bonus – Page 2 – Bad Movie Twins

Transylvania 6-5000 Preview

With that, Samantha turns and picks up a rock from the Bin of Rocks and turns to perform the ceremonial destruction of her previous entry on the Wall of Lovers. While Brad and Alejandro’s ghosts are a bit annoyed by this, they also understand that it was never them. It was always Jamie. There is no other way but to take a Rock to their false love. Four or five Rocks later and covered in sawdust, Samantha turns to Jamie. Together they use a Lover’s Chisel to begin carving the heart that will represent their forever love. It takes hours, interrupted only by intense makeout sessions the likes of which the roller skaters at the roller rink could only dream of. When they finish, Jamie turns to Samantha and asks what’s next. With tears in her eyes she whispers, “Life.”

Months later, Jamie stands on the shores of Hallston Lake. He had moved to Samantha’s hometown and they had indeed lived. But now he was alone. Well, almost. Because Patrick had also moved to Hallston to be there for Jamie in his time of need. “Hey buddy,” Patrick says kindly. “You thinking you want to head back to Brooklyn? Maybe start in on the third book of the Platonic Solids series? How’s that sound?” But that didn’t sound good at all to Jamie. “No… no I don’t think so,” Jamie says monotonously. “I just… need to… go for a swim,” he says looking at the moonlight bouncing off of Hallston Lake. With that he strips entirely nude and wades into the depths of the ice cold lake. Patrick is worried. It was very unlike Jamie to go midnight skinny dipping without eating a large surf and turf dinner immediately beforehand. That’s right! We are taking our own chilly dip into spooky waters with Night Swim. It’s about a haunted swimming pool. Given the impossibility of actually connecting to the 2024 cycle from the 80’s by definition, we built a bicycle with an (ironically) equally spooky horror film, Transylvania 6-5000. A movie that even me, a child of Comedy Central, barely knew existed. Finally we are pairing those with our final Friend of the Bring a Friend cycle: Revolution. It’s the Al Pacino film that doomed the Revolutionary War genre of film for decades. Let’s go!

Transylvania 6-5000 (1985) – BMeTric: 47.3; Notability: 29

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 2.4%; Notability: top 12.8%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 9.8%; Higher BMeT: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, Howling II: … Your Sister Is a Werewolf, Red Sonja, Porky’s Revenge, King Solomon’s Mines, Perfect; Higher Notability: A View to a Kill, Spies Like Us, My Science Project, King David, Maxie, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, Santa Claus, Perfect, Rocky IV, Brewster’s Millions, Head Office, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, Invasion U.S.A., Turk 182, Death Wish 3, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, The Slugger’s Wife, Heaven Help Us, Godzilla 1985, Creator, and 12 more; Lower RT: American Ninja, That Was Then… This Is Now, Head Office, Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, The Slugger’s Wife, Maxie, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, King Solomon’s Mines, King David, Once Bitten, My Science Project, Private Resort, Fever Pitch, Death Wish 3, Summer Rental, Tuff Turf, Gymkata, Rustlers’ Rhapsody, Perfect, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, and 2 more; Notes: I’m continually a little amazed when I realize we still have such big movies left. Howling II, Porky’s Revenge, King Solomon’s Mines. These are bad movie classics when you are in the know. We’ve watched a crazy number of bad movies, but the job never ends.

New York Times – The actors in ”Transylvania 6-5000,” which opens today at Loew’s State and other theaters, seem to have the impression that they are doing something funny, though where they got that idea is anybody’s guess. It cannot have come from the screenplay, which was written by Rudy DeLuca, who also directed the film, as a series of utterly listless comic setups. It’s not that Mr. DeLuca has done anything wrong, exactly; it’s simply that he never does anything right. There’s no reason for this material to be funny, so, not surprisingly, it never is.

(I mean … fucking nailed it. It is true, it is basically an improv troupe where nothing is working quite like you’d expect despite the setups being there.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulPZNXkpa5s/

(It’s cute. The movie is aggravating, but the trailer is actually like not that bad. In that it is taking the best part of the film and delivering in small doses like it is intended. Like it looks like it might work … rest assured it does not.)

Directors – Rudy De Luca – ( BMT: Transylvania 6-5000; Notes: He was an actor in a bunch of Mel Brooks films as well, including playing Vinnie in Spaceballs.)

Writers – Rudy De Luca – ( Known For: High Anxiety; Silent Movie; Caveman; Box Office 3D: The Filmest of Films; Screw Loose; The Good Bad Guy; Future BMT: Dracula: Dead and Loving It; Life Stinks; BMT: Transylvania 6-5000; Notes: He won two Emmy for writing on the Carol Burnett Show. Eventually he also did a bunch of variety shows as well.)

Actors – Jeff Goldblum – ( Known For: Jurassic Park; The Grand Budapest Hotel; Thor: Ragnarok; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; Independence Day; The Lost World: Jurassic Park; Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Annie Hall; The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; The Fly; Isle of Dogs; The Prince of Egypt; Asteroid City; The Switch; Morning Glory; Invasion of the Body Snatchers; The Player; The Right Stuff; Cats & Dogs; Wicked; Future BMT: Man of the Year; Holy Man; Hideaway; Vibes; BMT: Jurassic World Dominion; Independence Day: Resurgence; Mortdecai; Nine Months; Transylvania 6-5000; Mad Dog Time; Notes: Nominated for a short Oscar in 1996. These days he manages to be notable as being the weirdest and wildest part of the Wicked films.)

Joseph Bologna – ( Known For: Ice Age: The Meltdown; My Favorite Year; The Big Bus; Alligator II: The Mutation; Coupe de Ville; Jersey Girl; Love Is All There Is; Chapter Two; Boynton Beach Club; Cops and Robbers; Tango Shalom; Made for Each Other; Mixed Company; Heaven Before I Die; Future BMT: Big Daddy; The Woman in Red; BMT: Blame It on Rio; Transylvania 6-5000; Notes: Nominated for an Oscar for writing Lovers and Other Strangers in 1971. He died of cancer in 2017.)

Ed Begley Jr. – ( Known For: Pineapple Express; Ghostbusters; This Is Spinal Tap; Whatever Works; Best in Show; An Officer and a Gentleman; Book Club; Strange Darling; A Mighty Wind; You’re Not You; Lucky; Streets of Fire; Cat People; Get Over It; She-Devil; The Accidental Tourist; Plus One; For Your Consideration; Auto Focus; Hardcore; Future BMT: What’s Your Number?; The Pagemaster; Renaissance Man; Greedy; Protocol; Fly Me to the Moon 3D; Young Doctors in Love; BMT: Batman Forever; Amsterdam; CHIPS; Transylvania 6-5000; Notes: Nominated for 7 Emmys, 6 times for St. Elsewhere. He never won. His role in Hardcore is insane, and the son of Ed Begley who won an Oscar for Sweet Bird of Youth. I obviously know him as being in the later seasons of Veronica Mars, he was the president of the College she goes to.)

Budget/Gross – $3,000,000 / Domestic: $7,196,872 (Worldwide: $7,196,872)

(That is better than I would have expected I guess. The economics of mid-80s film is confusing because I doubt they made much on television of home video, but they probably got more from the theaters as well. Seems like a break even.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 20% (2/10)

(There is really only one review here and the gist is: This might be the worst horror-comedy you’ll ever see. The guy ain’t wrong … although things like Dylan Dog exist so who knows.)

New York Times Short Review: Strained Frankenstein spoof. Forget it.

Poster – Sklogsylvania 69-6969, Nice

(A great classic poster style. What’s funny is that by today’s standards this doesn’t work. Too much going on. Nothing to anchor to. Like reading a book rather than an advertisement. But if a modern movie made an alternate poster in this style it would be fun. B.)

Tagline(s) – WANTED: Two thrill-seeking reporters, brains optional, looking to dig up the story of the century. For information call… (F)

(We were in that transition period where posters were changing. Taglines were changing. A (bad) relic from that bygone era.)

