Sidekicks: Because dreams DO come true

The final installment in our glorious "Chuck Norris Family Film Night" was 1992's Sidekicks. By this point, Top Dog had melted my brain, and I think I had drool sliding down my chin as I gawked at the images dancing around on the sceen. My comprehension facilities had taken a permanent backseat to the terrible films at hand. It reminded me of those all-day video game marathons my friends and I used to have as kids – at the end, we thought we had gone cross-eyed. Such is the mental toll exacted up on us so that we can bring you terrible film reviews.

Before I get started, I have a confession to make – I saw Sidekicks during its initial theatrical run. I don't remember what appealed to me about it and allowed Kerasotes Theaters to pry hard-earned allowance out of my sweaty palms. It might have been my love for bad action movies, or just that my friends and I were bored hanging around the mall one weekend. The fact remains that I was one of ten other people in the United States who viewed Sidekicks on a big screen.

Barry Gabrewski (the departed Jonathan Brandeis of Seaquest fame) is a scrawny, weak, asthmatic high school kid who spends his days drifting off in class and dreaming about Chuck Norris – more specifically, he fantasizes about starring alongside Chuck in classic bad action fare like Missing in Action and The Octagon. These fantasy asides are amazing in their stupidity; he and Norris battle everything from ninjas to Vietcong to cheesy '80s punk gangs. In a way, this could almost make Sidekicks into a post-modern '80s action film that takes its cheese and homoerotic subtexts with a self-aware grain of salt.

As one can expect, Barry's fantasies lead him to the receiving end of some ole'-fashioned bullying from his peers. It's not too surprising, considering that "Barry-Warry" is prone to calling out for his hero in the middle of class lectures. He tries to enroll in Joe Piscopo's karate class, only to be turned down due to his weakness and his affinity for all things Norris. Actually, this leads to one of the best scenes in the film – Piscopo, who looks like a vein is about to break out of his gigantic neck, rants and raves against Chuck in a grandiose spectacle of scenery-chewing.

Barry's life begins to change when his teacher (Rambo's girlfriend from First Blood Part II, whose English seems to me MUCH improved on this go-round) introduces him to her grandfather (Mako, the mystical wizard from Conan), who is your typical wise Asian stereotype. The plot is predictable - under his tutelage, Barry is able to learn elite karate skills that allow him to stand up to the bullies at school, impress his R. Lee Ermey-esque gym teacher (Bull from Night Court) and woo Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years. Sidekicks culminates in a major karate tournament where Chuck Norris conveniently joins Barry's team to fulfill the necessary quote of competitors. Oh, and he also beats up Joe Piscopo.

Sidekicks is one of scads of kids' films that takes a plot, tweaks it slightly, then passes it off as a new movie, hoping its audience are too young and / or stupid to notice. Keep in mind that this movie was released about a decade before remakes became accepted practice in Hollywood, so they had to be slyer about their reusing back then. It's got the same hoary, tired tropes – work hard to persevere, dreams can come true, fantasy has its place in life, the nerd gets the girl. What really separates it from the pack is that this one features Chuck Norris and Joe Piscopo's inhuman neck veins, which should receive billing unto themselves.

Is this movie work your $2?:
If you're a dedicated bad action movie / Chuck Norris fan, if you wonder what became of Rambo's girlfriend and Winnie Cooper, or if you are one of the few who have childhood memories of it, then Sidekicks is for you.

Top Dog: Chuck Norris Family Night grinds us down

Chuck Norris teams up with big shaggy dog. Fights some hessian Nazis in San Diego. It's as bad as it sounds.

Forest Warrior - Norris goes Seagal

Why do you watch bad movies? If you watch them because you like seeing grown adults make fools of themselves, then today we've got the film for you! The pitch is simple and irresistible for bad movie fans - Chuck Norris is out to kick logger ass for mother Earth. This one would make an appropriate double feature with Seagal's two eco-revenge films, On Deadly Ground and Fire Down Below. Nonetheless, we choose to view it as a part of a three film endurance test we called "Chuck Norris Family Film Night," which also included Top Dog and Sidekicks. All three films films were directed by Chuck's brother, Arron Norris, who never learned the art of pacing in film school.

I'm assuming that this film was on a direct route to Blockbuster video shelves, as it was a follow-up to career-low Top Dog, a film where the biggest crime was making high school chess tournaments and televised bowling look exciting. How did the brothers Norris make up for this lapse in judgment? Did they make Delta Force 3? Missing in Action IV? The much-needed and never realized Invasion USA sequel? Nope - Forest Warrior.

