The Screengrab : gremlins

Unwatchable #84: "It’s Pat"

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

When we looked at Hobgoblins the other day, I mentioned that it might be possible to construct a Bottom 100 list made up entirely of Gremlins ripoffs. Now it occurs to me that you could probably do the same with Saturday Night Live spinoffs, a thought that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. What horrors await me further up the list? Coneheads? Superstar? A Night at the Roxbury? But after watching It’s Pat, my mind was put at ease. For there to be another SNL movie on the list, it would have to be worse than It’s Pat, and science has proven this to be impossible.

By “science” I mean “me sitting through all 77 minutes of It’s Pat.” Now, 77 minutes may not sound like long to you, but let’s remember that all time is relative. A 77-minute James Bond movie would probably zip on by, but for a movie based on a sketch that wore out its welcome thirty seconds into its first of many iterations, it’s 4620 seconds of pure torture. Surely you remember Julia Sweeney’s beloved Pat character – the tight curls and bushy unibrow, the thick-rimmed glasses, the western shirt and khaki slacks clinging tightly to a blobby physique. And you remember the one and only joke about Pat: Is she a he or is he a she? Nobody knows!

The premise was so thin that the true joke of the sketch quickly became: Can you believe we’re doing this fucking Pat sketch again? So it’s no wonder that the 1994 feature film version became a punch line long before it was given its belated, limited…I hate to even call it a “release”. More of a parole, really. Anyone in their right mind would rather watch 77 minutes worth of surveillance footage of writers Jim Emerson, Stephen Hibbert and Sweeney trying to cobble the script together. “Okay, I’ve got it! Pat falls down the stairs and cries, ‘I’ve crushed my nuts!’ But it turns out – Pat has a pocketful of walnuts! And now they’re crushed!” “That’s good, but I’ve got you beat. We see Pat’s equally androgynous lover Chris (Dave Foley in a unisex bob and colorful assortment of muumuus) with his hand in her lap, or her hand in his lap, or whatever, and Chris says ‘I love to stroke your pussy.’ But –get this – Pat has a cat in his or her lap!” And so it goes, until you’re half-convinced you’re watching some sort of experimental anti-comedy.

To the extent that I’ve spent any time thinking about it, I guess I’ve always figured Pat for a dude, but of course, it makes no difference. Either way, Pat is perhaps the most repulsive character ever to headline a comedy. Self-absorbed, rude, oblivious, and gross beyond human measure, this is no one you want to spend your valuable time with – man, woman or otherwise. It represents a career low point for everyone involved, including former SNL regular Charles “One Season” Rocket and cult band Ween, who seem only mildly embarrassed. Really, the only funny thing about the movie is its German title: Was ist Pat? Now that’s comedy.

Previously on Unwatchable:
85. Battlefield Earth
86. Hobgoblins
87. The Sidehackers
88. College Road Trip (pending)
89. Bloodlust!

Unwatchable #86: "Hobgoblins"

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

I haven’t done the math, but it’s within the realm of possibility that you could fill out an entire Bottom 100 list made up of nothing but Gremlins knockoffs. There have been at least four Critters movies, four installments of Ghoulies and a trilogy of Munchies, as well as lesser-known attempts like Beasties, Spookies and Kamillions. And then there’s our topic for today, 1988’s Hobgoblins.

I’ll admit to being unfamiliar with the work of writer/director Rick Sloane before now, and based on the evidence onscreen in Hobgoblins I would have been willing to bet it was his first and only movie-making effort. But I would have lost that bet. By the time he made Hobgoblins, Sloane already had several horror shows under his belt, including Movie House Massacre and The Visitants, which has a catchy title if nothing else. He is also responsible for six, count ‘em six installments of the Vice Academy series, which presumably bears the same resemblance to the Police Academy collective as Hobgoblins does to Gremlins: a smudgy, degraded Xerox of the original.