Keyword(s) – 1983-1991

Top 10: The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Back to the Future (1985), Goodfellas (1990), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983), Die Hard (1988), The Terminator (1984), Scarface (1983), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Future BMT: 72.7 Look Who’s Talking Too (1990), 72.5 Teen Wolf Too (1987), 67.9 Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983), 61.1 Staying Alive (1983), 59.1 Suburban Commando (1991), 57.7 The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990), 57.6 Ghost Dad (1990), 56.7 The Karate Kid Part III (1989), 55.1 Who’s That Girl (1987), 54.8 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), 53.5 Graffiti Bridge (1990), 52.5 Johnny Be Good (1988), 52.5 Porky’s II: The Next Day (1983), 52.4 Porky’s Revenge (1985), 52.2 Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), 51.8 Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986), 49.3 King Solomon’s Mines (1985), 48.7 Hercules (1983), 48.6 Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (1990), 48.6 My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988)

BMT: Jaws: The Revenge (1987), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), Troll 2 (1990), Jaws 3-D (1983), Highlander II: The Quickening (1991), Going Overboard (1989), Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989), Mac and Me (1988), Caddyshack II (1988), Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach (1988), Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), Howard the Duck (1986), Supergirl (1984), Cool as Ice (1991), Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985), The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987), Leonard Part 6 (1987), Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), Superman III (1983), Poltergeist III (1988), A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989), Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987), Wild Orchid (1989), Cyborg (1989), Problem Child 2 (1991), Rhinestone (1984), Red Sonja (1985), Troll (1986), Bolero (1984), …

(There isn’t really a sub-genre here, so I didn’t include it. We were just looking for a good 80s film to pair with Night Swim, and this came up as one to do.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 19) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Jeff Goldblum is No. 1 billed in Transylvania 6-5000 and No. 3 billed in Trigger Happy, which also stars Burt Reynolds (No. 6 billed) who is in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (No. 5 billed) which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (1 + 3) + (6 + 5) + (3 + 1) = 19. If we were to watch Paranoia we can get the HoE Number down to 13.

Notes – The movie was financed by the Dow chemical company in order to spend frozen finances (money that could not be spent outside the country of origin) that the company had in Yugoslavia.

Jeff Goldblum recommended Ed Begley Jr. to the director for the role of Gil Turner and Begley recommended Michael Richards for the role of Fejos.

Much of the scene between John Byner and Carol Kane preparing the lunch was improvised. The script’s only direction was ‘cut fruit and serve’.

The little girl playing Elizabeth’s daughter, Sara Grdjan, was a locally cast Croat who spoke no English. She had to be taught to speak her lines phonetically.

The director saw 40 women for the role of Odette. They liked Geena Davis and when she pulled off a compelling Bela Lugosi accent, they knew they had their Odette.

Rocky IV Recap

Jamie

Rocky IV has come and gone as a BMT film over the year. Honestly, it’s annoying. I’m annoyed by it. The movie has always been, and always will be hilarious. So it’s hard for me to take seriously the idea that a film will ironically not qualify for BMT. Similar in many ways to Moonfall. It gets credit for having its tongue in its cheek? I don’t think so. Rocky IV doesn’t even have its tongue in its cheek. Its tongue is firmly planted at the bottom of its mouth and has no intention of moving. Anyway, it’s delightful that after RT curated a number of older reviews this film managed to claw its way to BMT glory. I can rest now *an ancient sigh is released from Jamie’s chest and he falls into a deep slumber*

To recap, Rocky is doing great. He’s the champ. He’s got a family he loves. His brother-in-law Paulie has a robot. What else does a man need? A challenge, right? Wrong. When the monstrous Drago emerges from behind the Iron Curtain and asks to fight Rocky in an exhibition, Rocky is like “pshawwwww.” Long retired Apollo Creed, on the other hand, sees an opportunity. Always the showman, he sets up the super patriotic exhibition and is promptly pummeled to death. Not ideal. Rocky is sad. Adrian is scared. She knows Rocky and Rocky will want to avenge his friend. She’s like “you can’t win!” because she just saw Drago smash Apollo in the face until he died. But has she met Rocky? He’s got a literal rock for a head and so he agrees to the fight and heads off to Siberia to train. Oh he spars. Oh he lifts. Oh he ditches his Russian handlers with his blazing fast speed. They aren’t going to fight for money or belts. They are fighting for pride… and because Drago shattered Apollo’s body with his fists and Rocky didn’t like that. After Adrian arrives to lend her begrudging support, the big fight in Russia is on. Rocky is pummeled pretty much like Apollo right from the jump. But unlike Apollo he doesn’t know when to quit and just keeps standing and letting Drago punch him a thousand times. He has him right where he wants him. Soon the tide turns and he cuts the Russian. If Drago can bleed then Drago can be beaten. In the end Rocky wins even though it was probably like 120-10 on the scorecards after Drago won every round 10-1. Even the Soviets are cheering for Rocky and he gets to return home a hero! THE END.

I mean… I’m not going to sit here and say this movie is bad. It’s great. Really, really fun to watch. Do I think Sly Stallone knew exactly what he was doing when he made this? No, not really. I think he was making the movie he wanted to make and this is his vision of a film. Totally serious. If you watch the series back-to-back-to-back like I did you can see how the Rocky movies reflect Stallone’s life. It increasingly becomes about the challenges of fame as Stallone himself becomes more famous. Rocky IV is the transition point from “I kind of experienced this” Rocky/Stallone crossover to “I could end the Cold War” Rocky/Stallone. Insane stuff. There is a real visual and emotional flair that he still had, though, and it’s kind of thrilling to watch. Makes sense, too, that he basically stopped directing at this point. His 80’s style was on the way out and he only came back when he did another Rocky film, another Rambo film, and an Expendables film, which is essentially his attempt to bring his style back to the mainstream. It’s good, but like, also it’s really bad in the best possible ways.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I think it’s obvious that Rocky dies on punch 500 that he takes straight to the dome from Drago. As his limp body falls to the canvas he imagines coming back in the fight. Just bull rushing Drago, taking punch after punch directly to the face, without even flinching. The Russian gets cut? Not while Rocky is alive. In his dying dream, maybe. Drago was 100-0 going into the fight (I can’t remember if this is a real fact or comes from some non-canon source) and after the fight is 101-0 with probably 101 deaths on his hands. RIP Rocky. Hot Take Temperature: Smoking hot lady robot.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me climbing a mountain in Siberia with a light windbreaker on and bankrupting myself in the process* Let’s go!

The Good? Uhhhhh, are you dumb? This movie is incredible. It is both ironically and unironically good. At one point Dolph Lundgren proclaims that Rocky’s body is like punching steel. There is an entire song montage that shows all three of the prior films. Rocky agrees to have a fight for no money in Russia on Christmas Day. “If he dies he dies.” “I must break you.” This movie is genuinely incredible and the fact that is qualifies is a travesty.

The Bad? I mean, fine, the fight is ludicrous looking. They deal haymaker after haymaker, land all of them, and remain standing. At one point they suggest Lundgren has the hardest punch in history and he’s shooting up steroids and pure science is running through his veins. This movie is endlessly ridiculous and should be ridiculed for it.

The BMT? I mean … is the movie good, or is it so bad it’s good? The world legitimately may never know. Do I love it ironically, or unironically? I don’t even know. It is an enigma.

Final one of these advert ones. I did indeed change up the query to explicitly tell it to only look for full page advertisements. I don’t know how consistent it is, but it did, in general, seem better, at least for Rocky IV. Pretty much nailed it:

Of course, yeah, Rocky IV is one of the big boys. But look at those others! A BMT and a … Disney film I guess. It stars Mary Steenburgen and Harry Dean Stanton of all people. Goddamn, it was playing everywhere. It was wide release, and this juuuust narrowly beat having three BMT films as advertisements on the same day. That would have been something else.

I’m going to name a special award called The Worst Person In the Universe, Why Are You Friends With This Person (Who?) to give to Paulie. I’m going to give a Product Placement (What?) for the Lamborghini Jalpa Rocky rides in during the music montage. Definite Setting as a Character (Where?) for Siberia. Secret Holiday Film (When?) for days in the fight taking place on Christmas Day. Another special award called I Must Avenge You Apollo (Why?) for the movie death that has to be avenged at all costs. And this movie is somehow both Good and BMT, but I’m going to lean BMT and accept that this film is technically a bad movie by movie making standards.