We at Cinematic Feces are aware that in real-life, Norris is indeed a true martial arts master, so this next career move seems even stranger. Freshly-mulleted and wearing a "white man at the pow-wow" leather suit complete with tassels, it is nearly impossible to watch Norris in this film without laughter. At the same time, Forest Warrior offers us more than just a family film starring one of cinema's greatest white badasses - it is also an Earth First eco-defense training video!

The main characters are Oregon kids in the fictional town of Tanglewood, who have formed what basically amounts to an Earth-worshiping cult, complete with a bizarre pagan idol that would be at home in one of those Italian Indiana Jones rip-offs. All hell breaks loose when they camp on the mountain, and the loggers decide to shoot a baby bear they have made friends with as well as dynamite the kids' tree house (?!) . The kids go on to commit acts of economic sabotage and come close to murdering the head of a local timber company.

Help against the loggers comes from mountain man Jebediah McKenna (whatta name), played by Norris. At one point, an eagle flies down from the sky into the face of a hapless logger, then morphs into a mid-jump kick Norris, who finishes up by kicking him in the teeth. A pretty convoluted and boring flashback explains that Chuck's spirit protects the mountain - ah, if only every mountain had its own Norris. Oh, yes - he can also morph into a giant brown bear.

The cast features an array of crappy character actors. Most notable is Michael Beck (The Warriors, Megaforce and Xanadu), who tortures us with his portrayal of a drunk deadbeat dad (does he see the error of his ways at the end of the movie? Take a wild guess). We also get plastic surgery disaster Lorreta Swift, who is best remembered as Hot Lips from Mash (now she should be called "Weird Lips"), and William Sanderson from Newhart, Blade Runner and Fight For Your Life.

Is this worth your $2?:
Sweet mother of god, yes - there's a ton of excellence here for bad movie fans. Filmed outside of Portland, this is a strangely subversive, cheesy kids' film that is an unsung Norris classic.

Zeder - Watch out for those "K Zones"

Pupi Avati is one of the most underrated directors of Italian horror, largely due to the fact that he only has a handful of horror movies in his oeuvre, and many of them are difficult to find in the United States. His 1976 film The House With Laughing Windows, which happens to be my favorite giallo after the Fulci / Argento entries, was given a very brief DVD release by Image. Zeder did not fare much better in the U.S., although it at least saw a cut release on VHS under the misleading title Revenge of the Dead during the 1980s. If one were to believe the box, the movie could reasonably be expected to be an Italian zombie bloodbath in the spirit of Zombi 2 or Burial Ground. Avati, however, is not that kind of a director; having worked primarily in the art house realm, his horror movies are unsettling, slow and fraught with paranoid developments, rewarding patient viewers long after those with ADD weaned on MTV-style modern horror will have tuned out.

The story begins in France in 1956, where cops are turning up mangled bodies and attempting to solve the crimes by digging around basements for corpses. Paolo Zeder has discovered a way to defeat death, and to prove his theory, he buries himself in one of his "K Zones," or areas where the natural laws of death don't apply and bodies will resurrect.

We then flash forward to Italy, where a struggling writer everyman Stefano gets a typewriter as a gift from his wife. It doesn't take him long to find information on Zeder's research still imprinted on the ribbon, piquing his curiosity and leading him into a mystery that will open doors which we all know he will regret having opened by the end of the movie. Despite pleas from his wife and warnings from other parties, Stefano's investigations become obsessive; dogged by a shady government society bent on continuing Zeder's research, he discovers a link involving a former priest with a mysteriously empty tomb and an abandoned vacation camp surrounded by electric fences in the Italian countryside.

As in The House With Laughing Windows, Avati uses atmosphere and mystery, telling rather than showing, to build his horror methodically until everything comes to a boil in the final fifteen minutes of film. The ultimate horror is once again concealed in a creepy rural location, and the protagonist exists for little reason other than to move the plot along by uncovering strange secrets. Avati is good at using shadows and desolate locations to convey mystery and unease. Riz Ortolani (Cannibal Holocaust) composed the soundtrack, which sounds like a mix between something Goblin would have done for Romero or Argento and the theme from Psycho.

