Live Blogging: Crank High Voltage (2009)

Continuing the Crank fun from the other day and to show my support for tonight's Manly Movie Night I'll be missing, here's my live blog of Crank's sequel Crank: High Voltage. I was super jealous of Sean when he got to see this flick in theaters and blogged about it. Sean had this to say earlier this year: "Like an unholy cross between Chuck Norris's Invasion U.S.A., Troma, and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, the movie was wildly and needlessly experimental, and was offensive even to me at times, and had no redeeming social value whatsoever except to punch you in the face repeatedly with a fist made of entertainment. I'd be amazed all over again if I see a movie I enjoy more than this one for the rest of the year." I would honestly count this as one of the best action movies of all time and it's ability to top its predecessor, which was already an impressively over the top movie is, well, just plain amazing.

The plot of this one is that Chev Chelios fell out of the helicopter, but they grabbed his body right away and kept him alive for 3 months before opening him up to harvest his organs. They get his heart and replace it with a robot one, but it isn't until he overhears them talking about cutting of his penis that he freaks out and kicks ass. Amy Smart and Dwight Yoakam return in their same roles and Efren Ramirez plays his character from the first movie's brother Venus. Now, instead of needing adrenaline to stay alive, Chev has to shock his robot heart to keep it charged. As you can imagine, it's amazing.

Again spoilers follow and I highly encourage you to see this movie as soon as possible. It just came out on DVD last week or the week before. It's simply amazing. Well, here we go.

*Love that 8-bit credits.

*This is like watching Star Wars or Lord of the Rings back to back, but way cooler.

*News guy calls events of the first movie "implausible" - no kidding.

*Oh man, that dude puts ashes in Chev's open chest cavity. That's cold.

*He's awake during the surgery!!!

*"The famous Chelios heart" - subtitle, dude's so rad his HEART is famous.

*Where did she shove that pencil? Not cool.

*He dips the shotgun in tar and sticks it up the dude's ass--that's what you get bad guy!

*I like that he basically figures out the catch to survival on his own in both movies.

*"Jesus H. Chelios" - needs to be on a T-shirt.

*Nice film strip-like fake heart explanation from Yoakam.

*Oh man, his battery is already messed up after skidding.

*I don't think any movie star runs more than Statham.

*I love seeing the Social Club get emptied from the outside, that's a great touch. One man goes in (Chev) and everyone else flies out!

*There's Corey Haim...in a strip club, did he even know this was a movie? He's wearing a Nice Jugs t-shirt with pictures of milk jugs. Classy.

*Strippers with guns, it's like Sin City with implant jokes.

*Haha, the cops tazed him, not good for them.

*They finally explained that he's been gone for three months, love the phone message explanation.

*"Is Doc Miles gonna have to choke a bitch?" - nice one Dwight!

*Nice porn star cameos in the porn strike scene.

*Free style walking ball smash!

*Dog shock collar and the dog bits the cops junk, heh, nice.

*Kaylo's brother Venus has tourettes, that should be interesting.

*He's dry humping an old lady and she's loving it!

*The soundtrack is brilliant, Tarantin-esque.

*People love watching people have sex in various positions on a race track.

*Smart's way too turned on by seeing horse penis.

*"Well, you ain't no Ralph Macchio yourself Chev" - Venus.

*Gotta love a good man vs. car chase.

*They just made the heart transplant nonsense make sense. Impressive.

*Best in-car shootout ever.

*Dude just cut off his own nipples, squirm-o-ramma.

*Love seeing Haim get the hammer dropped on him by Smart after sucking.

*The shrink totally wants to bang the orderly from the first one...heh, sucks to be him.

*What the? It's like Godzilla under the power lines!!!

*Interesting talk show-style flashback to Chev as a kid with his mom complete with "he's a bad kid" clips. His mom looks an awful lot like Amy Smart.

*That's a lot of balls, but nicely followed by lots of boobs and butts.

*Floating robot head villain from the first movie AND his brother is The Ferret AND Ferret's beating Chev with a cat-o-nine-tails.

*Venus FINALLY kicks ass and with nun-chucks no less.

*Crazy awesome multi-group shoot out and fight scene!!!

*Chev's literally on fire and kicking ass, damn, even his face. GET SOME WATER!

*Watch through the credits as they actually end the story there and then do some fun out takes and whatnot.

Oh, DO go on.

