretty watchable when compared to its predecessors on this list. I know that doesn’t say much but you can put up with the horrible acting and script because the premise was at least somewhat entertaining.

NBC, having determined she had little to no acting talent at age 2, decided to put her to work in the studio canteen stirring chili.  It was 4 years later, over a cauldron of boiling ground beef that a young Gary David Goldberg noticed her and immediately decided to cast her in his latest show.

Sadly, “Daddy Kisses Best” never caught on as a concept… but his back-up project, “Family Ties” did.  For the next seven years, the Keatons were the only family she knew and loved (except Brian Bonsall, whom she despised and frequently tormented with sharp sticks and cigarette butts).

When the show was finally put to rest in 1989, Yothers was on her own for the first time in her life and quickly spiraled into a depressing spiral of spirally Spiro-graph addiction.  Spiral.  She would huddle for hours in dark L.A. alleys drawing complex images until her clothes were ratty and her once bright eyes were ashen and her chubby cheeks were hollowed.

In 1998, after nearly ten years on the streets, her family came to her rescue… they needed her to be there for a health crisis.

Yothers was devastated when she found out her brother had Parkinson’s disease. She was ever more devastated when she found out Michael J. Fox wasn’t even her real brother.  There was a terrible scene at the hospital, and Yothers has been in court on and off since fighting NBC for backwages earned in the NBC canteen in the 70’s and 80’s.

Yothers currently resides in sunny Las Hamburguesas, California under the assumed name of Sexy LaRue.  She has four cats, two dogs and a llama.

[Disclosure: SilentTalkie was paid by NBC to write this article ( but not well).]

Well, it’s not that my taste in movies is particularly bad, it’s just that I have the ability to sit through almost everything and find incredible humour in unintentional comedy. As a result, I’ve seen a number of films that most people scoff at, as they peruse the selection at their local movie rental store. Of course, this means that there are some bad films and some good films. Fortunately, I’m here to tell you about the good ones. I’ll save the bad ones in case I’m asked to write another article.

The Hebrew Hammer – Ever wonder what Shaft would look like if he was Jewish? Well, neither had I but this film answers those questions with hilarious results. It stars Adam Goldberg as a bad-ass Jew who has to defeat the evil Santa (played by Andy Dick) and stop him from destroying Chanukah. It sounds a little ludicris but it’s worth it to sit back and enjoy the laughs.

Free Enterprise – This film is pretty much the turning point in William Shatner’s career. Here was really the first place where he played himself and he primarily makes fun of himself. The film centres around two struggling professionals in Hollywood (including a young Eric McCormick, Will of Will & Grace) who run into William Shatner at a book store and develop a friendship with their boyhood hero. The part I forgot to mention is that both young men are huge sci-fi nerds. While not the slapstick and baseless humour of The Hebrew Hammer, the film delivers plenty of laughs. One of which involves Linda Harrison’s Nova character from Planet of the Apes being lauded as the ideal mate because she’s beautiful, scantilly clad and mute. Also, if you can’t laugh at William Shatner performing a rap version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, you might as well stop reading the column right now.

Super Troopers – Aside from the 40 Year Old Virgin, this is funniest film that I’ve seen in the last 5 years. The movie plays almost like a sketch comedy with the plot just moving you from gag to gag but the gags are worth it. Just don’t get carried away playing a game of repeater.

Mean Machine – Long before Adam Sandler made the travesty of a film known as The Longest Yard, a group of British actors, well known for their roles in Guy Ritchie films, remade the film using soccer as the sport instead of football. Unlinke Sandler’s version, the Brits end up with a funny film that doesn’t disrespect the classic nearly as much as Sandler’s version. Vinnie Jones stars as the ex-pro sent to prison and forced to assemble a team to take on the guards. Jason Statham is about the only other recognizeable name and stars as the psychotic goalie with dreams of stardom.

UHF – Supplies! While this one isn’t nearly as obscure as the others on the list, it deserves a mention as it has been forgotten about as one of the funniest films of the last 20 years. Parody movies are tough to make and this one succeeds where the Scary Movie franchise has failed repeatedly. Michael Richards’ physical comedy gives us a preview as to what Kramer would become and Weird Al does a good job at moving from joke to joke.

