The Substitute 4: Failure Is Not An Option

Price: 75 cents
Year: 2001
Length: Treat Williams
Director: Robert Radler
Cast: Treat Williams, Patrick Kilpatrick, Angie Everhart, Bill Nunn

It's always a Treat with Treat Williams! - me

A man can learn a lot about himself when slogging through the dollar bins for used blog fodder. For instance, I learned that I will purchase any film featuring "Always a" Treat Williams and any film that is a direct to video sequel to a not particularly well loved or remembered Tom Berenger vehicle. So now I own both The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All and The Substitute 4: Failure is Not an Option (Sniper sequels oddly MIA for now). For brevity and clarity, I will focus on the latter as I watched it sober this weekend compared to wasted 6 months ago por tres. Although I get giddier when stumbling across a Treat Williams vhs than Huell Howser does when finding a 19 year old can of kidney beans in a hermit's magic trash house, I can't really explain what it is about the guy that I fond so damn irresistible. It's probably some combination of my eternal love for THE PHANTOM, the time I stayed in a hotel room in Vegas with a picture of Treat and Cathy Moriarty on the wall, and the to the gut simplicity of his moniker. I can't help but be delighted by a man named Treat.

So it was with the great anticipation of a Christmas morn spent next to a fire at Coolio's egg-strewn house being lectured about right and wrong that I approached this film. I was giggly, caffeinated, and alert; open to all the Treats that awaited me, and, as always, Treat did not disappoint.

The Substitute sequels always find a way to shoehorn a professional mercenary into needing to pose as a teacher in order to murder some of his students for being up to (A) general drug dealing, gang banging, Jeff Gillooly-esque kneecappery, being in something awesomely called "The Kings of Destruction" (B) car-jacking, gang-banging, being in something unimaginatively called "The Brotherhood" (C) being on a football team, taking some frothing Benoit fantasia inducing steroids, ripping the tops of desks apart from the chair (D) being in the military, being Nazis, blowing up power plants, beheading old rich guys. Fortunately, D is the plot for The Substitute 4: Failure Is Not An Option and it makes for the least action filled, most nonsensical, strangely name actor filled (by Substitute standards) Substitute yet.

Before getting all Trick or Treaty on you, it bears mentioning that Patrick Kilpatrick is truly remarkable as a American military academy commandant at the realistically titled American Military Academy of the South, who has a poorly kept secret Nazi society called the Werewolves, who cleverly disguise themselves by wearing SS logos on their hats and armbands and denying the Holocaust to anyone within earshot. He constantly accuses Treat Williams of fostering "Multiculturalism" at his beloved academy and bragging about how a race war is totally gonna happen this time if he just blows up that billion dollar power plant that was funded entirely by money from black people apparently! (not making this up, I think!)

Treat is a lover and a fighter and he hates intolerance more than anything so he's on edge from the start about these Werewolf kids who keep trying to kill him and deny the Holocaust and what not. Good for Treat that former Stallone fiance and fading ginger sexpot Angie Everhart is also around to provide some nudity that otherwise the film would have been sorely lacking. She also takes a bullet for him at the end and it is very poignant. Also, good for Treat that Bill "Radio Raheem" Nunn is around to act all crazy like and give him guns when he needs them and kill some racists, too, because as a black man, his righteous anger against the skinheads is more crowd cheeringly deserved. But really, at the end of the day, this is a movie that belongs to the Treat and he does not disappoint.

Treat spins and kicks and flips bad guys over his back like cabbage. He spits and kisses and dances his way into our hearts during the torrid and truncated Campus Dance scene. But most of all, the way he bravely follows the Werewolves on their mission to blow up the power plant, then stands around doing nothing, waiting till after the power plant explodes to start kicking everyone's butt after they get back to campus, really seals the deal. Ultimately, The Substitute series is about the titular character teaching his students important life lessons with his feet and fists and IF he had stopped them and killed them off campus, his point would not have been so pointed. Only at a school can the most righteous teaching of death be solidly administered. Only at a school can the flimsy gimmick of a mercenary stopping crime tie back into the title of the series. Life lessons can be taught at school, but no one is better at offering death lessons than my man Treat Williams as Karl Thomasson in The Substitute 2 : School's Out, The Substitute 3 : Winner Takes All, and The Substitute 4: Failure Is Not An Option. Thank you, Treat Williams, for teaching us about death and teaching . . . again.

Also:

The Man Can Sing! (and not just that Hair shit)



He simply cannot be any Treatier!

Can't Hardly Wait!

Price: $1
Year:1998
Run Time: 100 min
Director:Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan
Cast: J Lo Hewitt, Ethan Embry, Charlie Korsmo, Lauren Ambrose, Seth Green, Peter Facinelli, Freddy Rodriguez, Jamie Pressly, Melissa Joan Hart


The late nineties were a great era for pop compilations. Sure you may not have had Jock Jams, Now (that's what I call music), or any of the MTV buzz bin disks, but if you were a young teen at that time, you were exposed to such compilations whether you liked it or not.