Unfortunately, Zeder's main drawback is that its events are very similar to Stephen King's Pet Sematary, published the same year that the movie came out. Although the similarities are undoubtedly a coincidence, this movie will attract savvy horror fans who have already seen and / or read King's work, making some of the events in Zeder fairly predictable and drastically reducing the shocks that the movie should be delivering.

Is this movie worth your $2?:

The House With Laughing Windows is much stronger (and ends on more over-the-top note), but Zeder is definitely worth checking out for fans of Italian horror and intelligent, underrated, creepy movies. Steer clear of the unwatchable U.S. DVD and check out the European disc instead. Avati returned to the horror genre in 2007 with The Hideout, which I have yet to see.

The complete Rambo Saga!

Ramb-athon

In honor of the return of a cinematic feces favorite John J. Rambo, we have decided to write an epic review of all four films. This is not just a return, but a return to the big screen, no less.

Rambo began life in the amazing novel First Blood. Don’t let Rambo’s fate of crawling through the cinematic sewer fool you; he is trained to survive such conditions.

The David Morrell novel is actually a high-class political thriller about generation gap, patriarchal abandonment and the Vietnam War coming home. According to Morrell’s site, Stephen King used it as one of only two texts in a fiction-writing course that he taught at the University of Maine. The first film, while a weaksauce version of the novel, is still underrated and mocked by the general public. Morrell didn’t bother with making Rambo sympathetic; the point was to display the demon that Rambo had become as a result of his horrific wartime experiences - the curse he could not escape. I’m not saying that the filmmakers made a bad choice in making Rambo a figure for the audience to sympathize with, but it changes the dynamic of the excellent novel.

Sly, who can act when he cares to, actually delivers an intense performance. For instance, after the redneck sheriff, played well by master thespian Brian Dennehey, harasses Rambo early in the film, we get to see Sly flex his acting muscles with almost no dialogue, letting facial expressions speak for themselves. Without words, he plays the first part of the film brilliantly. It might have been considered flawless, if not for the laughable breakdown Rambo has with Colonel Troutman at the end. Once the mayhem starts, Rambo kicks ass and is left alone with a personal war. You can’t help but feel sorry for him - an aspect completely lost in the first two sequels.

The Bo Returned in First Blood Part II. The movie starts with a random explosion in Rambo’s prison, where he's serving a hard labor sentence, breaking rocks for no apparent reason. While trying hard to stay close to the themes of the first film balanced with creating the Bo's cold warrior legacy, the movie emerges as the complete turd that everyone remembers. One can love this movie - just for different reasons than the first film.

Screenplay credit was shared by Stallone and James Cameron, the man who wrote two of the best sequels ever in Aliens and Terminator 2, so you’d expect that he could give this film a little class. Nope - the writers tried hard, but no panache is to be found.

So what makes part two such a delicious bad movie? There's absolutely no concern here for a sympathetic hero or any character development. First, Rambo's fighting the evil Vietnamese to free American hostages - until he realizes that they're working in collusion with the Russians, and then he just ends up fighting them both with equal fervor. Rambo takes out commies like Wal-Mart does local businesses. The movie's ultimate bloodbath follows a suiting-up for war scene designed for the masturbatory fantasies of closeted Soldier of Fortune subscribers. Add to the mix Cold War racist and nationalist stereotypes of Vietnamese and Russian targets, and you've got an offensive '80s action bomb! The stereotyping doesn’t just victimize the enemy - even Rambo’s love interest (who later starred opposite Chuck Norris in Sidekicks and Walker: Texas Ranger) has some of the most painful-sounding broken English dialogue ever put to screen. This is best highlighted when she and Rambo have a heart-to-heart where the Bo explains to her “what mean expendable.”

Politically, the film is mind-bogglingly confusing. At moments, it seems to be a Cold War propaganda fest, and at other moments we see that Rambo is getting fucked over again by his country that sent him on a doomed mission. The confusion is summed up by a tired and frustrated Rambo at the end. He tries to explain his feelings to Colonel Troutman, but it only leaves him speechless. I’m sure he was just trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. Come on now - give the Bo a break. He had just single handedly re-written history by defeating two nations. I’m sure when he had time to reflect on it, he had it all sorted out.

So, Rambo III, you ask? Well, this film's greatest contribution to cinema is inspiring the sequel to Hot Shots. It wasn’t good like First Blood, and it wasn't bad-good like First Blood Part Two. The film finds the Bo slumming in a Van Damme plot, stick fighting in a tournament on the kickboxer set in Thailand. That might be perfect for Van Damme, but it seems below the Bol, who we've always expected more of.