Bubble Boy – Have you ever been karmically bitch-slapped by a six-armed goddess? Long before he was a gay cowboy, Jake Gyllenhaal was the boy in the bubble. The movie seemed rather innocent, thanks to trailers which surprisingly didn’t show the funniest moments of the film. There is racial humour that springs up in the weirdest places and can bring you to tears. Actually, if you’re going to watch this film go in with low expectations, don’t think too much and you’ll enjoy it.

After reading this, you might think that just grabbing a random film off the shelf at Blockbuster is guaranteed laughs. Unfortunately, that’s not true. For every watchable film you find, you find five films on the level of Black Friday, Ninja III: The Domination and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn.

Note: Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn involves neither a storm of metal nor is Jared-Syn destroyed. That title is very misleading but it does star Bull from Night Court and Kelly Preston.

Editor’s Note: Ninja III does not star Richard Hamilton II

Well, sadly I have to admit that I have more in common with your elderly grandfather who likes to tell stories about rations he ate in the service while overseas. I love war movies.

If you think that war movies are all propaganda about how great ‘our side’ is, or that all they do is glorify war, then you haven’t seen many war movies. Most war movies made after Platoon tend to have a very cynical turn to them (even Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers), but those movies from the 50s and 60s tend to be historically accurate (accounting for embellished story-telling and censorship).

For a great example of a REALLY good war movie, check out The Longest Day. Made in 1962, and based on a phenomenal book by Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day is a collection of true stories about men’s experiences around what we know as D-Day, or the Allied invasion of France in June 1944. Stories are told from all levels of command and from all sides in the conflict. The focus of the film is evenly divided between sharing the facts of how the day played out historically, while sharing the emotionally difficult circumstances that all these men found themselves in. It’s a snapshot of one very important day in our modern history from a very human perspective, and it stars hundreds of famous actors.

Once you’ve watched The Longest Day, you can graduate to two movies that are far more deeply entrenched in our culture. The first is The Bridge on the River Kwai. It stars Alec “Obi Wan” Guinness as the commander of British Prisoners of War (or POWs) in a Japanese internment camp who are forced to build a railroad bridge. Again, like any good war movie, the focus of the film isn’t on explosions or action, but on how people react in extraordinary circumstances.

This goes double for the second movie… The Great Escape. This epic film also has a huge cast of big name stars, and is centered around POWs in World War II, but they are in a German internment camp, and they’re tunnelling out to escape. This is possibly one of the most intriguing true stories to come out of the war, and there’s barely any fighting in the film.

So, I challenge you to buy, rent or download (eek) these three movies and watch them in turn. I know, they’re each at least three hours long, but you won’t regret it. Send me your reviews at dave@silenttalkie.com, and I’ll do a follow-up article once I get a few responses.

He would show his true colours later…

I first became familiar with Harrison II’s work with Ninja Strike Force, which I have “borrowed” from some friends (sorry Jon and Mark) for over 10 years. An epic film of massive proportions. After a little more research, I was astounded to learn that I had just scratched the surface of not only Ninja ______ movies but also of Sir Harrison II Esquire (I’m sure he’s knighted somewhere.)

And as impressive as he was in those 75 Italian film gems, his true calling would come in 1985 when he was asked to portray a Ninja in NINJA HOLOCAUST aka 108 Golden Killers. Probably with little-to-no ninja training, “Harrison Deuce”, as his mom called him, had to kill his way to the top, I’m sure.

Richard had learned the taste for blood… and wanted more. A lot more.

After NINJA HOLOCAUST, Richard starred in six more films, five more as a ninja… in 1985 alone.

• Ninja Thunderbolt (1985)
  … aka Ninja and the Thief
  … aka To Catch a Ninja
• Ninja Champion (1985) …. Richard
• Majestic Thunderbolt (1985)
• Ninja Terminator (1985) …. Ninja master Harry
• Inferno Thunderbolt (1985) …. Richard

From 1986 til 1988 Harrison II played either Richard, the ninja side-kick to a Hong Kong cop (but really he was the brains and the braun behind the operation) or his most prized roll:

NINJA MASTER GORDON

Do you know how Gordon (played by Richard Harrison II) is a ninja master? He has a headband that says ninja on it and tells everyone he meets / fights that he is a ninja. He has to tell them, because you can’t read his headband when he’s killing you.

Although I am a Harrison II expert, I have only seen Ninja Strike Force, but can safely assume that the other Ninja _______ movies go something like this:

Part One: Flash back to some old Chinese movie with bad dubbing and someone dying for some ancient powerful relic or just plain murder.