Learn all about punching probably in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Rocky IV Quiz

Ooooo, maybe I’ll learn about Siberia or something. Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) Many shows have spoofed Rocky IV over the years. Even, surprisingly, this kids’ television show, made in Canada, and the origin of Nickelodeon’s green slime.

2) When Apollo fights Drago, James Brown appears as himself to perform Living in America. That song peaked at #4 on the Top 100. But that isn’t the highest single by Brown. What song is? Either the main title or subtitle accepted.

3) Rocky IV is a rare example of a BMT film with a writer-director-actor … right? I mean, it is rare right? Nope, actually, there are 57 films that qualify with that distinction, like 2.5% that is about the same as the number of twins. One of the others we’ve seen is a Star Trek film. Which one, and who directed, wrote, and starred in it?

4) Made specific by Sergei Eisenstein, what term, meaning “assembly” or “editing” in French was the major contribution of early 20th century Soviet film theorists to formal film analysis?

5) The film was actually the subject of a notable copyright case, in which a writer, Thomas Anderson, accused MGM and Stallone of stealing his Rocky IV script and using it without compensation. What was the result of this ruling?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: A little twistemup here. Airplane 2 was on television the day of Rocky IV’s release:

But what was the subtitle of this film?

Answers

Rocky IV Preview

Jamie, Samantha, Patrick and Kyle all quadruple group hug. Tears and snot mingle on their shirts. For a brief shining moment Samantha sees her roller rink beaus looking down from heaven nodding and giving her a thumbs up. “I couldn’t help but overhear,” Patrick says, when the group hug had run its course, putting emphasis on the word ‘overhear’ in order to really hammer home the lessons they all learned that day. “But what ever happened to Alajandro and Brad?” Samantha smiles sadly. “In a wild coincidence they also had vague terminal illnesses. It was part of why they were engaging in the particularly risky activities of drag racing and rollerskating on the day I met them. They each, separately and unknown to the other, had nothing left to live for… I guess that is until they met little ol’ me. And then once they were gone,” with that her voice catches and she runs her hand across a faded heart carved in the Wall of Lovers. “Once they were gone I also didn’t have much to live for and so why not take part in an obvious sham Fashion Week? Why not dress as half a horse? I just didn’t count on meeting my actual other half that day.” Jamie and Samantha share a passionate kiss. The smooch goes on and on, seemingly (and in actuality) for hours. It would have been extremely uncomfortable for Patrick and Kyle to stand there watching them if it wasn’t so beautiful. A beautiful unique tragic love. A tear runs down Kyle’s face as he ponders the beautiful unique mannequin he will craft to remember this moment by. Samantha and Jamie break their kiss and with eyes shining Samantha asks, “You wanted to know what was next?” Jamie nods. “It’s time to Rock.” That’s right! It is time to rock. Rocky IV and Rocky V that is. Rocky IV hasn’t always qualified, so we are jumping at that chance. Rocky V? That’s always qualified. For a Friend we are bringing along The Invisible Maniac. It’s about a maniac that turns himself invisible. It’s all there in the title. Let’s go!

Rocky IV (1985) – BMeTric: 10.9; Notability: 54

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 16.0%; Notability: top 3.2%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 19.6%; Higher BMeT: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, Howling II: … Your Sister Is a Werewolf, Red Sonja, Porky’s Revenge, King Solomon’s Mines, Perfect, Transylvania 6-5000, Creature, Gymkata, American Ninja, Private Resort, Invasion U.S.A., Once Bitten, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, Death Wish 3, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, Avenging Angel, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, King David, A View to a Kill, and 20 more; Higher Notability: A View to a Kill, Spies Like Us, My Science Project, King David, Maxie, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, Santa Claus, Perfect; Lower RT: American Ninja, That Was Then… This Is Now, Head Office, Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, The Slugger’s Wife, Maxie, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, King Solomon’s Mines, King David, Once Bitten, My Science Project, Private Resort, Fever Pitch, Death Wish 3, Summer Rental, Tuff Turf, Gymkata, Rustlers’ Rhapsody, Perfect, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, and 24 more; Notes: Obviously quite low BMeTric. If you look at the top 10 there, this guy played the most in the 90s (63 times), but Red Sonja is close behind (62 times). I do love that Gymkata played 35 times. There is something about that movie which felt like it was a modern 2000s rediscovery, but presumably a ton of people watched it in the 90s and that is how it became a cult film.

RogerEbert.com – 2.0 stars – The “Rocky” series is finally losing its legs. It’s been a long run, one hit movie after another, but “Rocky IV” is a last gasp, a film so predictable that viewing it is like watching one of those old sitcoms where the characters never change and the same situations turn up again and again. Even Sylvester Stallone seems to be getting tired of the series; as the writer and director, as well as the star, he puts himself through the same old paces.

(I suppose the irony would be that Rocky as a series is basically still going, and not only that but the third Creed film is making all the same mistakes as Ebert is pointing out here. Time is a flat circle.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1e9ReSD0E/

(Apollo nooooooooooooooooo! Insane that they just mention that in the first trailer. The music sting at the end though is immediately a classic. The movie looks insane and amazing. Which it is.)

Directors – Sylvester Stallone – ( Known For: The Expendables; Rocky II; Rocky Balboa; Rocky III; Paradise Alley; Future BMT: Staying Alive; BMT: Rambo; Rocky IV; Notes: He didn’t direct as much as I really remember, although he directed more Rockys than I would have thought. He is likely to never direct again as well, he seems to be doing smaller films plus writing these days.)

Writers – Sylvester Stallone – ( Known For: Rocky; The Expendables; The Expendables 2; Creed; First Blood; Rocky II; Rocky Balboa; Rocky III; Creed II; Cliffhanger; Homefront; Creed III; F.I.S.T.; Paradise Alley; Future BMT: Staying Alive; BMT: Rambo; Rocky IV; The Expendables 3; Rambo: First Blood Part II; Rocky V; Rambo III; Rambo: Last Blood; Cobra; Over the Top; Driven; Rhinestone; Notes: Staying Alive is upcoming and yeah … that means we are going to legit be done with Sly the writer and director. He does have an upcoming writing gig though, but I’m somewhat convinced that will be review-proof to some degree.)

Actors – Sylvester Stallone – ( Known For: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; Rocky; Men in Black; The Suicide Squad; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3; The Expendables; The Expendables 2; Creed; First Blood; Escape Plan; Rocky II; Rocky Balboa; Rocky III; Antz; Creed II; Cliffhanger; Cop Land; M*A*S*H; Spy Kids 3: Game Over; Samaritan; Future BMT: Staying Alive; Ratchet & Clank; BMT: Rambo; Rocky IV; The Expendables 3; Demolition Man; Rambo: First Blood Part II; Rocky V; Rambo III; Judge Dredd; Tango & Cash; Rambo: Last Blood; Assassins; Cobra; Daylight; The Specialist; Zookeeper; Grudge Match; Over the Top; Lock Up; The Expendables 4; Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot; Driven; Get Carter; Oscar; Rhinestone; Notes: And then there will be only Ratchet & Clank in the new year. When we watch Staying Alive that will be our 25th Stallone film. Insane. He seems a bit busy with Tulsa King these days to churn out stinkers.)

Talia Shire – ( Known For: The Godfather; The Godfather Part II; Rocky; The Godfather Part III; Rocky II; Rocky Balboa; Rocky III; I Heart Huckabees; Palo Alto; Megalopolis; New York Stories; Sly; She’s So Lovely; Rad; Prophecy; The Sparks Brothers; The Dunwich Horror; Deadfall; Homo Erectus; Gas! -Or- It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It.; BMT: Rocky IV; Rocky V; Notes: Nominated twice for Oscars for The Godfather Part II and Rocky. She was amazing in The Godfather Part II, and she is by far the best thing in some of these later Rocky films even though she doesn’t get much to do and people make fun of her for it.)

