Movie

How dumb is it that I am seriously considering buying this off of eBay?

A piece of Valley Lodge

A piece of Valley Lodge

An actual piece of the Valley Lodge from “Manos: The Hands of Fate“. If you’ve never seen it, it is one of the great independent B-Movies of all time. A quotable, terrible, and highly stylized movie that you can’t help but love.

I first saw it courtesy of my beloved Mystery Science Theater 3000, and contains my all time favorite MST3K quote..

Every frame of this movie is like the last known photo of somebody.” – Joel

 

It has since popped up in strange places throughout my life. Friends of mine and I have had long discussions about this movie. Once, while several cinephile friends and I were seeing just how much beer we could drink, and complaining about the terrible remakes Hollywood is forcing us to endure, Matt make a great point.

When asked what movie he would most like to remake, he replied “Manos: The Hands of Fate.” When further pressed to explain (i.e. drunken cries of “What’s the matter with you?”) he made a fantastic point. “Why remake a good, or beloved movie? What can you possibly achieve? If you’re going to remake a movie, take a terrible one and make it great.”

We thought about that for a minute, then pelted him with empty-ish beer cans. Because the one thing we really hate is somebody making sense in the middle of our fun.

So, if you’ve got an hour to kill, you could do a lot worse than watch this movie. Although, I do recommend the MST3K version for most of my “normal” friends. For my inner circle, we’ll watch both.

Jim Says:”You have failed us, Torgo. For this, you must die.”

As my regular visitor(s) know, I love movies. Extra love for movies shot in my hometown of Pittsburgh. A few of the greats…

Innocent Blood: Great John Landis comedy/horror film in the same vein as American Werewolf In London. Not only does Innocent Blood have a great plot, memorable characters and show off the city in a great way, but the vampires in it are actual blood sucking killers. Not sparkly little emo idiots in dire need of a good ass kicking. Fun movie all the way through.

Striking Distance a fun Bruce Willis vehicle that has some wonderful cinematography a decent plot with a few forgivable problems, but easily makes up for it with the characters and plot twists. Great movie to eat popcorn by.

She’s Out of My League:Great date movie. This romantic comedy features the classic “Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girls dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day.” Or something like that. Fun flick.

I wold be remiss if I didn’t also mention Zack & Miri Make a Porno. Kevin Smith delivers another fun ride with this comedy set, and filmed in, Monroeville. Laugh out loud funny. ‘Nuff said.

However, the number of stinkballs being filmed in my beloved city is growing. The inspiration for this post came from watching Unstoppable aka Unwatchable. So here’s the deal. A train gets away while its engineer steps off to sign some autographs or something, and begins a journey through Wester Pennsylvania at a high rate of speed while pulling several cars of toxic, highly explosive, zombie chemicals, and ONE grain car (it’s important). Along the way, we encounter plot holes you could drive a train.. well you get the idea. I’m no engineer, no expert on trains larger than HO scale, nor have I ever attempted to stop an actual train. But, you don’t need to be a rocket surgeon to figure out how to stop this one. Denzel, please start reading these scripts before signing anything. (Seriously, dude. You’re better than this. Leave that crap for Wesley Snipes.)

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be chiming in on this more from time to time. Meanwhile, enjoy.

Jim Says; “See you next Wednesday.”