Part Two: Present Day: Some Chinese guys are doing something, while in another scene a bunch of white ninjas (read: white people, mostly bearded) in a rainbow assortment of coloured ninja garb with a variety of weapons get together because someone or thing or group has stolen or killed or kidnapped something to do with the Chinese guys and the only ones who can stop it are the group of ninja masters, led by GORDON!

Contrary to the cover (on the right) there is no car chase, Bronsonesque character with a gun or kissing.

Bingo… that’s it. Now come up with a snappy title:

Ninja Powerforce (1988), Ninja Strike Force, Scorpion Thunderbolt (1988), Ninja: Silent Assassin (1987) Ninja Operation: Licensed to Terminate (1987), Cobra Vs. Ninja (1987), Ninja Avengers (1987), Ninja Commandments (1987), Hands of Death (1987), Ninja Kill (1987), The Ninja Showdown (1987), Diamond Ninja Force (1986), Ninja Dragon (1986), Ninja the Protector (1986), Golden Ninja Warrior (1986), Ninja Squad (1986) and Ninja Hunt (1986)

WOW.

Most people would credit the director with piecing together the Chinese parts and the White people parts so seamlessly.

You can barely tell that when they are talking to each other (for one scene) they aren’t in the same room or under the same lighting. And it takes a complete moron to miss the subtle parts of the story line where the two separate pieces come together for two seconds. Sheesh… just pay attention.

What was I writing? Oh yes… the reason the parts come together so seamlessly is because of one RICHARD HARRISON II… he ninja’d them together and the film changed for him.

So, if you have a week with nothing to do, go down to your local variety store, garbage dump, vintage video store or museum and pick up anything with Richard Harrison II in it.

Why do you need a week?

To recover.

See also this link, with an awesome description of Ninja Strike Force
S submitted by Dan!

In 1973, keyboardist Claudio Simonetti moved to England to work with Eddie Offord of the band “Yes”. Together with a english speaking singer, they formed a band named “Oliver” and worked on releasing an album. Unfortunately, Offord was constantly on tour with Yes, leading to a breakdown in productivity. Predictably, the band broke up and Simonetti moved back to Italy to form the band “Cherry Five” with Massimo Morante (guitar), Fabio Pignatelli (bass), Tony Tartarini (vocals) and Carlo Bordini. They released an album heavy with hammond organ, mellotron and grand piano, producing what is essentially a darker version of most “Yes” albums.

Following this self-titled release, the band were approached to produce some tunes for Dario Argento’s new horror film, “Deep Red” (1975). They changed their name, added a few members, and formed the first incarnation of “Goblin”. Their work on the film made them a sensation overnight, with the soundtrack selling over 1 million copies in Italy. Thus history was made – a rock band even more highly praised than the veteran score composer who had been assigned to help them on the project.

Not two years later, Goblin were invited back to the studio to produce the score for one of Argento’s most accessible movies, “Suspiria” (1997). This project marks a departure from their ’70s rock and roll roots, as they implemented sequencers for the very first time. The dark neo-gothic music that resulted was as mesmerizing and shocking as the film itself, cementing their status as the best horror band in the industry and shaping their future development.

It was at this point that Goblin decided to produce an album outside of the film studio. Although the results were well received, by the end of the project the band were sick of each other, and broke up. Over the following years, they each went their separate ways to create more film scores almost exclusively for the horror industry. It should be noted that although they were no longer a band, their individual work was sometimes still credited under the name “Goblin”.

In 1982, they finally reunited to score Argento’s film, “Tenebre” (1982), and began to re-identify themselves as “Goblin” by the time they produced the music for his next film, “Phenomena” (1985). At this point, their move from prog-rock to electronic was complete, and their place in movie history firmly cemented.

But what about the niche that Goblin has opened for us? Beyond Rob Zombie, who has managed to successfully cross the boundary between rock albums and film scores, the collaboration between rock bands and horror film makers seem to be more based on cameos, flashing tits, and selling existing albums – not on sitting down together and writing original scores using both the dark vision of the film maker and the experimental edge of the rock band. Alas, maybe these days, such magic is confined to a shorter, cheaper version: crappy-ass music videos.

To learn more about their work in the industry, check out the full listing of Goblin soundtracks: http://www.darkdreams.org/goblin_argento_soundtracks.html

Dude, you have just relived Toronto-based Tasman Richardson’s world of the “basement boy,” to which he has dedicated his video art masterpiece, “Basement Boy Hardcore”.