Burt Young – ( Known For: Rocky; Once Upon a Time in America; Chinatown; Rocky II; Rocky Balboa; Rocky III; Win Win; New York, I Love You; Transamerica; Mickey Blue Eyes; Back to School; Convoy; Sly; Rob the Mob; The Pope of Greenwich Village; She’s So Lovely; The Killer Elite; Across 110th Street; Last Exit to Brooklyn; The Gambler; BMT: Rocky IV; Rocky V; The Adventures of Pluto Nash; Going Overboard; Amityville II: The Possession; Notes: Oh wow, we finished off Burt Young. I suppose I just always expected there to be another random weird 80s Burt Young to go to in the end. Rocky was really a phenomenon, he was also nominated for an Oscar for it.)

Budget/Gross – $28 million / Domestic: $127,873,716 (Worldwide: $300,473,716)

(Gigantic. Rocky V truly is so terrible is scared even the money-making machines of Hollywood away from the series for a decade or two. This isn’t even a good movie and it just easily breaks $250 million in the 80s.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 39% (20/51): Rocky IV inflates the action to absurd heights, but it ultimately rings hollow thanks to a story that hits the same basic beats as the first three entries in the franchise.

(Juuuuuuust right there. Indeed it hasn’t qualified for years, but just a few months ago that switched and Rocky IV became a qualifier again. We would have watched it regardless.)

New York Times Description: This time he boxes a Soviet giant. Guess who wins.

Poster – Rock ’em Sock ’em IV: Sockin’ Again

(Spoiler alert! It’s OK. Just wish it didn’t spoil the end. S for spoilees.)

Tagline(s) – Get ready for the next world war. (B+)

(Holy shit. That’s not clever but it is great. I want to give it an A, but I’m a stickler for the tagline as everyone knows.)

Keyword(s) – 1983-1991

Best Options (franchise): 72.7 Look Who’s Talking Too (1990), 67.9 Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983), 57.7 The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990), 56.7 The Karate Kid Part III (1989), 55.1 Rocky V (1990), 54.8 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), 52.5 Porky’s II: The Next Day (1983), 52.4 Porky’s Revenge (1985), 52.2 Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), 51.8 Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986), 48.6 Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (1990), 47.2 Big Top Pee-wee (1988), 45.7 Children of the Corn (1984), 44.8 American Ninja (1985), 44.7 Missing in Action (1984), 41.9 House II: The Second Story (1987), 41.4 Speed Zone (1989), 41.0 Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987), 40.9 The Delta Force (1986), 38.0 House Party 2 (1991), 37.7 Return of the Living Dead II (1988), 34.0 Ernest Saves Christmas (1988), 33.4 Death Wish 3 (1985), 31.3 Ernest Scared Stupid (1991), 31.0 Jetsons: The Movie (1990), 30.1 Creepshow 2 (1987), 26.6 National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985), 24.2 A View to a Kill (1985), 24.1 Oh, God! You Devil (1984), 17.7 Phantasm II (1988), 17.4 Best of the Best (1989), 15.1 The Black Stallion Returns (1983), 10.9 Rocky IV (1985)

(This isn’t the one we did, we did Rocky V for this. It is kind of crazy Rocky V isn’t more reviled. It is actually truly trash, and bizarre to boot.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 9) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Sylvester Stallone is No. 1 billed in Rocky IV and No. 1 billed in The Expendables 3, which also stars Jason Statham (No. 2 billed) who is in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (No. 1 billed) which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (1 + 1) + (2 + 1) + (3 + 1) = 9. If we were to watch The Glass House we can get the HoE Number down to 8.

Notes – Sylvester Stallone decided that for the shooting of the fight, he and Dolph Lundgren should hit one another for real, so as to increase the intensity of the scene. After doing three takes of Rocky taking shots to ribs, Stallone felt a burning in his chest, but ignored it. Later that night, he had difficulty breathing and was taken to a nearby emergency room. It was discovered that his blood pressure was over 200, and he had to be flown on a low-altitude flight from Vancouver, Canada to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, where he remained in intensive care for four days. What had happened was that Lundgren had punched him so hard in the chest, Stallone’s heart had slammed up against his breastbone and began to swell, cutting off the blood supply and restricting the oxygen flow throughout the body. . However, when asked about whether or not it really happened while answering a series of fan questions in a 2021 interview with the Guardian, Lundgren claimed to have no recollection of the incident. “I don’t know,” he said. “[Stallone] keeps talking about it, so maybe he’s right. He did go to the hospital, but I don’t know whether it was my punches or the fact that he was so overworked as the director, actor and writer. We shot those 15 rounds over two or three weeks, eight or 12 hours a day, so you’re throwing thousands of punches. If you don’t connect, it looks a bit fake, but it doesn’t mean you want to hurt the other guy. But there were no hard feelings.” He went on to explain that stand-ins and stunt doubles were rarely used, and that he has performed the majority of his own stunts and fight scenes–but that this has changed in more recent years. “Back in the day, you had to do it all yourself: Rocky IV, The Punisher, Masters of the Universe, all the Expendables,” he said. “I’ve jumped from a motorcycle to a truck; dangerous things I would never do now. Staying physically fit over the years has been nice. There aren’t many actors who can stay physically fit for a long time. Part of the game is trying to look fit, at least.”

“Rocky IV” became the highest-grossing film in the “Rocky” series to date, taking in just over 300 million dollars worldwide.

During filming, Dolph Lundgren and Carl Weathers really did not get along and got into an altercation. Lundgren threw Weathers into a corner of the boxing ring. After that, Weathers shouted profanities at Lundgren while leaving the ring and announced that he was calling his agent and quitting the movie. Only after Sylvester Stallone forced the two actors to reconcile did the movie continue. This event caused a four-day work stoppage while Weathers was talked back into the part and Lundgren agreed to tone down his aggressiveness.

James Brown is seen performing the song “Living In America” prior to the Creed vs. Drago match. The song was released as a single from the movie’s soundtrack and became Brown’s first Top 40 single in eleven years, and the last of his career.

Over 8,000 people auditioned for the part of Ivan Drago. Dolph Lundgren was first turned down by the casting directors for being too tall but later on, he got the chance to send photos and meet Sylvester Stallone who told him he had a good chance to get the part, but advised him to gain twenty pounds of muscle. In total, it took Lundgren several months to win the part.

Awards – Nominee for the Razzie Award for Worst Picture (Irwin Winkler, Robert Chartoff)

Winner for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor (Sylvester Stallone)

Nominee for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor (Burt Young)

Winner for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress (Brigitte Nielsen)

Nominee for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress (Talia Shire)

Breakin’ Recap

Jamie

I don’t have much of a relationship to the Breakin’ franchise, so let’s get into it with Shabba Doo. Most interesting fact? His wikipedia page is under Shabba Doo and not his actual name Adolfo Quinones. I guess it’s because it was his professional stage name as a dancer, but it was a bit unexpected. After that I’m just more interested in where I can get me some more Shabba Doo. It appears that we only have one more BMT left with Lambada and even that is a bit questionable. Seems to have a wide enough release, but a sparse official review count. After that his only “major” release was Steel Frontier starring Joe Lara and Brion James. Which reminds me, I was listening to a podcast the other day and one of the hosts said he always liked Brion James… I’ve never heard anyone say that. Brion James. Huh.

To recap, Kelly is a dancer trying to make it in LA. She’s working with the best (the best!), a choreographer named Franco, who very much wants to sleep with her. This is really upsetting to Kelly. While thinking over how to rebuff Franco, but not burn that bridge, her friend takes her to Venice Beach where she witnesses the future: break dancing. She’s invited to a club by the two best dancers, Ozone and Turbo. Once there she witnesses a dance-off, where Ozone and Turbo get torched by a rival dance team after they unveil their secret weapon: a girl. Gasp! But wait, Kelly’s a girl, isn’t she? And she dances too!. But can she learn to let it all go and feel the rhythm of breakin’? Let’s just say the answer is an emphatic YES and Special K is born. Kelly’s agent is a bit skeptical, but also really believes in Kelly. He likes her too, but keeps it strictly professional, unlike Franco. Kelly wants them to enroll in a competition where Franco will be the choreographer for the winners in a big showcase. Kelly’s agent agrees, but when they show up at the competition Franco is infuriated that his former student is there with this street trash and trash dancing and demands that they be kicked out. The group won’t have that! They just start dancing… hard. They dance so hard that the judges can’t stop from tapping their feet and soon are telling Franco to shove it. We end with the big showcase which obviously is the most amazing thing anyone has ever seen and changes dance forever. THE END (or is it? (Ha! No!))

