Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

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In case you weren't aware, we love bad movies. And our access to them was largely because of weekend monster movie shows. In Detroit we had The Ghoul and Sir Graves Ghastly to feed our B-movie hunger. But there were and are others; MST3K, Joe Bob Briggs, Ghoulardi and, of course, Elvira, to name but a few.

But only one of them made it to the big screen (before Mystery Science Theater 3000, that is), and that's the movie we watched this time around.

Let's get this out of the way right of the bat: Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) has a healthy set of breasts. They features prominently in her television show, and they are a large part of the conflict during the movie. Specifically, how much all the guys want to see and touch them, and how much all the other women are threatened by them. Oh, sure, you could argue that the main plot is about Elvira's Uncle Vincent (William Morgan Sheppard) trying to get her late Aunt Morgana's cookbook/spellbook from her, but they would be wrong. The main storyline here is Elvira's boobs, and how many different ways they can be exploited on film.

Anyway...

Elvira is tired of starring in a nationally televised program where she gets to lounge on a couch and show B-movies. What she really wants to do is go to Las Vegas and shake her goodies for the adoring up-and-coming goth crowd there. (That was a thing in 1988, right?) Unfortunately, she needs moolah to make that happen, because the hotel that wants to book her is insisting she pay for all the set decoration and whatnot up front for some reason. However, she has only the salary from her wildly successful show, and can't afford the cost of set design. Fortunately(?) her aunt picks just the right time to kick the bucket, and it turns out Elvira was named in the will! So she scuttles off the Falwell, Massachusetts, to see what her aunt left her.

Upon arriving in town, everyone is giving her the stink eye because she has her bountiful sweater puppies on display (as much as one can in a PG-13 movie, anyway), and they immediately take an intense dislike to her. Not nearly as much of a dislike as her Uncle Vincent does when she arrives at the reading of the will. Morgana left five thousand dollars to both her maid and chauffeur, and the rest of her belongings, including a dog name Algonquin and a run-down house in Falwell, to Elvira. Vincent gets nothing at all, and he is not at all happy about it. He does, however, know about Morgana's book, and he wants it for his own nefarious purposes. He offers Elvira fifty dollars for it, and she accepts, telling him to come by and pick it up later.

He seems delightful!

Back in town, Elvira immediately angers the town council by being, you know...hot. This causes friction between her and them, but the teenage boys in town are big fans, as is the young girl whose elderly parents own the local motel. They all offer to help her repair the house so she can sell it and use the money to get to Las Vegas and do her show. She also befriends Bob (Daniel Greene), the slow-witted owner of the local movie house. He is the only man in town to whom she is willing to give up access to her goods, despite what the town council might think.

Vincent stops by to get the book, but the dog, now affectionately referred to as "Gonks," hides it so she can't find it. She tells Vincent she will find it and get it to him as soon as she can. He huffs and snorts before leaving.

Subtlety at its best!

After the repairs are done, Elvira needs to find a job until she can sell the place, but nobody in town will hire her, largely due to the reach of Chastity Pariah (Edie McClurg) and Bob's "sorta" girlfriend Patty (Susan Kellerman). So she makes a plan with Bob to do a live show at his theater, where she'll show a movie and entertain the kids. The kids' parents have other ideas, and they push the school to give detention to anybody who attends.

The night of the show, Elvira goes to the local bowling alley, where the kids hang out, and guilts them into going to her show. She also takes a quit minute to punch Patty's tits right off, giving one confused teenage boy a lot to think about.

This movie is not ONLY about her br--...Oh...

The show is a massive success, as she screens Attack of the Killer Tomatoes for the crowd, and then performs a Flashdance-style dance routine, ending it what was supposed to be a bucket of gold glitter being dumped on her. A vengeful Patty, however, switches the bucket out with one full of black paint, and a slightly less icky Carrie-esque moment occurs when Elvira is covered head-to-toe in paint.

Later that evening, Elvira washes all the paint off and then throws herself at Bob, who seems shocked and a little horrified at the idea of touching a lady, but he gives it a try, and it seems to be going well until Elvira finds the book stashed under a couch cushion. She offers to make dinner from the recipe book and sets about putting it together. It all seems to be going well until she lifts the lid to stir it, and then a murderous Muppet tries to kill her, leading to a Gremlins-like kitchen battle ending with the Muppet ground to bits in the garbage disposal. She and Bob then follow Gonks up to the attic, where they find a box with a letter from Aunt Morgana, explaining where Elvira came from, as well as the origin of the ring she always wears. It turns out that it's magic!