McCreedy, an elderly security guard at an abandoned Hollywood studio lot, is having trouble finding a reliable assistant. It seems everyone he hires ignores his warnings to stay away from the vault, despite the often fatal consequences of setting foot inside of it. He finally seems to have a worthy successor in Kevin (Tom Bartlett), a mild-mannered fellow whose frigid girlfriend Amy (Paige Sullivan) is constantly berating him for his lack of manliness. In his attempts at foiling a burglary, Kevin does indeed enter the vault, accidentally freeing its inhabitants, the titular hobgoblins. As McCreedy explains, the little critters arrived 30 years earlier in a tiny spaceship and virtually destroyed the studio with their other-worldly abilities. The hobgoblins have the power to make your wildest fantasy come to life, but in true “be careful what you wish for” fashion, the end result is deadly – except when it’s not, which is unfortunately too often the case here.

We’ve all heard of doing more with less, but somehow Sloane has managed to do less with less; if he spent any more on Hobgoblins than I spent on lunch today, he didn’t get his money’s worth. The creatures themselves appear to be Gremlins puppets straight from the Toys R Us shelves, the grand total of three locations are underdressed and underlit, and the apartment when Kevin and his friends hang out looks distressingly like a place I used to live in North Hollywood. (I know I shouldn’t hold that against the movie, but I’m only human.) I’m not suggesting that Sloane set out to make a bad movie on purpose…just that he was aiming low and didn’t quite hit the mark. There’s a spoofy, Troma-like sensibility to the proceedings, including a very silly and pointless rake battle between Kevin and the Army-trained boyfriend of his friend Daphne, a slutty Cyndi Lauper fashion victim. The only remotely endearing character in the movie is Pixie, the beehive-haired waitress/go-go dancer in the endless Club Scum sequence that more or less serves as the movie’s climax.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Hobgoblins – for all I know, everyone had fun making it and nobody got hurt. Perhaps I should be more forgiving of the low budget, even though wit doesn’t cost anything (yet can be very hard to find). But…wait! What’s this at the top of Rick Sloane’s IMDb page? It’s…it’s…(choke) Hobgoblins 2, scheduled for release later this year. Please excuse my fleeting magnanimousness.

Previously on Unwatchable:
87. The Sidehackers
88. College Road Trip (pending)
89. Bloodlust!
90. The Bat People
91. Horrors of Spider Island

In(dy) Other Blogs

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Because the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been so criminally overlooked by the mainstream media, it’s been up to the blogosphere to pick up the slack. As Paul Clark tipped you in his revisitation of the Temple of Doom, Cerebral Mastication is the hub of Indy blogdom, so a tip of the well-worn fedora to Ali Arikan for the centralized linkage.

The House Next Door offers a three-fer, looking back at all three previous Indiana Jones movies. Matt Zoller Seitz emerges from semi-retirement to offer his own thoughts on Temple of Doom, which he says “has the series' simplest plot, most annoying love interest, most casually racist and imperialist attitudes and most grotesque imagery (Doom and its summer-of-'84 blockbuster cousin, the Spielberg-produced Gremlins, sparked the creation of a new MPAA rating, PG-13). At the same time, though, it's the most viscerally intense entry in the series and the most wide-ranging in its moods, spotlighting the imaginations of Spielberg and his co-producer, George Lucas, at their most freewheeling. It's a blast from the id—like Close Encounters, 1941, E.T. and A.I, a rare instance of the director appearing to construct images and situations for his own private reasons, rather than keeping his eyes and ears attuned for signs of viewer discontent.”

At Edward Copeland on Film, David Gaffen has narrowed his focus to a single scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark – the one “where Indiana Jones, realizing that the Ark of the Covenant is to be placed on a plane and flown out of Egypt, sets out to sabotage the plane.” Gaffen proceeds shot-by-shot to dissect the workings of a signature action sequence. “The escalation here is deliberate – slowly ratchet up the tension within a scene that is already filled with active movement, derivative of Hitchcock in its cleverness even if Spielberg still names the 1950s serials as his original inspiration. The elements added in are small, careful ones – a shot of the wing grazing a nearby fuel truck, which spills gasoline. Just as the large German was introduced as a potential opponent this is presented as a problem, the proverbial gun in Act I that has to be fired in Act II.”