It gets worse when you know that the first credited screenwriter was Van Damme’s writer Sheldon Lettich, who wrote gems like Lionheart and Double Impact. Was it this man, or Sly who decided that a mulleted Bo finding peace at a monastery was good idea? Rambo may be keeping the monks in rice by stick fighting, but still doesn’t appear to be a place that John J. could call home. When Troutman shows up with a diplomat played (Kurtwood Smith of Robocop and That '70’s Show), Rambo doesn't buy it - for once, he knows not to trust the CIA.

Troutman decided to soldier on alone, and therein enters my first big problem with the third Bo entry. Colonel Troutman, the man who trained Rambo to kill and eat food that would make a billy goat puke, seems neutered and lobotomized in this film. A man of his knowledge and skill would have known better than to take this mission, and he certainly wouldn’t stand like a deer caught in headlights while the Russians captured him. I believe that if you dropped him in ancient Mongolia with a survival knife and a rubber band, he would have the Khan's head on a stake in a week.

From there, Rambo spends way to long pushing stones around the sand with future members of Al-Qaeda. Rambo fighting alongside the Taliban should be more interesting than this movie turned out to be. Novelist David Morrell, who had an early version of the script to write his novelization from, said that the early drafts were like a Rambo of Arabia. I’m down, but what happened before the finished product? Studio tampering is my guess.

It is interesting to consider Rambo’s allies in the third film. I’m sure the team on the fourth film considered cashing in on the post 9/11 hysteria surrounding "Islamofascism." They must have thought better of it. They could have called it Rambo: Blowback. A sequel about the consequences of Rambo’s support of the men who would later become the Taliban would make a bold and brave film. Imagine one of the young boys that Rambo helped in Part III being part of a hijacking or a London bombing, then escaping back to Tora Bora. Actually that would make a great Rambo novel, but I’m not sure Morrell would do it. He has our permission to run with it if he would!

So yes -- Rambo IV is out now. The CF team went to see the film on opening night out of general principle. It felt great saying “one for Rambo please.” For this film, Sly got good with math and he figured out a simple equation - 1+2 = 4. Forgetting the embarrassing mistakes of Part III, he balanced the character strengths of First Blood with the over the top ultra violence of part two. Thus, he made the strongest Rambo Film to date.

Sly is doing Rambo fans the same favor he did in Rocky Balboa - giving Rambo a last film with dignity. He also was able to give the Bo a chance to reflect on the things he did. This older Rambo is not giving speeches about wanting his country to love him as much as he loves it. No, this is a jaded, cynical Rambo who simply says, “Fuck the world.” He means it, too.

One of the lessons Sly learned from the reaction to Rocky Balboa was to let the character grow old. The jaded Rambo is still having nightmares about who and what he is. A serious oversight on the last two films, Stallone remembered this time what a cruel and fucked up life Rambo has had.
I’m not sure who at Lions Gate performed sexual favors for the MPAA ratings board, but the fact that this film got an "R" rating is miracle. This film is brutal, an adjective that all too often gets overused, but this time, it’s true. I saw people getting up and walking out in disgust - the same people who paid nine bucks knowing they were going to see Rambo.

In this installment, we see a hard-luck Rambo laying low in Asia, wrangling cobras and ferrying people down the river for change. The plot kicks off when Christian missionaries ask Rambo to take them into Burma (shades of Apocalypse Now) so that they can administer aid to the tormented population. It doesn't take long for them to get captured by the local junta and the Bo to do some sweaty soul-searching before he heads back upriver to save the group. Stallone wanted the viewer to understand how completely messed-up things are in Burma, and he doesn't offer a second of sugarcoating. Perhaps he forgot to mention the drug trade and Western consumers of the drugs, but that may cut down on some of the carnage. This is a brave and intelligent (ed. note: as much as can be expected, anyway) action film that is drenched in symbolism as well as blood and guts. That’s warfare, and there is nothing comic book about the warfare in this one. Bodies explode, bullets turn people into hamburger, and one unlucky guy is even eaten alive by a pig. The critics have cried "exploitive," which, to an extent, it is, but Rambo can be construed as a reflection of our violent times.

While I wouldn't mind another Rambo novel, I would be really happy if Stallone let die right here - on the top of his game. I’m just sad that Col. Troutman wasn’t there for Rambo to return to at the end.