Okay, that might be a bit of pandering.

The next day, during a town picnic, Elvira remakes the dish from the night before, but substituting one of the ingredients. It does not get the expected result, instead making all the old people horny, and causing a gross, wrinkly orgy right in the middle of the park, with the town's horrified teenagers looking on in terror as Chastity tries to sit on someone's face. In this PG-13 movie. Really.

Suitably disgusted with themselves and each other, the town council gets together to point fingers at the cause, and Vincent is there to help them along, pointing out a law on the state's books prohibiting witchcraft and spellcasting, and suggesting Elvira has been up to both. So the townspeople gather up their pitchforks and torches to capture Elvira. Their plan: burn her at the stake, just like the old days.

Oh, for crying out loud...

Will she escape with the help of a small group of scrappy, intelligent kids? Or will Vincent get the book? Will Gonks play any part in this? Will Elvira make it Las Vegas? Also, "titboobs"?

You'll have to tune in to find out!

Derek is shocked at the number of blowjob jokes in this, again, PG-13 movie. He is unsure what the teenager with the Sally Jessie Raphael glasses is, gender-wise. No judgments or anything. He just wants some clarification, is all. And, again, "titboobs"?

Larry loves this film. He wishes it was more horror than comedy, but the comedy that is in there is right up his alley. He is also confused about "titboobs," even though he is the one who coined the word. No doubt, there will be further investigation.

Jake makes a good point about wanting the humor to more more like the unintentional kind you might find in a B-movie. He thinks this was sanitized too much to make it anything special. He also has a much better idea for the kind of movie Elvira needs to be in.

So put on your wig, throw on a tight corset with a spider motif, and listen this week's episode!

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

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We at Here Be Spoilers have long argued that musicians trying to act is rarely, if ever, a good idea. Take, for instance, the entire film oeuvre of Elvis. Blech. It's garbage.

There are a few exceptions to the rule. Eminem in 8 Mile, for instance, although he is really just playing himself, so it's iffy, at best. There's also Prince. For the record, we're all Prince fans here, and it's hard to deny that he had an amazing ability to draw people in, and Purple Rain was an amazing film which, like 8 Mile, was semi-autobiographical, so it barely counts as acting. Really, it's the movie's soundtrack that is the major draw.

But if you want a perfect representation of our argument that musicians shouldn't act, you have to travel all the way back to 1978, and the musical film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which features a storyline very loosely based on the Beatles' album of the same name, plus one or two of their other songs.

Heartland is a tiny town in Middle America where there are white picket fences everywhere, everything is wholesome and the people are the friendliest. Hell, even the town's mayor(?), Mr. Kite, is played by George freakin' Burns, who also acts as the narrator of this movie.

The town's big claim to fame is, of course, Sgt. Pepper and his world-famous Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was solely responsible for ending both World Wars I and II. The stock market crash, the New Deal, Korea, Vietnam, the hippie movement...The band played on. Until one day, while performing in the town square, Sgt. Pepper dropped dead. It was a sad period, and the town did its best to find someone to become the new Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The best option...of whoever was available.

For reasons that will never become clear, they chose Billy Shears (Peter Frampton) and his best friends from childhood, the Henderson brothers, Mark (Barry Gibb), Dave (Robin Gibb) and Bob (Maurice Gibb), to take up the mantle and make the town famous again. Billy's brother, Dougie (Paul Nicholas), takes on the mantle of the band's manager, and Billy's girlfriend, Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina), takes it upon herself to look alternately bored and sad.

A man from a Big Record Company (Donald Pleasence as B.D. Hoffler) hears the band's music and wants to make them hugely famous, which, according to the movie, will take about a week. And what a busy week it will be!

The band whisks themselves away in a hot air balloon, which gets hit by a jet, and it takes them to Hollywood, where they begin a whirlwind of activity, starting with a party involving lots of booze, lots of food, and lots of women rubbing their tits against Billy and the Hendersons. The Henderson boys sign their contracts without even taking their eyes off the women. Billy takes a particular interest in Lucy (Dianne Steinberg), who is one of Hoffler's acts and, for some reason, his chauffeur. Lucy slips Billy a roofie and gets him to sign Hoffler's contract, and then they head to the Bone Zone on a bed shaped like a record.