The truth is, you probably liked it, at least on some level. All of those compilations I just named had at least one song on them that would appeal to any given kid. Even if you were a defensive disavower of all things pop at that point, I'd suspect a slight smile still comes across your face when you hear "I Like to Move it Move It".

Can't Hardly Wait is essentially a visual representation of a pop comp. It skates over the surface of nineties teen existence in a way that is ridiculously affable. It touches on much, but explores very little. As a result, the scenarios and characters we see are all vaguely relatable, but cartoonish enough to distance from our own personal experience. We enjoy the spectacle of the teenage experience, but are never subjected to the cringe inducing honesty of say, Freaks and Geeks.

What sets Can't Hardly Wait! apart from aforementioned short lived, but exceptional series, is that you don't have to have been a freak or geek to relate to it. There's a cursory overview of all high school experiences in there somewhere. To link it back to the beggining of this post, Can't Hardly Wait! is a compilation of John Hughes Greatest hits, with a few Cameron Crowe tracks thrown in to appeal to niche consumers.

Besides J Lo Hewitts unseen boobs (which apparently sum up the whole of her sex appeal), there is no tension beneath the surface here, but that's ok. This movie offers kick-ass moments like this:

Heller in Pink Tights

Price: $3.98 on DVD (DVD cherry officially popped re this blog)
Year: 1960
Run Time: 100 min
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Sophia Loren, ANthony Quinn. Ramon Novarro, Steve Forrest

Sophia in Technicolor would perhaps be a more appropriate title for this film, as those two elements really steal the show here. This is viewed as being a lesser work by master director Cukor. While I'm not about to start a campaign for a mass critical re-evaluation of the movie, I will say that every shot is so beautiful that you could fucking eat it. Art direction wise, think Wes Anderson+ Moulin Rouge + Suspiria+ FIstful of Dollars- most of MR's overblown acting (most, not all)- the irritating bourgeois male malaise of WA (but not minus WA's problematic portrayal of non-whites). Narrative content wise, there is nothing too spectacular. Its a basic story of a femme fatale actress named Angela Rossini (loren) who seduces her way through the old west. Her romance with the dependably affable Healy (Quinn) is threatened by the advances of Mabry, a devestatingly handsome gunslinger (Forrest). This love triangle plays out as the theater company, with Mabry in tow, races away from the debt they left in Cheyenne, trying to escape a murderous Indian tribe along the way (ah, Hollywood).

In this tale that relies strongly on to-be-looked-at-ness, Sophia Loren is the perfect star.


Her presence is truly iconic, and no matter whom you prefer to go to bed with, you will not be able to take your eyes off of her in this film. In an early scene at the theater in Cheyenne (a set which bursts with color) Loren peers through a window with wooden curtains that have a nude women painted on them. This short frame is a one-two punch of feminine spectacle. Her and Mabry eye each others' lower halves in this carnivalesque atmosphere, creating the sexual tension that will push much of the narrative forward. A unique and evocative interior space has been created here. When the narrative moves to the dessert, the open landscapes and mountains and canyons are treated with just as much visual care. The colors and the shapes of the landscape pop out and assault the eye with their beauty. The most heightened moment of this is when the Indians capture the theater company's coach, and set it on fire. The mountains of brightly colored costumes consumed by flames, paired with the blue sky and the gray smoke makes for a compelling spectacle.

Compelling spectacle certainly overtakes compelling storyline here. However, Ms. Loren plays an interesting character here. Although her most prominent quality is her beauty, she sets most of the narrative of the movie into action. She is a much more central force than any of the men in the film. I'm not sure if I'd say this is a feminist film, but what it certainly does do is wear the notion of female spectacle on its sleeve. Angela Rossini, and the other young girl in the company, make money after each performance by parading around the saloon in pretty dresses, selling stylized photographs of themselves. They are able to get the undivided attention of the saloon patrons. WHile the other woman (Della, played by Margaret O'Brien) is a pretty flat character, Angela is what I'd call a powerful spectacle.

Actually, that's what I'd call the whole film.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Price: 75 cents
Year: 1989
Length: 107 minutes
Director: Will.i.am. Shatner
Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Waltner Koenig, David Warner, Lawrence Luckinbill





Star Trek or Star Wars?

A Personal History:
1983-1999: Star Wars
1999-2004: Apathetic
2005-Present: Star Trek.

The nu-trilogy and the rise of G4 and Spike's constant rotation of TNG reruns pretty much sums up that whole equation as I imagine/hope it has for at least a few other undiscerning nards out there.

So . . .