There is something very wholesome and sweet about this film that can’t help but endear you to it. For one, it is shockingly not at all problematic, which was a pleasant surprise. Kelly doesn’t want to sleep with her teacher. The idea that he might not care about her dancing, but rather just about her body is upsetting. Franco is powerful in the world she wants to be in. She makes the hard choice to leave that world rather than compromise and in turn finds a friend, a potential love interest (although they take it slow), and an agent who respects her boundaries. The scene where the agent is like “it’s cool. I get the picture, but I believe in you” almost brought me to tears. Very sweet. For two, the dancing actually is a load of fun. So how much do I want to make fun of a couple amateur actors and the end dance scene being silly? Not too much. It’s a fun movie. Check it out.

Hot Take Temperature! They simply would not win. You think those judges would go against Franco (the Franco) just cause their toes were tapping a little bit? The rules were very clear: they had to do traditional dance. They would be choreographed by Franco. It ain’t happening. Once they dabbed the sweat off their foreheads and composed themselves, having let loose for a moment under the spell of breakin’, they would realize that it was just that. A spell. That these kids tricked them with some kind of voodoo dancing magic and would need to be taken care of. And taken care of they would be. Hot Take Temperature: Scorching hot dance moves.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me pop locking in fools’ faces while Ice-T reads out a spoken word album in the background* Let’s go!

The Good? Everything? Well, not really, but the movie is highly entertaining, and a small scale demo of pop locking mastery. Now, I’m not really that into dancing, let alone break dancing. But there is something decent here where it seems like a genuine love letter to a new form of expression. Add in Christopher McDonald, Ice-T, and a very brief glimpse of Jean Claude Van Damme, and you have a real cult classic on your hands.

The Bad? The acting is dire. Like really dire. But what do you expect? You are taking two very good break dancers and asking them to act … the thing is that as much as the main character holds her own, you could maybe have gotten a slightly better actor in there. But beggars can’t be choosers.

The BMT? Hmmmmmmm, well, no, on a technicality. You see, the movie is good. Calm down everyone, this isn’t the end of the world … because we got a second one.

Now this is what I call uh … AI scraping? In reality only a tiny bit of this is using AI, but it is still pretty good. Naturally, it is in line with some of my prior ideas on the subject: it is decent at extracting structured data from unstructured data (e.g. descriptions / keywords from an image), and it seems like it can be borderline SOTA object recognition, OCR, or generalized PCA type stuff. For this I decided on a fun project that is in line with the second part of that.

A while ago I scraped all of the New York Times listing pages. To do that there was a somewhat annoying (although practically not very difficult) step of getting listing page numbers from the New York Times. I set up a whole system using PCA and my own eyeballs and a UI to do this and it worked well, outside of dev time (which I’m fine with, this is how I learn) it probably took me like 10 hours to get the listing pages, mostly watching Seinfeld in the background.

But with AI it is kind of possible to do this much more quickly. Step one: scrape all of the small pages from an issue, non-trivial, but I had done it before. Step two: chop these small pages into single pages and reassemble them with ffmpeg into a movie, one page per frame, one frame per second. Step three: using Gemini I uploaded the video and asked for timestamps for any full page advertisement. Step four: I parsed the output and then scraped the larger size (which is actually a pattern of blocks … this ain’t my first rodeo, remember?) pages. And then I reassembled it. Et voila. For May 4th, 1984, all of the “full page” advertisements from the New York Times:

I mean, pretty good. For Breakin’ 2 I think I’ll just look to refine the query a bit, and probably scrape slightly larger initial pages just to make it more possible the program can figure out which are movie advertisements maybe. Regardless, I’m pretty happy with that one.

I’m going to invent a category here, which is the Bizarro World Twins (Who?) for the three other break dancers who are also two men and a woman who the crew battle throughout the film. Setting as a Character (Where?) up the wazoo since they very obviously head right to Venice Beach for one of the break dancing demos. The excellent MacGuffin (Why?) of the big dance audition against the other antagonist, the eeeeeevil dance instructor / pervert. And Worst Twist (How?) for the obvious end that the judges are moving to the groovin’ for this new dance phenomenon. And as I said, this film is Good.

Read all about break dancing maybe in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Breakin’ Quiz

Boogaloo Shrimp? Shabba Doo? Talk to me, people. Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) During an episode of At the Movies Breakin’ is reviewed alongside Hardbodies, Sugar Can Alley, and a 1984 Stephen King adaptation starring David Keith, Martin Sheen, and George C. Scott … fine there is an actual star of the film, but I’m not giving you her name. What is the film?

2) Ice-T is in the film. Looking at his discography outside of the rap charts he really never charted on the Top 100 outside of two songs. One is called New Jack Hustler which was for the soundtrack of New Jack City naturally. The other is a song for the soundtrack of what film directed by Dennis Hopper, and starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall as police officers?

3) The director, Joel Silberg, wasn’t done with dance films after this. He also made a film about a dance style from Brazil that is often called the Forbidden Dance. What is the name of the film and dance style.

4) This is considered one of the last financially profitable films ever produced by Cannon, partially due to the dissolution of a deal Cannon had with MGM for release. The dissolution came about due to the refusal of MGM to release what X-rated John Derek film starring Bo Derek?

5) Breakdancing consists of four main types of movies. Toprock (general standing footwork, often akin to dancing), downrock (footwork with hands and feet, e.g. the 6-step), power moves (acrobatic or athletic movements using speed and momentum), and what?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: On March 13, 1998, Breakin’ played for the first time on VH1. Meanwhile on Cinemax:

This is a major Sci Fi trivia, you better know this film.

Answers

Breakin’ Preview

“What?” Samantha says, frustrated that even her totally rizz new entry in the Holly Ween series didn’t get through to Jamie. “So I just need to dream again and then I’ll make sure to listen… like in your book,” Jamie says, adding the last part as he had forgotten that he was supposed to have already figured this out because of the book. But how could he be expected to interpret the hidden themes of a book when it was so ill and dope? “Alright,” Samantha starts again, “are you listening?” Jamie nods, staring intently. “I am dying.” Jamie gasps. He asks all the obvious questions. How? When? What? “It just happened,” Samantha says sadly, tears in her eyes. “I first noticed it in my elbow three years ago while practicing the shot put. But it ended up being more serious than that. It’s hard to explain. Just complex and vague really, but I assure you it’s terminal.” Jamie is blubbering at this point. “Who? Why? Where?” He gets out, not sure what else to say. Samantha hugs him, hoping he now understands why she ran. Why she ran so far away. All night and day… but she couldn’t get away. Not from this love. Jamie suddenly pulls away. “No!” he yells, “no, I don’t believe it. I’m going to punch those doctors that made you believe this. Just really punch them hard in the arm. Or maybe if we just get a second opinion then it’ll turn out they were wrong.” At this his face crumples and he begins to blubber again. Once he finishes he looks up, hope and love shining in his eyes. “What now?” he asks, accepting his new reality. Patrick looks on and his heart breaks for them. Kyle’s heart is breaking too. That’s right! We are pulling double dancin’ duty by watching both Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. These are classics of the genre, so there’s not much more to say. As for the Friend, we went full nostalgia for this one and did Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. Boy, I haven’t seen that since I was a little kid. Should be fun. Let’s go!