At Cinema Styles, Jonathan Lapper is trying to get excited about this whole thing. “A lot can change in 27 years. That's how long it's been since the original Raiders of the Lost Ark and it's been nearly two decades since the last one, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Look at it this way: Two of the biggest adventure hits of 1954 were 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Naked Jungle. Now imagine Kirk Douglas and Charlton Heston making sequels to those movies in 1981, 27 years later. By 1981 the movie landscape was decidedly different than it was in 1954 and 2008 is decidedly different than 1981. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't sense the excitement about a new Indiana Jones film like I did in the eighties. When the other two sequels were released they, like the Star Wars sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, were the summer movies to see. Now Indiana Jones is practically lost in the shuffle.”

Cinematical has a week’s worth of Indy stuff on offer. They’ve got us covered for List-o-Mania this week with Seven Indiana Jones Knock-Offs. Number one is Tomb Raider: “It's like all the initial three Indiana Jones films wrapped up in one, with added sex appeal in casting Angelina Jolie in the Harrison Ford role. Yet Jolie as Croft is too serious to be the female counterpart to Ford's Indy. Also, while the Indiana Jones films deal with some level of magically religious fantasy, they're at least grounded by ‘real’ or familiar artifacts such as the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. And they tend to remain just realistic enough to avoid things like giant six-armed statues that come to life.”

Remember those kids who made the shot-for-shot remake of Raiders back in the 80s? Well, they’ve hit the big time – sort of. According to Underwire, “On May 14, eight days before the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, now-grown filmmakers Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb will showcase their movie at the landmark Mann's Chinese Theater. But the guys who made it won't see a dime. ‘Due to copyright issues, revenue from the screenings of our film must go to a nonprofit organization,’ said Strompolos…While Adaptation can't be screened for profit, the DIY back story has turned into a moneymaker for Strompolos, Zala and Lamb. Big-shot movie producer Scott Rudin (There Will Be Blood) purchased rights to their real-life filmmaking adventures and hired Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) to write the script for Paramount Pictures.”

John Alvin, 1948 - 2008

Phil Nugent — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The painter John Alvin, one of the most iconic movie poster artists of the last three decades, has died of a heart attack at fifty-nine. Alvin's first official movie poster design was for Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles; its depiction of Cleavon Little flashing a peace sign while straddling a horse, set against a profile of Brooks, in Native American makeup and headdress, on a nickel emblazened with the words, "Hi, I'm Mel, trust me," established Alvin's gift for cariacture and for his knack for boiling the elements of a movie down to punchy image that captured a movie's flavor. His career made in the business, Alvin would work on more than a hundred movie campaigns; among the most celebrated and memorable were his posters for Young Frankenstein, Phantom of the Paradise, Blade Runner, Melvin and Howard, The Princess Bride, Gremlins, Empire of the Sun, New Jack City, the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series, and a slew of Disney movies, among them The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and The Pirates of Caribbean pictures. One project that had a special place in his heart was the campaign for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. For the poster image, inspired by Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, Alvin used his daughter Farah as a hand model.

Holiday Trailer Roundup: Gremlins

Paul Clark — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:30:00 GMT

For many of my peers, A Christmas Story is almost certainly the greatest unironic holiday classic, but Gremlins is probably the ultimate wicked Christmas movie. For the two of you who haven't yet seen it, it's a sly fusion of the monster movie with an idealized Norman Rockwell-style vision of the small-town Christmas. In other words, it’s a perfect Joe Dante movie, one that plays to all his strengths as a satirist of comfortable Americana. Gremlins is the kind of older kids’ movie Hollywood has forgotten how to make- with fun characters and adventure for the younger crowd, and enough of an edge to make it endlessly rewatchable even for adults. Gremlins is great any time of the year, but it’s essential around the holidays, especially for the scene where Phoebe Cates recounts her tragic (and hilarious) Christmas story. What’s even more amazing is how convincingly wholesome Cates managed to be here, just two years after her immortal scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.