Mustard accidentally pressed the "Robo-Colonic" button.

The next day begins a flurry of activity, as the band heads to the studio to record their first album. Back in Heartland, a van rolls into town carrying Mr. Mustard (Frankie Howard) and his assistant, The Brute (Carel Struycken). They have been sent their by a mysterious organization called the FVB, to steal Sgt. Pepper and his band's instruments, which will somehow send the town careening into the darkest pits of hell. Or something. This involves a lot of people moving and a bunch of strip clubs popping up out of nowhere.

Once Mustard steals the instruments, the FVB orders him to send to instruments to different locations, which he does, keeping the bass drum for himself. Strawberry, disheartened at how things are going in town, as well as missing Billy, sneaks out of her parents' house and gets on a bus to Hollywood to find him. Mustard, who was looking for a chance to grab her, misses this because he is sleeping, despite his weird sex robots trying to wake him.

For the record, this is not his special purpose.

Back in the big city--possibly the next day, the band goes on tour with Lucy and her group, The Diamonds (Stargard). They become an instant smash hit, and everybody loves them. So the obvious move is to go back into the studio and make another album. (Please note, this is the second album in two or three days!) Strawberry, who has reached Hollywood in record time, suffers a hallucination about Billy and his friends banging Lucy and her group, and then goes searching for the band, which she finds within minutes, and just wanders into the studio to interrupt recording without so much as a single person asking her, "Who are you and why are you here?". Billy, super-psyched to see Strawberry, drags the band out of the studio to talk to her, and she tells them about the instruments being stolen. They all decide to do a Scooby-Doo style investigation.

Upon leaving the studio, Strawberry and the band discover Mustard's van outside. It seems he actually did figure out where Strawberry went. They get inside the van, which is empty aside from the sex robots, and find the bass drum. A bit of dicking around with the computer shows them where the other instruments are, and they head out to find them.

The disembodied head of Frank Zappa commands you to DANCE!

First stop is Dr. Maxwell Edison's (Steve Martin) plastic surgery factory. He has Sgt. Pepper's coronet, and the group quickly gets it back. Not quick enough, however, to avoid Steve Martin singing a Beatles song. Off to the next stop, which is the Church of Sun King (Alice Cooper), who also sings a song at the viewer, but he adds psychedelic video effects. it doesn't help. From him, they re-steal the tuba. While doing that, Billy is almost electrocuted to death, but he is brought back to life with the help of the sex robots and Strawberry's tears, because why should that be the only thing that makes any sense?

The band then sneaks into FVB headquarters and steals back the saxophone, and then they head back home, where the town celebrates their return. Mr. Mustard also comes back to town, and he kidnaps Strawberry, taking her back to FVB, setting up a showdown between Billy and his bad, and the mysterious FVB itself (Aerosmith). But who will win? Will they all survive? If not, will it be Billy's fault? Will the Henderson boys ever stop mugging for the camera? Will Mr. Kite truly rock out, showing the town they should have picked him to lead the band instead?

Way too stoned to have realized this was a bad idea.

You'll have to tune in to find out!

Larry, surprisingly, liked the movie. His only complaint was that there was almost no dialog at all, other than Mr. Kite's narration. Otherwise, he feels that this film is flawless. Or not, because of Star Wars sounds. It's hard to explain, really.

Derek has all kinds of problems with this movie, from the terrible musical arrangements, to the "middle American" heroes who are, clearly, not from America. Also, what's with Mustard's robots? And why is Billy such an idiot? God, this movie sucked.

So don't do anything special. It's not worth it. the movie is crap. Just listen this week's episode!

Brotherhood of the Wolf

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Let's get this out of the way up front: French cinema can be pretty weird. From their excessively artsy films, to their seemingly bizarre obsession with Jerry Lewis, the French can really make some strange cinematic choices.

But once in a while, they put out a film that can appeal to fans of just about any genre, sometimes cramming them all into one film. Brotherhood of the Wolf is one such film.

Billed as a "historical action horror drama," it follows Grégoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) and his Iroquois blood brother Mani (Mark Dacascos), as they travel to the French province of Gévaudan to track down a mysterious beast that is killing women and children in the area. All of this is taking place in 1764, during the French Revolution.