Breakin’ (1984) – BMeTric: 24.5; Notability: 33

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 8.8%; Notability: top 7.6%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 13.2%; Higher BMeT: Supergirl, Ghoulies, The Hills Have Eyes Part II, Rhinestone, Bolero, Cannonball Run II, Children of the Corn, Missing in Action, Sheena, City Heat, C.H.U.D., Conan the Destroyer, The Ice Pirates, Exterminator 2, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Ninja III: The Domination, Blame It on Rio, The Woman in Red, Protocol, and 2 more; Higher Notability: Dune, Cannonball Run II, City Heat, Supergirl, Firstborn, Protocol, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, The River, Unfaithfully Yours, American Dreamer, Conan the Destroyer, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, The Woman in Red, The Ice Pirates, Rhinestone, C.H.U.D., Sheena, Reckless, Exterminator 2; Lower RT: The Hills Have Eyes Part II, Bolero, Exterminator 2, Reckless, Thief of Hearts, Crackers, Until September, Ghoulies, Blame It on Rio, Supergirl, Sheena, Cannonball Run II, Windy City, The Ice Pirates, American Dreamer, Missing in Action, Rhinestone, Tank, Mutant, Purple Hearts, and 9 more; Notes: Only played eight times on television, which is, again, a surprise because I would think this could play anytime so would play afternoons on random channels, but nope. Supergirl played 29 times, Ghoulies 8 times, and Rhinestone 32 times. This is a rare year where we’ve only seen 5 of the top 10 BMeT films, so we really have to get on the Children of the Corn series.

New York Times – Break-Dancing Stars – “Breakin’,” which opened yesterday at the National and other theaters, features a number of good, mostly small-scale demonstrations of break-dancing, the energetic street choreography that is now in process of being co-opted and merchandized by big-time show business.

(Basically, the complaint seems to boil down to: enough with the story, I want more dancing! He ain’t wrong.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFC5yYW58TM/

(Alright, strike that the music in this one is incredible. And the beginning of the trailer is just groin shots over and over. I’m not complaining. Just to be clear. Don’t be mistaken’ I’m going to watch Breakin’.)

Directors – Joel Silberg – ( Known For: Lambada; The Best of Enemies; Rappin’; Catch the Heat; BMT: Breakin’; Notes: My god, he directed Prison Heat. Also Rappin; and Lambada! This guy is clearly a legend. He died in 2013.)

Writers – Charles Parker – ( BMT: Breakin’; Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo; Notes: Literally just this movie and characters on the sequel. There isn’t a “real” write on this whole thing (no offense intended).)

Allen DeBevoise – ( BMT: Breakin’; Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo; Notes: Alright, well this guy did some producing after, although nothing of major note.)

Gerald Scaife – ( BMT: Breakin’; Notes: Crazy, he only wrote this movie, but he’s apparently a construction estimator / accountant for major films. He did Titanic!)

Actors – Lucinda Dickey – ( Known For: Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films; Ninja III: The Domination; Cheerleader Camp; BMT: Grease 2; Breakin’; Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo; Notes: So Grease 2 she was just a random female Greaser. After these two films she did Ninja III and then retired as she got married in 1990.)

Adolfo Quinones – ( Known For: Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films; Lambada; BMT: Tango & Cash; Breakin’; Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo; Notes: Bonafide break dancing legend by all accounts. His dance name was Shabba-Doo. He was also in Lambada and apparently did some breaking on Married… with Children.)

Michael Chambers – ( Notes: His name was Shrimp. Ignore the lack of detail here, he was actually in a bunch of movies, he just isn’t clearly in TMDb. My favorite credit is that he was Good Robot Bill in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. One of the bad guys was Good Robot Ted.)

Budget/Gross – $1.2 million / Domestic: $38,682,707 (Worldwide: $38,682,707)

(This was huge! What the hell. I would never have guessed how much money this made. No wonder they rushed a second film into production, they were apparently sitting on a goldmine!)

Rotten Tomatoes – 33% (3/9)

(That is genuinely better than I would have expected. Once again the consensus is like: If they would just let Turbo and Ozone cook this movie would be fire, instead it gets bogged down by insisting this movie have a plot.)

New York Times Description: Breakdancers. Some good hopping, period.

Poster – Sklogin’

(I mean, yes. This is exactly the poster for Breakin’ and what it should be. It’s crazy terrible. D+ for the font.)

Tagline(s) – Push it to Pop it! Rock it to Lock it! Break it to Make it! (A+++++++)

For The Break Of Your Life! (B-)

(The first is obviously life-changing. The second is better than you think. Just reading it, you’d think it was terrible. But it’s kind of clever, if a bit clunky. Trust me, you’ll end up loving it.)

Keyword(s) – 1983-1991

(It would just be off of this list, as the second is the one we are actually doing here, but also for whatever reason this series isn’t on the franchise list … I guess maybe they don’t technically count franchises where there are only two films?)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 21) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Ice-T is No. 7 billed in Breakin’ and No. 1 billed in Surviving the Game, which also stars Charles S. Dutton (No. 3 billed) who is in Random Hearts (No. 3 billed) which also stars Harrison Ford (No. 1 billed) who is in Hollywood Homicide (No. 1 billed) which also stars Josh Hartnett (No. 2 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 3 billed) => (7 + 1) + (3 + 3) + (1 + 1) + (2 + 3) = 21. If we were to watch Unforgettable we can get the HoE Number down to 16.

Notes – In the first “street dancing” scene, in which Kelly accompanies Ozone and Turbo to the beach, the audience watching the dancing is comprised of surfers and beach bums. A man in a black singlet claps with the music. It’s Jean-Claude Van Damme in his first on-screen appearance. According to Van Damme, he tried hard to draw attention to himself by jumping in the air and doing flips, but they were not included in the film.

According to Lucinda Dickey, Adolfo Quinones would often try to show her up and make her feel intimidated because of her dancing ability and their clashes within the film rang true with his personal resentment for her which was also shared by their co-star Michael Chambers.

The film uses two of Ice-T’s early instrumental raps; Tibetan Jam and Reckless. The producers later used Tibetan Jam as background music in Missing in Action (1984).

The idea for the film came from Menahem Golan’s daughter who one day while at the beach saw a group of break dancers performing before a crowd.

This was Cannon Films most financially successful movie as distributor.

Amityville II: The Possession Recap

Jamie

I’m going to put this right out there, I do not care for The Amityville Horror. The first half hour is fine and has some nice creepy stuff, but unlike Friday the 13th (which always knew what it was), this devolves over the course of 2 hours into a bunch of Stephen King/haunted house/exorcist retreads. Friday the 13th was giving people what they wanted in the slasher genre. Amityville doesn’t know what it’s serving up. Like is the house haunted? If you watched it you would be tempted to say yes. There appears to be a ghost in the house. But it’s not. It’s possessed by a demon… so the demon is pretending to be a ghost? And it just goes on and on and on like this for a full 2 hours. It’s bad. Just a bad movie that spawned a bunch of other bad movies I guess.

To recap, in a prequel to the first film (I think, it’s never made totally clear), the Montelli family moves into our fateful house. The head of the household is played by Burt Young and is a total maniac (Burt Young? A maniac? I’m shocked). Everyone is terrified of him because he is a loose cannon. As the demonic presence in the house pulls pranks like a little stinker, Burt Young just goes about blaming and beating his children for it. His wife tries to get a Priest to intervene but Burt Young is like “you wanna piece of this Father?” When choosing who to possess, the house appears to take one look at Burt Young and is like “No thanks,” and inhabits the eldest son, Sonny, instead. Thinks then get crazy. And I mean, like, real crazy. I’m talking Sonny seducing his sister kind of crazy… it’s crazy. He further falls prey to the demon and when it demands that he kill his family he obliges. The next day he is arrested and the priest is convinced that Sonny needs an exorcism. He breaks Sonny out of jail and eventually is able to perform the exorcism at the house. Sonny is taken back into custody, but at least free of the demon, who, it’s implied, has transferred to the priest. THE END (or is it? (Ha!))