Halloween Scene: Manly Movie Night 10-17-08

2008-10-19
4:26:11 pm

About three years ago my friends and colleagues at Wizard decided to get together and watch three "manly" movies hooting, hollering, drinking and making jokes the entire time. For a more complete history check out Sean T. Collins' blog post about what we've dubbed Manly Movie Mamajama.



About a month ago we started exchanging E-mails about a Halloween-themed MMM and finally decided on a line up consisting of The Lost Boys, Slumber Party Massacre II (which I take full responsibility for adding to the line-up) and Dead Alive. So, Friday night we gathered together in manly fashion eating pizza and chili (some of us simultaneously) and drinking beer and Red Bull. I'd actually seen all three movies before, but it's always a new experience watching them with these guys.

We started with Lost Boys (1987) directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Corey Feldman and Kiefer Sutherland. There's a lot going on in this movie and I'm not sure how much of it was actually intended. As Rickey pointed out, it really seems like brothers Jason Patric and Corey Haim are in a budding romance. There's also the hilarity of the clothing throughout the flick. Between Haim's crazy jackets/robes and Sutherland's gang of mulleted biker vampires. Did this ever look tough? Ah, it was a different, simpler time.

Anyway, for those of you who haven't seen it Lost Boys is about a pair of brothers and their mom who move in with their grandpa in the town of Santa Carla, CA which looks like Coney Island on crazy pills (but sadly lacking The Warriors). Well, it turns out that Santa Carla has a bit of a vampire problem and may or may not be the murder capital of the world, depending on how much stock you put into billboard graffiti. As Jason Patric gets wrapped up in Sutherland's vampire gnag (which also includes Bill from the Bill and Ted movies), Haim meets the Frog Brothers, one of which is Feldman with seems to be doing his best Stallone impression throughout the movie. Their parents own a comic book store (probably the most disorganized store of all time). One of my favorite not-funny-on-purpose lines comes when Haim explains why two Superman comics shouldn't be right next to each other (Lori Lemaris hasn't even been introduced yet). How about because they're no less than 100 issues apart from each other. Oh, also their parents look dead. Just saying. Anyway, the Frog Bros. are vampire hunters.

Anyway, you can imagine where things go from there. Sean Collins made the point that, in the 80s kids progressed from Goonies to Monster Squad to Lost Boys. Now, I had never actually heard of Monster Squad as a kid and I didn't see Lost Boys until Rickey and I lived together, but these three films definitely share a spirit that you can't find in movies aimed at kids anymore. Heck half the stars of this R-rated movie probably couldn't legally see it when it premiered. Awesome!

But, really, you should check it out. There's some pretty good effects and the last battle in the mom's house is pretty great. Plus it's good for a lot of laughs, both intentional and unintentional.

So, after Lost Boys we popped the VHS copy of Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) that I bought off of Amazon for just this occasion for about $6. It's one of, if not THE most ridiculous movies (horror or otherwise) I've seen ever. As I explained to the group before we started, the first SPM movie had a random mental patient killing high school kids at a slumber party with a drill. This movie stars Crystal Bernard (the cute, blonde girl from Wings) as the sister of the survivor from the first flick. She's in a band with three of her friends. One of the girls' parents' decided it would be a good idea to allow the girls to head up to their new condo (which are treated with the same sense of "newness" that malls were treated with in Dawn of the Dead) for the weekend.

Crystal keeps having crazy visions about a rockabilly dude with an Elvis haircut dressed in leather and rocking what looks like a BC Rich designed drill-tar. Well, as you can imagine, she keeps getting freaked out by various visions (the zit one is my favorite, worth the $6 I paid for this junk) but her friends just think she's crazy until the dude comes to real life and starts killing her friends and their visiting boyfriends. What?!

From there it's your average kids running away from a slasher movie, but with a lot more dancing as the Driller Killer busts some moves at random intervals and sings crazy songs. Seriously, if you love bad slasher movies, check this one out. Though I'm not sure if any of my MMM colleagues would agree with that sentiment. General consensus was that it was in the least liked films in MMM history down there with Steel Dawn and King Kong Lives (which I also found hilarious).

Unfortunately, I started coming down with a pretty bad cold that I'm still dealing with today, so I bounced out before the end of Dead Alive, though I'm not sure how much longer anyone else watched it. I would recommend skipping to the last 30 minutes, but make sure to view the zombie sex scene. It's hilarious. Anyway, for my full Dead Alive/Braindead review, click here. As always, I had a great time at the MMM (even with getting sick) and I highly recommend starting up your own.

Oh, DO go on.