Self-described as “a semi-autobiographical self-marginalizing identity based investigation of North American geek culture cross-pollinated with breakbeat hardcore,” this dvd is a hypnotic collection of short videos that explore different icons in western geekdom. These icons include things like Star Wars, Black Sabbath, ninjas, and the well-loved shoot ‘em up videogames from our youth.  What makes this video collection so amazing is Richardson’s unique editing technique – by treating the audio and visual elements of video as an organic whole, he manages to compose driving hardcore beats as he cuts and pastes each frame together. The result is a frenetic, startling audio/visual experience created out of familiar images from our hormonal youth.

I learned more about Richardson and his work after talking to him between his trips abroad:

ST: What is your training?
TR: I majored in New Media for four years at OCAD and graduated in 1996.

ST: Tell me more about your crazy-ass editing-for-sound technique. How did you develop it? What are the ups and downs that you’ve experience in using this type of editing style?

TR: The technique is a progression from the literary cutups of Bryan Gysin and William Buroughs but it’s also influenced by more recent works by Coldcut. I was working on these old AB roll decks which are just tape rolling back and forth, so you can imagine how impossible it was to be precise with cuts this fast or small (1/30 of a second). It was all just cut and paste or pause and record if you know what I mean, but then along came digital non-linear editing in the form of a very crappy early incarnation called “Perception” for PC and before you knew it I had churned out five new videos, all of them in the style that I’d been wanting to express. After all this time, it’s still those first five that are the clearest primitive break way from standard practice.

The technique is not so much about editing for sound as it is editing for symbolism and immediacy on all levels. I mean, yes, I listen to a clip and think ‘that sounds good’ but it needs to look good and if I freeze frame, it needs to have a strong composition. Each clip needs to visualize AND auralize something significant. Then when they all play together you get harmonies of information instead of noise.

ST: Tell me more about your collective, www.famefame.com. How did you guys get involved with each other? What are the benefits/drawbacks?

TR: FAMEFAME was born out of an earlier collective called JAWA. That’s a whole story in itself but I’ll cut it short. Jubal Brown and myself were already collaborating and I felt the need to take all my work in different mediums and place it under a banner… some kind of seal of approval or quality and that was FAMEFAME. It wasn’t officially founded until Josh Avery and Elenore Chesnutt started producing work that was complimentary to this goal. Then we drafted the manifesto, got our tattoos of loyalty and started the work.

Since then, we have a new member, Alana Didur. FAMEFAME is complex because in some ways it’s a parody of many recognizable institutions, a record label, an artist collective, a curatorial body, an events promoter, a design house, etc. We work with everything from vinyl records to kinetic sculpture, although our main concern lately has been video in the JAWA style or
the updated FAMEFAME style.

ST: What do you think of the Toronto arts scene? I am particularly interested in your thoughts, as you have had so much international exposure and can view the local scene with a more objective eye.

TR: This scene is very important because many cities don’t have anything like it. The artist-run side of things is very much in balance with the commercial. People may scoff at that but if you go to Paris of Tokyo you’ll feel crushed by the ridiculous demands of commercial venues and the impossible submissions process for getting noticed. There’s a lot of creative, underground sort of venue work being done in these places to counteract the commercial imbalance but that’s something we don’t have here, not to the same extreme. I didn’t appreciate that until recently but I’m really proud of it when I go anywhere outside of Canada. I’ve turned into this crazy nationalist canadiana pusher.

The biggest problem with Toronto now is that we have it so good and we don’t know it so instead of keeping the artist run culture sharp and raising standards, there’s a tendency, especially in video, to dumb it down as some kind of accessibility thing for the public. That’s bullshit and it’s sad because when you lower the standard it’s harder to raise it again later. It’s not bi-directional, you can’t just give it a try and see. Once you start showing kid-friendly anti-intellectual, 40 year old identity base work you’re going to introduce an audience that naturally loves it because  they’re just getting to know it for the first time. It’s our responsibility to bring the audience into the present, or even the future of the medium, not wow them with nostalgic concepts.

It seems like Toronto will always have these two type of screenings as a result: the public surface art which is simplified, and the clique powered aficionado types that are so well versed in a medium that the average person has no hope of fitting in. We need to break that and find a way to introduce mature, complex themes in a easy to enjoy format. That’s what FAMEFAME is trying to do, and I hope we succeed.

You can find more about Tasman Richardson’s work at www.famefame.com. You can also order a copy of “Basement Boy Hardcore” from their online shop.