Yeah, so this is a good movie. In terms of the craziness of a demonic possession this is on par with The Exorcist where there were several moments where I was like “woah!” and got a bit of a queasy feeling. It did not pull punches and knew exactly what it was up to. From start to finish the family at the center of it is in an upsetting position. Even before the possession, which I think it meant to convey the idea that a place like Amityville draws people like that to it. They are vulnerable to possession because of the sadness and anger and then the demon corrupts the remaining aspects of their lives so love and happiness are blotted out. It really is an upsetting film with not even a glimmer of a happy ending. So I give it credit. Hard for me to remember another case where a poorly reviewed sequel is so clearly superior to the original in almost every way. Like head and shoulders better.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Are we sure that house is possessed before Burt Young gets there? I’m not saying Burt Young is a demon, but I’m also not not saying it. Probably some force was simply inhabiting the house and was like “Oh, cool. A new family is here. I sure do hope they are kind and take care of this home we will share.” And then it took one look at Burt Young and was like “uh oh… I mean… I do have the possibility of stopping this maniac.” From there things spiralled a little out of control. Like in the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street it turns out that the possessed house was just misunderstood the whole time. Perhaps the house was really the hero we never knew we needed. Awwwww. Hot Take Temperature: A glowy pit under the basement.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me slowing getting covered in more and more flies, but unlike the movie it doesn’t seem to bother me which is somehow more scary* Let’s go!

The good? I always dig the look of older films like this because it feels like they were channeling a bit of the 60s and 70s directly into the 80s and trying to hold onto that small budget magic that existed at the time. I love Burt Young, even though this is full blown drunk Burt Young and he’s a monster in the film.

The bad? I could have done without the incest storyline. That was gross and dumb. I also didn’t think the movie read very well as a prequel. I legit did not remember it was a prequel until I started doing this recap even. The main issue is that the murderer in the first film was named DeFeo (who was a real person), but they obviously changed it for the second, but then was there a DeFeo? It is unclear.

The BMT? No, not really. The main issue if I’m being frank is that there are two films here, and the third one is weirder and wilder and much more fun. So it kind of nixes this as a BMT classic. Mostly it feels lazy, gross, and bad. So no, not very BMT.

I have an idea on how to maybe do keyword extraction in BMT, but there are a lot of tests I would like to run on it first. I figured and interesting bit though would be to look at multiple available sources:

Poster: Horror, Possession, Family, Fleeing, Nightmare, House, Evil, Amityville, Supernatural, Tragedy

Trailer: Horror, Supernatural, Possession, Haunted House, Amityville, Family, Paranormal, Demonic, Evil, Tragedy

Trailer (No Sound): Horror, Amityville, Possession, Haunted House, Paranormal, Family, Supernatural, Demonic, Thriller, 1980s

Wikipedia page: Possession, Horror, Familicide, Incest, Exorcism, Demonic, Violence, Abuse, Murder, Supernatural

IMDb Trivia: Incest, Nudity, Awkward, Horror, Sequel, Paranormal, Lawsuit, DeFeo, Replica, Debut

IMDb Reviews: Possession, Haunted House, Incest, Murder, Evil, Religion/Priest, Horror, Family, Violence, Prequel

The ones with actual text tended to identify specific plot points (incest being the big one), and the media was fairly mundane. Demonic, Supernatural, Possession, Haunted House, and Incest would be the five I would pick out as “intriguing and description”.

There is an A+ Setting Alert (Where?) for Amityville, New York, which seems to be somewhere in Long Island, although that’s where the real one is, they don’t get too specific in the movie. Worst Twist (How?) for the useless reveal that the priest is now possessed. That doesn’t come back at all in any of the first three films, so what is the point? This one is Bad, it is weird and gross and off-putting in general, and specifically is pretty boring with nothing to say ro add to the exorcism genre or the first film.

Read about haunted houses or something in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Amityville II: The Possession Quiz

What makes Amityville 2 special … possessions, exorcisms, talk to me people! Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) Might as well start with an easy one. Where in New York is the real life Amityville?

2) Ha, on the soundtrack for this film, naturally, it has to give official credit for Happy Birthday to You. This song is famously written by whom?

3) There was a remake of the original film in 2005. How many original films were there, and since 2011 how many independent releases of related films have there been (plus or minus 5 let’s say)?

4) Orion Pictures produced the film. They have produced four Best Picture films. Name any one of them.

5) In this film the family uses the fictional name Montelli. But what was the actual name of the family in the original Amityville haunting?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: On January 26, 1998, this film played late on TMC. Earlier that night though this played:

What is that film?

Answers

Amityville II: The Possession Preview

“What? No,” Samantha says, confused as to why Jamie would think a scorpion would have stung her in the forests of Massachusetts. She cradles her arm and looks at him with tears in her eyes. “I’ve been trying to tell you,” she says softly. “I know,” Jamie says, even softer, “but I wasn’t listening. But I’m listening now.” They slowly walk their way into the roller rink that contains the Wall of Lovers and sit at a table. Two milkshakes later and they’re ready to talk. “Do you remember when I told you about how I used to be a track and field star in high school but then had to stop?” Jamie shakes his head. He didn’t remember that at all, but it explains her blazing fast speed. “Alright,” she continues, “but you must remember how I told you about the time that a couple of boys drag raced their way into this roller rink and then into my heart while they rebuilt the roller rink together.” It sounded familiar but he eventually shakes his head. He probably would have remembered that if he had been listening. “OK,” she presses on, visibly frustrated, “but how could you forget that after finding my true loves we decided to carve our names in the Wall of Lovers and that’s when we noticed…” she trails off, her eyes pleading with Jamie to have at least absorbed the most tragic of the many tragic stories in her unique beautiful and doomed life. Jamie’s face is blank. Slowly he opens his mouth. “Yes,” he says. Samantha gives up and comes around to his side of the table and hands him a book. It’s the third of the Holly Ween series. Holly Ween’s Possessed 3D. That’s right! We are hitting up one of the most famous horror series for the first time by catching Amityville 2: The Possession and Amityville Horror 3-D. I really don’t like the first film much. I think it’s bad and kind of crazy that it spurred a whole series of films. But apparently these are even worse. Cool. As for Bring a Friend, let’s lighten it up a bit with the “classic” T&A comedy, Joysticks. Now we’re talking. Let’s go!

Amityville II: The Possession (1982) – BMeTric: 36.6; Notability: 32

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 3.4%; Notability: top 6.4%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 8.7%; Higher BMeT: Grease 2, Piranha II: The Spawning, Trail of the Pink Panther, Megaforce, Zapped!, Friday the 13th: Part 3, Losin’ It, Parasite; Higher Notability: Young Doctors in Love, Trail of the Pink Panther, Movie Madness, Grease 2, Wrong Is Right, Monsignor, Yes, Giorgio, Lookin’ to Get Out, Death Wish II, Fighting Back, The Toy, Megaforce, The Beast Within, Zapped!, Partners; Lower RT: Class Reunion, Partners, Movie Madness, Monsignor, The Toy, Piranha II: The Spawning, Megaforce, Zapped!, Friday the 13th: Part 3, Parasite, The Beast Within, Losin’ It, Vigilante, Fighting Back, Trail of the Pink Panther, Summer Lovers, Five Days One Summer; Notes: Only played 10 times on cable in the 90s which is a little surprising, it seems like the perfect item of IP to pedal to random channels late night. Grease 2 played over 40 times, but amazingly Piranha II seems to have only played once, on June 5th, 1993 at 3AM on channel 5 … that seems impossible. Young Doctors in Love … what the hell is that lol? We’ve only seen two of the films with a higher BMeT, mainly because it is hard to tell what is and isn’t qualifying from 1982.

RogerEbert.com – 2.0 stars – This movie is actually slightly better than “The Amityville Horror,” maybe because it rips off superior source material. It starts with the most notorious piece of real estate in North America. Then it lifts ingredients from “The Exorcist,” “Poltergeist,” and ‘Murder in Amityville,’ which was the book about the original Amityville horror.

(Hmmmm, intriguing. See this is why having real critics is nice. Who could have watched this along with like four other movies in an afternoon and then reeled this off off-the-cuff.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-1wwxK2wIs/

(The trailer explains the first film. Yes, before them another family … the DeFeo family. I do love how they had to change the name despite it being the original name in the first film. I guess you can’t just use actual names in ridiculous fictional accounts. This trailer really doesn’t do justice to how insane this film is.)