On the way to their destination, Fronsac and Mani come across a father and daughter who look like they are being robbed by a number of men, all of whom are dressed like women. The father and daughter claim the men are robbers, but the men insist they are out trying to draw the attention of the monster, as it only attacks women and children. Mani is immediately interested in the daughter, so he takes on several of them cross-dressing men, who are armed with Wolverine-style claws, and he beats them soundly, causing the entire group to run away. With a smirk and smoldering eyes, Fronsac and Mani continue on their way.

And sticks. They have sticks, too. Not that it matters.

Reaching their destination, the Marquis d'Apcher (Hans Meyer) sets the two of them up at the local brothel, where Fronsac is intrigued by an Italian woman there named Sylvia (Monica Bellucci). Later that day, Mani finds more people to fight, and they are again armed with those ridiculous claws. He beats them up again, and a dinner is thrown, where Fronsac meets all the local nobles, and then they convince Mani to tell them what their spirit animals are, although most of them don't take him too seriously. One of the men, Jean-François de Morangias (Vincent Cassel), who lost his arm to a lion during an African safari, asks Mani to identify his spirit animal, but Mani doesn't want to, for some reason.

About the same time, Fronsac meets Jean-François's sister, Marianne (Emile Dequenne), and becomes infatuated with her, despite the fact that she looks like she's maybe fifteen, at best. Jean-François is not too keen on Fronsac plowing his sister (we discover later that it's because he wants to do it himself), but their father, the Count (Jean Yanne), seems cool with it. Weird family.

Probably a metaphor for pre-teen sex or something.

While investigating another victim the next day, Fronsac removes a steel tooth from the body and decides that this is clearly no wolf, as the locals believed. However, this doesn't stop a wolf hunt that just results in a bunch of dead wolves that didn't do anything to anybody. King Louis XV's weapons master (John Leyson) orders Fronsac to taxidermy one of the dead wolves and make it look like a monster so he can bring it back to Paris and tell the king that the whole thing is handled. Fronsac is not into the idea, but he has no choice. After his work is completed, Fronsac is also sent back to Paris.

While trying to work out what the monster actually is, Fronsac connects it to a secret society, Brotherhood of the Wolf. He believes they are using it as a weapon to make the king look bad. When Fronsac receives a letter from Marianne, he sneaks back to  Gévaudan to see her, and they are attacked by the monster, but it doesn't attack Marianne.

Very clearly not a wolf.

Now a little more informed about what they are looking for, Fronsac, Mani and the Marquis go looking for it. They find it and try to trap it, but none of those work. They do manage to injure it quite badly, and Mani follows the trail of blood it leaves, leading to an underground cavern where the soldiers of the secret society--also known as the cross-dressers from the beginning of the movie--fight with Mani again. He beats of them, but them an unseen person shoots Mani int he back, killing him. Fronsac finds his body and takes him back to the Marquis's mansion, where he performs an autopsy, finding a silver bullet--the signature of Jean-François.

Total dick.

Now that he knows who the killer is, Fronsac returns to the cavern and starts killing bad guys. A lot of them. Like, dozens. But then he stops because the new day's sun is coming up, and he has to burn Mani's body, per his people's customs. As he gathers Mani's ashes, the local constable arrives and arrests him.

While in prison, Sylvia visits him, demanding that he be fed. The jailer gives Fronsac some food while Sylvia tells him about what has happened. Fronsac can't pay attention to her, however, because he is busy choking to death.

Nothing but trouble. Hot, sexy trouble.

Or is he? Is Sylvia more than she seems? Is Marianne cool with the guy she totally wants to go to Pound Town with also hitting the Bone Zone with Sylvia? Or will she reconsider her brother's advances? Oh, and we almost forgot; what the heck is the monster?

You'll have to tune in to find out!

Derek liked the movie, but he was not particularly happy with the CG components. The practical monster looked cool, but its digital counterpart was not great. Also, how freakin' old is Marianne? She looks half Fronsac's age. That can't be cool, even in the mid-1700s.

Jake is a fan. He especially likes the fight scenes, as well as the various other action sequences. He's not impressed with the CG monster, either, but he's willing to give it a pass because it's such a good story. He does have some concerns about the whole powdered wig thing, though.

So put on a fake mole, some pantaloons, and get greased up for this week's episode!