Maybe it has something to do with me being a nu-jack Star Trek acolyte and a lover of trash and camp and overblown ego trips, but everything you've heard about this movie is wrong. Old-school Star Trek nerds are mirthless bonerheads for denying this movie's majesty for so long. It's probably the quintessential Star Trek dollar video. Although copies of ST: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: Generations are much more plentiful, this one embodies all the glorious misguidedness that marks a truly noteworthy and remarkable dollar vid. For a TV show whose whole reputation and success is indelibly linked to camp, it is downright unfathomable how the campiest Star Trek film ever "shat" out is also the most hated.

First of all, it was directed by William Shatner from a story he himself wrote with the help of only two (!) other credited screenwriters, so it has vision going for it in spades. His turn in the director seat is also invariably a result of the ego-wounding success that Leonard Nimoy had at the helm of both the muted Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and the worldwide smash eco-comedy Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (still the highest-grossing Star Trek movie). One can easily imagine Shatner refusing to make another Star Trek movie unless they let him try his hand at directing the next one himself after all if a plebe like Nimoy could bang a couple out of the park how about letting ol' Shatface swing, hell he even directed 8 wholed episodes of TJ Hooker beforelike. I want to hug those poor subsequently unemployed studioheads for giving me my turkey early this year.

So it opens with some obvious Star Wars knock offs of the sand people and the mos eisley cantina with this brah that turns of to totally be spock's half brah neverbefore mentioned and never mentioned again. Also Capt. Kirk is apparently into free climbing cause he is doing some of that in Yosemite at the beginning and Spock has sweet rocket shoes that saves his life and they all sit around the campfire singing row row row your boat and eating beans and dranking whiskey and making obvious fart jokes. These scenes are great.

Then Spock's brother gets up to some bullshit and eventually it turns out to be a search for God in the middle of the universe who turns out just to be some random dude with a couple deep purple rekkids and a psychedelic face projector. In between, Sulu and Chekov get erotically lost in the (metaphoric?) forest of their own desires and only through sexual exploration and brainwashing are they able to escape. As a result, they spend most of the movie working against the core groop of Shat, Nim, and BoneThugs. Scotty hits his head on something at one point and does a three stooges quality pratfall. There is also an obviously tacked on plot involving some billy zanily misguided Klingons who stop what they are doing when firmly told to stop by an old guy.

So yeah, it's mishmashy, but it's never boring, except when it is boring, but even when it's boring, it's boring in an interesting way so it stops being actually boring so quickly that you are never actually bored in the first place and, in fact, the boredom was kind of a thankful respite from the non-stop excitement anyway, so you (the audience) are always winning with William Shatner's Star Trek Five: The Final Frontier! Don't you wanna win? Sure, you do! So watch this movie already if you haven't yet and if you already have then you should watch it again and again until you like it as much as I do and if you've seen it already and liked it, then I guess you're cool with me, but you should probably check with the Shatman just to be sure. He may make you buy a TekWar book or something, but it'll be worth it cause that's still better than having to watch Boston Legal or some shit like that. Fuck Boston. That place and everything associated with it sucks (except (maybe) Mr. Boston and (definitely) the band Boston).

Amityville II: The Possession

Price: 75 cents (110 minutes of your life)
Year: 1982
Length: 110 minutes of spooky!
Director: Damiano Damiani
Cast: Burt Young, James Olson, Rutanya Alda, Diane Franklin, Jack Magner

This is an important film.

It is about what happens when you let the voices in your walkman convince you that sleeping with your hot sister was wrong and that you should kill all yr family members to appease the house you moved to or else it will shake around and move things to where they don't belong (like a blanket on a light fixture, what wants that?). If you do it with a shotgun, even better. If the creepy priest who also want(s(ed)) to bone yr h of a sis tries to reenact THE EXORCIST for the last half hour of the movie even better. This is what important films do.

It also helps if you look like Craig from Degrassi TNG animorphed with just a touch of latter day Wacko Jacko Coke Septum Erosion.

It also helps if you easily confuse the phrase testicles and tentacles.
But before we let the dirt in my teenage mustache coalesce into a serum of defeat, I must address the most important asspect of this great American movie . . . oh wait, i already talked about the incest themes . . . huh, that about does it for point of innarest in this one. Burt Young does some great acting with his cigar chomping scotch swilling inarticulation that certainly seems much more worthy of the TITle mumblecore than a bunch of ennui leaden movies about quirky hiptards feeling sorry for they selves. The way he beats his children and wife while simultaneously not spilling his drink or managing a single discernible human sound is the kind of acting often forgotten about in this post-John Ritter apocalypto of a filmy land. I wish he was in more movies. He was good in the rocky balboa movie, he was drunk a lot, and then i think he died or something, either way it was very very sad. I liked when he got a robot for his borthday in that one rockie movie. it made me smile. Happy Halloween!