Directors – Damiano Damiani – ( Known For: A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe; A Bullet for the General; Mafia; Confessions of a Police Captain; The Most Beautiful Wife; The Empty Canvas; Alex l’ariete; The Case Is Closed, Forget It; I Am Afraid; How to Kill a Judge; The Witch; Un uomo in ginocchio; The Sicilian Connection; The Inquiry; Goodbye & Amen; Lipstick; Girolimoni, the Monster of Rome; Arturo’s Island; Una ragazza piuttosto complicata; The Warning; BMT: Amityville II: The Possession; Notes: Italian obviously … it is unclear whether this is his only American film.)

Writers – Tommy Lee Wallace – ( Known For: Fright Night Part 2; Vampires: Los Muertos; Far from Home; BMT: Halloween III: Season of the Witch; Amityville II: The Possession; Notes: He genuinely seems to be known for writing many sequels to classic horror films. I’ve heard good things about Fright Night Part 2.)

Hans Holzer – ( BMT: Amityville II: The Possession; Notes: He wrote the book. For some reason he only got credit on this one and then two terrible sequels.)

Dardano Sacchetti – ( Known For: Demons; The Beyond; City of the Living Dead; The House by the Cemetery; The Cat o’ Nine Tails; A Bay of Blood; The New York Ripper; Demons 2; The Psychic; Shock; Cannibals in the Streets; 1990: The Bronx Warriors; A Blade in the Dark; Devil Fish; Aladdin; Manhattan Baby; Cut and Run; Body Count; I guerrieri dell’anno 2072; The Tough Ones; BMT: Amityville II: The Possession; Notes: I guess I assume he worked with the director at some point? Or maybe he was just an Italian guy who did American Horror films and so the director hired him.)

Actors – James Olson – ( Known For: Commando; The Andromeda Strain; Ragtime; Rachel, Rachel; The Stalking Moon; Wild Rovers; Moon Zero Two; The Strange One; The Groundstar Conspiracy; Crescendo; The Mafu Cage; The Sharkfighters; The Three Sisters; BMT: Amityville II: The Possession; Notes: Oh, I should watch The Andromeda Strain, the book was quite good. Mostly he doesn’t have any qualifying films because he really didn’t work much in the 80s.)

Burt Young – ( Known For: Rocky; Once Upon a Time in America; Chinatown; Rocky II; Rocky Balboa; Rocky III; Win Win; New York, I Love You; Transamerica; Mickey Blue Eyes; Back to School; Convoy; Rob the Mob; Sly; The Pope of Greenwich Village; She’s So Lovely; The Killer Elite; Across 110th Street; Last Exit to Brooklyn; The Gambler; BMT: Rocky IV; Rocky V; The Adventures of Pluto Nash; Going Overboard; Amityville II: The Possession; Notes: Burt Young baby! He looked ancient for like 20 years prior to passing away in 2023. Also, I’m not sure anyone acted drunk better than him … also he might have been drunk.)

Rutanya Alda – ( Known For: The Deer Hunter; Rocky II; The Long Goodbye; The Ref; Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid; The Panic in Needle Park; The Dark Half; Scarecrow; The Stuff; Mommie Dearest; The Fury; Hello, Dolly!; When a Stranger Calls; Black Widow; The Last Tycoon; Looking for Mr. Goodbar; Christmas Evil; Night of the Wolf; Last Exit to Brooklyn; Prancer; Future BMT: The Glass House; The War with Grandpa; Gross Anatomy; BMT: Steel; Amityville II: The Possession; Notes: Still alive I think. She was born in 1942 in the Soviet Union.)

Budget/Gross – $5 million / Domestic: $12,534,817 (Worldwide: $12,534,817)

(Again, not bad. You really can’t go wrong with horror films. They can be made for a few million, and you make like $15 million and mint some money. Easy.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 27% (6/22)

(Ha, well the consensus appears to be: this is a rip-off of The Exorcist, and also is gross for exploiting an actual tragedy. Go figure.)

New York Times Description: More occult hooey.

Poster – The Amityville Sklog II: The Skloggening

(The house has always been cool. Looking like the Halloween pumpkin and all that. This poster sucks though. I’ll give it a slight bump far higher than it deserves only because of those cool little devil esses in the title. C-.)

Tagline(s) – The night of February 5, 1976, George and Kathleen Lutz fled their home in Amityville, New York. They got out alive! Their living nightmare shocked audiences around the world in “The Amityville Horror”. But before them, another family lived in this house and were caught by the original evil. They weren’t so lucky… this is their story! (F)

(Nope. Let me know when you finish reading it so I can reiterate: No way.)

Keyword(s) – 1983-1991

Best Options (Horror): 58.3 Amityville 3-D (1983), 45.7 Children of the Corn (1984), 45.4 DeepStar Six (1989), 42.4 Shocker (1989), 41.9 House II: The Second Story (1987), 37.9 Invaders from Mars (1986), 37.7 Return of the Living Dead II (1988), 32.7 The Seventh Sign (1988), 30.1 Creepshow 2 (1987), 28.3 The Phantom of the Opera (1989), 26.5 My Demon Lover (1987), 26.0 Bad Dreams (1988), 25.6 The Unholy (1988), 25.3 The First Power (1990), 24.2 Dark Angel (1990), 23.4 Popcorn (1991), 22.4 Nightmares (1983), 21.6 Dead Heat (1988), 20.8 The Believers (1987), 17.7 Phantasm II (1988)

(This film is actually a little outside the window, it is being done as a bonus. As you can see though, Amityville 3-D was just so good we couldn’t pass it up.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 14) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Burt Young is No. 2 billed in Amityville II: The Possession and No. 3 billed in Rocky V, which also stars Sylvester Stallone (No. 1 billed) who is in The Expendables 3 (No. 1 billed) which also stars Jason Statham (No. 2 billed) who is in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (No. 1 billed) which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (2 + 3) + (1 + 1) + (2 + 1) + (3 + 1) = 14. If we were to watch Rocky IV, and The Glass House we can get the HoE Number down to 13.

Notes – In a 2018 interview, Diane Franklin talked about her infamous incestuous sex scene. She said while she definitely understood the peculiarity of it, she didn’t have a huge issue with doing it. “I never had a brother, so luckily, I didn’t have that association or the weirdness that went along with it.” Franklin did admit filming the scene did end up being very awkward, but not because of the content. It was the producers who made her nervous. Shot in Mexico with no parents or chaperones at her side, the script called for the actress to appear topless, which she agreed to because she had no issue taking off her top in front of cast and crew. She’d already done it in The Last American Virgin (1982). But when producers tried to persuade her to go fully nude, she balked and successfully stood her ground. “They said I was beautiful and they really wanted me to do it. I said thank you very much but no.” Franklin laughed. “They got around it by shooting me from the back, which I had no say in. And that was that.”

Jan and Mark Montelli were portrayed by real life brother and sister Erika Katz and Brent Katz.

According to an interview with George Lutz at website Horror.com, (Lutz’ twenty-eight days in the real-life house provided the base for The Amityville Horror (1979)), Lutz wanted this sequel to be based on John G. Jones’ book “The Amityville Horror Part II”, the sequel novel which recounts the aftermath of the Lutz family escaping the house, but still experiencing paranormal events. However, producer Dino De Laurentiis, in conjunction with American International Pictures, made this sequel based on Hans Holzer’s book “Murder in Amityville”, which is a prequel that recounts the events that led to the DeFeo family deaths instead. Lutz sued De Laurentiis. He was unsuccessful but did manage to force them to out a disclaimer on the posters that read “This film has no affiliation with George and Kathy Lutz.”

Debut theatrical feature film of actor Jack Magner whose only other screen acting credit after this movie was in Stephen King’s Firestarter (1984).

The house in the film, as in the original The Amityville Horror (1979) movie, is not the actual house as depicted in the best-selling novel, as that dwelling was unavailable to shoot in for both films. The home in both movies was a Colonial style replica situated in Toms River, New Jersey.

Awards – Nominee for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress (Rutanya Alda)